Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism
Nietzsche · en
"The creative self created for itself valuing and
despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The
creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand
of its will."
One of the best passages in Zarathustra's sermons is Nietzsche's
command to love the overman, the man of the distant future:
"I tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love
of yourselves.
"Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would
fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your
unselfishness.'
"The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been
proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; man thus thrusteth
himself upon his neighbor.
"Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? I rather counsel
you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote.
"Love unto the most remote future man is higher than love
unto your neighbor. And I consider love unto things and
ghosts to be higher than love unto men.
"This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is
more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him
thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto
thy neighbor.
"Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves
enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you
and thus to gild you with his error.
"My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I
counsel you to love those who are the most remote."
In perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche's view
of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:
"Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be
built thyself square in body and soul.
"Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate
thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help
thee!
"Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel
of self-rolling,--thou shalt create a creator.
"Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one
which is more than they who created it I call marriage
reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a
will.
"Let this be the significance and the truth of thy
marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage,
those superfluous--alas, what call I that?
"Alas! that soul's poverty of two! Alas! that soul's dirt
of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!
"Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in
heaven.
"Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!"
Nietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the
common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, "You are
not a woman, you are a friend." He says of woman:
"Too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman.
Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she
knoweth love only."