The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II
Nietzsche · en
In my opinion, Henrik Ibsen has become very German. With all his
robust idealism and "Will to Truth," he never dared to ring himself
free from moral-illusionism which says "freedom," and will not admit,
even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis
of the "Will to Power" in him who lacks it. In the first stage, one
demands justice at the hands of those who have power. In the second,
one speaks of "freedom," that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself
free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of
"equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant
personality one wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing in
power.
87.
The Decline of _Protestantism_: theoretically and historically
understood as a half-measure. Undeniable predominance of Catholicism
to-day: Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
_anti-Protestant_ movements (Wagner's _Parsifal,_ for instance) are no
longer regarded as such. The whole of the more elevated intellectuality
in France is _Catholic_ in instinct; Bismarck recognised that there was
no longer any such thing as Protestantism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and tiresome form of decadence,
in which Christianity has known how to survive in the mediocre North,
is something incomplete and complexly valuable for knowledge, in so far
as it was able to bring experiences of different kinds and origins into
the same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of Christianity! And, to refer
to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Protestant
Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent, and more lounging form
of Christian belief be imagined, than that of the average German
Protestant?... It is indeed a very humble Christianity. I call it
the Homœopathy of Christianity! I am reminded that, to-day, there
also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has ever
maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely
a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any means a more
comprehensible one.
90.