Жақсылықтан Өте: Болашақ Философиясына Кіріспе

1886 book by Friedrich Nietzschethe book by Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft) is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra but with a more polemical approach. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. G. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author. According to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as "X is good" or "X is evil". (§ 257). Nietzsche contrasts southern (Catholic) and northern (Protestant) Christianity; northern Europeans have much less "talent for religion" (§ 48) and lack "southern delicatezza" (§ 50). As elsewhere, Nietzsche praises the Old Testament while disparaging the New Testament (§ 52). Religion has always been connected to "three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, fasting and sexual abstinence" (§ 47), and has exerted cruelty through demanding sacrifice according to a "ladder" with different rungs of cruelty, which has ultimately caused God himself to be sacrificed (§ 55). Christianity, "the most fatal kind of self presumption ever", has beaten everything joyful, assertive and autocratic out of man and turned him into a "sublime abortion" (§ 62). If, unlike past philosophers such as Schopenhauer, we really want to tackle the problems of morality, we must "compare many moralities" and "prepare a typology of morals" (§ 186). In a discussion that anticipates On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche claims that "Morality is in Europe today herd animal morality" (§ 202)—i. e., it emanates from the ressentiment of the slave for the master (see also § 260, which leads into the discussion in Genealogy, I). Nietzsche argues that more than what they value as "good" distinguishes noble and base. Even where agreement exists over what is good, what men consider a sufficient sign of possessing what is good differs (§ 194). Nietzsche describes love as the desire to possess a woman. The most unrefined form of the desire is also the most readily identifiable as a desire to possess another: control over the woman's body. A subtler desire to possess her also wants her soul, and thus wants her to be willing to sacrifice herself for her lover. Nietzsche describes this as a more complete possession. A still more refined desire to possess her prompts a concern that she might be willing to sacrifice what she desires for a mistaken image of her lover. This leads some lovers to want their women to know them deep down so that their sacrifice really is a sacrifice for them. A similar rank ordering applies to statesmen, the less refined not caring whether they attain power by fraud, the more refined not taking pleasure in the people's love unless they love the statesman for who he really is. In both cases, the more spiritualized form of the desire to possess also demands one possess what is good more completely. In § 259, Nietzsche states that to not injure, exploit or be violent to others as a general principle of society is "a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay." He goes on to argue that life is "essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak."

Nietzsche discusses the complexities of the German soul (§ 244), praises the Jews and heavily criticizes the trend of German antisemitism (§ 251). He praises France as "the seat of Europe's most spiritual and refined culture and the leading school of taste" (§ 254). He finds the English coarse, gloomy, more brutal than the Germans, and declares that "they are no philosophical race", singling out Bacon, Hobbes, Hume and Locke as representing a "debasement and devaluation of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century" (§ 252). Nietzsche also touches on problems of translation and the leaden quality of the German language (§ 28). In a prophetic statement, Nietzsche proclaims that "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth" (§ 208).

Between § 62 and § 186 Nietzsche inserts a collection of mostly single sentence aphorisms, modelled on French aphorists such as La Rochefoucauld. Twelve of these (§§ 84, 85, 86, 114, 115, 127, 131, 139, 144, 145, 147, 148) concern women or the distinction between men and women. Other subjects touched on include his doctrine of the eternal recurrence (§ 70), music (§ 106) and utilitarianism (§ 174), among more general attempts at trenchant observations about human nature. The work concludes with a short ode to friendship in verse form (continuing Nietzsche's use of poetry in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Andreas Urs Sommer: Kommentar zu Nietzsches Jenseits von Gut und Böse (= Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Hg. ): Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken, Bd. 5/1). XVII + 939 pages. Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2016, (the comprehensive standard commentary on Beyond Good and Evil – only available in German).