(Z1.8). The hope for a Dionysian future that N first put forward in BT is one that he has ‘no reason to take back’ (EHBT4).
human, all Too human:
a book for free spirits
Originally three separate publications (1878, 1879, 1880), rebound together in 1886 in two volumes with new prefaces. The book is notable for introducing N’s aphoristic style; a return to a broadly Enlightenment trust in reason and in scientific method; a thorough- going attempt to offer a psychology founded on pleasure and pain, which would investigate the history of the development of thought; the concept of a ‘history of moral feelings’, and key among these the feeling of power; some of Nietzsche’s most sustained analyses of social organization and politics, employing especially the concept of utility. To a contemporary readership, the scattered comments on art and artists (see especially the fourth chapter of H1) would have clearly referred to Wagner; this book thus marks N’s decisive break with his former friend and idol.
human/humanity
N’s thoughts on the human per se are too diverse to be discussed in one entry. Despite occasional excursions into a philosophy of nature, the nature of the human is his most constant subject matter. Topics such as art, morality, religion, history, science, politics – N’s interest in them lies almost exclusively in what forms of human life they express, and what implications they hold for other, possible forms of human life, and thus the relationship to the animal or the
overhuman.
Here, let us focus on the concept of humaneness [Humanität, and sometimes N uses Menschlichkeit in this sense], by which N means the distinctive modes of excellence – particularly, healthy and noble but highly spiritualized feelings towards others – that belong to the human. A related term in English might be ‘civilized’. Such humaneness does not mean that the human is not something to be overcome (ZP3), or that we have made moral progress, or that
modes of human life within the modern world are not generally decadent and ill. Humaneness has not arisen for the reasons we believe (e.g. selflessness). Instead, they arise from the action of savage forces (H1.246) or basic errors (GS115). The notion of humaneness is N’s attempt to justly judge what human beings have achieved. Good examples can be found at H1.624, H2.231, D81, TIGermans5, EHWC1. Humanity is also a common theme explored in notebook 15 from 1888 (see particularly entries 63, 67, 110, in which the ‘true love of humanity’ is distinguished from the pseudo-humanity of Christian morality). N expresses admiration for seventeenth-century France who ‘loved existence’ as a ‘place where greatness and humanity are possible together’ (D191). By the later work (BGE on), N often uses the term ironically (e.g. TISkirmishes37).
I
See self.
ideal
Ideal. By ideal is meant some kind of imagined state in which a
mode of life is fully lived or a value is fully realized. By its nature, the ideal provokes a longing for it, or a striving so as to achieve it. Or, looked at differently, a mode of life is always associated with an ideal which defines it and towards which it longs and strives. That is how N uses the term ‘goal’ at Z1.15. Nietzsche uses the term ideal in three distinct senses. (i) An ideal which involves the negation of some aspect of life or of existence more generally. Often, the point of such analyses does not concern the ideal as such, but rather concerns what kinds of life would posit this as their ideal, and what have been the historical effects of the pursuit of this ideal. For example, in GM3, N writes about the ‘ascetic ideal’, the state in which freedom from passion or even sensation would be achieved. Likewise, the ideal human posited by morality is a tamed beast (TIImprovers). Ideals in this sense are generally targets of N’s harshest criticism (e.g. EHPreface2). (ii) Occasionally, N uses ‘ideal’ to indicate someone’s desire for
IDEAlISm 179
something which is beyond them, mere fantasy, and thus a kind of escape from reality (TISkirmishes32) – it is thus related to ‘idealism’. Here, the ideal requires the positing of and probably subordination to some transcendent reality; in this way it is (like the first type) opposed to life and this world. (iii) Ideal as a projection of one’s possibilities of health, growth or beauty, which does not require either the rejection of what is, or the positing of a transcendence. Thus, for example, the Greek gods are the ‘ideal image’ of the Greek mode of life (BT3, and see also H2.99, GS143); or, the ideal of the philosopher that N derives from Schopenhauer’s value as educator (UM3.5). N uses the term ideal particularly for his various concepts of future and higher types of human (e.g. GS382). Accordingly, he also sees his philosophical work as proposing this ideal as a ‘counter-’ or ‘opposite’ ideal. It is ‘counter’ to those ideals that are projected by weak or ill modes of life (GM2.23 and 3.23, BGE56, EHGM).
idealism
Kant termed his own thought ‘transcendental idealism’, and the German philosophical tradition after Kant (e.g. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel) is often called ‘German Idealism’. However, N makes little or no mention of these specific meanings. N’s usage is also not the everyday sense in English: an idealist as someone who holds unrealistic goals or values. N’s use of the term refers instead to any philosophical, ethical or religious doctrine that rejects (as illusory, false, degrading, or inferior) ‘this world’, one or more of its primary features (especially becoming), and our bodily connection to it (sensation). Parmenides and Plato are the key philosophical points of reference. N’s account of idealism thus ties in closely with the notion of ascetic ideals. At GS372 the attitude to the senses is key. N offers a critique of modern science beginning in GM3.23. In the following section, he groups together many of his contemporaries – ‘pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists, these sceptics’ – labelling them all idealists. They are the last and most spiritualized devotees of the ascetic ideal, because they still believe in truth. In this passage also, N refers us back to GS344, which explains why there is an idealism implicit in any appeal to ‘truth’.