Human All Too Human

Notes

Preface

Who is this book for? Nietzsche answers that almost immediately, in section 2 of the preface: he is dedicating the book to "free spirits."

He spends much of the book talking about how free spirits think and behave, what shapes them and what drives them. But he begins the book, in the Preface, by attempting to explain what a free spirit is. And he begins that explanation with an explanation of how free spirits are born (what he calls the great separation):

From the preface:

Thus I invented, when I needed them, the "free spirits" too, to whom this heavyhearted-stouthearted book with the title Human, All-Too-Human is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits", were none - but, as I said, I needed their company at the time, to be of good cheer in the midst of bad things (illness, isolation, foreignness, sloth, inactivity); as brave fellows and spectres to chat and laugh with, when one feels like chatting and laughing, and whom one sends to hell when they get boring - as reparation for lacking friends.

- Preface, Section 2

In the very next section, Nietzsche articulates, at great length, what it is that causes a free spirit to be born - what he calls the "great separation." It's a moment in a person's life when they become unbound to their social role, their duties, their moral universe, and gives up all obligations:

Better to die than to live here, so sounds the imperious and seductive voice. And this "here", this "at home" is everything which it had loved until then! A sudden horror an suspicion of that which it loved; a lightning flash of contempt toward that which was its "obligation"; a rebellious, despotic, volcanically jolting desire to roam abroad, to become alienated, cool, sober, icy: a hatred of love, perhaps a descratory reaching and glancing backward, to where it had until then worshipped and loved; perhaps a blush of shame at its most recent act, and at the same time, jubilation that it was done; a drunken, inner, jubliant shudder, which betrays a victory - victory? Over what? Over whom? A puzzling, questioning, questionable victory, but the first victory nevertheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history of the great separation.

- Preface, Section 3

It is also a disease that can destroy a person, this first outburst of strength and will to self-determination, self-valorisation, this will to free will: and how much disease is expressed by the wild attempts and peculiarities with which the freed person, the separated person, now tries to prove their rule over things!

...There is some arbitrariness and pleasure in arbitrariness to it, if he then perhaps directs his favor to that which previously stood in disrepute - if he creeps curiously and enticingly around what is most forbidden. Behind his ranging activity (for he is journeying restlessly and aimlessly, as in a desert) stands the question mark of an ever more dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all values be overturned? And is Good perhaps Evil? And God only an invention, a nicety of the devil? Is everything perhaps ultimately false? And if we are deceived, are we not for that very reason also deceivers? Must we not be deceivers, too?

- Preface, Section 3

Quotes

Preface

Thus I invented, when I needed them, the "free spirits" too, to whom this heavyhearted-stouthearted book with the title Human, All-Too-Human is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits", were none - but, as I said, I needed their company at the time, to be of good cheer in the midst of bad things (illness, isolation, foreignness, sloth, inactivity); as brave fellows and spectres to chat and laugh with, when one feels like chatting and laughing, and whom one sends to hell when they get boring - as reparation for lacking friends.

- Preface, Section 2

Better to die than to live here, so sounds the imperious and seductive voice. And this "here", this "at home" is everything which it had loved until then! A sudden horror an suspicion of that which it loved; a lightning flash of contempt toward that which was its "obligation"; a rebellious, despotic, volcanically jolting desire to roam abroad, to become alienated, cool, sober, icy: a hatred of love, perhaps a descratory reaching and glancing backward, to where it had until then worshipped and loved; perhaps a blush of shame at its most recent act, and at the same time, jubilation that it was done; a drunken, inner, jubliant shudder, which betrays a victory - victory? Over what? Over whom? A puzzling, questioning, questionable victory, but the first victory nevertheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history of the great separation.

- Preface, Section 3

It is also a disease that can destroy a person, this first outburst of strength and will to self-determination, self-valorisation, this will to free will: and how much disease is expressed by the wild attempts and peculiarities with which the freed person, the separated person, now tries to prove their rule over things!

...There is some arbitrariness and pleasure in arbitrariness to it, if he then perhaps directs his favor to that which previously stood in disrepute - if he creeps curiously and enticingly around what is most forbidden. Behind his ranging activity (for he is journeying restlessly and aimlessly, as in a desert) stands the question mark of an ever more dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all values be overturned? And is Good perhaps Evil? And God only an invention, a nicety of the devil? Is everything perhaps ultimately false? And if we are deceived, are we not for that very reason also deceivers? Must we not be deceivers, too?

- Preface, Section 3

Chapter 5

No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it. However many "worldly" elements the Catholic Church may have, its strength rests on those priestly natures, still numerous, who make life deep and difficult for themselves...

The person who wants to gain wisdom profits greatly from having thought for a time that humans are basically evil and degenerate: this idea is wrong, like its opposite, but for whole periods of time it was predominant and its roots have sunk deep into us and into our world. To understand ourselves we must understand it; but to climb higher, we must then climb over and beyond it.

Love is foolish, and possesses a horn of plenty; from it she dispenses her gifts to everyone, even if he does not deserve them, indeed, even if he does not thank her or them. She is as non-partisan as rain, which (according to the Bible and to experience) rains not only upon the unjust, but sometimes soaks the just man to the skin, too.