Nietzsche gives a page-long
retrospective on this work in part III of Ecce Homo.
1. Note from section 8 of his preface
that Nietzsche does not intend for reading this work to be an easy matter.
First Essay: " ‘Good and Evil’ and ‘Good
and Bad’ "
2. As the title of the first essay
indicates, its main point is to distinguish between seeing the world as
consisting of good and evil (which is symptomatic of weak morality) and seeing
it as consisting of good and bad (which is a sign of strength). The difference
is more complicated, however, than merely that the weak and strong utilize
different moral concepts for the non-good. What is the further complication?
(Only upon seeing this will you understand the difference Nietzsche is trying
to describe between the weak and the strong.)
3. How do you think Nietzsche would
answer the following objection to his genealogical account: "If the
so-called slaves were able to overthrow the so-called nobles, then wouldn’t
that mean that the so-called slaves were actually strong? And that the
so-called nobles were actually weak?" In other words, is Nietzsche advocating
a moral relativism or nihilism of "Might makes right"?
4. An important notion in the first
essay is ressentiment. Nietzsche’s use of the
French here is discussed by Kaufmann, referred to in his footnote to I.10.
5. See anything in here that the Nazis
could have used? Do you think that Nazi propagandists who employed citations to
Nietzsche to support their cause were using or misusing
Nietzsche?
Third Essay: "What Is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?"
6. Use the following to help you
organize the topics of the third essay.
section 1 -- introduction
sections 2-6 -- the ascetic ideal in art
sections 7-10 -- the ascetic ideal in philosophy
sections 11-22 -- the purest example of the ascetic ideal: the ascetic priest
sections 23-28 -- the pernicious ubiquity of the ascetic ideal (in science,
history, and even atheism)
7. Given what else Nietzsche has said
earlier (especially in I.7 and I.16), how can he consistently say "all
honor to the Old Testament!"?
8. Is the solution to this surprise
the same solution as for how, given what Nietzsche has said about priests as
haters (for example, I.10), he can now write, "this ascetic priest, this
apparent enemy of life, this denierprecisely he is
among the greatest conserving and yescreating
forces of life"? Is he now relegating his first essay to the realm of mere
appearance?
9. In
sections 17 and 18, Nietzsche describes three strategies used by the ascetic
priests to combat people’s world-weariness. Be able to articulate and
differentiate the three. (Nietzsche summarizes them in section 19.)
10. Be able
to say what Nietzsche means by his statement "man would rather will nothingness
than not will." (For those keeping score, "lieber will noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen als nicht wollen.")
11. Then, of course, be able to say whether or not you think Nietzsche is correct. And even if he is correct, is there room to agree with him about this and yet disagree with the moral implications which Nietzsche himself draws from this claim?
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