Why I Am a Destiny
Original German
1 ICH kenne mein Loos. Es wird sich einmal an meinen Namen die Erinnerung an etwas Ungeheures anknüpfen, — an eine Krisis, wie es keine auf Erden gab, an die tiefste Gewissens-Collision, an eine Entscheidung heraufbeschworen gegen Alles, was bis dahin geglaubt, gefordert, geheiligt worden war. Ich bin kein Mensch, ich bin Dynamit. — Und mit Alledem ist Nichts in mir von einem Religionsstifter — Religionen sind Pöbel-Affairen, ich habe nöthig, mir die Hände nach der Berührung mit religiösen Menschen zu waschen... Ich will keine „Gläubigen“, ich denke, ich bin zu boshaft dazu, um an mich selbst zu glauben, ich rede niemals zu Massen... Ich habe eine erschreckliche Angst davor, daß man mich eines Tags heilig spricht; man wird errathen, weshalb ich dies Buch vorher herausgebe, es soll verhüten, daß man Unfug mit mir treibt... Ich will kein Heiliger sein, lieber noch ein Hanswurst... Vielleicht bin ich ein Hanswurst... Und trotzdem oder vielmehr nicht trotzdem — denn es gab nichts Verlogneres bisher als Heilige — redet aus mir die Wahrheit. — Aber meine Wahrheit ist furchtbar: denn man hieß bisher die Lüge Wahrheit. — Umwerthung aller Werthe: das ist meine Formel für einen Akt höchster Selbstbesinnung der Menschheit, der in mir Fleisch und Genie geworden ist. Mein Loos will, daß ich der erste anständige Mensch sein muß, daß ich mich gegen die Verlogenheit von Jahrtausenden im Gegensatz weiß... Ich erst habe die Wahrheit entdeckt, dadurch daß ich zuerst die Lüge als Lüge empfand — roch... Mein Genie ist in meinen Nüstern... Ich widerspreche, wie nie widersprochen worden ist, und bin trotzdem der Gegensatz eines neinsagenden Geistes. Ich bin ein froher Botschafter, wie es keinen gab, ich kenne Aufgaben von einer Höhe, daß der Begriff dafür bisher gefehlt hat; erst von mir an giebt es wieder Hoffnungen. Mit Alledem bin ich nothwendig auch der Mensch des Verhängnisses. Denn wenn die Wahrheit mit der Lüge von Jahrtausenden in Kampf tritt, werden wir Erschütterungen haben, einen Krampf von Erdbeben, eine Versetzung von Berg und Thal, wie dergleichen nie geträumt worden ist. Der Begriff Politik ist dann gänzlich in einen Geisterkrieg aufgegangen, alle Machtgebilde der alten Gesellschaft sind in die Luft gesprengt — sie ruhen allesammt auf der Lüge: es wird Kriege geben, wie es noch keine auf Erden gegeben hat. Erst von mir an giebt es auf Erden große Politik. —
2 WILL man eine Formel für ein solches Schicksal, das Mensch wird? — Sie steht in meinem Zarathustra.
»— und wer ein Schöpfer sein will im Guten und Bösen, der muß ein Vernichter erst sein und Werthe zerbrechen.Also gehört das höchste Böse zur höchsten Güte: diese aber ist die schöpferische.«
Ich bin bei weitem der furchtbarste Mensch, den es bisher gegeben hat; dies schließt nicht aus, daß ich der wohlthätigste sein werde. Ich kenne die Lust am Vernichten in einem Grade, die meiner Kraft zum Vernichten gemäß ist, — in Beidem gehorche ich meiner dionysischen Natur, welche das Neinthun nicht vom Jasagen zu trennen weiß. Ich bin der erste Immoralist: damit bin ich der Vernichter par excellence. —
3 MAN hat mich nicht gefragt, man hätte mich fragen sollen, was gerade in meinem Munde, im Munde des ersten Immoralisten, der Name Zarathustra bedeutet: denn was die ungeheure Einzigkeit jenes Persers in der Geschichte ausmacht, ist gerade dazu das Gegentheil. Zarathustra hat zuerst im Kampf des Guten und des Bösen das eigentliche Rad im Getriebe der Dinge gesehn, — die Übersetzung der Moral in’s Metaphysische, als Kraft, Ursache, Zweck an sich, ist sein Werk. Aber diese Frage wäre im Grunde bereits die Antwort. Zarathustra schuf diesen verhängnißvollsten Irrthum, die Moral: folglich muß er auch der Erste sein, der ihn erkennt. Nicht nur, daß er hier länger und mehr Erfahrung hat als sonst ein Denker — die ganze Geschichte ist ja die Experimental-Widerlegung vom Satz der sogenannten „sittlichen Weltordnung“ —: das Wichtigere ist, Zarathustra ist wahrhaftiger als sonst ein Denker. Seine Lehre und sie allein, hat die Wahrhaftigkeit als oberste Tugend — das heißt den Gegensatz zur Feigheit des „Idealisten“, der vor der Realität die Flucht ergreift; Zarathustra hat mehr Tapferkeit im Leibe als alle Denker zusammengenommen. Wahrheit reden und gut mit Pfeilen schießen, das ist die persische Tugend. — Versteht man mich?... Die Selbstüberwindung der Moral aus Wahrhaftigkeit, die Selbstüberwindung des Moralisten in seinen Gegensatz — in mich — das bedeutet in meinem Munde der Name Zarathustra.
4 IM Grunde sind es zwei Verneinungen, die mein Wort Immoralist in sich schließt. Ich verneine einmal einen Typus Mensch, der bisher als der höchste galt, die Guten, die Wohlwollenden, Wohlthätigen; ich verneine andrerseits eine Art Moral, welche als Moral an sich in Geltung und Herrschaft gekommen ist, — die décadence-Moral, handgreiflicher geredet, die christliche Moral. Es wäre erlaubt, den zweiten Widerspruch als den entscheidenderen anzusehn, da die Überschätzung der Güte und des Wohlwollens, in’s Große gerechnet, mir bereits als Folge der décadence gilt, als Schwäche-Symptom, als unverträglich mit einem aufsteigenden und jasagenden Leben: im Jasagen ist Verneinen und Vernichten Bedingung. — Ich bleibe zunächst bei der Psychologie des guten Menschen stehn. Um abzuschätzen, was ein Typus Mensch werth ist, muß man den Preis nachrechnen, den seine Erhaltung kostet, — muß man seine Existenzbedingungen kennen. Die Existenz-Bedingung der Guten ist die Lüge —: anders ausgedrückt, das Nicht-sehen-wollen um jeden Preis, wie im Grunde die Realität beschaffen ist, nämlich nicht der Art, um jeder Zeit wohlwollende Instinkte herauszufordern, noch weniger der Art, um sich ein Eingreifen von kurzsichtigen gutmüthigen Händen jeder Zeit gefallen zu lassen. Die Nothstände aller Art überhaupt als Einwand, als Etwas, das man abschaffen muß, betrachten, ist die niaiserie par excellence, in’s Große gerechnet, ein wahres Unheil in seinen Folgen, ein Schicksal von Dummheit —, beinahe so dumm, als es der Wille wäre, das schlechte Wetter abzuschaffen — aus Mitleiden etwa mit den armen Leuten... In der großen Ökonomie des Ganzen sind die Furchtbarkeiten der Realität (in den Affekten, in den Begierden, im Willen zur Macht) in einem unausrechenbaren Maaße nothwendiger als jene Form des kleinen Glücks, die sogenannte „Güte“; man muß sogar nachsichtig sein, um der letzteren, da sie in der Instinkt-Verlogenheit bedingt ist, überhaupt einen Platz zu gönnen. Ich werde einen großen Anlaß haben, die über die Maaßen unheimlichen Folgen des Optimismus, dieser Ausgeburt der homines optimi, für die ganze Geschichte zu beweisen. Zarathustra, der Erste, der begriff, daß der Optimist ebenso décadent ist wie der Pessimist und vielleicht schädlicher, sagt: »Gute Menschen reden nie die Wahrheit. Falsche Küsten und Sicherheiten lehrten euch die Guten; in Lügen der Guten wart ihr geboren und geborgen. Alles ist in den Grund hinein verlogen und verbogen durch die Guten.« Die Welt ist zum Glück nicht auf Instinkte hin gebaut, daß gerade bloß gutmüthiges Heerdengethier darin sein enges Glück fände; zu fordern, daß Alles „guter Mensch“, Heerdenthier, blauäugig, wohlwollend, „schöne Seele“ — oder, wie Herr Herbert Spencer es wünscht, altruistisch werden solle, hieße dem Dasein seinen großen Charakter nehmen, hieße die Menschheit castriren und auf eine armselige Chineserei herunterbringen. — Und dies hat man versucht!... Dies eben hieß man Moral... In diesem Sinne nennt Zarathustra die Guten bald „die letzten Menschen“, bald den „Anfang vom Ende“; vor Allem empfindet er sie als die schädlichste Art Mensch, weil sie ebenso auf Kosten der Wahrheit als auf Kosten der Zukunft ihre Existenz durchsetzen.»— Die Guten — die können nicht schaffen, die sind immer der Anfang vom Ende —— sie kreuzigen den, der neue Werthe auf neue Tafeln schreibt, sie opfern sich die Zukunft, sie kreuzigen alle Menschen-Zukunft!— Die Guten — die waren immer der Anfang vom Ende...— Und was auch für Schaden die Welt-Verleumder thun mögen, der Schaden der Guten ist der schädlichste Schaden.«
5 ZARATHUSTRA, der erste Psycholog der Guten, ist — folglich — ein Freund der Bösen. Wenn eine décadenceArt Mensch zum Rang der höchsten Art aufgestiegen ist, so konnte dies nur auf Kosten ihrer Gegensatz-Art geschehn, der starken und lebensgewissen Art Mensch. Wenn das Heerdenthier im Glanze der reinsten Tugend strahlt, so muß der Ausnahme-Mensch zum Bösen heruntergewerthet sein. Wenn die Verlogenheit um jeden Preis das Wort „Wahrheit“ für ihre Optik in Anspruch nimmt, so muß der eigentlich Wahrhaftige unter den schlimmsten Namen wiederzufinden sein. Zarathustra läßt hier keinen Zweifel: er sagt, die Erkenntniß der Guten, der „Besten“ gerade sei es gewesen, was ihm Grausen vor dem Menschen überhaupt gemacht habe; aus diesem Widerwillen seien ihm die Flügel gewachsen, „fortzuschweben in ferne Zukünfte“, — er verbirgt es nicht, daß sein Typus Mensch, ein relativ übermenschlicher Typus, gerade im Verhältniß zu den Guten übermenschlich ist, daß die Guten und Gerechten seinen Übermenschen Teufel nennen würden...»Ihr höchsten Menschen, denen mein Auge begegnete, das ist mein Zweifel an euch und mein heimliches Lachen: ich rathe, ihr würdet meinen Übermenschen — Teufel heißen! So fremd seid ihr dem Großen mit eurer Seele, daß euch der Übermensch furchtbar sein würde in seiner Güte...«An dieser Stelle und nirgends wo anders muß man den Ansatz machen, um zu begreifen, was Zarathustra will: diese Art Mensch, die er concipirt, concipirt die Realität, wie sie ist: sie ist stark genug dazu —, sie ist ihr nicht entfremdet, entrückt, sie ist sie selbst, sie hat all deren Furchtbares und Fragwürdiges auch noch in sich, damit erst kann der Mensch Größe haben...
6 ABER ich habe auch noch in einem andren Sinne das Wort Immoralist zum Abzeichen, zum Ehrenzeichen für mich gewählt; ich bin stolz darauf, dies Wort zu haben, das mich gegen die ganze Menschheit abhebt. Niemand noch hat die christliche Moral als unter sich gefühlt; dazu gehörte eine Höhe, ein Fernblick, eine bisher ganz unerhörte psychologische Tiefe und Abgründlichkeit. Die christliche Moral war bisher die Circe aller Denker, — sie standen in ihrem Dienst. — Wer ist vor mir eingestiegen in die Höhlen, aus denen der Gifthauch dieser Art von Ideal — der Weltverleumdung! — emporquillt? Wer hat auch nur zu ahnen gewagt, daß es Höhlen sind? Wer war überhaupt vor mir unter den Philosophen Psycholog und nicht vielmehr dessen Gegensatz „höherer Schwindler“, „Idealist“? Es gab vor mir noch gar keine Psychologie. — Hier der Erste zu sein kann ein Fluch sein, es ist jedenfalls ein Schicksal: denn man verachtet auch als der Erste... Der Ekel am Menschen ist meine Gefahr...
7 HAT man mich verstanden? — Was mich abgrenzt, was mich bei Seite stellt gegen den ganzen Rest der Menschheit, das ist, die christliche Moral entdeckt zu haben. Deshalb war ich eines Worts bedürftig, das den Sinn einer Herausforderung an Jedermann enthält. Hier nicht eher die Augen aufgemacht zu haben gilt mir als die größte Unsauberkeit, die die Menschheit auf dem Gewissen hat, als Instinkt gewordner Selbstbetrug, als grundsätzlicher Wille, jedes Geschehen, jede Ursächlichkeit, jede Wirklichkeit nicht zu sehen, als Falschmünzerei in psychologicis bis zum Verbrechen. Die Blindheit vor dem Christenthum ist das Verbrechen par excellence — das Verbrechen am Leben... Die Jahrtausende, die Völker, die Ersten und die Letzten, die Philosophen und die alten Weiber — fünf, sechs Augenblicke der Geschichte abgerechnet, mich als siebenten — in diesem Punkte sind sie alle einander würdig. Der Christ war bisher das „moralische Wesen“, ein Curiosum ohne Gleichen — und, als „moralisches Wesen“, absurder, verlogner, eitler, leichtfertiger, sich selber nachtheiliger als auch der größte Verächter der Menschheit es sich träumen lassen könnte. Die christliche Moral — die bösartigste Form des Willens zur Lüge, die eigentliche Circe der Menschheit: Das, was sie verdorben hat. Es ist nicht der Irrthum als Irrthum, was mich bei diesem Anblick entsetzt, nicht der jahrtausendelange Mangel an „gutem Willen“, an Zucht, an Anstand, an Tapferkeit im Geistigen, der sich in seinem Sieg verräth: — es ist der Mangel an Natur, es ist der vollkommen schauerliche Thatbestand, daß die Widernatur selbst als Moral die höchsten Ehren empfieng und als Gesetz, als kategorischer Imperativ, über der Menschheit hängen blieb!... In diesem Maaße sich vergreifen, nicht als Einzelner, nicht als Volk, sondern als Menschheit!... Daß man die allerersten Instinkte des Lebens verachten lehrte; daß man eine „Seele“, einen „Geist“ erlog, um den Leib zu Schanden zu machen; daß man in der Voraussetzung des Lebens, in der Geschlechtlichkeit, etwas Unreines empfinden lehrt; daß man in der tiefsten Nothwendigkeit zum Gedeihen, in der strengen Selbstsucht (— das Wort schon ist verleumderisch! —) das böse Princip sucht; daß man umgekehrt in dem typischen Abzeichen des Niedergangs und der Instinkt-Widersprüchlichkeit, im „Selbstlosen“, im Verlust an Schwergewicht, in der „Entpersönlichung“ und „Nächstenliebe“ (— Nächstensucht!) den höheren Werth, was sage ich! den Werth an sich sieht!... Wie! wäre die Menschheit selber in décadence? war sie es immer? — Was feststeht, ist, daß ihr nur décadence-Werthe als oberste Werthe gelehrt worden sind. Die Entselbstungs-Moral ist die Niedergangs-Moral par excellence, die Thatsache „ich gehe zu Grunde“ in den Imperativ übersetzt: „ihr sollt alle zu Grunde gehn“ — und nicht nur in den Imperativ!... Diese einzige Moral, die bisher gelehrt worden ist, die Entselbstungs-Moral, verräth einen Willen zum Ende, sie verneint im untersten Grunde das Leben. — Hier bliebe die Möglichkeit offen, daß nicht die Menschheit in Entartung sei, sondern nur jene parasitische Art Mensch, die des Priesters, die mit der Moral sich zu ihren Werth-Bestimmern emporgelogen hat, — die in der christlichen Moral ihr Mittel zur Macht errieth... Und in der That, das ist meine Einsicht: die Lehrer, die Führer der Menschheit, Theologen insgesammt, waren insgesammt auch décadents: daher die Umwerthung aller Werthe in’s Lebensfeindliche, daher die Moral... Definition der Moral: Moral — die Idiosynkrasie von décadents, mit der Hinterabsicht, sich am Leben zu rächen — und mit Erfolg. Ich lege Werth auf diese Definition.
8 HAT man mich verstanden? — Ich habe eben kein Wort gesagt, das ich nicht schon vor fünf Jahren durch den Mund Zarathustra’s gesagt hätte. — Die Entdeckung der christlichen Moral ist ein Ereigniß, das nicht seines Gleichen hat, eine wirkliche Katastrophe. Wer über sie aufklärt, ist eine force majeure, ein Schicksal, — er bricht die Geschichte der Menschheit in zwei Stücke. Man lebt vor ihm, man lebt nach ihm... Der Blitz der Wahrheit traf gerade Das, was bisher am höchsten stand: wer begreift, was da vernichtet wurde, mag zusehn, ob er überhaupt noch Etwas in den Händen hat. Alles, was bisher „Wahrheit“ hieß, ist als die schädlichste, tückischste, unterirdischste Form der Lüge erkannt; der heilige Vorwand, die Menschheit zu „verbessern“, als die List, das Leben selbst auszusaugen, blutarm zu machen. Moral als Vampyrismus... Wer die Moral entdeckt, hat den Unwerth aller Werthe mit entdeckt, an die man glaubt oder geglaubt hat; er sieht in den verehrtesten, in den selbst heilig gesprochenen Typen des Menschen nichts Ehrwürdiges mehr, er sieht die verhängnißvollste Art von Mißgeburten darin, verhängnißvoll, weil sie fasciniren... Der Begriff „Gott“ erfunden als Gegensatz-Begriff zum Leben, — in ihm alles Schädliche, Vergiftende, Verleumderische, die ganze Todfeindschaft gegen das Leben in eine entsetzliche Einheit gebracht! Der Begriff „Jenseits“, „wahre Welt“ erfunden, um die einzige Welt zu entwerthen, die es giebt, — um kein Ziel, keine Vernunft, keine Aufgabe für unsre Erden-Realität übrig zu behalten! Der Begriff „Seele“, „Geist“, zuletzt gar noch „unsterbliche Seele“, erfunden, um den Leib zu verachten, um ihn krank — „heilig“ — zu machen, um allen Dingen, die Ernst im Leben verdienen, den Fragen von Nahrung, Wohnung, geistiger Diät, Krankenbehandlung, Reinlichkeit, Wetter, einen schauerlichen Leichtsinn entgegenzubringen! Statt der Gesundheit das „Heil der Seele“ — will sagen eine folie circulaire zwischen Bußkrampf und Erlösungs-Hysterie! Der Begriff „Sünde“ erfunden sammt dem zugehörigen Folter-Instrument, dem Begriff „freier Wille“, um die Instinkte zu verwirren, um das Mißtrauen gegen die Instinkte zur zweiten Natur zu machen! Im Begriff des „Selbstlosen“, des „Sich-selbst-Verleugnenden“ das eigentliche décadence-Abzeichen, das Gelocktwerden vom Schädlichen, das Seinen-Nutzen-nicht-mehr-finden-können, die Selbst-Zerstörung zum Werthzeichen überhaupt gemacht, zur „Pflicht“, zur „Heiligkeit“, zum „Göttlichen“ im Menschen! Endlich — es ist das Furchtbarste — im Begriff des guten Menschen die Partei alles Schwachen, Kranken, Mißrathnen, An-sich-selber-Leidenden genommen, alles dessen, was zu Grunde gehn soll —, das Gesetz der Selektion gekreuzt, ein Ideal aus dem Widerspruch gegen den stolzen und wohlgerathenen, gegen den jasagenden, gegen den zukunftsgewissen, zukunftverbürgenden Menschen gemacht — dieser heißt nunmehr der Böse... Und das Alles wurde geglaubt als Moral! — Ecrasez l’infâme! — —
9 HAT man mich verstanden? — Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten...
Musean translation
A complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from the German of the 1908 Insel edition, including its concluding poem. This early edition's readings and omissions are retained, not replaced with later critical restorations.
1 I know my fate. One day my name will be linked to the memory of something monstrous—a crisis unlike any on earth, the deepest collision of conscience, a decision conjured up against everything hitherto believed, demanded, held sacred. I am no human being, I am dynamite.—And for all that, there is nothing of a founder of religion in me—religions are affairs of the rabble; I need to wash my hands after contact with religious people… I want no “believers”; I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses… I have a horrifying fear that one day I will be canonized; you will guess why I am publishing this book beforehand: it is meant to prevent people from making mischief with me… I do not want to be a saint; I would rather be a buffoon… Perhaps I am a buffoon… And nonetheless, or rather not nonetheless—for nothing yet has been more mendacious than saints—truth speaks out of me.—But my truth is terrible: for until now the lie has been called truth.—Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for an act of humanity's highest self-examination, become flesh and genius in me. My fate decrees that I must be the first decent human being, that I know myself to stand in opposition to the mendacity of millennia… I was the first to discover truth, because I was the first to sense the lie as a lie—to smell it… My genius is in my nostrils… I contradict as no one has ever contradicted, and yet I am the opposite of a No-saying spirit. I am a bearer of glad tidings such as there has never been; I know tasks of such a height that the concept for them has been lacking until now; only with me are there hopes again. For all that, I am necessarily also the man of doom. For when truth enters into battle with the lie of millennia, we will have upheavals, a convulsion of earthquakes, a shifting of mountain and valley such as no one has ever dreamed of. The concept of politics will then be wholly absorbed into a war of spirits; all the power structures of the old society will be blown into the air—they all rest on the lie: there will be wars unlike any on earth before. Only with me is there great politics on earth.—
2 DO you want a formula for such a destiny that becomes human?—It is in my Zarathustra.
“—and whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil must first be a destroyer and break values.Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but this is creative goodness.”
I am by far the most terrible human being there has ever been; this does not rule out my becoming the most beneficial. I know the joy of destroying to a degree commensurate with my power to destroy—in both I obey my Dionysian nature, which cannot separate No-doing from Yes-saying. I am the first immoralist: that makes me the destroyer par excellence.—
3 NO one has asked me—they should have asked me—what the name Zarathustra means precisely in my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what makes that Persian so immensely unique in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle of good and evil the true wheel in the machinery of things—the translation of morality into metaphysics, as force, cause, end in itself, is his work. But this question would, at bottom, already be the answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful error, morality: consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only does he have longer and greater experience here than any other thinker—indeed, all history is the experimental refutation of the proposition of the so-called “moral world order”—: more importantly, Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, holds truthfulness to be the highest virtue—which means the opposite of the cowardice of the “idealist,” who flees from reality; Zarathustra has more courage in his body than all thinkers put together. To speak the truth and shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue.—Am I understood?… The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite—into me—that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.
4 AT bottom, my word immoralist contains two negations. For one thing, I negate a type of human being hitherto regarded as the highest: the good, the benevolent, beneficent; for another, I negate a kind of morality that has gained currency and dominion as morality itself—the morality of decadence, more plainly, Christian morality. One would be justified in regarding the second contradiction as the more decisive, since, on the grand scale, I already regard the overvaluation of goodness and benevolence as a consequence of decadence, a symptom of weakness, incompatible with an ascending and Yes-saying life: negation and destruction are conditions of Yes-saying.—For now I will stay with the psychology of the good person. To assess what a type of human being is worth, you must reckon the price of maintaining it—you must know its conditions of existence. The condition of existence of the good is the lie—: in other words, the will at any price not to see how reality is fundamentally constituted, namely not in such a way as to call forth benevolent instincts at all times, still less in such a way as to submit at all times to interference from shortsighted, good-natured hands. To regard distress of every kind as an objection, as something one must abolish, is the supreme foolishness; on the grand scale, it is a true calamity in its consequences, a destiny of stupidity—almost as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather would be—out of pity for poor people, perhaps… In the great economy of the whole, the terrible things in reality (in the passions, in the desires, in the will to power) are necessary to an incalculably greater degree than that form of petty happiness called “goodness”; one must even be indulgent to grant the latter any place at all, since it depends on instinctive mendacity. I will have ample occasion to demonstrate the immeasurably uncanny consequences, for the whole of history, of optimism, that offspring of the best of men. Zarathustra, the first to grasp that the optimist is as decadent as the pessimist, and perhaps more harmful, says: “Good people never speak the truth. The good taught you false shores and certainties; in the lies of the good you were born and sheltered. Through the good, everything is falsified and twisted to its very foundations.” Fortunately, the world is not built to suit instincts that would let nothing but good-natured herd animals find their narrow happiness in it; to demand that everything become a “good person,” a herd animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, a “beautiful soul”—or altruistic, as Mr. Herbert Spencer wishes—would mean robbing existence of its great character, castrating humanity and reducing it to a wretched Chinese affair.—And this has been attempted!… This is precisely what was called morality… In this sense Zarathustra calls the good now “the last men,” now the “beginning of the end”; above all, he feels them to be the most harmful kind of human being, because they assert their existence at the expense of truth as well as at the expense of the future.“—The good—they cannot create, they are always the beginning of the end——they crucify the one who writes new values on new tablets; they sacrifice the future to themselves; they crucify the whole human future!—The good—they have always been the beginning of the end…—and whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.”
5 ZARATHUSTRA, the first psychologist of the good, is—consequently—a friend of the evil. If a decadent kind of human being has risen to the rank of the highest kind, this could only have happened at the expense of its opposite, the strong kind, certain of life. If the herd animal shines in the radiance of the purest virtue, the exceptional human being must have been devalued into evil. If mendacity at any price claims the word “truth” for its own way of seeing, the genuinely truthful person must be found under the worst names. Zarathustra leaves no doubt here: he says that it was precisely his knowledge of the good, the “best,” that made him feel horror at humanity itself; from this aversion his wings grew, “to soar away into distant futures”—he does not conceal that his type of human being, a relatively superhuman type, is superhuman precisely in relation to the good, that the good and the just would call his overman a devil…“You highest human beings my eye has encountered, this is my doubt about you and my secret laughter: I guess you would call my overman—a devil! So alien are your souls to greatness that the overman would be terrible to you in his goodness…”Here, and nowhere else, one must make a beginning in order to grasp what Zarathustra wants: the kind of human being he envisages apprehends reality as it is: it is strong enough to do so—it is not estranged from reality, not removed from it, it is reality itself, it also has within itself all that is terrible and questionable in reality; only through this can a human being have greatness…
6 BUT I have chosen the word immoralist as my badge, my badge of honor, in yet another sense: I am proud to have this word that sets me apart from all humanity. No one yet has felt Christian morality to be beneath him; that would require a height, a far reach of vision, a psychological depth and abyssal reach quite unheard of until now. Christian morality has hitherto been the Circe of all thinkers—they stood in her service.—Who before me descended into the caves from which the poisonous breath of this kind of ideal—the slandering of the world!—wells up? Who dared even to suspect that they are caves? Who among philosophers before me was a psychologist at all, rather than his opposite, a “higher swindler,” an “idealist”? Before me there was no psychology at all.—To be the first here can be a curse; in any case it is a destiny: for one is also the first to despise… Disgust at humanity is my danger…
7 HAVE I been understood?—What sets me apart, what places me to one side against all the rest of humanity, is having discovered Christian morality. That is why I needed a word containing the sense of a challenge to everyone. Not to have opened one's eyes here sooner seems to me the greatest uncleanliness humanity has on its conscience: self-deception become instinct, a fundamental will not to see any event, any causality, any reality, counterfeiting in psychological matters to the point of criminality. Blindness to Christianity is the crime above all crimes—the crime against life… The millennia, the peoples, the first and the last, the philosophers and the old women—excepting five or six moments of history, myself as the seventh—in this respect they are all worthy of one another. The Christian has hitherto been the “moral being,” a curiosity beyond compare—and, as a “moral being,” more absurd, more mendacious, more vain, more frivolous, more harmful to himself than even the greatest despiser of humanity could have dreamed. Christian morality—the most malicious form of the will to lie, humanity's true Circe: what has corrupted it. It is not error as error that horrifies me at this sight, not the millennia-long lack of “goodwill,” of discipline, of decency, of courage in matters of the spirit, betrayed by its victory: it is the lack of nature, the utterly appalling fact that what is contrary to nature itself received the highest honors as morality and remained hanging over humanity as law, as categorical imperative!… To go so far astray, not as an individual, not as a people, but as humanity!… That people were taught to despise the very first instincts of life; that a “soul,” a “spirit” was fabricated to disgrace the body; that people are taught to feel something unclean in the precondition of life, in sexuality; that the principle of evil is sought in the deepest necessity for thriving, in strict selfishness (—even the word is slanderous!—); that, conversely, the typical badge of decline and of contradiction among the instincts, the “selfless,” the loss of a center of gravity, “depersonalization” and “love of one's neighbor” (—addiction to one's neighbor!), are seen as the higher value—what am I saying!—as value in itself!… What! Could humanity itself be decadent? Has it always been?—What is certain is that only decadent values have been taught to it as the highest values. The morality of self-renunciation is the morality of decline above all others, the fact “I am perishing” translated into the imperative “you shall all perish”—and not only into the imperative!… This sole morality taught until now, the morality of self-renunciation, betrays a will to the end; at the deepest level it negates life.—Here the possibility would remain open that it is not humanity that is degenerating, but only that parasitic kind of human being, the priest, who by means of morality has lied his way up into the position of determining humanity's values—who divined in Christian morality his means to power… And indeed, this is my insight: the teachers, the leaders of humanity, theologians all, were also all decadents: hence the revaluation of all values into hostility to life, hence morality… Definition of morality: morality—the idiosyncrasy of decadents, with the ulterior motive of taking revenge on life—and with success. I attach importance to this definition.
8 HAVE I been understood?—I have just said not a word that I had not already said five years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra.—The discovery of Christian morality is an event without equal, a real catastrophe. Whoever throws light on it is an overwhelming force, a destiny—he breaks the history of humanity in two. One lives before him, one lives after him… The lightning bolt of truth struck precisely what had stood highest until then: whoever grasps what was destroyed there may look to see whether he has anything left in his hands at all. Everything hitherto called “truth” is recognized as the most harmful, most insidious, most subterranean form of the lie; the holy pretext of “improving” humanity, as the cunning means to suck dry life itself, to make it anemic. Morality as vampirism… Whoever discovers morality also discovers the worthlessness of all values people believe or have believed in; he sees nothing venerable anymore in the most revered types of human being, even those declared holy; he sees in them the most fateful kind of monstrosities, fateful because they fascinate… The concept “God” invented as the counterconcept to life—in it everything harmful, poisonous, slanderous, the whole deadly hostility to life brought into one terrible unity! The concept “beyond,” “true world,” invented to devalue the only world there is—to leave no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept “soul,” “spirit,” finally even “immortal soul,” invented to despise the body, to make it sick—“holy”—to treat with appalling frivolity all the things that deserve seriousness in life: questions of food, housing, mental diet, treatment of illness, cleanliness, weather! Instead of health, the “salvation of the soul”—which means a cycle of madness between spasms of penance and the hysteria of redemption! The concept “sin” invented, together with its accompanying instrument of torture, the concept “free will,” to confuse the instincts, to make distrust of the instincts second nature! In the concept of the “selfless,” the “self-denying,” the very badge of decadence—being lured by the harmful, no longer being able to find one's own advantage, self-destruction—made into the sign of value as such, into “duty,” into “holiness,” into the “divine” in humanity! Finally—it is the most terrible thing—in the concept of the good person, taking the side of everything weak, sick, ill-formed, suffering from itself, everything that ought to perish—thwarting the law of selection, making an ideal out of opposition to the proud and well-formed person, the Yes-saying person, the person certain of the future and guaranteeing the future—who is now called the evil one… And all this was believed as morality!—Crush the infamous thing!——
9 HAVE I been understood?—Dionysus against the Crucified…
Plain English translation
A complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the same German edition, including its concluding poem. This is the 1908 text, not a modern critical edition.
1 I know my fate. One day my name will be linked to the memory of something enormous—a crisis unlike any the earth has seen, the deepest clash of conscience, a decision called forth against everything people had believed, demanded, and held sacred until then. I am not a human being; I am dynamite.—And yet there is nothing of a religious founder in me. Religions are affairs of the rabble; I need to wash my hands after contact with religious people… I don't want “believers.” I think I am too malicious to believe even in myself. I never speak to crowds… I am terribly afraid that one day people will declare me a saint. You can guess why I am publishing this book beforehand: it is meant to stop people from playing such tricks with me… I don't want to be a saint. I would rather be a buffoon… Perhaps I am a buffoon… And yet—or rather, not “and yet,” since nothing so far has been more dishonest than saints—truth speaks through me.—But my truth is terrible: until now, people have called the lie truth.—Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for an act of humanity's deepest self-examination, which has become flesh and genius in me. My fate requires me to be the first decent human being, to know myself in opposition to the dishonesty of millennia… I was the first to discover truth, because I was the first to feel—to smell—the lie as a lie… My genius is in my nostrils… I contradict as no one has ever contradicted, yet I am the opposite of a no-saying mind. I am a bringer of good news unlike any before me. I know tasks so high that until now there has been no concept for them. Only with me are there hopes again. All this necessarily makes me a man of doom as well. For when truth goes to battle with the lie of millennia, there will be tremors, a spasm of earthquakes, a shifting of mountains and valleys beyond anything ever dreamed of. The very idea of politics will then be entirely absorbed into a war of minds. All the power structures of the old society will be blown apart—they all rest on the lie. There will be wars unlike any the earth has seen. Only with me does great politics begin on earth.—
2 Do you want a formula for such a destiny taking human form?—It is in my Zarathustra.
“—and whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil must first be a destroyer and break values.So the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but that goodness is creative.”
I am by far the most terrible human being there has ever been. That doesn't rule out my becoming the most beneficial. I know the pleasure of destroying to a degree that matches my power to destroy. In both, I obey my Dionysian nature, which cannot separate saying no through action from saying yes. I am the first immoralist: that makes me the destroyer in the fullest sense.—
3 No one has asked me, but someone should have asked, what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist. For what makes that Persian so enormously unique in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see the struggle between good and evil as the real wheel in the machinery of things. Turning morality into something metaphysical, into a force, a cause, an end in itself, was his work. But at bottom, asking this question would already supply the answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful error, morality. So he must also be the first to recognize it. It is not just that he has longer and greater experience of it than any other thinker—after all, the whole of history is an experimental refutation of the claim that there is a “moral world order.” More importantly, Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, makes truthfulness the highest virtue. That means the opposite of the cowardice of the “idealist” who runs from reality. Zarathustra has more courage in his body than all thinkers put together. To speak the truth and shoot arrows well: that is the Persian virtue.—Do you understand me?… Morality overcoming itself through truthfulness, the moralist overcoming himself into his opposite—into me—that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.
4 At bottom, my word immoralist includes two denials. First, I deny a type of person who until now has been considered the highest: the good, the well-meaning, helpful. Second, I deny a kind of morality that has gained acceptance and power as morality itself—the morality of decline, or, more plainly, Christian morality. You could see the second objection as the more decisive one. In the larger picture, I already consider the overvaluing of goodness and goodwill a result of decline, a sign of weakness, incompatible with a rising, yes-saying life. Saying yes requires denying and destroying.—For now, I will stay with the psychology of the good person. To judge what a type of person is worth, you must work out the price of maintaining it. You must know the conditions of its existence. The condition of the good person's existence is the lie. In other words, it is wanting at any cost not to see what reality is like at bottom. Reality is not made to call forth well-meaning instincts at every moment, still less to put up at every moment with interference from shortsighted, good-natured hands. To see hardships of every kind as an objection, as something we must abolish, is the height of foolishness. On the large scale, its effects are a real disaster, a fate determined by stupidity—almost as stupid as wanting to abolish bad weather, perhaps out of pity for poor people… In the great economy of the whole, the terrifying things in reality—in emotions, in desires, in the will to power—are incomparably more necessary than that form of small happiness called “goodness.” It even takes indulgence to grant goodness any place at all, since it depends on instinctive dishonesty. I will have a great opportunity to show the extraordinarily disturbing effects of optimism, this offspring of the best people, on the whole of history. Zarathustra was the first to understand that the optimist is just as much a person of decline as the pessimist, and perhaps more harmful. He says: “Good people never tell the truth. The good taught you false shores and false safety. You were born and sheltered in the lies of the good. Everything has been falsified and twisted to its roots by the good.” Fortunately, the world is not built around instincts that would let nothing but good-natured herd animals find their little happiness in it. To demand that everyone become a “good person,” a herd animal, blue-eyed, well-meaning, a “beautiful soul”—or altruistic, as Mr. Herbert Spencer wishes—would take the great character out of existence. It would castrate humanity and reduce it to a miserable Chinese-style existence.—And people have tried to do this!… This is precisely what they called morality… In this sense, Zarathustra sometimes calls the good “the last human beings,” sometimes the “beginning of the end.” Above all, he feels they are the most harmful kind of person, because they maintain their existence at the expense of both truth and the future.“—The good—they cannot create, they are always the beginning of the end——they crucify anyone who writes new values on new tablets; they sacrifice the future to themselves; they crucify all human future!—The good—they were always the beginning of the end…—And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.”
5 Zarathustra, the first psychologist of the good, is—therefore—a friend of the evil. If a declining type of person has risen to the rank of the highest type, this could only have happened at the expense of its opposite: the strong type, confident in life. If the herd animal shines in the glory of the purest virtue, the exceptional person must have been devalued as evil. If dishonesty claims the word “truth” for its way of seeing at any cost, then the truly truthful person must be found under the worst names. Zarathustra leaves no doubt here. He says it was precisely his knowledge of the good, the “best,” that made him shudder at human beings in general. From this disgust he grew wings “to soar away into distant futures.” He doesn't hide the fact that his type of person, a relatively superhuman type, is superhuman precisely in relation to the good. The good and the just would call his overman a devil…“You highest human beings my eyes have met, this is my doubt about you and my secret laughter: I guess you would call my overman—a devil! Your souls are so foreign to greatness that the overman would be terrible to you in his goodness…”Here, and nowhere else, is where you must start to understand what Zarathustra wants. The type of person he conceives of conceives of reality as it is: he is strong enough for it. He is not estranged from it, not carried away from it; he is reality itself. He also has everything terrifying and questionable about reality within him. Only with this can a human being have greatness…
6 But there is another sense in which I have chosen the word immoralist as my badge, my badge of honor. I am proud to have this word, which sets me apart from all humanity. No one before has felt Christian morality to be beneath him. That required a height, a far-reaching vision, a psychological depth and capacity for probing the depths never heard of before. Until now, Christian morality has been the Circe of all thinkers—they were in its service.—Who before me went down into the caves from which the poisonous breath of this kind of ideal—the slandering of the world!—rises? Who even dared suspect that they were caves? Who among philosophers before me was a psychologist rather than his opposite, a “higher swindler,” an “idealist”? Before me, there was no psychology at all.—Being the first here can be a curse. In any case, it is a destiny: for you are also the first to feel contempt… My danger is disgust at human beings…
7 Have I been understood?—What sets me apart, what places me on one side against all the rest of humanity, is that I have discovered Christian morality. That is why I needed a word carrying the sense of a challenge to everyone. I consider humanity's failure to open its eyes here sooner the greatest filth on its conscience. It is self-deception turned into instinct, a fundamental will not to see any event, any process of cause and effect, any reality; counterfeiting in psychological matters to the point of crime. Blindness to Christianity is the supreme crime—the crime against life… The millennia, the peoples, the first and the last, the philosophers and the old women—apart from five or six moments in history, with me as the seventh—are all worthy of each other on this point. Until now, the Christian has been the “moral being,” a curiosity without equal—and, as a “moral being,” more absurd, dishonest, vain, careless, and harmful to himself than even the greatest despiser of humanity could dream. Christian morality—the most malicious form of the will to lie, humanity's real Circe: what has corrupted it. What horrifies me at this sight is not error as error, not the thousands of years of failing in “goodwill,” discipline, decency, and intellectual courage that its victory reveals. It is the lack of nature. It is the utterly dreadful fact that what is against nature received the highest honors as morality and remained hanging over humanity as law, as a categorical imperative!… To go so wrong, not as an individual, not as a people, but as humanity!… That people were taught to despise the most basic instincts of life; that a “soul,” a “spirit,” was made up to disgrace the body; that people are taught to feel something unclean in sexuality, the condition of life; that the principle of evil is sought in strict selfishness, the deepest necessity for thriving (even the word is slanderous!); that, on the contrary, the typical signs of decline and conflicting instincts—“selflessness,” losing one's center of gravity, “depersonalization,” and “love of one's neighbor” (an addiction to one's neighbor!)—are seen as the higher value, what am I saying, as value itself!… What! Could humanity itself be in decline? Has it always been?—What is certain is that it has only ever been taught values of decline as its highest values. The morality of stripping away the self is the morality of decline above all others. It turns the fact “I am perishing” into the command “you must all perish”—and not only into a command!… This one morality, the only one taught until now, the morality of stripping away the self, reveals a will to the end. At its deepest level, it denies life.—Here the possibility remains that it is not humanity that is degenerating, but only that parasitic type of person, the priest, who used morality to lie his way up into the role of humanity's judge of values, who recognized Christian morality as his means to power… And in fact, this is my insight: humanity's teachers and leaders, theologians every one, were also people of decline every one. Hence the revaluation of all values into values hostile to life; hence morality… Definition of morality: morality—the peculiar nature of people of decline, with the hidden intention of taking revenge on life—and with success. I attach importance to this definition.
8 Have I been understood?—I have just said nothing that I had not already said through Zarathustra's mouth five years ago.—The discovery of Christian morality is an event without equal, a real catastrophe. Whoever throws light on it is an overwhelming force, a destiny—he breaks humanity's history into two pieces. People live before him; people live after him… The lightning of truth struck precisely what had stood highest until then. Anyone who understands what was destroyed should see whether he has anything left in his hands at all. Everything called “truth” until now has been recognized as the most harmful, most treacherous, most deeply buried form of the lie. The sacred pretext of “improving” humanity has been recognized as a trick for sucking the blood out of life itself, making it anemic. Morality as vampirism… Whoever discovers morality has also discovered the worthlessness of all the values people believe or have believed in. He no longer sees anything worthy of respect in the most respected types of person, even those declared saints. He sees in them the most disastrous kind of monstrosity, disastrous because they fascinate… The concept “God” was invented as the opposite of life. In it, everything harmful, poisonous, and slanderous, the whole deadly hatred of life, was brought together into one terrifying unity! The concepts “afterlife” and “true world” were invented to devalue the only world there is—to leave no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concepts “soul,” “spirit,” and finally even “immortal soul” were invented to make people despise the body, to make it sick—“holy”—and to treat with dreadful carelessness everything that deserves to be taken seriously in life: food, housing, mental diet, care of the sick, cleanliness, weather! Instead of health, “salvation of the soul”—meaning a recurring madness that swings between convulsions of repentance and hysteria over redemption! The concept “sin” was invented, together with its instrument of torture, the concept “free will,” to confuse the instincts and make distrust of the instincts second nature! In the concepts of the “selfless” and the “self-denying,” the very mark of decline—being lured by what harms you, no longer being able to find what benefits you, self-destruction—was made the mark of value itself, of “duty,” of “holiness,” of the “divine” in a human being! Finally—and this is the most terrible thing—in the concept of the good person, sides were taken with everything weak, sick, failed, and suffering from itself, with everything that should perish. The law of selection was thwarted. An ideal was made out of opposition to the proud and well-formed person, the yes-saying person, confident in the future and guaranteeing it. That person is now called the evil one… And all this was believed as morality!—Crush the infamous thing!——
9 Have I been understood?—Dionysus against the Crucified…
About this section
Why I Am a Destiny is part of Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 16 of 17 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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