WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.480 --> 00:00:06.040
This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

2
00:00:06.719 --> 00:00:13.000
For more information or to volunteer,
visit LibriVox dot org. Beyond Good and

3
00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:20.920
Evil by Frederick Nietzsche, preface read
by Hugh mc guire. Supposing that truth

4
00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:27.480
is a woman, what then is
there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers,

5
00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:32.320
in so far as they have been
dogmatists, have failed to understand women,

6
00:00:33.200 --> 00:00:39.240
That the terrible seriousness and clumsy and
opportunity with which they have usually paid

7
00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:45.600
their addresses to truth have been unskilled
and unseemly methods for winning a woman.

8
00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:52.119
Certainly she has never allowed herself to
be won. And at present every kind

9
00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:58.600
of dogma stands with a sad and
discouraged mien, if indeed it stands at

10
00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:03.079
all. For there are scoffers who
maintain that it has fallen that all dogma

11
00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:07.719
lies on the ground, nay more
that it is at its last gasp.

12
00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:14.760
But to speak seriously, there are
good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in

13
00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:19.959
philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive
and decided airs, it has assumed,

14
00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:27.400
may have been only a noble purialism
and tyrannism. And probably the time is

15
00:01:27.439 --> 00:01:34.239
at hand when it will be once
and again understood. What has actually sufficed

16
00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:41.200
for the basis of such imposing and
absolute philosophical edifices as the Dogmatists have hitherto

17
00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:49.640
reared. Perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time, such as the soul superstition,

18
00:01:49.719 --> 00:01:55.319
which in the form of subject and
ego superstition, has not yet ceased

19
00:01:55.439 --> 00:02:00.560
doing mischief. Perhaps some play upon
words, exception on the part of grammar,

20
00:02:01.200 --> 00:02:07.159
or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human,

21
00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:15.360
all to human facts. The philosophy
of the Dogmatists, it is to be

22
00:02:15.479 --> 00:02:21.560
hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology

23
00:02:21.879 --> 00:02:28.199
in still earlier times, in the
service of which probably more labor, gold,

24
00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:32.960
acuteness, and patience have been spent
than on any actual science. Hitherto

25
00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:39.199
we owe to it and to its
superterrestrial pretensions. In Asia and Egypt,

26
00:02:39.879 --> 00:02:46.840
the grand style of architecture. It
seems that, in order to inscribe themselves

27
00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:53.439
upon the heart of humanity with everlasting
claims, all great things have first to

28
00:02:53.479 --> 00:03:00.199
wander about the earth as enormous and
awe inspiring caricatures. Dogmatic philosophy has been

29
00:03:00.199 --> 00:03:07.719
a caricature of this kind, for
instance the Vedanta doctrine in Asia and Platonism

30
00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:12.120
in Europe. Let us not be
ungrateful to it, although it must certainly

31
00:03:12.159 --> 00:03:15.280
be confessed that the worst, the
most tiresome, and the most dangerous of

32
00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:22.879
errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error, namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and

33
00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:28.039
the good in itself. But now, when it has been surmounted, when

34
00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:32.479
Europe, rid of this nightmare,
can again draw breath freely and at least

35
00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:42.080
enjoy a healthier sleep, we whose
duty is wakefulness itself, are the errors

36
00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:47.840
of all the strength which the struggle
against this error has fostered. It amounted

37
00:03:47.879 --> 00:03:53.319
to the very inversion of truth and
the denial of the perspective, the fundamental

38
00:03:53.360 --> 00:04:00.240
condition of life. To speak of
spirit and the good as Plato spoke of

39
00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:04.319
them. Indeed, one might ask, as a physician, how did such

40
00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:12.439
a malady attack the finest product of
antiquity? Plato had the wicked Socrates really

41
00:04:12.479 --> 00:04:16.759
corrupted him? Was Socrates, after
all, a corrupter of youths and deserved

42
00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:23.439
his hemlock. But the struggle against
Plato, or to speak plainer than for

43
00:04:23.480 --> 00:04:30.160
the people, the struggle against the
ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity. For

44
00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:34.600
Christianity is Platonism for the people produced
in Europe a magnificent tension of soul,

45
00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:41.399
such as had not existed anywhere previously. With such a tensely strained bow,

46
00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:46.879
one can now aim at the furthest
goals. As a matter of fact,

47
00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:50.879
the European feels this tension as a
state of distress, and twice attempts have

48
00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:57.160
been made in grand style to unbend
the bow, once by means of Jesuitism,

49
00:04:57.759 --> 00:05:00.800
and the second time by means of
democratic enlightenment, which, with the

50
00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:05.240
aid of liberty of the press and
newspaper reading, might in fact bring it

51
00:05:05.279 --> 00:05:13.680
about that the spirit would not so
easily find itself in distress. The Germans

52
00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:17.000
invented gunpowder, all credit to them, But they again made things square.

53
00:05:17.199 --> 00:05:23.240
They invented printing. But we,
who are neither Jesuits nor Democrats, nor

54
00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:29.439
even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans
and free, very free spirits, We

55
00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:31.920
have it still, all the distress
of spirit, and all the tension of

56
00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:38.000
its bow, and perhaps also the
arrow the duty, and who knows the

57
00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:46.079
goal to aim at. Written in
sales Maria Upper Engadine, June eighteen eighty

58
00:05:46.079 --> 00:05:50.279
five. End of preface