[214] Nietzsche asserts we still have virtues but they do not look like those virtues for which we honoured our ancestors. Our Virtues are those which resonate with our heartfelt desires. For mankind there is apparently no greater task than to seek out our virtues. We wear the heirlooms of our ancestors; specifically their virtue. Yet very soon it will be very different.
[215] Nietzsche uses the analogy of multiple stars lighting up a world with distinctly different colours. He indicates how different moral systems illuminate the world distinctly and how at times our own actions may be illuminated with various different colours.
[216] Nietzsche asserts that love for ones enemy is a lesson we learned; moral attitude is fundamentally opposed to man's tastes. It is the music in our conscience and the dance in our spirit. A tasteful distraction please to to the senses.
[217] Those who attach great significance to being accredited as moral never forgive us should they err in our presence. They become our long term critics even though they call us "friend". There is an element in which people that aspire to virtue will consciously or unconsciously punish those who see their mortal failings.
[218] Nietzsche asserts that psychologists focus their attention on those exceptions to the rule. Those who seek to surpass mediocrity and be distinct from the herd what should be of real interest is what keeps man mediocre.
[219] Moral judgement is a means to preserve equity rather than gradations of rank between individuals; The belief that all individuals can become equal on the basis of adherence to a common moral system.
[220] Given the disinterested man is elevated it raises the question as to what actually interests the ordinary person. If refined tastes are responded to with disinterest should this not also be the case with love or sacrifice? There will be no answer given, of course, as to answer would require one to show an interest.
[221] Honouring someone is not necessarily a question of virtue. It may be a question of usefulness. Any self professed universal system of Morals incentiveses ommision given the seduction of philanthropy.
[222] Where ever sympathy and suffering with fellow man is encourage there exists genuine self-contempt. Man is a conceited ape he suffers but does not feel it justified unless he suffers with his peers.
[223] Nietzsche uses the allegory of history as a wardrobe full of clothes of the past that no longer fit. In this age we proceed to have a carnival and perhaps nothing will last for the future aside from our own laughter.
[224] The ways in which a context decide upon what is valuable [historical sense] has been plunged into chaos because of the mixing of the classes and races. Like no other age we have access to all civilisations and all of the semi-barbarity that has ever existed on earth. Where human history is dismissed as semi-barbarity, this sense is revealed to be ignoble given it implies the sense for everything. Men of distinguished culture then have no palate for the possibility a culture may strike out on its own, be dissatisfied with its status or admire the strange. Yet what is best in the world is not their property and towards these things they are unfavourably disposed. Duplicitously we honour Shakespeare and all the hideous fumes that erupt from him. We are a whole host of virtues but perhaps not very tasteful. Perhaps our greatest virtue is necessarily contrasted with good taste, that very bad taste. Perhaps what is most valuable is what is most difficult; that man will only achieve his greatest bliss when he is in the greatest danger.
[225] Measures of thought that divide up the world in terms of pleasure and pain are naivetes that one cannot help but look upon with sympathy. It is not sympathy for the sick and misfortune herd. Nor sympathy for the slave classes that struggle after power. Our sympathy is greater, one that perceives how man dwarfs himself, how others want to do away with suffering. Suffering for us should increase, it is not a goal, it is an end. This great suffering has brought into being all the elevations of humanity. It is necessary for man to suffer through refinement. There a greater problems in existence than just the issue of pleasure or pain, and it is naivete to belive otherwise.
[226] Nietzsche asserts that within this world we are woven into a tight net of duties within which we cannot disengage ourselves, we are men of duty. Yet more often than not we boast of our imprisonment and complain about our lot. Yet we are men without duty with fools and appearances against us.
[227] Honesty is one of the few virtues we cannot escape. We will labour at it and spend our time perfecting it. Should our honesty find us disagreeable it will desire the path is made easy. As such we should be prepared to resist and remain strong with all of our wickedness. Let us go to the aid of our gods with all our wickedness, but others will simply believe this honesty to be our wickedness. We must be cautious given every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity,".
[228] Nietzsche asserts that whilst morality is wearying and has been made tedious by its proponents it is nonetheless useful. It is desirable that few should reflect upon morality and this certainly appears to be the case. The English utilitarians are tireless and plod on without original thought or even consideration of what has come before. There is a desire for the happiness of the herd to be authoritative; that comfort and fashion are the greatest virtue. But the idea of "general welfare" is no remedy and no ideal. It does not acknowledge that what may be fair to one may not be to another. It gives no consideration to the distinction in rank. These are an unassuming and mediocre race of humans.
[229] Nietzsche explains there are some truths that mankind fears letting loose upon the earth because of what kind of monster may emerge as a result. Almost everything of higher culture is based on cruelty. That others might seek to ply it with sentiment to make it bearable isn't necessarily helpful. This beast we sought to lock away became something else: the Romans enjoyed the arena, the Christians the cross, the Spaniards the bull fight, the French the revolution and so on. This is the aphrodisiac of cruelty. It is not just appealing to observe the suffering of others but also to experience our own; self mutilation in the religious sense. Man is allured and impelled towards cruelty towards himself. Thus the seekers of knowledge operate saying nay when they wish to affirm; an intention to injure the spirit. Therefore in every drop of knowledge there is a drop of cruelty.
[230] Nietzsche asserts that the spirit wishes to be master internally and externally and to feel itself as master. It is the ruling will with the power to assimilate new ideas into the old, to reject contradiction. Its object is the incorporation of new experiences within the old arrangement.
In growth or the feeling of growth. This same will has a closing of windows, prohibition or denial in defence against much which is knowable. Yet it will only accept what it can digest. Thus there exist the potential for deception. In the connection between the two is the spirits proclivity to deceive other spirits. This cloak is thrown over all that visible cruelty that any well trained intellect might otherwise observe. Frankly there may be a time we are glorified for our cruelty or honesty but for now let us swell our hearts with excessive moralising. Yet this is vanity and the free spirits great task is to stand before himself and assert "you are more". To the question of "why knowledge at all?" we cannot find any better answer.
[231] Learning alters us in the same deep way that nourishment causes us to flourish. Yet within us there is something solid and unteachable to which we can only follow to our fixed conclusions. These footsteps lead to the fate we embody nothing more than "my truths".
[232] Nietzsche asserts that as women begins to reveal herself "as she is" she exposes her shame and superficiality which has been dominated and repressed by the fear of man. She now calls out what is required of man. Does a woman desire enlightenment, can she desire it? If she can find no thing to adorn herself with, then she wishes to make herself feared. Women do not aspire to truth and this is what men find so alluring.
[233] It betrays corrupt instincts when women compare themselves to three historical women that for Nietzsche and his time represent comical figures. Such individuals perhaps accurately reflect the disaster of woman as she is.
[234] Nietzsche uses the allegory of traditional gender roles to indicate the lack of wisdom within woman. That she attempts to feed all without knowledge of what food is. Nietzsche suggests through an entire lack of reason the human race has been held back.
[235] Nietzsche asserts that there are often a handful of words by which an entire society crystallises itself. Nietzsche gives the example of a mother speaking to her son and stating "you never allow that madness that will make you great pleasure".
[236] Nietzsche asserts that women would not accept what Goethe and Dante believe that women draw men aloft. This is what she believes of the masculine.
[237A] Nietzsche asserts that man has treated women as birds; something that has descended from the heavens and requires cooping up to avoid them running away.
[238] A thinker that aspires to equal rights between the sexes is a shallow one at best; shallow in instinct. A man with the depth of spirit would think of women as property predestined for servitude. With the Greeks as culture, power and influence increased so did their strictness towards woman become greater. How logical or desirable this is; let us consider for ourselves.
[239] Nietzsche asserts that as the weaker sex have received greater respect from man so their demands of men have increased. This belongs to the fundamental taste of democracy. They learn more and make greater claims. She is unlearning to fear man but in so doing looses a profound instinct: That women should move forward when the fear inspiring quality in man that which is man within man is no longer present or desired. As such without this woman deteriorates. Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the militaristic or aristocratic spirit she seeks economic and legal independence and retrograde. In France the influence of woman has decreased in proportion to her emancipation. This weakens her instincts. There is a profound stupidity in this movement. To loose the most successful battlegrounds for victory; that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected and indulged.
There are men who would also like to see women lowered in culture. Increasingly with her degredation she is less capable of fulfilling that primary function of bearing robust and strong children. Nietzsche continues to highlight how the perceived cultural cultivation of man has always correlated with a deterioration of his force of will. Nietzsche asserts that which inspires respect in woman and fear is her nature. That which aspires egoism, her naievete. The disenchantment of women is in progress. Nietzsche warns that thus the "modern idea" may master society once more but this time without a God.
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