Friedrich

Nietzsche
on the Philosophy of
Right and the State

Nikos Kazantzakis

Translated and with an Introduction,

Notes, and Additional Comments by
Odysseus Makridis
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OF
RIGHT AND THE STATE


This page intentionally left blank.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OF
RIGHT AND THE STATE


Nikos Kazantzakis

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

Odysseus Makridis

State University of New York Press

From the recently published text, based on the 1909 (Iraklion, Greece: Alexiou) printing
of Kazantzakis’ dissertation: O Friderikos Nitse en ti Philosophia tou Dikaiou kai tis
Politeias, edited and with an introduction by Patroklos Stavrou (Athens, Greece:
Ekdoseis Kazantzaki, 1998).

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2006 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Kazantzakis, Nikos, 1883–1957.

Friedrich Nietzsche on the philosophy of right and the state / Nikos Kazantzakis ;
translated and with introduction by Odysseus Makridis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6731-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Nietzsche, Frederich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. 2. Power (Social sciences) 3. State,
The. I. Title.

B3318.P68K39 2006
193—dc22

2005021344
ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6731-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Translator’s Preface vii

Introduction ix

1. Prolegomena 1
A. The Times 2
B. The Character and Life of Friedrich Nietzsche 7

2. [Nihilism] 15

3. [Human Nature] 23
A. Man in General 23
B. Man’s Historical Evolution 24
C. The Constitution of Human Nature 26
a. Soul 26
b. Free Will 28
c. On Human Equality 31
D. Family 33
The Natures of Man and Woman—Marriage 33
E. The State 36

4. Religion—Morality—Right 43
A. Religion 43
B. Morality 45
C. Right 48

v
vi  Contents

5. [Recapitulation and] Conclusion 51

6. The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy 55

Notes 67

Index 115
 Translator’s Preface

I
n this volume I am offering my translation of Nikos Kazantzakis’
dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche’s “philosophy of right and the
state.” Although Professor Peter Bien, one of the most knowledgeable
students of Kazantzakis’ work, translated and commented on this short
thesis,1 I undertook the project mainly for three reasons:

(a) A new Greek edition of this dissertation became recently avail-

able by the Athens-based Kazantzakis Editions.2 The Editor of
the project, Mr. Patroklos Stavrou, who is dedicated to supervis-
ing the publication of Kazantzakis’ collected works, brought to
my attention that the older available versions of the dissertation
have errors, whereas the newly published version is the authentic
one penned by the young Kazantzakis.
(b) I take this work to be important not only for the dedicated stu-
dent of Kazantzakis’ literary output but also for those interested
in Nietzsche’s philosophy and in turn-of-the-century European
ideas. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance, I would think,
to make available in English Kazantzakis’ early, unapologetic,
unpolished reflections on Nietzsche’s neo-aristocratic political
philosophy. Notwithstanding its youthful bravado and occasional
hasty enthusiasm, Kazantzakis’ commentary is more lucid than
many a later gloss on Nietzsche’s political thought. As a budding
young intellectual—but by no means an ordinary, trendy, or plain
unoriginal one—Kazantzakis penetrated to the core of Nietz-
sche’s thought and aspirations.

vii
viii  Translator’s Preface

(c) In light of the significance of Kazantzakis’ dissertation, I thought

it incumbent on me to offer a translation with a full accompani-
ment of critical apparatus. When Kazantzakis wrote his disserta-
tion, it was not mandatory to attach notes, attribute all the
indicated quotes to their specific sources, or survey competing in-
terpretations. I attempt to provide necessary textual references
and unobtrusive exegesis in my endnotes. I have tried to draw a
balance between the extremes of insinuating an expansive com-
mentary and letting an ineluctably sparse original text speak for
itself. The former move would be hubristic on my part; the latter
choice would constitute an unfair omission—unfair to Kazantza-
kis, whose insightful analysis simply appears unscholarly to our
more pedantic current tastes.
I hope that this translation and accompanying critical notes fulfill
their intended task of assisting the student both of Kazantzakis’ and of
Nietzsche’s thought. I am offering the translation and contextualizing
endnote material without taking positions on substantive issues. My edu-
cated opinion is this: Both students of Kazantzakis’ work and of Niet-
zsche’s thought could benefit from perusing this material. Kazantzakis
scholars may judge for themselves the extent and relevance of this erst-
while influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy on the Cretan author. Nietzsche
scholars may profitably tread as through a portal into a representative—
today often forgotten—early reception and interpretation of Nietzsche’s
vehement polemics. Especially what is at first glimpse shocking for its can-
dor might afford us a rare insight into the original matrix of ideas, and be-
setting anxieties, within which Nietzsche’s thought began to dawn,
fatefully, on the firmament of contemporary European intellectual life.

Odysseus Makridis, Ph.D.

Fairleigh Dickinson University
Madison, NJ
 Introduction

N
ikos Kazantzakis, one of the best-known modern Greek authors,
was born on February 18, 1883, in Megalokastron, today’s Irak-
leion, Crete. The author of The Last Temptation of Christ, The
Greek Passion, Zorba the Greek, and the monumental modern Greek epic
Odyssey remained a controversial figure throughout his entire life. It is an
eternal monument to his originality and greatness of spirit that Kazantza-
kis was assailed with equal savagery from left and right, treated acerbically
both by religious and secular critics, deprecated uniformly by aesthetes and
pedagogues, and execrated consistently both by café intellectuals and dilet-
tante commentators. Kazantzakis’ influence endures long after his critics
have been mercifully consigned to oblivion. This is not to say that all the
diatribes were unfair or unreasonable. Kazantzakis’ themes and language,
their pungent urgency preserved even in translation, probe deeply into the
most threatening dead-ends that mock an anguished humanity. By virtue
of its subject matter, as much as through its monolithic pathos, Kazantza-
kis’ work inevitably arouses varied reactions. Sharing in the fate of authors
who are essentially, not faddishly, controversial, Kazantzakis is bound to
stir strong feelings. At the same time, Kazantzakis’ work is universal and
perennially relevant while the controversy this kind of work is bound to
arouse follows more epochal and transient rhythms.
A substantial global population of Kazantzakis’ admirers has formed
especially since his death in 1957. Equally important is that Kazantzakis’
spirit has not been haunted by the ineluctable imitators and propagandists
who tend to bandwagon on newfangled success: Kazantzakis’ work,
thought, and literary style defy the triune curses of imitation, dogmatism,
and didacticism.

ix
x Introduction

Kazantzakis is a seminal figure of Modern Greek and, indeed, of

World Literature. Interest in the seminal influences that shaped this rare
soul is justifiably keen today. Before Kazantzakis was a writer he was an
avid student of Nietzsche’s thought. This is how Kazantzakis reminisced
about the fateful occasion for his acquaintance with Nietzsche in the thir-
teenth chapter of his fictional autobiography Report to Greco. Here is my
translation of the relevant passage:

One day, as I was reading attentively, all bent over, at the Library of Saint
Genevieve, a young woman came up and leaned over me; she was holding
an open book and had placed her hand underneath the photograph of a
man, so that she would hide his name; all the while, she kept staring at
me in disbelief:
‘Who is this?’ she asked, showing me the photograph.
I shrugged: ‘How would you expect me to know?’ I said.
‘But, it is you, sir,’ motioned the young woman; ‘your mirror image,
indeed: Look at the forehead, the bushy eyebrows, the deep-set eyes; except
that he had a thick, drooping mustache, which you don’t have.’
I turned my eye, alarmed: ‘So, who is he?’ I ventured, trying to move
her hand to the side.
‘You don’t recognize him? This is the first time you’ve seen him?
It’s Nietzsche.’
Nietzsche! I had heard his name but had not yet read anything
written by him.
‘Haven’t you read his Birth of Tragedy? His Zarathustra? About the
Eternal Recurrence? The Übermensch?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ I kept nodding, ashamed, ‘nothing.’
‘Stay here for a moment,’ she said and hopped away. Before too long
she was back, bringing me Zarathustra.
‘Here it is,’ she said, smiling; ‘here’s lion’s fodder for your mind—if
you have a mind, and if your mind is hungry.’

Whether the influence lasted is controversial but that a period of

schooling took place is attested by Kazantzakis himself in his autobio-
graphical Report to Greco and by the fact that the Cretan author wrote a
dissertation on Nietzsche’s political and legal philosophy. It is this disser-
tation that I have the distinct privilege to offer to the English-speaking
audience in what follows.
Modern Greece is a nation obsessed with its unresolved Balkan inher-
itance. Epigone to the glory that was once ancient Hellas, and descendant
of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, the modern country regained her
independence after a relatively brief and bloody insurrection against a super-
annuated and teetering Ottoman Empire. Greece’s heritage is as divided as
 Introduction  xi

the Greek soul is ambivalent between ancient rationalist humanism and

mystical Christian Orthodoxy. Modern Greek cultural commentary is
known to oscillate uneasily between stultifying lamentation of an unde-
servedly Ottomanizing past and a frustrated longing for a long-delayed and
uncertain future, between the Circe-like beckoning of modern ideas and the
unresolved persistence of a lingering Greco-Christian dispute, between alien
“Western” technological rationality and the quest for Greece’s true soul. Per-
haps no other modern Greek author captures or exemplifies the defining and
characteristic tensions of Greek culture more astutely than Kazantzakis. The
Cretan author was both an inveterate mystic and, for an early 20th century
Greek intellectual, atypically comfortable with Western ideas and mod-
ernism. He was an agent provocateur and a fiendishly poignant blasphemer
in matters religious, rather in the reformist spirit ushered by Benthamite util-
itarianism; and yet, at the same time, no one could be more remote from the
utilitarian ethos. Kazantzakis was singularly capable of ferreting out and em-
bodying the mystical essence of Greek-Orthodox sensuous religiosity. He
had a cultural inheritance that had been denied the Protestant Nietzsche.
While Nietzsche’s anti-Christian denunciations come across as shrill and
(the early Nietzsche’s) scientistic optimism adds an uncharacteristically shal-
low note to the inquiry, Kazantzakis is the one who puts Nietzsche’s psycho-
logical insight to practice by engaging in a noble contest with Christ—
a contest that wills and adores the opponent and, thus, rises to higher spiri-
tual content than the yea-saying faithful can attain.
The later Nietzsche, culminating in the marvel of the Genealogy of
Morals, draws on psychological insight to convey the antireligious and es-
sentially humanistic message we identify with Nietzsche as an author. Yet,
at the same time, it was Nietzsche himself who emphasized art as the au-
thentic human contribution to the world and, returning to the Pre-Socratic
philosophers, condemned Socratic rationalism and Platonic transcenden-
tal Realism. It is ironic that Nietzsche would have to draw on psychologi-
cal insight—an aspiring reductionist knowledge—rather than directly on
art to make his point. This is perhaps what Nietzsche had in mind when,
gaping at the jaws of insanity, he enigmatically mused that the world
would remember him for his—rather undistinguished—musical composi-
tions! In that sense, Kazantzakis lived up to the Nietzschean agenda by ab-
juring frontal psychological inquiry and by opting for a purely literary
confrontation with the demons of the deep.
Kazantzakis presents a multitude of interesting and defining para-
doxes: Detested and anathematized by the Greek Church, Kazantzakis’
passion is, nevertheless, more likely to resonate with the unplumbed depths
of religious sensitivity than with the jaded faddism of urban intelligentsia.
xii  Introduction

He is more essentially religious as an enemy of religion than many a com-

placent devotee can be. A perennial itinerant and at home in many
languages, Kazantzakis became a superb stylist in a remarkable and inim-
itable Greek literary idiom that is entirely his own but, at the same time, in-
conceivable outside of a confined Hellenic corner. A European’s European,
and yet discomfortingly outlandish as a rare spiritual specimen, he has mys-
tified Europeans; at the same time, Greek writers have systematically re-
sented him with the wrenching resentment of incorrigible provincials.
Often coming close to embracing the regnant positivistic, rationalistic, and
scientistic ethos of his times, he was as quick in throwing it all away with
alacrity, ever ready to embark on strange sojourns after oriental lands. In his
politics, he ran roughshod over ideologies that are mutually inconsistent if
not exclusive, but he remained unmistakably a spiritual transideological pil-
grim throughout and in spite of his various philosophical reincarnations.
Peter Bien, one of Kazantzakis’ most knowledgeable interpreters and
translators, has suggested that Nietzsche furnished the Greek author with a
“human prototype” of a heroic individualist who questioned settled orthodoxy
and debunked conventional credo. Although Kazantzakis did not altogether
reject Nietzsche’s “positive teachings,” he was mainly attracted to the “nega-
tive” aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Especially after Kazantzakis discov-
ered Bergson, the Cretan writer felt compelled to reject Nietzsche’s teaching
of the will to power, arguably on the grounds that “the essence of life [motion]
is always compromised when it is embodied.”1 It is hard to tell to what extent
Bergson’s vitalistic hylozoism supplanted Nietzsche. The result can also be
seen as synthesis of Bergson and Nietzsche. In his directly philosophical-
essayist work, and somewhat less vocally in his great spiritual novels, Kazant-
zakis was wont to stress a teaching of a quasi-mystical transubstantiation
(metousiosis) of matter into spirit. The luscious self-assurance of Bergson’s
Parisian intellectualism certainly appealed to Kazantzakis but did not vitiate
his Eastern mysticism and essentially Orthodox earnestness. The Bergsonian
elan vital philosophy impressed Kazantzakis as an outlet for an elusive balance
he was seeking—a balance between the modern reasonableness of European
Enlightenment and the atavistic cosmological-speculative mysticism of a
more profound past. Yet, Kazantzakis’ quest, far from being sated at the
Bergsonian fountain, was propelled by an impassioned thrust that is alien to
the cultured elegance of the Parisian philosopher.
Nietzsche’s influence is also in evidence in the ethical purpose, with
which Kazantzakis animated his work. Kazantzakis directly stated that his
admiration for Nietzsche celebrated the “rhythm” of Nietzsche’s vitally cre-
ative project, even though he harbored reservations about Nietzsche’s
apocalyptic teaching on the Übermensch.2 Kazantzakis appears to have
 Introduction  xiii

rejected Nietzsche’s pivotal tenets of aristocratic radicalism. It might be

that, as one of Kazantzakis’ students put it, Kazantzakis had sufficient con-
cern and empathy for the common man to harbor a dream of “making
all individuals into superior beings.”3 At the same time, Kazantzakis
wholeheartedly embraced Nietzsche’s critique of traditional morality,
of the narrow and prediagnostic significations of “good” and “evil,” and of
the contribution of traditional religions to the impoverishment of life and
retardation of a human destiny of self-overcoming. What Kazantzakis
learned from Nietzsche was not to squander his cherished view of the soul
on religions of resentment and retribution. Kazantzakis holds a concept of
the “soul” dear, even in the face of those Nietzschean teachings, which he
took in dead earnest. I suggest that Kazantzakis was bothered by a vague-
ness in Nietzsche’s teaching of overcoming. In his own version of human
overcoming, Kazantzakis opted for a transubstantiationist version—one
that appears to retain the traditional dualism of matter and soul or spirit
and to which the Cretan author finally gave vent in his quasi-philosophi-
cal treatise Aesthetikē.
Let us step back and examine Kazantzakis’ formative years in
some detail.
One of his most astute and knowledgeable interpreters, Peter Bien,
says of Kazantzakis’ formative years that this period “coincided with what
appeared to be the death agonies of European civilization. Convinced that
liberalism was bankrupt, deeply contemptuous of bourgeois values,
Kazantzakis sought a mystical camaraderie rooted in the vibrancy of an all-
embracing anti-intellectual myth that would solve his own and the world’s
malaise.”4 Sifting through ideas and drifting into ideological wildernesses,
his innermost “inborn fastidiousness” made it impossible for him to settle
on favorite authors or causes. “Like so many of his contemporaries, he
always returned to the problem of filling his own emptiness.”5
Nevertheless, the emphasis on an existentialist angst may be not
merely anachronistic but also misleading. It is doubly misleading in that it
might suggest a pathology. Kazantzakis inhabited what was still a world of
objective truths; the vacation of truth itself was bound to be seen as an ob-
jective event—if not as an actual event of departure at least as an event in
the sense in which observing and reflecting on a shadow is an ontological
commitment to the actual presence of shadows as real entities. Postmod-
ernism and other contemporary quasisystems are often missing this point,
in the process elevating our current neosolipsistic subjectivisms into
thought-threatening dogmas. Kazantzakis’ longing was not for an ever-self-
rewriting narrative but for a narrative-begetting union with universal mean-
ing—if need be, with the yawning chasm vacated by the departure of
xiv  Introduction

classical idols and the disembowelment of the Enlightenment machinery.

Ironically perhaps, Nietzsche himself was an objectivist too. His Zarathus-
tra gospel is an antigospel—an antagonistic pronouncement in real time
and not a slippery narrative or a ladder one ought to kick under one’s feet
after a futile climb.
One major difference between Nietzsche and Kazantzakis that is
obscured when we look for a pathology of emptiness is this: Kazantzakis
remained, psychologically, a deeply mystical author, more in the vein of an
Eastern Orthodox mystic. Kazantzakis’ soul is more akin to Dostoevsky
than to shallow denouncers of religions. Even Nietzsche could not grasp
the entirety of the Russian’s genius—he noticed the psychological acumen
but blithely ignored the mystical, ultimately religious, allegorization of cos-
mic vitalistic forces—a strife that is Dostoevsky’s unceasing obsession. One
should contrast Kazantzakis’ Odyssey with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in this
respect. They are both deliberately blasphemous and reverse images of the
life and teaching of Jesus—but how are they different?
A recent study has drawn attention to the essentially neo-Platonic,
specifically Plotinian, understanding of the abyss we find even in some of
Kazantzakis most provocative “nihilistic” statements.6 Kazantzakis’ view of
the abyss, in this reconstruction, reaffirms a humanistic centeredness—
a realignment of human freedom with open-endedness, in which “noth-
ingness” is actually the blank slate of a terrifyingly silent universe, out of
which, and only out of which, humanity can ascend to the Plotinian one.
This view seems too firmly aligned with a transcendental essentialism to
do credit to the other, equally indispensable, side of Kazantzakis—his nag-
ging sense that metaphysics fails to find repose. It is true, however, that
Kazantzakis’ negations are often preliminary—mere first steps to a more
encompassing affirmation. This is arguably true of Nietzsche as well.
Nietzsche too moves from critique to positive teaching with remarkable,
and often puzzling, facility and alacrity.
A deep difference between Kazantzakis and Nietzsche, it seems to
me, is this: Notwithstanding his proudly classical-philological background,
Nietzsche reduces the ancient Greek achievement to a markedly un-Greek
subjectivist individualism. (This was a trend bequeathed to German schol-
arship and intellectual commentary by the smashing success of Hegel and
his epigones.) Kazantzakis, on the other hand, and as I have already inti-
mated, retains a view of the universe as objectively given—and it is within
this objective universe that Kazantzakis’ other statements and his wistful
confiding about silence and the abyss must be placed.
Kazantzakis attached a nearly mystical significance to the fact that he
was born in an era of transition. Among the thinkers and writers who
spoke to Kazantzakis’ deepest convictions on this issue was Nietzsche. The
 Introduction  xv

influence is especially notable when it comes to Nietzsche’s diagnosis of

the contemporary malaise of nihilism and its eerie mirror image—a com-
forting eschatology, a millenarianism, which is both symptom and cause of
the dreadful discovery that values have no self-supporting metaphysical
standing in the fabric of the universe. Nietzsche himself, playing by the
rules of this revealing or revelatory game, as it were, builds up to a mil-
lenarian apotheosis of his own narrative: an open-ended human future, in-
augurated by the “death of God” and perhaps culminating in a superhuman
species of the future.
These two themes—the past as culminating in nihilism and a transcen-
dental Darwinism of a superhuman future—comprise Nietzsche’s testament
on the dwindling era of the European spirit; they exerted considerable influ-
ence on Kazantzakis’ early intellectual stirrings.7
But Kazantzakis was mainly attracted to Nietzsche on account of the
German thinker’s creatively antinomic inner essence—his readiness to stay
put, not to flee the abysses Kant had disclosed when he discovered that
human reason is essentially antinomic. When it comes to the most vital
and fateful questions, when it comes to the foundations and to the peaks,
human reason can produce equally unassailable arguments on both sides of
the issue. Kant was not disturbed by this but Nietzsche apparently took it
as a final suicidal confession by reason of its own deeper groundlessness,
impotence, and make-believe phantasmagoria. Kazantzakis must have
found in this Nietzschean obituary for European rationalism the key that
can unlatch deeper, supra-rational sources of inspiration. Eastern mysti-
cism meets European rationalism at the latter’s deathbed as it were.
Similarly, in the case of Nietzsche’s post-nihilistic prophecy, the patient
and perceptive student of Nietzsche soon enough runs out of rubrics under
which to subsume, and thus make ready sense of, Nietzsche’s agenda, queries,
themes: Was he a Schopenhauerian bent on purging Schopenhauer’s deeply
nihilistic ontology of all its pent-up self-delusions and rationalist atavisms?
Was Nietzsche a latter-day votary of the pre-Socratic thinkers, simply
reopening a disastrously forgotten mode of inquiry? Was he a severe and
insightful critic of the epistemic limitations, and unspoken motivations, of
Kantian epistemology? Was he an essayist, in the French or even in the
Emersonian mold, who transposed the healthy skeptic Montaigne to the
unredeemed anguish of a publicly post-Christian age? Was he a metaphysical
Darwinian who took a fatal turn from his early critique of Socratic rational-
ism toward the hylozoistic irrationalism of the “will to power”?
In the end, none of the above rubrics proves sufficient in unlocking
Nietzsche’s thought. If the student of Kazantzakis tries to classify
Kazantzakis’ thought, he or she might easily run into the same problem.
Nor does it help to combine approaches, to apply critical syncretism, or
xvi  Introduction

attempt reconciliation by smoothing out contradictions or selectively dis-

tributing emphases. Nietzsche remains elusive. And so does Kazantzakis.
Paradoxically, the beginning of an insight into Nietzsche may dawn
when one comes to embarrassingly simple realizations: For instance,
Nietzsche might have had a “negative theology” after all—as Heidegger
opined and as the fateful Andreas Lou Salome, Nietzsche’s unrequited
love, always insisted.8 I would say the same of Kazantzakis—that he re-
mained faithful to a winding, truly serpentine, and deeply indignant, yet
essentially theistic, quest. Recall Dostoevsky, again, and the centerpiece
obsession of the Possessed: The apocalyptic monster spews out the luke-
warm—but it retains both those who have been hot and those who have
been “cold” and ferocious in matters of faith and spirit.

Kazantzakis studied philosophy in Paris from 1907 to 1909, during
which period he attended lectures by the sensational Henri Bergson who
was at the time registering a marked impression on students at the Collegé
de France.9 It was also during this period that Kazantzakis wrote his dis-
sertation on Friedrich Nietzsche’s “philosophy of right and the state.”
Kazantzakis arrived in Paris on October 1, 1907, armed with a degree from
the Law School of Athens. He was twenty-four years old at the time and
the purpose of his taking lodgings in Paris was to attend classes at the Law
School of the University of Paris. Instead, he was irresistibly drawn to the
study of philosophy—hence, his exposure to Bergson’s lectures. Kazantza-
kis’ guilt toward his hard-working merchant father, who had to foot the
bill, could only be allayed thanks to the unquestioning reverence he had for
the life of the mind—even his formidable and awe-inspiring father, who
served as the inspiration for Kazantzakis’ character Captain Michalis,
could not compete with thought, philosophy, ideas, and the boundless
inquiry that attracts precocious youth. It is true, however, that when it
came to his son’s advancement and education, even Captain Michalis was
always ready to acquiesce; as most Greeks throughout the ages, Kazantza-
kis’ father himself, and despite his practical proclivities, had a deep and
abiding respect for education.
Kazantzakis finished the first draft of his dissertation in Paris. He
intended to submit it to the Department of Philosophy and Law of the
University of Athens, hoping that this would secure an appointment as lec-
turer. This appointment never materialized and it is more than likely that
the brilliant young student’s thesis was cast aside as soon as it was re-
ceived—one more embarrassing historical anecdote on the generally atro-
cious record of the nepotistic and cloistered academe of modern Greece.10
 Introduction  xvii

Kazantzakis put the finishing touches on his dissertation on his re-

turn to Paris in the January and February of 1909. Back in his dazzling
Mediterranean, and all-too-provincial, hometown of Irakleion, his aspira-
tions dashed, Kazantzakis had his thesis printed as a bound copy of ninety-
three pages. It is this authentic text that has recently become available, and
which I had the honor to translate and present in what follows.
This page intentionally left blank.
 Chapter 1

1
PROLEGOMENA

R
arely has a philosopher caused so much admiration, or invited such
opprobrium, as Nietzsche. At one extreme, his devotees elevate
him to the topmost rank of thinkers and herald his teachings as
true salvation that has finally descended to cleanse our contemporary intel-
lectual horizon from lies, hypocrisy, and pettiness and to direct humankind
to a goal that is truly worthy of itself. At the other extreme, many heap on
him affront and ridicule, denouncing the philosopher as a preposterous2 and
sophistical cynic3 who weaves banalities and contradictions in brilliant lyri-
cal style so he can blind and deceive. An impartial judgment of Nietzsche
becomes even more difficult because of the shamelessness and impetuosity
of certain supposed Nietzscheans who—as is always bound to happen—
have ruinously misunderstood the true meaning of the Teacher’s sermon.
Such followers turn out to be of about any stripe—from democratic anar-
chists to the most authoritarian monarchists. At any rate, they usually turn
out plain ludicrous. Showing contempt for the law, or fancying themselves
skeptics4—these are vain narcissists, would-be Overmen.5
The causes of all this confusion and misunderstanding are, on the
one hand, the impulsive and incomplete study of certain works of Nietz-
sche, and on the other hand, the frequent omission, even from complete
studies, of an inquiry into two crucial elements, without which it is impos-
sible to comprehend Nietzsche’s teachings: (1) Nietzsche’s times;6 and
(2) Nietzsche’s character and life.7
Even the most truly exceptional philosopher, poet, or artist—not to
mention the rare forerunner8 of the future—is always a product of his
times. In and through his works, an exceptional genius absorbs, sublates,9
and cogently formulates all those features of his times’ spirit that remain
adrift, unfinished, or disordered. It is, therefore, imperative that we

1
2 Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

acquaint ourselves with (a thinker’s) times and his times’ ideas and general
impetus.10 Only in this way can we assess a philosopher’s real worth, thor-
oughly grasp the way he managed to express the (historical) momentum,
and measure the extent of his individual contribution.
But this is not enough. Following our examination of his times we
must inquire into the character and life of the “composite”11 individual—
be he an artist or a philosopher. If it is true that art is an entirely subjective
“externalization of an idiosyncrasy,”12 Nietzsche thought the same of phi-
losophy. According to Nietzsche, philosophy is not an abstract and objec-
tive system that exists outside of the thinking philosopher. It is rather the
living reflection of the philosopher’s subjectivity, the expansion and sys-
tematization of his attributes and predilections.13 In one word, it is the ob-
jectification of his subjectivity.
For this reason, the only thing the philosopher can and ought to say
is this: in what way he has arrived at the discovery of his attributes and
inner forces;14 and in what way he has, subsequently, achieved in this life
tranquillity and harmony of the soul. Thus he can be of assistance to his
students so they too can, by adapting similar methods according to their
specific idiosyncrasies, reach the same goal.
Indeed, Nietzsche’s teaching is but the tempestuous history of his soul,
which through so many storms always steered toward serenity and light. In
other words, it is impossible to understand his teachings without a prelimi-
nary survey, not only of the times but also of, the character of Nietzsche.
So, right from the outset and before we proceed to the main part of
our study, we see clearly a need to preliminarily examine two things:
(1) Nietzsche’s times–our times;15 (a) Nietzsche’s character and life.

The Times
Never before have there been times like ours—so fecund when it
comes to creating, reversing, and nervously seeking after a stable ideal that
can satisfy the material and spiritual needs of a contemplative and strug-
gling humanity.
Yesterday’s idol, whatever it may be, totters and is felled today; on its
pedestal another one is raised anon, soon again to tumble and be shattered.
So, after the fall of Napoleon the Great, exhausted from the long and most
calamitous wars, stunned by the unprecedented reversal of fortune, which
appeared before them as Nemesis and Divine Providence, the nations hud-
dled together under the comforting wing of religion seeking in it relief and
peace. Yet this return to religion was an altogether sentimental and philo-
logical affair, the outcome of an instantaneous lack of nerve and nervous
exhaustion.16 By the mid-nineteenth century another idol triumphantly
appears on the scene of human consciousness, carrying in its arms rich
 Prolegomena 3

promises, proclaiming panaceas for all problems, heralding the fair and
impartial satisfaction of every need: Science. Every exceptional mind
greeted her with unrestrained enthusiasm as the new and definitive reli-
gion of humankind. But, once again, the enthusiasm proved short-lived.
In vain are philosophers and utopians trying to erect a new religious,
economic, and political regime on nature as now revealed by Science.
Rather, the more Science uplifts the sacred veil of Isis, the more the ideals
of love and brotherhood, which humankind has hitherto pursued and of
which it has always dreamed, become irreconcilable with the ideals pursued
by Nature. The chasm separating Morals from Physiology becomes all the
more terrifying. Nature is revealed as something, by standards of human
perception, immoral and monstrous—a cruel stepmother for the weak and
slender, a blind and savage force that destroys to create and creates so it can
destroy all over again.
Everything humanity has hitherto considered noble and moral sud-
denly appears as something that violates the laws of nature.
An anxiety-inducing, puzzling question17 rears its head: As a natural
being and infinitesimal speck, is a human being18 morally obligated to sub-
mit to, and follow, the laws of the rest of nature? Or is he able—and is he
obligated—to constitute an exception, given that a blending of natural and
moral laws has, after all philosophic endeavors, proven untenable?19
From this double fountain of laws spring the two main currents of
modern thought—vehement currents, indeed, that flow at cross-purposes.
Science is no longer able to step in as aide and conciliator. In vain have
people asked her to explain the “what-for” of things, so they can perhaps
embrace the other alternative: Science can explain “how,” but not “why”
and “what for.”20, 21 The celebrated Darwinian theory, which once emerged
as the answer to humanity’s anguished interrogation of the Unknown, has
disappointed all hope. This Darwinian theory explicates the adaptation,
the maneuvers, and ingenious combinations that nature invents in order to
combat the obstacles that arise in her path; yet, the theory is unable to elu-
cidate the cause of the process and the goal of evolution.22 The bumpy
condition of the road and the overcoming or bypassing of obstacles as a
matter of fact can by no means explain the beginning or end of the road;
adaptation by no means explains evolution.23
So, implacable criticism has already begun to undermine Science—to
subject Science to analysis and slowly overturn it.
Contemporary philosophers and scientists—like [Henri] Bergson,24
[ Jules Henri] Poincaré,25 [Edouard] Le Roy in France,26 [Charles] Pearce
[Peirce], and [William] James (“Pragmatism” 1906) in America,27 Professor
[Ferdinand] Schiller (“Humanism” 1906) in England28—are all denouncing
Science for its inability to give answers to any but secondary matters
4 Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

related to practical utility and material progress. Diagnosing its inability to

fulfill its own promises, all these declare Science bankrupt.29
In this way, then, an unprecedented intellectual [or spiritual]30 anar-
chy has made an onslaught on History. Ideas from the past, as well as sys-
tems and laws and morals, are still alive, while the foundations, on which
all the above are actually based, have been toppled and overturned by mod-
ern analysis and critique. Nowadays, the reigning contradiction of contem-
porary life is becoming ever more unbearable: A human being now must
need submit to laws, in which one can no longer have the slimmest faith;
we are following rules for living, which were forged by notions already
proven to be wrong—notions that have all but been overturned.
Humanity has not yet succeeded in finding the doctrines that follow
from the new notions about the world, on which one can build new ideas
about Right and Morality and about laws and morals. Thus, we find our-
selves in limbo, in a transitional state. Having destroyed the Temple in
three days, Science is to this day unable to raise another one in its place.
The pathological symptoms of this condition astonishingly resemble
those of the times of the Sophists—the years of decline of the classical
Greek world. As then so today the human spirit, having rejected and shat-
tered the idols of its erstwhile enthusiastic worship, is anxiously awaiting a
moral authority that will put an end to anarchy and hesitation. As then so
today we have Nay-saying,31,32 Epicureanism, Pessimism, Cynicism,
wholesale despair, complete absence of inner discipline, denunciation of all
social systems.33 A sense of discomfort, burgeoning from underneath, like
a premonition of impending earthquake, threatens to overturn today’s so-
ciety and political systems whose foundations have been unveiled and
shown to be decayed and in need of renewal.
But what makes our times today even more frightening is that this
state of anarchy and creeping discomfiture is not confined, as in antiquity,
to the upper class alone; waxing today ever more anarchic and urgent, [this
state] permeates and grips all ranks and strata of society. And all this is due
to the compulsory system of education, the public lectures, the books, and
the instigation of unscrupulous demagogues and dangerous utopians,
whose preaching brings together the workers, the paupers, the victims of
injustice, the downtrodden and unites them into unions, companies, polit-
ical parties, and opposed camps of economic ideology. A desire and need
for uplifting have, for all them, become imperative; today, universal suf-
frage places in their hands the power to satisfy this desire and this need [for
elevation and empowerment]. And this sought-after satisfaction is nothing
but merciless. For, no higher authority exists today to hinder or overawe
the modern crowds: Formless, multiform, and omnipotent—the human
mass is stirred up and convulsed throughout the lowest and largest layers of
 Prolegomena 5

society, growing ever more savagely enraged by past hatreds, armed with
present theories, and having shaken off both the fear and the consoling
promise of an afterlife. Future reward or punishment can no longer restrain
the instincts today.
In this way an era has been molded—an era that obstinately chafes
against every kind of spiritual bridle. While, on the one hand, one notices
a tendency toward material concentration, on the other hand, one wit-
nesses a large-scale and calamitous spiritual decentralization. This is with-
out precedent in the history of nations. Until now, including throughout
antiquity and the middle ages, a higher authority—either religious or po-
litical—had always imposed its way of thinking, its religion, and its moral-
ity, on everyone under its control; in all other respects, one was free to
dispose according to will of his labor and productive power. Today the
State raises a claim to the regulation and, if possible, takes over commerce,
industrial activity, material production [in all its forms], all the while al-
lowing for individual freedom of thought and freedom of religion. In the
old times, spiritual and intellectual [or spiritual]34 expression was enslaved
and material expression was free; today material expression is enslaved and
only the intellectual expression is free.
Yet, this complete freedom of the intellect is a formidable instrument
for demolition; it is in all respects useless for reconstruction. Intellectual
freedom proved most useful during the eighteenth century—the century of
negation and destruction—but it is dangerous and disastrous in the nine-
teenth and in the twentieth century, when the need for reconstruction
becomes all the more urgent and imperative.
Throughout this era—a period both of overturning but also of at-
tempted building—it was inevitable that many a sophist and destroyer, and
many a daydreamer and creator, would be born. In England [Robert]
Owen proved the most daring with his “New Harmony,” which he set up
in America;35 it proved a grotesque failure. In France, Saint-Simon predi-
cated a universal unity on human ability and work;36 [August] Comte
based his “Religion of Mankind” on Science and Love;37 and Charles
Fourier would have capital, labor, and intelligence proportionately share in
the profits.38 In Germany [David] Strauss, [Ludwig] Feuerbach, and
[Max] Stirner labored in the field of religious and ethical studies;39 Karl
Marx and [Ferdinand] Lassalle in the field of economic study. The former
[Marx] instituted the dogma of socialism, denounced capital as “dripping
with blood and slime,”40 and forecast as historically inevitable and neces-
sary the triumph of the fourth class and the destined downfall of the bour-
geois and the capitalist classes.41 Whereas socialism was before Marx
premised wholly on the sentimental arguments of philanthropy and on the
vague philosophic notions of justice and equality, it now drew its weapons
6 Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

from Science and established the [final] victory of the working class as a
self-evident and legitimate outcome in accordance with the natural and
inescapable logic of social evolution.42
Lassalle, on the other hand, is the impetuous Saint Paul of modern
dogma, having preached to the crowds the new Gospel with prodding
activity and eloquence. 43
Friedrich Nietzsche ought to be counted both among the destroyers
and the creators, as he encompasses both qualities.
Profoundly different from those who are simply anarchists, whose
aim is to overturn for the sake of overturning, and from the skeptics who
hesitate before everything, Nietzsche makes his appearance in the end of
the nineteenth century: a wonderful tragic figure, encompassing within
himself, entire, our tempestuous era’s anxiety and tragic antinomy, the Tan-
taleian thirst for the truth that always refutes our hopes, the indignation
and anarchic flight of our century no less than its disorderly impulse44 that
propels toward new, more noble, ideals.
His is a double nature,45 both negative and positive. We should do
well to comprehend it before we can enter into a detailed account of this
nature’s manifestations.
On the one hand, [Nietzsche is] a most astute critic, never hesitating
before he dissolves46 and strips bare even those convictions and ideas that
have been heretofore deemed sacrosanct; one who destroys with an im-
pulse47 so austere, pitiless, and implacable as to stir indignation even
among his most devoted champions. On the other hand, [he is] a most
profound poet, with an overflowing love for everything beautiful and
noble, with a Dionysian joy that flows upward from a chaotic and deranged
mind and from a constitution that suffered and in vain sought relief and
release in the shores of the Mediterranean or in soothing medications.
Once we have examined Nietzsche’s times, our inquiry into his char-
acter and life, viewed in their mutual conjunction, will successfully offer us
the key to the riddle which Nietzsche’s work has posed until now.
What were Nietzsche’s exceptional qualities? How were such quali-
ties intensified to the point of risk-fraught paroxysm due to the most pro-
found influences of his youth? How did his [ideas or qualities] receive
systematic form and, from negative and pessimistic, how were they trans-
formed into optimistic and positive and joined to form well-defined
moral-philosophical, social, and political ideals?48 In the subsequent brief
overview of the inner and external life of Nietzsche, we undertake a gen-
eral inquiry into the above [themes], to the extent only that is required in
order to understand Nietzsche’s philosophic system, with a focus on [his
views of ] Right and the State.
 Prolegomena 7

The Character and Life of Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche has two exceptional qualities—his facultés maîtresses, as

Taine would say:49 an ingrained and implacable sense of sincerity, and an
ego beyond measure.
His sincerity caused him to anxiously seek after the truth, scrutinize
ideas, forge ahead and penetrate. He would draw conclusions but always
remain unsatisfied—ever fearful lest this is not the truth he has reached,
lest he still needs to remove yet another mask. Always incredulous and in-
satiable, even when he finally lets an idea rest on final analysis, he still re-
gards it with uneasiness, wondering if the face he has bestowed on it is not
itself but a mask.
This fundamental quality of character compels Nietzsche to always
forge ahead and overcome himself. As a consequence, he is constantly un-
easy and, objectifying his subjectivity, he is finally compelled to consider
self-overcoming as humanity’s ultimate goal. Without end or cessation,
humanity, [according to Nietzsche], always seeks to overcome itself, [in the
process] creating ever more perfect types.
On the other hand, Nietzsche’s strong ego explains and reinforces the
acuity of his other, previously mentioned, quality [sincerity]: He will abide
no bridle; he always strives with renewed passion to find something novel
and unprecedented. Consequently, he often falls into incongruity50 and
cynicism—even if only for the sake of appearing unique and superior to
everyone else in audacity of philosophic exposition.
From this union of sincerity with conceit stems Nietzsche’s alto-
gether feminine and hysterical daintiness toward everything he considers
to be a lie or something unsound; also the passionate impulse51 with which
he defends the new idol he is bringing to humankind—the Übermensch.52
Having now acquainted ourselves with these dominant qualities of
Nietzsche—the sincerity, the egotism, the sensitivity, and the passionate
impulse53—we can easily try to fathom the resounding impact of the in-
fluence he has exerted.
Raised by a family of priests and pious folks, he retained forevermore,
alongside his hatred of Christianity, a morality that is wholly Christian.54
As a true Protestant, he believed, to begin with, in a complete harmony be-
tween Science and Christianity; this is the reason he would find in [the
study of ] religion satisfaction of his exceptional quality—his sincerity and
worshipful devotion to the truth.55 And only when, by the time he was
twenty years old, he began to waver and doubt this supposed harmony
between truth and Christianity, only then did he take the first steps away
from religion. He did this not by abandoning his previous notions56 but, on
8 Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

the contrary, as one solidly possessed by those notions: To the extent that
he had been a believer in religion, he believed because he identified religion
with the truth; therefore, as soon as he began to discern that the two57
diverge and are separate, it was inevitable, given the bent of his character,
that he would reject religion and follow the truth.
Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s sensitivity did not allow him to sever himself
from religion easily or painlessly. “How easy it is for one to destroy,” he
roars, “yet, one must subsequently build too. And, I think, destruction seems
easier than it really is. Unto our soul’s innermost parts we are so profoundly
affected by the impressions of our childhood, and by our parents’ and teach-
ers’ lasting influences, that our deeply rooted prejudices cannot be easily
removed with logical argument or by a command of the will. The force of
inured habit, the need for an ideal, the rupture with our times, the ongoing
dissolution of all social forms, our anguished disbelief that, for two thou-
sand years, humanity could have been the victim of such deceit—all these
sentiments are wrestling within the soul and threaten to tear it apart!”58
To such a struggle was Nietzsche subjected, striving to reconcile ir-
reconcilables. Only when powerful influences of a different sort were im-
posed on him from outside did he definitively sunder himself from
religion. He then began to ascend, as he himself says, “the solitary and
painful path of the researcher who no longer seeks after happiness and
peace but is bent on discovering the truth, no matter how many sacrifices
it takes, even if this truth is dreadful and repulsive.”59
Two influences prodded Nietzsche to take this ultimate step of re-
nouncing religion—influences that deeply shook his soul: [Arthur]
Schopenhauer60 and [Richard] Wagner. A detailed comparison between
the philosophical systems of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche falls outside the
scope of our present study. Such a study would convince us that the
philosopher and prophet of Nirvana [Schopenhauer] exercised a strong in-
fluence on Nietzsche’s life and spirit. Yet, a few words on this subject are
necessary for a full understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy.
With the great Pessimist, Nietzsche accepts that the essence of the
world is the Will, which is the same in quality and different only in quan-
tity throughout the whole universe. This Will is nothing else but a most
painful desire, which propels humans to an eternal struggle—so replete
with despair as it is accompanied by a certain presentiment of defeat.
“To want to permanently suffer for no good cause, and then to perish, and
so on, eternally, until the [time comes when] earth is shattered to
smithereens.”61 In this way, the world is seen to be unjustifiable and no sal-
vation is left besides the obliteration of this very Will itself, which alone is
still preserving life on our planet.
 Prolegomena 9

In a soul as sensitive and aristocratic as Nietzsche’s—a soul that

recoiled from the hubbub of the street and the vulgar contacts of daily
life—the incalculable influence of such doctrines was evident. In addition,
Wagner’s acquaintance and music further accentuated Nietzsche’s pes-
simistic overexcitation. In lethal doses he savored the enchantment of that
music, which, under its pompous exterior and primitive drive,62 encom-
passes everything neurotic and decadent that possesses the modern soul.
In this way, and until he was twenty-five years of age, Nietzsche fell
under pessimistic and neurotic influences. Due to an accentuation of his
own qualities and in the absence of systematic direction, Nietzsche came to
be a peculiar hero, at once hankering after life and struggle but also reduced
to hysteric tears as soon as he would come in sudden touch with reality. He
came to be at once hardened as well as tender, both inclined to mystical
flights as well as scientifically minded. In a state of nervous excitation, his
whole psychic constitution was yearning for revelation of an ideal that could
encompass and harmoniously intensify all his qualities and drives.63
The revelation finally came. For Nietzsche, it was Greece. Appointed
professor at the University of Basel, in Switzerland, when he was only
twenty-five years old, he was given the opportunity to study Greek tragedy
and the Greek philosophers with diligence. To these influences we should
add certain secondary ones—[Friedrich] Hölderlin,64 and, first and fore-
most, [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. The former conveyed to Nietzsche a lyri-
cal enthusiasm for the civilization of the Greeks—a civilization widely free
and deeply humanistic, in contrast to the narrow and pedantic civilization
of modern Germany. Emerson, on the other hand, conveyed to Nietzsche
the cult of great heroes, which Carlyle so much praised (Hero Worship);65
also an enthusiasm for resoluteness and luxuriating life, and contempt for
material goods and for the narrow joys of the bourgeois.66
Whether he perceived [classical] Greece correctly or falsely—the con-
sequences are still the same: Greece became for Nietzsche the ideal for which
he was looking; she became a broad conception that could encompass both
pessimism as well as an impetuous67 love of life; she alone could guide hu-
manity toward its true destination. The soul that, according to Nietzsche,
permeated Greek tragedy throughout, became the beginning and the end of
his philosophy. He received the inspiration for his first philosophic work
from Greek tragedy and at the end, after the long series of his subversive
writings, it was from Greek tragedy that he extracted the ideal of life and
humanity. So, it is necessary, even if briefly and in passing, to see how Nietz-
sche understood ancient tragedy.
According to Nietzsche, by means of pity and fear, Greek tragedy can
bring a human being to a state of Dionysian ecstasy; emancipated from the
10  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

confines of narrow individual life, in this way he partakes, so to speak, of

the eternal and creative force of the living Universe. In the melody of
dance, by the side of Thymele, the deep soul of the Greek drew her
strength—a soul that was exquisitely sensitive even to the lightest sorrows.
With her acute eyesight, the Greek soul took stock of the atrocious calami-
ties of universal history and detected the cruelty and blindness of nature.
And, then, Art appeared and proved true savior Goddess; she saved the
Greek soul from Buddhist pessimism and transformed the spectator’s sen-
timental aversions to an idealized and two-dimensional spectacle: Tragedy
and Comedy.
Not only should we be able to endure life, proclaims Nietzsche in-
spired by his discovery of the Greek world; we should also love and pas-
sionately embrace life, disdainfully rejecting pessimism and romanticism
and Christianity—and all and sundry variants of suicide and calumniation
of life. “I want man to be, as far as possible, most proud, vibrant, and pas-
sionately yearning for life. And I long for the world and I want it to be ex-
actly as it is, and I want it now and eternally; and I will be screaming
insatiably: bis!”
Yet, this perception entails mortal antagonism, implacable struggle,
and dangers that lurk in every step. To be more precise: “Believe me, the
only way one can reap an abundant yield is by sowing abundantly, by living
dangerously. Build your homes at the foot of Vesuvius. Send out your ships
to the distant, unexplored seas. Live in a state of constant belligerence
against those who are like you—and against yourselves too.”68
In this way are the idols, which Nietzsche had hitherto worshiped,
toppled. Those idols taught him romanticism and heightened sensitivity,
they inspired him with mistrustfulness and hatred of life. And, lo and be-
hold, he now discovers a race that is free, light-hearted and joyful as well as
profound, that loves life and is not fearful of death, Apollonian in her mo-
ments of serenity and Dionysian in its arousal and holy enthusiasm,
Olympian in its totality. The idols had taught Nietzsche pessimism; and, lo
and behold, he comes across a race that is not only optimistic but also ap-
plies pessimism as an instrument of optimism, in this way eliding the tragic
antinomy by means of a heroic acceptance of life in all its manifestations—
manifestations both of grief and sensuous pleasure.
The struggle that, as we saw above, preceded Nietzsche’s severance
from religion also took place before his detachment from the new idols. He
did not shake off his most endeared pessimism and romantic view of the
world without going through convulsions. “When I embarked all alone on
the way, I began to tremble. After some time, I grew sick, exhausted by the
disappointment I received from the ideas I had loved until then; exhausted
by the contemplation of a dreadful hint: I had a foreboding that, following
 Prolegomena  11

this disappointment, I was doomed to become more and more distrustful,

more deeply contemptuous, and more isolated.”69
Indeed, from that point on, his life became a disconsolate struggle
and an assault of unprecedented severity against everything he had up to
then loved, admired, and respected. After the discovery of such a wonder-
ful civilization, Nietzsche cast his eye on contemporary Europe and would
instantly be seized by indignation and a destructive frenzy. And he raised
the anguished question: What is the cause of such a decline of the con-
temporary world? Nietzsche discovered the cause in the fundamental ideas
that are embedded in the foundations of contemporary society. And he as-
saulted those foundations with a vehemence that was constantly exacer-
bated by his burgeoning illness. Resigning his professorship for reasons of
poor health, he began to wander on the shores of the Mediterranean, anx-
iously anticipating the happy occasion of a momentary lull in his bodily
distress so he could work, think, and write. Without a family, without shel-
ter, wandering in foreign lands, with no friends, ignored and diseased, he
began from that time on to live the most tragic drama of his life. Every day
he waged a desperate struggle against his burgeoning insanity. During its
luminous intervals of health, his sinking and fading brain generated ideas,
songs, and sermons of marvelous beauty and force.70
Our philosopher’s works deeply show the effects of his tormented
life—a life harshly tested by illness and tried by the struggle toward health
and light. What a difference between his first work [Die Geburt der
Tragödie, 1869–1871] and the ones that immediately followed. In his erst-
while work, and in a spirit of youthful enthusiasm and lyrical frenzy, he
discloses the secret of holy Thumele71 and raises before our eyes an en-
chanting, unrivaled ideal of Greek life. In his subsequent works, on the
other hand, he attacks with irony and indignation every religious, moral,
and political regime. No aspect of contemporary life is spared by him. He
compares himself to an undermining force—someone who digs deep un-
derground tunnels to undermine the foundations of the mightiest doc-
trines; one who methodically, assiduously, and patiently labors
underground, away from light, time, and humanity.72
Similarly, in the Human, All Too Human [Menschliches Allzumenschliches,
1876] Nietzsche attacks romantic pessimism73 and, more specifically, the pes-
simism of his most endeared teacher Schopenhauer,74 whom he denounces
and condemns.75 He no longer accepts the universal Will as what “truly is.”76
He condemns pity,77 self-abnegation,78 self-sacrifice.79 He no longer accepts
that the goal of humankind is the generation of genius80—for he no longer
concedes any goal to humankind or to the universe.81 Art? Poetry? Under-
handed creators of dangerous chimeras.82 In his next work, The Wanderer and
His Shadow [Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, 1880] he ventures to penetrate
12  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

into the shadow that all objects cast when the sun of knowledge falls on them.
Without guide or compass, the wanderer chanced to be to the north of his
shadow. Defenseless and listless, he is led by his shadow to roam over deadly
peaks and to the verges of abysses. Whatever dreams, convictions, notions he
had thought to have shaken off and slain are now presenting themselves in
front of him as phantoms to perturb his ailing imagination. He is like a mur-
derer who sees his victims during hallucinatory fits.
In other works, The Daybreak [Morgenröte, 1881] and The Genealogy
of Morality83 [Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887], he attacks morality and at-
tempts to show that morality does not originate from above, nor is it
meaningful as an absolute “categorical imperative.”84 There is no general
and certain rule that defines and demarcates good and evil. Morality is
nothing but the impositions of the weak and the decadent. In his remain-
ing works—The Gay Science [Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882], Beyond Good
and Evil [Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886], and The Twilight of the Idols
[Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889]—he fells today’s false idols with ever greater
force85 and cynicism. From exceeding love of the truth, he boldly rejects
truth herself: His analysis showed that, given the superlative destiny of hu-
manity, both truth and falsehood are perhaps equally worthy of acceptance
and respect.86
Nevertheless, underneath the resounding boisterous sarcasm of these
works, one feels Nietzsche’s disconsolate pain and sorrowful travail guiding
all negations to a triumphant affirmation. Already in 1882, his health had
begun to improve. Moved by joy, he cries out in the Gay Science: “This book
is a shout from joy, following long days of misery and incapacity; it is a
hymn of joy, in which sing reawakened powers87 and a reborn faith in life.
Suddenly I feel open in front of me pending future adventures, free seas,
and new purposes toward which I must extend my powers.”88
He was feeling the sweet intoxication of convalescence89—a feeling of
joy and hope, resembling the arrival of spring after a long winter. And, then,
in Nietzsche’s thought there rises the thundering figure of Zarathustra who,
after relishing his thoughts and seclusion in the desert,90 descends to hu-
mankind to announce to them the religion of the Übermensch.91
“I am announcing to you the Übermensch.92 Humanity is something
that we are obligated to overcome. What have you done in order to over-
come humanity? All creatures have hitherto created something higher
than themselves; and you, contrary to all nature, would even return to the
animal rather than overcome man? What is the ape for man? An object
of laughter and shame and grief. So is today’s human being for the Über-
mensch: An object of laughter and shame and grief. Behold, I am bring-
ing you the glad tidings of the Übermensch. Behold the Übermensch, the
purpose of the earth.”93
 Prolegomena  13

This new ideal of Nietzsche perfectly resembles the ideal that was re-
alized by the Greeks of the pre-Socratic years: that is, the heroic acceptance
of life with all its joys and sorrows, pessimism thus subjugated under opti-
mism to serve as a springboard toward a deeper enjoyment of eternal life.94
And from this pinnacle, which Nietzsche had reached after so many
struggles and so many tribulations, he suddenly fell into insanity, mentally
dead, nevermore able to finish his abandoned half-finished Wille zur Macht,
in which he was planning to systematically and philosophically expound his
theory that he had lyrically and symbolically outlined in Zarathustra.
Such was, in broad outline, Nietzsche’s life and intellectual develop-
ment. In anguish he sought the truth on forbidden and deadly peaks.95 In
his own words: “Isolated, far away from humankind, having wandered in
every labyrinth of the future, I resemble a bird of augury—head facing
backward, I am prophesying the future.”96
Nonetheless, his tormenting life notwithstanding, he does not lose
heart and does not succumb. “No,” he declares—and, contemplating his
life, we read these lines deeply moved by emotion, “no, life has not deceived
me. On the contrary, I find life all the more rich, more mysterious and
more desirable ever since the day when a redeeming thought was revealed
to me—that life might actually be a trial for him who seeks after the truth.
Let this truth be, for the rest, a couch of repose or a way leading up to rest,
entertainment, or delectation. For me, it is a world replete with dangers
and victories and heroic feats. Life was given us so that we may find the
truth. With this conviction at heart we are able not simply to endure life
but to actually live in bliss.”97
We now know the two components that are indispensable for a com-
prehension of Nietzsche’s philosophy: (1) Nietzsche’s times, and (2) Nietz-
sche’s character and life. Bearing both of the above in mind, we intend to
duly justify, and also duly critique, Nietzsche’s excesses and aberrant turns,
without at all overlooking his noble bravery and his heroic efforts to raise
our intellect and life to higher and purer peaks.
Needless to say, a soundly founded, logically consistent, system can-
not be extracted from Nietzsche’s teaching. Nevertheless, we will attempt
to expound, in as systematic a fashion as possible, Nietzsche’s teachings
specifically with respect to the philosophy of Right; his teachings on
human nature and destiny; on the family; on society; on morals; on justice
and legal right; and on the state.
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 Chapter 2

[NIHILISM]

A ccording to Nietzsche, the fundamental characteristic—and

gravest malaise—of our times is Nihilism.1
From one end to the other, Europe is mightily convulsed, seized by a
mortal anguish that is swelling little by little, menacing with a pending and
unprecedented catastrophe. Harried and rashly impetuous, society is car-
ried away “like a river that is hurrying to reach the end of its flow.”2
What does the word “Nihilism” mean? It is the condition that is pro-
duced in us as soon as we realize that there exists an implacable and irrecon-
cilable disparity3 between the real and the ideal, between the life that is
necessitated by reality and the life we deem good and tolerable.4
Whence does this condition originate?5 Every era, every civilization,6
has what Nietzsche calls its “table of values.”7 In other words, [every civiliza-
tion] accepts a hierarchical ranking8 of values; it faults and condemns certain
ideas,9 it elevates and imposes on others.10 Accordingly, the table of values of
the contemporary era inscribes truth as preferable to falsehood, morality
above immorality, kindhearted compassion and benevolence above cruelty
and maliciousness. This arrangement [and ranking] of values constitutes the
very foundation of State and Society; it regulates the action of citizens, re-
wards and punishments, individual and civil rights, and responsibilities—in
brief, it defines and posits the rules that everyone should follow in his inner
and external life if he is to live up to the dictates of Right and Morality.
Therefore, its corresponding table of values is the foundation of every era and
every civilization. It follows that we need to seek the cause of every general
[valuation of ] health or illness in the corresponding table of values.11
Contemplating the contemporary decline12 of humanity and society,
Nietzsche wonders: Could it be that the cause of such a decline is the table
of values that is today imposed on the world? With his characteristically
15
16  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

uncompromising sincerity and impetus,13 he goes on to examine and ana-

lyze the values inscribed on this table. According to Nietzsche, the conclu-
sion reached through this analysis is this: The contemporary table of values
is the sole cause of the nihilism we observe in Europe today.
Indeed, today’s reigning values, which claim to regulate life, are seen,
on detailed inquiry, to ineluctably and fatefully culminate in nihilism: On
the basis of the dominant table of values, today’s humanity believes in the
existence of God and in a destiny that points both humankind and the
whole universe to a definite goal.14 Today’s human being takes himself to
be the epicenter and tragic hero of life, a precious molecule of divine
essence, a veritable microcosm, an intermediate and intermediating being
between God and matter, foreordained to reign over inanimate and irra-
tional nature. And, then, all of a sudden, instantly, as soon as he bends over
the findings of modern science,15 he is jolted to a mighty shock: No pre-
destination exists in the world; evolution follows no system—blind and
omnipotent, it confers life and death, without cause and without goal. In
vain does he strive to revive God, who “is dead,”16 by substituting for Him
either the conscience and its “categorical imperative,”17 Logic and the
French Revolution, or—last but not least—Comte’s “Cult of humanity”
(Culte de l’Humanitè).18 All such endeavors collapse and today’s human
being is compelled to admit that he neither knows, nor is he able to know,
anything; he is completely ignorant as to where he comes from, where he is
heading to, what he must seek to attempt, and what he might be able to at-
tain. “A human being—a certain kind of over-stimulated animal that, luck-
ily, dies quickly. As for life on earth in general—a passing instant, a single
incident, a futile exception, something of no significance for a comprehen-
sive description of life. This very earth, like every other star—a spark shin-
ing between two interminable nights, an incident without reason, without
will, without conscience, the product of dumb necessity.”19
Confronted with so sudden a realization, whose conclusions are so
starkly opposed to what the “table of values” instructs, a human being is
inevitably led to disappointment and despair. Indignantly and in a spirit
of bitter irony, he is compelled to reject the consoling solutions that are
now and then offered him, in the process successively renouncing God,
duty, his own faith in progress and improvement, his innate20 sociability
that prods him to pity and love his fellow human beings, and, finally, his
very faith in science—this ultimate solace he had eked out from the in-
stinct of life. Lastly, he declares, after Hartmann21 and Schopenhauer—
those late22 votaries of death and diseased bedfellows—that life has at last
seen through to its inner futility and purposelessness and now wishes to
be annihilated.
 [Nihilism]  17

So, contemporary man, having been reared and enervated23 by the

false tidings of our era’s Decalogue, and suddenly faced with the logically
compelling conclusions of today’s science, sees a formidable dilemma ris-
ing in front of him:
Either he must destroy the reigning table of values; or he must
himself suffer destruction.
There is no third option. Indeed: either, the table of values, by dint of
which a human being can find faith in and love a world that is altogether
different from the real world (a world that has a God, a purpose, etc.), is
true, in which case the table of values necessarily leads to a negation and
annihilation of real life; or, this table of values is false and error-ridden,
and, then, the sentence we pass against real life based on this table of val-
ues is likewise mistaken and misdirected. If the latter is the case, it is im-
perative that we overturn this false table of values and erect another one in
its place—one that is in harmony with reality and with scientifically dis-
covered truth.24
So, nihilism raises two diametrically opposed solutions for our con-
sideration and points us to two mutually opposed extremes:

(a) To the obliteration and self-destruction of life.

(b) To the obliteration only of the currently reigning table of val-
ues, which is to be succeeded by a heroic and joyous acceptance
of life.25
So we arrive at the fundamental distinction, which Nietzsche makes with
regard to the present condition of our disconents:

(a) Pessimistic Nihilism.26

(b) Optimistic, or Dionysian, Nihilism.27
Of these two, the pessimistic Nihilism is malaise and decadence—not an
anomalous phenomenon really, but actually a physiological norm and evo-
lutionary consequence. Indeed, the socialists are either demagogic charla-
tans or naive daydreamers,28 when they promise, taking their bearings from
the dominant table of values, that they are in a position to discover a social
arrangement from which suffering, poverty, and immiseration will be ab-
sent. It is as if they were issuing commands, decreeing that society were to
be preserved in perennial youth and nevermore be affected by the passage
of time, social changes, or technological advancements. Nevertheless, “ill-
ness, old age, and misery cannot be removed by an act of our will.”
The great sham from which today’s society suffers, even as it ever
hopes for rebirth, consists in taking for causes of decadence those symptoms
18  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

that are only the consequences and effects of decadence:29 Crime, alco-
holism, the decline of marriage, hysteria, demoralization, lack of will—all
these symptoms are not decline’s offspring but its parents.30 As it is, one of
the following two conditions will come to pass:

(a) Either: faced with the spiritual wreckage of today’s world, and
seeing dead in front of him all the hopes that had been vouched
for by Religion, Society, Morality, and the overall table of values,
one might grow weak and crumble, no longer able, once such
props have been removed, to bear the weight of a life without
purpose and without God. Such “pessimistic nihilism”31 ought to
be abolished as soon as possible, lest it contaminates and trans-
mogrifies the whole planet into a vast almshouse.32
(b) Or: confronted with human wreckage of this sort, humanity as a
whole is bound to pause and shilly-shally for a while before it
joyously takes forward strides with fortitude—all the more hap-
pily for having ridden itself of the dead weight of vain hopes and
false promises. [Once it begins to advance with fortitude,] hu-
manity will finally become the source of purpose and direction on
life, since life in and by itself has no purpose and no direction.33
So, according to Nietzsche, contemporary European nihilism has be-
come a drug of critical importance; administered to the diseased pes-
simists, it gives death to some and life to others.34
In the face of such a dilemma, what is the destiny of philosophy in
general, and of the philosophy of right and the state in particular? As the
destiny of the latter Nietzsche posits the task of forming concepts and in-
stitutions that regulate human relations in such a way as to promote the
triumph of the Dionysian kind of pessimism and a grateful and virile ac-
ceptance of life that has no need for false hopes.35 To fulfill this momen-
tous destiny, the philosopher incurs a double mission:

(a) Negatively Stated:

He has the task of reassessing, one by one, all values of today’s
reigning Decalogue, to analyze them with sincerity and courage
and to expose them for being pernicious to and destructive
of life.
In order to thoroughly understand Nietzsche’s philosophy
unto its innermost depths and dispel the presumed incongruities
many claim to find in his work, it is indispensable that we stress
the following: Nietzsche does not claim that the values in question
must be destroyed because they are not true but for the reason that
 [Nihilism]  19

they do not contribute to the preservation and enhancement of

life. In his works, Nietzsche first appears to hesitate, but by and by,
he comes to vehemently maintain this hypothetical: Could it be
that truth is occasionally harmful for the preservation of life, and,
therefore, ought to be discarded?36 No matter how great the value
we owe to assign to truth and disinterestedness,37 we still ought to
concede an even greater value to sheer appearance,38 to deception,
to egoism, to desire—a value that is greater and far more useful for
the enhancement of life.39 “The untenability40 of an argument is
not for us an excuse that suffices for rejecting this argument. The
matter should be put in a different way: To what extent is it useful,
or harmful, for life? And it is likely that we will then discover that
the most deceptive arguments . . . are also the more useful for the
preservation of life.”41
Analyzing our era’s reigning table of values from this point
of view we find that this table is the work of diseased and deca-
dent human beings who availed themselves of it so they can
desparately cling to life. And, sometimes, this has proved truly
useful because—its falsity being invisible—this table of values
proved conducive to the enhancement of life. At the present,
however, the contemporary table of values is ineffective and
without any utility. No longer able to hoodwink humanity with
its lies, the table has lost all force and potency. No one leans on it
anymore, and it is rapidly becoming all the more dangerous as it
is prodding people toward skepticism and hesitation—and even
toward disappointment and pessimism.
The philosopher’s task is to once and for all overthrow this
insidious and disastrous table and to make it plain that the life of
the God-believing faithful, of the duty-abiding and excellence-
pursuing virtuous, and of the philosopher who seeks behind the
flux of things what “truly is”42—this life is nothing but the work
of diseased organisms and degenerated vitality.
Still, the philosopher should not rest after he has reached
this thankless goal of negation and destruction. His mission is:
(b) Positively Stated:
He must pass through the gauntlet of complete nihilism
and, having rejected the currently dominant values, he must raise
other values, by virtue of which life and the universe cannot only
be justified but also become endearing and valuable.43 With ex-
emplary enthusiasm must the philosopher render life accept-
able—life in its entirety and in all its manifestations, including its
20  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

blemishes as much as its charms, its good equally with its bad,44
its morality as well as its immorality. It is enough if only these
antinomies enhance life and make it more harmonious and raise
humanity to ever-higher plateaus. The goal to set is this: the per-
manent and eternal tendency of humankind to actualize a new
human type—one that is higher and stronger—must be deemed
as yet another bridge toward one more, an even more perfect,
type. And so on, ad infinitum, since the height [humankind can
reach] can have no [fixed] destination or boundary.45
It follows that human relations, the relationship between the state
and its citizens, as well as human obligations and civic duties must be reg-
ulated in accordance with the goal and destiny of humankind.

From the preceding overview it is shown that Nietzsche’s philosophy
is subdivided into two aspects:

(a) a negative aspect, by means of which Nietzsche overturns the

reigning table of values;
(b) and a positive one, according to which he erects another table
with a new ranking of values and new ideals of humanity, society,
and state.
At the same time it is possible to explain the dual character of Nietz-
sche’s work along the same lines: on the one hand, satire and sarcasm, a
veritable Mephistophelean laughter, cynicism, and indignation. Only
this tenor can suit a work that is hell-bent on negating and overthrow-
ing. On the other hand, [we find in Nietzsche’s work] the marked lyri-
cism, the prophetic expansion, the “great love,” the Dionysian
enthusiasm, and the joy of the true creator.
The course of the main body of our inquiry, into which we are about
to enter, turns out to be as follows:
First, we will study the negative part of Nietzsche’s teaching in re-
lation to his philosophy of Right and the State. We will see how Nietz-
sche tries to show that the values of today’s Decalogue—as the latter
applies to the nature and destiny of humanity, the family, society, moral-
ity, right and the state—are manifestations of decadence, inevitably, and
of necessity leading to nihilism, and they must be discarded. And after he
has demolished such values, Nietzsche naturally guides us to the second
part of his teaching, the positive part, in which he raises the new, his very
own table of values, on which a new understanding of humanity and the
universe are enshrined. This new understanding stretches life so it can
 [Nihilism]  21

vibrate in the wavelengths of the reality today revealed for us by contem-

porary science.46
To recapitulate:
We have so far examined Nietzsche’s times and environment, his
character, the influence he received from German romanticism, Schopen-
hauer, and [Richard] Wagner. Also his discovery of the [classical] Greek
world. The overthrowing of everything he had believed up to that point,
and his heart-rending separation from religion, Schopenhauer, and Wag-
ner. He then turned to the Greek ideal and, juxtaposing this ideal to the
state of contemporary humanity, he discovered the source of the modern
fall in today’s table of values—work of the feeble and the decadent. He
then set himself a double mission: the overturning of this table of values,
and the erection of another one that heroically accepts life and reality.
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 Chapter 3

[HUMAN NATURE]

Before any examination of a social system, in which [the concepts of]

right and the state play a crucial role, it is imperative that one inquire
into and comprehend the nature of man. What is man’s origin? What is
his nature? What is his mission? Both the problem of what a human
being is and the problem of society hang in the balance here.1

A. Man in General
How did Nietzsche understand this problem? And how did he
resolve it?
Until recently, the reigning religious dogmas and philosophic systems
declared the human being to be privileged—a being that has a “fully com-
pleted nature”—created by the Divine Creator with special care, whose
purpose is to rule over all other creatures, endowed with a soul immortal,
which he carries within himself for the sake of future eternal life beyond
the grave.2
So, under the weight of vain hopes, human beings had their nature
and destiny monstrously distorted, so as to become consistently with this
passionate belief in a universe that strives toward a definite goal. Accord-
ing to the same belief, partaking as it does both of divine and earthly
essence, human nature is also supposed to tend toward a definite goal.3
All of a sudden, the natural sciences shattered those hopes,4 demon-
strating as they did that the human being is an earthly plant, merely a
higher rung on the ladder of organic life, and that “all is flux”5 with no goal
or purpose, no will, without a supervising and guiding power.6
In this shattering of man’s hopes Nietzsche discerns a major source of
the modern, pessimistic, Nihilism. Indeed, up to that point, humanity had
considered itself the center of all existence, the “salt” of the earth,7 and, lo
and behold, it was suddenly realized that the human being is a mere

23
24  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

descendant of the beasts and that between himself and the rest of organic
existence there is no difference of substance but only a difference of gra-
dation. Although Nietzsche accepts Darwin’s theory insofar as the origin
of human nature is concerned, he nonetheless savagely attacks Darwin’s
theory regarding natural selection, that is, the means by which nature pur-
sues its goal of “perfecting”8 its organisms.9
There is no such perfection. Taken as a whole, plant and animal lives
do not advance from a less to a more complete form. It all happens hap-
hazardly, pell mell, without system, without a plan, without a purpose.
Moreover, the more complex and richer forms disappear more easily, and
only the lower and less perfect retain on the surface an indestructible char-
acter.10 The former both come into existence more rarely and are preserved
with greater difficulty; the latter are more fertile and predominate.
The exact same absence of purpose and the same prevalence of the
mediocre and herdlike types is also to be found in the historical evolution
of humanity.11

B. Man’s Historical Evolution12

Humanity is not a systematically structured, harmonious whole. It is
rather an indissoluble variety of vitalistic13 phenomena that involve ascent
and descent. Humanity possesses neither youth, maturity, nor old age. On
the contrary, all and sundry human strata evolve pell-mell and confusedly,
the one on top of the other as it were, and it is not unlikely that, in a few
thousand years, there will be human beings that are “younger” than our con-
temporaries. Likewise, senility14 and decadence are to be found in all eras.
Nietzsche concludes that humanity, taken as a species, presents no
systematic, coherent progress over time. Its overall level is not in the slight-
est elevated. It is true that, as is the case with the rest of the animal and
plant life, there are, within the human species, higher types; but even those,
inept and impotent for life as they are, are not preserved for long. Such
higher types are exposed and susceptible to every sort of assault from out-
side—and to degeneration from within.15 They occupy extremes, and this
is already a sign of decline and decadence. Beauty is ephemeral, sterile is
the genius, and Caesar is without heirs. Genius in particular is the most
delicate machinery and, for this reason, the most fragile and short-lived.16
Nietzsche attempts to explain this universal phenomenon by means
of the fundamental concept of his philosophy: the will to power [Wille zur
Macht].17 It is inevitable, he says, that in the struggle for life the exception
will be annihilated for the sake of the rule.18 Even though stronger and rel-
atively perfect, the best are isolated; they confront the organized instincts
 [Human Nature]  25

of the group and they are faced with the systematically organized and per-
sistent [collective] power of the stock and average individuals—a power,
moreover, which is more suitably adapted to the environment. If we
wanted to summarize this harsh reality in one compact moral law, we could
formulate this law as follows:
The average form is more valuable than the above-average, and the
below-average is more valuable than the average.
Nature is a cruel step-mother for the superlatively excellent natures.
The passion to level and annihilate is more strongly protected [by na-
ture] than the lust for life, and this law was articulated by Buddha, Christ,
Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, all of whom heralded the message: It is bet-
ter for one not to live than to be alive.19 And, clearly perturbed, Nietzsche
cries out: “I revolt against this way of describing reality with a view to ex-
tracting a moral law. And this is the reason I conceive a mortal hatred to-
ward Christianity for succeeding in creating excellent words and postures
so it can wrap a horrific reality in a cloak of virtue, justice, and Divinity.”20
In spite of this rebellion, Nietzsche’s implacable sincerity21 does not
allow him equivocation or silence. So, he confesses that, after a long and
impartial search, he concluded that one and only law governs not merely
the animal and plant types of life but also humanity itself: the will to
power.22 All our acts, desires, and thoughts are ruled by the instincts, all of
which coalesce around and stem from an original and fundamental in-
stinct, a source of vitalistic23 manifestations. Over and above Darwin’s law
of a “struggle for life”24 reigns this law of prevalence,25 deeply rooted in na-
ture and tending to manifest itself and emerge triumphant, often at the
cost of posing a grave risk and causing destruction to life. Many examples
are furnished both by History and by a true and enlightened examination
of human nature. All our manifest actions and [underlying] proclivities are
subject to instinct. Our propensity for truth, art, and progress are nothing
but manifestations of this instinct to prevail. For example, the passion for
the discovery of truth did not initially develop in the expectation of bene-
fits that truth holds in store in and by itself, but rather because of the an-
ticipated advantages truth confers on those who possess the truth vis-à-vis
those who are ignorant.26 Only much later, when it came to be an integral
part of the spiritual life, did the search for the truth propel humanity to
seek after truth in a wholly “disinterested” fashion.27 In the same way one
can explain the origins of morality, concepts of right, and aesthetic views.
Initially, they were sought after for the sake of the comparative advantages
and superiority they conferred, and only later, after they had become psy-
chological needs, were they sought in themselves and for their own sake
[independently of the advantages that flow from them].28
26  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

In fact, these ideas of Nietzsche’s were inspired by the teachings of

[Herbert] Spencer.29 Whereas Spencer, however, opines that, by dint of
his adaptability, a human being forever tends toward truth, happiness, and
altruistic behavior, Nietzsche, on the contrary, thinks that this life-con-
stituting human passion to prevail can have as terms and preconditions for
its existence and development not only happiness but also sorrow, not
only the “good” but also the “evil” tendencies,30 not only truth but also
falsehood, not only altruism but also egoism.31
And in this way, Nietzsche is able to present to us a most interesting
and revealing account of man’s historical evolution.
By means of a most singular perversion of his various instincts, the
human being finally stooped to an objectification and deification of what
gave satisfaction to his instincts. He came to worship such satisfactions as
distinct and separate divinities, as ideals that were outside of him and
standing above himself. He forgot that he himself had created those ideals
as means for the satisfaction of his needs. Instead of saying: “I live to sat-
isfy the fundamental instincts of life, and I will consequently seek after the
good, the fair, and the true only insofar as they serve this purpose [of in-
stinctual satisfaction],” he actually says: “It is the Good, the Fair, and the
True I must seek after, not because they are beneficial for me—this would
be blasphemy—but because they are the good, the fair, and the true.” Fur-
thermore: “My life is nothing but the means, or an instrument, for the
actualization of these ideals.”32
In this way, little by little, and through the influence of philosophers
and founders of religions—in whom the instinct for life had become at-
rophic because of a hypertrophy of the moral or scientific33 instinct—the
true essence34 of a human being was distorted, his historical development
was diverted to another path, and life was demoted to second-rate status.
Everything that had, up to that point, been discovered and employed as a
means was transformed to, and apotheosized as, a goal.

C. The Constitution of Human Nature

a. Soul

Nietzsche attributes the relatively late theory concerning a human

soul35—a theory that draws an abysmal chasm between animate [en-
souled] and inanimate [un-souled] nature—to the distorting influence of
religious and philosophical teachings.36
In the beginning, it is true, humans attributed a soul not only to
themselves but to the entire nature, thus personifying and en-souling37
trees, animals, boulders, lightning, and other natural phenomena, endow-
ing them with human qualities such as benevolence, cruelty, compassion,
 [Human Nature]  27

vindictiveness, and so on. So, soul was found to be permeating everything;

it was the connecting bond between humans and the rest of nature.38
Subsequently, in order to make human beings disdain real life and
follow their theories, founders of religions and philosophers, deliberately
elevated humanity and made the soul humanity’s exclusive prerogative. As
we saw, in them the instinct for life had become atrophic because of the
hypertrophy of other instincts.39 Their theories posited another life, [liter-
ally] the other life, as center and goal. By claiming that the soul was the ex-
clusive [possession and] prerogative of human beings they succeeded in
two things:
On the one hand, they separated humanity from the rest of nature,
the un-souled nature.
On the other hand, they demarcated a place for man, a place of eternal
rewards. One can reach this place if he follows their commands; otherwise, if
one disobeys their commands, one can only expect [eternal] punishment.40
According to Nietzsche, this mentality is disastrous for [our assess-
ment of ] reality. Luckily, following the advancement of the sciences, the
erstwhile notions about soul and immortality have collapsed and a new era
has been inaugurated—an era that is exquisite and virile, the right era for
those who are able to resist and survive after the destruction of so shallow
a human privilege.
Hailing this new era, Nietzsche bellows triumphantly: “One of the
most useful conquests of the human spirit is the rejection of the existence
of an immortal soul. Humanity now has the right to wait, no longer com-
pelled to rush and accept inconclusively tested ideas as was necessary be-
fore—in the years of studious care.41 For, back then, the salvation of the
hapless immortal soul depended on convictions that were formed during
the short span of earthly life, so it behooved one to decide as quickly as
possible; knowledge had a terrifying significance. And, lo and behold, we
have finally acquired the right to deceive ourselves, to try and fail, to accept
ideas only temporarily, to perpetually incline toward new ideas, to step
forth and forward;42 and, in this way, individuals and whole generations at
last have the right to attempt wondrous deeds, which would once have
seemed insane and irreverent toward heaven and earth.”43
Notwithstanding all this, Nietzsche cannot deny that this old faith in
the existence of the soul mightily cultivated man’s inner world. And in this
we again bear witness to the triumph of Nietzsche’s sincerity. According to
Nietzsche, our world was rendered deeper and broader from the moment
the outward flow of human emotions was stopped.44 Impeded by social
obstacles and, therefore, unable to turn outward, the human instinct of in-
dependence and immeasurable freedom turned against its own agent. The
“troubled conscience” was born in this way, as resentment,45 cruelty, the
28  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

need to crush and persecute were all deflected inward and were now turned
against [someone who was also] the possessor of an instinct for freedom.
Similarly, when put in a cage, wild beasts bite the iron bars and irremedia-
bly wound themselves [as they fret] contemplating their erstwhile freedom
in the woods.46
And, from that time, the gravest and most paradoxical of human
maladies has been introduced—and humanity has not been able to cure it-
self from it as of yet: an abrupt severance from the animalistic past, a leap
into a new way of life, declaration of war against the olden instincts that
had, up to that point, accounted for what was powerful and terrifying in
human beings. After all, this newly invented human soul proffered the
world an element so novel and profound, riddlesome, fraught with contra-
dictions and ridden with hopes that the face of the earth was truly altered.
It is from this point on that humanity begins to arouse intellectual curios-
ity, anxious anticipation, and boundless hope.
Examined from this vantage point, the introduction into the world of
the notion of the soul presents itself as an event of heightened significance
and inestimable consequences. Not because this famed soul exists but be-
cause, through faith in it, it now became possible to foster faith in the soul’s
existence; consequently, novel, hitherto unheard of, needs could be created,
the intensity of human agency could be expanded, and the human Will
could reach out and begin to yearn for dominance beyond this world, be-
yond this life, and beyond finite time. This notion of the soul became so
inextricably entwined with our spiritual and vital47 manifestations that it
exercised a most profound impact on Morality and [concepts of ] Right,
and the State—as it did on every human activity.48

b. Free Will

To sum up, Nietzsche violently rejects all claims about the existence
of an immortal soul without in the least overlooking the invaluable conse-
quences that have flown from this belief. With as vehement a conviction
Nietzsche rejects another cardinal principle of today’s table of values—the
free will.
According to Nietzsche, there is no free will any more than there is
unfree will. There are only weak wills, whose effects are inconsequential.49
Such judgments as, for example, that “the strong prevails over the defense-
less”—like “the light shines”—are nothing but empty tautologies: The light
has no free choice as to whether to shine or not to shine; it is simply no
light except for as long as it shines. Similarly, the power that manifests it-
self in the deeds of the strong is not something that exists in and by itself
and regardless of its manifestation.50 This power exists only in its manifes-
 [Human Nature]  29

tation and insofar as it actually manifests itself; it is not antecedent.51 From

this it follows that no free, or unfree, will can be attributed to power. Power
has no free choice as to whether to externalize itself mildly or severely.
Popular consciousness, however, was unable to penetrate into this matter,
and so it drew an arbitrary distinction between the will and its manifesta-
tions. Behind the visible consequences of the strong will, that is, behind the
will’s deeds, popular imagination formed an entity, which it named “free
will,” and to which it attributed the capacity to freely manifest itself in one
way or another.
This notion of a free will is a concoction created by the weak and
decadent, who only in this way could manage to show themselves not only
equal but even superior to their [natural] masters. Provided that a man’s
worth does not depend on the quantity of power he has in his possession,
one who applies this power mildly and leniently—hence, weakly—is supe-
rior to one who is unable to restrain his will52 and who tends to external-
ize it in a harsh and domineering manner.
This theory of the free will was also readily embraced by the strong,
because it can be easily seen as an indication of man’s pride: In this way one
is able to accept integral and undivided responsibility for his actions, be
they good or evil, and in this way, to become independent from every
higher will that seeks to regulate his activities.53
This way of conceptualizing the matter is deeply irreligious.54 And
those who, along with Augustine, and with Luther as mouthpiece, declared
that arbitrary freedom amounts to a denial of Jesus Christ,55 have perfectly
grasped the essence of religion, and of Christianity in particular. Accord-
ing to them, all our deeds are determined from above and powerlessly bend
under the ponderous weight of divine grace.
Humanity has oscillated between these two extremes until today. In
our times, the theory of a free will—foundation of the contemporary table
of values—is resoundingly overturned by [such developments as] research
in heredity, [an assessment of ] the impact of the natural and social envi-
ronment, and a deeper analysis of the inner machinery that constitutes
human nature. To quote Nietzsche: “You arrive into the world having
sprung from parents who squandered their moral powers, which genera-
tions had invested in them. You are incorrigible—that is, ready for either
jail or bedlam. Moral decadence is the consequence of physical decadence.
One is born vicious as inexorably as he is born sickly. Malice is not a cause,
it is a consequence.”56
Necessity roams about, omnipotent, trampling men’s destinies un-
derneath. We usually call this Necessity our “free will.”57 For some, this
Necessity is inexorable and compulsory, assuming the mask58 of their pas-
sions; for others it assumes the mask of morality and conformity, because
30  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

their constitutions are so molded that they never succumb to sturdy pas-
sions and readily abide by morality’s restrictions. For some, Necessity as-
sumes the mask of common sense59 and scientific inquiry; and for yet
another group, it is the mask of eccentricity and cavalier frivolity.
Nevertheless, all of the above seek to locate their free will precisely
where they are attached through necessity—and this attachment is com-
pletely independent of their will. It is as if they were claiming that the larva
weaves its cocoon through an exercise of its free will,60 or that fire’s free will
entails burning.
If we enter even more deeply into this psychological delusion, we are
able to discover the original source and fountain that unconsciously
brought forth the idea of the free will. As we saw, this delusion has been es-
poused and put to use by the weak as consolation and by the strong out of
pride. The fallacy of the free will becomes possible61 because everyone con-
siders himself more free in those respects in which his instinct happens to
be stronger, so that his contentment [in the same respects] is also, corre-
spondingly, more readily available and more satisfying. This instinct is pas-
sion for some, a sense of duty and thirst for the truth for others, and
quaintness or capriciousness for others still.
In this way, the delusion of the free will sprang into the world. Like
the belief in the existence of the soul, the notion of a free will has also
turned into an indispensable adjunct of man’s mental setup and, as one
would expect, it has exercised profound influence on social institutions. This
is inevitable considering that Morality and Right wholly depend on this be-
lief in a free will. As a consequence, the value of acts, which for ten thousand
years was judged by the act’s outcomes, is now assessed on the basis of its
originating source. This most momentous reversal was settled only after
protracted struggles and in the wake of lingering hesitations. Unfortunately,
the originating source of an act is now generally confused with the [pre-
sumed] intention underlying the act. According to the reigning conviction,
it is the intention that reveals the origin of an act. And it is only today that
we are beginning to suspect that the most crucial element that allows us to
gauge the significance or inconsequentiality of an act is precisely what lies
hidden behind the intention—something indeed mysterious and indepen-
dent of the will. The intention is nothing other than a symptom that calls
for an explanation—a symptom created by unknown factors. For this rea-
son, today’s morality is overall unfair and deceptive, insofar as it is founded
on the erroneous belief that it can judge acts according to their underlying
convictions—convictions that cannot be possibly known.62
And today, when the mechanism that prompts to action has become
more precisely understood and we are beginning, albeit dimly, to discern the
springs that move our actions, there is a high call of duty for enlightened
 [Human Nature]  31

consciences: to begin to preach and construct a new morality, quite beyond

our modern morality, on foundations that are new, truer, and higher.63
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all this ado about constructing a
new morality, the recent scientific discovery of the radical [natural] irre-
sponsibility of human beings, when it comes to the origin and anatomy of
action, constitutes a most bitter litmus test for the wise—for those who
seek in personal responsibility the escutcheons and insignia of human no-
bility and dignity.64 This is a most bitter trial, because judgments, prefer-
ences and dislikes now become utterly devoid of value and weight. It is
now to be inferred that the sacred enthusiasms of the martyr and the hero
were themselves premised on a falsehood. No one can either applaud or
disapprove anymore, because it is indeed absurd and comical to praise or
censure natural laws and necessity. The very same stance that one adopts
toward the manifestations of plant life—a stance that is dispassionate and
objective—one must also display toward one’s own actions and the actions
of others. One can admire in human actions force and spontaneous im-
pulse but not moral value. Everything flows from necessity, so proclaims
the new wisdom. Everything is innocent.65 Wisdom is the only path that
leads66 to the awareness of such a universal innocence and necessity.
Similarly, the three cardinal values, which are engraved in today’s
table of Ten Commandments, collapse in the wake of a scientific exami-
nation of things.

(a) the existence of purpose both in nature and as it regards humanity;

(b) the existence of an immortal soul; and
(c) the existence of a free will.
How is it possible that one who leans on these fragile and deceptive
promises raised by our table of values will not fall into pessimism and ni-
hilism? How can we avert our eyes from the dilemma that Nietzsche posits
to contemporary man:

either to destroy himself;

or to smash and destroy today’s table of values?

c. On Human Equality

Here is, according to Nietzsche, another value of our contemporary

table of values—one that fatefully and calamitously leads to nihilism and that
must be elided from our table of values without mercy.67 According to Nietz-
sche, there is no more poisonous poison than the principle of equality.
Nietzsche loathes Darwin and Spencer because they tell us commandingly:
32  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

“Bend over backwards, react in the right proportion to external forces, disap-
pear if you must for the sake of your environment, become absorbed into
the whole.”68
From this principle they have deduced a law that presumably explains
existence, when in fact there only exists a law of domination that flows
from the natural law of inequality, which prods every living organism to
overcome every other. The struggle is not about how to stay alive, how to
vegetate, but rather about how to live as good a life and as expansive a life
and as intense a life as possible.69 As in nature so with human society: not
democracy but aristocracy is the true ideal; or rather, not even aristocracy
but monarchy and tyranny.
“By nature, some are slaves—and for them to slave away is both ben-
eficial and just—and some are free.”70 Nietzsche applauds this Aristotelian
aphorism and, as we shall see in the appropriate place below, he builds on
it his entire philosophic system of Right, Morality, and the State.
Nowhere in nature is equality to be seen. Equality is the sophistry
used by the weak in order to hoodwink and surmount the strong. Equality
was invented by Religion and Moral Philosophy,71 it was preached by
utopians and demagogues, it was reinforced by popular voting, and today
threatens through the heralds of socialism to obliterate civilization and
everything that is superior. “Do not mistake me for any of those heralds [of
socialism],” Nietzsche thunders, “because justice commands me to declare
that ‘men are not equal.’ ”72 Since they are not equal, it is not true that all
individuals have equal rights, or equal obligations. The unequal allotment
of unequal rights and obligations to unequal beings—this is, for Nietzsche,
supreme Justice.
In fact, today the mediocrities, the masses, the “herd animals”73 are
huddling together and, like one body, throng against and shove aside every
towering exception. The equal rights, which they demand, are nothing but
an equality in injustice—the injustice that is perpetrated in this general
struggle against everything rare and privileged.74 After all, the instinct of
the crowd can hardly be deceived; the whole endeavor is to drown anything
that is superior. Instinctively, the crowd senses that great men are danger-
ous, harmful products of chance, considering that such natures have the
power to overhaul and overturn everything that generations of mediocri-
ties have built.
Therefore, in the midst of this most trite democratic mentality, en-
gendered by idea of human equality, the ideal of a noble human being is to
distance oneself from the herd, to run into seclusion, hide and live beyond
good and evil.75
Today the diminution and leveling of human beings poses the gravest
danger.76 This spectacle can wear down the human soul. Nothing today
 [Human Nature]  33

can be exceptional, everything is diminished, reduced, rendered harmless,

spinelessly prudent, mediocre, and indeed indifferent. We have ceased to
be afraid of human nature, and so we have at the same time ceased to love
and hope for human nature.77 Today the [mere] sight of a human being
tires and disheartens. What else can all this be but nihilism? And what
other source can nihilism possibly have but this revealed fourth false value
[human equality] engraved on today’s table of values?

D. Family
The Natures of Man and Woman—Marriage78

Up to this point, we have seen how the human being, as an individ-

ual entity, was deformed by receiving from the contemporary table of val-
ues attributes that were previously lacking; also, how humanity has been
ineluctably prodded to despair and nihilism in the aftermath of the mod-
ern scientific [unveiling] and denunciation of all such lies.
Not only has modern man79 been deformed as an individual, soaked
through and through as he is by all these lies, but wider social formations
have fared no better as is evident from the case of the family—the primary
social association that is broader than the individual.80
Indeed, if we inquire into the question of the true natures of man and
woman and of the purpose81 of marriage, and then turn to the ideas of
equality and equal rights [for women], which today’s democratic table of
values underwrites82 and encourages, we will be able then to instantly di-
agnose, in the family too, the seeds of decadence and pessimism that we
find in the individual.
What are truly the natures of man and woman?83
Nietzsche considers the inequality between man and woman to be a
law of nature, which stems from the two genders’ differing physiological
and mental84 makeup:
In the man, the dominant instinct is a passion to prevail, the need to
impose his ego as widely as possible all around him.85 His purpose is to wage
battle against the forces of nature and the wills that stand opposed to him.
Eros is nothing other than a single incident in his life; were he to dedicate his
life to a woman, he would be cowardly and degenerate—unworthy to
be called a man.
In the woman, on the contrary, eros is of the greatest significance;86
it fills her entire life, either destroying or restoring her.87 For the woman,
husband and child constitute the end in life as well as her perpetual avoca-
tion and happiness. “Everything in woman is a riddle. The solution of the
riddle is pregnancy.”88 Man is for woman the means whose end is the
34  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

offspring. But is woman to man? “The true man,” says Nietzsche, “desires
two things: danger and game. This is why he desires woman—the most
dangerous game. A man must train for war, a woman for the warrior’s re-
pose; Man’s happiness is called ‘I want,’ woman’s happiness ‘he wants.’”89
Such are the natures of man and woman. And, today, what are we
facing? The spirit of equality and leveling has also invaded the sacred sanc-
tuary of the household, and woman, led astray by today’s mob ideals, is ask-
ing for her freedom and for equal rights.90 And, so, we are presented today
with the horrendous types of the intellectual and the professional woman.
“The intellectual woman is one of the most sorrowful deformities of
today’s culture.91 A woman should have reasons to hide: she is so naïve,
fastidious, arrogant, petty, immodest. Until now, the fear of man compelled
her to restrain herself. Woe unto us, if women ever forget the precious art
of shaking off cares, if they shed off their limber ability to lighten life
through their graces.
Why should women be interested in the truth, which is by its very
nature utterly repulsive? Her greatest art, nature’s gift bestowed on her, is
the lie, and it is precisely this that we love in a woman.”92
In so acrimonious and fierce a way is Nietzsche railing against the
[modern] woman who has entered the socioeconomic battle against
man.93 “Woman,” he thunders, “is falling prey to degeneration. Every
time that the industrial spirit prevails against the aristocratic or militaris-
tic, woman tends to obtain the financial and legal independence that is fit
for a hireling.”94
The “woman hireling” is in the making in today’s society. Yet, much
as she is in this way conquering new privileges and new freedoms, raising
high the banner of progress, she is, in spite of all this, retreating.95 Ever
since the French Revolution, woman’s influence has waned in the exact
proportion in which her claims and rights have ascended.96 And the liber-
ation97 of woman constitutes, in this way, a most serious symptom of per-
version and diminution of the most characteristically feminine instincts. To
neglect, as a woman, the cultivation of one’s true weapons; to undo with
such craze the idea, which men hitherto harbored of woman as a creature
that is weak and in need of nurturing, support, tenderness, insinuating, as
it were, an ideal mysterious as it was different from the masculine standard;
to want to cast off the notion of the eternally unknown feminine, which
alone made woman so adorable—what else does all this mean if not a thor-
oughgoing distortion of the general instinct?98
Nietzsche rises against all those thinkers who are aiding and abetting
women’s struggle for economic and social emancipation. “Idiotic philoso-
phers and corrupters of women, who want to turn women into atheists and
scholars, that is into utterly revolting and ludicrous creatures. They are for-
 [Human Nature]  35

getting that what primarily inspires respect, and occasionally fear, for
woman is her shrewd and adaptable nature, the tiger claws insinuating
themselves under the velvet foot, the naïve egoism, the intractable and re-
bellious idiosyncrasy, the irrational and unpredictable vicissitudes of her
passions and virtues.”99 And they are asking her to throw off all these dan-
gerous and seductive weapons and step into the arena of life destitute of
poetic mystery and glamour—in a word, unarmed.
It is obvious from the above how high a destiny Nietzsche reserves
for the institution of marriage. This is the only means by which it is pos-
sible to reach the ideal, which humanity should ever pursue—to always
seek to overcome oneself. The offspring concentrates on itself all the
hopes of the species. Words of a poet, vibrant with holy enthusiasm, flow
from Nietzsche’s mouth every time he speaks of marriage and its exquis-
ite purpose:

I wish to address a question, my brother, a question I am plunging into

your soul like an orb of measurement, to gauge its depth. You are young,
so you are longing for woman and children. But my question to you is:
Are you worthy of being able to desire offspring? Are you a winner, mas-
ter of yourself, lord over your senses and virtues? This is what I am ask-
ing you. Or are you perhaps simply one who desires and your desire is
nothing but the howl of the beast and of desperate need, the fear of lone-
some seclusion? I want your victory and your freedom to be perpetuated
through your offspring. In this way, through the offspring, will you raise
a monument to your victory and to your liberation. You will raise it above
and beyond your stature’s height. You are obligated not only to propel
your race forward, but also upwards. And to this effect, plow the Garden
of Holy Matrimony. Thirst for creation; an arrow shot into the heights,
an impulse of yearning for the Übermensch—tell me, my brother, don’t
you want your marriage to be such? I proclaim such a holy desire and
such a marriage.”100
Rarely has a philosophy or a religion expressed itself with such en-
thusiasm and respect for marriage.101 Nietzsche, the implacable anarchist
and individualist, is allowing here for no exemptions to this holy law. For
this reason, he rails with ever greater ferocity against the frivolous ideas
which, predicated on the perfect equality of the sexes, are trying to under-
mine sacred matrimony and turn it into a simple means for the satisfaction
of a vulgar need, or to a profitable covenanting of a commercial compact.
“That which the world calls matrimony—alas—how should I call it?
Alack, what a poverty of soul in such couples, what a squalor of soul! What
abject well being! And they are calling this marriage! And they say that
their marriage was sealed in heavens! Well, then . . . Far be it from me, this
heaven of superfluous people!”102
36  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

E. The State

So far we have seen how Nietzsche demonstrated that today’s

man,103 both within the narrowest sphere of his activities as an individual
and within the broader institution of family, is fatefully led to nihilism, cor-
rupted by the notions of today’s table of values. But, is it not also true that
“the whole human being,” human being as is to be found within the broad-
est cycle of his activity, human being within the State, is influenced as dis-
astrously by the contemporary table of values?
Let us examine the nature and origins of the State.
Nietzsche rejects Aristotle’s true teaching that “he who is unsociable
by nature and not accidentally is either a beast or a god.”104 To the con-
trary, Nietzsche asserts that sociability is against nature because in many
ways it diminishes and stifles the free and enriched expression105 of a
human being.106 This is the reason why the strong tend to pull apart and,
if they ever happen to draw together, they do so only to externalize and sat-
isfy their instinct for dominance in [carrying out a] concerted assault
against the weak. Even though their healthy consciousness recoils at the
prospect of a joint endeavor, the strong still gather together, rather in the
manner of birds of prey purposing to fall on the weak who, from necessity
and fearing lest they perish in the unequal struggle, bristling with terror,
huddle like cattle.
Therefore, we have two teams that have been formed by necessity: the
pride of the predacious blonde beasts107 and the herd of the weak.108 This is
the reason that the earlier centuries of human history were steeped in blood
through and through. A ferocious struggle [continuously] pits the two
groups against each other until the weak made to submit to the strong.109
No quarters given, no pact offered. Why should the strong be concerned
with conditions and compromises since they are able to seize whatever they
list for with just one swivel of their mighty hands? The submission of the
weak under the strong is a law of nature. Might directs and governs accord-
ing to the laws it decrees. In this way it creates the State and gives shape to
Right, which is nothing else than one of the expressions of might.110
Such is the origin of the State. Evidently, justice bears no relationship
to [what we usually take as] customary morality.111 It is rather that the
State’s genesis amounts to a most extreme realization of human immoral-
ity112 and the elevation of such immorality to a veritable system.113 Here
we see humanity unencumbered of fear and bridle, in this way displaying
human nature in stark naked form and with no mask of altruistic ethics.
And so we see the State perpetrating what the individual lacks the courage
to bring about.114 Whatever it is that the individual lusts for in his inner-
most depths but dares not externalize because of weakness, fear, or a sense
 [Human Nature]  37

of responsibility, the State brings to fruition115 because it is powerful and

also because, in the case of the State, responsibility is distributed over so
many members that it vanishes. For this reason, the study of actions of
States is most instructive: such study reveals to us what human beings
would be like if they only were bold enough.
Therefore, we find that altruistic morality can exist only in the indi-
vidual; this ethic is acquired, [it is not natural,] and it is of shallow foun-
dations, originating in fear, weakness, or calculation.116 Contrast this with
the actions of States, which, being in a position to externalize the true na-
ture of human beings, prove themselves implacably egoistic and fiercely
cruel, without splitting hairs when it comes to the morality of the means
they use in the way they interact both with other states and with their own
citizens.117 A state’s sole aim is to reach its goal, which is essentially one
and only one: to satisfy the fundamental instinct that propels every indi-
vidual organic entity—the instinct to dominate. For the State, virtue,
morality, and justice are nothing but means for their preservation and ex-
pansion. Such is the healthy, vibrant life of a State. This situation is not
only reasonable and natural; it is also just. Expansion and domination are
needs of every living organism, which is instinctively driven to augment its
power, hence to absorb foreign forces.118 Morality, on the other hand, al-
lots to a human being a right to defense; should it not, for the same reason
and by the same token, also recognize a right to an assault?119 This right is
indispensable for the healthy organism and most beneficial for society: in
this way, society is compelled to strengthen its defenses, and to arm and
perfect itself, every single moment sensing a nearby danger. “It is no small
advantage and no paltry pleasure to feel the sword of Damocles hanging
over one’s head.”
It makes no difference whether this [natural] right to aggression is
to be ceded to the individual or to a State that is frenetically bent on ex-
pansion. The right to punish has been called a “right” unwarrantedly: after
all, because we obtain rights only by means of a duly established process,120
and no such process has taken place [in this instance].121 Based on this
kind of logic and approach, a nation might as well give the name “right” to
the feeling that goads it to conquest and expansion either by the force of
weapons, commerce, or colonization. This would indeed be a right to
growth and survival: a people that instinctively rejects war as well as peace-
ful or belligerent expansion is a people that has fallen into decline and at-
rophy of vitality, that is, it is a people that is “mature and ripe for
democracy and rule of the grocers.”122
Indeed, what else can we truly say of the two most noble nations that
created human civilization? What were they indeed if not sturdy organisms
that would alternately use as instruments and weapons both injustice and
38  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

justice, morality and immorality, friendship or inhuman vengeance—all for

a single purpose: to preserve themselves and expand to, if possible, spread all
over the world?123
Notwithstanding its name, Athenian democracy was essentially an
aristocracy, or, rather, an oligarchy. A few thousand citizens were rulers
over three hundred thousand metics124 and slaves. To be taken seriously,
one had to be a citizen; otherwise, he was not recognized as having any
rights. To this effect, the Athenians recognized no rights of slaves, metics
[alien residents], or women.
The ancient Greeks were fervent lovers of the State.125 Their reli-
giously passionate devotion to the King [Archon] was, after the dissolution
of the [traditional] Kingship, transferred, intensified, to the City.126 This
devotion was in this way naturally intensified because, compared to a per-
son, an idea is a more apt object of passionate dedication; first and fore-
most, an idea can cause far fewer disappointments for the lover. In a subtle
psychological vein, Nietzsche adds: “The more someone senses that he is
being loved the more he reacts curtly toward the wooer until he finally
becomes unworthy of this love and the final rupture follows.”127
With respect to the Roman Empire, we observe a similar and even
greater “immorality.” In what other way could the Empire’s world hege-
mony be attained if not by means of an unbroken chain of crimes, violence,
betrayal, and cruelty? And the Roman religion was nothing other than an
instrument of the State. The gods were a sort of supraterrestrial Senate pre-
siding over their earthly counterpart; they supervised, defended, and pun-
ished the State. Oftentimes, they would even be themselves punished by the
State—whenever they would not assiduously attend to the State’s interests.
This wholesome and natural condition of a State cannot possibly last
for very long. Below the class of the strong, which rules and fashions the
State in its own image, live the crowds ever swelling and increasingly ap-
propriating prosperity and power. In the beginning, the masses sense over
and above them the conquerors—a foreign race with savage and rapacious
instincts, or even members from the same racial stock who have, through
selection and heredity, succeeded in shaping in themselves such instincts;
the masses, therefore, remain mute and obedient, and furnish their lords
with a pliable and most useful instrument. Yet, with the passage of time,
shrewdly and with judicious council and long patience, the crowd advances
subterraneously and surreptitiously undermines the class of the strong
above. One by one they seize the trenches that the higher class had erected
in front of them. We have a perfect model of such strategic and gradual as-
cendancy in the frenzied struggle waged by the Plebeians against the Pa-
tricians of ancient Rome. By means of various ingenious methods—such as
 [Human Nature]  39

strikes, rebellions, cunning, and outright violence—they gradually insinu-

ated themselves into the offices, the families and the class of the nobility.
Morality proved one of the most effective weapons, inspired by the instinct
of self-preservation and put to good use to inveigle and subjugate the
strong. The rules of morality overturned, wholesale, everything the con-
querors had heretofore deemed fair and good128 and declared as such the
exactly opposite values, which were to the interest of the weak: benevo-
lence, compassion, frugality, and modesty.
Little by little, this morality—a conspiracy by the weak instincts
against the strong and proudly egotistical—gains ground, penetrates the
class of the strong, which it disarms and demolishes in this way bestowing
victory on the throng of the weak.129
And, so, the healthy and predatory State collapses. What was it that,
above everything else, contributed to this calamitous destruction of the
healthy State? It was a tiny, unsavory people of a foreign race, dwelling on
a far-away strip of land and worshiping its own God—a God implacable
and omnipotent. This people is not of noble stock,130 like the Greek and
Roman peoples were; it is rather a heavily ochlocratic131 people, and the
creator of a morality wholly different from the one that issued from the
Greco-Roman mentality.
For this people, transgression is not an act that is detrimental to citizen
or State but one that is directed against God—one that is wholly unrelated
to the State. This sin132 can be forgiven only after one has repented, asked for
forgiveness and contritely prostrate oneself before the offended divinity. Be-
fore such a God—a God omnipotent and unbending—all are equals in their
nullity—strong and weak, rich and paupers, beautiful and unseemly. This
paradoxical view of transgression was transmitted all over the world by
Christianity, which attempted to Judeaize the world. And, since then, a
meaningful ranking of values has been turned upside down and States and
individuals have been delivered to corruption.133
No longer is any value attached to strength, beauty, the drive134 to
conquer, and the instinct of domination. Instead, now valued are cow-
ardice, humility, obedience, hypocrisy, and ascetic abnegation. No longer
are esteemed splendor, the strong and beautiful body, the artist’s voluptuary
delectation, and the aristocrat’s intense display of throbbing life. Instead,
now reign poverty, mediocrity, narrow-minded morality, suspicion of
beauty, abstinence from every pleasure, contempt for fleeting life and
earthly possessions, and a stretching of all faculties and desires upward and
toward another life beyond the grave.
The center of human gravity is now being transposed from this earth
down here below to heaven above.
40  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

This transvaluation of values is unprecedented in human history and

of the utmost importance.
The Greek and Roman conception of the State has now collapsed;135
the barbarian victors have been vanquished and tamed by Christianity,
which dribbled poison into their healthy blood. “I know nothing of what
happens in zoos, but I doubt that the beast is being improved. They enfee-
ble it, they render it ever less dangerous by intimidating it and inflicting
wounds and lashings upon it. And, so, the beast falls unto sickness.”136 Ac-
cording to Nietzsche, the same lot has befallen the “blond beast,”137 the
beast of prey, which Christian morality has turned into a domesticated and
harmless animal.
One of the most calamitous consequences of this Judaic conception
of society and polity is the principle of equality.138 Because all are equal be-
fore God, they deduced that all must be equal before the law too. And this
disastrous notion was embraced by the French Revolution whose goal it
was to attain equality and national supremacy.139 But what can these ob-
jectives seek to promote other than an unadulterated, cruel, and implacable
mob rule? Indeed, equality overturns and nullifies freedom and national
supremacy abolishes equality itself. Because, if what the majority vote for is
law, if majority rule rules, then what is it that really happens? The aristo-
crats—those who excel by virtue of their superior character and learning—
are not taken into account, they are crushed within the masses, and their
views are lost in the noise of the crowd.
And it is precisely this that the French Revolution sought to bring
about: Rule by the majority—mob rule. It handed over the guiding staff to
the herd after it snatched it away from the hands of the shepherd. Major-
ity rule—this calamitous and omnipotent weapon of the crowd—consti-
tutes a vile and criminal confusion between quantity and quality. Should
the ballots be counted or should they be weighed? The answer is easier
than obvious: thousands are the soldiers but one the general. Yet, now in
this mob-ruled novel State, the general is made to obey the soldiers—or,
rather, no general whatsoever is allowed to be there at all.
Such are the wiles and subterranean traps set by the mob, by means
of which the healthy original State and its superior class of strong individ-
uals were undermined. And this class and such a State are forevermore un-
dermined and in the end succumb, caving in,140 debased, stunned by the
casuistry [of the mob and the demagogues] and sinking into the traps of
the mob. And civilization perished along with them: for, the more the mob
rules the more tyrannically does it lord over the exceptional toilers of
progress—the paragons of human intellect; the mob demoralizes and
drives [great natures] to pessimism and nihilism.141
 [Human Nature]  41

And what is even more disappointing is this: This advance of the

weak and vanquished is systematic and perpetual, as it becomes evident
when we survey its various stages through the ages:

Stage I:

(a) The weak proclaim human equality—first and principally within

their own consciences and subsequently abroad in the world.
(b) They begin to prevail in the struggle, they seek recognition, they
long after justice, and demand equal rights.
(c) They achieve recognition. As is always the case, the first victory
leads to frenzy and stirs up ever greater demands: now they claim
prerogatives. They entice and gain over many from the superior
class.
(d) They desire power for themselves alone, crushing everyone else.
(e) They already possess power or are in the course of acquiring it.
In other words, the ochlocratic current deluges and drowns the State,
in the process creating yet another grave symptom of decadence and ni-
hilism: The purpose to which today’s State aspires is to encompass as many
people as possible, and afford them the maximum feasible welfare—a wel-
fare that is as secure and animalistic as possible.
The modern State is like an architect engaged to build a hospital: He
calculates with mathematical precision the number of cubic meters that are
necessary for sufficient ventilation, and he says: “If I cut off another five
millimeters from each, I will be able to have four or five more beds.”
“More people than are necessary arrive in the world,” cries Nietz-
sche—mightily indignant at the mentality of this modern State. “This
State has been invented for the sake of the superfluous. See how she at-
tracts them, the superfluous! How she embraces them! How she gnaws at
them and regurgitates them! How is this modern society seeking after?
Justice and equality. What does she mean by the word justice? Revenge
against, and extermination for, all those who excel over us. And by equality
they mean the virtue that urges us to raise our voices against the strong.”142
And from the hubbub and loud applaud of the mob a novel idol is
erected: the democratic State. She forces people to worship her, falsely de-
claring that she represents the People. “This State is the coldest of mon-
strosities. She lies shamelessly, and here is the lie that crawls on her lips: I,
the State, am the People: This is a lie! Those who molded peoples were
truly creators, having raised over its head a Faith and a Love. But those are
42  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

destroyers, on the other hand, who lay great numbers of snares and call
them State. They are raising one sword and they are whetting one hun-
dred appetites.”143
Such is the modern State, having convinced the people that she issues
from it and represents it. And under this pretext, this State flatters the
most loathsome instincts and degrades the people instead of prompting it
upward and toward what is great and noble.144 And, in order to urge
fanatical worship, the State bellows in frenzy: “Nothing higher than me
exists on this earth; I am the finger of God!”145
How, indeed, is humanity going to wind up under so leveling and
democratic a State?
“I walk in the midst of this people and keep my eyes open. People
have waned smaller and are constantly shrinking. They are rotund, law-
abiding, and easy to address, relating like grains of sand to one another.
With modesty and frugality they embrace a most trite happiness, while
with the other eye they squint toward another kind of happiness.”146
The distortion of the nature and purpose of the State has become,
along with other factors we examined above, one of the sources of contem-
porary nihilism. “The State is to be found everywhere that good and bad
imbibe poison and become exacerbated. The State is to be found every-
where slow suicide is called life.”147
 Chapter 4

Religion—Morality—Right

S
o far, it has been demonstrated how disastrously the modern table of
values has affected human nature, the Family, and the State—these
three concentric manifestations of human energy and sociability. In
their turn, these institutions transmit and spread everywhere the malaise
that today consumes humanity and pushes it toward suicide and nihilism.
But what about the three fundamental notions that govern both the
inner and public life of human beings, the Family, and the State—that is,
Religion, Morality, and Right? Are these notions affected any less disas-
trously by the contemporary table of values, so that they can perhaps coun-
terbalance the harm caused by these values? Or have they also been
poisoned themselves, so that they too contribute to the maximum enfeeble-
ment of life? Is it possible that these three values1 of today’s Decalogue are
also symptoms of decadence and inventions of the weak and vanquished?

A. Religion
Religion, which at the dawn of humanity absorbed every manifesta-
tion of Right, is the creation of weakness and fear. It bears witness to the
human need to lean on a beginning and a purpose, a crutch—any response
whatsoever to the anguish of the soul.
For as long as the human will remained strong, there was no need felt
of such a support: The will was externalized as a natural force and, as such,
aimed straight at its goal. When his will was worn out and his courage was
diminished by the dangers and resistances provided by external nature, the
human being sought solace and shelter and found them in religion: All
those strong and hostile forces, which surrounded and crushed him, he
thought to co-opt and propitiate by prayers and ritualistic catchwords and
by votive sacrifices of his very pleasure and strength.

43
44  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

In this way did terror and powerlessness create religion. But even the
moments of human power contribute to this creation. The ordinary human
condition in the early times was a desperate struggle against the forces of
nature, by which humanity was still being defeated after the long stretch of
millennia. For this reason, as soon as the human being would feel an in-
dwelling superlative force, as soon as the human being would score a victory
of some sort, he would not dare attribute it to himself; he rather imputed it
to an internal force, one more powerful than he was—a Divine force. In this
way was the human being ever diminished, losing confidence in his own
powers, so he divided himself into two separate entities: one feeble, deserv-
ing pity, and in need of protection, which he called “human”; and the other
powerful and mysterious, outside him, which he called “God.”
This condition soon found its ingenious organizers who gave body
and expression to these instincts of powerlessness and fear, in the form of
rules, doctrines, and rites—in this way enveloping them with the requisite
prestige of a system and making them palpable.
And so are the instincts of the weak elevated above the level of mun-
dane life and, wrapped up in the august glory of the holy and the super-
natural, are deified. Accordingly, every people created its Gods in its own
image and likeness and, unconsciously, compelled them to follow its va-
garies and evolution. And indeed, when we examine a people’s religion, we
are able to determine and chart its strength and intensity of life at different
stages of its history.
Take the Jewish people. For as long as they remained strong, they had
a God like them: a zealous God that hated all other peoples. When the
Jewish people began to fall and altogether come close to vanishing, its faith
in a future and the hope of liberation after a most oppressive subjection
shaped in its consciousness new values; its view of God was inevitably
transformed. Before the Hebrew God had represented the power of a peo-
ple—the insatiability and drive of a vigorous people. Now its God becomes
cowardly, humble, and no longer advises war and conquest of the other
peoples, but rather tranquillity of soul, modesty and righteousness, love of
both friend and foe. The Hebrew God turns cosmopolitan. Indeed, there is
no other outlet or choice for Gods: either they are strong embodiments of
conquest, and, in that case, they are bound to be the Gods of a specific peo-
ple; or they are weak and decadent and, then, they become Gods of benev-
olence and of the whole world. The outsiders become the “nations,”
Jehovah becomes Jesus Christ.2
And this development was quite natural. Born at the time of the
Roman Empire’s decline and the Jewish nation’s complete subjugation,
Christianity found most fertile ground and spread among the lowest
classes of a haplessly senescent society, among the humble and downtrod-
 Religion—Morality—Right  45

den, the lepers, the uneducated, the slaves, and the paupers. Christianity
exalted the attributes and valorized the instincts of such classes: humility,
poverty, ugliness, and patience. Christianity censured State and mother-
land. “If you are a Christian,” exclaims John Chrysostom addressing the
people of Antioch, “you have no city on earth; our census was taken in
heaven, and that is where we exercise our political rights.”3 He goes on to
prohibit taking oaths, military service, participation in judicial proceedings,
exercising one’s individual right to legal defense. He obliterates the dis-
tinction between native-born citizens and foreigners. He condemns soci-
ety as he praises asceticism and celibacy. He interjects a feeling of satiety
and revulsion at this world, the “vale of tears,” [Psalms 83.6, Isaiah 24.1–3]
and heaves the whole force of human passion and endeavor in the direction
of life after death. It is natural that any teaching that invokes an “other life”
casts a censure on this earthly life and imposes on its votaries either to leave
this life on their own or to at least long for swift exit. Hence Christianity’s
hatred toward this world, its execration of human passions, its fear and
contempt for beauty and pleasure—amounting to a deep yearning for
annihilation, longing for rest in death.
And this Christian religion, notwithstanding all its calamitous con-
sequences, is still dominant even in spite of the protests to the contrary by
all those who have allegedly ridden themselves of the religious lie. For,
what is the democratic ideal of the modern State but a corollary and con-
sequence of the Christian ideal? In both we find the same hatred of the
weak toward the strong, the same tendency to elevate and ennoble weak-
ness and humble origins, the same advertising of benevolence and charity,
and the same dogma of human equality.
And what are all these tendencies and servile ideals but symptoms
that bespeak social decline, lack of courage, dread of pain, bodily and moral
hardships, and mortal danger?
And what other idea contributes more to the preservation and
spreading of this malady of modern humanity but the Christian idea,
which has infected with its poison of nihilism even the theories that appear
to be ostensibly most diametrically opposed to it?

B. Morality

The most daring philosophers always halted, full of awe, before the
problem of good and evil.
Kant considered the categorical imperative not amenable to discus-
sion. “Act in such a way that your conduct can, if possible, be raised to a
universal law.”4 Schopenhauer himself, even though he criticized the Kant-
ian ethics of duty, still accepts that it is indeed practically necessary that
46  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

everyone acts according to the axiomatic principle: “Harm no one; help

others as much as you are able to.”5
Not resting content with such facile reaffirmations of practical utility,
Nietzsche, undeterred, attempts to penetrate into the mystery of morality:
What is the origin of morality? What is its true utility and what its inner
truth? Does morality in any way contribute to life or, like religion, is it too
a symptom of decadence and enfeeblement?
Let us first examine the origin of morality. In the age of barbarous so-
ciety, residing everlastingly in a state of savage war, cruelty was deemed one
of the foremost pleasures.6 It was inevitable that humans would attribute
to their gods their own qualities raised to the maximum, since, as we have
seen, the gods were created in the image and likeness of humans. Conse-
quently, the gods feel the greatest pleasure when they see humans suffer
and the sight of human happiness saddens them as if it were an insult
against their divine grandeur. It follows that those who had to torture oth-
ers similar to themselves in order to be pleased had to torture themselves
to please their gods—especially so when they felt exceedingly happy.
In this way, suspension and abatement of happiness and the war
against pleasure came to be duties and voluntary suffering came to be
regarded as a display of piety.
Here is the erstwhile manifestation of morality. We please God by
combating our desires and by practicing abnegation toward the joys that
happen to befall us. A human being’s strife against himself, then as now,
constitutes the quintessence of morality. Ever since, the idea has been in-
troduced and planted solidly that virtue consists in suffering, privations—
in the suspension of human will. In this way, one fights against his most
natural instincts to satisfy, at first, evil and zealous Gods and, later on,
Gods who, being benevolent but austere, do not want us to be tortured or
martyred but, still, won’t allow us to relinquish ourselves to the unchecked
gratification of our instincts because this would be tantamount to aban-
doning God and lapsing into oblivion.
Finally, regarding all those who think they have ridden themselves
from the idea of a God who dictates rules of morality, they should be re-
minded that there is another God—a God equally austere and implaca-
ble—that they name “Conscience”; it commands them with categorical
imperatives exactly as the God in whom they no longer believe.
For centuries after Buddha had died, people were still showing
his shadow wandering in certain caves. Such a shadow of the dead God
is “Conscience.”
The conscience is not something unitary, immutable, divine; it is
rather multiple and mutable, variable across nations and ages and often
changing from one person to another within the same nation or era. More-
 Religion—Morality—Right  47

over, the conscience is something that depends on many circumstances that

are altogether unaffected by our will—hence, independent of our merits
and demerits. Whether they be called heredity or upbringing, physical and
cultural environment or accidents and coincidences, the circumstances that
determine our conscience are generally mysterious and operate indepen-
dently from us, yet, at the same time, they are omnipotent factors that un-
derlie all our actions. In this way, the foundation of morality—which,
alone, can enable morality to sustain rewards and punishments for our
actions—is negated.7
In this way, morality is shown immoral and unfair, having received its
origin from a most obtuse misunderstanding and subsisting on a most un-
fair notion. But, could this morality, as we conceive it nowadays, be, at
least, useful? According to Nietzsche, this contemporary morality enfeebles
and disgraces humanity. It recommends, “sacrifice yourself for those who
are like yourself,” which is a form of suicide. It desiccates human sources of
vitality—the source of human desires, passions, selfishness; so desiccated
and enervated a human being contemporary morality presents as the
human ideal.
Morality declares unto us: “Vice and indolence destroy nations.” Yet,
the true logic of an emancipated human being declares: “When a nation is
destroyed, vice and indolence (i.e., the need for strong stimulants, after
which enfeebled organisms always seek) are the necessary consequences.”
The newspapers inform us: “This or that political party is being destroyed
because of this or that mistake.” Yet, correct8 logic tells us: A political party
that makes this or that mistake is already advancing toward its destruction.
Every error is the outcome, not the cause, of decadence.
According to Nietzsche, the calamitous consequences of morality—
and, more particularly, of Christian morality—can be summed up under
the following:

(a) It has tainted suffering and pain, having admixed with them the
notion of sin; in this way, it has taken away from pain its inno-
cence.
(b) It has attached a stigma on all feelings of pleasure and joy (in-
cluding lustful passion, a sense of triumph, and pride), by diag-
nosing in them sinfulness and temptation.
(c) It has bestowed the most sacred names on the most unworthy
sentiments: weakness, modesty, and humility.
(d) It has foisted a false interpretation on everything that is great
about human nature and has forced man to disown his most vir-
ile characteristics. Only wealth, the overflowing richness of one’s
48  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

personality, the superabundance of the self, the thriving vitality of

the instincts, and robust self-confidence can prove able to under-
take sacrifices on behalf of others and to elevate themselves to
the great love. We must first have respect for ourselves; from that
flow all virtues.
(e) It has sullied man’s eros toward woman.
(f ) It has declared that life is penal service, happiness is temptation,
and confidence in our own abilities is impiety.
Throughout the whole spectrum of today’s Judeo-Christian morality,
which has dethroned the values of our wholesome ancestors, one can see
the weak and the masses, on the one hand, piling up fences and obstacles
against the free development of strong personalities and, on the other
hand, positing as ideals their own cowardly and trifling instincts.

C. Right 9
As the antiquated notions about God, the soul, freedom of the will,
duty, and morality have changed, they have engendered—as ought to be
expected—a change in the meaning of the concept of Right.
A priori philosophical and metaphysical theories no longer suffice.
The more recent physical sciences have introduced new modes of exami-
nation and analysis of things and ideas—modes based on facts, precise ob-
servation and the resolutive method [analysis]. The concept of right is now
accepted as one of the manifestations of social life, and is associated with
the natural laws that govern the natural universe as well as with the laws
that determine the thought and intellectual development of a nation or era.
And, so, we realize that the way in which a people conceives of the
idea of right stems, in a most immediate and profound sense, from its char-
acter, history, traditions, and ideals. Thus, in England, [Thomas] Hobbes
bases right on power and self-interest, and [ John] Locke on self-interest
and liberty: this is a realistic tendency, founded on self-interest and lib-
erty—two cardinal characteristics of the English race.10,11 At the other ex-
treme, in France, the tendency toward the ideal is expressed by means of
the three great words of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Frater-
nity. In Germany, the evolution of the notion of right demonstrates more
aptly, and within a space of only a few years, the direct relationship be-
tween the political and economic conditions of a people, on the one hand,
and the ideas a people forms about right, on the other. Before the national
unification and supreme elevation of the economic and military spirit of
Germany, German philosophers, actuated by metaphysical notions, had
founded right on moral freedom, on what is distinct about human nature,
 Religion—Morality—Right  49

and on an innate idea of right. The material aspect of right, its might, was
viewed as merely an instrument that lies outside of the essence of right.
The thought of Hegel, which expresses the entire way of thinking of a rag-
ing nation, can be summarized as follows: “Those actions are right which
operate parallel to and consistently with the power of a nation; unjust are
those actions which operate in the opposite direction: the former succeed,
the latter fail. Success is the necessary material externalization of the idea
of Right.”12
And here is what Jhering says: “The purpose of right is peace, and the
means that right utilizes to advance this purpose are struggle, war, and
might. The struggle is coeval with the history of the world. Therefore, the
struggle is not alien to right, but, on the contrary, it is inextricably joined
with the essence of right—it is a veritable component of right. All rights in
the world have been conquered by means of struggle, because the idea of
right is nothing but the pure meaning of might.”13

Nietzsche could not avoid influences from his environment—nor was
this possible. Genuine offspring of a nation in a state of climaxing vitality,14
he spelled out the ideas that filled out his surrounding atmosphere and, so,
declared right to be inextricably entwined with might. Insofar as the two
concepts are distinguished and separated and equal rights are ascribed to
strong and weak alike, this is a sign of society’s decline and decadence.15
As we saw, powerful races usually aggress against other, powerless
and peaceful races and subjugate them. No rules of justice govern the rela-
tionship between the strong and the weak.16 The strong are also the cre-
ators of the various tablets of values, and they declare good and moral and
just whatever is kindred to them and conducive to their interests. On the
contrary, immoral and unjust is whatever is incompatible with their nature
and character.17
On the other hand, those who are lorded over, at first stealthily and
inwardly and later on with ever greater boldness and success, formulate a
different table of values—a different distinction between right and wrong,
which is diametrically opposed to that of the strong. Merciful sympathy,
benevolence, suave mildness, patience, kindness, and humility—all of
which were, for the proud and strong master, contemptible and unworthy
of a true man—are, for the hapless and groaning slave, the highest and
most salvaging advantages.
So, according to Nietzsche, in no shape or form is there a right that is
inherent to human nature, by which one can live and which no one knows
“since when it has appeared.”18 Right flows from might itself, whose
boundaries are called laws.19 Everywhere in nature there is an indissoluble
50  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

unity of might and right. Such is the law of nature—it is indifferent if this
is moral or immoral as far as the narrow human notion of morality is con-
cerned. One thing alone is certain: No one can violate a natural law with
impunity.20 And such a fateful punishment of the transgressor is glaringly
in evidence in the dissolution and decline of the earlier societies.
While the earlier societies, basing the distinction between right and
wrong on the laws of nature, were strong and healthy, today’s societies are
leaning toward decadence and suicide. All this has happened because the
humble and weak have succeeded, calmly and systematically undermining
and corrupting the strong, to usurp Right for themselves, in this way turn-
ing the universal laws upside down.
One who examines Nietzsche’s views on this topic cannot help
thinking that he is listening to the Callicles of Plato’s Gorgias, as he ex-
pounds to Socrates his theory on the origin and evolution of Right. I am
copying Callicles’ theory, from Plato’s Gorgias, insofar as it is difficult to
imagine a more complete and authentic articulation of Nietzsche’s ideas.

“Those who set the laws are the weak and many. On their behalf
and in their interest they both set the laws and mete out praises and re-
proaches. They are afraid of those human beings who are the strongest
and the most capable of having more than others. Therefore, and in
order not to be outdone, they say that it is disgraceful to have more than
others—and that injustice is indeed to seek to have more than others.
And this is because, even though they are worse and contemptible, they
[the weak and many] still want to have equal shares.
For this reason, it is declared, by the law, that it is unjust and dis-
graceful to seek to have more than the many, and seeking more is said to
be the same as doing injustice. But, I think, nature itself amply shows
that it is just for the better to have more than the worse and for the
stronger to have more than the weaker. Nature indeed shows in many
ways that this is so—and as far as other animals are concerned and, in
human affairs, in the origins of and relations among city states—that it is
right that the better rules over and has more than the worse.
And not at all as we do, taking the young and cajoling and enticing
them, as with young lion cubs, we make slaves out of them, by telling
them that it is just to have equal shares and that this is what is right and
fair. If, however, a man happens to be born who has a vigorous nature, I
think, such a one, once he shakes off and tears apart and escapes from all
this—once he tramples underfoot your teachings and flattering and urg-
ings and all your laws that are against nature—rising up, he, a slave,
shows himself to be your absolute ruler, and in this way there shines what
is right by nature.” (Plato, Gorgias 482–487)
 Chapter 5

[Recapitulation and] Conclusion1

W
e have seen that, in whatever way we inquire into the state of
contemporary humanity, we find it in a state of complete deca-
dence. All the most significant ideas, on which contemporary
societies are based, ineluctably contribute to this advancing decadence, in-
sofar as they stem from defective conditions—conditions that are no
longer able to persist under the burgeoning new needs and circumstances.
And this decadence is marching on with rapid pace. Everywhere the
triumph of the morality and the right of the slaves! Everywhere the same
acceptance of tablets of value created by the hatred and weaknesses of the
vanquished and by the unconscious, or perhaps all too deliberate, lies of
their leaders—priests and demagogues. For centuries raged the implaca-
ble struggle pitting the aristocratic2 ideal, embodied by the Greeks and
Romans, against the Semitic democratic ideal represented by the Jews.
Through Christianity, the Jews prevailed.3
A certain resistance was born during the Renaissance, when the be-
ginning of an attempt was again made to realize the Greek ideal. But
Luther and the Reformation thwarted and reversed this attempt,4 and the
last wondrous representative of power, Napoleon,5 was defeated by the
Holy Alliance. Indeed, today, the triumph of Jews and slaves is complete
and calamitous.6 As we have seen in the present study, humanity, the fam-
ily, the State, religion, morality, and Right have fallen into the hands of
slaves and are now being fashioned by them and in their own image.
And even all this—is not enough! The most recent ideal itself, called
the “religion of human sorrow,” which has begun to inscribe itself on human
conscience and already tends to overtake contemporary religion, morality,
and views of justice—this too is inspired by even more servile and disastrous
principles. This new religion of mercy and benevolence, so sentimentally

51
52  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

preached by socialists7 and utopians, is tending to replace Christianity,

being very much similar to the Christian religion but also encompassing
new elements that were born of more recent needs.8 As any religion would
do, this new religion also systematizes the instincts and propensities of the
modern era, sublimates9 them10 and presages their triumph as a historical
and indubitable necessity. And it does not displace this triumph onto an af-
terlife,11 but places it on this very earth. This is precisely its greatest, and at
the same time calamitously dangerous, advantage: In this way, it attracts and
rouses those strong human instincts that yearn for immediate and palpable
satisfaction. All the same, the lie of its promises can also be rendered palpa-
ble and known on this very earth; in this way, once it is exposed for being
unable to fulfill its promises, [this secular religion of compassion] can
be thrown overboard.12 In sharp contrast, the Christian religion, which
transposes the time and place of fulfillment of its promises onto another
world and another life, renders futile any attempt at an immediate and pal-
pable proof of its lie.
Nevertheless, for the time being this new religion of “human sorrow”
is in its first, quite favorable, stage and keeps attracting to itself the masses
of humanity in our times. And, this studious dalliance at the doorstep of
mercy, this excessive overflowing of compassion—what else do they prove
but that human beings have become soft, effete,13 dreading not only one’s
own pain but also that of others, as if it were a warning that every one can
also fall prey to such misery? Hod[i]e tibi, cras mihi: [This is my miserable
lot today, but it will be yours too tomorrow.]
And this is not all: People have begun to hesitate, on account of com-
passion, when it comes to a strict application of the law14 in inflicting se-
vere penalties on felons—a phenomenon that had been previously
observed during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and a short
time before the French Revolution.15 And this is natural. A time comes in
the life span of every society when, agitated and rendered oversubtle out
of weakness, the society takes the side of the criminal and hesitates to im-
plement against crime those penalties that are meant to ensure society’s
preservation.16
Fear of pain and cowardice in the face of inflicting punishment are
symptoms of decadence and collapse.
And, at this point, Nietzsche offers a sublime hymn to the pain that
so much raised and ennobled him.
“Pain is the great educator of humanity, and to pain are owed
almost all noble acts and great drives. At the school of pain—immense
pain—humanity has reached her highest progress, wisely and surely
guided by this strict teacher. This tension of the soul, which stands erect
and learns to be strong under the weight of pain, this dread and horror
 [Recapitalation and] Conclusion  53

born of great danger, this courage that makes it possible to persevere, to

endure, to transmute and take advantage of its pain, and, finally, every-
thing that is weighty, mysterious, wise, crafty and great—all these, where
else could the soul have learned them but at the school of pain? In each
man, there is both a creator and a creature. There is something that is
matter, finiteness, superfluity, clay, mire, absurdity, and chaos; in addition
to these, there is also something that is creator, sculptor, the hardness of
the hammer, the artist’s inspection, joy of the seventh day. Your compas-
sion is aimed at the former part, which must and is destined to suffer, be
torn to pieces and shattered to smithereens, be burned and purified
through fire and pain. My compassion—is it not obvious which part of
the human being it is aimed at, struggling as it does against your cow-
ardly and humiliating compassion? Do you see? Compassion pitted
against compassion.”17,18

Not only does so womanly a conception of pain and life degrade hu-
manity, it is also wholly without consequence.19 Let us assume that, as a
matter of fact, this contemporary predilection for a religion of mercy were
to be generalized and reign supreme. What would happen then? Not only
would the total amount of global suffering fail to decrease, it would actu-
ally increase: in addition to one’s own worries, one would become burdened
with the worries of others.20 In this way, commiseration is shown to be an
enfeeblement of the natural instinct for life—redounding, as it does, to a
progressive loss of powers and rendering unhappiness contagious.
And all this because human nature, corrupted by the principles of the
reigning Decalogue dictated by the vanquished, more and more derogates
from the laws of nature.
Indeed, what else can this modern trend of the new religion of com-
passion be but a trespassing against a cardinal law: the law of selection?21
According to this law, the weaker organisms disappear in the struggle for
survival. Can Christianity and socialism possibly intend anything that is
not opposed to the laws of nature? They are striving to preserve and keep
alive the feeble and dissipated, the miserable, the crippled. They preserve
and multiply the share of misery in life. Hence, they are making the world
uglier and the negation of life easier—out of either disgust or compassion.
So, universally, in the already established conceptions and, even more,
in the burgeoning subterranean trends of contemporary humanity, there
rear their heads decadence, triumph of the ideas of slaves and the weak,
and an unobstructed gravitation toward disaster and pessimistic nihilism.22
This page intentionally left blank.
 Chapter 6

The Positive Aspect of

Nietzsche’s Philosophy

A nd now, what is to be done?

Humanity, family, the state, religion, morality, Right—poisoned by
the contemporary table of values, handiwork of the slaves1 and the van-
quished—they prod [contemporary humanity] to the indictment and nega-
tion of life itself. Is humanity destined to become extinct so soon, or are
such despair and discomfiture, perhaps, birth pangs of a healthy, robust, and
beautiful world?2 Are we perhaps [still] able to erect a new table of values—
one that is in accordance with the infallible laws of nature, and consistent
with a new mentality that can contribute to a noble enrichment of life?
Nietzsche’s answer is affirmative, in a “Dionysian” vein.3 By discover-
ing the global law that governs living organisms—plant, animal, and human
life—we are in a position to found a new Decalogue that not only accepts
and promotes life but also puts to use pessimism and nihilism themselves as
instruments for living.4
On this law we shall fix firmly the entire contemporary human edi-
fice; it shall guide us so that we may find the destiny of humanity, family,
the state and [better grasp] their mutual relationships, which henceforth
will be truly just and moral, by being the consequence and harmonious
evolution of a global law.
What is this law? By studying the natural laws that are in evidence
in each and every gradation of organic life, Nietzsche finds that their ulti-
mate purpose and invincible inclination is the “will to power.”5 So, it is not
the struggle to exist that governs beings but the struggle to prevail. Life is

55
56  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

not so meager and ascetic6 as to rest content in a vegetative subsistence,

preservation and reproduction, merely ensuring for itself any narrow mea-
sure of welfare.7 Life is rather an intense longing for an externalization that
is as broad as possible; life perpetually tends to transcend itself. Every
healthy living organism posits for itself as goal—even unto its own harm
and destruction—to conquer and predominate over its surrounding organ-
isms, never to rest content on victory but to rush8 insatiate, toward ever
new conquests—and all this perpetually and as long as life lasts.9
Day after day, we observed this to be the case with plants and ani-
mals—and it also applies to humans. All there is in the depths of a healthy
human being is egoism10—an unrestrained driving force11 to prevail, ag-
grandize oneself, have an effect and spread oneself over as expansive a ra-
dius as possible.12 Those who think that, deep down, human beings only
long for happiness deceive themselves.13 They deceive themselves indeed,
if by “happiness” they mean tranquillity, or a state of serene peace and con-
tentedness beyond which nothing is desired. In fact, humanity is indeed
tending toward such a condition of immobility, but it is doing so by means
of perpetual, eternal motion.14 As soon as one reaches the point where he
intended to stop, one rushes on toward new conquests, taking this point
not as a terminus but as a new beginning. So, the deepest human need, in-
dwelling in the innermost depths of human nature, is eternal unrest and a
tendency toward expansion.
Having discovered this fundamental law of life, the philosopher is
obligated to posit it as the basis of the new table of values.15 In this way,
one would succeed both in defining the purpose of humanity and in rank-
ing the various values hierarchically in accordance with their utility for pro-
moting humanity’s goal.
To recapitulate: Foundation and principle of the new Decalogue in-
troduced by Nietzsche is the will to prevail and dominate. An immediate
corollary of this principle can be deduced: the purpose of a human being
is to eternally surpass himself,16 to always and forever tend beyond and
above the presently existent type of “Human” and produce another type,
one fuller and more robust and more harmonious in accordance with the
laws of nature—the “Übermensch.”17
How are we to define the “Übermensch” and what is it we must do
to bring about actualization of this higher type of humanity—an end that,
in the new Decalogue, becomes our purpose?
The Übermensch is the one who “is able to heroically shake off the
present table of values and develop harmonically, to the utmost degree, all
human attributes; one who once again posits as the purpose of his life to
eternally tend to become higher than himself.”18
 The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy  57

So, by way of taking the first step toward realization of this purpose, it
is imperative to “heroically” cast off the contemporary table of values—one
that can no longer serve as a “stimulant”19 for life.20
At this point, Nietzsche realizes that casting off this table of values
for all people, without distinctions, is not only impossible but it is actually
useless and quite dangerous.
Up to this point, Nietzsche has dissected,21 judged, critiqued, and
condemned the contemporary values. He has declared these values to be
disastrous to those like himself who, having become aware of the hoax,
have developed a frightful asymmetry between their inner and external
lives, between what they believe in and the way in which they are obliged
to act—and so they are ineluctably plunged into despair and nihilism.22
In its negative aspect, Nietzsche’s work was indiscriminate and
rather facile, animated as it was by a destructive impetus.23 But now,
arriving at the hard task of building, the daring philosopher is compelled
to take conciliatory steps and draw relevant distinctions; he also finds
himself obliged to restrict his most severe and dangerous, yet also
redeeming, Decalogue to the few, the initiates, the “Select Ones.”24
Nietzsche observed that whatever is salubrious as nourishment and
stimulant for certain organisms is poison, often fatal, to others, and vice
versa. So, religion, morality, today’s political regimes and notions of
Right—indispensable nourishment and fitting accommodations for the
weak, whose survival requires a religion of compassion and sociopolitical
egalitarianism, are all driving the strong toward asphyxiation and death.
Conversely, were the weak to be given the food of the strong, they would
surely perish.
So, Nietzsche divides society into two classes, strictly distinguished,
each with its own separate rights and duties, with distinct laws and goals.
The lower class is comprised of the bourgeois, the mediocre, those who are
content simply to be puny cogs in the enormous social machinery.25 This
class encompasses not only the laborers, the merchants, the farmers, the in-
dustrialists, but also the scientists and those supposed sages who confine
themselves to some narrow specialty and toil and moil away, throughout a
whole life, obediently and patiently, for the sake of the common good.
These are the slaves of the Nietzschean society, those who are destined and
duty-bound to sustain and obey the higher class.
The State, the constituted authority, comprised of the upper26 class,
wishes to secure for the masses a perfectly livable existence. Moreover, the
masses will indeed be more secure and happier than the higher class. They
will no longer need to guide or pave the way for forward movement; there-
fore, they will be released from the anguish and the dangers that belong to
58  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

the creators. Religion will be the greatest consolation for them, gilding
their humble and bleak life with the splendor of metaphysical hopes and
instructing them to persevere and be content—for they have fulfilled their
duty, offering unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Above this class and supervising, stands the class, so to speak, of the
warriors, who oversee the guardianship of laws and social order. To them, the
morality and religion accepted by the lower class, as well as the formal allot-
ment of rights,27 are disastrous and paralyzing—no longer capable of deceiv-
ing them, so that a different way of conceiving life becomes necessary for
them. This way is defined and signified by the higher type of Creator and
Lord that originates from within their ranks. This is a higher species of
humanity—“composite,”28 majestic and standing alone, recapitulating and
summing up29 in it the advancements effected by the human race over a suc-
cession of centuries and standing as a new halfway station along humanity’s
procession.30 This new type of humanity knows that reality is nothing but the
matter to which only we can confer value. This new human type knows that
our creative impact and imposition can transform truth and lie, good and evil,
the passions and all the instincts into instruments most fit for the fulfillment
of the purpose of a life that perpetually31 tends to eternally32 overcome itself.
In this way, the ranking of values is altered in its very foundations; the
morality, the Right, and the mission of the higher classes become entirely
different from those of the lower. Now, good is everything that conduces to
the strengthening and forward progress of life; evil is everything that ener-
vates and dissipates life.

I do not know whether life is essentially good or bad. But, insofar as I am

alive, I want my life to be as bountiful and luxuriating as possible, both
inside and outside myself. Therefore, I shall say “yea” to everything that
renders life more intense and more beautiful. If it is proven to my satis-
faction that deception and illusion can be useful for the advancement of
life, I shall say “yea” to deception and illusion. If it is proved to my satis-
faction that the instincts that are condemned by today’s morality—cru-
elty, resourcefulness, unthinking boldness, warlike fervor—are able to
enhance human vitality, I shall say “yea” to evil and sin; if it is shown to
my satisfaction that pain contributes to the nurturing of the human
species as much as pleasure does, I shall say “yea” to pain.33,34

This Übermensch is in no way bringing to humanity glad tidings of

peace: rather he tends constantly to assume higher and superior forms,
never resting on his occasional conquests and ever ready to risk life and
happiness for the sake of his elevation. “I am not preaching peace unto you
but war and victory. Peace—what is it but the means to new wars? And the
short-lived peace is preferable to the long peace.”35
 The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy  59

For Nietzsche, as for Pindar, war is the “father of all things,”36 the
most powerful instrument of progress and selection.37 Here stand facing
each other in irrencocilable opposition two ideas, two individuals, two
races: the one that is more vital and stronger will prevail; the one that is
decadent, and hence worthless, will no longer be allowed to occupy any
space or hinder the progress and expansion of the strong and superior.
While the old Decalogue—which Nietzsche still accepts, but only for
the lower classes—posits compassion among the top-ranking virtues, the
Übermensch, on the contrary, proclaims cruelty. The creators need to be
hard, like diamonds, or like the sculptor’s chisel, if they wish to carve and
sculpt the raw marble of chance—if they wish to elevate new tablets and
brand their times with their ego’s mark. For Nietzsche, compassion not
only fails to be a virtue, it is actually the most harmful and unnatural of
vices. “May the weak be destroyed—here is the first step in [expressing] my
love for humanity. Compassion has a calamitous effect, as it wages combat
against the law of evolution and selection and preserves those who are ripe
for death.”38
“Why so rough?” the kitchen board asked the knife one day.39
But not only toward others, but also toward himself must the Über-
mensch be cruel. He is obligated to renounce happiness, rest, and peace be-
cause he knows that humanity is not advancing toward a determinate and
fixed goal. Everything is in flux, with no preappointed end-point—life per-
petually seeks only to advance and ascend.40 It follows that a human being
should never consider himself to have arrived at a last station and haven;41
rest is for the Übermensch but preparation for a new war, his life but a se-
quence of trials that grow ever more dangerous and heroic. He is seeking life
in its full intensity, and, consequently, accepts the highest joy and the great-
est pain with equal gratitude.
Such is the nature and such the mission of the ideal human, which
Nietzsche imagined and yearned for. The ideal human being will destroy in
and through himself the reigning table of values and will see lying dead in
front of him all those hopes that have heretofore consoled and sustained
[even] him: Religion, Morality, the State, faith in the existence of a soul
and in a future life, and belief in free will and in human equality. And yet,
despite all this destruction, he shall not be discouraged and shall not lose
heart; on the contrary, he shall now advance without crutches, blessing his
life and accepting it in its entirety42 along with all its pains and pleasures.
He will not begrudge the throngs the environment that is their salvation:
prosperous welfare and self-sufficient thrift: Because he understands well
that the fish have an interest, and indeed a vital organic need, to remain in
their water-bound captivity instead of trying to follow the fowl of heaven
in soaring flight.43
60  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

And, as we saw, the Übermensch creates for himself his own peculiar
morality beyond Morality, and he forges a sphere of activity44 and percep-
tion “beyond good and evil”—or, rather, a sphere that includes both good
and evil and utilizes them for the fulfillment of the purpose [of overcom-
ing].45,46 “The most evil human being is no worse, and might be more ben-
eficial than, the most moral and best human being: because through
himself, and on behalf of everyone else too, he preserves instincts without
which humanity would have become effete and corrupt a long time ago.
Those spirits that are, in every other respect, endowed with the greatest
pride and malice have become up until now the causes of the greatest ac-
complishments of progress in the world. They always kindled the passions
that had been dormant in society, they forced people to confront every idea
and every ideal with another, opposite, one. And all this by use of arms, by
transgressing upon boundaries, by violating piety, but also by means of new
religions and new moralities.”47 Our contemporaries always descry evil in
the soul of every teacher and Forerunner of a new religion or new Moral-
ity. Because whatever is new is always considered evil, bent as it is on de-
stroying the accepted boundaries and whatever rules of pious observance
may chance to be in existence. Only what is old, accepted, and established
in a stable fashion, [entrenched] in conscience, is deemed good and
moral.48 “The virtuous of all eras were those who studied and respected the
reigning laws and managed to make them productive. But, every kind of
soil is in the end exhausted and turns barren, and it then becomes necessary
for the rake of evil to come about and turn the soil—to furrow it and tear
it to pieces.”
Is Alfred Fouillée wrong, then, when he maintains (Revue des Deux
Mondes, September 1, 1901) that “for Nietzsche, morality is the most
poisonous of poisons; if humanity has failed to achieve great progress,
this is because of morality”? Such biased criticisms can be directed—and
have been leveled—at Nietzsche, stemming from a partial study of his
work. Morality, according to Nietzsche, is dangerous today because it can
no longer deceive and, hence, can no longer serve as a stimulating influ-
ence for life and action. Therefore, morality is poisonous only to those it
can no longer deceive. But for the rest it is most beneficial in that it steers
them away from nihilism; [without morality,] unable to withstand the
collapse of all hopes, average humanity would succumb to its sickness
and be destroyed.
Nor is it true, as the same Fouillée claims, that Nietzsche confuses
morality with Christianity. Diagnosing contemporary morality as an efflu-
ence from the Judeo-Christian ideal, Nietzsche, right from the beginning,
directs his indictment at its roots. This he does not in order to let human
passions run without bridle, but, on the contrary, to circumscribe and bal-
 The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy  61

ance such passions within a morality—a stricter and more moral “moral-
ity.” The only, and most grave, censure49 that can be aimed at Nietzsche’s
positive system, concerns his abrupt and arbitrary distinction of human be-
ings into two classes: the class of the “slaves” and the class of the “masters.”
How are these two classes to be distinguished from each other? What are
the differentiating characteristics of the “master”—and what are those of
the “slave?” To be sure, everybody will place himself in the first class and,
consequently, shake off the bridle of morality and justice, in this way pos-
ing a grave threat to society and the state.
In this way, the foundations of Nietzsche’s work begin to tremble and
his entire edifice is ready to crumble. It is in this aspect that the most vul-
nerable part of Nietzsche’s teaching is to be found—not in the apparent
contradictions, which, at first blush, appear in every step. Such contradic-
tions are canceled as soon as we place them within the appropriate con-
text—the spirit of the whole, which permeates our philosopher’s work in a
most harmonious and unifying fashion. For instance: On the one hand,
Nietzsche praises the passions and pronounces them holy and salutary; yet,
on the other hand, he also teaches that we should subject the same passions
under a strict and ascetic discipline. The apparent contradiction is canceled
once we realize that the passions, like all natural forces, are advantageous
only whenever we subject them under the discipline of our will, taking this
as an opportunity to reinforce our will power and personality through this
struggle.50
Elsewhere, Nietzsche also teaches that an implacable egoism is the
foundation of every manifestation of life; and yet, a little further, he an-
nounces the “great love.” This is not a contradiction. It is rather the attri-
bution to egoism of its true scope and intensity. Only when one identifies
his self-being with the collective being, only when he dedicates and sacri-
fices his own life for a universal idea that elevates and ennobles the
whole—only then is he able to satisfy his own egoism fully and most
intensely.51
This is Nietzsche’s teaching.
Seldom has a philosopher aroused so much affection, and so much
hatred, to say nothing of the debate about the value and originality of his
ideas or the controversy as to whether his system has a destructive or salu-
tary effect.
Fervent52 individualist, uncompromisable aristocratic idealist,53 mor-
tal enemy of today’s democratic governments, and formidable herald of
[the teaching of ] natural inequality—it was inevitable that he would
arouse a bilious reaction54 from contemporary society.
Most profound lyrical poet, an artist of the keenest sensitivity,55 bold
and cynical in his expressions—he roused the distrust of scientists and
62  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

philosophers. While it was precisely these same talents and flaws that
kindled the enthusiasm of others.
Improperly understood, Nietzsche’s ideas are capable of inflating
today’s spirit of rebellion and egotism to the point of paroxysm and cari-
cature. This is the reason why Nietzsche is so often confused with the an-
archists or the heralds of bestial violence. Nietzsche is neither of the above.
Nietzsche is not an anarchist because the anarchists proclaim that
everyone has the right to grow without any restraints and, by right, to pur-
sue happiness and freedom, which today’s society restricts and steals from
people. On the contrary, Nietzsche teaches that happiness should in no way
be considered as the purpose of life. Rather, the end of life is the constant
extension of life on and upward,56 and this task imposes on the lower class
slavery and submission and on the higher class not an anarchical and care-
free enjoyment of the labor of the lower class but, on the very contrary, an
even stricter discipline, a painful and uninterrupted intensity of the will, and
a mastery over the passions57 that is tyrannical and unqualified.58
In other words, Nietzsche’s teaching is vastly different from [the ide-
ology of ] anarchy. It is also greatly different from [an advocacy of ] vio-
lence. It is true that Nietzsche’s teaching imposes a cruel regimen59 on all
those who are diseased and spent;60 and that it rejects equal allotment of
rights to all. On the other hand, this teaching also extols the “great love” for
all those who are strong and capable of achieving something monumen-
tal.61 Compassion is a symptom of the enfeeblement and poverty of life,
whereas the “great love” is a sign of a rich nature, which “is bending under
the weight of its fertility” and needs to spend itself.
The use of violence62 should in no way aim at the acquisition of ma-
terial goods or the search for happiness; it is not allowed for the higher
class, [because the only use of violence for them is with a view to attain the
goal of “eternally overcoming themselves.”]63 Moreover, this violence is to
be exercised by the higher classes—and this is a most fundamental char-
acteristic—not only on others but, first and foremost, on themselves.
Nor is it true that Nietzsche is a skeptic—which is what many take
him to be. The skeptic believes in nothing, doubts everything, and leads a
life without convictions or purposes. On the contrary, Nietzsche took a
step beyond skepticism and, having rejected the contemporary table of val-
ues, he did not rest on doubt and uncertainty concerning truth but—
restless, despondent, frenzied—he continued to seek after a creed, Moral-
ity, Justice,64 the ideal human being and the ideal State. And he quieted
down and declared his mission as philosopher completed only when he
had discovered these ideals65 and erected them as a new Decalogue.
With pious fanaticism, Nietzsche believes in the Übermensch. He
believes in human inequality and the need to establish rule by the best66
 The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy  63

and the creators. He believes in the intense and balanced life, which the
pre-Socratic Greeks had already actualized, and which is to be realized
again in the future if the world shakes off today’s Decalogue and follows
new rules for life and action.
Of course, not all of Nietzsche’s ideas are original. We find these
ideas scattered throughout [the history of philosophy]: not only in the
Greek sophists, but also in later and modern philosophers and political
theorists—Machiavelli, Hobbes, La Rouchefoucauld, Kant, Feuerbach,
Stirner, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Emerson.67
Nietzsche develops these older ideas; he revitalizes them, he sur-
rounds them with the royal cloak of his speech and confers on them a novel
and quasi-original luster. So, if we compare Nietzsche to Kant, we imme-
diately perceive an enormous difference between the two. Kant’s is a geo-
metric, scientific intellect, which builds its syllogisms in a strictly
systematic fashion, within the realm of theory and abstraction, far from re-
ality, and without heat or radiance. By means of terms that are philosophic
and impenetrable for the uninitiated, Kant demolishes any hope, whatso-
ever, that we may ever understand what lies beyond or attempt a [success-
ful] metaphysics. In this way, he erects an insurmountable—a veritable
Chinese—wall between ourselves and the unknown.68 But Kant’s revolu-
tionary ideas are propagated noiselessly within the narrow circle of savants;
it is impossible for them to extend beyond this circle and have an impact
on life and reality.69
In sharp contrast, as soon as he becomes aware of these ideas, Nietz-
sche feels a most violent shock reverberating throughout his entire being,70
raises his head and, in horror, sees this Chinese wall [of Kantian episte-
mology]. He waxes distressed, rises in rebellion and, in prophetic words
and with a vehemence71 that is unprecedented for a philosopher, releases
the anguish of his soul through lyrical verse and philosophic prose.
The conclusions, which Kant had confined to the theoretical realm
and destined for the most narrow circle of initiates, Nietzsche now takes
over and throws into real life, gauges their practical consequences, and uses
as points of reference to determine the quality [and rank] of values. On the
basis of this new conceptualization [of the problem of contemporary
nihilism], Nietzsche aspires to erect a new edifice—one that is consistent
with his conclusions.72
Kant is a brain, not a sensitive heart.73 In sharp contrast, Nietzsche is
possessed of a sensitivity of unheard-of intensity. He is to Kant what Fer-
dinand Lassalle [was to Karl Marx].74 Once conceived by him, an idea re-
verberates as a signal throughout Niezsche’s entire nervous system and
flows out in an outpouring of passion, indignation, daydreaming, irony, sar-
casm, and ecstasy. And it is in this precisely that the secret lies of Nietzsche’s
64  Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State

vast influence. In order to move and excite a mass of people75 and make an
impact on life, a great idea must first be transformed into sentiment and
passion. Taken over by Nietzsche and transsubstantiated, the ideas of Kant
and other philosophers were transmuted into most vigorous sentiments and
passions.
This is the reason why his work has exercised so profound an influ-
ence on the political, literary, and cultural life of contemporary Europe.76
Is this influence salutary or harmful? It is impossible to offer a cate-
gorical response—affirmative or negative.
Nietzsche’s teaching can indeed upset the equilibrium of organisms,
in whom egoism and ambition are already in a state of hypertrophy. Such
organisms tend to absorb whatever in Nietzsche’s writings contributes to
an overstimulation of passions, and they tend to overlook or miss the as-
cetic and altrouistic part of the teaching; in this way, they end up either as
inhumane or comical.77 Indeed, many have blamed such types on Nietz-
sche, but they have done so unjustly. Nietzsche would have been the first to
denounce and scorn such types [had he known of their existence and
claims]; he would have [exposed them] by means of his implacable satire.
On the other hand, Nietzsche’s teaching can assist those who are wa-
vering and affected by the sentimental ethics and literature [of our corrupt
times] and teach them to face life with utmost manliness and perseverance.
Nietzsche’s teaching makes thought reach maturity and fortifies the will; it
teaches us to face life and death with courage and olympian detachment.78
In times like our own, when will power79 is in decline and skepticism
has rendered vitality80 itself diffident and hesitant; in times when, on the
one hand, socialist ideologies elevate pity and mutual assistance within the
herd to religious duties, and, on the other hand, an individualism without
bridle, conscience, or purpose—an undisciplined and nihilistic individual-
ism—rushes to overturn just for the pleasure of throwing everything up-
side down—in such times Nietzsche’s teaching can bring redemption and
salvation for a new generation. This teaching is austere; it offers to hu-
manity an ideal that is worthy of the most noble human impulses;81 and it
imposes obligations and prerogatives82 that conduce to the furthering of
the noble ideals it propounds.
Indeed, with respect to its details and certain of its general premises,83
Nietzsche’s system is arbitrary and fantastic. Nevertheless, it is permeated
by sincerity through and through; it is invigorated by a spirit of impetuos-
ity84 and savage youthfulness. This system represents the world as an arena
and life as the means to undertakings, wars, and victories. To the serious and
restrained student, Nietzsche’s teaching offers a program of noble vitality
and superhuman goals.
 The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy  65

[In the final analysis,] Nietzsche is the adversary of the enfeebled

will85—a final and dangerous medication, which either cures once and for
all or . . . kills. All those—individuals or peoples—that are able, without
being crushed or embarrassed, to withstand Nietzsche’s philosophy and
follow it heroically and consistently with their own natures, are destined
for life and dominance. The rest are ripe for extinction and deserve pity.

Paris, 1908
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 Notes

Translator’s Preface
1. See Peter Bien, “Kazantzakis’ Nietzscheanism,” Journal of Modern Lit-
erature 2 (1971–72): 245–266, for a close examination of Kazantzakis’ dissertation
project on Nietzsche, which he wrote while in Paris in 1910 and before he came
under the partly countervailing influence of Bergson.
2. See O Friederikos Nitse en ti Filosofia tou Dikaiou kai tis Politeias, op. cit.

Introduction
1. Peter Bien, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press), 1989, p. ix.
2. Ibid.
3. Lewis Owens, “ ‘Does This One Exist?’ The Unveiled Abyss of Nikos
Kazantzakis,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 16 (1998): 331–348.
4. Peter Bien, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1989), p. ix.
5. Ibid.
6. Lewis Owens, “ ‘Does This One Exist?’ The Unveiled Abyss of Nikos
Kazantzakis,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 16 (1998): 331–348.
7. More on the same theme in James Lea, Kazantzakis: The Politics of Sal-
vation (University of Alabama Press, 1979), 63.
8. See Andreas Lou Salome, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinem Werke (Frank-
furt: Insel, 2000).
9. The following biographical details are based on Dr. Patroklos Stavrou’s
Preface to the recent edition of the authentic text of the dissertation: O Friederikos
Nitse en ti Filosofia tou Dikaiou kai tis Politeias, edited by Patroklos Stavrou
(Athens: Ekdoseis Kazantzaki, 1998).
10. For those interested in further details about the fate of Kazantzakis’ dis-
sertation on Nietzsche’s political philosophy, I am citing a lengthy passage from
Patroklos Stavrou’s Preface to the recent edition of the text of the dissertation in

67
68  Notes to Chapter 1

Greek, O Friederikos Nitse en ti Filosofia tou Dikaiou kai tis Politeias, edited by
Patroklos Stavrou (Athens: Ekdoseis Kazantzaki, 1998). The translation is mine.
It is most likely that the dissertation was rejected, on account both of its subject
matter and the revolutionary ideas of its author. It is uncertain whether it was
even submitted in the first place. Demetres Xyritakes, practitioner of law from
Irakleion who has researched and written on the subject, wonders why Kazantza-
kis keeps silence on this dissertation and never mentions it in the chapter on
Nietzsche of his autobiographical Report to Greco. As plausible explanation he
offers: “the unfair judgment of his teachers had caused bitter feelings.”

1. Prolegomena
1. I have placed within brackets ([]) words or phrases that are not in
Kazantzakis’ text but are implied, embedded in the context, carried over from pre-
ceding sentences or from the earlier part of the same sentence, or are required to
make sense of the text.
With only one exception, Kazantzakis does not annotate. His quotations
from Nietzsche’s work are in his own translation. Often, words, phrases or entire
sentences are omitted without indication; when this is the case, I have supplied the
missing part, if necessary for Kazantzakis’ point, within brackets; or I have indi-
cated the absence [. . .].
References to Nietzsche’s work are by aphorism number, or essay number
for the Untimely Meditations and Genealogy of Morals. References to Thus Spake
Zarathustra are to part and chapter. References to Twilight of the Idols are by title
of the section, followed by essay number. Earlier works of Nietzsche are annotated
by references to pages in recent editions, as specified in my endnotes.
2. Paradoxolo;goõ: literally, someone who either enjoys or cannot help
thinking and speaking in paradoxes.
3. See Beyond Good and Evil 26, where Nietzsche denounces cynicism as
the manner in which ignoble souls approach intellectual honesty. But contrast his
self-congratulation on his books’ occasional cynicism, “the highest achievement on
earth,” in EccHomo, “Why I Write Such Good Books,” 3.
4. Nietzsche often singles out the skeptics for praise among anicnet
thinkers [e.g., Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” 3; Antichrist 12], but this, of
course, does not mean that he endorses formulaic, affected, or fashionable forms
of skepticism.
5. See below for Nietzsche’s übermensch, and the reasons for rendering this
word as Übermensch. An interesting source on Nietzsche’s stormy early influence
on at least one continental culture, see Steven E. Anschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy
in Germany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992). The George
Kreis, revolving around the poet Stefan Georg, was one of the very first to form
around a remystified, romanticized view Nietzsche. In a perverse twist of irony,
Nietzsche’s early admirers saw him as a martyr, in spite of his exhortation to the
contrary: See Ecce Homo, “Why I Am a Destiny,” 1: “I have a terrible fear that one
day I will be pronounced holy.” See, further, Human, All Too Human, 73, for the
 Notes to Chapter 1  69

psychological dissection of the martyr-type as an incorrigible conformist who

prefers death to the unflattering opinion of his peers.
6. Nietzsche himself insisted that his philosophy was ahead of its times
and was liable to be misunderstood by all but the most exceptional spirits: Nietz-
sche also claims, however, that thinkers cannot be fully understood outside of the
context provided by their times: For his critique of scholars’ and philosophers’ ha-
bitual, and ruinous, disregard for the appropriate study of history see his early Un-
timely Meditations II: “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” and
Twilight of the Idols, “Reasons in History,” 1.
7. Nietzsche composed his autobiographical Ecce Homo in 1888. It first
saw the light of publication in 1908, the year Kazantzakis wrote his dissertation.
8. Provdromoõ: literally forerunner, as in John the Baptist, who is referred
to, in New Testament Greek, as the Prodromos or Forerunner.
9. Sunqevtei: an allusion, perhaps, to Hegel’s dialectical method.
10. Ormaiv.
11. Sunqetikovõ.
12. Kazantzakis does not attribute this apparent quotation.
13. See, for example, Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human 608; Beyond Good
and Evil 5–6; Twilight of the Idols, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 2, “The Four Great
Errors,” 1; The Will to Power 423, 458.
14. Ormaiv.
15. Kazantzakis wrote his dissertation in 1909.
16. Compare Neitzsche’s thought in Will to Power, 41: Napoleonic mili-
tarism, which considers “civilization” its enemy and strives to shatter it, is the
short-lived cure for the malady of culture, which uses religion and humanitarian-
ism to infect the healthy with the viewpoints and values of the weak and decadent.
See also ibid. 104. But see 129: all “great artists of government,” including
Napoleon, encouraged religion and spiritualism insofar as these forces reinforce
what is herdlike in human beings—form pliant masses and make them govern-
able. Further, see 877: Napoleon made possiblenationalism—nineteenth century’s
most popular revolutionary movement.
17. Aporiva.
18. One of the most difficult, and recurrent, problems in translating the
text is created by Kazantzakis’ frequent use of the word a[nqrwpoõ. The Greek
word means human, not man. We have become sensitized to the sexist implica-
tions of the word only recently and belatedly. The Greek, however, never used the
word for the male of the species as a stand-in for the human race as such. The sex-
ist connotations of the English word man should not be imputed to the Greek
word presumptively. On the other, however, it is true that the Greek word [ho an-
thropos ⫽ human, human being] is masculine iin gender. Moreover, Greek cul-
ture and intellectual traditions have not been sympathetic to women. A dilemma
that confronted me was this: the English word man preserves the flavor of early
century writing. Moreover, as feminist writers often warn, it is disingenuous and
dangerous to attempt to palliate the full effect of traditionally sexist words by re-
placing them by gender-sanitized contemporary equivalents. Not only could this
70  Notes to Chapter 1

be historically inaccurate, but it may also create false impressions about the
author’s protofeminist credentials. As best as I could, I tried to navigate between
the diametrical risks of anachronistically sanitizing early twentieth-century words
and unfairly burdening the author with views [in this case, sexist views] that there
is no good or presumptive reason to impute to him. This is the rule I have applied:
I have used words like “humanity” and “humankind,” when, and only when, the
meaning of anthropos is clearly, within the particular context, meant to be univer-
salistic and not gender-conscious.
Two exceptions: In the chapter entitled “On the Natures of Man and
Woman,” I retained “man” also to stand for human being; I believe that this is
consistent with the thinking both of Kazantzakis and Nietzsche—at least, taking
human beings as they are currently and not by reference to a possible Utopia of the
future, when the “right kind” of woman, or Überfrau, might have emerged.
I have had the masculine pronoun his accompany “human being” when a
pronoun was needed. “Its” won’t do for human being, I am afraid. May it be un-
derstood that, in those instances, “his” stands for “his/her”—the latter being too
awkward to be inserted into the text.
19. In other words, scientific and philosophic attempts to discover moral
laws in and through the study of nature have failed. One is reminded of Nietz-
sche’s quarrel with English naturalist ethicists, by whom his friend Paul Reé was
influenced, to predicate a system of ethics on moral sentiment, pursuit of happi-
ness or utility, or any other empirically verifiable natural foundations. See Nietz-
sche’s Preface to his Genealogy of Morals.
20. “What-for”: diativ.
21. In Aristotle’s teleological philosophy, the “final cause” [an account of
the “for-the-sake-of ” or “purpose” of something] is the highest in explanatory
power and dignity. In modern philosophy, hatural teleology came under scathing
assault by such [Scottish and French] Enlightenment figures as David Hume
(e.g., Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) and Voltaire (e.g., Candide). Even
Descartes, who preserved the “soul” as a separate entity, fortified the modern sci-
entific project by insulating systematic inquiry from a quest for final causes in na-
ture. In the 4th Meditation, para. 6, he writes: “I have no longer any difficulty in
discerning that there is an infinity of things in [God’s] power whose causes tran-
scend the grasp of my mind: and this consideration alone is sufficient to convince
me, that the whole class of final causes is of no avail in physical [or natural] things;
for it appears to me that I cannot, without exposing myself to the charge of temer-
ity, seek to discover the [impenetrable] ends of Deity.” [From the John Veitch
English translation of 1901.]
22. In The Origin of the Species Darwin appears to admit only nonteleologi-
cal “causes.” According to Darwin, “species are produced and exterminated by
slowly acting and still existing causes, and not by miraculous acts of creation.” The
following mutually overlapping modes of causation can be found in Darwin’s ac-
count: causes of selection; causes that stem from the selection process (operating
singly as well as cumulatively); [admittedly obscure] causes that tend to check nat-
ural tendencies; “causes of destruction”; known and unknown (even “mysterious”)
 Notes to Chapter 1  71

“causes of variation” and “intricate causes” that resist scientific inquiry; “unper-
ceived causes” and “accidental causes” that can only be conjected; and so on. Dar-
win states that “nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this
similarity of pattern in members of the same class by utility or by the doctrine of
final causes” (emphasis added).
23. Darwin’s evolutionary-biological reductionism encountered resistance
from other scientists, including defenders of teleological explanations of natural
and biological phenomena. See the important study by Timothy Lenoir, The
Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology
(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982), 247, 248, 250, 254–55.
24. While in Paris from 1907 to 1909, Kazantzakis attended lectures by
Henri Bergson (1858–1941), exponent of an intuitionist philosophy of a cosmic
vital force (élan vital).
25. Jules Henri Poincare (1854–1912): celebrated founder of the mathe-
matical theory of dynamical systems and of algebraic topology as well as noted
philosopher of science. Through his work, and in his philosophic approach, Poin-
care inflicted yet another twentieth-century blow on the transitional ways of tele-
ological thinking by arguing that it is unnecessary—and might even be
disadvantageous—to “understand” what one attempts to prove scientifically. Sci-
ence is in this way anything but an ally to the agonizing human effort to discover
meaning in the universe. In his ground-breaking efforts to engage the ancient
question concerning universal stability, Poincare adumbrated the theoretical un-
derstanding that is today known as deterministic or dynamical chaos: Even an infin-
itesimal error about the initial condition and original laws of the universe renders
prediction of celestial phenomena impossible because, in Poincare’s words, “small
differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenom-
ena.” It follows from Poincare’s inquiries that we can still marvel at the complex-
ity and possible symmetries that are to be disclosed by a study of nature but one
cannot expect to discover in nature objective meanings, standards of utility, and
recommendations for life and action.
26. Edouard Le Roy (1870–1954): French philosopher, a student of Bergson.
27. Charles S. Peirce (misspelled by Kazantzakis) and William James are
the two most famous members of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) School of
American Pragmatism. Proudly anti-Platonist and anti-essentialist, Pragmatism
judges thinking, and even defines truth, by reference to its concrete goals and ac-
complishments. Pragmatists reject eternal or antecedent truths and see values as
conditioned by historical time and pragmatic contingency.
28. Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937): Humanistic pragma-
tist who premises understanding on concrete human action, author of Studies in
Humanism (London, 1907).
29. See William James, Pragmatism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1975), 15: “The progress of science has seemed to mean the enlarge-
ment of the material universe and the diminution of man’s importance”; ibid., 91:
the onslaught of scientific progress and technological discovery raise the specter of
a contemporary humanity that “may drown in [its] wealth like a child in a bath
72  Notes to Chapter 1

tub, who has turned on the water and who cannot turn it off.” See further his
“Notes on Ethics” I, no’s. 44–72, in Manuscripts, Essays and Notes (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 301: “The principles of ethics are inde-
pendent of those of science” because science is about facts, “whether good or bad,”
whereas ethics is about what is “good or bad, whether it be or not.” Of course,
Williams’ view of ethics is not quite like Nietzsche’s. On the other hand, however,
John Dewey, another celebrated American Pragmatist, also warned against scape-
goating science and admonished his contemporaries to beware of regressing into a
remystified view of the universe: See “The Democratic Faith in Education,” in The
Collected Works of John Dewey (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press,
1991), 15:256. Kazantzakis’ preoccupation with science might reflect his immer-
sion into the reading of the three works that belong to Nietzsche’s positivistic pe-
riod—Human, All Too Human, Gay Science, and Daybreak. At the same time,
Kazantzakis’ perceptive critique of the hollow scientific promise points to the later
Nietzsche who denounced science as yet another form of postdecadent asceticism.
30. Pneumatikhv.
31. Arnhsiõ.
[
32. See Ecce Homo, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 1–2: “after the yes-saying
part” was fulfilled there came the fullness of time for the “nay-saying [stage].” In
it, everything of which “our age” boasts is experienced as a contradiction.
33. Now Kazantzakis is suddenly thinking not of the age of the Sophists
but of Hellenistic-Roman Antiquity, when Epicureans and Cynics flourished and
a spirit of pessimistic resignation seemed to reign in philosophic movements. But
the point about lack of discipline is, on its face, inaccurate—one is reminded of the
Stoic Epictetus but also of Epicurus himself who urged inner discipline. See, for
example, Epicurus, Principal Doctrines XVII.
34. Pneumatikhv: also mental and spiritual.
35. Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a utopian of rather low education but
strong intuitions who “with his strong and simple intellect, saw the source and
volume of the new wealth and attempted to regulate the continually rising stream
of production, to control the inanimate machinery as well as the greed of the em-
ployers, and to educate the laboring population, with a view to a peacefuly read-
justment of society to the new conditions.” As a social reformer, he saw the social
problem as essentially a moral one, yet, at the same time, he realized that “the mis-
sion of the reformer . . . could not consist of preaching, admonishing, and punish-
ing the sinners, but of changing the social circumstances [the ‘factory system’]—of
removing the evil conditions that favored ignorance, selfishness, crime, misery,
hypocrisy, superstition, enmity, and war, and creating good conditions that fa-
vored knowledge, health, courage, brotherly feelings, and social service.” The par-
tial editor goes on to say that Owen’s “communist experiments in America
(1824–28) . . . failed . . . due to the incompleteness of his theory of character for-
mation.” [M. Beer, in his introduction to The Life of Robert Owen by Himself
(London: Bell, 1920), vi–vii.]
36. Henri Saint-Simon, influential nineteenth-century utopian whose ideas
and deeds mean different things to different commentators and writers. He influ-
 Notes to Chapter 1  73

enced both left- and right-wing ideologues. Ostensibly, he advocated rule by an

intellectual elite. In German Ideology, pt. IV, Marx dismissed him, as he did other
utopianists like Fourier and Owen. Marx might have changed his mind later on,
as Friedrich Engles claims in a footnote to a later edition of the Critique of Politi-
cal Economy. In his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin conde-
scendingly rejects Saint-Simon’s musings about the future of the capitalist system
as the mere “guesswork” of a genius.
37. Along with Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte is the most celebrated, or
notorious, exponent of sociological positivism—an approach that seeks to apply the
methods of the hard sciences in order to explain, retrodict, anticipate, and control
dynamic social phenomena. John Stuart Mill remarked in 1865 that “though the
mode of thought expressed by the terms Positive and Positivism is widely spread,
the words themselves are, as usual, better known, through the enemies of that
mode of thinking than through its friends.” [Originally published in Westminster
Review; reprinted as Auguste Comte and Positivism (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University
of Michigan Press, 1965), 2.] Of course, Mill himself apprehended the prospects of
social uniformity and stifling of individual expression adumbrated by a scientistic
approach to the study of human phenomena. But, the influence of positivistic
thinking soon became so pervasive in the English-speaking world that, as Gertrud
Lenzer has observed, while “Mill parted company with Comte the sociologist, he
still insisted on his affinity with Comte the logician, a qualification of no small sigi-
ficance not only for Mill’s work but also for the later development of social science,
the methodology of the sciences, and the philosophy of science.” [See her intro-
duction to Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (New York:
Harper, 1875), xxxi.]
38. Charles Fourier was an inegalitarian utopian who denounced equality as
“political poison.” In Fourier’s utopian society, the respective distributive shares
would be: five-twelfths for labor, four-twelfths for capital, and three-twelfths for
talent. Although this formula sounds fantastic and invites ridicule, Fourier was
proud of this discovery, which he considered one of his greatest achievements. See
Oeuvres completes de Charles Fourier (Paris: Anthropos, 1966–1968), IV:445,
516–518; V:502–514.
39. These are all Neo-Hegelians: see, as an important source on left- and
right-wing Neo-Hegelians, Karal Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, David Green,
transl. (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1967). David Strauss made a
splash with the publicatin in 1835 of his Life of Jesus, where he treats the Gospels’
form of religious expression as a product of subconscious mythological and
mythopoetic imagination, which requires a certain philosophical methodology if
it is to be understood. Strauss moved further into a positivistic direction with his
The Old and the New Faith (1872). In his first Untimely Meditation, Nietzsche at-
tacked Strauss, “the Confessor and Writer,” as a symptomatically self-important,
scholarly pedant. Ludwig Feuerbach, a more important Neo-Hegelian, exercised
considerable influence on individuals like Wagner and Marx. In his Essence of
Christianity (1841), Feuerbach argued that Christianity is a grand-scale projection
of human capacities and aspirations, which in this way become cut off and
74  Notes to Chapter 1

estranged from humanity; human beings are impoverished as a consequence. Karl

Marx and Friedrich Engels greatly admired Feuerbach, although Marx did take
him to task for not daring far enough in a direction of praxis-centered dialectical
materialism [in the classic “Theses on Feuerbach.”] Finally, Max Stirner
(1806–1856), an anarchical individualist, authored an eccentric manifesto on the
“individual and what is emphatically his own,” claiming that Hegelian philosophy
culiminates in the actualization of meaning in the unique individual [any one
individual]. This appears to be an early domestication of potentially nihilistic
trends in European thought—Stirner does not intend to deny, and indeed he cel-
ebrates, the potentially arbitrary character of individual-centered actions.
40. Here is the full citation: “If money, according to [Marie Augier, Du
crédit public (Paris, 1842)], ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on
one cheek,’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood
and dirt.” [Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, part VIII, ch. 31]
41. See, for example, the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party, penned
by Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1872: “The advance of industry . . . replaces the
isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination,
due to association . . . What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its
own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”
(end of sc. I, “Bourgeois and Proletarians”).
42. See Enrico Ferri, Socialism and Positive Science (London: Independent
Labor Party, 1905), 78: “Henceforth, it is impossible not to see the direct rela-
tionship of Marxian socialism to scientific evolution, when it is understood that
the former is only the logical and consequential application of the theory of evolu-
tion in the economic domain.” Cp. L. Jacoby, L’Idea dell’evoluzione in Bibliotheca
dell’economista, series III, vol. IX, pt. 2, p. 69, quoted in ibid., 76. Nevertheless,
Marx, perhaps primarily a humanist, remained at best ambivalent toward Dar-
win’s theory. See Richard Weikart, Socialist Darwinisn (London: International
Scholars, 1999).
43. See Georg Brandes, Ferdinand Lassalle (London: Heinemann, 1911),
109–110: “[Lassalle] belongs to those who choose rather than to those who are
called. A chance occurrence meets him on his way; he chooses to pursue it with
the whole passion of his soul. Lassalle’s will was itself a call. His acts of will
invariably portray something of the agitator in their nature, taking the term ‘agi-
tator’ in its widest and fundamental meaning and not in the ordinary sense.”
44. Ormhv.
45. Upovstasiõ.
46. Analuvei: also, analyzes.
47. Ormhvv.
48. See Twilight of the Idols, “What the Germans Lack,” 6: Nietzsche avers
there that his intent is primarily positive and forward-looking, with criticism and
deconstructive vituperation serving merely as means to the positive part of his
thinking.
49. See Hippolyte Taine, “On the Ideal in Art,” [1864], in Lectures on Art
(New York: AMS, 1971), vol. 1: Literary values and ethical [character] attributes
 Notes to Chapter 1  75

are in mutual correspondence; character attributes, talents, and literary qualities

are arranged, objectively and naturally, in a strictly hierarchical fashion.
50. Paradoxologiva. On Nietzsche’s alleged paradoxologia, see Kazantza-
kis’ “Prolegomena.”
51. Ormhv.
52. Kazantzakis is returning to this subject below, where he quotes from the
Preface to Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
53. Ormhv
54. Interestingly, this was also the diagnosis of one of the most interesting
individuals of turn-of-the-century European intellectualism, Lou Andreas-Salomé,
with whom Nietzsche fell in love to be devastatingly rejected. See her thoughts on
Nietzsche’s inner character, ideas, and tragic madness, in, for instance, Nietzsche
(Redding Ridge, Conn.: Black Swan, 1988).
55. The vagaries of the concept “truth» in Nietzsche’s philosophical system
are of mind-boggling complexity. See Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human 257:
“The searchfor truth still has the charm of always contrasting strongly with gray
and boring Error; this charm is progressively disappearing. It is true that we still
live in the youth of science, and tend to pursue truth like a pretty girl; but what
will happen when she has one day turned into an elderly, scowling woman? In
almost all the sciences, the basic insight has either just been found or else is still
being sought; how different is this appeal from the appeal when everything essen-
tial has been found and all that is left for the researcher is a scanty autumn glean-
ing (a feeling one can come to know in certain historical disciplines).” [Helen
Zimmern’s translation, published, 1909–1913.]
56. Idevaõ.
57. Idevai.
58. See Ecce Homo, “Birth of Tragedy,” 3, where the destructive prelude to
creation is associated with the teaching of eternal recurrence. Also, see ibid.,
“Zarathustra,” 8; “Why I Am a Destiny,” 2 and 4.
59. In the 1878 edition of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche offers, “In
Lieu of a Preface,” a quotation from the Prologue to Descartes’ Discourse on
Method, which speaks of a road to truth forged by the appropriate research
method. See Ecce Homo, Preface, 3: a person is only as great as the plenitude of the
truth he can endure.
60. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), sworn anti-Hegelian and author of
one of the century’s philosophical classics, The World as Will and Representation.
His view of the will exercised some influence on the young Nietzsche. Schopen-
hauer [along with Ludwig Feuerbach] was also a major influence on the composer
Richard Wagner—see subsequently—who served as short-lived father figure to
Nietzsche until Nietzsche’s vehement and quite emotional denunciation of the
composer as a veritable example of modern “decadence.” For Nietzsche’s early at-
tachment to Schopenhauer, see W. Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist,
Antichrist (New York: Meridian, 1956), 32, 37–38, 136–137, 147, 211; for Nietz-
sche’s subsequent disenchantment with and opposition to Schopenhauer, see ibid.
72, 110–111 [Kaufmann’s view is that Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy is actually a
76  Notes to Chapter 1

polemic against Schopenhauerian pessimism]. See Nietzsche, Gay Science, V.370,

for Nietzsche’s view that Wagner and Schopenhauer were two “romanticists,”
whose malaise he had originally failed to recognize.
61. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. I,
book II, § 29, in E. F. J. Payne’s translation (New York: Dover, 1969), 1:164–165:
“Absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the will in it-
self, which is an endless striving . . . Eternal becoming, endless flux belong to the
revelation of the essential nature of the will . . . [T]he game is . . . kept up of the
constant transition from desire, to satisfaction, the rapid course of which is called
happiness, the slow course sorrow, and so that this game may not come to a stand-
still, showing itself as a fearful, life-destroying boredom, a lifeless longing without
a definite object, a deadening languor.”
62. Ormhv.
63. Ormavõ.
64. The poet Friedrich Hölderlin, like Nietzsche, had an extreme, nearly
mystical, fondness for ancient Greece; he also died mad, and has been seen as a
precursor of Nietzsche.
65. See Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 44. Nietz-
sche often expresses admiration for Emerson: See ibid. 13. On the other hand, he
viscerally dislikes Carlyle: see Gay Science 92, 97; Beyond Good and Evil 252; Twi-
light of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 1, 12; Ecce Homo, “Why I
Write Such Good Books,” 1.
66. See Emerson’s thoughts, possibly based on a Lecture Emerson gave in
Boston near the end of 1837, in Essays, First Series (New York: Wise, 1923),
2:243–264: “We need books of this tart cathartic virtue [books on heroism] more
than books of political science or of private economy.” Moreover, the praise of
heroic virtue is needed to “arm man” against the evils and frights raised by mod-
ern humanity’s wanton violation of the laws of nature. Carlyle indeed sent his vol-
ume Lectures on Heroes to Emerson: see Carlyle’s “Letter to Mrs. Emerson,”
London, 21 February, 1841, in J. Slater, ed., The Correspondence of Emerson and
Carlyle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 290.
67. Ormhtikavõ.
68. Gay Science 283; see also 124, 289, 291, and 343, as indicated by
W. Kaufmann, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage, 1978),
228, fn. 10.
69. Ecce Homo, “Why I am So Clever,” 10.
70. Ormhv.
71. Originally an altar-shaped, specially designated and possibly elevated
area in the middle of the stage in the ancient Greek theater; hence, what pertains
to the art of drama.
72. An elaboration on Nietzsche’s opening simile in the Daybreak, Preface
1. Nietzsche there stresses not only his subversive qualities and devotion to the
task of undermining but also vaunts his enigmatic qualities. Compare what
Kazantzakis says above about the luminous qualities of Nietzsche’s earlier work,
 Notes to Chapter 1  77

The Birth of Tragedy, which revealed the secrets of the tragic art, and further see
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Human, All Too Human,” beginning.
73. See also Nietzsche, The Gay Science 370: Nietzsche diagnoses Schopen-
hauer and Wagner as exemplars of the romantic malady: Unlike pre-Socratic and
pre-Euripidean Greek artists, whose creative suffering issued from a healthy abun-
dance of life, romantic suffering, as Nietzsche sees it, stems from an ill-constituted
and morbid constitution and from impoverishment of vital life. Consequently, ro-
mantics seek either rest and cessation of effort [preservation of drives, “Nirvana,”
anaesthesia] or artificial and exaggeration overstimulation [hysterical frenzy, the-
atrical postures, convulsive inspiration]. Schopenhauer’s pessimism is, more
specifically, “epistemological pessimism”: Will to Power, 82.
74. Schopenahuer is attacked especially in Human, All Too Human, 21, 26,
39. Nietzsche had earlier praised Schopenhauer in the IIIrd Untimely Meditation
entitled “Schopenhauer as an Educator” (1874).
75. Nietzsche actually singles out his fated rupture with Richard Wagner
as a landmark event that indicated a dramatic change in his life: Ecce Homo,
“Human, All Too Human,” 2–3. Wagner was indeed deeply influenced by
Schopenhauer, although his work, Tristan and Isolde especially, rises in creative
passion above the sum total of its philosophic debts. The later-period Nietzsche
was in the habit of mentioning Wagner and Schopenhauer in one breath, as kin-
dred spirits of pessimistic self-immolation and “decadence.” Nietzsche goes so
far as to see Wagner’s Ring opera cycle as the “translation” of Wagner’s own
decadent attraction to pessimism into Schopenhauer’s terms. See The Case of
Wagner Preface and 4. Contrast ibid. 10, where Nietzsche seems to be pairing
Wagner with Schopenhauer’s nemesis, the historicist German philosopher
Hegel. In Human, All Too Human, Preface 1, Nietzsche singles out Schopen-
hauer’s “blind will to morality” [cf. Human, All Too Human 57, 103, 110, and
Will to Power, 83 on Schopenhauer’s nihilistic relapse into moralism] and Wag-
ner’s romantic pessimism.
76. The reference is to Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will, not to the con-
cept of a Will to Power, which Nietzsche himself would slowly develop over time.
The phrase “truly is” [“ontos on,” in quotation marks in the original] evokes Plato
(Republic book VII). For Nietzsche’s critique of Platonism see Beyond Good and
Evil, parts I and II; Twilight of the Idols, “How the True World Finally Became a
Fable”; Ecce Homo, “The Birth of Tragedy,” 2; and Will to Power, “Critique of
Greek Philosophy.”
77. See Human, All too Human, 47, 103, 363. Schopenhauer is also implic-
itly targeted by Nietzsche’s assault on compassion: Contrast Human, All Too
Human, 50 [taking its bearings from La Rouchefoucauld] with Schopenhauer’s
The World as Will and Representation, book 4, par. 67.
78. Human, All Too Human 132–134, 138, 139.
79. Ibid. 133, 138, 620, 630.
80. For this earlier view of Nietzsche, see the IInd of the Untimely Medita-
tions, entitled “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” VII.
78  Notes to Chapter 1

81. See Human, All Too Human 157–158, 162–165, 231, 258, 635: Nietz-
sche no longer treats “genius” with the enthusiasm of his earlier writings; he rather
dissects “genius” in a spirit of detached, scientific interest and with palpable skep-
ticism. In 234, Nietzsche appears to be saying that the generation of genius is pos-
sible under the rarest, and perhaps now bygone, historical and social conditions; at
the same time, Nietzsche seems to be either half-heartedly resigned to this
prospect (234) or outright reluctant to celebrate the modern twilight of genius
(235, 241). Nietzsche’s critique of classical teleology [metaphysical interpretation
of nature as a meaningful and purposeful whole] is more sustained throughout
Human, All Too Human: see especially, section I: “Of the First and Last Things.”
82. Nietzsche rarely puts it as strongly; he rather condemns art as a sign
(even a necessary sign perhaps) of an era that is to be overcome by the more rigor-
ous “scientific” understanding of the future. In Human, All Too Human, aphorisms
that assume a negative posture toward art are: 10, 31, 108, 272, 292. But contrast
27, where art is granted a provisional role in paving the way for the transition to
the “scientific” understanding of the future. A positive view of art can also be
found in certain aphorisms—for example, see 125, 251. Nietzsche’s ambivalent
enthusiasm in favor of art is in evidence in the entire IVth section of the work,
entitled “From the Soul of Artists and Writers.” Nevertheless, Kazantzakis is not
wrong in detecting an uncharacteristic shift in Nietzsche’s mood against the arts:
Even in the IVth section of the early Human, All Too Human, witness, for exam-
ple, the hostility toward poets of aphs. 148, 189.
83. This rendering, and not the translation of this passage from the stan-
dard Genealogy of Morals, captures the meaning of Kazantzakis’ Greek.
84. Allusion to Immanuel Kant’s famous formulation of a “categorical im-
perative” that is expounded in his Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals [Grundle-
gung für Metaphysik der Sitten].
85. Ormhv.
86. See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, “On the Prejudices of Philoso-
phers,” 1–2. See, further, aph. 4, where Nietzsche suggests that “false judgments”
might be at least as indispensable as true ones. In this work Nietzsche subsumes
truth [and falsehood] under truthfulness [and dishonesty]. This allows him to
pursue his broader project (of showing how philosophical questions are indeed un-
derpinned by evaluations) and to take the philosophic tradition to task for its
temerity and insincerity in matters pertaining to the quest for the truth.
87. Dunavmeiõ.
88. Kazantzakis appears to be paraphrasing from, and expanding on, a pas-
sage from the Preface to the Second Edition of The Gay Science: “This whole book
is nothing but a bit of merry-making after long privation and powerlessness, the
rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the
day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future, of impending
adventures, of seas that are open again, of goals that are permitted again, believed
again.” [Walter Kaufmann’s translation, from The Gay Science, with a Prelude in
Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, translated and with a commentary by Walter
Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 32.]
 Notes to Chapter 1  79

89. The rapture of convalescence is a recurrent them in Nietzsche’s writ-

ings, and a reflection of actual physiological experiences in Nietzsche’s tormented
life. See the Preface to the second edition of the Gay Science; also Thus Spake
Zarathustra, III.13: “The Convalescent.”
90. The choice of the word desert attests to Kazantzakis’ lifelong preoccu-
pation with the legendary experiences and tribulations of the ascetics celebrated by
the Eastern Orthodox traditions of Christianity. Zarathustra actually returns, and
descends, from the mountains—Nietzsche’s proudly chosen sanctuary (see,
e.g., his Preface to The Antichrist and Gay Science, 343). In Zarathustra it is actu-
ally the “saint” who avers that he had gone into the desert for love of mankind,
only to discover that it is an all-powerful God, rather than imperfect humanity,
that he loves. See Zarathustra, Prologue. 2. In Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of
Christ (ch. 17), Jesus repairs to the desert where he confronts, and confers mean-
ing to, his “temptations.”
91. Walter Kaufmann has made a definitive case in favor of rendering
Übermensch as «Overman.” See Kaufmann’s Note to the First Part of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin, [1954] 1982), 115.
The alternative “Superman” has popular-culture associations that make it outright
misleading. “Overman,” however, places undue emphasis on the male gender; this
incenses our sensitized ears—it is uncertain to me whether earlier generations
inevitably saw the component “man” to refer exclusively to the male of the species.
At any rate, I have opted for retaining Übermensch in my translation, since this
notorious Nietzschean term has more or less entered our language.
92. Other references to the Übermensch in the Nietzschean corpus include
Ecce Homo, “Untimely Meditations,” III.6. For anticipations of the theme see
Untimely Meditations, II and Gay Science, 382.
93. This is Kazantzakis’ rendering. Compare Walter Kaufmann’s transla-
tion of the text (Prologue, 3), in The Portable Nietzsche, 124: “I teach you the
Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to over-
come him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do
you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather
than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or painful embar-
rassment. And man shall be just that for the Overman: A laughingstock or painful
embarrassment . . . Behold, I teach you the Overman. The Overman is the mean-
ing of the earth.”
94. See Kazantzakis’ preceding analysis of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy.
95. Nietzcshe’s pursuit of truth has been a recurrent theme of this chapter.
Nietzsche prefaces his Genealogy of Morals by speaking of a quest of knowledge
[Preface, 1] and he often speaks of the passion of the seeker after knowledge [e.g.,
Gay Science 351]. Moreover, Moreover, Nietzsche’s overall genealogical project is
undertaken as an interpretative endeavor, which, by itself, seems to suggest that
there is an objectively true “text” to be retrieved by an interpretation. Alexander
Nehamas has brought attention to a paradoxical tension in Nietzsche’s thought
surrounding the issue of “truth.” Nehamas sees that this tension essentially corre-
sponds to the paradox of asceticism which Nietzsche studies in the third essay of
80  Notes to Chapter 2

his Genealogy of Morals. This correspondence also helps illuminate the Nietzshean
paradox of truth itself: As in the case of asceticism, for which privation and
chastity are the preconditions of the good life for certain human types, so with the
relationship of the quest for knowledge to truth—for certain human types, but not
for all, the exercise of power made possible through an epistemic quest can thrive
only under a precondition of truth-seeking. [See A. Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as
Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 115.] Let it be
noted that it is the quest-for-truth, and not the discovery or prospect of discovery
of truth, that differentiates certain higher from lower human types. The quest for
truth is conceivable even if objective truth, and falsehood, are not meaningful
phrases. In fact, Nietzsche intimates some times that truth itself is a certain “error”
[a reification of an arbitrarily fixed point in the relentless course of Heracliteian
becoming]; yet an error that is necessary to stave off paralysis and, hence, to make
possible preservation and growth of a human being, the animal cursed with self-
arresting memory [cp. Will to Power, 493 with Untimely Meditations, II].
96. The Will to Power, Preface, 3. Compare Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale’s translation [The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1968), 3]: “a
philosopher and solitary by instinct, who has found his advantage in standing
aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind; as a spirit of
daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the
future; as a soothsayer-bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come; as
the first nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of
nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself.”
97. For Nietzsche’s “truthfulness,” see also Ecce Homo, Preface, 2–3: Nietz-
sche’s new modes of evaluation gauge a spirit by the amount of truth it can bear.
Nietzsche is not juxtaposing truth to falsehood but truthfulness to mendacity. The
flight from reality to an otherworldly realm of ideals—in its erstwhile and semi-
nal form, Platonism—has been a profound and most influential manifestation of
a will to mendaciousness; this has cast humankind as a dishonest and cowardly
species. See also Nietzsche’s Preface to The Twilight of the Idols.

2. [Nihilism]
1. The deeper definition of the phenomenon of nihilism, as understood by
Nietzsche, is this: The values on which Western history has predicated its search
for meaning, institutions, culture, and achievements show themselves to be
empty—often detected in that they turn out, for instance, to contradict themselves
especially when their logical conclusions are extracted or become manifest. As
Nietzsche puts it in Will to Power Preface, 4, the values with and by virtue of
which “we” have lived so far are now drawing their final conclusions. [Notice the
crypto-Hegelian view, still persisting in Nietzsche’s thought, of history as an un-
folding and working out of notional conclusions, as if a syllogism were unfolding
its premises all the way to its conclusion—except that the syllogism in this case
shows itself to be fallacious or nonsensical (Nietzsche does not make it clear
which).] Nietzsche is trying to show that not reason but will to power is at work in
 Notes to Chapter 2  81

the universe: which means that we need an inverted Hegelianism—not rationally

corrected positions dialectically advancing toward a logical resolution but rather
dashes for power [whether accidental “truths” or advantageous “errors”] sorting
themselves out in a unceasing contest.
2. Will to Power, Preface 2.
3. Kazantzakis’ word: antinomiva.
4. Mark Warren has offered, more recently, a similar rendering of Nietz-
sche’s insight into nihilism: Nihilism is the disjunction between our direct experi-
ence of phenomena and our symbolic representation of the world—which, for
Nietzsche, is ultimately evaluative. See M. Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 15–17. The underlying ontology of this
epistemic ramification of the phenomenon of nihilism is laid out in the opening sec-
tions of the Will to Power: the highest values are found to be self-undermining, so
they can no longer provide answers to the vital questions which propelled them into
existence in the first place (Will to Power, 2). Nihilism is inevitably a stage of trans-
lation (ibid. 13)—a historical moment that oversees the collapse of the theoretical
artifacts that sustained life up to that point. It remains the case, however, that the
historical failure of the theory or ideology to live up to the expectations it created has
something to do, in a deep sense, with the theory or viewpoint itself: the very de-
mands, which the viewpoint proves unable to solve, are generated not only by his-
torical forces but also through the mediation of the theoretical viewpoint itself.
Nietzsche’s favorite example is about Christianity: the religion of the “slaves” de-
manded sincerity—recoiling as it did from the assertive and guilt-free Machiavel-
lianism of stronger natures; but Christianity also perished from the very sincerity it
demanded, Nietzsche thought, as “honest” bourgeois scholars started probing into
the historical origins of Christianity, seeking truth about and corroboration of the
biblical texts. See Will to Power, 2–5.
5. This is a difficult question—the answer is bound to be complex and,
given Nietzsche’s purposeful oscillations between extremes, more than one an-
swers might be forthcoming—and it is also true that such answers need not be
mutually consistent. One revealing thought, in the Will to Power (12A), points to
an insight Nietzsche had already formulated for an incredulous audience of philol-
ogists and Wagnerians in his Birth of Tragedy: Knowledge itself is a desperate ra-
tionalization, an attempt to hurl drapes, woven in healthy joy, over the repulsive
“emptiness” of the actual abysss of existence.
6. Politismovõ.
7. The key text is Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I.7. Nietzsche’s references to the
“table of values” show a degree of ambivalence. On the one hand, the ultimate re-
duction of values to perspectival arrangements undermines the claim of any val-
ues to objectivity, truthfulness, relevance for life and action, or higher sanction of
any sort. On the other hand, even so inevitably compromised a table of values
demonstrates an underlying will to dominance and, accordingly, serves, or can
serve, as a crucible for “overcoming” humankind’s present condition, although it is
understood that such “overcoming” cannot originate through an initiative of the
human “herd” itself (cf. also ibid. III.56).
82  Notes to Chapter 2

8. diabavqmisiõ: literally gradation.

9. See Zarathustra, I.15, “On the One Thousand and One Goals”: “A
table of values hangs over every people”; in a way, every people, its herdlike medi-
ocrity notwithstanding, has proved capable of surviving the implacable struggle for
existence precisely in proving capable of overcoming itself—and it is the table of
its values that pose the agenda for a people’s self-overcoming exercises.
10. See Gay Wisdom, 115: one of humanity’s four cardinal errors is the ancient
tendency to devise tablets of values and then taking such values to be eternal verities.
11. The reigning tablets of values actually instantiate, and are themselves
engendered by the underlying pathologies of their authors.
12. Katavptwsiõ: decline, collapse, downfall.
13. Ormhv.
14. Nietzsche draws this connection between classical teleology and the ni-
hilist crisis in many passages. See, for instance, Will to Power, 12A, 552, 562, 878.
15. A reading of Nietzsche’s Will to Power, a compiled note-based text that
Kazantzakis might not have had access to, shows that it is not exactly science that
opens our eyes to the phenomenon and historical fate of nihilism. See also Ge-
nealogy of Morals, III: Scientists are, actually, latter-day ascetics. Another reason
for which science is found to gravitate toward the phenomenon of nihilism, rather
than serve as an antidote to it, is science’s heavy dependence on epistemologically
objectivist claims—postulating its operations on the notion that the external world
can be represented as it is in itself. This raises the states as it were and is bound to
lead to greater disappointment, chaos, and despair when it is realized that objec-
tivist break down under scrutiny.
16. Gay Science, 125.
17. A reference to Kant’s famous formulation of the “categorical impera-
tive” [Grundlegung für Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785].
18. For Nietzsche’s scathing criticism of Auguste Comte and Comtean
positivism see Dawn, 132, 542; Gay Science, 377.
19. Untimely Meditations, II: On the Uses and Abuses of History I, beginning;
II, paragraph 5. See Birth of Tragedy, 18, 21: Culture depends on “stimulants.”
Compare Gay Science, 1: Only the human animal has become such an odd creature
that he needs periodic reaffirmation of the notion that there are purposes to exis-
tence as a necessary stimulant to life. The allusion to overstimulation of the con-
science is really about Christianity: it was the Christian faith—even down unto the
very dietary prescriptions and prohibitions enjoined by the faith—that regulated
life with a view to giving outlet to morbid physiological systems and overstimulat-
ing decadent nerves (Antichrist, 12). See also Will to Power, 43, 44: Nihilism itself
is the weakening of the natural need of the will for strong stimuli. There is no con-
tradiction here on Nietzsche’s part—although deeper thoughts are, as expected, not
always made clear, overstimulation—especially if it is applied for the wrong rea-
sons, in the wrong way, or on the wrong constitutions—can lead to an intrinsically
nihilistic phenomenon of satiation and jadedness. Thus, we are told, altruistic
morality is an overstimulated state of physiology—once again, psychophysiological
makeup being a deeper cause—which leads to a degradation of healthy response
 Notes to Chapter 2  83

capabilities—a loss of the natural ability to resist stimuli, as one ought to do in con-
formity with the natural economy of intrapsychic stimulations: Will to Power, 44.
The deeper thought might be this (ibid. 703): Expenditure of power leads to over-
estimation of what the power is expended on; overestimation inevitably leads to
disappointment with what is, inevitably and comparatively, found to be an impov-
erished reality [an essentially nihilistic dialectic].
20. Ormevm␸uton.
21. Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). His interminable
suffering from knee pain and poor health eerily parallels Nietzsche’s lifelong bouts
with mysterious ailments (perhaps due to syphilis contracted when breifly serving
in the army) that caused him stomach pain, migraines, insomnia, eyestrain, and
vertigo. Hartmann attempted to effect a synthesis between Hegel’s philosophy of
universal Reason or Spirit (Geist) and Schopenhauer’s concept of the Will. Hart-
mann envisioned his philosophic system of the “Absolute Spirit” as a spiritual
monism, with its key concept being the “Unconscious.” According to this view,
both Will and Reason are only incidental and limited manifestations of the “Un-
conscious.” True wisdom and any vestiges of specific purposefulness we can dis-
cover reside in the Unconscious. This is as it ought to be because, unlike both
finite Reason and recalcitrant Will, the Unconscious is in a deep sense unerring.
This does not mean that the Unconscious is unerring when considered from our
constrained vantage point, but that error, by definition, arises from the incidental
opposition that pits Reason against the Will and from the differentiation of both
Reason and Will from the Unconscious. Hartmann’s “solution” for human mis-
ery is Schopenhauerian: nonbeing and nonwilling are the ultimate and only safe-
guards against human suffering. In proper Hegelian fashion, such a state of
nonsuffering can be attained only when the fullness of time arrives, when that part
of the Unconscious that stands for Reason has prevailed over the Will’s obstreper-
ous clinging to ephemeral and necessitous desires. One has a duty to personally
expedite the arrival of that moment by assisting the travails of intellectual enlight-
enment even though one well knows that even science is an illusory promise.
22. Nevouõ: reference to Nietzsche’s “late” man. See accompanying endnote.
23. baukalisqeivõ.
24. Yet another reading of Nietzsche along scientistic lines.
25. The possibility of constructive and life-affirming deployments of ni-
hilism rests, ultimately, on the paradoxes of physiopsychology which Nietzsche
presented in his autobiographical Ecce Homo: a decadent may still possess suffi-
cient inner health and a core of life-affirming assertion that permits him to con-
quer his malaise.
26. See Will to Power, 9–11, 31–34.
27. See Will to Power, 417: Dionysian wisdom ekes joy out of destructive
acts and from an ephemeral loss of identity through an absorption into nature and
the amorphous “everything.”
28. See Gay Science, 12, and Human, All Too Human, 235: a socialist utopia
would smother salutary distinctions. It is only out of the ground of aristocratic
pride that superlative and exceptional natures can sprout. On the other hand,
84  Notes to Chapter 2

however, and as Kazantzakis’ following sentence makes clear, even the naive and
virulently envious utopias of the socialist levelers are themselves actuated by the
ubiquitous cosmic principle—the will to power—to which only excellent natures
have a proper claim: see Human, All Too Human, 451, 473.
29. Nietzsche’s deeper criticism of the misleading linguistic convention—
and pragmatically convenient but metaphysically unsupported view—of cause/
effect relationships can be found in: Gay Science, 111, 112, 121, 360; Beyond Good
and Evil, 4; Twilight of the Idols, “The Four Great Errors,” 3. For the specific point
made here regarding human character, and on the error of taking the will to be an
independent cause that is “available” to the agent, see Beyond Good and Evil, 15.
30. From the previous sentence the reverse should follow: such symptoms
are not the true parents, they are the offspring of decadence or decline [parakmhv].
Obviously, by “decadence” Kazantzakis here means the actual, galloping, and en-
veloping condition of decadence—not simply a physiological deficiency butan al-
ready established sociocultural framework and historical moment.
31. Will to Power, 132: The European variant of—what Nietzsche takes to
be intrinsically nihilistic—Buddhism is the “pessimistic” strain of philosophy.
Nietzsche developed this thought to its logically ultimate and cruel conclusions:
those who cannot stand certain teachings may begin to perish, rather than being
preserved in succor and consolation, so as to pave the way for humankind’s self-
overcoming, that is, the Superman. See also Genealogy of Morals, III.17 for pes-
simistic nihilism as the intellectualized equivalent of the physiology of animal
hibernation.
32. See Will to Power, 109: modern humanity is sick and decadent; yet, side
by side with the universal malaise, there lies hidden a source of robust and vital
strength—and it is this juxtaposition that explains how Nietzsche can still speak
of a hope for the future.
33. Elsewhere, Nietzsche places his hopes not with history’s progress but
with nature’s pitiless long-run winnowing and elimination of feeble natures: na-
ture will see to it that the weak are removed, in a process of genuine natural selec-
tion. See, for instance, Will to Power, 52.
34. See Will to Power, 15, 37. There is certainly a sinister message here—
even more morbid if it is read in conjunction with what Nietzsche says in his
Zarathustra about the need to overcome pity so the arrival of the Übermensch can
be facilitated and accelerated. See Gay Science, 347: nihilism is a potent medi-
cine—one that can be deployed to bring life to the strong and death, perhaps by
despair-born suicide, to the weak. Stanley Rosen goes so far as to suggest that
Nietzsche’s enticing rhetoric, which indeed has been often mistaken as a late
species of Enlightenment egalitarian radicalism, is meant to entrap the weak, lure
them in, and drive them to a despair that will hasten their readiness to remove
themselves, by death if necessary. See S. Rosen, The Mask of the Enlightenment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.
35. See Will to Power, 37: The stages of the development of pessimism into
the ultimate crisis of nihilism are as follows: (1) The weak perish of it; (2) the
strong destroy whatever has survived; (3) the strongest overcome the very values
 Notes to Chapter 2  85

on which judgments are based. Also, Will to Power, 54: Pessimistic fatalism itself
is to be “respected,” because it advises the weak to speed up their demise. In ibid.
55, further explanations are proffered as to how this cataclysmic cleansing is sup-
posed to take place: Shorn of their supporting values, the weak will find life in-
sufferable. On the other hand, having survived and having escaped unscathed, the
strong will emerge stronger.
36. This is certainly an interesting, and very rare, interpretation of Nietz-
sche’s thought. The concept of truth is notoriously difficult—in modern analyti-
cal philosophy, truth is regarded merely as a property of statements, which if
empirical, are to be subjected to rigorous tests of verification; in technical philo-
sophical analysis today, strong ontological commitments to what the “real” world
truly is are often discouraged. As we saw in chapter 1, Kazantzakis places signifi-
cant emphasis on Nietzsche’s virtuous truthfulness. Kazantzakis also detects and
captures Nietzsche’s commitment to a second-remove notion of truth, as it were:
although the fact that the world can only be known through interpretations pre-
cludes talk of objective truth, there are second-level or second-remove notions of
truth that are meaningful. Perhaps this means that those second-level “truths” are
declared true on the basis of a pragmatic criterion [the second-level “truths” make
certain actual goals possible];
37. A␸ilokevrdeia.
38. Fainomenikovthta.
39. This becomes clearer in the light of The Birth of Tragedy, a work
Kazantzakis read and apparently took very seriously. The strong natures—for in-
stance, the older tragic poets, before Euripides—were able to healthily bypass the
horror of the gaping abyss and happily engage in the aesthetic task (i.e., the life-
enhancing activity of draping the abyss). Compare, here, Alexis Zorba’s personal-
ity and his proclivity to push life’s dance near the brink of the abyss without losing
his concentration
 to the act of dancing or his gleeful and vitalistic celebration of life.
40. Yeu doõ: literally lie, falsity, falsehood.
41. Beyond Good and Evil, 4. On the thoughts expressed in this paragraph,
also see Beyond Good and Evil, 2; Gay Science, 110–111; Human, All Too Human,
31, 33, 34; Will to Power, 486, 497, 584. Also see Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes
of an Untimely Man,” 33
42. The phrase o[ntwõ o[n” is quite common in Plato’s dialogues: see, for ex-
ample, Republic, 490B5, 597D2; Phaedrus, 247C7, 249C3; Sophist, 237E3,
248A11, 256D–E; Timaeus, 52B; Epinomis, 985C1
43. Notice that Kazantzakis does not see the enthronement of the Über-
mensch as a move “beyond good and evil” but as a matter of establishment of a
new table and appropriately life-enhancing table of values. This is consistent with
Will to Power, Preface, 4, which speaks of the urgent for “new values.”
44. The Greek word kakovn means both bad and evil. See Genealogy of
Morals, esp. I.5.
45. On the absence of fixed upper boundaries to humankind’s final desti-
nation contrast: Will to Power, 684 (every species has a limit, beyond which ad-
vancement is not possible), with ibid. 552 (the growth of a species is the process by
86  Notes to Chapter 3

means of which a species endlessly overcomes itself en route to a stronger type). See
also Will to Power, 862, 898, 1023. It is not difficult to reconcile these two appar-
ent directions of Nietzsche’s thought: Here are a few possible reconciliations:
(a) one possible strategy of reconciliation suggests that the species can indeed
evolve beyond itself in a nonbiological sense—remember, it is not biological or sci-
entifically taxonomically meaningful species that Nietzsche has in mind; (b) an-
other possible way for reconciling the two is by suggesting that the species does
not and cannot really—within-nature—overcome itself as species, but, at the same
time, the struggle can go on and a species, even if biologically stationary, can con-
tinue to redefine itself, at a higher and extrabiological level, through its accom-
plishments in self-overcoming; as if it were advancing beyond its boundaries; (c)
the self-overcoming process is not endless, the whole endeavor being tragic but
nobly dignified and rich in meaning that it is as if overcoming were going beyond
the natural limit; (d) it is delusional to believe that a species can continue to evolve
endlessly by its own devices, but the claim that the process can continue beyond
natural limits is one of those life-enhancing delusions that are “higher” than the
vapid “truths” of everyday life.
For other references to self-overcoming and the humanity of the future, see
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 3–4, 7; I.4, 6, 14, 16, 18, 22(A), (C); II.24, 43;
III.56(C), 57(II); IV.73(II), (III).
46. Kazantzakis continues to discover in Nietzsche’s teachings a curiously
sanguine optimism informed by trust in scientific knowledge and confidence in
the prospects of scientific advancement. This message can be extracted mainly
from Nietzsche’s three writings that belong to his positivist period: Human, All
Too Human, Daybreak, and the Gay Science. Contrast Genealogy of Morals,
III.23–25 for Nietzsche’s later and profound insights into the alarming affinities
between the scientific temperament and religious asceticism.

3. [Human Nature]
1. This is a quotation from a standard Greek university textbook in polit-
ical thought, written by university professor N. Kazazis. Kazantzakis annotates the
title [Philosophy of Right and the State] as well as volume and page reference [II.28].
Kazantzakis expected Kazazis to read and support the dissertation, as he explains
in his letter to his parents that is reproduced, in translation, in the Appendix to the
present volume. Kazantzakis mentions an ongoing correspondence with the acad-
emician and, in no uncertain terms, vents an aspiration to become Kazazis’ Assis-
tant, following submission of the dissertation, and to eventually succeed the
professor after the latter’s death. As the Editor of the original text of the disserta-
tion explains, Kazantzakis’ aspirations proved futile. See Patroklos Stavrou’s In-
troduction to the edition (Athens: Ekdoseis Kazantzaki, 1998).
2. Though not strictly true that the teleological structure of the universe
was just being subjected to doubt—in his Ethics, Spinoza had repudiated the
“primitive” teleology of final causes a long time before the end of the nineteenth
century, drawing the conclusions from galloping skeptical, scientific formalist, and
other trends in science and philosophy—it is the case indeed that the death-of-
 Notes to Chapter 3  87

God criticism and developments in science had delivered a final blow to the san-
guine view of an ordered and meaningful universe.
3. This is the traditional teleological view of the nature. Christianity—
and, of course, Judaism through, for instance, a commentator like Philo Judeaus—
inherited and strove to assimilate the philosophical version of teleological nature
from the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, for example, elaborates on this view of nature
in the first book of his Politics. Aquinas spent his cloistered and industrious life
trying to reconcile the Aristotelian teleology with the revealed word of the Scrip-
tures, the resultant product known as Natural Law and still in use as the Catholic
normative model today. In modern times, however, the complacent view and
promising vision of a teleological universe came under assault. As expected, the
implications of the decline of natural teleology were brought out by Nietzsche
himself—already in his relatively early Gay Science, 109, for instance.
4. See previous note. Not to mention that science does not begin to diverge
from philosophic thought until much later, this like so many other revolutionary
upheavals in thought were first made possible in the realm of thought, not in what
is commonly taken as science. Kazantzakis is consistently misled from Nietzsche’s
positivistic period—the period that comprises the composition mainly of Dawn,
Human, All Too Human, and Gay Science. These are Kazantzakis’ main sources,
besides, of course, the quasi-biblical and apocalyptic Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
5. A reference to Heraclitus’s famous dictum [fragment 20].
6. It must be pointed out that Nietzsche was not receptive to vulgar Dar-
winianism, and Kazantzakis himself saw this later in his intellectual career, mainly
through the influence of Bergson’s philosophy of the élan vital. Consider Nietz-
sche’s characteristic comments on this matter, at Gay Science, 224: it is the weak
and frail natures—the ones who perish under the brutal burden of a plebeian cul-
ture—that advance the human type; the physically strong merely keep the human
species alive. Darwin’s and evolutionary biology’s assimilation of humanity unto
the rest of nature—inevitable methodologically and perhaps ideologically—is
incongruous with Nietzschean aristocratic elitism and human exceptionalism.
7. The Gospel According to Matthew, 5:12–14.
8. Quotation marks not in the original, but arguably justified in the con-
text of Kazantzakis’ and Nietzsche’s overall argument. See the immediately fol-
lowing sentence.
9. This sentence appears to smuggle back into the evolutionary picture a
teleological view. It was very recently, however, that even evolutionary biology as
a science made it clear to itself how natural selection through replication is com-
pletely shorn of teleological long-term purposes. The classic text to this effect is
S. J. Gould’s Pandora’s Thumb (New York: Norton, 1980): a startling example dis-
cussed there concerns the awkward survival of a thumb that is not only useless but
an outright impediment to the animal’s actions.
10. A Nietzschean thought—see previous notes—that characteristically oc-
curs to Kazantzakis spontaneously: Kazantzakis comments of Nietzsche’s dis-
agreement with Darwinian thought—see next section—but he does not seem to
be aware that Nietzsche’s hostility to Darwinism is very deep indeed.
88  Notes to Chapter 3

11. See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,”

14; on the historical predominance of mediocrity see Will to Power, 60, 685. Also,
the idea that the average individual—a pejorative term in Nietzsche—is better
adapted to face the rigors of life, see Will to Power 685.
12. Reading this section, also consider the influence of Bergson, with
whose ideas Kazantzakis was becoming acquainted during his Paris years. See
Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell (New York: Holt, 1911), 11: in
the universe two opposite movements are to be found—ascent and descent—the
first corresponding to “an inner work of ripening,” while the latter is to be com-
pared to instantaneous release of spring.
13. Zwikav yainovmena: literally phenomena of [or pertaining to] life. See
below on the will to power as a “source of vitalistic manifestations.” Needless to
say, the word vitalistic is not here used in a negative sense.
14. Ghvraõ: literally old age, but the context demands a critical if not disap-
proving word, like senility.
15. The susceptibility of higher natures to “decadence” is a recurrent, nearly
obsessive and deeply ambivalent, theme in Nietzsche’s work: The entire concep-
tion of the autobiographical Ecce Homo is arguably predicated on this, as intimated
in Nietzsche’s Preface; see also ibid. I.1–2, Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of
Socrates,” 1, and Will to Power, 684.
16. Indeed, there are many passages in which Nietzsche speaks emphatically
of the absence of any systematic plan of historical evolution of humanity and draws
conclusions from this. See, for instance, as early as in the Untimely Meditations, II,
On the Advantages and Abuses of History for Life, where Nietzsche specifies as the
value of “monumental history” as consisting not in the objective content of histor-
ical or scientifically assessed events but in the unpredictable—and deep-down arbi-
trary—uses to which a few rare and mercurial sprits may choose to put historical
narratives; and Human, All Too Human, 16, where Nietzsche goes beyond what
Kazantzakis has in mind here: the value and essence of humanity, whatever they
may be, are inevitably the outcome of accidental visions and random errors.
17. Nietzsche conceived of the will to power as his major metaphysical con-
cept—one, to an extent, suggested to him through a reflection on the differences
between his thought and the philosophy of Schopenhauer—as early as when he
wrote his Dawn: see 63, 131–148, 174, 214, 224, 289, 315, 334, 377, 385, 411,
516–517, 549; also Gay Science, 13. On Nietzsche’s “Discovery of the Will to
Power,” see Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New
York: Meridian, 1956), the chapter under this title and esp. 382.
18. Kanwvn: The word generally means “rule” but “mediocrity” [the ruling
type] makes better sense in this context.
19. A reference to Nietzsche’s reasons for disagreement with the philoso-
phy of Schopenhauer—ultimately, the same reasons for Nietzsche’s denunciation
of Oriental philosophy in its Buddhist form: behind the self-effacing withdrawal
of the personality is an atrophy or a capitulation of the will—“playing dead” out of
inner exhaustion or weakness, and, paradoxically, doing so out of a desperate and
craven will to still preserve oneself. See Gay Science, 13, 347; Genealogy of Morals,
 Notes to Chapter 3  89

III.11, 13; and Will to Power 47, 55: Both Buddhism and Christianity, Nietzsche
opines, owe their origin to a cataclysmic collapse of the will—a despairing, crum-
bling, and a quest for a master to whom to submit; but, of course, the will to power
remain intact, indeed propels human action, even behind this retreat and apparent
suicidal rush of whole masses.
20. See Antichrist, 15, 25, 39, 47.
21. See chapter 1 of the dissertation, beginning.
22. Kazantzakis’ italics.
23. Zwikhv. See above.
24. In English in the original. Also, Kazantzakis capitalizes the word strug-
gle both in English and in Greek.
25. Not of the “will to prevail” as one would expect.
26. A recurrent thought in Nietzsche: see, for instance, Gay Science, 110;
Beyond Good and Evil, 10; Will to Power, 515, 568, 583. This theme suffers from
some of the ambiguities, discussed in notes to chapter 1 above, which surround
Nietzsche’s theories about truth.
27. Quotation marks not in the original but warranted by the tenor of the
argument. On this latter point, see further Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man,” 35. See also ibid., “Four Great Errors,” 5, for a psychological ex-
planation of the origins of truth—postulating “truth” renders the world familiar.
28. The locus classicus for the distinction between different types of goods is
the beginning of the IInd book of Plato’s Republic. There Socrates distinguishes
between three different types of good: goods that are sought only for the sake of
their consequences [e.g., a bitter medicine one swallows only in anticipation of
better health]; goods that are choice-worthy in themselves [e.g., health itself]; and
goods that are desirable both for their consequences and in themselves. In the di-
alogue, Plato’s two real-life brothers, Glaukon and Adeimantus, commission
Socrates to prove to them that justice, and excellence of soul in general, are goods
that are choice worthy for their one sake: one would still choose to be just even if
one expected nothing beneficial to flow from that, even in fact if one expected only
to be subjected to the whole array of humanly possible and endurable forms of tor-
ture. By common admission, Socrates does not succeed in this task. Nietzsche
stands at a point of culmination of a Western-philosophic critique of the possi-
bility of ethical disinterestedness; he is not the originator of this line of thinking
but he is perhaps the most radical exponent, one moreover who embeds this cri-
tique within a broader quasiframework of negative philosophy and one who does
not hesitate to apply psychological dissection, and vivisection.
29. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), celebrated social Darwinian, so famous
in the earlier part of this century, is one of the few writers whom the Justices of the
U.S. Supreme Court deign to quote in opinions. See also chapter 1 above and
notes there.
30. The quotation marks are not in the original but, I think, are clearly
required in the present context.
31. See Will to Power 1067; see also 382, 423, 478, 579.
32. Beyond Good and Evil, 59: but contrast ibid. 32.
90  Notes to Chapter 3

33. Perhaps “philosophical” would better capture Kazantzakis’ thought

than “scientific,” but Kazantzakis does say episthmoniko e[nstinkto.
34. Curiously essentialist language—not only does it remind us of Kazantza-
kis’ own way of thinking but it also illustrates an aspect of Nietzsche’s own, deeply
antinomic, philosophy.
35. For the sake of precision, perhaps a clarification is necessary here. See
Genealogy of Morals II.16, 18: what is late is not the soul—an animistic concept
had preceded the decadent variants—but the Christian view that turned the
immortal soul of otherworldly judgment against life itself.
36. A psychological—comforting—function is also attributed by Nietzsche:
see Twilight of the Idols, “Four Great Errors,” 6 and Will to Power, 502.
37. Emyucwvn.
38. See Twilight of the Idols, “The Four Great Errors,” 3: the primitive ani-
mistic psychology can be explained as the outgrowth of a belief that every act must
have a doer—someone responsible, that is, someone on whom the scourge of pun-
ishment can now be gleefully inflicted. In other words, a sadistic self-awareness
of the will to power is the root cause of the stipulation that every effect has to have
a cause. Christianity translated this underlying will to power to its own notion of
a “soul” or will, which was then attributed to everything worth speaking about. See
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue 3: Christianity’s establishment of dominion over
the body inevitably meant that the body would from now on be kept ideologically
and physically in the condition of a perennially crushed and enfeebled subordinate.
39. See “The Problem of Socrates,” which is section II of Twilight of the
Idols, for one of the most concise of Nietzsche’s statements of this thought on an
equilibrium between hypertrophic and atrophying aspects of an organism.
40. See Antichrist, 38, 42.
41. Spoudhv.
42. Procwr␻men: advance.
43. See Beyond Good and Evil, 123; Genealogy of Morals, III.9; Will to Power,
339, 383. Notice that as Kazantzakis acknowledges elsewhere in this dissertation,
Nietzsche also admitted that the invention of the soul itself conferred depth to
human existence and, ironically and through the unintended consequences that
are so characteristic a phenomenon of historical unfoldings leading to nihilism, it
paved the way for the future Nietzsche envisions. See Genealogy of Morals, I.6; see
also Beyond Good and Evil, 12, where Nietzsche calls for more creative variations
of the “soul hypothesis.”
44. See Genealogy of Morals, III.1, 13, 15, 20; Beyond Good and Evil, 57.
45. An elliptic reference to Nietzsche’s elaborate theory of ressentiment; see
Genealogy of Morals, I.10, 11, 13, 14, 16; II.11, 17; Antichrist, 24.
46. For Christianity’s war against the natural instincts, see: Beyond Good and
Evil, 55; Genealogy of Morals, III; Antichrist, 5-6, 14, 25.
47. Zwikevõ: it can also be rendered as “animal” [adjective].
48. See Genealogy of Morals, I.6: the invention of—or revamping of
teachings on—the soul gave depth to the human animal, so humanity finally
became interesting.
 Notes to Chapter 3  91

49. In my opinion, the full meaning of Kazantzakis’ thought at this point re-
quires a supplement: ‘There are only weak wills and strong wills.’
50. This rather difficult passage might be better grasped in the light of the
Platonic tradition and Nietzsche’s revolt against Platonic idealism. The notion
that true entities antedate their actually known, empirically ascertainable, and fac-
tual manifestations is patently Platonic. Kazantzakis draws the Nietzschean corol-
lary, in this paragraph: the Western belief in free will is one more consequence of
Platonism, insofar as this belief presupposes that the objects to be actualized—
hence, “freely” chosen—are prior to fact of choice, and to the acting agency. This
is a profound critique. It proved important as a catalyst for many of Heidegger’s
thoughts in the twentieth century.
51. See Human, All Too Human, 228: there is no free choice for the “strong”—
the greater the degree of fixity of the motives the greater is the strength of character.
See also ibid. 224: great natures preserve the type human, while weaker ones seek to
advance it—a thought that is, on its face, inconsistent with Nietzsche’s views of
strong and weak wills, unless seen in the light of the preceding observation about the
relative fixity; hence, lack of free will (or of the illusion of a free will)—on the part of
strong natures. See Beyond Good and Evil, 260; Genealogy of Morals, II.11: the fiction
of the free will was invented by the weak or “slave” types, so they could impute guilt
to their masters—if free will is possible, then the “master” could have acted otherwise.
The deeper interpretation of the origins of the belief in free will is, I believe, this:
(Beyond Good and Evil, 19, also Genealogy of Morals, I.13) the will to power, seeking
to dominate and turning against the agent as immediately available object, is the ori-
gin of the feeling of a free will. It must be observed that Nietzsche objects to the free
will but is not endorsing the view that the will is “unfree” either.” The “unfree” will,
understood as the deterministic or automatist will, betrays a misleading mechanistic
or Newtonian [deterministic-explanatory] view of the universe: see Beyond Good and
Evil, 21.
52. The reference to “will,” of course, is from the point of view of the “weak
and decadent.” Otherwise, the text would require “power” instead of “will.”
53. See Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates,” for the account of
the entrapment of the strong—through a cunning appeal to a roundabout exercise
of the agonistic instinct. Contrast Beyond Good and Evil, 290: the strong prefer to
obey. For the development of the free will notion as a deepening of responsibil-
ity—hence, as a prerogative of the strong—see: Genealogy of Morals, II.2, and
Dawn, 9, 14, 16.
54. The reader might wonder at this point: Is the invention of a free will to
be credited to the weak and decadent natures of characteristically religious tem-
perament? Or is freedom of the will an inherently radical conceptual discovery that
makes possible resistance to the weak-minded fatalism of religious souls? It seems
that Kazantzakis astutely detects a creative ambiguity in the heart of Nietzsche’s
thought. Throughout his work, Nietzsche wavers in his views of certain cardinal
figures in the history of philosophy, religion, and of Christianity in particular.
Those who, with mightily ground-shaking transvaluations, have cast a ponderous
pall on the world stage—including the pathological dialectician Socrates and the
92  Notes to Chapter 3

shrewd hater Paul—must have still commandeered enormous resources of will to

achieve their dubious purposes. The tension disappears once we are reminded of
Nietzsche’s autobiographical commentary on his own forcefully “decadent” powers
in Ecce Homo. Presumably, the difference between Nietzsche and those other law-
givers is that the others lacked the inner core of health for which Nietzsche effu-
sively congratulates himself in the grandiloquent language of his late works.
55. In Latin in the original: “Sunt abnegatores Christi dum asserunt liberum
arbitrium.”
56. Kazantzakis identifies this passage as Will to Power, vol. I, p. 231. Cf.
ibid. aphorisms 41–42: The supposed causes of decadence are actually its conse-
quences. See also 38–39: moral nihilism is, properly diagnosed, “physiological
decadence,” that is, humanity’s derogation from the paths of healthy instinct. On
the relation between procreation and a squandering of energy, see ibid., no. 815.
57. On making virtue out of one’s physiological needs and temperament,
see Gay Science, 39.
58. The metaphor of a mask is recurrent and significant in Nietzsche’s
writings.
59. Logikhv: common sense is koinhv logikhv, but Kazantzakis is depicting
a character type, he is not referring to a student of formal Logic.
60. This remained one of Kazantzakis’ favorite pictures throughout his life.
61. Proevrcetai: literally, stems from.
62. Either because there is no free will; or because only a few are capable of
the responsibility that ennobles the human type, and it would be incongruous to
submit such great natures to the reproaches of the masses.
63. This sentence pithily suggests that Kazantzakis is reading Nietzsche
primarily through the German thinker’s positivist period. The positivist optimism
is evidence in the sudden suspension of the ontological problem of truth [rather
than question notions of truth and truthfulness, there is here confidence that cer-
tain principles and values can be “truer” than others, and their truth content is de-
pendent on their object’s elevation or, perhaps, on their potential utility in
elevating humanity]; and in the partial replacement of apocalyptic Nietzscheanism
by a problem in social-psychological engineering [announcement of a new table of
values that can propel humanity to a brighter future]. The succeeding sentence,
however, partly qualifies, and adds renewed depth to, this statement. Another ex-
ample of Kazantzakis’ emphasis on the positivist side of Nietzsche’s thought is to
be found in the penultimate paragraph of this section.
64. Kazantzakis here is too rash in attributing an unqualifiedly determinis-
tic view to Nietzsche. See previous note.
65. On the “innocence of becoming,” see Will to Power, 552, 765, 787.
66. This is what the text says, but it makes better sense to read “wisdom is
only a path that . . .”
67. See Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 34: impov-
erishment of life’s deeper instincts leads to suffering and, from there, to demand
for equal rights. See also ibid, 50, and Will to Power, 52.
 Notes to Chapter 3  93

68. On this see Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes,” 14, 37; Will to Power, 53,
382; Gay Science, 349.
69. This and the following sentences display Kazantzakis’ early attachment
to classical antiquity, which he disavowed or at least significantly qualified by the
time he wrote the chapter on the Parthenon in the Report to Greco.
70. Aristotle, Politics, I, the infamous chapter on slavery: see esp. 1255a2–4.
71. Hqikhv also means Morality, but the meaning of this sentence plausibly
requires a reading of ‘Moral Philosophy.’
72. See Beyond Good and Evil, 202–203; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II.XXIX:
“The Tarantulas”; Human, All Too Human, 457; Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes
of an Untimely Man,” 37.
73. Beyond Good and Evil, 201–203.
74. Aristotle’s concept of geometrical justice comes to mind: treating un-
equals as if they were equals is unjust. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1131a29ff. Also see
Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 34, 40, 48.
75. No quotation marks in the original, but, of course, “beyond good and
evil” [jenseits von gut und böse] is the renowned title of one of Nietzsche’s works.
76. See Will to Power, 85–86, 125.
77. See Nietzsche, Gay Science, 328: “It is certain that the belief in the rep-
rehensibility of egoism, preached with such stubbornness and conviction, has on
the whole done harm to egoism (in favor of the herd instinct, as I shall repeat a
hundred times!), especially by depriving it of a good conscience, and by bidding us
seek in it the source of all misfortune.”
78. Characteristically, Nietzsche’s views on women, or on men for that
matter, are dispersed throughout his works. There is, however, a whole section,
VII, of Human, All Too Human, which is entitled “Woman and Child.”
79. I have been using man instead of human being or humanity in this sec-
tion of the translation in order to avoid an unwarranted gender-egalitarian con-
struction of either Kazantzakis’ or Nietzsche’s meaning. Nietzsche’s statements
on women are often acerbic and have gained him a reputation of virulent misog-
yny, although the seminal significance of his thought for modernist and post-
modernist illuminations has also fostered a predictable share of ambiguity among
many notable feminist writers. [See M. Pearsall and K. Oliver, eds., Feminist In-
terpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State
University, 1997).]
80. An interesting insight we find in Human, All Too Human, 424. Social
institutions like the family render motivating idealizations inflexible and sclerotic.
81. Proorismovõ: literally “destiny.”
82. çpobavllei; it is possible that epibavllei is meant, which means “dic-
tates, requires.”
83. Kazantzakis’ reading clashes with another way in which Nietzsche views
the nature of women: simply put, women are Protean—they lack a firm nature and
acquire the features that are called for by the moment’s urgent or convenient
requirements. This does not necessarily mean that women are inferior—indeed, the
94  Notes to Chapter 3

rare perfect women are said to be better than correspondingly perfect men (Human,
All Too Human, 377). Nor is it clear if this protean nature of women is brought
about by male make-believe projections (ibid., 400) or is strangely intrinsic to
woman’s “essence” to lack an essential nature (cf. Zarathustra I, “The Dance
Song”). In either case, Nietzsche apparently insists that there is no fixed feminine
nature, while—notwithstanding his perspectivism—he seems to suggest that there
is an essential male nature (e.g., Human, All Too Human, 421). But Nietzsche also
writes, in other passages, as if there were a fundamental feminine nature display-
ing the characteristics Kazantzakis adduces (e.g., Beyond Good and Evil, 232); even
then, woman’s essential nature is presumably sheer instinctuality (ibid, 233), or
more “natural” than the . . . nature of man (cf. Gay Science, 352).
84. Pneumatikhv: “mental,” “intellectual,” but also “spiritual.”
85. Woman, on the other hand, is shrewd enough to exaggerate and abet
the notion that she is really weaker than man. See Gay Science, 66, 70.
86. See Gay Science, 363.
87. See Beyond Good and Evil, 115: Where neither love nor hatred enter the
picture, a “woman’s game” is inevitably reduced to mediocrity.
88. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “Old and Young Women.”
89. All the above quotations are from Zarathustra, ibid. See further Gay Sci-
ence, 72; Human, All Too Human, 432. See also Gay Science, 363: Woman naturally
wants to be possessed, which Nietzsche also reads as an act of denunciation of nat-
ural rights. “Woman gives herself, while man is bent on acquiring more and
more.” As in most Nietzschean aphorisms about the sexes, it is not clear how nat-
ural attributes are to be distinguished from cultural and ideological artifices: for in-
stance, it is not clear if this presumed natural denunciation of natural rights is a
denunciation of rights originally possessed—so that this is a denaturalization of
woman; or if Nietzsche means that this characterization captures the essence of
woman’s natural psychology, in which case there must be something artificial
about the notion of a natural right itself—the right that it is natural for woman to
relinquish although she originally possessed it.
90. Beyond Good and Evil, 238: there is a natural antagonism between man
and woman, and the quest for equal rights is a sign of shallowness. Also, ibid,
232, 239.
91. See also Beyond Good and Evil, 144: “When a woman has scholarly in-
clinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexuality . . .” [Walter Kauf-
mann’s translation from Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
(New York: Vintage, 1966), 89.] On the democratic, hence nihilistic, affiliations
of the “self-proclaimed” declaration of scholarly independence in general, see
Beyond Good and Evil, 204, and, more specifically on women, ibid., 232 and 239.
92. But contrast Gay Science, Preface, 4: “One should have more respect for
the bashfulness with which nature has hidden behind riddles and iridescent un-
certainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not letting us see her
reasons? Perhaps her name is—to speak Greek—Baubo?”
93. See generally, Beyond Good and Evil, 233, 239.
94. See Beyond Good and Evil, 232–236, 239.
 Notes to Chapter 3  95

95. Human, All Too Human, 425.

96. Kazantzakis is freely paraphrasing from Beyond Good and Evil, 239.
97. Ceirafev
 thsiõ: literally, “emancipation.”
98. Genikou [general], not gunaikeivon [feminine].
99. Beyond Good and Evil, 239; cf. Human, All Too Human, 412.
100. Here is the original [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I.7: “On Child and Mar-
riage”], in Walter Kaufmann’s translation [The Portable Nietzsche (New York:
Viking, 1982), 181–182]:
I have a question for you alone my brother: like a sounding lead, I cast this ques-
tion into your soul that I might know how deep it is.
You are young and wish for a child and marriage. But I ask you: Are you a
man entitled to wish for a child? Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror,
the commander of your senses, the master of your virtues? This I ask you. Or is it
the animal and need that speak out of your wish? Or loneliness? Or lack of piece
with yourself?
Let your victory and your freedom long for a child. You shall build living
monuments to your victory and your liberation. You shall build over and beyond
yourself, but first you must be built yourself, perpendicular in body and soul. You
shall not only reproduce yourself, but produce something higher. May the garden
of marriage help you in that!
You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel—
you shall create a creator.
...
Let this be the meaning and truth of your marriage. But that which the
all-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage—alas, what shall I name that? Alas,
this poverty of the soul in pair! Alas, this filth of the soul in pair! Alas, this
wretched contentment in pair! Marriage they call this; and they say that their
marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superflu-
ous. No, I do not like them—these animals entangled in the heavenly net. And
let the god who limps near to bless what he never joined keep his distance from
me! Do not laugh at such marriages! What child would not have cause to weep
over its parents?

101. But, for the sake of balance, contrast Dawn, 359, 437.
102. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Child and Marriage.” At this point
Kazantzakis concludes one of the shortest sections of his dissertation, with no fur-
ther comment. Those who are rattled by Kazantzakis’ often hostile depiction of
women in his novels might not be surprised that, in this early dissertation, he so
avidly cites Nietzsche’s rabidly misogynist asides. It is noteworthy, however, that
Kazantzakis resorts to quoting from Nietzsche’s text more often in this section
than in any other. Uncharacteristically, Kazantzakis confines his labors to citation
and brief explication in this section; he appears to be refraining from gloss and
comment. Also noticeable in this section are Kazantzakis’ foisting of a romantic
tint on Nietzsche’s views of marriage and the insertion of a rare comment—pre-
cious for the exegetic commentator—that proclaims Nietzsche to be an “anarchist
and individualist.”
96  Notes to Chapter 3

103. “Anthropos” should be clearly translated as “man” in this passage, I

would think.
104. Aristotle, Politics, 1253a20: “One who is incapable of entering into a
social association, or who is so self-sufficing that he has no need to do so, cannot
be a part of a state, so he must be either a beast or a god.”
105. Exwterivkeusiõ: Literally, “externalization.”
106. Nietzsche promises a new kind of pleasant association in the future
and after degeneracy has been historically transformed into a millennial society of
superior beings and free spirits: see Human, All Too Human, 98. But, indeed, see
Beyond Good and Evil, 26: anyone who does not experience disgust and a feeling of
asphyxiation in the company of others—anyone who does not yearn for blessed
solitude—is not a spirit of elevated tastes. Ibid., 29: loneliness is the price, privi-
lege, and distinguishing mark of the strong. Ecce Homo “Why I Am So Wise,” 8:
“On the tree of the future shall we build our trees; to us, the lonesome ones, shall
eagles bring food on their beaks.”
107. Contested and historically infamous phrase—one that Nazi apologists
used to claim Nietzsche as their herald. Nietzsche does not have in mind Aryans
or literally blonde and fair human beings but the predatory lion. See Genealogy of
Morals, I.11. II.17; Twilight of the Idols, “Improvers,” 2.
108. See Genealogy of Morals on Nietzsche’s famous distinction between
noble morality and the base “herd” morality. On the democratic modern triumph
and superimposition of a herd mentality see Beyond Good and Evil, 44; cf. Gay
Science, 328.
109. Of course, this applies to the earlier stages. Later, the weak or herd an-
imals subvert the strong and noble beastlike natural human beings by means of su-
perstition-inducing religious incantations and through the convenient discovery of
crippling guilt. This is the saga Nietzsche so eloquently related in his Genealogy of
Morals. Alternatively, Kazantzakis may be sensing an apocalyptic vision: once
again, as it once was in the bosom of nature, the weak will be brought into sub-
mission, at a time that will perhaps coincide with the elevation and enthronement
of the Übermensch. But is this meant to last or will even this future utopia be sub-
verted by the sly weak people?
110. See the definition of justice Plato puts in the mouth of Thrasymachus
in book I of the Republic. Thrasymachus insists that justice is the advantage of the
stronger (338C), which is open to the objection that the stronger might actually
be mistaken about what is to their true advantage, in which case they might be
well advised to listen to philosophic teachings. A minor character in the dialogue,
Cleitophon, interferes and suggests a more consistently legal-positivist emenda-
tion of Thrasymachus’s definition: justice is what the strong take to be to their ad-
vantage, whether they are correct about this or not (Republic, 340A–B). Another
Socratic interlocutor, in Plato’s Gorgias, who closely anticipates Nietzsche’s posi-
tion is Callicles.
111. A direct repudiation of Hegel’s philosophy of history.
112. This should read: “what has been traditionally considered immorality.”
Since Nietzsche has presumably exploded the ancient fiction that objective evalu-
 Notes to Chapter 3  97

ations of morality are tenable, it does not make sense to evaluate the origin of the
state objectively and pronounce it “immoral” as Kazantzakis does in this sentence.
Kazantzakis could be ironic in this sentence. Or, arguably, this is actually a slip—
a telltale sign affording us an unintended glimpse into Kazantzakis’ innermost as-
sumptions about objective evaluations. Similar instances of ambiguity can be
sometimes detected in Nietzsche’s writings.
113. Daybreak, 112 is the central passage for this and the following assertions
Kazantzakis makes in this paragraph. There, Nietzsche issues a genetic explanation
of the phenomenon of morality: duties, the cornerstone of morality, constitute noth-
ing but rights—that is, conscious and efficacious exercise of power owned—by oth-
ers. In the realm of foreign relations, Nietzsche goes on to say, this originating force
of bare might becomes evident time and again with exemplary and stunning blunt-
ness: the very structure of rights, responsibilities, codes of conduct, and moral con-
cerns is so malleable that it would be embarrassing if this were the case with domestic
legal arrangements and moral codes: and yet, this unmediated actualization of power
is the truth—a truth that is sublimated, hidden, rationalized, and institutionalized in
the context of moral and legal arrangements. The thought that all social institutions
are artificial and desperate conversions of fleeting passions into permanent—
of course, power-supported—appurtenances is expressed at Daybreak, 27.
114. See what Thrasymachus, the sophistical teacher of Rhetoric, says
about tyranny in Plato’s Republic, 544B: “[The petty thief is generally denounced
as unjust and immoral.] But when [someone], in addition to stealing property,
also kidnaps and enslaves the whole citizen population [as the tyrant does] he is
then pronounced blessed and in bliss not only by those he has captured but by
anyone who happens about the story. In this way people praise him who has per-
petrated perfect and complete injustice.”
115. Exwterikeuvei: literally “externalizes,” used twice in this sentence, once
to refer to the individual’s deepest wishes and once to describe the State’s actions.
116. Or a degenerating natural instinct—a derangement of natural instincts
so that they no longer correspond or respond to their naturally assigned stimuli.
See Twilight of the Idols, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” esp. 5. Altruistic self-sacrifice
is the expropriation of alien functions by an inherently underdeveloped, hence par-
asitic, will: see Gay Science, 119.
117. Kazantzakis was writing before the outbreak of the great wars of the
twentieth century but he certainly had ample examples from earlier Western his-
tory attesting to the ferociousness of human nature.
118. A key text is Will to Power, 619: Modern science, which is accorded
boundless respect and admiration, continues to evoke quasi-magical forces: attrac-
tion and repulsion, and action at a distance are two instances of this surreptitious
and generally undetected scientific adherence to superstitious and anthropomor-
phic forces. Instead, Nietzsche states, the will to power, as a natural force, aug-
mented with an inner will to domination for sentient things—conceived in the
analogy of nature and not reflected back anthropomorphically—eschews such en-
during views of a magical nature. It follows that the absorption of others, of which
Kazantzakis speaks in this passage, is itself not an anthropomorphic projection but
98  Notes to Chapter 3

an implacable, essentially “mindless,” natural process whose operation is coexten-

sive with existence itself.
119. This makes clear that Kazantzakis discovers in Nietzsche not the absence
of morality but a harsh ethic of aggression and aggrandizement.
120. Dikaiopraxiva has connotations that correspond to the English term
“due process.”
121. In other words, Kazantzakis reads Nietzsche as a legal positivist—one
who accords the term “law” and “right” only to commands issued by a duly con-
stituted authority. Kazantzakis’ reading might be based on Nietzsche’s Human, All
Too Human, no’s. 98–99.
122. See Human All, Too Human, 472, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of
an Untimely Man,” 39.
123. See also Dawn, 112: The rights we cede to others are coextensive with
the unoccupied space forfeited by our proportionately declining force. This is not
simply the legal-positivist assertion that rights are always correlative with someone
else’s duties—which is supposed to show that law is ultimately the command of a
superior that cannot and will not be disobeyed with any reasonable degree of suc-
cess. [This is the so-called Austinian theory of law.] Nietzsche’s account is far
more subtle, and avoids some of the snares into which Austinian legal positivism
falls. Creation of space, into which the “rights” of others may begin to prop up,
may well be entailed by psychological and moral [compulsory morality-engen-
dered] forces. This follows from Nietzsche’s subtle and rich understanding of the
concept of force—which is captured by Kazantzakis in these lines.
124. Foreigners living in Athens who enjoyed certain immunities but not a
full-fledged Athenian citizen’s rights.
125. Erastaiv Politeivaõ: Lovers of the State. Cf. Pericles’ Funeral Ora-
tion, as attributed by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, II.43.1.
126. See Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, III.2: “The greatest and
oldest of the offices were the King, the War-lord and the Archon. Of these the of-
fice of King was the oldest, for it was ancestral.” The kingship was transformed
into a constitutional office and its tenure was finally limited to ten years after the
“people deprived the descendants of Melanthus, called Medontidae, of most of
their power” (Pausanias, IV.5.8). In the classical period, the King Archon’s pre-
rogatives were mainly limited to ritual supervision.
127. Human, All Too Human, 603. Compare Beyond Good and Evil, 79: One
who does not requite love with love is betraying—or letting show forth—the bottom
sediment of his being. It is not clear, of course, that this is a disapproval of those who
fail to return love. Also 163: love brings out the exceptional qualities in the lover—
which would suggest that the prospect of having one’s love returned is rather unim-
portant anyway. Ibid., 175: in the end one’s love is indeed directed at exalting one’s
own ability to desire, not the object of desire itself. Human, All Too Human, 523: the
demand to be loved is condemned as a sign of unwarranted arrogance.
128. Kalovn kai divkaion.
129. The Genealogy of Morals remains the ultimate analysis of this
phenomenon.
 Notes to Chapter 3  99

130. Aristokratikovõ.
131. That is, ruled by mob rule.
132. Amavrthma: originally, in ancient Greek, “error”; in New Testament
Greek, “sin.” Kazantzakis uses this word throughout in this paragraph. I render
as “transgression” at first, to apply to conditions that antedate the Judeo-Christian
evaluation, and revert to “sin” when the context leaves no doubt that the religious
evaluation is meant.
133. Kazantzakis’ analysis appears to be consistent with Nietzsche’s notori-
ously anti-Semitic barbs. Nevertheless, one would seriously misunderstand both
Nietzsche and Kazantzakis if one took them to be anti-Semites. In his Report to
Greco, Kazantzakis allows himself an outpouring of sympathy for the woebegone
genius of the Jew, whose eternal sufferings are essentially coeval with History,
claims Kazantzakis. His characteristically acerbic hyperbole notwithstanding,
Nietzsche was not anti-Semitic either. Walter Kaufmann has taken pains to es-
tablish this [see, e.g., his accompanying editorial notes in Friedrich Nietzsche: On
the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, translated and with a commentary by Wal-
ter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969)].
134. Ormhvv: see Prolegomena, I.1.
135. See Genealogy of Morals, I.16; Antichrist, 58–59.
136. Twilight of the Idols, “Improvers of Mankind,” 2: enfeebled and,
through continuous subjection to fear, pain, wounds, and hunger, they are become
sickly. See also Beyond Good and Evil, 257: At the beginning, the “noble cast” was
always the more barbaric one: they were “more complete beasts, that is, more com-
plete men.”
137. Nietzsche’s blonde Bestie, which Nazi ideology expropriated with
alacrity as a symbolic reference to Aryan supremacy. Nietzsche coined the expres-
sion and he deploys it in Genealogy of Morals, I.11 and II.17, and in “The Im-
provers of Mankind,” 2, in Twilight of the Idols. The “blondness,” however, refers
to the characteristic color of the lion and not to a racially distinct phenotype. Wal-
ter Kaufmann has meticulously documented this in his Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psy-
chologist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian, 1956), ch. 7, sc. III. Kaufmann stretches
credulity, however, when he claims that Nietzsche does not glorify the “unsubli-
mated animal instinct” represented by the phrase “blond beast” (ibid., 195).
138. See previous section of this chapter, and Twilight of the Idols, “Skir-
mishes of an Untimely Man,” 34, 37, 48.
139. For Nietzsche’s extremely hostile views on the French Revolution, see
Genealogy of Morals, I.16; BeyondGood and Evil, 38, 253; Will to Power, 94. 
140. Reading proscwrou sai (giving in, caving in) for procwrou sai
(advancing).
141. In addition to the generally deleterious effects of democracy on the
rare and aloof genius, the greatest harm is caused by democracy’s devaluations and
destruction of the “pathos of distance” between high and low—a characteristic lev-
eling not only in speech but engrained in practice, which virtually guarantees per-
petual mediocrity: see Beyond Good and Evil, 257.
142. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “The New Idol.”
100  Notes to Chapter 4

143. Ibid.
144. This does not follow from the preceding quote: The molding and
forging of compact peoples intones the eternal glory of the lawgiver—someone
like the Greek Lycourgos or the Hebrew Moses. It does not follow that, for
Nietzsche, the people itself is destined, or intended by its creator, to achieve great-
ness. This is a noteworthy gloss by Kazantzakis himself, which is not quite in the
spirit of the original he quotes. Nietzsche himself could hardly find a people to
praise, except perhaps for the ancient Greeks and a few others.
145. See Human, All Too Human, 474 (every state is zealous about letting
culture rise higher than itself), and contrast ibid. 471.
146. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III. “On the Olive Mount.”
147. Ibid., I. “The New Idol.”

4. Religion—Morality—Right
1. Axivai ⫽ values. They had been called ideas [idevai] in the preced-
ing paragraph.
2. Like Nietzsche, Kazantzakis is here thinking of Christianity as an es-
sentially Hebraic religion. The logic of the argument about the universality of
“weak and decadent” divinities must be understood in the context of the earlier,
Feuerbachian, claim that divinity is formed by elevating and magnifying human
characteristics (see Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity). The meaning
is this: When the human being has devolved into an enfeebled and “decadent”
condition, so do his Gods.
3. This must be a reference to St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the
Statues, Addressed to the People of Antioch, III.21.
4. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung für Metaphysik der Sitten. A more accu-
rate formulation is: Act in such a way that you can, without logical contradiction,
will that the maxim of your conduct can become a universal law. For instance, it
is logically impossible, for Kant, that the liar can will that lying be universally prac-
ticed; in that case, the liar himself would not be believed either. The point is not
to look into the consequences of an action but to magnify it, universalize its prin-
ciple, in order, in this way, to be able to examine whether this leads to contradic-
tions; if contradictions can be detected, the maxim fails the test of Kantian
rationality. Kazantzakis, however, reads Kantian ethics as a doctrinate system that
eschews examination altogether.
5. Arthur Schopenhauer’s major work in moral philosophy is Über das
Fundament der Moral (1840). Deeply offended by the Danish Academy’s with-
holding of a prize from the above work, even though it was the only one submit-
ted, Schopenahuer returned to moral philosophy in 1841, when he published Die
beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik.
6. Kazantzakis could be referring to the famed “state of nature,” a hy-
pothesis about the presocial origins of human nature that was advanced presum-
ably to shed light on human nature and on the origins of civil society and
legitimate government. This device was mainly deployed by social contract theo-
rists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Thomas Hobbes and
 Notes to Chapter 4  101

John Locke. Nevertheless, Kazantzakis calls this state one of social intercourse
[koinwniva] and this is at odds with the primary assumption of social contract the-
ories—the assumption that sociability is unnatural. This apparently self-contra-
dictory combination of social contract and primordial community can indeed be
found in Nietzsche. In no’s. 98–99 of section II (entitled “The History of Moral
Feelings”) of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche combines a classical, nearly Aris-
totelian, view of natural human sociability with what sounds like a version of the
utilitarian component of Hobbes’ contractarianism—the conception of human na-
ture as an atomistic entity bent on adding up and subtracting pleasures and pains
and computing the factors that ensure preservation of life and avoidance of pain.
Famously, Nietzsche, however, finds the will to power, and not the pursuit of self-
preservation, as human nature’s fundamental driving force.
7. That is, once the mutability and fluidity as well as the psychological de-
termination of conscience are taken into account, the myth of a free will, w hich pre-
sumably chooses to follow an objective moral law collapses. It is not even “fair,” let
alone meaningful, to reward and punish actions that emanate from a shifting agent
and are not freely chosen. This difficult sentence can also be read along the following
lines: Morality has been traditionally dependent on promises of reward and punish-
ment, whether in this earthly world or in an afterlife. But once it is realized that the
conditions of the moral agency—ability to act or forbear—are beyond our control,
our actions can no longer be rewarded or punished with justice or in a meaningful
way: it would not be “our” acts that are being rewarded and punished; and it would
not even help to attach rewards and punishments to acts for the sake of motivating or
deterring moral agents we would still have no choice as to how to act anyway.
8. Alhqhvõ logikhv: Literally, “true logic.”
9. In this section, “right” refers to political right. Kazantzakis is inconsis-
tent in his capitalization of the initial letter of the Greek word, Divkaion.
10. Fulhv.
11. Thomas Hobbes’ main works include Leviathan and De Cive, while John
Locke, one of the inspirations behind the American Revolution, is better known for
his Two Treatises of Government and his Letter Concerning Toleration. Kazantzakis
has in mind the natural rights theories of the two thinkers. Hobbes’ philosophy is
frankly materialistic, empiricist, and was, mehodologically, inspired by the then
nascent scientific method of resolution and composition. Hobbes’ moral philosophy
is subjectivist and conventionalist, seeing notions of good and evil as being mean-
ingful only in reference to a single, a-social, isolated individual; it is only by conven-
tion or agreement that an objective system of values or moral code can be created.
Locke, on the other hand, tempered Hobbes’ premises by adding that original
human nature is capable of sympathy, which makes Locke’s normative use of the
language of natural law slightly more convincing than Hobbes’s. In this passage,
Kazantzakis conflates at least two distinct lines of commentary: On the one hand, he
speaks of natural laws and the concepts of rights that are presumably predicated on
such laws. On the other hand, Kazantzakis is alluding to a Nietzschean psychologi-
cal insight, according to which tablets of values are the historically crystallized epit-
omes of nations’ characters.
102  Notes to Chapter 4

12. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel bases his philosophy of history on the
premise that what is rational is real and what is real is rational. Historical existence
is the unfolding of universal Reason, for Hegel. In the beginning of history, and
so that history becomes possible, Reason alienates itself from itself; world history
is the ongoing process of the Reason’s return to itself, which is to be effechated as
an ongoing process of advancing. Hence, it follows that whatever happens in his-
torical time is the rational solution to a problem raised by universal Reason’s at-
tempt to return itself; sufficient power for the actualization of the rational is, by
definition, always forthcoming. Individual historical actors are not aware of this,
but they are peons in the ongoing unfolding of the rational world-historical
process. In this sense, power inevitably assists the progressive realization of a more
rational state and right, properly understood, is actualized by existing power.
13. Rudolf von Jhering (1818–1892) was a German scholar, writer, and
founder of the so-called philosophical school of law or sociological jurisprudence.
His most widely read work was Der Zweck im Recht (The Law as a Means to an
End) (1877–1883), in which he sees law as a mechanism for conflict management
and social coordination; in his view, collective interests trump private concerns and
ought to prevail in the law when the two—private and public—are in conflict.
14. Orgasmovõ.
15. In this instance Kazantzakis seems to be subscribing to a contextualist
understanding of ideas. One form of a contextualist view is historicism—the no-
tion that meanings are dependent on the historical period in which they are artic-
ulated. It was the German philosopher Hegel who offered the fullest and most
systematic articulation of a historicist philosophy. Kazantzakis sees the German
gravitation toward notions of right as might to be exemplary of a nation that has
been, historically, in a stage of high collective excitation. Certain mystical organ-
ismic views of national destiny are certainly at work here. [For Hegel’s organis-
mic view of the State, see Philosophy of Right III.iii.§269, Addition.]
16. This critique of natural morality is ominously associated with certain right-
wing ideologies. Nonetheless, as an assault on classical liberalism, it is a self-evident
objection to natural rights philosophy—an objection that was also pressed by the so-
cial reformer and utilitarian Jeremy Bentham in his essay “Anarchical Fallacies.”
17. Famously, Nietzsche makes this point in his Genealogy of Morals I.4.
Kazantzakis expects the reader to gain this insight cumulatively, from the whole
range of genealogical comments that precede this last statement. Nietzsche’s point
is this: There are, roughly, two types of morality, which correspond to the phys-
iopsychological personality types that create them. The robust, well-constituted,
healthily impulsive, strong types, the “masters,” advance the “master morality,” ac-
cording to which good is what is good and useful to the strong [for instance, the
lamb is “good” to the wolf ] and bad is what is simply not advantageous for the
strong. The weak, ill-constituted, resentful “slave” types, on the other hand, con-
trast good to a notion of “evil,” by means of which they effect a “transvaluation of
all values”: The wolf is not just bad to the sheep; the wolf is evaluated, ethically
 Notes to Chapter 5  103

from the standpoint of the weak but this evaluation now leads to the declaration
that the strong is universally evil.
18. Kazantzakis is evidently thinking of Antigone’s great speech, in Sopho-
cles, Antigone, lines 450–460. In that famous passage, Antigone is referring to the
laws of “Zeus”—an allusion to ancestral tradition rather than natural law. The
moral significance of the laws of nature found a complete expression for the first
time in the writings of Stoicism and was aptly epitomized by Cicero (Republic, I.25,
III.22 and Laws, I.6, 10, 12). Notice also that Kazantzakis is conflating the moral
theory of natural law with the later, “modern,” doctrine of natural rights. It is
tempting to make this conflation because seminal authors of natural rights theories,
like John Locke, also tend to deploy the rhetoric of ancient-Stoic natural law.
19. In other words, right is coextensive with might. By putting it in this
way, Kazantzakis classes Nietzsche with the other German thinkers—Hegel and
the legal philosopher Jhering, to whom he had referred in a preceding paragraph.
20. This is a classical argument in support of natural law. So, there is a nat-
ural law rightly understood.

5. [Recapitulation and] Conclusion

1. Notwithstanding Kazantzakis’ designation of this chapter as “Conclu-
sion,” there is one subsequent chapter, which can be characterized more appropri-
ately as the true conclusion of the dissertation, with the present chapter serving as
a summary and brief commentary.
2. Kazantzakis adds here arianouv, Aryan. But, contrast Nietzsche, The
Will to Power, 142–143, where the origins of “priestly” evaluations are said to be
not Semitic but Aryan. “The development of the Jewish priestly state is not origi-
nal. The Jews learned the pattern in Babylon—it is Aryan.”
3. In Genealogy of Morals, I.7–9, Nietzsche declares that Jewish spiritual-
ism exacted a most stunning revenge against the warrior type—a naturally well-
constituted being—by means of a revaluation of values. It is this revaluation that
Christianity perpetuated and, through its open and wide invitation to the nations,
spread, in this way conquering the healthy barbarians with whom the Roman Em-
pire came into contact. See also Beyond Good and Evil, 195. In Genealogy of Morals,
III.22, it seems that Nietzsche absolves the Hebrews from the odium he had pre-
viously leveled at them: Nietzsche found the Hebrew Bible a most worthy book,
one that exemplifies the warrior type. (See Beyond Good and Evil, 52).
4. Antichrist, 4: The European of the late nineteenth century is a lower
specimen than the Renaissance homo universalis—so much for the vaunted mod-
ern European notion of historical progress. Cp. ibid. 61. See Gay Science, 149: The
fact that Luther’s Reformation succeeded in the North of Europe demonstrates
that the northern regions were more parochial and backward—they had not beern
touched by the Renaissance and were excessively “barbarian.” For Nietzsche’s
praise of Renaissance virtue see: Antichrist, 2 (Renaissance men properly conceived
of virtue as a healthy reinforcement on the whole organism’s healthy quest for
104  Notes to Chapter 5

power after power); and Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” 1 (Renaissance virtú
is free from moralism).
5. Genealogy of Morals, I.16: Napoleon is the “synthesis” of subhuman beast
and the Übermensch of a utopian future Nietzsche wishes for humanity—Napoleon
is the veritable definition of what Nietzsche calls the “late man.” The phenome-
non of Napoleon’s apotheosis by the masses is also interesting insofar as it adum-
brates the ultimate, already prefigured, failure of the “herdlike,” democratic ideal:
the masochistic pleasure of surrendering to the strong leader is ever too seductive
and irresistible to the masses: See Beyond Good and Evil, 199; compare with the fa-
mous section on “The Grand Inquisitor” in Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers.
6. Unfortunately, Kazantzakis seems to be buying into an anti-Semitic
view with alacrity. This is not an accurate impression, though. The mistaken no-
tion about Nietzsche, inflicted in great measure by the Nazi expropriation of Ni-
etzschean-sounding jargon, has been put to rest through the important work of
the translator and student of Nietzsche’s works, Walter Kaufmann. Kazantzakis
himself was attracted to the indispensable role Jews have played in world history.
Although he does not always avoid pitfalls and prejudicial stereotypes, Kazantza-
kis would strike the average Greek reader—especially of his times—as being
rather philo-Semitic. 
7. Kazantzakis uses the Greek word (koinwnist␻n) instead of the univer-
sal term “socialist.”
8. See Human, All Too Human, 235 and 452: socialists are striving to erect
a compassion-based regime, which, if successful, would prevent human greatness
from emerging. See ibid. 451 and Genealogy of Morals, I.5, for socialism as the ide-
ology of the “caste” of natural slaves. The point about a genetic value-relationship
between socialism and Christianity is explicitly made at Will to Power, 51;
Antichrist, 57; and Beyond Good and Evil, 202.
9. Exidanikeuvei.
10. For Nietzsche’s seminal thought that associates drive sublimation with
certain types of inhibitory moralities, see Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psy-
chologist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian, 1956), III.7, pp. 182–196.
11. Eiõ e }teron kovsmon.
12. Katakrhmnisqei.
13. Ektequlhmevnoõ: literally, having become effeminate.
14. Divkaion: right, justice.
15. See Thus Spake Zarathustra, I, “The Pale Criminal.”
16. Contrast Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” 45:
The criminal is the naturally healthy type made sick by decadent society. This
is not inconsistent with the other point, which Kazantzakis raises here—that
squeamish compassion toward the criminal is an unmistakable sign of social dis-
solution. As a healthy specimen, the criminal himself obviously does not oper-
ate with compassion as a virtue. And, it is a fact that the criminal is threatening
society; so, hesitation in matters pertaining to the criminal show that the most
basic life-preservative instincts have taken round-about routes and fail to func-
tion immediately.
 Notes to Chapter 5  105

17. Eusplacnivan antiv eusplacnivaõ: It can also be rendered as “One

kind of compassion in the place of another.” Kazantzakis is thinking of a pun on
the Old Testament rule “a tooth for a tooth.”
18. Beyond Good and Evil, 225. Nietzsche’s text reads “in the human being,
creator and created thing are united.” In an interesting slip, Kazantzakis rendered
in an egalitarian mood: “in every human being, there is a creator and a creature.”
See also Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III. “Of Old and New Law-Tablets;” Twilight of
the Idols, Preface; also Gay Science, 301, 302: Higher spirits demonstrate a greater
sensitivity to pleasure and, especially to, pain. At Gay Science, 312 Nietzsche com-
pares his pain to a dog—reliably ubiquitous, incomprehensibly faithful, and even
a readily available outlet for one’s sudden outbursts. [See also Ecce Homo, “Why I
Am So Wise,” 1.] Pain is also celebrated as an indispensable educational instru-
ment at Gay Science, 318.
19. The significance of pain is explained at Gay Science, 13: since the ulti-
mate cosmological principle in the universe is the will to power, pain and not plea-
sure must be summoned to imprint lasting effects. One inquires, agonizingly,
about the origins of pain, whereas one remains narcissistically aloof when experi-
encing pleasures; this is consistent with the cosmology, because this characteristic
of pain makes it an appropriate means for the exercise of greater power over one’s
surroundings.
20. Unexpectedly, and perhaps in a rhetorical turning-of-the-tables fash-
ion, Kazantzakis proffers a utilitarian argument. The argument is not informed by
classical eudemonism, even in its Epicurean form, but, remarkably, it is premised
on the reformist utilitarianism associated with the liberal thought of Jeremy Ben-
tham and John Stuart Mill. The difference between the eudemonist, even the he-
donist, variant of classical utilitarianism and Benthamite modern utilitarianism is
profound: classical times draw a distinction between higher and lower pleasures,
and assume that human beings are by nature unequally endowed when it comes to
the ability to appreciate and draw toward higher pleasures.
21. It would be a mistake to read in Nietzsche, or in Kazantzakis, a view
that favors Darwin’s theory, or any other evolutionary-biological view. See rele-
vant note appended to the next, concluding, chapter.
22. Nietzsche goes further. See Antichrist, 2: the supreme maxim of charity,
rightly understood, is that the feeble should perish and, therefore, that a quasiduty
exists to help all these weak and miserable nihilists to their demise—so that the
path can be cleared and paved for the Übermensch. It is not clear how the decadent
are to be expedited to their annihilation. Presumably, the deadly truths Nietzsche
is bringing to them (perspectivism, genealogical evaluative deconstruction, the
cosmology of the will to power, and the dark teaching of the eternal recurrence of
the same) will be too much for them to take. Alternatively, rhetoric can be de-
ployed to demoralize and dispatch them post haste to their end. [Are some of
Nietzsche’s teachings, which are used to that effect, perhaps rhetorical and not
necessarily credible to Nietzsche himself? This is one of the subjects of the inter-
esting study by Stanley Rosen, The Mask of Enlightenment (Cambridge University
Press, 1995).]
106  Notes to Chapter 6

6. The Positive Aspect of Nietzsche’s Philosophy

1. Nietzsche’s term, introduced in Beyond Good and Evil, 260, and more
fully elaborated upon in The Genealogy of Morals.
2. One of Nietzsche’s most fateful and idiosyncratic teachings, of which
Kazantzakis waxed fond later in his life, is curiously missing from this dissertation:
the eternal recurrence of the same. It is this teaching that, presumably, succeeds
the pessimistic, enfeebled, and suicidal nihilism of modern humanity as the Über-
mensch’s ability to affirm life in its core.
3. Nietzsche’s famous distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian
is introduced in his Birth of Tragedy. In that early work—presumably his first
scholarly publication, but sufficiently idiosyncratic and so adoringly Wagnerian
as to alienate the majority of Nietzsche’s pedantic colleagues—Nietzsche claimed
to have unlocked the alluring and so far elusive mystery of Greek civilization. The
admirably serenity that surrounds and illumines the classical Greek model of char-
acter is actually, Nietzsche contends, a matter of balance. Only those who could
sense the deepest, most rending and devastating affect of despair and inward suf-
fering could succeed so admirably in draping the gaping abyss over with beautiful,
tranquil, perennially brilliant aesthetic creations. The Greek equipoise, then, bal-
ances two opposed kinds of forces—opposed, but, at the same time, simultane-
ously available only to those who are sufficiently healthy for both. The Dionysian
forces are dark, chthonic or subterranean, recollecting bygone eras of primitive
self-expression, and seeking to reach a mystical identification with the primeval
and atavistic elements in human nature; the Apollonian forces, on the other hand,
lean over to a preference for mental luminosity, emotional balance, and rational
and luminous elaboration on the surfaces of things. The Birth of Tragedy recon-
structs the history of classical times to raise the original claim that two villains—
who did not really have a Greek character properly understood, and were decadent
sufferers who could not naturally balance the opposite forces—stepped into the
aesthetic milieu of Athens and subverted its beautiful, eternally youthful—hence
manipulable—innocence: the two villains allegedly were Socrates and Euripides.
4. Compare Nietzsche, Will to Power, 13: The extreme form of nihilism—
the one that posits that no meaning exists in nature—is itself a value-positing sim-
plification that exemplifies the strength of a lawgiver.
5. Bouvlhsiõ thõ epikrathvsewõ: literally, the will to prevail, predomi-
nate, lord it over; clearly, a reference, placed within quotation marks, to Nietz-
sche’s “Wille zur Macht.” Gay Science, 13 is one of the first introductions of the
concept, which was, in the same year, destined to make a triumphant appearance
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, esp. I. “Joys and Passions,” “The New Idol,” “The
Thousand and One Goal.”
6. Oligarkhvõ: literally, satisfied with just a little.
7. Euhmeriva.
8. Ormhvshi.
9. This passage appears to be assimilating humanity unto the other
species, which is a view that is both coherent and, more significantly, consistent
with classical Darwinian theory. It is not, however, Nietzsche’s ultimate view—
 Notes to Chapter 6  107

and, characteristically, it is not Kazantzakis’ final view, either.Nietzsche’s deeper

aversion to evolutionary biology, the appearance of a superficial agreement
notwithstanding, becomes evident throughout his work: See, for instance, Will to
Power, 130 [Darwin classed together with other infamous egalitarians]; even more
dramatically, philosophical objections of a classical tenor are leveled at Darwin in
ibid., 638. Kazantzakis came to similar views, fully reinforced with metaphysical
backing, after he became acquainted with Bergson’s philosophy of the élan vital:
See Peter Bien, Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1989), p. 45.
10. It is not clear why this impersonal, universal, blind cosmic force should
be considered centered around a perduring individual. Ineed, for Nietzsche, a per-
son is the history of successful—all of them contingent—exercises of the will to
power. To my knowledge, Nietzsche does not reconcile this insight with any pos-
sible theory of “personal identity.” It might well be that the theory of the will to
power is ultimately a critique of substantivist theories of personal identity. As
Kazantzakis was generally prone to emphasize the underlying ethics of Nietzsche’s
thought, he probably disregarded the de-individuating effects of the will to
power—which serves as an amorphous field of factual struggles and transient suc-
cesses, producing in the process the criteria of its success as well as instantiating it-
self in the form of one entity or another. This is a vexingly obscure teaching, and
it is not surprising that most contemporary commentators and students of Nietz-
sche’s thought tend to dismiss it in summary fashion. Ironically, this teaching,
which Kazantzakis disregards, is akin to certain corollaries that follow from Henri
Bergson’s philosophy of an èlan vital—a view that exercised significant influence
on Kazantzakis’ thought and culminated in his major philosophic opus, Asketiki.
11. Ormhv.
12. This is Kazantzakis’ encapsulation of one of Nietzsche’s cardinal teach-
ings—the teaching of the will to power. Many commentators—including Walter
Kaufmann and Alexander Nehamas—deny that this is a substantive or systematic
metaphysical theory. It would be fair to say that, whatever it may be, the will to
power is not a scientific hypothesis: it defies the standard scientific requirement of
falsifiability. It is not clear, to say the least, under what conditions the theory
would be proven false—and, because of this, it does not pass an essential criterion
of the scientific method.
13. Genealogy of Morals, II.12. As we have had occasion to observe time and
again in this dissertation, Kazantzakis shows a marked predilection for highlight-
ing a more egalitarian “Nietzsche” than is warranted.
14. Perhaps an oblique reference to Nietzsche’s teaching of the will to power.
15. A transition has been made here from metaphysics—the disclosure of the
will to power as the constituting force of what is real—to what is today called meta-
ethics—a discourse on criteria for the valuation and ranking of morally significant
goods. Kazantzakis does not indicate how this transition is to be effected. He might
be reading Nietzsche’s eschatology in a Hegelian mood (seeing history as the bearer
and revealer of deeper meanings, and, at the same, as the ultimate unerring judge
and definitive evaluator). This is not an impermissible bridging of Nietzsche’s will-
108  Notes to Chapter 6

to-power metaphysics with Nietzsche’s philosophy of the future, considering that

Nietzsche is often classed among the right-wing Hegelians, with Feuerbach, Marx,
and Stirner occupying the left wings of the neo-Hegelian enclave.
16. çperbaivnei: transcend, surmount, surpass, exceed.
17. One of Nietzsche’s trademark ideas is that of the Übermensch. In his
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche introduces the idea of the Übermensch (Pro-
logue, 3–7) as one the cardinal teachings of his philosophy: The Übermensch is to
be a goal, which, through instilling discipline and by harnessing latent, uniquely
human and naturally unequal, potential, can accelerate and redirect evolution—
make evolution serve a creative, distinctly human, self-posited ideal. As Nietzsche
puts it, today’s humanity will be as embarrassing to tomorrow’ Overmen as the
monkey is to us. Indeed, Zarathustra (ibid.) suggests that the teaching of the
Übermensch is a necessary counterweight and urgently needed antidote to contem-
porary humanity’s tendency to slide back into the morass of bestiality.
18. Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “Backworld” (parentheses in Nietzsche’s
original): “Dead are all the Gods. Now we only want the Übermensch to live.” See
also Prologue, 9: “Fellow-creators the creator seeketh—those who engrave new
values on new tablets.” Zarathustra is surrounded by “broken tablets” as he is pa-
tiently awaiting for his vital hour to strike (“Old and New Tablets,” 3.) See also
Zarathustra’s plea: “Break up, break up, ye discerning ones, the old tablets.” (“Old
and New Tablets,” 7, cf. 10.)
19. Brackets in the original.
20. On the importance of stimulation to action—even to life itself—see
generally Thus Spake Zarathustra: especially, I, “Voluntary Death.”
21. Anevlusen: analyzed; etymologically, dissolved into its components.
22. See Ecce Homo, Preface.
23. Ormhv.
24. Brackets in the original.
25. A noteworthy instance of Kazantzakis’ ambivalence toward Christian-
ity, which, at a deeper level, may well be reflective of a similar posture on Nietz-
sche’s part.
26. Anwtevra: upper, higher; but the connotations of the present usage
point to aristocratic ranking, not to socioeconomic stratification.
27. Divkaion: Right; but, quite clearly, the ascriptive individual rights of the
Enlightenment tradition are meant.
28. Sunqetikovõ.
29. Sunoyivzwn.
30. There is a hint here of Nietzsche’s notorious Lamarckianism—named
after the biologist Lamarck’s erroneous beliefs that transmission of acquired traits
is genetically possible and can be appealed to in order to explain evolution. For
Nietzsche’s apparent lapses into Lamarckianism, see: Gay Science, 99, 110 (an ob-
scure reference to a process of “inheriting” the errors of previous generations);
Beyond Good and Evil, 213, 264. In the works of his positivistic period, traces of
this kind of thinking are more frequent: for example, Dawn, 30, 136, 191, 199,
205, 241, 247, 310, 540. Also see Zarathustra, II.7. Nonetheless, to accuse Nietz-
 Notes to Chapter 6  109

sche of a gross scientific error is certainly wrong. Indeed, as one would expect,
Nietzsche also intimates, at times, that the exact opposite is the case: that great
human beings are atavisms—as he puts it: they are exceptional and unexpected
throwbacks to earlier and, indeed, healthier characteristics: See Gay Science, 10.
31. Aeivpote.
32. Aiwnivwõ.
33. A Nietzschean list of yea-sayings can be found at Thus Spoke Zarathus-
tra, III, “Before Sunrise.” See also Thus Spoke Zarthustra, I, “The Three Meta-
morphoses.”
34. On a somber note, Compare Heinrich Himmler’s similar thoughts: “It
is the curse of greatness that it must step over dead bodies to create new life . . .”
See R. Manwell and H. Fraenkel, Heinrich Himmler (London, 1965), 187. This
thought reverberates throughout the Nietzschean opus and has gained Nietzsche
no inconsiderable animus and opprobrium. See, for instance, Gay Science, 325:
even the weak can bear and eventually even master endurance of pain and suffer-
ing; what distinguishes the great is their ability to persevere even when they are
compelled to inflict suffering unto others. See also Human, All Too Human, 477
and Dawn, 9.
35. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “War and Warriors,” “The Tarantulas.”
36. The statement about war is attributed to Heracleitus, not to Pindar. See
Diels-Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker19 (Zurich: Weidmann, 1996),
I:162, fragment B53 [44].
37. See previous chapters and notes therein: this is not a Darwinian or
Spencerian view.
38. Antichrist Preface, 2; see Zarathustra, I “War and Warriors.”
39. Famous epigram for Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, whose subtitle is,
How One Can Philosophize with a Hammer.
40. This statement aptly captures a major difference between Nietzsche and
social Darwinists—a difference which is often overlooked.
41. Limevna: Harbor, [with connotations of safe harbor].
42. The references throughout are to the Übermensch, as Kazantzakis does
not make much of other nuanced distinctions introduced by Nietzsche—like the
one between the Übermensch and the so-called late men, beastlike depositories of
instinctive vibrancy like Napoleon, or the distinction between the Übermensch of
the future and present superior types who, like Nietzsche himself, are decadents
with a healthy core [see his Ecce Homo].
43. In other words, utilitarian ethics and prudential maxims, which Nietz-
sche deemed indicative of slavish resentment, will be retained for the masses only
in the postapocalyptic society.
44. Enevrgeia: energy, act, activity, energetic vibrancy.
45. “Of overcoming” is not in the text, but follows from the general direc-
tion of the argument.
46. Here Kazantzakis opts for a Machiavellian reading of Nietzsche’s diffi-
cult, and often appearing to be inconsistent, teaching on morality. It is, of course,
contested that Machiavelli himself subscribes to a normative view that is “beyond
110  Notes to Chapter 6

good and evil.” Kazantzakis’ interpretation is one of many equally plausible read-
ings of Nietzsche’s thought; it is an internally consistent reading, in this passage at
least, in that it couples an ends/means morality with a higher Nietzschean pur-
pose—the emergence and support of the exceptional human being, which alone
“justifies” existence.
47. The Will to Power, 740.
48. Kalovn: good, moral, the right thing to do, benevolent; classical Greek:
beautiful, noble, of high class.
49. Reading mom␸hv instead of mor␸hv.
50. This is a brilliant reading, which the student of Nietzsche’s apparently
self-contradictory study of asceticism (Genealogy of Morals, III), would be well ad-
vised to keep in mind. Kazantzakis offers one of the most perceptive and con-
structive ways of reconciling Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of the ascetic
phenomenon with Nietzsche’s claim that the enduring ascetic was great enough to
make life as such—albeit weak and decaying life—endurable.
51. In this passage, Kazantzakis combines abstract ontology and social-crit-
ical observation in a most interesting way, which, unfortunately, cannot be ren-
dered in English in a straightforward or literal manner without reducing the
passage to helpless obscurity. The tilt is in favor of a collectivist-organismic ideol-
ogy and anticipates Kazantzakis’ brief fascinations with collectivist ideologies
(Mussolini’s Fascism and Marxist-Leninist views). As the preceding passages must
have made clear, Kazantzakis criticizes Nietzsche from the “left”—taking Nietz-
sche to task for his inegalitarian ethos. Kazantzakis combines here an organismic
view—one that traces the inner essence of humanity to its gregarious nature and
rootedness in an ancestral community—with an idealistic view—one that sees con-
catenation of actualized ideas as the vehicle of historical developments. I would call
this a Herderian Hegelianism.
52. Fanatikovõ: the word, fanatical, has decidedly negative connotations in
English.
53. Aristokravthõ: “aristocrat” generally refers to genealogical descent.
The meaning points to Nietzsche’s aristocratic nature or aristocratic idealism [pro-
ponent of an aristocratic-inegalitarian ideology].
54. Covloõ.
55. Aijsqantikwvtatoõ.
56. Consistently with Nietzsche’s teaching on the will to power, which
posits that the pursuit of power overrides seeking of pleasures.
57. Epiv twn paqw¦n hmwn: over our passions. A slip of the tongue, perhaps?
58. Apovlutoõ: absolute, unqualified, total, complete.
59. Sklhrovthõ: Cruelty, harshness, toughness.
60. Kacektikoiv.
61. Mevga: Great; but see Nietzsche’s distinction between the “antiquarian”
and the “monumental” way of studying history in the Second of his Untimely
Meditations [⫽ On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life].
62. The sentence is introduced with a]llwõ [otherwise, in every other
respect], but the meaning is not clear.
 Notes to Chapter 6  111

63. The meaning is not clear.

64. Mivan Hqikhnv, eÕ n Divkaion: the indefinite article [Mivan, e]n] stressing
that there is a legitimate plurality of moral systems and approaches to the problem
of justice, but without endorsing relativism—the notion that all such approaches
are equal in truth-value or rank of importance for human life.
65. Tav ijdewvdh: note the definite article, the ideals, for which Nietzsche had
been looking—as if theywere there, to begin with, waiting to be discovered.
66. Aristokrat␻n: rule by aristocrats [= the best].
67. The notion that ideas are “scattered” in the work of various ancient and
modern thinkers reveals an interesting way of thinking—one that sees philosoph-
ical views and approaches as recurrent in history. This is consistent both with the
ancient Greek view and with certain Nietzschean insights.
Kazantzakis is correct in including La Rouchefoucauld and Emerson
among those he mentions: if nothing else, they both appealed to Nietzsche; with
the possible additions of Goethe and Heine, they are the only thinkers who are
mentioned by Nietzsche always in an approving mood. It is less clear that Nietz-
sche received a theoretical influence from them—especially from Emerson’s
neostoic pantheism.
Nietzsche seems to approve of Machiavelli in many passages. If Machiavelli
is to be read in ways consistent with the associations, which his name has acquired,
then, a case can be made that Nietzsche finds in Machiavelli a fellow spirit in the
fight against the detrimental, denaturing and enervating influence of Christianity.
Nevertheless, the decidedly more “republican” turn Machiavelli took in compos-
ing his Discourses on Livy would probably be repugnant to Nietzsche’s aristocratic
radicalism. Machiavelli’s political realism—at times underpinned by a nearly ple-
beian knack for efficacious shrewdness—is also at odds with Nietzsche’s exaltation
of noble virtues.
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist-mechanistic thinker. Hobbes’ philosoph-
ical psychology is one that emphasizes a material-hedonist makeup of human na-
ture: human beings are like calculators who add and subtract actual and
anticipated material appetites and aversions; in contrast to the decidedly more
noble hedonism of ancient thinkers, including Epicurus himself, Hobbes does not
draw any distinctions of rank among desires—all desires are equal because defined
by their lowest common denominator, which consists in seeking self-preservation
and as many basic satisfactions as are necessary or as one can get away with.
Immanuel Kant’s influence becomes discernible when one tries to make
sense of Nietzsche’s philosophy of knowledge—especially when one tries to rec-
oncile Nietzsche’s perspectivism with the “positive” statements he makes about the
causes of knowledge and about ways of ranking human natures and life plans.
Kazantzakis is aware of this but is not interested in Nietzsche’s epistemology in
this dissertation. But see following note.
Ludwig Feuerbach was a “left” Hegelian who influenced the thought of the
opera composer Richard Wagner—Nietzsche’s one-time idol and subsequent
nemesis. Feuerbach’s sustained assault on religion anticipated Nietzsche’s. Marx and
Engels spoke in glowing terms of him. It does not sound quite right, or helpful, to
112  Notes to Chapter 6

compare Nietzsche to Feuerbach: the latter was ideologically to the left, so that he
appears almost as the antipode, in many respects, of Nietzsche.
Arthur Schopenhauer’s influence is undeniable, especially in the early writ-
ings of Nietzsche. Equally critical is Nietzsche’s rejection of Schopenhauer phi-
losophy of the will, which he denounced as a symptom of the decadent or
pessimistic nihilism [see chapter 2 of Kazantzakis’ dissertation].
Max Stirner was an anarchist neo-Hegelian who emphasized and celebrated
the naturally egoistic tendencies of the human ego. The temptation is strong to
compare this teaching to Nietzsche’s “philosophical egoism.” But the same objec-
tions apply here as in comparing Nietzsche to Feuerbach.
The differences between Nietzsche and the biologistic and sociological Dar-
winists, including Herbert Spencer, have been brought up and delineated through-
out notes to the present dissertation. Kazantzakis himself was shaken profoundly
by Darwinism and never reconciled himself to so scientistic and biologistic a view.
If, however, one thinks of the Darwinian method as primarily a historical-analyti-
cal method—one that replaces biblical dogma by consistent interrogation of secu-
lar history and fossil record—then a case can perhaps be made for drawing an
analogy between Darwin’s revolutionary method and Nietzsche’s genealogy.
There were other influences on Nietzsche, not mentioned here: the Presocrat-
ics [especially Heraclitus and the Sophists], Montaigne, Dostoevsky [limited influ-
ence, probably due to Nietzsche’s tragic and premature mental collapse], Stendhal,
Goethe, and Heinrich Heine—to mention a few. Equally important to Nietzsche—
and influential for his development—were those he loathed, or was ambivalent
toward: Richard Wagner, Socrates, Saint Paul, Spinoza, Rousseau, the utilitarian
reformists, Emile Zola, and many others.
68. It is true that Immanuel Kant began his philosophic endeavors as a stu-
dent of Newtonian physics and geometry. Indeed, it was his study of mathemat-
ics that suggested to him the, by now celebrated, insight that synthetic a priori
truths are possible. [See Nietzsche’s attempt to ridicule this discovery: Beyond
Good and Evil, 11.] Kant’s study of David Hume’s skeptical and challenging epis-
temology awakened Kant from his “metaphysical slumber,” as he put it, and set
him on the path of attempting to save metaphysics from the inroads of skepticism.
Kant attempted to safeguard metaphysics by demarcating its territory, that is, by
grounding metaphysics through a determination of its limits. Kazantzakis is right,
therefore, in drawing attention to the prohibitive and antimystical—even conser-
vative—aspect of Kant’s epistemology. Fending off the incursions of idealism—
which he considered a more threatening foe than philosophical empiricism—Kant
stressed that the “thing-in-itself”—the object of sensible knowledge, as it is in its
own objective nature—can never be known; all that our organizing structures of
perception and understanding allow us to establish is that there are things that
trigger perceptions and thoughts in us; but we cannot know those things as they
are in themselves. Similarly, Kant staves off any appeal to religious-transcenden-
tal appeals—for instance, to the ontological proof for the existence of God: after
all, such views of a transcendental entity are not indispensable for structuring and
organizing “reality” the way we do. Hence, Kazantzakis is also right to point that
 Notes to Chapter 6  113

Kant “demolishes” the pietistic invocations of earlier philosophy—Scholasticism

and even Descartes and Spinoza. Nevertheless, Kant had a pious personality, as
Nietzsche ruthlessly detected. [Indeed see Nietzsche, Gay Science, 335: “I recollect
old Kant, who, as a punishment for having gained possession surreptitiously of the
‘thing in itself’—also a very ludicrous affair!—was imposed upon by the categori-
cal imperative, and with that in his heart strayed back again to ‘God,’ the ‘soul,’
‘freedom,’ and ‘immortality,’ like a fox which strays back into its cage: and it had
been his strength and shrewdness which had broken open this cage!” See also Be-
yond Good and Evil, 5; Twilight of the Idols, “Reason in Philosophy,” 6, fourth
proposition. See also Genealogy of Morals, III.25: having touched the “thing in it-
self,” the essentially religious, guilt-ridden nature of Kant revenged itself by in-
flicting on Kant the essentially religious relics of ethics, conscience, moral
autonomy, and privileged human freedom, which Kant smuggled in from the back
door of moral philosophy. See, further, Antichrist, 11: Kant’s understanding of
ethics as a deontology—equating moral good with being good for its own sake—
is “chimerical” and reveals a “decaying life.” Dawn, 3: it is Kant’s deep-seated pes-
simism that lurks behind his desperate concept of moral duty.
It is also interesting that Kazantzakis sees scientism—even the scientific
bent of Kant’s thought—to be decidedly at odds not only with any view of the be-
yond but also with metaphysics—the philosophic activity—as traditionally under-
stood. But contrast Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 95, 101, 529, 571, 578: Kant,
with his “moral fanaticism,” his dogmatic sugar-coating of a seemingly inquisitive-
scientific inquiry, and his suspect confidence in “practical reason,” belongs to the
romantic eighteenth century; Kant’s restoration of, for instance, causality, even
within the proper limits of human reason, was, for Nietzsche, a “piece of naiveté,”
dictated mainly by metaphysical-moral needs.
69. Social reality is meant, not the objective reality of realist philosophies of
knowledge.
70. Organismouv.
71. Ormhv.
72. Kazantzakis’ insistence that Kant is a significant figure in the back-
ground of Nietzsche’s philosophy is perceptive and anticipated the insights
reached by students of Nietzsche’s philosophy decades later. According to this
reading, Nietzsche’s epistemological perspectivism is actually a radicalization of
Kant’s contention that the “thing-in-itself” (das ding an sich) can never be known.
Kant, however, shows how a philosophy of knowledge can be constructed in spite
of this fundamental epistemic impossibility. On the other hand, however, Kant’s
epistemology rests on a view of the possibility of understanding as a distinctly
human perspective—it is the faculty of human reason that can organize percep-
tions in a certain way and by means of concepts, categories, and a priori schema-
tizations. In this sense, a global human “perspectivism” is shown to be a viable
foundation for human knowledge. Indeed, if Kant solved the problem of skepti-
cism in this way, and if his solution is sound, it would follow that any perspectival
philosophy must proceed along Kantian lines. Nevertheless, the mystery of Nietz-
sche’s philosophical astuteness cannot be made to disappear so easily—and
114  Notes to Chapter 6

Kazantzakis is not contending that Nietzsche is simply a Kantian. Kazantzakis

claims that Nietzsche’s is a philosophically pragmatic variant of Kantianism. That
Nietzsche is a philosophical pragmatist has been contested by Alexander Ne-
hamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988):
see especially the critique offered there of Arthur Danto’s earlier work.
73. Euaisqhsiva.
74. See Kazantzakis’ Prolegomena to the present work.
75. Once again, Kazantzakis “democratizes” Nietzsche’s thought, by stipu-
lating that a sufficiently large mass of people may be the intended audience of
Nietzsche’s message.
76. This is actually prophetic, although it is stated as a factual report.
77. A fascinating passage, uncannily prophetic as it was penned decades be-
fore the rise of Nazi savagery.
78. Olumpiovthõ.
79. Qevlhsiõ.
80. Enevrgeia.
81. Ormaiv.
82. Dikaiwvmata: Rights; but, in light of the preceding analysis of Nietz-
sche’s views, prerogatives is a more appropriate rendering.
83. Bavseiõ.
84. Ormhv
 . 
85. T␻n ajsqen␻n th;n qevlhsin: literally, the will of the weak.
 Index
aesthetes, ix
aesthetics, 25, 85n39, 106n3. See also art
aggression, 37, 49, 98n119. See also war
America
utopian experiments in America, 5,
72n35
American Pragmatism (philosophy), 3,
71n27, 72n29. See also James,
Pragmatism
American Revolution, 101n11
Anarchical Fallacies (Bentham), 102n16
anarchist(s), 6
Nietzsche as, 35, 62, 95n102
Stirner as anarchical individualist,
74n39, 112n67
anarchy, 4, 6
intellectual anarchy, 4
anguish (modern era), ix, xv, 3, 6, 8, 11,
15
Nietzsche’s, 13, 43, 63
the creator’s, 57
See also anxiety, dread, fear
Anscheim, Steven E., 68
Antichrist, The (Nietzsche), 79n90, 82n19,
89n20, 90n40, 90n45, 90n46,
99n135, 104n8, 105n22, 109n38,
113n68
Antigone (Sophocles), 103n18
antinomic, xv, 90n34
antinomy, 10, 20
115
Anti-Semite, 99n133, 104n6
anxiety. See anguish, dread, fear
apocalyptic, xii, xvi, 87n4, 109n43
apocalyptic teachings: xii
See also prophetic
Apollinian. See Apollonian
Apollonian, 10, 106n3
Aristotelian, 32, 101n6
Aristotelian teleology, 70n21
Aristotle, 36, 70n21, 87n3
on slavery, 93n70
concept of geometrical justice, 93n74
Constitution of the Athenians, 98n126
Nicomachean Ethics, 93n74
Politics, 93n70, 96n104
aristocracy, 32, 38
aristocratic, 9, 34, 39, 40, 51, 83n28,
108n26, 110n53
Aristocratic Radicalism, xiii, 111n67
art, 11, 78n82
art as Savior, 10
Greek, 77n73
artist, 1, 2, 53
as voluptuary, 39
Aryan, 103n2. See also Semitic,
Anti-Semite
ascetic(s), 39, 56, 79n90, 79n95, 82n15
asceticism, 45, 64, 86n46, 110n50
as decadence, 72n29
Asketike (Kazantzakis), 107n10
116
Augier, Marie, 74n40
authority, 4–5
Beer, M., 72
Bentham, Jeremy, 105n20
Anarchical Fallacies, 102n16
Benthamite, xi. See also Utilitarian,
Utilitarianism
Bergson, Henri, xii, xvi, 67n1, 71n24,
71n26, 87n6, 88n12, 107n9,
107n10
beauty, 24, 39, 45. See also aesthetics, art
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), 68n3,
69n13, 72n32, 76n65, 77n76,
78n86, 84n29, 85n41, 89n26,
89n32, 90n43, 90n44, 90n46,
91n51, 91n53, 93n72, 93n73,
93n75, 94n83, 94n87, 94n90,
94n91, 94n93, 94n94, 95n96,
96n106, 96n108, 98n127,
99n136, 99n139, 99n141,
103n3, 104n5, 104n8, 105n18,
106n1, 108n30, 112n68
Bible, the, 103n3
Bien, Peter, xiii, 67n1, 67n4, 107n9
Birth of Tragedy, The (Nietzsche), x,
75n58, 75n60, 77n72, 77n76,
79n94, 81n5, 82n19, 85n39,
106n3
blasphemous, xi, xiv
blasphemy 26
blond beast, 99n137
bourgeois, xiii, 5, 9, 57
bourgeoisie, 74n41
Brandes, Georg, 74n43
bravery, 13
Buddhism, 10, 84n31, 88n19
Byzantine Empire, x
capital, 5, 74n40
Capital (Marx), 74n40
Captain Michalis (Kazantzakis), xvi
Carlyle, Thomas, 9, 76n65, 76n66
Case of Wagner, The (Nietzsche), 77n75
charity, 45, 105n22
See also compassion, love (Christian)
Christ. See Jesus
Index
Christianity, 108n25
as a threat to the future, 111n67
See also Greek Orthodox, nihilism,
slaves, transvaluation
Cicero, 103n18
Cive, de (Hobbes), 101n11
civilization 15, 32, 37, 40
European, xiii
classical Greek, 9, 11
Napoleonic militarism as enemy of,
69n16
comedy, 10
compassion, 15, 26, 39, 52, 53, 59, 62,
77n77, 104n8, 104n16, 105n17
See also charity, love (Christian)
Comte, August, 82n18, 73n37, 82n18
Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle),
98n126
Cretan, viii
Crete, ix, xvii
crisis. See Europe
critique. See Nietzsche, negative aspects
Cynic(s), 72n33
cynicism, 1, 12, 20, 61, 68n3
Danto, Arthur, 114n72
Darwin, Charles, Sir, 70n22, 105n21
Darwinism, xv, 3, 24, 25, 31, 71n23,
74n42, 87n10, 106n9, 109n37,
109n40
vulgar, 87n6
See also Social Darwinism, Spenser
Dawn, The (Nietzsche), 12, 72n29, 76n72,
86n46, 97n113, 98n123,
108n30, 109n34, 113n68
Daybreak, The (Nietzsche). See Dawn, The
(Nietzsche)
decadence, 17, 18, 20, 24, 29, 33, 41, 43,
46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 84n30,
88n15, 92n56, 104n16
decadent, 9, 12, 19, 21, 29, 44, 59, 82n19,
83n25, 84n32, 90n35, 91n52,
92n54, 100n2, 105n22, 106n3,
109n42, 112n67
Decalogue, 17,18, 20, 43, 53, 55, 56, 57,
59, 62, 63. See also values
deception, 29, 30, 31, 58
 Index
deontology, 113n68. See also Kant,
Grundlegung (Kant)
despair, 4, 8, 16, 33, 55, 57, 82n15, 84n34,
89n19, 106n3. See also crisis,
pessimism
Dewey, John, 72n29
discipline, 4, 61, 62, 64, 77n33, 108n17
See also self-restraint, self-
overcoming, Übermensch
Dionysian, 6, 10, 18, 20, 55, 83n27, 106n3
Dionysian ecstasy, 9
See also ecstasy
Discourses on Livy (Machiavelli), 111n67
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, xiv, xvi
The Karamazov Brothers, 104n5,
112n67
dread, 52
Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 68n3, 68n4, 68n5,
69n7, 72n32, 75n58, 75n59,
76n65, 76n69, 77n72, 77n75,
77n76, 79n92, 80n97, 83n25,
88n15, 92n54, 96n106, 99n133,
104n4, 105n18, 108n22, 109n42
ecstasy. See Dionysian ecstasy
élan vital, xii, 71n24, 87n6, 107n9, 107n10
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 9, 66, 76n65,
76n66
Emersonian, xv
Engels, Friedrich, 73n36, 74n39, 74n40,
111n67
Enlightenment, xii, xiv, 83n21, 84n34,
105n22, 108n27
envy. See ressentiment, resentment
Epicurean, 4, 72n33, 105n20
Epicurus, 72n33, 111n67
Epinomis, The (Plato), 85n42
Essence of Christianity, The (Feuerbach),
73n39, 100n2
Essentialism, xiv
Euripides, 77n72, 85n39, 106n3
Europe, xv, 11, 16, 64, 80n98
European, xii, 74n39, 75n54, 103n4
Buddhism, 84n31
civilization, xiii
death throes of European civilization,
xiii, xv, 15, 42
117
ideas, vii
nihilism, 18
Rationalism, xv
evil, xiii, 12, 26, 29, 32, 45, 46, 58, 60,
72n35, 85n43, 101n11, 102n17,
110n46
evolution. See Darwinism, Social
Darwinism
evolutionary. See Darwinism, Social
Darwinism
existentialist Angst, xiii
falsehood, 12, 15, 26, 31, 78n86, 80n95,
80n97. See also lie, truth
family, the, 33–36
fanaticism, 62
moral, 113
fear
uses of in tragedy, 9
feminine, 7, 34, 94n83. See also woman
Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich
Nietzsche, 93n79
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 100n2, 108n15,
111n67
The Essence of Christianity, 73n39,
100n2
force
creative and destructive forces, 3
forerunner, 1, 60. See also prophet
Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals
(Kant), see Grundlegung
(Kant)
Fourier, Charles, 5, 73n36, 73n38
free
free will, 28–31
freedom, 5, 35, 40, 48, 62
Gay Science, The (Nietzsche), 12, 72n29,
76n60, 76n65, 76n68, 77n73,
78n88, 79n89, 79n90, 79n92,
79n95, 82n16, 82n18, 82n19,
83n28, 84n29, 84n34, 85n41,
86n46, 87n3, 87n4, 87n6, 88n17,
88n19, 89n26, 92n57, 93n68,
93n77, 94n83, 94n83, 94n85,
94n86, 94n89, 94n92, 109n34,
113n68
118
genealogical
critique of asceticism, 110n50
deconstruction, 105n22
genealogy, 112n67
Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche), xi, 12,
68n1, 70n19, 78n83, 79n95,
82n15, 84n31, 85n44, 86n46,
88n19, 90n35, 90n43, 90n44,
90n45, 90n46, 90n48, 91n51,
91n53, 96n107, 96n108,
96n109, 98n129, 99n133,
99n135, 99n137, 99n139,
102n17, 103n3, 104n5, 104n8,
106n1, 107n13, 110n50,
113n68
Georg, Stefan, 68n5
George Kreis, The, 68n5
Germany, 9, 48
God, 16–19, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48, 58, 70n21,
79n19, 87n2, 112n68
death of, xv, 108n18
gods, 38, 44, 46, 100n2
Gorgias (Plato), 50, 96n110
Gospel According to Matthew, The, 87n7
Gould, Steven J., 87n9
Greece
ancient, 9, 76n64
modern, x, xi, xvi; predicament of,
x–xi
nepotism in, xvi
war of Greek Independence, x
Greek art, 77n73
Greek Orthodox, xi
Greek Passion, The (Kazantzakis), ix
Grundlegung (Kant), 78n84, 82n17,
100n4
Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von,
83n21
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, xiv,
83n21, 96n111, 102n12,
103n19, 107n15, 110n51,
111n67
Philosophy of Right, 102n15
Heine, Heinrich, 111n67
Hellas. See Greece
Heraclitus, 80n95, 112n67
Index
hero, 9, 31
heroic, 13, 76n66
acceptance of life, 10, 17, 21, 65
individualism, xii
hierarchy, 15, 56, 75n49. See also inequality
Himmler, Heinrich, 109n34
History of the Peloponnesian War
(Thucydides), 98n125
historicism, 102n15
Hobbes, Thomas, 100n6, 101n11
De Cive, 101n11
Leviathan, 101n11
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 76n64
human nature, 23–31
Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche), 68n5,
69n13, 72n19, 75n55, 75n59,
77n72, 77n74, 77n75, 77n77,
77n78, 78n81, 78n82, 83n28,
85n41, 86n46, 87n4, 88n16,
91n51, 93n72, 93n78, 93n80,
94n83, 94n89, 95n95, 95n99,
96n106, 98n121, 98n127,
100n145, 101n6, 104n8,
109n34
hylozoism, xii, xv
Idealism, 112n68
Nietzsche’s aristocratic, 110n53
Platonic, 91n50
ideals, 3, 6, 20, 26, 34, 45, 48, 62, 64,
80n97
idols, xiv, 10, 12
illusion
of the free will, 91n51
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
(Lenin), 73n36
Individualism, xiv, 64. See also
Subjective Individualism
Iraklion. See Crete
irrational, 16, 35
Irrationalism, xv
Jacoby, L., 74n42
James, William, 3, 71n27, 71n29
Pragmatism, 71n29
Jhering, Rudolf von, 102n13, 103n19
John the Baptist, 69n8
 Index
John, Chrysostom, 100n3
Jesus, xiv, 29, 44, 79n90
Jews, the, 51, 103n2, 104n6
Judaism, 40, 87n3, 99n132
Judeo-Christian, 39, 48, 60
justice
Aristotle’s concept of geometrical,
93n74
Kant, Immanuel, xv, 45, 63, 64, 78n84,
82n17, 100n4, 111n67, 112n68,
113n72, 114n72
Grundlegung, 78n84, 82n17, 100n4
Karamazov Brothers, The, 104n5,
112n67
Kaufmann, Walter, 75n60, 76n68, 79n91,
99n133, 99n137, 104n6,
104n10, 107n12
Kazantzakis, Nikos
as controversial thinker, ix
as turn-of-the-century intellectual,
ix
his significance in Greek and world
literature, x
how he became acquainted with
Nietzsche’s work, x
as student of Nietzsche’s thought,
ix–xiii
Nietzsche’s influence on, xv–xvi
differences between him and
Nietzsche, xiv
his spiritualism, xii
his religious sensitivity, xi–xii, xiv
as a mystic, xi, xiv, 112n68
his mystical camaraderie with
Nietzsche, xiii
as believer in objective truth, xiv
his relationship with his father, xvi
his formative years, xii–xvi
Asketike, 107n10
The Greek Passion, ix
The Last Temptation of Christ, ix
Odyssey, ix, xiv
Report to Greco, x, 68n10, 93n69,
99n133
Zorba, the Greek, ix
Kazazis, N., 86n1
119
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 5, 6, 74n43
Last Temptation of Christ, The, ix
late men, 104n5, 109n42
Law School of Athens, xvi
Law School, University of Paris, xvi
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyitch, 73n36
Leninist, 110n51
Letter Concerning Toleration, A (Locke),
101n11
Leviathan, The (Hobbes), 101n11
Liberalism, xiii
classical, 102n16, 105n20
liberty, 48. See also freedom
lie, 19, 30, 33, 34, 51, 52, 58
See also deception, illusion
Locke, John, 101n6, 101n11, 103n18
A Letter Concerning Toleration,
101n11
love, 3, 5, 6, 17, 33, 48, 61, 62,
98n127
charitable love, 16, 44
creator’s, 20, 41
of humankind, 79n90
of the State, 38, 98n125
of the truth, 12
woman’s, 94n87
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 111n67
Discourses on Livy, 111n67
madness, 75n54
malaise, xiii, 84n32
of the Romantics, 76n60
See also illness, nihilism, pathology
man
nature of man, 33–36
See also masculine
Manifesto of the Communist Party, The
(Marx-Engels), 74n41
marriage, 33–36
masculine, 69–70
Marx, Karl, 5, 73n36, 73n39, 74n39,
108n15, 110n51, 111n67
The Manifesto of the Communist Party,
74n41
metaphysical
inadequacy of theories, 48
as desperate hope, 58
120 Index
metaphysics
Bergsonian, 107n9
failure of, xiv
from metaphysics to metaethics,
107n15
Kant’s critique of, 63, 113n68
of cause and effect, 84n29
of the will to power, 88n27, 107n12,
108n15
saving metaphysics from skepticism,
112n68
teleological, 78n81
Middle Ages, The, 5
Mill, John Stuart, 73n37, 105n20
Utilitarianism, 105n20
modern
Greece, x–xi
science, 16, 33, 70n21, 75n60, 97n118
state, 41–42, 45
table of values, 43
modernism, xi, xii, 2–6, 21, 23, 33, 52–53,
63, 70n21, 76n66, 78n81,
84n32, 85n36, 87n3, 93n79,
96n108, 103n4, 106n2
modernity, xi, xii, 2–6
Montaigne, Michele de, xv, 112n67
morality, xiii, 4, 5, 7, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25,
28, 29–31, 36–40, 45–48, 50, 51,
58–62, 82n19, 96n108, 97n112,
97n113, 97n116, 98n119,
98n123, 101n7, 102n16,
102n17, 109n46
morals, 3, 4, 13
mystic. See Nietzsche as a mystic
mysticism, 106n3
Greek Orthodox, xi, xv
view of history, 102n15
Napoleon, 2, 51, 69n16, 104n5, 109n42
natural law, 87n3, 101n11, 103n18,
103n20
natural rights, 94n89, 101n11, 102n16
natural right to aggression, 37, 49
Nemesis, 2
Nicomachean Ethics, The (Aristotle), 93n74
Nietzsche, Friedrich
as anarchist, 35, 62, 95n102
as an aristocratic radicalist, 61, 87n6,
111n67
as an aristocratic soul, 9, 110n53
as an artist, 61
as a critic of Christianity, xi
as an iconoclast, 6
as a modernist, xi
as a mystic, 9
as a pessimist/optimist, 10
as a product of his times, 1–6, 49–50
as a prophet, xv
as a psychologist, xi
as a student of art, xi
classical Greece as his ideal, 9, 11
his exceptional qualities, 6–13
his excesses and how to read him, 13,
18–21
his life, 7–13
his madness, xi, 75n54, 83n25
his musical composition, xi
his negative teachings, xii, xiv, 6,
55–65
his new table of values, 56–65
his positive teachings, xii, xiv, 6,
55–65
his significance, 1, 61–65
his unworthy propagandizers, 1, 68n5
his views of women, 33–35, 93n78,
93n79, 93n83, 94n85, 94n87,
94n89, 94n90, 94n91, 94n92,
95n102
his views of the Jews, 51, 103n2,
104n6
The Antichrist, 79n90, 82n19, 89n20,
90n40, 90n45, 90n46, 99n135,
104n8, 105n22, 109n38, 113n68
Beyond Good and Evil, 68n3, 69n13,
72n32, 76n65, 77n76, 78n86,
84n29, 85n41, 89n26, 89n32,
90n43, 90n44, 90n46, 91n51,
91n53, 93n72, 93n73, 93n75,
94n83, 94n87, 94n90, 94n91,
94n93, 94n94, 95n96, 96n106,
96n108, 98n127, 99n136,
99n139, 99n141, 103n3, 104n5,
104n8, 105n18, 106n1, 108n30,
112n68
 Index
Birth of Tragedy, The, x, 75n58,
75n60, 77n72, 77n76, 79n94,
81n5, 82n19, 85n39, 106n3
Dawn, The, 12, 72n29, 76n72, 86n46,
97n113, 98n123, 108n30,
109n34, 113n68
Case of Wagner, The, 77n76
Ecce Homo, 68n3, 68n4, 68n5, 69n7,
72n32, 75n58, 75n59, 76n65,
76n69, 77n72, 77n75, 77n76,
79n92, 80n97, 83n25, 88n15,
92n54, 96n106, 99n133, 104n4,
105n18, 108n22, 109n42
Gay Science, 12, 72n29, 76n60, 76n65,
76n68, 77n73, 78n88, 79n89,
79n90, 79n92, 79n95, 82n16,
82n18, 82n19, 83n28, 84n29,
84n34, 85n41, 86n46, 87n3,
87n4, 87n6, 88n17, 88n19,
89n26, 92n57, 93n68, 93n77,
94n83, 94n85, 94n86, 94n89,
94n92, 109n34, 113n68
Genealogy of Morals, xi, 12, 68n1,
70n19, 78n83, 79n95, 82n15,
84n31, 85n44, 86n46, 88n19,
90n35, 90n43, 90n44, 90n45,
90n46, 90n48, 91n51, 91n53,
96n107, 96n108, 96n109,
98n129, 99n133, 99n135,
99n137, 99n139, 102n17,
103n3, 104n5, 104n8, 106n1,
107n13, 110n50, 113n68
Human, All Too Human, 68n5, 69n13,
72n19, 75n55, 75n59, 77n72,
77n74, 77n75, 77n77, 77n78,
78n81, 78n82, 83n28, 85n41,
86n46, 87n4, 88n16, 91n51,
93n72, 93n78, 93n80, 94n83,
94n89, 95n95, 95n99, 96n106,
98n121, 98n127, 100n145,
101n6, 104n8, 109n34
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 13, 79n91,
81n7, 86n45, 87n4, 90n38,
93n72, 94n88, 95n100, 95n102,
99n142, 100n146, 105n18,
106n5, 108n17, 108n18,
109n33, 109n35
121
Twilight of the Idols, 12, 68n1, 69n6,
69n13, 74n48, 76n65, 76n65,
77n76, 78n81, 80n97, 84n29,
85n41, 88n11, 88n15, 89n27,
90n36, 90n38, 90n39, 91n53,
92n67, 93n68, 93n72, 93n74,
96n107, 97n116, 98n122,
99n136, 99n137, 99n138,
104n16, 105n18, 109n39,
113n68
Untimely Meditations, 68n1, 73n39,
77n74, 77n80, 79n92, 80n95,
82n19, 88n16, 110n16
Wanderer and his Shadow, 11
Will to Power, 69n13, 69n16, 77n73,
77n75, 77n76, 80n1, 80n95,
80n96, 81n2, 81n4, 81n5,
82n14, 82n15, 82n19, 83n19,
83n26, 83n27, 84n28, 84n31,
84n32, 84n33, 84n34, 84n35,
85n41, 85n43, 85n45, 88n11,
88n15, 89n19, 89n26, 89n31,
90n36, 90n43, 92n56, 92n67,
93n68, 97n118, 99n139, 103n2,
104n8, 106n4, 107n9, 110n47,
113n68
nihilism, xv, 15–21, 36, 40, 41, 42,
43, 45, 53, 55, 63, 80n96,
80n1, 81n4, 82n15, 82n19,
83n23, 84n31, 84n34, 84n35,
90n43, 92n56, 106n2, 106n4,
112n67
noble, 3, 6, 13, 32, 37, 39, 42, 52, 55, 61,
64, 92n62, 96n108, 96n109,
99n136, 110n48, 111n67
See also aristocratic
objective
objective truths, xiii. See also truth
objectivism (philosophy), xiv
Odyssey (Kazantzakis), ix, xiv
Old Testament, 105n17
organic, 23, 24, 37, 55, 59, 90n39, 103n4
organismic, 102n15, 110n51
Ottoman Empire, x, xi
Overman. See Übermensch
Owen, Robert, 5, 72n35, 73n36
122
pathology, 4, 82n11, 91n54. See also
madness, malaise
Paul, Saint, 6, 92n54, 112n67
Peirce, Charles, 3, 71n27
pessimism, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17–21,
40, 53, 55, 72n33, 84n31,
84n35, 85n35, 106n2, 112n67
Buddhist, 84n31
epistemological, 76n60, 77n73
Kant’s, 113n68
Schopenhauerian, 76n60, 77n73,
77n75
Phaedrus, (Plato), 85n42
Philosophy of Right (Hegel), 102n15
physis. See nature
physiology, 3, 82n19, 84n31
Pindar, 109n36
pity, 9, 11, 16, 44, 64, 84n34. See also char-
ity, compassion, love (Christian)
Plato, 50, 71n27, 77n76, 85n42, 89n28,
96n110
Epinomis, 85n42
Gorgias, 50, 96n110
Phaedrus, 85n42
Republic, 77n76, 85n42, 89n28,
96n110, 97n114
Sophist, 85n42
Timaeus, 85n42
Platonism, 80n97, 91n50
Realism, xi
Plotinian, xiv
poet, 1, 6, 35, 61, 78n82, 85n39
poetry, 11, 35. See also aesthetics, art
Poincarè, Jules Henri, 3, 75n21
Politics (Aristotle), 93n70, 96n104
positive aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy.
See Nietzsche–his positive
teachings
Pragmatism (philosophy), 71n27, 71n28,
71n29, 85n36, 114n72
Pragmatism (James), 3, 71n29
Presocratics, the, xi, 112n67
psychologist. See Nietzsche–as a
psychologist
Rationalism, xii. See also Socratic
Ratio-nalism
Index
Realism (philosophy)
Platonic Transcendental Realism, xi
reason
Hegelian concept of Reason, 83
recognition
the struggle for recognition, 41
reductionism, xi
religion, xii, xiii, xiv, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10,
12, 18, 21, 26, 27, 29, 32,
35, 38, 43, 45, 46, 51, 52, 55,
57, 59, 60, 69n16, 70n21,
111n67
of slaves, 81n4. See also Christianity
Roman religion, 38
religion of mankind (Comte),
See also transvaluation
Renaissance, 103n4
Report to Greco (Kazantzakis), x, 68n10,
93n69, 99n133
Republic (Plato), 77n76, 85n42, 89n28,
96n110, 97n114
Revolution, French, 16, 34, 40, 48, 52,
99n139
right (legal concept), 48–49
Rouchefoucauld, La, 77n77, 111n67
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 112n67
Roy, Eduard Le, 71n26
Saint-Simon, Henri, 5, 72n36
Saul. See Paul
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 8, 11, 75n60,
76n61, 77n73, 77n74, 77n75,
77n76, 77n77, 83n21, 88n17,
88n19, 100n5, 112n67
The World as Will and Representation,
75n60, 76n61, 77n77
Schopenhauerian, xv, 76n60, 83n21
science, 3, 16, 17, 21, 23, 26, 27, 30, 48,
57, 61, 70n19, 70n21, 71n22,
71n23, 71n25, 71n29, 73n37,
74n42, 75n55, 78n81, 78n82,
82n15, 83n21, 86n1, 86n46,
87n2, 87n4, 87n9, 88n16,
90n33, 97n118, 101n11,
107n12, 113n68
scientism, xi, xii, 73n37, 83n24, 112n67,
113n68
 Index
Semites, 103n2, 104n6
Semitic
democratic ideal as, 51
See also Anti-Semite, Aryan
Schiller, Ferdinand, 3, 71n28
self-abnegation, 11
self-interest, 48
self-overcoming, 7, 82n9, 84n31, 86n45,
88n19, 95n100. See also
Übermensch
self-preservation, 39, 101n16, 111n67
self-sacrifice, 11, 77n75, 97n116
Skepticism, 1, 6, 19, 62, 68n4, 78n81,
86n2, 112n67, 113n72
Montaigne’s, xv
slaves, 32, 38, 45, 49, 50, 55, 57, 61,
81n4, 91n51, 102n17,
104n8
religion of, 81n4
morality of, 51
slavery, 62
Aristotle on slavery, 93n70
Social Darwinism, 89n29, 112n67. See also
Spenser
Socialism, 5, 17, 32, 52, 53, 64, 74n42,
104n7, 104n8
utopian, 83n28
Socrates, 89n29, 91n54, 106n3, 112n67
Socratic
Socratic Rationalism, xi, xv
Sophocles, 103n18
Antigone, 103n18
soul, xiii, xiv, 9, 35, 48, 52–53, 59,
68n3, 70n21, 89n28, 90n35,
90n38, 90n43, 90n48, 95n100,
113n68
Sophist (Plato), 85n42
Sophists, 72n33, 112n68
Spinoza, Baruch, 86n2, 112n67
State
origins and nature of, 36–42
Stirner, Max, 5, 74n39, 108n15, 112n67
Strauss, David, 5, 73n39
subjectivist
Subjectivist Individualism, xiv
sublimation, 97n113, 99n137, 104n10
syncreticism, xvi
123
tables of values. See values
Taine, Hippolyte, 7, 74n49
teleology, 70n21, 70n22, 71n23, 71n25,
78n81, 82n14, 86n2, 87n3,
87n9
Thucydides, 98n125
History of the Peloponnesian War,
98n125
tragedy, 10
Greek, 9
transvaluation, 15–21, 40, 48, 58, 81n4,
91n54, 102n17, 103n3, 108n18
Christian transvaluation, 52–53
See also values
truth, 6, 15, 17, 19, 25, 26, 30, 34,
71n27, 75n55, 75n59, 81n1,
81n4, 81n7, 85n36, 86n45,
89n26, 89n27, 92n63, 94n92,
97n113, 105n22, 111n64
a priori, 112n68
as an instrument, 58
in Nietzsche’s philosophy, 75n55,
78n86, 79n95, 80n97
love of, 12
objective, xiii
pragmatic view, 71n27
See also falsehood, illusion, lie
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 13,
79n91, 81n7, 86n45, 87n4,
90n38, 93n72, 94n88, 95n100,
95n102, 99n142, 100n146,
105n18, 106n5, 108n17,
108n18, 109n33, 109n35
Timaeus (Plato), 85n42
Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 12,
68n1, 69n6, 69n13, 74n48,
76n65, 76n65, 77n76,
78n81, 80n97, 84n29, 85n41,
88n11, 88n15, 89n27, 90n36,
90n38, 90n39, 91n53,
92n67, 93n68, 93n72, 93n74,
96n107, 97n116, 98n122,
99n136, 99n137, 99n138,
104n16, 105n18, 109n39,
113n68
Two Treatises of Government (Locke),
101n11
124
Überfrau, 70n18
Übermensch, x, xii, 7, 12, 35, 56, 58, 59,
60, 62, 68n5, 79n91, 79n92,
84n34, 85n43, 96n109, 104n5,
105n22, 106n2, 108n17,
108n18, 109n42
Untimely Meditations (Nietzsche), 68n1,
73n39, 77n74, 77n80, 79n92,
80n95, 82n19, 88n16, 110n16
Utilitarianism, xi, 101n6, 102n16, 105n20,
109n43, 112n67
Utopia, 3, 4, 32, 52, 70n18, 72n35, 72n36,
73n38, 83n28, 96n109, 104n5
values, xv, 15–21, 28–31, 33, 36, 39,
43–44, 49, 55–59, 62, 63, 71n27,
80n1, 81n7, 82n9, 82n10,
82n11, 84n35, 88n16, 92n63,
101n11, 106n4, 111n64
bourgeois, xiii
life-enhancing, 85n43
slaves’, 51, 69n16
vitalism. See Bergson, hylozoism
Wagner, Richard, 8, 9, 73n39, 75n60,
77n73, 77n75, 81n5, 106n3,
111n67
Wanderer and His Shadow, The
(Nietzsche), 11
will to power, xv, 24, 25, 55, 80n1,
88n13, 88n17, 89n19, 90n38,
Index
91n51, 97n118, 101n6,
105n19, 105n22, 107n10,
107n12, 107n14, 107n15,
110n56
Will to Power, The (Nietzsche), 69n13,
69n16, 77n73, 77n75,
77n76, 80n1, 80n95, 80n96,
81n2, 81n4, 81n5, 82n14,
82n15, 82n19, 83n19, 83n26,
83n27, 84n28, 84n31, 84n32,
84n33, 84n34, 84n35, 85n41,
85n43, 85n45, 88n11, 88n15,
89n19, 89n26, 89n31, 90n36,
90n43, 92n56, 92n67, 93n68,
97n118, 99n139, 103n2,
104n8, 106n4, 107n9, 110n47,
113n68
woman, 33–35, 93n78, 93n79, 93n83,
94n85, 94n87, 94n89, 94n90,
94n91, 94n92, 95n102
the nature of, 33–35
See also feminine
World as Will and Representation, The
(Schopenhauer), 75n60, 76n61,
77n77
Zarathustra, x, xiv, 12, 13. See also Thus
Spoke Zarathustra
Zola, Emile, 112n67
Zorba, 85n39
Zorba, the Greek (Kazantzakis), ix
PHILOSOPHY / LITERATURE

Friedrich
Nietzsche
on the Philosophy of Right and the State

Nikos Kazantzakis
Translated and with an Introduction, Notes,
and Additional Comments by Odysseus Makridis

This book represents the first English translation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1909
dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche’s political and legal philosophy. Before
Kazantzakis became one of the best-known modern Greek writers, he was an avid
student of Nietzsche’s thought, discovering Nietzsche while studying law in Paris
from 1907 to 1909. This powerful assessment of Nietzsche’s radical political thought
is translated here from a restored and authentic recent edition of the original. Its
deep insights are unencumbered by the encrustations that generations of
Nietzsche’s admirers and detractors have deposed on the original Nietzschean
corpus. The book also offers a revealing glimpse into the formative stage of
Kazantzakis’s thought.

“Thanks to the efforts of the translator, Kazantzakis’s bold, appreciative interpretation

of Nietzsche is now available to Anglophone readers. While other figures from the
period offered their thoughts on Nietzsche, none approaches the stature and
genius of Kazantzakis. This book opens a unique window onto the European intel-
lectual scene at the beginning of the twentieth century.”

— Daniel W. Conway, author of Nietzsche and the Political

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) is the author of Zorba the Greek, The Last
Temptation of Christ, and the modern Greek epic Odyssey. Odysseus
Makridis is Assistant Professor in Philosophy and the Humanities at Fairleigh
Dickinson University and the translator of Letters and Sayings of Epicurus.

State University of New York Press

www.sunypress.edu