Nietzsche on Race and Sex
Scholars sometimes say Nietzsche wasn’t really
racist or anti-Semitic, and that his sexist remarks are simply a reflection of his
times. But Nietzsche certainly appears to endorse shockingly racist, anti-Semitic,
and unusually virulent sexist ideas (even for his time). Consider the following: "In the Latin malus (which I place side
by side with m
e
l
a
V
) the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and above all as
the black-haired ("hic niger est"), as the pre-Aryan inhabitants
of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest feature of distinction from
the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering race: … good, noble, clean, but
originally the blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals.
The Celts, if I may make a parenthetical statement, were throughout a blonde race; and
it is wrong to connect, as Virchow still connects, those traces of an essentially dark-haired
population which are to be seen on the more elaborate ethnographical maps of Germany, with any
Celtic ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood: in this context, it is rather the
pre-Aryan population of Germany which surges up in these districts. (The same is
true substantially of the whole of Europe: in point of fact, the subject race has finally
again obtained the upper hand, in complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps
in the intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that modern democracy, still
more modern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the "Commune," the most primitive
form of society, which is now common to all the Socialists in Europe, does not in its real
essence signify a monstrous reversion – and that the conquering and master
race – the Aryan race, is not also becoming inferior physiologically?)" The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 5 "The knightly-aristocratic "values" are based on a careful cult of
the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes
considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase,
the dance, the tourney — on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free,
and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode of valuation is … based on other
hypotheses; it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests
are, as is notorious, the worst enemies — why? Because they are the weakest.
Their weakness causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape
which is most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the history of the world
have always been priests, who are also the cleverest haters — in comparison with the
cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negligible.
Human history would be too fatuous for anything were it not for the cleverness imported into
it by the weak — take at once the most important instance. All the world’s efforts
against the "aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters,"
the "holders of power", are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished
against those classes by the Jews — the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually
realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by
means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the
cleverest revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests,
to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who,
in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved
by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and
indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness)
this contrary equation, namely, "the wretched are alone the good; the suffering,
the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who
are blessed, for them alone is salvation — but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats,
you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate,
the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!" The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 7; see also Beyond Good and Evil, Section 195. "This Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer"
bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful — was he not really
temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, temptation to take the tortuous
path to those very Jewish values and those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel
really obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by the tortuous paths of this
"Redeemer," for all that he might pose as Israel ’s adversary and
Israel’s destroyer? Is it not due to the black magic of a really great policy
of revenge, of a far-seeking, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with slowness,
that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the actual instrument of his own
revenge and nail it to the cross, so that all the world — that is, all the enemies of
Israel — could nibble without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover, any human
mind with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was more truly dangerous?"
The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 8 "[The aristocratic men] enjoy their freedom from all social control, they feel
that in the wilderness they can give vent with impunity to that tension which is produced
by enclosure and imprisonment in the peace of society, they revert to the innocence
of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps come from a ghastly bout
of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with bravado and moral equanimity, as though merely some
wild student’s prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the poets have now an
ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is impossible not to recognise at the core of all
these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the magnificent blonde brute, avidly
rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the
beast must get loose again, must return into the wilderness — the Roman, Arabic,
German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are all
alike in this need. … The profound, icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon
as he arrives at power, – even at the present time, – is always still an aftermath
of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath
of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the old Germans and ourselves there exists
scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, relationship). … Granted the truth of
the theory now believed to be true, that the very essence of all civilisation is to
train out of man, the beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal,
it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real tools of civilisation all
those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the help of which the aristocratic races,
together with their ideals, were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not
yet come to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also
represented the civilisation. It is rather the contrary that is not only
probable — nay, it is palpable today; these bearers of vindictive instincts
that have to be bottled up, these descendants of all European and non-European slavery,
especially, of the pre-Aryan population — these people, I say, represent the
decline of humanity! These "tools of civilisation" are a disgrace to
humanity, and constitute in reality more of an argument against civilisation,
more of a reason why civilisation should be suspected. One may be perfectly justified
in being always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the core of all aristocratic
races, and in being on one’s guard: but who would not a hundred times prefer to be
afraid, when one at the same time admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost of
being perpetually obsessed with the loathsome spectacle of the distorted, the dwarfed,
the stunted, the envenomed? And is that not our fate?" The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 8 The following are aphorisms about women
from Beyond Good and Evil: And these remarks are mild compared to Thus Spake Zarathustra, XVIII! |