Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
“That meditating on things human, all too human (or, as the learned phrase goes, “psychological observation”) is one of the means by which man can ease life’s burden; that by exercising this art, one can secure presence of mind in difficult situations and entertainment amid boring surroundings; indeed, that from the thorniest and unhappiest phases of one’s own life one can pluck maxims and feel a bit better thereby: this was believed, known—in earlier centuries. Why has it been forgotten in this century, when many signs point, in Germany at least, if not throughout Europe, to the dearth of psychological observation?”
In the late 19th century, Europe was in a period of transformation. Countries found themselves moving away from monarchal rule to democratic rule. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection had shaken the foundations of theology and of the origin of the human species and taken hold in the minds of the intelligentsia; trains now stretched from France to Germany and all around Europe; the Church was experiencing a decline in political power, under threat from the new scientific innovations spreading across the continent; everywhere one looked, one saw signs of an ever increasing rate of change that would come to be the norm in the 20th and 21st centuries.
As Nietzsche observed the world around him, and especially as he looked at the heart of his modern-day Germany, he found humanity itself undergoing a transformation. The scientific mind was disrupting the old modes of thought and institutions, and, according to Nietzsche’s prescient predictions, would continue to do so. In Nietzsche’s later thought, he turns away from the romantic to focus on the scientific. Nietzsche finds error in the way so many thinkers understand humanity. His knowledge of Greek and Classical history, along with the discovery of evolution by natural selection, leads Nietzsche to ideas that question the foundation of humanity and society.
Cover for Human, All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by Marian Faber)
In Human, All Too Human (1878), Nietzsche makes the first foray into what he will later term “philosophizing with a hammer.” He outlines his task under the name of a new science which he refers to as “historical philosophy.” This task involves cataloguing human history and development as well as the history of philosophy, religion, morality, metaphysics, psychology, and truth. In this work, his goal is to cast a scientific gaze upon that which is human, all too human without concerns for sentimentality or tradition. Instead, Nietzsche wants to give a path for the ”the free spirit” in the new world where humans find themselves. It is a captivating transitional work in the history of his thought and kicks off the publishing spree and development of thought that, over the following decade, will culminate in his most famous works, including Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil.
The Structure of Human, All Too Human
The book is comprised of 9 chapters, which have quite a large range in topics, which are titled into as:
Of First and Last Things
On the History of Moral Feelings
Religious Life
From the Soul of Artists and Writers
Signs of Higher and Lower Culture
Man in Society
Woman and Child
A Look at the State
Man Alone with Himself
Unlike so many other philosophical works, this book is written in an aphoristic style—instead of long walls of text filled with unbroken thought and clearly outlined logical conclusions, this work is written in bursts of thought which range from a single sentence to only a couple of pages. Each aphorism breaks into a new thought and often has no explicit connection with the immediately prior or following aphorism. The aphoristic style creates a work that is digestible in length and word count, but also creates challenges for the novice reader. Someone who is not familiar with the history of philosophy or the thought of the time may not glean what Nietzsche intended. The short paragraphs, even when they are direct and pointed, often leave open the possibility of misunderstanding Nietzsche’s thought. The tone of each aphorism is exceedingly important to grasp, as one aphorism may be a tongue-in-cheek mocking of the content presented, whereas another aphorism is designed to be taken in earnest at face value. The aphoristic style that Nietzsche uses is one that forces a reader to engage with the text differently. Instead of outlining all of the conclusions within each section, he leaves the breadcrumbs as a guide, but often leaves the reader with the task of interpreting where he is leading the reader. At the end of each section are lengthier aphorisms that provide a capstone for the preceding aphorisms, but these are still not directly outlining the logical conclusions of the section. Instead, they are like a crescendo for each chapter, providing a burst of energy and thought on the topic before moving onto the next chapter.
Historical Philosophy and Human Psychology
In the first chapter, Nietzsche opens with his mission statement—to create a chemistry of moral, religious, aesthetic ideas and feelings, and openly question the origin and beginnings of mankind. His second aphorism is also quite important to understanding the structure of the chapters that follow. Here Nietzsche criticizes philosophers for looking at present-day man and assuming that the kind of man that exists today is the same kind of man that has existed throughout history and throughout prehistory, as if mankind were an eternal property or truth. Philosophers at this time do not take on the serious implications that “everything essential in human development occurred in primeval times, long before those four thousand years with which we are more or less familiar.” There are no eternal facts or absolute truths, period. Thus, one cannot make universal proclamations about either the world or humanity. As such, many of the aphorisms in this book are designed to lead the reader to truth by casting doubt and showing errors so that that which is true may arise.
Nietzsche goes through several more pages and touches on several other themes, including the psychology of dreams, the creation and nature of metaphysics and what may be lost when metaphysical thought is lost, and some short paragraphs on skepticism. One can even see some of the beginning of those thoughts that will go on to become Beyond Good and Evil (1886). For example, “it is self-evident that the world is not good and not evil, let alone the best or the worst, and that these concepts ‘good’ and ‘evil’ make sense only in reference to men. Perhaps even there, as they are generally used, they are not justified: we must in every case dispense with both the reviling and the glorifying view of the world.”
In Section Two, Nietzsche turns his attention to the nature of human psychology. These thoughts are not the pop psychology that the tabloids promote nowadays or the Freudian psychoanalytic fables that come to dominate so much thought in the early 20th century. Here Nietzsche is still interested in some of the more romantic notions of human psychology and trying to give them a critical eye. Before he begins, he spends the first few pages justifying the value of “psychological observation” and overcoming any objections that the reader may have to trying to treat this as a science. After this, the gloves come off quickly as Nietzsche immediately attacks the idea of intelligible freedom—free will—claiming “no one is responsible for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is to be unjust. This is also true when the individual judges himself. The tenet is as bright as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to walk back into the shadow and untruth—for fear of the consequences” (Section Two, Aphorism 39). The argument here holds that a pure rationality shows us that free will does not exist, and hence personal responsibility does not exist. Nietzsche doesn’t go on to say what the consequences are. Instead he leaves the reader with the quote above to complete his thoughts and lets his reader fill in the gaps.
Nietzsche and Religion: Sympathetic, Yet Scathing
In Section Three we see the blooming of Nietzsche’s thought on religion. At this point Nietzsche was clearly a skeptic and did not believe in the metaphysical claims that Christianity and other religions espoused. Even in this work, Nietzsche clearly holds onto the notion that society embracing science and moving away from religion is still a loss. In this chapter as well as the chapter “From the Soul of Artists and Writers,” Nietzsche draws a connection between the religious mode and the ability to experience art strongly. Like an atrophying muscle, as humanity’s need for religion wanes, so does our capacity for appreciating art. Yet his thoughts are not simply a dirge that sing praises for the times when religion ruled. Nietzsche still despises traditional religion in so many of its forms, and sees it as having burdened humanity in more ways than it liberates. He also has complex thoughts on what it means for an individual to be religious. In Aphorism 115 he writes:
“There are sober and efficient men on whom religion is embroidered like the hem of a higher humanity. These men do well to remain religious: it beautifies them.
All men who have no expertise with any weapon (mouth and pen counting as weapons) become servile: for such men, religion is very useful, for here servility takes on the appearance of a Christian virtue and is surprisingly beautified.
People who think their daily lives too empty and monotonous easily become religious: this is understandable and forgivable; however, they have no right to demand religiosity from those whose daily life does not pass in emptiness and monotony.”
Here Nietzsche clearly is walking a line between sympathizing with the religious and drawing a line that one has “no right to demand religiosity” from the person who is unreligious. Many of the aphorisms in Religious Life fit with this theme: those who are religious and have been in history are blameless, and there are many reasons why the Church (Nietzsche’s emphasis) has persisted with the power it has. Yet the history of religion provides no reason for us to continue supporting it, especially when we see progress on more modest goals in the realms of science.
Quote from Human, All Too Human
An instance where Nietzsche also draws a line on religion is Aphorism 129: “There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings.” Again, there is no ambiguity in this statement—the beings worshipped by religion are imaginary beings, and it does humanity no good to give our valuable time to them. What will replace the gap that comes from a lack of religion? Will that be the job of science, the state, philosophy, art, or any combination of the above? Nietzsches argues that there may be some very constrained ways that philosophy can come to fill the needs left by religion, but is also explicitly skeptical about it filling all of the gaps left by religion. In the chapter “A Look at the State” Nietzsche argues that the state may try to fill this gap, but without a tie to religion or traditional institutions there will inevitably be a conflict between the ruling class and the ruled. Unqualified obedience will be much less common in an unreligious state, which will lead to more despotism to retain control over power.
Some of the needs that religion provides for will need to disappear entirely, rather than be replaced. Forgiving the sin of man is something one only needs if sin is created in the first place. If sin disappears entirely, what need is there of redemption or forgiveness? Aphorism 119 lays out this case succinctly: “Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has to burden the heart first, in order to be able to lighten it afterward. Consequently it will perish.” In a longer aphorism (Aphorism 141), he makes the point even more clearly—“If one goes through the individual moral statements of the documents of Christianity, one will find everywhere that the demands have been exaggerated so that man cannot satisfy them; the intention is not that he become more moral, but rather that he feel as sinful as possible.” By abandoning pessimistic religion, we clear the way for a new path to be discovered which may allow man to become more moral. This change may be so complete that this species may view its religious ancestors like that of an alien race.
Art and Writing – Aesthetics and Practical Advice
Friedrich Nietzsche, portrait
Nietzsche is probably most famous for being known as a nihilist in his later work, and nothing in Human, All Too Human leads the reader to doubt his nihilism. What a close reading shows is a kind of longing and regret and uncertainty around what comes next. A new kind of human will come to exist, one that does not need religion—but also one that does not need art. The loss of art is more mournful to Nietzsche than the loss of religion. For Nietzsche, religious sentiment is a conduit for the metaphysical, and part of the drive to interpret the metaphysical and “the thing in itself” ultimately inspires art. As the scientific mind grows stronger, the artistic mindset grows scarce.
Nietzsche sees that artists can only become masters of their craft by positioning themselves to it more weakly. The thinker’s job is to find and express truth, but the artist’s job is “fighting for the higher dignity and meaning of man” (Aphorism 146). In this pursuit, the artist must remain in a kind of juvenescence. Artists preserve old ideas about life, even ones that do not hold up under the scrutiny of the enlightenment.
To show the utter truth about our reality is not art—that is science. The benefit of art is that it “renders the sight of life bearable by laying over it the gauze of impure thinking” (Aphorism 151). The artists creates art through dedication of her craft, which can lead to her being labeled a genius. Yet a genius should not be so proud and feel so divine that they are above reproach. If a man should become so narcissistic that he “is overtaken by awe of himself” then he risks being above reproach (Aphorism 164). Those who worship him are blessed by his presence while those who judge his work are deemed lower.
Aphorism 164, mentioned above, is a lengthier aphorism about the “danger and benefit of worshipping the genius” which drives home what must have felt very personal for Nietzsche. Throughout his early adulthood, Nietzsche built a strong relationship with Richard Wagner, the famous German composer of Tristan and Isolde and The Valkyrie. To Nietzsche, Wagner was not only a close friend, but also a confidant, a mentor, and, in many respects, a father-figure. Being in Wagner’s close inner life is a privilege that many would have sought, but only Nietzsche’s brilliance could have cultivated the interest of a man so popular. It is hard to express Wagner’s earth-shatteringly influence on German and European culture in the mid to late 19th century. His works were so powerfully acclaimed, his scores so emotional, that much of the rich nobility funded an unimaginably lavish lifestyle for Wagner and his friends so that he would be free from as many worldly distractions as possible in order to create his art. It would be as if you combined the popularity of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones at the peak of their fame into a single person, and then had the entirety of the English government pay millions of British Pounds to immediately fund every possible whim they could ever have. If you can imagine that, you will have some sense of the level of privilege and fame that Wagner held in Europe.
For someone like Nietzsche, who came from a poor family and whose father had died when he was still a teenager, the opulence and brilliance of being connected with Wagner was intoxicating. Besides the mansion, food, and other material benefits of being in Wagner’s good graces, the company itself was great. Wagner and Nietzsche inspired each other in wonderful ways, and they both benefitted from the other—for a time. Eventually, Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner weakened, his ideas grew separate from Wagner’s, and the two become mere acquaintances. Wagner’s ego, antisemitism, and self-worship became too much for Nietzsche, and Aphorism 164 can encapsulate some of the more abstract thoughts on “genius.” Only ten years later will Nietzsche write “The Case of Wagner,” where he explicitly calls out this antisemitism and comes to understand that his own ideas about art and music and genius were misapplied to Wagner’s work.
In the middle of this chapter, Nietzsche turns to some extremely short and pithy aphorisms about writing which are quite enjoyable:
“A good writer possesses not only his own mind but also the mind of his friends.” (Aphorism 180)
“It is neither the best nor the worst of a book that is untranslatable.” (Aphorism 184)
“The so-called paradoxes of an author, which a reader objects to, are often not at all in the author’s book but rather in the reader’s head.” (Aphorism 185)
“Most thinkers write badly because they tell us not only their thoughts. But also the thinking of the thoughts.” (Aphorism 188)
“The poet presents his thoughts in splendor, on the wagon of rhythm—usually because they cannot go on foot.” (Aphorism 189)
“The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.” (Aphorism 192)
“One should regard a writer as a criminal who deserves acquittal or clemency only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.” (Aphorism 193)
The tone of these aphorisms are a bit cheeky and poke at writing as an ignoble profession, except for in the rarest situations. Nietzsche clearly has insights to share about writing, but doesn’t want to build up the self-esteem of the writer too much. As a writer, Nietzsche seems to be trying to contrast his own profession as a writer with that of the musical or artistic genius and ensure he does not become a hypocrite. The advice he gives is more than just false modesty. He goes on to ridicule tabloid newspaper writers and bemoan the inevitable and necessary existence of bad writers.
These shorter lines give way to much longer aphorisms about the nature of the comic, rhyme, music, transcendence in art, and poetry. This section is easily accessible and insightful, so it remains my favorite chapter within the book.
On Culture – The Higher and Lower
The second half of the book has chapters which are so close in theme that they could be combined into a single megachapter. Sections 5, 6, and 8 cover all the varied topics of society, the development and future of science, the nature of government, and interpersonal relationships, including both friendships and rivalries.
Among the consequences of democracy and the weakening power of religion within the state, Nietzsches makes some prescient predictions about the adversarial result of these institutions. In Aphorism 472, titled Religion and Government Nietzsche writes that the continued existence of religion is beneficial for the state because “religion appeases the individual soul in times of loss, privation, fear, or mistrust, that is, when government feels itself unable to anything directly to alleviate the private man’s inner suffering.” When enlightened stewards of government separate themselves from religion while still embracing that religion as a tool, that for Nietzsche is “the origin of free-thinking.” In democratic states, however, the separation between the ruling class and the ruled becomes blurred—democracy erases the hierarchy of state over the individual so that there is no Above and no Below. Here, the state cannot take a stance toward religion that is different from that of the people. If the majority of the electorate treat religious idolatry and beliefs as a core end of society itself, the government cannot take a the detached approach above where the rulers see themselves as above the “lower culture” of the common people. As sects argue amongst themselves to gain ground about the truth of the matter, religion will be relegated to personal, private life only, and government will, by necessity of the diversity of religious sects within a democracy, become irreligious and secular. Once the state becomes secular, those who still hold religious attitudes will become hostile to the state and take the irreligious nature as an affront to the religion’s tenets. Eventually, Nietzsche argues, the conflict will lead to despotism as an attempt to retain political control and the state itself will decline.
Nietzsche has lots to say about the state, but one of his unmistakable beliefs is that socialism is bad for the overall development of culture and the state. Like his stance on religion, Nietzsche openly mocks it while simultaneously putting forth an empathetic understanding of why it appeals to certain parties. His thoughts are best captured at the ending of Aphorism 473:
“Socialism can serve as a rather brutal and forceful way to teach the danger of all accumulations of state power, and to that extent instill one with distrust of the state itself. When its rough voice chimes in with the battle cry “As much state as possible,” it will at first make the cry noisier than ever; but soon the opposite cry will be heard with strength the greater: “As little state as possible.”
Nietzsche’s Problematic Views on Women
I would be remiss to entirely skip Section 7: Woman and Child. The section itself does not contain very much in the way of insight, but it is a powerful chapter for another reason—it is one of the areas of Nietzsche’s work where misogyny is on full display. Many of the aphorisms in this section preclude any possibility of women becoming “free spirits” or even of free spirits living with women. Nietzsche also argues that marriage is detrimental to the overall spiritual development of the husband. He paints a picture of the dutiful wife making a bigger deal than is necessary of the house-work and inner happenings of a house. In Aphorism 419, he claims that women lack the same logical capacities as men:
“Because women are so much more personal than objective, their range of ideas can tolerate tendencies that are logically in contradiction to one another; they tend to be enthusiastic about the representatives of these tendencies, one after the other, and accept their systems wholesale; but in such a way that a dead place arises whenever a new personality later gains the upper hand. It could happen that all of the philosophy in the head of an old woman consists of nothing but such dead places.”
These aphorisms show a blatant sexism in the capabilities of women to become free spirits, to participate in philosophy, and to even participate in government and science. The various paragraphs go on to describe women conspiring, either intentionally or through their natures, against their husbands and against the very idea of free spirits. There is a kind of bitter thankfulness toward Xanthippe, Socrates wife. The only reason Socrates was able to become the great philosopher and gadfly of Athens, according to Nietzsche, is because “Xanthippe drove him more and more into his strange profession, by making his house and home inhospitable and unhomely; she taught him to live in the back streets, and anywhere one could chatter and be idle, and in that way formed him into Athens’ greatest backstreet dialectician, who finally had to compare himself to a pesky horsefly, set by a god on the neck of the beautiful horse Athens to keep it from coming to rest” (Aphorism 433).
As much as Nietzsche defenders may want to look at this chapter and argue that the content is not particularly egregious when compared to the standards of his day, I think that defense misses the mark. For an iconoclast and nihilist such as Nietzsche, who has no problem vehemently opposing the antisemitism of one of his life-long friends, no qualms about breaking down our understanding of human psychology, and taking a hammer to every other piece of tradition that society holds dear, why should this topic be the one topic on which he has the most unenlightened thoughts?
If one dares to risk interpreting philosophy as biography, one might first point to Nietzsche’s largely unromantic life—he never married, never had a fiancé, and never had so much as a regular lover, so far as the historical record shows. He had many infatuations and tried to court women, but they were either not interested in him or the connections he made always turned out to be intellectual rather than physical or sexual in nature.
One could also point to the fraught relationship he had with his sister and mother. Both of these women were obsessed with status and image, whereas Nietzsche was only interested in it so far as it could take him. His sister had a vicious, vindictive personality, and went on to create a failed commune that she scammed other Germans into joining in South America. After Nietzsche’s death she would take the private notes of Nietzsche and selectively publish them as a collection called “The Will to Power.” She was a vicious antisemite and married a husband who was even more antisemitic than her. Needless to say, one of the closest women in Nietzsche’s life ended up being a loathsome person generally.
Yet even the most loathsome women does not excuse the rampant sexism in Human, All Too Human. The section sticks out from the rest of the book like a sore thumb, with the exception that it is the chapter that mentions the “free spirit” more than any other. In this section, Nietzsche is almost outlining the free spirit purely as contrast against the spirit and nature of women. Whatever Nietzsche ascribes to the nature of woman, the opposite holds true for the free spirit; “Women want to serve, and therein lies their happiness; and the free spirit wants not to be served, and therein lies his happiness” (Aphorism 432).
Man Alone with Himself
Finally, at the end of the book, we arrive at the section which contains a combination of the others, weaving together human psychology, culture, society, art, writing, and truth. This chapter has more to say on what it means to live than the others.
“People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.” (Aphorism 495)
“To speak about oneself not at all is a very refined form of hypocrisy.” (Aphorism 504)
“The champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring.” (Aphorism 506)
“That something is irrational is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition for it.” (Aphorism 515)
“Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy’s staying alive.” (Aphorism 531)
These sections highlight the necessity of irrationality as a motivating force in life. While the scientific mind may have brought us truths and technology, one cannot live scientifically. Certainly one can be a scientist, not just by occupation but also by disposition, but science and truth only carry one so far; “When a man tries earnestly to liberate his intellect, his passions and desires secretly hope to benefit from it also” (Aphorism 542).
Nietzsche ends the book with a call that the free spirit become a wanderer. He should wander without a final goal, taking in everything that he sees. The free spirit wanders detached from any individual thing or idea, putting himself at risk of nights with bad weather, greedy thieves, and ravenous beasts. He must wander through the night, make it finally to the light of day, and after embracing daybreak seek the philosophy of the forenoon (Aphorism 638). The final page of this book aligns well with my rambling philosophy. Nietzsche’s wanderer and my rambler are good friends, conversing with each other on the trail down the mountain.
