Nietzsche ATCT el ten NY ee Oot Introduction by dire menr LaniCAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Human, All Too HumanCAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors KagL AMERIKS Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame DEsMonp M. CLARKE Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork The main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commis- sioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book.FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Human, All Too Human TRANSLATED BY R. J. HOLLINGDALE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD SCHACHT University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign EE CAMBRIDGE a: UNIVERSITY PRESSPUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cs2 2nv, UK 4o West 2oth Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, USA. 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcén 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa hitp:/ /www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1986, 1996 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published with introduction by Erich Heller 1986 This edition published with introduction by Richard Schacht 1996 Ninth printing 2005 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge ‘A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. [Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. English] Human, all too human / Friedrich Nietzsche; translated by R. J. Hollingdale; with an introduction by Richard Schacht. p. cm. — (Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy) Includes bibliographical references (p. xxvi). 1. Man, 1. Hollingdale, R.J. 11. Title, 1. Series. 1B3313.M52E5 1996b 128-de20 96-10969 cir ISBN 0 521 562007 hardback ISBN 0 521 567041 paperback ceCONTENTS Introduction Chronology Further Reading Human, All Too Human Volume I Preface 1 Of First and Last Things 2 On the History of the Moral Sensations 3, The Religious Life 4 From the Souls of Artists and Writers 5 Tokens of Higher and Lower Culture 6 Man in Society 7 Woman and Child 8 A Glance at the State 9 Man Alone with Himself ‘Among Friends: An Epilogue Volume II Preface Part One Assorted Opinions and Maxims Part Two The Wanderer and His Shadow Index page vii vxiv xxvi 12 31 107 136 150 179 205 207 215 396INTRODUCTION ‘Human, All Too Human is the monument of a crisis.’ With these apt words Nietzsche began his own reflection, in his autobiographical Ecce Homo (1888)/' on this remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms published in three instalments, the first of which had appeared in 1878, ten years earlier. The crisis to which he refers was first and foremost a crisis of multiple dimensions in his own life. Human, All Too Human was the extended product of a period of devastating health problems that necessitated Nietzsche's resignation in 1879 from his professorship in classical philology at Basel University. These problems were to plague him for the remaining decade of his brief productive life (which ended with his complete physical and mental collapse in January 1889, at the age of 44, from which he never recovered in the eleven years of marginal existence that remained to him before his death in 1900). Human, All Too Human also marked Nietzsche's transition from the philologist and cultural critic he had been into the kind of philosopher and writer he came to be. But the crisis was above all a crisis in Nietzsche's intellectual develop- ment; and although it was very much his own, it presaged the larger crisis toward which he came to see our entire culture and civilization moving, and subsequently came to call ‘the death of God’.*In his own case, this crisis was Precipitated not only by his deepening appreciation of the profound and extensive consequences of the collapse of traditional ways of thinking, but also - and more immediately - by his growing recognition of the in- sufficiency of the resources of both the Enlightenment and the Romanticism to which he had been so strongly attracted to fill the void. The three instalments of Human, All Too Human are no less important for the insight they yield into the kind of struggle in which Nietzsche was engaged than they are for the many sparks that fly in the course of his efforts to find new ways to goon. The world around Nietzsche did not appear to be a world headed for crisis. The ordeals, horrors and dramatic changes of the century to come were largely unimagined, and indeed unimaginable, even to Nietzsche, who was far more prescient than most - even to the point of deeming the advent of air travel to be inevitable (1:267). In 1876, when he began working on the material that was published two years later in what is now the first volume of Human, All Too Human, Europe was again at (relative) peace. It had been ten years since the Austro-Prussian War that had left Prussia dominant in Central Europe; and it had been five years since the brief Franco-Prussian viiINTRODUCTION War (in which Nietzsche had briefly served as a volunteer medical orderly, with disastrous consequences for his health), which further enhanced and extended Prussia’s sway, this time at France’s expense. German unification under Prussian leadership had been achieved in 1871, and the new Reich appeared tobe thriving, with Wilhelm on the throne and (more importantly) Otto von Bismarck at the helm. Everything seemed to be coming along very nicely for Western civiliza- tion in general, Europe in particular and Germany more specifically. It was the heyday of European imperialism, with India recently incorporated into the British Empire, and much of the rest of the non-Western world coming, under European sway. The industrial revolution was sweeping all before it, and capitalism was triumphant. New technologies and modes of transportation and communication were transforming Western societies. (Nietzsche himself must have been one of the very first philosophers to own. cone of the newly invented typewriters, although it proved to be of little use to him.) Despite the success of conservative elements of European societies in retaining their social position and political power, forces preparing the way for their eventual replacement by more popular forms of social, cultural, economic and political organization — for better or for worse — were gathering. The physical sciences were advancing spectacularly; and while the influence of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud had yet to be felt, the social and historical disciplines were maturing, and the biological sciences were coming on strong, Charles Darwin already loomed large. His Origin of Species had been published in 1859, and his Descent of Man in 1871. Germany, making up for lost time, was emerging as an economic, political and tech- nological powerhouse, as well as the world’s new leader in many of the sciences. It also continued its century-long dominance in philosophy, with ever-mutating forms of idealism, neo-Kantianism, naturalism and material- ism competing in the aftermath of Hegel. Religion, enjoying official state status in many countries and the unquestioning allegiance of the vast majority of their populations, seemed immune from serious challenge. The arts, literature and music were flourishing as well, in Germany as elsewhere in Europe; and in 1876 the frenzy surrounding Richard Wagner - to which Nietzsche was no stranger ~ rose to new heights, with the opening of Bayreuth, and the performance of the first complete four-opera cycles of Wagner's monumental Ring of the Nibulungs. Yet Nietzsche was convinced that all was far from well. He was repelled by the popular culture and brave new social, economic and political world burgeoning around him, and could no longer take seriously the intellectual and religious tradition associated with it. By 1876 he also found himself increasingly estranged from the newly fashionable alternatives to the tradition that its critics and rivals had been touting, including his erstwhile idols and mentors Arthur Schopenhauer and Wagner. Everywhere he looked, even at those things and thinkers supposedly representing the pride of our culture and the zenith of humanity, what he saw was not only far from divine but all-too-human. viii