Twilight of the Idols

By Friedrich Nietzsche

"Twilight of the Idols means that the old truth is on its last legs," declared Friedrich Nietzsche in this 1889 polemic. Forceful in his language and profound in his message, the philosopher delivered the nineteenth century's most devastating attack on Christianity. Intended by Nietzsche as a general introduction to his philosophy, it assails the "idols" of Western philosophy and culture, including the concepts of Socratic rationality and Christian morality.
Written while Nietzsche was at the peak of his powers, less than a year before the onset of the insanity that gripped him until his death in 1900, this work's proximity to the end of the author's career renders it a distinctive portrait from his later period. The source of the famous dictum, "Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger," it blazes with provocative, inflammatory rhetoric that challenges readers to reexamine what they worship and why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jul 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780486841632

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was an acclaimed German philosopher who rose to prominence during the late nineteenth century. His work provides a thorough examination of societal norms often rooted in religion and politics. As a cultural critic, Nietzsche is affiliated with nihilism and individualism with a primary focus on personal development. His most notable books include The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. and Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche is frequently credited with contemporary teachings of psychology and sociology.

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DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JIM MILLER

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of The Twilight of the Idols; or How to Philosophise with a Hammer, as published in The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume XI, Macmillan and Company, New York, in 1896.

International Standard Book Number

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-83167-1

ISBN-10: 0-486-83167-1

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

83167101 2019

www.doverpublications.com

Note

ICONOCLASTIC, CONTROVERSIAL, AND highly influential—all describe a major philosopher of the second half of the nineteenth century: Friedrich Nietzsche. In an ironic twist of fate, Nietzsche, whose father and grandfathers were clergymen, is known to many for his pronouncement God is dead (Gott ist tot).

Only four years old when his father died, Friedrich grew up with his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and his younger sister, Elisabeth. He attended boarding school and received a classical education, after which he studied philology and theology at the University of Bonn, transferring later to the University of Leipzig. In his early twenties, he interrupted his studies to serve in the military but went on sick leave after being injured while mounting a horse. Returning to Leipzig, Nietzsche began reading Schopenhauer, whose philosophical writings greatly appealed to him. Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, with whom Nietzsche had studied in Bonn, recommended him for a professorship in Basel, Switzerland. Soon after, however, Nietzsche left Basel to volunteer as an orderly in the Franco-Prussian War—an unfortunate decision, as he contracted diphtheria as well as dysentery.

His first published work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, appeared in 1872. Reflecting Nietzsche’s classical studies, the book explores the dichotomy between the opposing Greek concepts (and contradictory elements of the human psyche) Apollonian (rational and structured) and Dionysian (irrational and chaotic). He claimed that the Dionysian forces, which produced classical tragedy, nevertheless led to the affirmation of life against the inevitability of human suffering. Nietzsche had tried his hand at composing and was for a time an enthusiastic supporter of Richard Wagner, hence the reference to the Spirit of Music (he wrote, in Beyond Good and Evil [1886], By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves). Later works, such as The Gay Science (1882), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85), The Genealogy of Morals (1887), and Ecce Homo (1888), although highly regarded in the twentieth century and an influence on cultural figures such as Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hermann Hesse, were poorly received during his lifetime. Suffering from poor health, Nietzsche roamed Europe toward the end of his life. In 1889, after collapsing in a street in Turin, Italy, he had a mental breakdown. His mother and sister cared for him until his death on August 25, 1900, in Weimar, Germany.

Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophise with a Hammer (Götzen-Dämmerung, oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert) was first published in 1889 (he had written it in just over a week in the summer of 1888). Nietzsche intended it to act as a short introduction to his other works, and it serves that purpose very well. Divided into twelve sections, the book is ultimately a grand declaration of war on the idols of Western culture. Socrates, Christianity, and contemporary German culture are particular targets. Essential reading to students of philosophy and history, Twilight of the Idols remains a fascinating initiation into the mind and work of one of the modern world’s most influential and original thinkers.

Contents

Preface

Apophthegms and Darts

The Problem of Socrates

Reason in Philosophy

How the True World Finally Became a Fable

Morality as Antinaturalness

The Four Great Errors

The Improvers of Mankind

What the Germans Lack

Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher

My Indebtedness to the Ancients

The Hammer Speaketh

PREFACE

It requires no little skill to maintain one’s cheerfulness when engaged in a sullen and extremely responsible business; and yet, what is more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds unless overflowing spirits have a share in it. The excess of power only is the proof of power.—A Transvaluation of all Values, that question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow on him who sets it up,—such a doom of a task compels one every moment to run into sunshine, to shake off a seriousness which has become oppressive, far too oppressive. Every expedient is justifiable for that purpose, every case is a case of fortune,—warfare more especially. Warfare has always been the grand policy of all minds which have become too self-absorbed and too profound: there is healing virtue even in being wounded. A saying, the origin of which I withhold from learned curiosity, has for a long time been my motto:

Increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.

Another mode of recuperation, which under certain circumstances is still more to my taste, is to auscultate idols . . . There are more idols in the world than realities; that is my evil eye for this world, it is also my evil ear . . . To put questions here for once with a hammer, and perhaps to hear as answer that well-known hollow sound which indicates inflation of the bowels,—what delight for one who has got ears behind his ears,—for me, an old psychologist and rat-catcher in whose presence precisely that which would like to remain unheard is obliged to become audible . . .

This work also—the title betrays it—is above all a recreation, a sunfreckle, a diversion into the idleness of a psychologist. Is it also perhaps a new warfare? And new idols are auscultated, are they? . . . This little work is a grand declaration of warfare: and as regards the auscultation of idols, it is no temporary idols, but eternal idols which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning-fork,—there are no older, more self-convinced, or more inflated idols in existence . . . Neither are there any hollower ones . . . That does not prevent them from being the most believed in. Besides people never call them idols, least of all in the most eminent case . . .

Turin, 30th September 1888,

the day when the first book of the

Transvaluation of all Values was finished.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

APOPHTHEGMS AND DARTS

1

Idleness is the parent of all psychology. What! is psychology then a—vice?

2

Even the boldest of us have but seldom the courage for what we really know.

3

To live alone, one must be an animal or a God—says Aristotle. The third case is wanting: one must be both—a philosopher.

4

Every truth is simple—Is that not doubly a lie?

5

Once for all, there is much I do not want to know.—Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

6

We recover best from our unnaturalness, from our spirituality, in our savage moods . . .

7

How is it? Is man only a mistake of God? Or God only a mistake of man?—

8

From the military school of life.—What does not kill me, strengthens me.

9

Help thyself: then everyone else helps thee. Principle of brotherly love.

10

Would that we were guilty of no cowardice with respect to our doings, would that we did not repudiate them afterwards!—Remorse of conscience is indecent.

11

Is it possible for an ass to be tragic?—For a person to sink under a burden which can neither be carried nor thrown off? . . . The case of the philosopher.

12

When one has one’s wherefore of life, one gets along with almost every how.—Man does not strive after happiness; the Englishman only does so.

13

Man has created woman—out of what do you think? Out of a rib of his God,—his ideal . . .

14

What? you are seeking? you would like to decuple, to centuple yourself? you are seeking adherents?—Seek ciphers!—

15

Posthumous men—myself, for example—are worse understood than opportune, but are better heard. More strictly: we are never understood—therefore our authority . . .

16

Among women. —"Truth? Oh, you do not know truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs?"

17

That is an artist such as I love, modest in his requirements: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art,—panem et Circen . . .

18

He who cannot put his will into things, puts at least a meaning into them: that