Religious views

Romantic love is also present in the Bible, particularly the Song of Songs. Traditionally, this book has been interpreted allegorically as a picture of God's love for Israel and the Church. When taken naturally, we see a picture of ideal human marriage:

The passage dodi li v'ani lo, i.e. "my beloved is mine and I am my beloved", from Song of Songs 2:16, is an example of a biblical quote commonly engraved on wedding bands.

The Bible states love is a characteristic of God. I John 4:8 states "God is Love". In essence, God is the epitomy of love - in action and relation. It is God that first loved mankind and desired a relationship. (John 3:16-17) Love is the underlying drive in most people. The search for love seems endless within the human race, throughout the ages. The Bible defines God as being the completeness of love. Love, as being defined by Him, is demonstrated in his character and personality. Another way of defining this type of love is "godly love", a love shown through the example of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. However, this "sacrificial" love can also be expressed by humans, although imperfectly. For example, the love of a mother for her child. Many mothers would sacrifice anything for their children. It is this type of love that the Bible teaches us to follow and to share with one another. Love, in the end, is truly a sacrifice, ultimately expressed in the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the New Testament. C.S. Lewis discusses Christian ideas about love in his book The Four Loves

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, defines Love as one of 7 synonyms for God. This indicates that Deity is more than a being that has benevolent concerns for mankind, but rather that God is Love itself. Love is also synonymous with Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth and indicate the depth and wholeness of Love.

In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, there are six words for Unconditional Love (Kenoota, Khooba, Makikh, Abilii, Rukha and Dadcean Libhoun) which are untranslatable and are all translated as the one word “Love” in the English Bible. They are explained here

The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, helps devotees to see that love conquers all. It says, "Sattva—pure, luminous, and free from sorrow—binds us to happiness and wisdom" (Number 6). Sattva, translated as purity, helps one to see that love evolves from selflessness.

Cultural views

The traditional Chinese character for love (愛) consists of a heart (心, in the middle) inside of "accept", "feel", or "perceive", which shows a graceful emotion.

Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences.

See also

Notes

References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Love

Look up love in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Accessed July 17 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

Emotions
List of emotions Acceptance Affection Aggression Ambivalence Anger Apathy Anxiety Compassion Despair Disgust Doubt Empathy Envy Embarrassment Euphoria Fear Forgiveness Frustration Guilt Gratitude Grief Happiness Hate Hope Horror Hostility Homesickness Hysteria Jealousy Loneliness Love Pity Pleasure Rage Regret Remorse Sadness Shame Suffering Surprise Sympathy

 

Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love is seen as an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Though often linked to personal relations, love is often given a wider connection, a love of humanity, of nature, with life itself, or a oneness with the universe, a universal love or karma. Love can also be construed as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods. This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity.

Part of a series on Love Historically Courtly love Greek love Religious love Types of Emotion Erotic love Platonic love Familial love Puppy love Romantic love See Also Unrequited love Problem of love Sexuality Sexual intercourse Valentine's Day

Contents 1 Definitions 2 Scientific views 2.1 Biology of love 2.2 Psychology of love 3 Philosophical views 4 Religious views 5 Cultural views 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References Close Relationships Affinity • Attachment • Bonding • Cohabitation • Compersion • Concubinage • Courtship • Divorce • Dower/-ry • Friendship • Family • Husband • Infatuation • Intimacy • Jealousy • Limerence • Love • Marriage • Monogamy • Nonmonogamy • Office romance • Passion • Partner • Pederasty • Platonic love • Psychology of Monogamy • Relationship abuse • Sexuality • Spouse • Separation • Wedding • Widowhood • Wife

Definitions

The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation and thoughtful introspection. The difficulty of finding a universal definition for love is typically tackled by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. These types of love can often be generalized into a level of sexual attraction. In common use, love has two primary meanings, the first being an indication of adoration for another person or thing, and the second being a state of relational status. Love is an act of identifying with a person or thing, capable of even including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness. In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.

Thomas Jay Oord has defined love in various scholarly publications as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be sufficient for research in ethics, religion, and science.

The different aspects of love can be roughly illustrated by comparing their corollaries and opposites. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more mutual and "pure" form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other connotations of love may be applied to close friendships as well.

The very existence of love is sometimes subject to debate. Some categorically reject the notion as false or meaningless. Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages. Others maintain that love really exists, and is not an abstraction, but is undefinable, being essentially spiritual or metaphysical in nature. Some psychologists maintain that love is the action of lending one's "boundary" or "self-esteem" to another. Others attempt to define love by applying the definition to everyday life.

Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept, easier to experience than to explain. Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love".

 

Scientific views

Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have added to the understanding of the nature and function of love.

Biology of love

Further information: Interpersonal chemistry

Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly-overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust exposes people to others, romantic attraction encourages people to focus their energy on mating, and attachment involves tolerating the spouse long enough to rear a child into infancy.

Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.

Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding which promotes relationships that last for many years, and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin than short-term relationships have.

In 2005, Italian scientists at Pavia University found that a protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these levels return to as they were after one year. Specifically, four neurotrophin levels, i.e. NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4, of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love were compared with levels in a control group who were either single or already engaged in a long-term relationship. The results showed that NGF levels were significantly higher in the subjects in love than as compared to either of the control groups.

Psychology of love

Further information: Human bonding

Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. This led researchers such as Yela to further refine the model by separating Passion into two independents components: Erotic Passion and Romantic Passion.

Following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating, such as in evolutionary psychology, agree that pairs unite or attract to each other owing to a combination of opposites attract, e.g. people with dissimilar immune systems tend to attract, and likes attract, such as similarities of personality, character, views, etc. In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and or affinities.

Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose works in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the"'concern for the spiritual growth of another", and simple narcissism. In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.

Philosophical views

People, throughout history, have often considered phenomena such as "love at first sight" or "instant friendships" to be the result of an uncontrollable force of attraction or affinity. One of the first to theorize in this direction was the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who in the 4th century BC argued for the existence of two forces, love (philia) and strife (neikos), which were used to account for the causes of motion in the universe. These two forces were said to intermingle with the classical elements, i.e., earth, water, air, and fire, in such a manner that love served as the binding power linking the various parts of existence harmoniously together.

Later, Plato interpreted Empedocles' two agents as attraction and repulsion, stating that their operation is conceived in an alternate sequence. From these arguments, Plato originated the concept of "likes attract", e.g., earth is attracted to earth, water to water, and fire to fire. In modern terms this is often phrased in terms of "birds of a feather flock together".

Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value", as opposed to relative value. Thomas Jay Oord defines love as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be adequate for religion, philosophy, and the sciences. Robert A. Heinlein, one of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 20th century, defined love in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land as the point of emotional connection which leads to the happiness of another being essential to one's own well being. This definition ignores the ideas of religion and science and instead focuses on the meaning of love as it relates to the individual.

Also, an ancient proverb states that love is a high form of tolerance. This view is one that many philosophers and scholars have researched, and is widely accepted.

Pragmatism

William James

Pragmatism holds that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy. The late 19th-century American philosophers Charles Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as that which would be established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion. Critics have accused pragmatism of falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth.Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana, and C.I. Lewis. Pragmatism has more recently been taken in new directions by Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl, promotes the idea that the natural world is largely shaped by the human mind. An important part of Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.

Setting out to revise his views on the foundation of mathematics, and influenced by the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano, under whom he had studied in Vienna, Husserl began to lay the foundations for an ambitious account not just of the kinds of experiences that underly and make possible mathematical judgments, but of the structure of conscious experience in general. In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), he launched an extended attack on the psychologism of which he had been accused by Frege. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are indeed grounded in conscious experience – not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question.

He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses.

Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Göttingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.

Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard

Existentialism is a philosophical movement that rejects any predetermined role for human beings. Unlike tools, which are designed in order to fill some preconceived role (for example, a knife's preconceived role, or essence, is to cut), human beings are capable, to some extent at least, of deciding for themselves what constitutes their own essence.Although they didn't use the term, the 19th-century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.

Two of the targets of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's writings were the philosophical systems of Hegel and Schopenhauer respectively, which they had each admired in their youths. Kierkegaard thought Hegel ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings, while Nietzsche thought Schopenhauer's pessimism led people to live an ascetic, or self-hating, life. Kierkegaard suggested that truth is subjectivity, arguing that what is most important to a living individual are questions dealing with one's inner relationship to life. Nietzsche proposed perspectivism, which is the view that truth depends on individual perspectives.

Although Kierkegaard was among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debated. However, in Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. In The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre, along with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, became perhaps the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness , but also in plays and novels. Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir all represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaard's spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers.

The analytic tradition

The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress clarity of meaning above all other criteria. The philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel and his followers in particular, and of speculative philosophy in general. Some schools in the group include 20th-century realism, logical atomism, logical positivism, and ordinary language. The motivation is to have philosophical studies go beyond personal opinion and begin to have the cogency of mathematical proofs.

In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by clear thought. Years later he would reverse a number of the positions he had set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations encouraged the development of "ordinary language philosophy", which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others. The "ordinary language philosophy" thinkers shared a common outlook with many older philosophers (Jeremy Bentham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Stuart Mill), and it was this style of philosophical inquiry that characterized English-language philosophy for the second half of the 20th century.

See also Transcendentalism

Ethics and political philosophy in the West

Human nature and political legitimacy

Thomas Hobbes

From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be run by a council of philosopher-kings, since those best at philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans are political animals (i.e. social animals), and governments are set up in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she lives in a community. His The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues (or "excellences") in the person as a citizen; the second addresses the proper form of government to ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal with the essential role of justice in civic life.

Nicolas of Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and divine (that is, made in God's image), so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusa's views are credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the notion of "Nation-States".

Later, Niccolò Machiavelli rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is morally praiseworthy. Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotle's views. For Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature. This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, in which (or whom) is vested complete control over the community, and which is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects.

Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the possibility of a democratic state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among those who attempted to overturn these doctrines: he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind of "noble savage", and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic was John Locke. In Second Treatise on Government he agreed with Hobbes that the nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature.

Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to the influence of David Hume and his student Adam Smith, appeals to human nature for political justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers, especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their arguments.

Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

Jeremy Bentham

One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by their consequences) and deontology (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by consideration of agents' duties, the rights of those whom the action concerns, or both).

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are famous for propagating utilitarianism, which is the idea that the fundamental moral rule is to strive toward the "greatest happiness for the greatest number". However, in promoting this idea they also necessarily promoted the broader doctrine of consequentialism.

Adopting a position opposed to consequentialism, Immanuel Kant argued that moral principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it would deny the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we conform our actions to the categorical imperative, which is an absolute duty. An important 20th-century deontologist, W.D. Ross, has argued for weaker forms of duties called prima facie duties.

More recent works have emphasized the role of character in ethics, a movement known as the aretaic turn (that is, the turn towards virtues). One strain of this movement followed the work of Bernard Williams. Williams noted that rigid forms of both consequentialism and deontology demanded that people behave impartially. This, Williams argued, requires that people abandon their personal projects, and hence their personal integrity, in order to be considered moral.

G.E.M. Anscombe, in an influential paper, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958), revived virtue ethics as an alternative to what was seen as the entrenched positions of Kantianism and consequentialism. Aretaic perspectives have been inspired in part by research of ancient conceptions of virtue. For example, Aristotle's ethics demands that people follow the Aristotelian mean, or balance between two vices; and Confucian ethics argues that virtue consists largely in striving for harmony with other people. Virtue ethics in general has since gained many adherents, and has been defended by such philosophers as Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rosalind Hursthouse.

Applied philosophy

Though often seen as a wholly abstract field, philosophy is not without practical applications. The most obvious applications are those in ethics – applied ethics in particular – and political philosophy. The political and economic philosophies of Confucius, Sun Zi, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taimiyyah, Niccolò Machiavelli, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Mahatma Gandhi, and others – all of these have been used to shape and justify governments and their actions.

A modern example is the political movement Neoconservatism, which began as a philosophical tradition at the University of Chicago centered around Leo Strauss and his unique interpretations of the work of Plato. This intellectual movement went on to shape major parts of the politics of the George W. Bush presidency, demonstrating that seemingly "ivory tower" movements can have a profound impact on real world events.

In the field of philosophy of education, progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the 20th century. Descendants of this movement include the current efforts in philosophy for children. Carl von Clausewitz's political philosophy of war has had a profound effect on statecraft, international politics, and military strategy in the 20th century, especially in the years around World War II. Logic has become crucially important in mathematics, linguistics, psychology, computer science, and computer engineering.

Other important applications can be found in epistemology, which aid in understanding the requisites for knowledge, sound evidence, and justified belief (important in law, economics, decision theory, and a number of other disciplines). The philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method and has affected the nature of scientific investigation and argumentation. Deep ecology and animal rights examine the moral situation of humans as occupants of a world that has non-human occupants to consider also. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of music, literature, the plastic arts, and the whole artistic dimension of life.

In general, the various "philosophies of..." strive to provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields.

Often philosophy is seen as an investigation into an area not sufficiently well understood to be its own branch of knowledge. What were once philosophical pursuits have evolved into the modern day fields such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics, for example. But as such areas of intellectual endeavour proliferate and expand, so will the broader philosophical questions that they generate.

Eastern philosophy

Many societies have considered philosophical questions and built philosophical traditions based upon each other's works. Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophical traditions have influenced Western philosophers. Russian (which to many people still counts as Western), Jewish, Islamic, African, and recently Latin American philosophical traditions have contributed to, or been influenced by, Western philosophy: yet each has retained a distinctive identity.

The differences between traditions are often well captured by consideration of their favored historical philosophers, and varying stress on ideas, procedural styles, or written language. The subject matter and dialogues of each can be studied using methods derived from the others, and there are significant commonalities and exchanges between them.

Eastern philosophy refers to the broad traditions that originated or were popular in India, Persia, China, Japan, and to an extent, the Middle East (which overlaps with Western philosophy due to the spread of the Abrahamic religions and the continuing intellectual traffic between these societies and Europe.)

Accessed July 7 2007

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil)

• It is some basic certainty which the noble soul has about itself, something which does not allow itself to be sought out or found or perhaps even to be lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.

• So you want to live 'according to nature?' Oh, you noble Stoics, what a fraud is in this phrase! Imagine something like nature, profligate without measure, indifferent without measure, without purpose and regard, without mercy and justice, fertile and barren and uncertain at the same time, think of indifference itself as power — how could you live according to this indifference? Living — isn't that wanting specifically to be something other than this nature? Isn't living assessing, preferring, being unfair, being limited, wanting to be different? And assuming your imperative to 'live according to nature' basically amounts to 'living according to life' — well how could you not? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be?
  • Aphorism 9

• Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power -: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this.
  • Aphorism 13

• Independence is an issue that concerns very few people: — it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. And assuming a man like this is destroyed, it is an event so far from human comprehension that people do not feel it or feel for him: — and he cannot go back again! He cannot go back to their pity again!
  • Aphorism 29

• People used to believe in 'the soul' as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: people said that 'I' was a condition and 'think' was a predicate and conditioned — thinking is an activity and a subject must be thought of as its cause. Now, with admirable tenacity and cunning, people are wondering whether they can get out of this net — wondering whether the reverse might be true: that 'think' is the condition and 'I' is conditioned, in which case 'I' would be a synthesis that only gets produced through thought itself.
  • Aphorism 54

• There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best. . .Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god; the joy of this particular festival shines in the cruel eyes of the ascetic, that enthusiastic piece of 'anti-nature.' Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? In the end, didn't people have to sacrifice all comfort and hope, everything holy or healing, any faith in hidden harmony or a future filled with justice and bliss? Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves? To sacrifice God for nothingness — that paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty has been reserved for the race that is now approaching: by now we all know something about this.
  • Aphorism 55

• I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields.
  • Aphorism 68.

• One has only seen little of life, if one hasn't also seen the hand that mercifully — kills.
  • Aphorism 69

• The sage as astronomer. — If you still experience the stars as something 'over you,' you still don't have the eyes of a knower.
  • Aphorism 71

• Anyone who despises himself will still respect himself as a despiser.
  • Aphorism 78

• One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.
  • Aphorism 136

• Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.
  • He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
  • Aphorism 146

• Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer jenseits von Gut und Böse.
  • What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
  • Aphorism 153

• Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.
  • Aphorism 156

• The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.
  • Aphorism 157

• In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.
  • Aphorism 171

• The Jews -- a people 'born for slavery' as Tacitus and the whole ancient world says, 'the chosen people' as they themselves say and believe -- the Jews achieved that miracle of inversion of values thanks to which life on earth has for a couple of millennia acquired a new and dangerous fascination -- their prophets fused 'rich', 'godless', 'evil', 'violent', 'sensual' into one and were the first to coin the word 'world' as a term of infamy. It is in this inversion of values...that the significance of the Jewish people resides: with them there begins the slave revolt in morals.
  • Aphorism 195

Genealogy of Morals (1887)

• There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as "the powerful," "the masters," "the commanders") or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as "the rich," "the possessors" (this is the meaning of 'Arya,' and of corresponding words in Iranian and Slavic).
  • First Essay, Section 5

• While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.
  • First Essay, Section 10

• Without cruelty there is no festival: thus the longest and most ancient part of human history teaches--and in punishment there is so much that is festive!
  • Second Essay, Section 6

• As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies--but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in the world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
  • Second Essay, Section 7

• . . . that every will must consider every other will its equal--would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.
  • Second Essay, Section 11

• It is possible to imagine a society flushed with such a sense of power that it could afford to let its offenders go unpunished.
  • Second Essay, Section 11

• The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."
  • Second Essay, Section 15

• All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward--this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his "soul."
  • Second Essay, Section 16

• The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was therefore accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on earth.
  • Second Essay, Section 21

• The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."
  • Essay 2, Aphorism 15

• The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.
  • Essay 3, Aphorism 14

• A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
  • Essay 3, Aphorism 16

The Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Götzen-Dämmerung (The Twilight of the Idols), 1888

• Plato ist langweilig
  • Plato is boring.
  • What I Owe to the Ancients, 2

• What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?
  • Maxims and Arrows, 7

• Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
  • What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
  • Maxims and Arrows, 8

• Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrtum.
  • Without music, life would be a mistake.
  • Maxims and Arrows, 33

• Das Christenthum ist eine Metaphysik des Henkers...
  • Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman...
  • The Four Great Errors, Section 7

• Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
  • Things the Germans Lack, 38

• It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book.
  • Things the Germans Lack, 51

• The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … ‘Equality to the equal; inequality to the unequal’ – that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, ‘never make the unequal equal’.
  • Die Lehre von der Gleichheit! ... Aber es giebt gar kein giftigeres Gift: denn sie scheint von der Gerechtigkeit selbst gepredigt, während sie das Ende der Gerechtigkeit ist... "Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches - das wäre die wahre Rede der Gerechtigkeit: und, was daraus folgt, Ungleiches niemals gleich machen."
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man, §48 Progress in my sense (Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen §48 Fortschritt in meinem Sinne). (Chapter title also translated as: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation, and Raids of an Untimely Man, Richard Polt translation)

• When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallowpates.
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man §5

• We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt.
  • Expeditions of an Untimely Man §26.
  • Variant translation: That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.'

• My conception of freedom.— The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it—what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic [genüsslich]—every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization ...

• These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself.

• Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free—and how much more the spirit who has become free—spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.—

• How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which must be overcome, by the effort [Mühe] it costs to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and dreadful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves—most beautiful type: Julius Caesar—; this is true politically too; one need only go through history. The nations which were worth something, became worth something, never became so under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit—and forces us to be strong ...

• First principle: one must need to be strong—otherwise one will never become strong.— Those large hothouses [Treibhäuser] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers ...

The Antichrist (1888)

Der Antichrist (The Antichrist), 1888

• Einige werden posthum geboren.
  • Some are born posthumously.
  • Der Antichrist (The Antichrist), Foreword.

• What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
  • Sec. 2

• In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
  • Sec. 16

• Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
  • Sec. 23

• The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding — in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
  • Sec. 39

• As an artistic triumph in psychological corruption...the Gospels, in fact, stand alone...Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal 'holiness' unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art -- all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is race.
  • Sec. 44

• ...The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish.
  • Sec. 44

• What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose early Christians for companions as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them -- neither has a pleasant smell.
  • Sec. 46

• The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world" (especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul's resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of God, Torah -- that is essentially Jewish.
  • Sec. 47'

• God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment — but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake.
  • Sec. 48

• Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
  • Sec. 48

• That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
  • Sec. 51
  • Note: Often rendered as "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."

• 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true.
  • Sec. 52

• Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss.
  • Nihilist and Christian. They rhyme in German... and they do indeed do more than just rhyme.
  • Sec. 58

• I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
  • Sec. 62

Ecce Homo (1888)

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), 1888

• Der Mensch der Erkenntniss muss nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, er muss auch seine Freunde hassen können.
  • The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
  • Foreword

• Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

• One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.

• I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous--a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
  • (Ecce Homo, "Why I am a Destiny", 1).

• was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn starker
  • What does not kill him, makes him stronger.
  • (Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Wise", 2) (Often paraphrased as "What does not kill me, makes me stronger.")

The Will to Power (1888)

Der Wille zur Macht] (1888)

• This is the antinomy: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence.
  • Sec. 6

• Moralites and religions are the principal means by which one can make whatever one wishes out of man, provided one possesses a superfluity of creative forces and can assert one's will over long periods of time--in the form of legislation, religions, and customs.
  • Sec. 144

• A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as "a tree as it ought to be."
  • Sec. 332

• The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence — here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws."
  • Sec. 630

• Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions...I abhor Christianity with a deadly hatred.
  • Sec. 685

• The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life...three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty -- all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
  • Sec. 801

• The Beautiful exists just as little as the True. In every case it is a question of the conditions of preservation of a certain type of man: thus the herd-man will experience the value feeling of the True in different things than will the Overman.
  • Sec. 804

• A declaration of war on the masses by Higher Men is needed!...Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the end of the People or the Feminine, works in favor of Universal Suffrage, i.e. the domination of the Inferior Men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light and the bar of judgment.
  • Sec. 864

• The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.'
  • Sec. 872

• The homogenizing of European man...requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a Master Race whose sole task is to rule, but a Race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength...strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.
  • Sec. 898

• There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit," reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.
  • Sec. 942

• The possibility has been established for the production of...a Master Race, the future 'masters of the earth'...made to endure for millenia — a higher kind of men who...employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.
  • Sec. 960

Others

• It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war. And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a people needs when it is losing its vitality.
  • Human, All Too Human (1878)

• The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
  • The Dawn, Sec. 297

• There are no facts, only interpretations.
  • Nietzsche's Notebooks, Summer 1886 – Fall 1887 7 [60]

• Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
  • Twilight of the Idols, What the Germans lack, 2; also in The Antichrist, Sec. 60, and Gay Science, Sec. 147

• It is a matter of honor to me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal regarding anti-Semitism, namely opposed, as I am in my writings.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche's Collected Letters, Vol. V, #479

Unsourced

• The future influences the present just as much as the past.

• The greatest events are not our loudest hours, but rather our most quiet.

• Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

• A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

• At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

• For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.

• I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

• In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
  • From the Nachlaß, KSA 13: 11[153]
  • Original context: Die Kirche hat deutsche Kaiser auf Grund ihrer Laster in Bann getan: als ob ein Mönch oder Priester über das mitreden dürfte, was ein Friedrich der Zweite von sich fordern darf. Ein Don Juan wird in die Hölle geschickt: das ist sehr naiv. Hat man bemerkt, daß im Himmel alle interessanten Menschen fehlen?
  • Translated: The Church has excommunicated German emperors because of their vices: As if a monk or a priest had a say in what someone like Friedrich II [the Staufer, 1194-1250] may demand of himself. A Don Juan is sent to hell: that is very naive. Is it noticed that in Heaven all the interesting people are missing?

• After the old god has been assassinated, I am ready to rule the world.

• Swallow your poison, for you need it badly.

• What is bad? But I have said this already: all that comes of weakness, of envy, of revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same origin.

• Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.

• We have art in order not to die of the truth.
  • Perhaps this is a rendering of Gay Science

• Your pride can't hurt me-- I have no beliefs!

• You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

• No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

• There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

• He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

External links

• Works by Friedrich Nietzsche at Project Gutenberg
• The Antichrist
• Open Directory Project: Friedrich Nietzsche
• Wiki Nietzsche