Three things stand out about section 293 of Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche’s portrait
of the Masterful Man, his remarks on the value of pity, and his assertion that European culture
is becoming “a veritable cult of suffering.”
In this video, I will comment on each of these three elements, then give you the text of section 293.
Nietzsche describes the “man who is by nature a master” in a long rambling sentence.
The masterful man declares and protects his own: his own people, his own goods and homeland.
He is able to act decisively, to keep promises, to rebuke those who slight him.
His strength is a refuge for weaker spirits, who seek him out for protection.
(Kaufmann remarks that the German expression Nietzsche uses is “gern zufallen,” the
weak “like to fall” to or under the master.)
I think this description is valuable, both for its vivid and evocative details, and for
its insight into Nietzsche’s personal psychology.
This sort of strength, the manly power that protects the weak, claiming them for one’s
own, is something he finds valuable, and finds lacking in contemporary Europe.
We may find it worthwhile to look elsewhere for more signs of Nietzsche’s personal investment
in this vision of the masterful man.
The long description of the master-by-nature ends by noting that such a man’s pity is
really worth something.
Recall that pity is one of the deadly emotions, for Nietzsche.
It undermines and weakens almost everything it touches.
Elsewhere in his works Nietzsche warns against the dangers of pity.
Here, pity means a sympathetic concern for the weak and downtrodden.
The pity of the strong man is worth paying attention to, he says, unlike the pity of
the weak, which is self-serving.
And worse, the pity of those who preach pity, who make pity into an ideology or worldview.
This is what Nietzsche accuses Christianity of doing, and he thinks it is deadly to the
higher ambitions of the human spirit.
We can think of Nietzsche’s large-scale moral project as an overcoming of the morality of pity.
But why is the strong man’s pity worthwhile?
Because it proceeds from his unshakeable strength of will, his knowledge that he himself is its source.
A weaker man might feel pity out of a sense of obligation, in response to an external
demand, perhaps out of obedience to God’s law.
This pity, Nietzsche thinks, is useless or worse.
He remorselessly criticizes pity as a system or an external obligation.
In the second half of section 293, Nietzsche observes that late nineteenth century Europe
is afflicted by “a pathological sensitivity and receptivity to pain,” “a repulsive
incontinence in lamentation,” and “a veritable cult of suffering” which he denounces as
unmanly and in bad taste.
Three aspects of this passage deserve attention: Nietzsche’s diagnosis, criticism, and solution.
First, his diagnosis.
Nietzsche seems to think Europeans value suffering over strength, even to the point of assigning
higher social value to those who have suffered more.
He associates this sensibility with Christianity and modern egalitarianism and social democracy.
Second, his criticism of this culture of victimhood.
He calls it unmanly and incompatible with the willfulness and self-assertion of the
Masterful Man.
Each of these aspects is open to challenge.
We will discuss his diagnostic and evaluative claims further in my class, or in the comment
section below.
Lastly, Nietzsche suggests that the solution to this pity-sickness of European culture
is his “gay science,” joyful wisdom, or frohliche Wissenschaft.
This is the title of an earlier book of his, in which he first introduces the expression
“God is dead.”
So we should see Nietzsche’s philosophy as containing a prospective solution to the
“cult of suffering” he disdains.
We will see different elements of this solution as we read further into Nietzsche’s works.
Now, here is the text of section 293 of Beyond Good and Evil.
A man who says, “I like this, I take this for my own and want to protect it and defend
it against anybody”; a man who is able to manage something, to carry out a resolution,
to remain faithful to a thought, to hold a woman, to punish and prostrate one who presumed
too much; a man who has his wrath and his sword and to whom the weak, the suffering,
the hard pressed, and the animals, too, like to come and belong by nature, in short a man
who is by nature a *master*—when such a man has pity, well, *this* pity has value.
But what good is the pity of those who suffer?
Or those who, worse, *preach* pity?
Almost everywhere in Europe today we find a pathological sensitivity and receptivity
to pain; also a repulsive incontinence in lamentation, an increase in tenderness that
would use religion and philosophical bric-a-brac to deck itself out as something higher—there
is a veritable cult of suffering.
The *unmanliness* of what is baptized as “pity” in the circles of such enthusiasts is, I should
think, what always meets the eye first.
This newest kind of bad taste should be exorcized vigorously and thoroughly; and I finally wish
that one might place around one’s heart and neck the good amulet “gai saber”—
“gay science,” to make it plain to the plain.