Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews February 10, 2023 February 3, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
This chapter is made up of 122 short one- or two-line epigrams on a wide range of topics. Rather than try to touch on each epigram individually, this summary and commentary will trace several themes that run throughout, and identify a few epigrams as particularly illustrative.
Nietzsche focuses largely on psychological observations. He challenges our habit of seeing our motivations and drives as transparent and easily understood. For instance, in section 100, he says: "In front of ourselves we all pose as simpler than we are: thus we take a rest from our fellow men." We seem to assume that we understand ourselves perfectly well, but Nietzsche suggests that in fact we are far more complicated than we think. We are made up of conflicting drives, and our reason is far from being able to take an unbiased perspective toward these drives. In section 158, he asserts that both our reason and our conscience bow toward "the tyrant in us," our strongest drive.
Nietzsche's observations dig up a number of facts we try to keep hidden. Our dislike for others, for instance, says more about ourselves than about those we dislike: "The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity" (176); "The familiarity of those who are superior embitters because it may not be returned" (182). In a particularly brilliant epigram, Nietzsche suggests why we fail to recognize the darker motives behind many of our thoughts and actions: "'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that,' says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually--memory yields" (68). Our pride does not permit us to see ourselves as we really are, and will work all kinds of self-deception to hide us from ourselves. However, a careful observer can catch hints of what lies beneath by the way we unconsciously betray ourselves: "Even when the mouth lies, the way it looks still tells the truth" (166).
Our inner life is more like a battlefield than an open book. Nietzsche writes, "Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself" (76). If our drives can find nothing in the world to struggle against, they turn inward and struggle against themselves. Our reason, thoughts, morality, etc., are all just expressions of different drives. There is no will that is purely our own: "The will to overcome an affect is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, affects" (117). This inner struggle is a difficult one that only the strongest are adequately equipped to cope with, a thought Nietzsche expresses in one of his more famous epigrams: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you" (146).
Nietzsche sees morality as born out of our inner struggle. In section 143, he suggests we might find the origin of a great deal of our morality in the fact that "our vanity desires that what we do best should be considered what is hardest for us." Morality does not exist in itself, but is instead just a way of looking at the world that is directed by our inner drives: "There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena" (108).
The epigrams in this chapter also cover a number of other topics, including remarks on the nature and value of knowledge, the psychology of women (not Nietzsche's strong point), Christianity, sexuality, nationalism, and teaching and learning.
Please wait while we process your payment