Beyond Good and Evil - The Original Classic Edition (Electronic book text)

A major 19th century philosophical work by the German philologist, philosopher and author. In it, Nietzsche denounces what he considers to be the moral vacuity of 19th century thinkers. He attacks philosophers for what he considers to be their lack of critical sense and their blind acceptance of Christian premises in their considerations of morality and values.

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But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human?all-too-human facts.

In that they side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of perspective, in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that the earth stands still, and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in ones body?), ?who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the immortal soul, perhaps the old God, in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by modern ideas?

The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, I think, I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ego, and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking?that I KNOW what thinking is.

In short, the assertion I think, assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further knowledge, it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.?In place of the immediate certainty in which the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: Whence did I get the notion of thinking?