11/16/2023 0 Comments Timeless quotes plato love![]() ![]() ![]() The other, if he does not want to be though inhuman, must forgive because of this coercion, pleasure in the other’s humiliation is slight. The one who does the former demonstrates his power and then his goodness. It is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grand forgiveness. On offending and being offended he offers: The hierarchy itself is not established or changed from the point of view of morality nevertheless an action is judged moral or immoral according to the prevailing determination. It indicates a backward nature, but only in degree. ‘Immoral’ then indicates that someone has not felt, or not felt strongly enough, the higher, finer, more spiritual motives which the new culture of the time has brought with it. If someone prefers revenge to justice, he is moral by the standard of an earlier culture, yet by the standard of the present culture he is immoral. The hierarchy of the good, however, is not fixed and identical at all times. To prefer a low good (sensual pleasure, for example) to one esteemed higher (health, for example) is taken for immoral, likewise to prefer comfort to freedom. The accepted hierarchy of the good, based on how a low, higher, or a most high egoism desires that thing or the other, decides today about morality or immorality. On morality and the ordering of good he writes: We attack not only to hurt another person, to conquer him, but also, perhaps, simply to become aware of our own strength. ![]() On why we attack others, Nietzsche points out that it’s not always to hurt them: If we have injured someone, giving him the opportunity to make a joke about us is often enough to provide him personal satisfaction, or even win his goodwill. If we’ve offended someone we need only offer compensation: Their skill inspires amazement, but the spectator who is guided not by the scientific spirit, but by the humane spirit, will eventually curse an art which seems to implant in the souls of men a predilection for belittling and doubt. ![]() … La Rochefoucauld and those other French masters of soul searching (whose company a German, the author of Psychological Observations, has recently joined) are like accurately aimed arrows, which hit the mark again and again, the black mark of man’s nature. If one imitates Plutarch’s heroes with enthusiasm and feels an aversion toward tracing skeptically the motives for their actions, then the welfare of human society has benefited (even if the truth of human society has not). And perhaps the belief in goodness, in virtuous men and actions, in an abundance of impersonal goodwill in the world has made men better, in that it has made them less distrustful. Indeed, a certain blind faith in the goodness of human nature, an inculcated aversion to dissecting human behavior, a kind of shame with respect to the naked soul, may really be more desirable for a man’s overall happiness than the trait of psychological sharpsightedness, which is helpful in isolated instances. Why do people let the richest and most harmless source of entertainment get away from them? Why has it been forgotten in this century, when many signs point, in Germany at least, if not throughout Europe, to the dearth of psychological observation? Not particularly in novels, short stories, and philosophical meditations, for these are the work of exceptional men but more in the judging of public events and personalities most of all we lack the art of psychological dissection and calculation in all classes of society, where one hears a lot of talk about men, but none at all about man. German philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of humanity’s most influential and enduring minds. He was particularly good at the aphorism and the brief collection published in Aphorisms on Love and Hate highlights some of his most profound thoughts on the subject.Ĭommenting on psychological observation, in his typically beautiful prose, he wrote that it would be better to have a blind faith in humanity than a curious one.Įditating on things human, all too human (or, as the learned phrase goes, ‘psychological observation’) is one of the means by which man can ease life’s burden that by exercising this art, one can secure presence of mind in difficult situations and entertainment amid boring surroundings indeed, that from the thorniest and unhappiest phases of one’s own life one can pluck maxims and feel a bit better thereby: this was believed, known – in earlier centuries. “We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from earliest youth … Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater.” ![]()
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