Here is one of Nietzsche's most famous ones...I will give you the context under which I 'accidentally' came across this passage again....
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I had taken a couple of customers (pilots) downtown in my limo and was waiting for them to have dinner before I took them back to the airport.
I drove over to the other side of downtown and parked my Lincoln.....walked down towards Church and Wellesley (not my usual walking ground ) and happened upon The Church Street Diner, 555 Wellesley Street. A man fixing the menu board waved me in so I walked up the stairs, went inside, and grabbed a seat by the window overlooking Church St. The waitress was smiling and friendly...asked me later what I was reading...and then when I told her she asked me who Nietzsche was...(in 20 words or less....I tried to tell her who Nietzsche was, that he was a very intense, passionate philosopher...and this was probably his most famous book...I then said I was looking for a dessert and she recommended the 'maple sugar pie with ice cream'...I said that sounded 'very sweet'...she said it was 'very good'...and I said, 'I'd give it a try although my belly would probably not be thanking her later....The pie and ice cream came, all 500 calories or more of it...but who was counting after I took my first bite...).
While I was waiting for my dessert, I opened 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' to a page and start reading. It didn't grab me, so I tried again, and then again....On my third try, I got the 'hit' I was (or wasn't) looking for, but found anyway, probably one of Nietzsche's most famous quotes from 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. (I didn't even know that it came from this book) Here is a more extended version of the writing context surrounding one of Nietzsche's most famous quotes...
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But Zarathustra looked at the people and marvelled. Then he spoke thus:
Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman -- a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and staying still.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going.
I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across.
I love the great despisers, for they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other bank.
I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices; but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.
I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who works and invents that he may build a house for the Superman and prepare earth, animals, and plants for him; for thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is will to downfall and an arrow of longing.
I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as virtue over the bridge.
I love him who makes a predilections and a fate of his virtue; thus for his virtue's sake he will live or not live.
I love him who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more than two, because it is more of a knot for fate to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who neither wants nor returns thanks: for he always gives and will not preserve himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? -- for he wants to perish.
I love him who throws golden words ahead of his deeds and always performs more than he promised: for he wills his own downfall.
I love him who justifies the men of the future and redeems the men of the past: for he wants to perish by the men of the present.
I love him who chastises his God because he loves his God: for he must perish by the anger of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in its ability to be wounded, and whom even a little thing can destroy: thus he is glad to go over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself and all things are in him: thus all things become his downfall.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the bowels of his heart, but his heart drives him to his downfall.
I love all those who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they prophesy the coming of the lightning and as prophets they perish.
Behold, I am the prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Superman.
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DGB...Editorial Comments....
Part 1: Did Nietzsche Have A 'Will to His Own Downfall'?
It feels like Nietzsche is anticipating his own collapse in the passages above...Thus Spoke Zarathustra was composed between 1883 and 1885...Nietzsche collapsed from a mental breakdown on January 3rd, 1889.
The first puzzling phrase that Nietzsche uses is:
'What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going'.
The 'going across' phrase fits with Nietzsche's image of two cliffs and an abyss. And man needing to 'go across' the abyss of life....That part fits...but what about the phrase 'down going'....What does that mean? Does it mean that Nietzsche anticipates 'falling into the abyss'...
Nietzsche continues: 'I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across'.
So Nietzsche associates 'going down' with 'going across'...going down where? To the earth? To your own self-destruction? Let's look for more clarification in the passages below:
I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices; but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.
I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who works and invents that he may build a house for the Superman and prepare earth, animals, and plants for him; for thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is will to downfall and an arrow of longing.
I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as virtue over the bridge.
Does this help to clarify the 'down-going' Nietzschean puzzle? Or make it more puzzling? It is almost as if Nietzsche is setting himself up to be a 'martyr' here -- he is going to die for a cause, and that cause is living the life of a 'Superman'...until he collapses...Nietzsche is 'willing his own downfall' for the cause of The Superman...
What's he seems to be saying is that to live life with all the passion that he is trumpeting is to 'will your own downfall'...to be 'left at the bottom of the abyss'? You can't go across without falling -- falling at some point into the abyss. And depending on how hard you land in the abyss, you may be able to climb your way back out...or maybe not...eventually not...
It's better to live and to eventually take a very hard fall...than not to have lived at all...
In Neil Young's words, 'It's better to burn out than to fade away.'
It's better to live and to eventually take a very hard fall...than not to have lived at all...
In Neil Young's words, 'It's better to burn out than to fade away.'
Perhaps this is just a little more passion than most people are prepared to live....How many broken hearts are you going to endure before you start to 'compensate' by 'protecting your heart' in whatever manner you deem necessary...by in effect, coating it with a 'sheet of armour'....Wilhelm Reich called this 'body armour'....
How many broken hearts did Nietzsche endure? Two that I have read about, one relative to Richard Wagner's second wife, Cosima...and the other relative to Lou Andreas Salome...Nietzsche did not seem to be lucky in love...More research is needed here on my part...we will explore some of these details in the future...
So on January 3rd, 1899, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and never returned to sanity in the eleven years leading up to his death in 1900. The event was recorded as follows:
On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What actually happened remains unknown, but an often-repeated tale states that Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its neck to protect the horse, and then collapsed to the ground.[22]
Here, in an instant perhaps, was Nietzsche's final 'down-going' -- his plummet to the bottom of a mental abyss from which he did not return.
How and for what reason did it happen? Here are some of the still existing theories:
1. Syphilis; (diagnosis at the time, perhaps caught during his war years...Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter.[10][11];
2. Some hereditary type of brain disease...his dad died from some kind of brain disorder when little Nietzsche was 5 years old...and Nietzsche suffered from migraines, dizziness, and the like for most of his adult life...He was not a healthy person;
3. 'A will to his own downfall'...written about in the passages above some five years before his eventual collapse..was he prognosing it, anticipating it, prophesizing it...
4. 'Manic-Depression'...'Bi-Polar Disorder'...'Split Personality'...'Existential Disorder'and/or some other psychological disorder/diagnosis....
Now, I don't feel comfortable making any definitive conclusion here, when other more far more authoritative Nietzschean scholars are either inconclusive themselves, or in disagreement with each other. Having said this, I will offer my own speculations. I think that it is quite likely that Nietzsche suffered from the same type of brain disorder that killed his father. His father, having died when little Nietzsche was only 5 years old, is quite likely to have passed on his 'pathological genes'.
Also, Nietzsche seems to have been sick for most, if not all of his, life with headaches, blurred vision, and the like, even before he went to war and contacted dysentry and/or whatever else...This having been said, his 'psychotic breakdown' seems to have been caused or at least stimulated by an emotional stressor, specifically the horse incident, which does point to one or more (likely more) psychological co-factors. There is also another horse incident previous to this one in which Nietzsche took a very bad fall and this could have resulted in brain trauma.
Whether he actually 'willed his own downfall' or not is a debatable question but he certainly does seem to be prognosticating his own downfall in the passages that I have cited above...That is about as far as I can take this matter without having enough concrete biographical knowledge to do a full 'transference analysis' of Nietzsche's character...Wikipedia's comments seem to touch upon most of the relevant variables:
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From the internet...Wikipedia...
In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel. (Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868 riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays until regular work became impractical.)
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Similarly to the Wikipedia comments cited above, I believe that there were probably multiple co-factors involved in Nietzsche's physical, mental, and psychological demise: 1. genetic brain factors from his dad; 2. possible brain injury factors resulting from his serious fall from a horse; 3. possible viral and/or bacterial issues from his year spent in The Prussian Army...(Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter....Wikipedia...)...and an inter mixture of great self-destructive, ideational and psychological factors as well as great creative factors...perhaps a form of 'bi-polar disorder', or more specifically, 'manic-depression'...
In the end, Nietzsche basically turned his back on finding some sort of 'healthy homeostatic balance' in his life in favor of 'bi-polar extremism' -- climbing to the highest heights of philosophical achievement and perhaps 'romantic infatuation/love' on the one hand vs. 'jumping off of metaphorical cliffs and crashing to the bottom of the metaphorical abyss on the other hand'....with perhaps one too many falls to the bottom of the abyss...
Such was the life and is the philosophy of Nietzsche -- the philosophy of The Superman...with potentially or inevitably 'Super Falls' To The Bottom of The Metaphorical Abyss in The Name of Giving One's Best Effort at Jumping or Climbing From The 'Cliff of Being' to 'The Cliff of Becoming'...
In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt...
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
Eleanor Roosevelt
-- dgb, May 23rd, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiatons...
-- Are Still in Process...
Similarly to the Wikipedia comments cited above, I believe that there were probably multiple co-factors involved in Nietzsche's physical, mental, and psychological demise: 1. genetic brain factors from his dad; 2. possible brain injury factors resulting from his serious fall from a horse; 3. possible viral and/or bacterial issues from his year spent in The Prussian Army...(Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery. Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his other infections at this time, and some biographers speculate that syphilis caused his eventual madness, though there is some disagreement on this matter....Wikipedia...)...and an inter mixture of great self-destructive, ideational and psychological factors as well as great creative factors...perhaps a form of 'bi-polar disorder', or more specifically, 'manic-depression'...
In the end, Nietzsche basically turned his back on finding some sort of 'healthy homeostatic balance' in his life in favor of 'bi-polar extremism' -- climbing to the highest heights of philosophical achievement and perhaps 'romantic infatuation/love' on the one hand vs. 'jumping off of metaphorical cliffs and crashing to the bottom of the metaphorical abyss on the other hand'....with perhaps one too many falls to the bottom of the abyss...
Such was the life and is the philosophy of Nietzsche -- the philosophy of The Superman...with potentially or inevitably 'Super Falls' To The Bottom of The Metaphorical Abyss in The Name of Giving One's Best Effort at Jumping or Climbing From The 'Cliff of Being' to 'The Cliff of Becoming'...
In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt...
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
Eleanor Roosevelt
-- dgb, May 23rd, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiatons...
-- Are Still in Process...
