This page includes most of the aphorisms I've written, on:

The arts
Life and death
Happiness and suffering
Nature and the universe
Religion, ideology and honesty
Courage
Power and justice
Ethics
Miscellaneous topics

A short introduction to the aphorism form

Discussion of the aphorism form, Nietzsche as aphorist

Aphorisms: the arts

There isn't much difference between the most austere music and the most sensuous poetry.

As well as explaining reality and reflecting reality, art extends it, so that reality becomes more mysterious and problematic than ever.

Writers are often very strong but with not much incentive to be strong - they can make so much of their weakness.

Poeticules use a rule.
Poets use a graticule.

To a lyric poet:
Useless - less - unless distress
drives or drove your work.

Anything 'as good as' what has come before and very similar to it is worse.

An unfailingly kind and generous critic is a bad critic.

To the writer, the blank sheet of paper is as inviting as Walt Whitman's open road. But often, the road turns out to be blocked.

A writer must be far more patient than a gardener.

Many books come complete with their own antidote, many are innocuous, some are addictive, a few are fatal.

Pain, waste, the humdrum, ignorance, violence and chance - the world throws up all sorts of objections to shallow and inadequate thought and art.

The world is so constructed as to discredit superficial thought and art.

If you're tired of very great writing, read some very bad writing. If you're tired of very great music, listen to some very bad music.

Art demands a willingness to avoid short cuts and to acquire insights at ruinous cost.

The sailing ship is becalmed, the poet is bemused.

Aphorisms: life and death

Simple curiosity has probably never been the motive for a suicide.

Summer summarizes only a limited life.

Dying must be terrible - like becoming blind, deaf, dumb and completely paralyzed, and losing your mind, all at once.

The richness of a life rich in disappointments.

Dying is more than mathematical subtraction. Being born is more than mathematical addition.

The central facts of life are revealed by experiences which are marginal and of rare intensity.

The years accumulate, and are compressed.

As well as the obvious limits at its beginning and end, each life has limits at the sides.

The desperate people who feel that whilst there's death, there's hope.

Beware of things that emerge gradually as well as things that strike suddenly.

Those times when everywhere we look we find.

Return tickets are usually unobtainable.

Hope is sometimes a form of greed.

To try
to triumph.

They are engraved on the mind, the dead.

The sword - the point of no return.

Aphorisms: happiness and suffering

Pain in the body is often a sign that there's something wrong with the body. Pain in the mind is often a sign that there's something right with the mind.

Conventional, and courageous, people like others to suffer sensibly and not to give way to despair or rage - in other words, not to suffer as intensely as they might, or perhaps to extract as much benefit from the experience as they might. A kind of courage is needed for self-pity.

The body knows the difference between happiness and unhappiness but not the difference between spirituality and deadness.

Suffering should produce suspicion.

We're often told that we can't find happiness by trying to find it but we're often given advice as to how to dispel unhappiness.

Did you become an optimist (or a pessimist) by looking into yourself or at the world?

Often, when we cry out we are inaudible to everyone but ourselves.

It's not at all unreasonable to feel sorry for someone who is happier than you are.

Many people will put up with any amount of suffering, their own and other people's.

Since the blind exist, the main point of life can't consist in what is seen, since the deaf exist the main point of life can't consist in what is heard ... fulfilment must be open to all.

The sufferings of the world are too terrible for our imaginations to encompass, so we naturally concentrate our attention on something more manageable, our own sufferings.

Compassion sometimes goes with the illusion that we're exempt from suffering something similar, or worse.

I was so happy, because I was no longer unhappy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,' Proposition 6.43: 'Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.' And the world of the happy woman is different from the world of the unhappy woman. The world of the unhappy woman is similar to the world of the unhappy man.

Aphorisms: nature and the universe

Never play music loud in the countryside, even if the music is intensely beautiful and the countryside very dull.

A pool need not remind us of the sea.

Technology is now almost as indifferent, ambiguous and wasteful as nature.

The ambiguity of a rope, which can save life and end it.

A mountain that forces us to look down rather than up.

I emerge from a winter without much snow as unrefreshed as from a night without much sleep.

One of the signs of the triumph over nature: there are so many facetious people.

It's impossible to swim in water in which it's impossible to drown.

It's not so much that nature is so cruel as that part of nature is so sensitive.

Nature is an assemblage of dissimilar components, which sometimes cohere beautifully.

The relationship between the mind and the universe is far from an infinitesimal against the infinite.

Let's not meet indifference with indifference, above all in the case of nature.

Contrasts so extreme it takes a universe to contain them.

Aphorisms: religion, ideology and honesty

The great achievements of religious architecture, painting, sculpture and literature are no evidence for religion but evidence that people with artistic gifts may have far less talent for critical thinking.

This world is inexhaustible and unfathomable. We need speculate about no other.

Mystics who are 'deep' are out of their depth.

Humanity can be explained only partly in natural terms but not at all in supernatural terms.

The horrific imperfections of the world foster courage and ingenuity. Why not skepticism?

The understandable fear of becoming lost, of leaving behind roads and paths, helps to explain the refusal to follow an argument wherever it leads, the reassurance of religions and ideologies.

The Christian revelation has taken away from life the mystery which for non-Christians remains. For skeptics more than for Christians, this is a mysterious and magical world.

The Christian God has become softer and gentler, a God who's 'only human,' although no more so than the old vengeful God.

Self-evident untruths and half-truths will always be popular.

Honest people may well reinterpret their lives at intervals as drastically as totalitarian regimes reinterpret their own history

I detest your ideology and the ideologies you detest.

'The later can be better than the earlier.' There's more consolation in this than in all the religions of the world. It may even console us for the existence of those religions.

If the world were imperfect in the way that Christians or communists suppose, Christianity or communism might be true, but it's imperfect in a way that refutes them. And so for other theisms and ideologies.

The world, like some faces, can look much better seen in a distorting mirror.

Aphorisms: courage

People are often cowardly where little courage is needed and heroic when the highest courage is called for.

A very ordinary, unpretentious, unspectacular, person with grotesque omissions, deep ignorance, monstrous self-deception, overwhelming kindliness and superhuman courage.

Aphorisms: power and justice

Try to see that justice is done even when no law has been broken.

Even the most benevolent power for good ought not to be unchecked by other powers.

Aphorisms: ethics

At the furthest reaches of morality: the Nazis who shot babies, gassed babies or set fire to buildings in which babies were burned alive, who would have felt revulsion if they had been ordered to boil babies alive. Probably, a few of them would have refused to obey.

The evil of aggressive, militaristic states has been overcome often by aggressive military action. When by pacifism?

A good cause may have to triumph over the methods used to promote it and the arguments used in its defence.

Ethical purity - as unlikely and as ineffectual as political purity.

What we enjoy the most, what we are best at doing, what we are expected to do and what we ought to do may be very different matters.

The person who doesn't neglect any duties and obligations is as constrained as an invalid.

The dog lovers who destroy the unwanted dogs they're unable to rehome are to be admired, not the dog lovers who give their dogs expensive hair-trims and shampoos, the best of everything.

Aphorisms: miscellaneous topics

'The best thing to eat with chicken is an egg,' and similar misconceptions.

'We've had a love-hate relationship. You've hated me and I've loved you.'

Love-hate relationships: in that order or reverse order.

Not yet near.
Nothing to fear.

There are no longer any serpents or tempests,
no longer a jest, blackguard or ne'er-do-well,
no rosy-fingered dawn.

Every question is an order: answer!

The things that unite us as humans are not much different from the things that unite us as living creatures.

If you judge only by the most superficial appearances, so many people have depth.

Adequate criticism of an aphorism needs a more extended form than another aphorism.

The relationship to the few and simple elements of someone's existence may be one of gluttony.

Nietzsche's 'Twilight of the Idols' is subtitled, 'How to Philosophize with a Hammer:' (Götzen-Dämmerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt.) Nietzsche philosophizes with a hammer, a sledgehammer, instead of using skilfully, with delicacy and finesse but massive force and power when necessary, a wide-ranging set of tools - including a nutcracker.

My atheism is far from being the most important thing about me, otherwise there would be a strong linkage between me and the atheist Stalin.

I'm a vegetarian but I'm far from placing all vegetarians above all meat-eaters, or even above all cannibals.

To know that someone is a Christian or an atheist tells me almost nothing about the person.

Abbot Arnald Almaric: 'Kill them all. God will look after his own.'
They hate love and love hate,
though firm believers in the triumvirate.

The ascent's assent.
The descent's dissent.

'I understand! I'm an understudy!'

The lion's share.
The lionness's share.
The cubs' share.

A short introduction to the aphorism form

From the Introduction to 'The Oxford Book of Aphorisms,' edited by John Gross, a superb collection, and a superb Introduction:

'...although the two words ['maxim' and 'aphorism'] certainly overlap, they are far from interchangeable...Aphorisms tend to be distinctly more subversive; indeed, it is often a maxim that they set out to subvert. And they are less cut and dried, more speculative and glancing...[the aphorism] is a form of literature, and often a highly idiosyncratic or self-conscious form at that. It bears the stamp and style of the mind which created it; its message is universal but scarcely impersonal; it may embody a twist of thought strong enough to retain its force in translation, but it also depends for its full effect on verbal artistry, on a subtle or concentrated perfection of phrasing which can sometimes approach poetry in its intensity. (At the same time one should add that compression is not necessarily the supreme stylistic virtue in an aphorism, and that the finest examples are not always the most terse. A good aphorism - and here too it differs from the proverb, which has to slip off the tongue - may well need to expand itself beyond the confines of a single sentence.)

'An aphorism, finally, has to be able to stand by itself; as Johnson said, it is an 'unconnected' proposition. Yet in practice many aphorisms are also retorts and ripostes, shafts aimed at the champions of an established viewpoint or a shallower morality. They tease and prod the lazy assumptions lodged in the reader's mind; they warn us how insidiously our vices can pass themselves off as virtues; they harp shamelessly on the imperfections and contradictions which we would rather ignore. There are times when the very form of the aphorism seems to lend itself to a disenchanted view of human nature. Anxious to distance himself from platitude, the aphorist is drawn towards the unsettling paradox...

'... there are of course as many different kinds of aphorism as aphorist...classic aphorisms and romantic aphorisms, aphorisms which deflate and aphorisms (rather fewer) which console.'

Discussion of the aphorism form, Nietzsche as aphorist

Discussion of the aphorism form

Introduction
Scale
Completeness
Subject and style

Nietzsche as aphorist

Nietzsche and pity: a central objection
The success of Nietzsche's aphorisms
Nietzsche and extended forms
Nietzsche and the word-sphere
Criticism: some aphorisms of Nietzsche

Introduction

Some of the material here comes from other pages, with links provided to the pages which give the original context.

Nietzsche wrote in 'Twilight of the Idols: 'I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.' (Maxims and Arrows, 26). From the Introduction to my page Glossary: poetry, defiantly anti-Nietzschean:

'My approach is in part systematic and rigorous, but I see no contradiction between system and rigour on the one hand and on the other, passion, compassion, activism, humour, an intense concern for the health of language and the vitality of culture, a whole range of other concerns. A systematic study can reveal gaps, new possibilities very clearly. The meticulous work of cartographers was needed to show explorers what regions were still unexplored, to suggest new areas for risk and adventure.' One or two of the sections below are moderately systematic and rigorous. Appreciation of aphorisms and enjoyment of the enjoyable aphorisms aren't diminished at all by system and rigour.

The stupidities of this age and the often worse stupidities of previous ages can be exposed to healthy criticism by means of the aphorism - although that isn't their only function - and by means of extended writing - but by being systematic as well.

The obsession with what sells well can be countered by means of an aphorism, such 'Best-sellers are not usually the best books' and by simply pointing out that high sales may be (a) thoroughly deserved OR (b) undeserved - a very simple example of the theme {diversification} and the 'diversification operator.' There are many, many cases where the systematic approach leads to useful insights but involves no more elaboration than stating an alternative.

The use of 'curly brackets' in a few places, as in {diversification} and {substitution} is explained in the page Linkage and Theme Theory, which is unavoidably technical in many places. I make use of this theory here, but only lightly. The discussion here can be followed without referring to the page on theory. There's a list of themes on the page Themes and controversies - map, giving access to illustrative examples for the separate themes.

Scale

I introduce the terms and ideas I use later in discussing aphorisms by means of illustrations from other areas, including architecture, photography and even bullfighting as an art form. This underlines the fact that the terms and ideas can be applied very widely. A primary aim of mine in this site, 'Linkage and Contrast' is to point out linkages between fields which are apparently very different. What I mean by 'scale' and 'adequacy' can be explained by an unexpected illustration, bullfighting. (But the page on bullfighting makes it clear that my objections to bullfighting - there are many of them - are not based primarily on scale.)

'There are no great theatrical masterpieces which last only a quarter of an hour. They need longer than that for their unfolding, to have their impact. Aristotle, in the 'Poetics,' wrote that 'Tragedy is an imitation of an action that ...possesses magnitude.' (Section 4.1) The word he uses for 'magnitude' is 'megethos' and it expresses the need that the dramatic action should be imposing and not mean, not limited in extent. Aristotle's view here isn't binding, but it does express an artistic demand which more than the so-called 'unities' has a continuing force. The 15 minutes, approximately, which elapse from the entry of the bull until its death are far too little for the demands of a more ambitious art. The complete bullfighting session is simply made up of these 15 minutes repeated six times, with six victims put to death. This repetition doesn't in the least amount to magnitude, to 'megethos.' The scale of bullfighting doesn't have adequacy. The scale of Greek drama does have adequacy. Shakespearean themes needed a drama with still greater scale for adequacy.

Ruskin has an extended discussion of scale in architecture in Chapter III of 'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 'The Lamp of Power.' In 'Mornings in Florence,' 'The Fourth Morning,' section 72, he writes 'Mere size has, indeed, under all disadvantage, some definite value...Disappointed as you may be, or at least ought to be, at first, by St Peter's, in the end you will feel its size...the bigness tells at last: and Corinthian pillars whose capitals alone are ten feet high, and their acanthus leaves three feet long, give you a serious conviction of the infallibility of the Pope, and the fallibility of the wretched Corinthians, who invented the style indeed, but built with capitals no bigger than hand-baskets.'

As for the use of architecture to 'prove' a doctrine, an aphorism of mine is relevant: 'The great achievements of religious architecture, painting, sculpture and literature are no evidence for religion but evidence that people with artistic gifts may have far less talent for critical thinking.' There's no linkage between the power of architecture and the validity of religious beliefs: [power of architecture] > < [validity of religious beliefs]. There's a linkage between baroque architecture and the values of the age of absolutism, [baroque architecture] < > [values of the age of absolutism] but the architecture didn't validate them.

Diversification by simple alternative can be applied to Aristotle's claims concerning magnitude and tragedy, which are justified claims, I'm sure, but undiversified. He claims that there are imitations that have insufficient scale (my term) or 'megethos' (Aristotle's term) and so have inadequacy in imitating the action. What Aristotle didn't consider here (although he did consider very thoroughly similar ethical alternatives in the 'Nicomachean Ethics' ) is the diversified OR: imitations that have excessive scale.

There are many dramatic illustrations of this, from screen and television as well as the stage: imitations where the action is ridiculously inflated, grandiose, in general excessive for the small-minded or insignificant theme.

This too is a claim for disproportion of scale, D H Lawrence on Flaubert's Madame Bovary:

'I think the inherent flaw in Madame Bovary is that individuals like Emma and Charles Bovary are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert's profound sense of tragedy...Emma and Charles Bovary are two ordinary persons, chosen because they are ordinary. But Flaubert is by no means an ordinary person. Yet he insists on pouring his own deep and bitter tragic consciousness into the little skins of the country doctor and his dissatisfied wife...'

I live in a small terraced house, which suits me but would have insufficient scale for a King or Queen, even the unpretentious royalty of the Netherlands or Denmark. Excessive scale is represented by the inhuman scale of brutalistic architecture for accommodation.

It's necessary to diversify further: excessive scale can be justified OR unjustified. Brutalistic architecture, which has the effect of making people more insignificant, is an example of unjustified excessive scale, I think. There are compensating advantages in some excessive scale. Baroque architecture makes people less significant rather than more significant, but it has a compensating drama, energy, dynamism, excitement. Neo-classic St Petersburg is built on an inhuman scale but the scale enhances human experience. This, and the Baroque excessiveness, has a linkage with the excess (the 'nimiety') of Beethoven in some of his works, such as the repeated figure in the Scherzo of his Quartet Opus 135: an example of artistically justified excess and great scale in a small-scale musical genre.

All of this, of course, is preparation for discussion of the aphorism form.

Aphorisms are astonishing. Successful aphorisms have a very small scale: {restriction} is marked in this literary form. There is little {distance} between upper and lower limits and the upper limit is only a few lines. Marion Faber, who translated (very well) Nietzsche's 'Human, All Too Human' is mistaken when she claims, in her introduction, that 'The 638 aphorisms of Human, All Too Human range from a few words to a few pages, but most are short paragraphs.' Only the shorter sections can qualify as aphorisms at all and of these, only a proportion are aphoristic. No aphorisms are a page long, let alone several pages long.

Aphorisms are short, but all the same, successful aphorisms have been found to have adequacy for very small themes and the largest, such as the universe and God, if God exists. The scale has adequacy for themes of the most varied extents. In other spheres, such as architecture, scale has to be varied and very often, scale is excessive or insufficient.

For all that, there is {restriction} on the application-spheres of aphorisms. Aphorisms can give powerful insights into things considered as a whole, such as the universe as a whole, or a single aspect of a thing. They have limited adequacy in addressing multiple aspects and details and in making detailed comparisons. They have limited adequacy in addressing extended subjects whose internal organization has also to be considered. For these purposes, powerful and very often wonderful instruments such as scholarship and serious criticism are needed.

Completeness

In the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle used the concept of ('autarkeia' often translated as 'self-sufficiency.') In the Greek manuscripts, both works belong to the corpus dealing with 'practical philosophy.' Like 'megethos,' the concept of autarkeia can be generalized and applied to the aphorisms of Nietzsche and the aphorism form in general. It can be generalized to give an inclusive theory of 'completion and completeness.'

Autarkeia depends upon a further Aristotelian concept, the , 'telos,' often translated as 'end.' Something which is 'complete' has reached its end. In the Nicomachean Ethics, happiness has autarkeia because it lacks nothing and someone is happy who is self-sufficient, happiness depending only on the person, not on external conditions. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives the very valuable insight that ('arete,' excellence) is a kind of completion. (Metaphysics, Book Delta, XVI.)

Aphorisms are often held to possess 'self-sufficiency,' to be complete in themselves. This can be interpreted in various ways. An aphorism by Nietzsche can be regarded as self-sufficient and complete if it needs no knowledge of Nietzsche's philosophy for an adequate appreciation, or if it needs no knowledge of Nietzsche's other aphorisms or the aphorisms of other aphorists or the extended work of non-aphorists. An aphorism of Nietzsche, like many of those in collections of aphorisms, can be detached by an editor from a passage of extended prose. The resulting aphorism has to 'stand alone,' and not require knowledge of the context. A high degree of self-sufficiency or complete self-sufficiency does seem to be a requirement for a successful aphorism, even if serious criticism will inevitably explore the context.

Subject and style

The aphorist is at the service of a subject. In the Oxford Book of Aphorisms, the aphorisms are arranged according to subject - 'Design and Chance,' 'The Sense of Identity,' 'Self-Knowledge,' 'Men, Women, Marriage,' 'The Family' and many more. The aphorism is expected to have adequacy in relation to the subject - to express something of importance about the subject, or at least one aspect of the subject - but to have more than adequacy.

The aphorism is expected to have style as well, using 'style' in the sense used in stylistics. Style includes a degree of individuality. (Herbert Read, in 'The Styles of European Art,' points out that 'the derivation of the word from the Latin stilus indicatesthat originally the connotation waspersonal: it meant the peculiarities of the marks made by an individual using a stilus or pen.')

There are propositional ways of addressing a subject. The wording of a proposition can be changed in many ways without loss. Works of philosophy and history are propositional in this sense. When works of philosophy or history are written in a style of high literary value, such as the dialogues of Plato, then this is an enhancement, not something necessary to the form. Aphorisms are non-propositional. The style is far more than an enhancement.

Literary forms other than the aphorism such as novels, short stories, poems and drama are often at the service of a subject too, but not to the same extent or in the same way. A collection of novels, short stories, poems and drama can be imagined dealing with the same subjects as the Oxford Book of Aphorisms - necessarily in many volumes. The section 'Men, Women, Marriage' might include D. H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love' and 'Macbeth,' for its probing of the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. This scheme would break down on account of the greater scale of these works, which allows for such a great variety of levels, alternative themes and sub-themes, and such aspects as characterization. In one respect, the degree of organization, novels and drama have linkages with other extended forms otherwise very different in kind, such as works of scholarship. Relatively unextended forms such as brief lyric poems have a strong linkage with aphorisms.

I think, then, that aphorisms have as their characteristics
(1) restricted scale
(2) a high degree of completeness
(3) a high degree of 'subjection to the subject'
(4) style.

Nietzsche as aphorist

Nietzsche and pity: a central objection

'Pity ... is a weakness.' (Daybreak.)

And Nietzsche's opinion in 'Daybreak' ... is an untruth. Or a false generalization, a sphere in which Nietzsche excelled. It ignores the extent to which the person who pities, who has compassion, is strong. Far, far easier in times of tyranny and cruelty to ignore pity and compassion, to live as easy and obscure a life as possible. From the Author's Note to John Bierman's 'Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust:'

'Attorney Gideon Hausner, chairman of Yad Vashem ['Yad Vashem ... at once a memorial, museum, library and archive, and a centre for study and research into one of history's most terrifying and inexplicable recent phenomena: the attempted destruction of an entire people by an apparently civilized nation'] and the man who prosecuted Adolf Eichmann, expresses the special significance of Raoul Wallenberg:

"Here is the man who had the choice of remaining in secure, neutral Sweden when Nazism was ruling Europe. Instead, he left this haven and went to what was then one of the most perilous places in Europe, Hungary. And for what? To save Jews." '

Nietzsche's absolute dismissal of pity would be immune to any evidence. Pity for any suffering was weakness. His later doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence, the principle of maximum acceptance, the principle that all and every suffering would recur, would not be deflected. He would not have been interested in pity during Stalin's Great Terror. Robert Conquest's book, 'The Great Terror: a Reassessment' describes the purges, the tortures, the executions, life - the short, living death - in the camps. He gives some statistics, with evidence that the statistics he gave in the first edition were not exaggerated:

'Arrests, 1937 - 1938 about 7 million
Executed about 1 million
Died in camps about 2 million
In prison, late 1938 about 1 million
In camps, late 1938 (assuming 5 million in camp at the end of 1936) about 8 million

'I have concluded, from much Soviet and other testimony, that not more than 10 percent of those then in camp survived.'

Nietzsche would have been indignant at the grossness of Stalinist Russia, he would have called it decadent and many more things (and he would very likely have been executed if he had lived in Russia at the time) but he would have been unmoved by the suffering.

But would he have preferred the state of consciousness of those who had pity or the state of consciousness of those who were without pity? Was it weakness to have pity in those desperate circumstances? Pity was punished without pity. The testimony of two ex-prisoners, recounted in Robert Conquest's book:

'There were many officials of all grades, from simple warder to prison governor, who again and again defied regulations and risked their own freedom by finding opportunities of making prisoners' lives easier by secretly giving them food or cigarettes, or even merely speaking a cheering and comforting word to them.'

Being imprisoned or sent to a camp for such acts of kindness could well result in death. These people were risking a very great deal.

Nietzsche's account of pity in his later writings is simple-minded for a thinker with such a reputation as a psychologist. He was ready to uncover the egotism which may lie behind apparently selfless acts, but this motivation was surely not present in these cases or in so many other cases of kindness in situations of great danger (or in situations not at all dangerous.) There was nothing to be gained by kindness at all. In his earlier writings, Nietzsche's view of pity was not just more measured but far more profound. In 'Human, all too Human,' published 8 years before 'Daybreak,' Section 59 (not, as the translator here of this section, Marion Faber, would have it, aphorism 59), he writes, 'Intellect and morality. One must have a good memory to be able to keep promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.'

'In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.' (Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams and Interludes, 171.)

In the later books, both the aphoristic Nietzsche and the prolix Nietzsche praise hardness and condemn pity.

One of the most important of all statements of Nietzsche's position can be found in 'Beyond Good and Evil,' Book Four, Section 338. Here, as elsewhere, his survey is defective. He sees no need for {modification} of hardness, no need for {adjustment} of hardness because the examples of pain and suffering which he gives are of one kind, the kind that leads to insight, the kind that enriches. 'The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by "distress," the way new springs and needs break open, the way in which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed - all such things that may be involved in distress are of no concern to our dear pitying friends: they wish to help and have no thought of the personal necessity of distress, although terrors, deprivations, impoverishments, midnights, adventures, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and for you as are their opposites...No, the "religion of pity" (or "the heart") commands them to help, and they believe that they have helped most when they have helped most quickly.' (Translation of Walter Kaufmann.)

A much fuller and better survey than Nietzsche's would have to include the severe and intractable pain that goes on and on, with never the healing of 'old wounds' but only newer and worse wounds, giving not the least opportunity for reflection, constructive thought or growth. Nietzsche's thought would lead to the abandonment not just of pity but of analgesics and anaesthetics.

In 'The Gay Science,' in Section 326 (The physicians of the soul and pain) he resorts to outright falsification. Nietzsche's survey includes only suffering of lesser degrees, not unendurable suffering. 'It seems to me that people always exaggerate when they speak of pain and misfortune, as if it were a requirement of good manners to exaggerate here, while one keeps studiously quiet about the fact that there are innumerable palliatives against pain, such as anaesthesia or the feverish haste of thoughts, or a quiet posture, or good or bad memories, purposes, hopes, and many kinds of pride and sympathy that almost have the same effect as anaesthetics - and at the highest degrees of pain one automatically loses consciousness.'

Knowledge of these words would never have consoled those being broken on the wheel - bones of the legs and arms smashed with a heavy iron bar - being burned alive or racked or crucified. After the flogging which tore open the back, after being nailed to the cross, after being conscious for a day without automatic loss of consciousness, all that could be hoped for was the breaking of the legs which put an end to the ordeal a little earlier. The Roman practice of crucifixion, like the killing of the gladiators in the arena and the killing of the wild animals in the arena, are blots on Roman civilization. Nietzsche's commendation of hardness, such as the Roman hardness, is a failure of {adjustment.} Hardness has to be modified and modulated, it has to be replaced by pity when necessary.

In the same page, I discuss a poem of mine which has very bleak, in fact, repulsive, content but a serene and harmonious shape:

'... a single poem can show untransformed horror, can express an unrelievedly bleak vision. Besides, the repulsive content of the poem is not all. It's in tension with the serene and harmonious shape of the poem.

The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo's wrote in Poem XXVI of 'Trilce:'

Rehusad, y vosotros, aposar las plantas
en la seguridad dupla de la Armonia.
Rehusad la simetria a buen seguro.

Refuse to place your footsteps
in the double security of Harmony.
Refuse to allow symmetry to
make you sure.

but in my 'symmetrical' poems' I'm doing something unexpected and, I think, well worth doing: using serene, symmetrical shapes in tension with disharmonious content. Mathematicians and scientists take an interest in symmetry. I think poets can take some interest in symmetry too, as an instance of pattern. There's the maximum of tension between the harmonious shape and the bleak and discordant content. This is an aspect of what I call tensile art. In general, in the face of opposites, poetry which is distinctively modern will not reject one of them but will tend to affirm both, often precariously, with great tension. The poets of the past who seem most modern to us have done exactly this: Catullus, for example, with his 'Odi et amo,' 'I hate and love.'

'I regard Nietzsche as almost a low-tension thinker. Tension is used as a technical term in Linkage Theory. A low-tension thinker can't keep opposed ideas in consciousness simultaneously, but has to emphasize one whilst denying others. There's a low-tension view which cannot come to terms with the shocking aspects of reality but instead distorts reality by, for example, sentimentalizing it.

Nietzsche could keep the two ideas in consciousness at once, the harshness of reality and its wonder. However, he lessened tension by flagrantly diminishing the harshness of reality. And he refused to acknowledge one more strand which can't be ignored without distorting reality, or so I claim: active humanitarianism, the urge to reduce suffering, to improve the world, an attempt which will often be frustrated (in a poem I use the words "...the anger of the one who acts to stop the killing,/but of course, so rarely can") but which is not always frustrated, an attempt which is difficult and sometimes impossible but absolutely essential. This is a high-tension view.'

'It is inhuman to bless where one is cursed.' (Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams and Interludes, 67.)

A good and revealing aphorism - for the contrast it makes with Nietzsche as a mechanical thinker.

The Gospel injunction not to respond to violence with violence, to turn the other cheek, is a failure of {adjustment}. Gandhi's tactics were very good ones in the circumstances he faced, but to transfer them to very different circumstances and to practise them mechanically - as against Hitler - would be a gross failure of {adjustment}. War carried out according to international legislation practises {adjustment}. Killing stops when the enemy has surrendered. Enemy wounded are treated not killed. Warfare which disregards these norms fails to practise {adjustment}. Killing indiscriminately is a fixed, rigid position. In everyday life, very kindly people who are in positions of authority have to practise {adjustment} by sometimes reprimanding employees, taking disciplinary proceedings, dismissing them. Parents who are uniformly indulgent or uniformly severe are failing in {adjustment}.

Nietzsche is right to criticize the injunction to bless where one is cursed but his own failures of {adjustment} were grotesque. His praise of hardness and disregard for pity, apparent in so many places in his writings, is a fixed, mechanical position, allowing no scope for intelligent thinking, emotional breadth, nuance. A military commander (in a just cause) who shows hardness and complete determination whilst fighting and mercy after fighting has ended has a much fuller and more interesting consciousness than the kind of commander Nietzsche admired, hard and ruthless at all times.

The success of Nietzsche's aphorisms

The aphorisms I discuss are amongst Nietzsche's better aphorisms, or at least ones which are striking, even if they may be faulty. I think that most of Nietzsche's aphorisms are weak and pointless to a greater or lesser extent (usually a greater extent), such as 'In music the passions enjoy themselves.' I think that Nietzsche is easily surpassed as an aphorist not just by such a conscious aphorist as Lichtenberg but by many 'aphorists by selection,' writers whose aphorisms have been taken by an editor from a more extensive context, usually prose but sometimes poetry. I regard Nietzsche's reputation as an aphorist as an instance of {substitution}, in this case (belated) fame as a substitute for achievement. Which isn't to deny his successes.

The evaluation of aphorisms is far more developed than the evaluation of concrete poetry - the aphorisms chosen for collections of aphorisms more often than not are genuinely interesting or important - but not developed enough. One of the acutely undeveloped areas is the examination of the aphorisms of Nietzsche. Which of them are arguably excellent or good, which of them are arguably poor? This is before the finer distinctions (the equivalent in evaluation of such distinctions as 'lower middle working class' in the English class system, the class into which I claim to have been born.)

My discussion here doesn't amount to a survey of Nietzsche's achievement or limited achievement in the form. I discuss only a few of his aphorisms. I think that his best aphorisms have least to do with his main themes, such as the condemnation of pity and praise of 'hardness,' (I detest his view) and the condemnation of Christianity (which I share.)

Nietzsche and extended forms

An aphorism is never a 'torrent of words,' words piled upon words, but it's a striking fact that Nietzsche used this technique to a far greater extent than he used the concise form of the aphorism. To view Nietzsche as primarily an aphorist is mistaken. Success in extended and concise forms is a different matter.

Such well-known collections as the Oxford Book of Aphorisms and the Faber Book of Aphorisms contain the aphorisms of philosophers and non-philosophers. Nietzsche, of course, is generally regarded as one of the 'philosophers,' and the philosopher most closely associated with the aphorism form. What background knowledge is required or desirable in order to appreciate the aphorisms of Nietzsche, such as knowledge of epistemology and metaphysics? None, or very little, I think. I regard Nietzsche as a thinker rather than a philosopher, for reasons which include his relative importance as an aphorist. His strength is in short and often concentrated forms - in his better aphorisms but also in his non-aphoristic writing. His weakness is in extended argument which requires extended forms for adequacy.

The philosophy of Kant is extended as well as complex and only an extended criticism can do justice to it, criticize it adequately or have any chance of demolishing it. Nietzsche was evidently convinced that he had demolished it, as in his discussion in Sections 10 - 12 of 'The Antichrist,' but his criticism does not have the requisite scale. It does not have adequacy.

In reading the aphorisms of Nietzsche, we should be alert to Nietzsche's weakness in extended forms, his tendency to make a virtue of his weakness. As always, his claims have to be treated with the suspicion which he (hypocritically) recommended. He wrote: 'Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.' (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 127). If we criticize, we are 'novices,' people who have 'reflected not at all.'

In a much later work, (Twilight of the Idols, 51), Nietzsche writes: 'The aphorism, the apophthegm, in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book...' He goes on to declare that 'I have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses, my Zarathustra.'

We have to ask, does a particular aphorism by Nietzsche have adequacy, or is it being used as an unsatisfactory substitute, something with insufficient scale? The same question can be asked of the aphorisms of other aphorists, including myself.

Nietzsche and the word-sphere

I think that Nietzsche often remained in what I call the word-sphere. Of course, the word-sphere is the natural home of imaginative writers. This isn't a pejorative use of the phrase. 'Word-sphere' in the pejorative sense reflects a sense of reality which is surely defective. Often, reality is difficult, intractable, sometimes impossible to deal with. It's far easier to arrange words so that an aspiration is put forward as reality. 'Declaring' a thing to be so is mistakenly thought to be the same as the reality. Sometimes, words become a substitute for action - this is an instance of {substitution}. The word-sphere is amongst other things the world of facile claims, ringing declarations, hollow confidence-building assertions, wildly optimistic projections for future success.

The word-sphere is also the home of the theorists criticized in 'Theory's Empire,' edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral. The essays in Part VII, 'Restoring Reason,' criticize relativists, theorists who elevate interpretation and diminish the role of fact. In their introduction to this section, the editors write 'It should come as no surprise that in order to separate language from reality, and to treat words as the preeminent building blocks of life, a major assault on rationality and science had to be launched.'

Nietzsche became a proto-theorist in this sense in a significant part of his work. Again and again, his aphorisms part company with reality. He becomes a master of the aphorism to a limited extent, but far more a master of the false generalization - which sometimes has such convincing (but illusory) power that it's easy to overlook the fact that it belongs only to the word-sphere. Very many of Nietzsche's arguments belong, like so many of the arguments of those he attacks, to the dismal category of 'argument by intimidation.' Nietzsche defies you to disagree.

Criticism: some aphorisms of Nietzsche

'Love of one is a barbarism; for it is exercised at the expense of all others. The love of God, too.' (Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams and Interludes, 67.)

Whenever Nietzsche mentions 'God,' it's the Christian God he has in mind. His discussion of other theisms is completely inadequate. 'Love' doesn't express at all adequately the believer's relationship with the God of Judaism or with Allah, and Buddhism has no personal God who could be loved. This is the Christian God, then. I'm no more well-disposed to the Christian God than Nietzsche, but in this aphorism, Nietzsche's distortion is obvious. The imperative is to love oneself, the 'neighbour' and God: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart and with all thy mind and with all they spirit. And thy neighbour as thyself.' This imperative belongs to the word-sphere. In the reality-sphere, the practice of Christians has been very flawed. Far better at the level of personal kindliness than at the level of, for example, the laws of officially Christian countries.

'Forbidden generosity. There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings.' (Human, All Too Human, Section Three, Religious Life, 129.)

William Blake responded to disregard of his work by becoming, to an extent, obscure and careless. If he'd had an appreciative public he would have taken more care to revise. In his wonderful essay 'Gerard Manley Hopkins' in 'The Common Pursuit,' F. R. Leavis describes Hopkins' response to the lack of a reading public, not obscurity but laboriousness: ' ... the reaction of so tense and disciplined an ascetic is the reverse of Blake's: he doesn't become careless, but - 'Then again I have of myself made verse so laborious' (LIII, to Bridges).' Nietzsche responded to disregard of his work by becoming intransigent and extreme and not so much careless as reckless. Nothing is refuted just by calling it intransigent or extreme. I think that his late work, 'The Anti-Christ' is intransigent but justifiable in its opposition to Christianity. But when he dealt with many other subjects, Nietzsche took up indefensible positions. 'Ecce Homo' has as chapter headings 'Why I am so wise,' 'Why I am so clever,' 'Why I write such excellent books.'

The earlier Nietzsche of 'Human, All Too Human is a less exciting writer than the later Nietzsche, who generally writes as if using bold print all the time, but we can appreciate the gentleness of this aphorism, its avoidance of stridency and shrillness and its rare praise of love and kindness. The later Nietzsche lost the ability to convey these things.

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.' (Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams and Interludes, 75.)

This aphorism, one of Nietzsche's better known aphorisms, is isolated in the body of his work. All the evidence is that although Nietzsche may have had sexual longings, they were frustrated. For that reason or other reasons, men's sexuality has no importance in Nietzsche's thought, except for this aphorism. Women's sexuality is treated in more detail but far from adequately. This isolated aphorism is surely a typical example of the word-sphere. Nietzsche on this occasion liked the sound of the words rather than any reality which the words could represent. They have poignancy as evidence of his sexual frustration, very much sublimated. The main point, however, is that the words are a false generalization.

'Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.' (Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams and Interludes, 156.)

A good, a very good aphorism in its sound, authoritative and convincing in sound: a product of the word-sphere. Another of Nietzsche's false generalizations. Ages are too big and multi-faceted to be included in such simple-minded talk, containing not just madness but lucidity, clarity and common-sense. Madness isn't rare in individuals if madness is taken to include delusions and irrationality which verge upon the psychotic. Nations can become mad for a time, as when Germany and Austria became Nazi and Russia became Stalinist, but the generalization overlooks the individuals who remained uninfected by the madness. It's surely a true generalization that some nations have been far more immune to the madness which led to the extermination camps, the concentration camps, the purges and the labour camps than these, and to lesser forms of madness.

George Orwell is quoted in Robert Conquest's 'The Great Terror:' 'Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that human beings are very much alike, but in fact any one able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another.'

This is true, I think, but countries are not condemned to perpetuate the past: {separation} between past and present may be more obvious than continuity. Very often the madness of a country's past is a warning, making it less likely that the madness will be repeated in a later age.

Reality is fluid, varied and contradictory. Nietzsche's word-sphere is rigid and simple and his works supply many, many instances of false and debatable {ordering}.

The index to Walter Kaufmann's translation of Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil' has 22 entries for 'rank, order of,' excluding references to the translator's own foot-notes. Sometimes the phrase 'order of rank' is used explicitly in Nietzsche's text, more often the concept is strongly implied or stated. Some examples (of aphoristic writing rather than aphorisms):

"What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must almost be poison for a very different and inferior type." (Section 30).

"Ultimately, there is an order of rank among states of the soul, and the order of rank of problems accords with this. The highest problems repulse everyone mercilessly who dares approach them without being predestined for their solution by the height and power of his spirituality." (Section 213).

"Every enhancement of the type "man" has so far been the work of an aristocratic society - and it will be so again and again - a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other." (Section 257).

"There is an "instinct for rank which, more than anything else, is a sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which allows us to infer noble origin and habits." (Section 263).

"I should actually risk an order of rank among philosophers depending on the rank of their laughter - all the way up to those capable of golden laughter." (Section 294).

Nietzsche's interpretation of 'higher' and his weighting should be examined. Any weighting which ranks as 'not higher'' Newton and the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (to give just two examples - but remembering that only one counter-example may be enough for a refutation) should be examined very carefully. Newton was a poor specimen of humanity, petulant and paranoid, and it is impossible that Nietzsche could have claimed for Newton "the height and power of ...spirituality." It would be asking too much of human versatility that someone who transformed our understanding of nature and made such innovations in mathematics should also be someone of 'nobility,' by Nietzsche's exacting standards. The engineers who designed the audacious viaducts and the railway tunnels and the mechanical engineers who designed the no less audacious machines during the Industrial Revolution have been 'higher' or 'high' in one sense, but not in the sense demanded by Nietzsche.

Close analysis of Nietzsche's orders of rank is hardly needed, including such fatuous claims as the one for golden laughter. Any history of philosophy which used this as a criterion of rank would be laughable. There have been philosophers capable of good humour, such as Hume, but none known to me capable of golden laughter. In fact, Nietzsche's words here are a typical product of the word-sphere. He likes the sound of the words but they lead nowhere.