Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities§379 The great Nihilistic counterfeiting concealed beneath an artful abuse of moral values.
Love regarded as self-effacement; as also pity.
Only the most impersonal intellect (“the philosopher”) can know the truth, “the true essence and nature of things”.
Genius, great men are great, because they do not strive to further their own interests: the value of man increases in proportion as he effaces himself.
Art as the work of the “pure free-willed subject “; misunderstanding of “objectivity”.
Happiness as the object of life: virtue as a means to an end.
The pessimistic condemnation of life by Schopenhauer is a moral one. Transference of the herd standards into the realm of metaphysics.
The “individual” lacks sense, he must therefore have his origin in “the thing in itself” (and the significance of his existence must be shown to be “error”); parents are only an “accidental cause”. The mistake on the part of science is in not understanding the individuum: he is the entirety of all past life in one development and not its result.