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Posted by Thomas on 7/31/2007, 1:13 am, in reply to "Re: Zarathustra 18: Old and Young Women" 238. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and 239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so
83.202.218.X
Well I'm interested in revising my opinion; when you mention Beyond Good and Evil, perhaps you have these two sections in mind?
Best regards,
Thomas
woman," to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity
for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal
rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a
TYPICAL sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved
himself shallow at this dangerous spot--shallow in instinct!--may
generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as
discovered; he will probably prove too "short" for all
fundamental questions of life, future as well as present, and
will be unable to descend into ANY of the depths. On the other
hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and
has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity
and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of
woman as ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a possession,
as confinable property, as a being predestined for service and
accomplishing her mission therein--he must take his stand in this
matter upon the immense rationality of Asia, upon the superiority
of the instinct of Asia, as the Greeks did formerly; those best
heirs and scholars of Asia--who, as is well known, with their
INCREASING culture and amplitude of power, from Homer to the time
of Pericles, became gradually STRICTER towards woman, in short,
more Oriental. HOW necessary, HOW logical, even HOW humanely
desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!
much respect by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency
and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as
disrespectfulness to old age--what wonder is it that abuse should
be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn
to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be
well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife
itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty.
And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is
unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who "unlearns to fear"
sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture
forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man--or more
definitely, the MAN in man--is no longer either desired or fully
developed, is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough;
what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby--
woman deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays: let us
not deceive ourselves about it! Wherever the industrial spirit
has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman
strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk:
"woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of the modern
society which is in course of formation. While she thus
appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes
"progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite
realises itself with terrible obviousness: WOMAN RETROGRADES.
Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has
DECLINED in proportion as she has increased her rights and
claims; and the "emancipation of woman," insofar as it is desired
and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine
shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the
increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts.
There is STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine
stupidity, of which a well-reared woman--who is always a sensible
woman--might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the
ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect
exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go
before man, perhaps even "to the book," where formerly she kept
herself in control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralize
with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a VEILED, fundamentally
different ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily
feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the
idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and
indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant
domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of
everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the
position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has
entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-
argument, and not rather a condition of every higher culture, of
every elevation of culture):--what does all this betoken, if not
a disintegration of womanly instincts, a defeminising? Certainly,
there are enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman among
the learned asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to
defeminize herself in this manner, and to imitate all the
stupidities from which "man" in Europe, European "manliness,"
suffers,--who would like to lower woman to "general culture,"
indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here
and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and
literary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be
something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and
godless man;--almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by
the most morbid and dangerous kind of music (our latest German
music), and she is daily being made more hysterical and more
incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of
bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general
still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex"
STRONG by culture: as if history did not teach in the most
emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his
weakening--that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and
languishing of his FORCE OF WILL--have always kept pace with one
another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the
world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank
their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for their
power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect in
woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more
"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning
flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in
egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the
incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and
virtues. That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for
the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more
afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, and more
condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and
sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in
the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy,
which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to be at
an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The
tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We
know the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee,
from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable
might once more become "history"--an immense stupidity might once
again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed
beneath it--no! only an "idea," a "modern idea"!
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