/lit/ - Literature

From the Antichrist
6
>It is a painful, horrible spectacle that has dawned on me: I have drawn back the curtain from the corruption of man. In my mouth, this word is at least free from one suspicion: that it might involve a moral accusation of man. It is meant—let me emphasize this once more—moraline-free. So much so that I experience this corruption most strongly precisely where men have so far aspired most deliberately to “virtue” and “godliness.” I understand corruption, as you will guess, in the sense of decadence: it is my contention that all the values in which mankind now sums up its supreme desiderata are decadence-values.
>I call an animal, a species, or an individual corrupted when it loses its instinct s, when it chooses, when it prefers what is disadvantageous for it. A history of “lofty sentiments,” of the “ideals of mankind”—and it is possible that I shall have to write it—would almost explain too why man is so corrupt. Life itself is to my mind the instinct for growth, for durability, for an accumulation of forces, for power: where the will to power is lacking there is decline. It is my contention that all the supreme values of mankind lack this will—that the values which are symptomatic of decline, nihilistic values, are lording it under the holiest names