Human, All Too Human Characters

Human, All Too Human Character List

Artists

Artists are those who seem poetically inspired in their art or literature. Nietzsche's conclusion is that they are serving social service in their relationship to their status. That's a fancy way of saying that artists are basically just politicians.

Society

Society is the humanizing force in Nietzsche's view of the universe. It's more than just people in one's life—it also contains a person's fear of looking weird or being rejected. A person is programmed to exist in community, and this functionality blinds us to the truth of life, that it is meaningless.

Woman

The passages in the chapter "Man in Society and Woman and Child" concerning women are pretty offensive. In Nietzsche's world, women are seen as a dyad containing the child as well. In other words women are like a mechanism by which men are made. Marriage, family, and romance are pretty much worthless in Nietzsche's view.

Child

A child is programmed by adults to false believe religious and moral ideas that the adults have long forgotten learning themselves. When they learned those ethics, they too were children, unable to think for themselves. Therefore morality can evolve since we're burdening innocent minds with the full weight of myth and superstition. This is discussed in "On the History of Moral Feelings."

Man

Man is Nietzsche's opposite force to society. In one's psychology, they have a pathology which they learned from their parents in their young life. This is the imposition of morality onto the mind. In Nietzsche's view the correct response is for man to go be alone with himself. In "Man Alone with Himself," he outlines precisely the kind of philosophical games that might lead to his enlightenment, but he calls it obscurantism (darkening as opposed to lighting).

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