Nietzsche’s unflattering utterances about women have been rather extensively psychoanalyzed, and should I say, overanalyzed, particularly in what concerns his “relationship” with his sister (and, I might add, with his mother too, judging by some of his unhappy references to mothers and children). Another suggestion points to the strong possibility of Nietzsche’s prejudice rooted in his contraction of an STD from a prostitute, early on. Honestly, I am always skeptical with regard to such suggestions. For one thing, all this guesswork about the alleged motives behind what the author says, clouds the purity of our judgment of what is actually being said. Secondly, in Nietzsche’s case, I am always subjectively inclined to attribute such statements, even the most outrageous ones, to the man’s undeniable eccentricity and propensity to challenge. Walter Kaufmann, whom I have already quoted on several occasions, gives this issue a modest passing comment,--- “There are some passages striking me as blemishes without which the book [Jenseits] would be better, for example the tedious remarks about women.”. Bertrand Russell treats this as a far more serious offense, with which view I, however, tend to disagree. But, considering that this issue has risen to a level of some importance, I feel compelled to comment on it myself as well.
Among Nietzsche’s numerous scandalous and shocking statements about women, we have already cited a few elsewhere, including the famous “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip.” (Zarathustra). In an elaborate remark in Jenseits, one of those which Kaufmann calls “tedious,” Nietzsche writes:
“Woman wants to become self-reliant, and for that reason she is beginning to enlighten men about woman as-such: this is one of the worst developments of the general uglification of Europe. For, what must these clumsy attempts of women at scientific self-exposure bring to light! Woman has much cause for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness and immodesty lies concealed in woman-- one only needs to study her behavior with children!-- and so far all this was at bottom best repressed and kept under control by fear of man…” (#232)
Or take this one: “Man likes woman peaceful, but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.” (#131)
These examples are plenty. In Jenseits alone there are some twenty-four entries directly devoted to women, and, of course, the very first sentence of Nietzsche’s Preface to Jenseits, much quoted by me already, reads: “Supposing truth is a woman--what then?” Much unlike the overwhelming barrage of the negative stuff said by Nietzsche about women, and often gleefully quoted by his critics, comparing truth to a woman cannot be altogether deprecating to either one, and so, here we are either looking at a terrible inconsistency in our bad boy woman-hater, or else, a much more complex phenomenon, when the same object can be seen in totally different lights, depending on the angle. There is no suspense to break here, as the latter must obviously be the case, and we have many other examples in Nietzsche (he does this also with quite a few great philosophers) when he would mercilessly chastise the object of his invective, but then would suddenly reverse himself, and lavish great praises upon him. (As he does with Plato, Spinoza, Pascal, Kant, and many others)…)
There can be no doubt that Nietzsche’s negative talk about women is not sheer sexism, but that he is making a much finer psychological argument, using women as his case in point. Incidentally, he is not the only one who treats women so disparagingly. The Holy Bible is full of what any modern psychologist would qualify as fierce sexism, starting with the story of how the wily Serpent chose the woman Eve as "the fifth column" to seduce the man Adam. Tertullian, who was not a very pleasant man, as I have observed elsewhere, but, still, a bona fide Father of the Christian Church, called woman “the gateway of the Devil.” Homer, in Odyssey xi, says, “No trust is to be placed in women.” Aristophanes goes still further with his invective: “Nothing in the world is worse than a woman… save another woman.” (Compare this particular line to the Ecclesiasticus xxv:19: “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.”) Springing all the way to the twentieth century, here is our “best-beloved” Rudyard Kipling, with his sarcastic “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
There is little sense in continuing the ten-thousand-mile-long list of authoritative yet uncharitable quotations using women as their target. My closing point here is that not all of them are soaked in some misogynic poison, and it is in their company, and in their historical context, that Nietzsche’s “womantalk” has to be placed, and judged. And guess what? By this reasonably impartial standard, we may even find it… “fair and balanced.”
Among Nietzsche’s numerous scandalous and shocking statements about women, we have already cited a few elsewhere, including the famous “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip.” (Zarathustra). In an elaborate remark in Jenseits, one of those which Kaufmann calls “tedious,” Nietzsche writes:
“Woman wants to become self-reliant, and for that reason she is beginning to enlighten men about woman as-such: this is one of the worst developments of the general uglification of Europe. For, what must these clumsy attempts of women at scientific self-exposure bring to light! Woman has much cause for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness and immodesty lies concealed in woman-- one only needs to study her behavior with children!-- and so far all this was at bottom best repressed and kept under control by fear of man…” (#232)
Or take this one: “Man likes woman peaceful, but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.” (#131)
These examples are plenty. In Jenseits alone there are some twenty-four entries directly devoted to women, and, of course, the very first sentence of Nietzsche’s Preface to Jenseits, much quoted by me already, reads: “Supposing truth is a woman--what then?” Much unlike the overwhelming barrage of the negative stuff said by Nietzsche about women, and often gleefully quoted by his critics, comparing truth to a woman cannot be altogether deprecating to either one, and so, here we are either looking at a terrible inconsistency in our bad boy woman-hater, or else, a much more complex phenomenon, when the same object can be seen in totally different lights, depending on the angle. There is no suspense to break here, as the latter must obviously be the case, and we have many other examples in Nietzsche (he does this also with quite a few great philosophers) when he would mercilessly chastise the object of his invective, but then would suddenly reverse himself, and lavish great praises upon him. (As he does with Plato, Spinoza, Pascal, Kant, and many others)…)
There can be no doubt that Nietzsche’s negative talk about women is not sheer sexism, but that he is making a much finer psychological argument, using women as his case in point. Incidentally, he is not the only one who treats women so disparagingly. The Holy Bible is full of what any modern psychologist would qualify as fierce sexism, starting with the story of how the wily Serpent chose the woman Eve as "the fifth column" to seduce the man Adam. Tertullian, who was not a very pleasant man, as I have observed elsewhere, but, still, a bona fide Father of the Christian Church, called woman “the gateway of the Devil.” Homer, in Odyssey xi, says, “No trust is to be placed in women.” Aristophanes goes still further with his invective: “Nothing in the world is worse than a woman… save another woman.” (Compare this particular line to the Ecclesiasticus xxv:19: “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.”) Springing all the way to the twentieth century, here is our “best-beloved” Rudyard Kipling, with his sarcastic “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
There is little sense in continuing the ten-thousand-mile-long list of authoritative yet uncharitable quotations using women as their target. My closing point here is that not all of them are soaked in some misogynic poison, and it is in their company, and in their historical context, that Nietzsche’s “womantalk” has to be placed, and judged. And guess what? By this reasonably impartial standard, we may even find it… “fair and balanced.”
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