The Beautiful exists just as little as the True. In every case it is a question of the conditions of preservation of a certain type of man: thus the herd-man will experience the value feeling of the True in different things than will the Overman.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Beauty and truth are equally scarce; they serve to preserve a certain type of person, with the herd valuing truth differently from the Overman.
- In plain terms
- Both beauty and truth are rare and shape different kinds of people.
- What can you take from it?
- Different people perceive truth and beauty in ways that reinforce their type.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do we define 'overman' in modern terms?
- Can beauty and truth be equally valued across societies?
Another view
The distinction can be used to justify elitist attitudes.
More from Friedrich Nietzsche
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life...three …
Permalink to quote #198 A declaration of war on the masses by Higher Men is needed! ... Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the end of the People or the Feminine, w…
Permalink to quote #200 Morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions ... I abhor Christianity with a deadly hatred.
Permalink to quote #197
Related quotes
Pragmatists explained that Truth is what it pays to believe. Historians of morals reduced the Good to a matter of tribal custom. Beauty was abolished by artist…
Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell quote #165 Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins, Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, Its joy conf…
Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau quote #13 To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before.…
Edith HamiltonEdith Hamilton quote #9