Ugly Instincts, in Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 20

by Corry Shores
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Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

Skirmishes of an Untimely Man

20

As we noted before, nothing is beautiful in itself. Only humans are beautiful. And whatever we deem beautiful in the world are things that reflect our image back to us.

Nietzsche says this is the first truth of aesthetics.

The second: only the degenerating man is ugly, and nothing else. When we see decay, danger, powerless and so forth, we become deprived of our physical strength. These things we call ugly.

One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful.

Hence there are many other ugly reminders of degeneration.

Every indication of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly."

Such things threaten our health and the well-being of our species. So we hate them. The cause of our hate for ugliness runs as deep as any other survival instinct. It cuts to the heart. When art is ugly, it too may pierce our souls.

A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? But there is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep ...

Text from the Nietzsche Channel:

20

Nothing is beautiful, only man [Nichts ist schön, nur der Mensch ist schön]: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating [entarten] man—and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically considered, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, powerlessness; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful ... In both cases we draw a conclusion: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a suggestion and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every indication of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition—even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol—all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused—but whom does man hate then? But there is no doubt: thedecline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness—it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep ...

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Based on Walter Kaufmann's translation. Available at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/twi.htm