Basic Writings

Paul Ree, Robin Small

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780252092244
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book contains the first English translations of The Origin of the Moral Sensations and Psychological Observations, the two most important works by the German philosopher Paul Rée. These essays present Rée's moral philosophy, which influenced the ideas of his close friend Friedrich Nietzsche considerably.Nietzsche scholars have often incorrectly attributed to him arguments and ideas that are Rée's and have failed to detect responses to Rée's works in Nietzsche's writings. Rée's thinking combined two strands: a pessimistic conception of human nature, presented in the French moralists' aphoristic style that would become a mainstay of Nietzsche's own writings, and a theory of morality derived from Darwin's theory of natural selection. Rée's moral Darwinism was a central factor prompting Nietzsche to write On the Genealogy of Morals and the groundwork for much of today's "evolutionary ethics."In an illuminating critical introduction, Robin Small examines Rée's life and work, locating his application of evolutionary concepts to morality within a broader history of Darwinism while exploring Rée's theoretical and personal relationship with Nietzsche. In placing Nietzsche in his intellectual and social context, Small profoundly challenges the myth of Nietzsche as a solitary thinker.

PART 1

Psychological Observations

From the Nachlass of

L’homme est l’animal méchant par excellence.”¹

Some read to improve their hearts, others to improve their minds: I write for the latter.

On Books and Authors

1

Aphorisms are a thought concentrate that anyone can expand for themselves according to their taste.

Such a writing style is to be recommended. In the first place, it is not very easy to express a real stupidity in a short, pithy way. For it cannot hide itself behind few words nearly as well as behind many. In any case, the great quantity of literature makes a short mode of expression desirable.

2

The value of an aphorism cannot be judged by its author until he has forgotten the concrete cases from which it has been abstracted.

3

The fact that the author proceeds from the individual to the general, and the reader from the general to the individual, is the source of numerous misunderstandings between them.

4

Vauvenargues says, “If the illustrious author of the Maxims had been such as he tried to depict everyone, would he have deserved our respect and the idolatrous cult of his followers?”²

This question is absurd: for what La Rochefoucauld’s followers admire is not the goodness of his heart, but the subtlety of his head.

5

That a person’s goodness consists in the degree of his disinterested concern for the fate of others, and his practical rationality in not following momentary inclinations but taking the future into account, and that every person ought to be good and rational, everyone knows from himself and does not need to learn from moral philosophy.

Moreover, since the extent of our goodness, as much as of our rationality, depends mainly on our inborn nature, and in the second place on whether we had frequent opportunities from youth onward for the pursuit of good and rational actions, whereas reading the philosophers achieves nothing—it follows that philosophy (and similarly art) cannot exist for moral goals. Rather, it serves for the conversation and intellectual edification of those who have a natural interest in such matters.

6

The most important author has the smallest public.

7

We see every great author at the first stage of his career surrounded by critics who bark at him, as village dogs bark at a traveler to keep him away. Yet the dogs eventually return to their village, and the critics to the state of obscurity that they needlessly left for a moment.

8

Great models are useful only for great successors.

9

Speakers and authors generally convince only those who were already convinced.

10

When we read a respected author, we revise our judgment according to him.

On the other hand, when we read an author who is not yet respected, we revise him according to our judgment.

Hence, a famous author can receive credit for his bad books more easily than an unknown author for his good ones.

11

Scholars shine, like the moon, with reflected light.

12

The philologist knows books just as accurately as the paper they are printed on knows them.

13

We are not always pleased when someone agrees with our favorable judgment on a great man. For we are so vain that we want to be the only one qualified to appreciate him.

14

The brain of many is pickled in scholarship.

15

The “bookworm” finds pleasure in study itself, not in the things studied.

16

The mere scholar is more conceited than the philosopher. For the philosopher often finds that things he has reflected on for years are better known to the naïve and perhaps uneducated person than to him, whereas of all the things that the scholar knows, no uneducated person has the slightest inkling.

17

What is found in histories of philosophy is either the same as in the philosophers—in which case the histories are useless; or else different—in which case they are harmful.

18

If vanity did not exist, nearly all the sciences would still be in the cradle.

19

Someone who has understood the masterpieces of poetry will seldom take pleasure in holding forth about them, feeling that the beauties of such works cannot be communicated by words to those who do not feel them immediately in reading the works themselves.

Hence, one must have understood the poets very little to be able to write a history of literature.

20

How badly many books would stand up to our critical judgment, if we had not written them ourselves.

21

When facts stand in contradiction with our system, we do not admit them to ourselves.

22

We regard only those critics as competent who praise our achievements.

23

Newly discovered truths are opposed partly out of envy toward their teacher and partly to avoid admitting that one was mistaken for so long.

24

The author is seldom satisfied with the public. For while he sees the beauties of his work and feels its weaknesses only faintly, the public does the opposite, to his astonishment.

25

Human insights are like small islands that float about, lonely, in the infinite sea of our ignorance.

26

It is not in the nature of things probable that the praise people give to our achievements comes closer to the truth than the blame. Nevertheless, we always hold the former to be true and the latter to be untrue.

27

The thought never occurs to us that someone does not understand what he is saying, and yet we should have experienced in our own case how often this is true.

28

A fool fills his traveling flask with water from a Swiss puddle, brings it home, and says, “Look, this is what the water of the Swiss lakes looks like”—and people believe him.

So it has been for the Germans with French literature.

29

If the so-called unities of Aristotle are heavy fetters for the dramatist, one must admit that the French dramatists know how to move in those fetters with great grace and skill.³

30

Whoever is eminent within his profession appears to himself to be eminent in general; it does not occur to him that other professions stand much higher than his.

31

It is remarkable how people take a lively interest in an unpublished poem by Goethe or Schiller, even when they know only a minute amount of the published work.

32

Any system is found correct in all its aspects only by its founder.

33

When one has once changed one’s opinions, there arises, as with second love, a feeling of uncertainty and mistrust of one’s own constancy.

34

The fact that everyone else also holds their opinion to be correct should make us mistrustful of the correctness of our opinion.

35

Stupid people achieve office and status quickly because no talent distracts them from their occupation.

36

To recognize that the good things of this world do not make one happy is difficult, almost impossible, before one possesses them; but then everyone recognizes this truth. Hence, the writings of the moral philosophers on this subject cannot have a practical goal.

37

Geniuses make an impression on the commonplace person only when they show some knowledge of his own daily occupation.

38

With average aptitude one gets on in the world more easily than with extraordinary talents.

39

Insignificant people, who have only weak sides, should not criticize the weaknesses of important people.

40

Whoever asserts that there are no inborn talents is usually right in his own case.

41

The fable of the wren who flew even higher than the eagle under whose wings he had risen so far is especially valid for many a writer who has g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Translator’s Introduction
• Part 1: Psychological Observations
• Part 2: The Origin of the Moral Sensations
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author