Reading Nietzsche

Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route

Thirty-Eight Miniatures: Solitude, the Herd, and Laughing

Optional full-text route · Station 17 of 35

Read: Book III, §§164–201, in full, from the original 1882 edition. Begin at §164 and stop before §202.
Allow: About 45–65 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The primary text is short, about 1,500 words in the free edition, but it contains 38 separate judgments.

Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §164 · §174 · §184.

Quotations on this page follow Common’s free translation, including his section titles. Kaufmann’s wording differs, and none of it is quoted here. Many of these aphorisms share a printed page, so a link may land a few lines above the one named; count the section numbers down from there.

Before you read

This is the first of three stations of very short aphorisms that close Book III (stations 17–19). The long religious and historical sections of Book III have just ended (stations 14–16). Here the book speeds up. Many of these sections are one or two sentences; a few are small dialogues between A and B.

The main question: Which of these short judgments about solitude and society resist each other—and which one reduces a large question to taste?

How to read a run of miniatures

The same method serves all three miniature stations, 17–19.

  1. First pass, straight through. Read all 38 without stopping to interpret. Put a mark beside each: P (psychological observation), H (historical claim), V (valuation or ranking), or ? (where Nietzsche himself hedges, as with “perhaps”). Note who speaks: an “I,” a “we,” a dialogue, a named speaker, or an impersonal maxim.
  2. Second pass, with a pencil. Star three sections: one you disagree with, one you do not understand, and one you think is simply true.
  3. Group, then close-read. Use the groups below or make your own.

You do not need to write about every section. You do need to have read every one.

What to notice

  1. Society. §166 says “We are only in our own society always.” Find the sections that seem to contradict it.
  2. Justice as taste. Read §184 twice. What does “and nothing more” rule out?
  3. Laughter. §177 and §200 both concern laughing. Compare them with station 2’s §1.

Close reading

One way to group the run

These groups are this guide’s, not Nietzsche’s. The book prints the sections in one numbered sequence; many have their own titles, but none is printed under group headings like these. A section may belong to more than one group.

Alone and with others

§166 makes a strong claim about perception: everything akin to me speaks to me and comforts me, and other things go unheard. “We are only in our own society always.” Mark it P. Then read the sections that press against it. §170 describes a man who follows the multitude out of laziness and will turn against it, because “the multitude is not lazy enough for him.” §182 says that in solitude one writes quietly, fearing “the criticism of the nymph Echo.” §195 laughs at a man who runs away from people, whom they follow because he runs ahead of them. §166, our own society

§174, titled “Apart,” is the run’s one direct political claim. Parliamentarism is “the public permission to choose between five main political opinions.” It flatters those who want to seem independent. “After all, however, it is a matter of indifference whether one opinion is imposed upon the herd, or five opinions are permitted to it.” Whoever goes apart from all five “has always the whole herd against him.” §174, parliamentarism

Mark it V, and state it plainly. It treats a parliamentary electorate as “the herd,” and it denies any real difference between one imposed opinion and a choice among several. It does not argue for that denial. Here “herd” is a term of contempt for a public, not an analysis; the theme page on the herd and the last man follows how that vocabulary develops across the corpus.

Justice as taste

§184 is titled “Justice.” “Better allow oneself to be robbed than have scarecrows around one—that is my taste. And under all circumstances it is just a matter of taste—and nothing more!” §184, justice

The “scarecrows” are presumably the grim guardians one would need to prevent every theft. Book II’s §107 used the same image: without art, “we” might become “virtuous monsters and scarecrows” through over-strict demands (station 12 and Reading 2). The first sentence is a preference. The second makes a claim about all such preferences: that justice is “just a matter of taste—and nothing more.” Mark it V. Ask whether the second sentence follows from the first, and what it would do to any argument about justice.

Kindness and possession

§192 asks what distinguishes the good-natured. They are at ease with a new person and quickly taken with him. Then come, in order, “the wish to appropriate,” rapid appropriation, “joy in the possession,” and actions in favour of the person possessed. This is station 4’s §14 in miniature: kindness as a form of possession. Mark it P. §192, the good-natured

Nearby, §199 says: “Liberality is often only a form of timidity in the rich.” §167 calls misanthropy “the result of a far too eager philanthropy,” a case of having swallowed too many people: “who ever bade you swallow men like oysters, my Prince Hamlet!”

Thinkers and laughter

Several sections define the thinker by what he simplifies or cannot hear. §189: “He is a thinker: that is to say, he knows how to take things more simply than they are.” §196: “We hear only the questions to which we are capable of finding an answer.” §179: “Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments.” Put these beside station 2’s demand for intellectual conscience. They are not attacks on thinking, but observations about its limits. §196, what we can hear

§193, “Kant’s Joke,” says Kant tried to prove, in a way that dismayed “everybody,” that “everybody” was right. He wrote in favour of popular prejudice, but for the learned. §177 says that in Germany “the laughter of higher men” is lacking: “these men do not laugh in Germany.” §178 says the Germans must be talked out of both Mephistopheles and Faust, “two moral prejudices against the value of knowledge.” Mark these V, with some H. They are judgments about a nation and a philosopher, stated as jokes.

§200 defines the act that ties this run to §1: “To laugh means to love mischief, but with a good conscience.” At station 2, laughter at oneself was the wisdom of a possible future. Here laughter is closer to Schadenfreude, made respectable. Keep both definitions; the book does not choose between them. §200, laughing

Leading and following

§181 is a dialogue. A: of two people, one will always follow and the other lead, “And yet the former is superior to the other in virtue and intellect.” B: “And yet? And yet? That is spoken for the others; not for me, not for us!” It ends with a Latin phrase, Fit secundum regulam (it happens according to the rule). B treats the gap between virtue and command as normal. §181, following and leading

Do not assign B’s view to Nietzsche automatically. Ask who “us” is, and whether the dialogue endorses the view that leading has nothing to do with virtue or merely reports it. Compare the prelude’s poem 7 (station 1) and §255 at station 19, both about following.

A difficulty

If justice is taste, what is left to argue?

§184 says justice is “just a matter of taste—and nothing more.” Yet the run also contains §191: “The most perfidious manner of injuring a cause is to vindicate it intentionally with fallacious arguments.” That assumes some arguments are fallacious and some are not. Station 6’s §39 said opinions follow taste, and station 7’s §51 answered with a test.

Three readings are possible.

Decide which reading the text best supports, and name the section that tips it.

Check your understanding

Try answering before opening each suggested response.

What does §174 claim about parliamentarism?

That allowing “the herd” to choose among five opinions is no different in effect from imposing one, and that whoever goes apart from all five has the whole herd against him. It is a valuation, stated without argument.

What does §192 say about the good-natured?

That their kindness follows a sequence of liking, “the wish to appropriate,” appropriation, “joy in the possession,” and actions in favour of the person possessed. It is kindness described as possession, as in §14 at station 4.

How does §200’s definition of laughter differ from §1’s?

§1 imagined laughter at oneself “out of the veriest truth,” united with wisdom. §200 defines laughter as loving mischief “with a good conscience,” closer to pleasure at harm. The book keeps both.

In §181, who says that leading has nothing to do with virtue?

Neither speaker says it outright. A observes that the follower is superior in virtue and intellect; B dismisses the objection as “spoken for the others,” and ends with it happens according to the rule. Whether the section endorses B has to be judged, not assumed.

Writing prompt

Write 150–200 words answering:

Choose two sections from this run that resist each other. What would each say to the other?

A successful response reads the two sections as a pair rather than as slogans, states any political or anti-egalitarian claim plainly, and does not settle the tension by ignoring one side.

Continue

Continue to station 18: Forty Miniatures: Courtesy, Punishment, and the Spectator’s View →

Read next: Book III, §§202–241. The miniatures continue with kindness, punishment, and perspective.

Previous station: station 16, §§144–163. Return to the route list in the book guide.

A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised .

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