Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route

Dissatisfaction, Heresy, and the Taste That Changes Opinions

Optional full-text route · Station 6 of 35

Read: Book I, §§24–40, in full, from the original 1882 edition. Begin at §24 and stop before §41.
Allow: About 60–80 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The seventeen sections total about 2,900 words in the free edition; §40 is the longest.

Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §24 · §35 · §40.

Quotations on this page follow Common’s free translation, including his section titles. Kaufmann’s wording differs, and none of it is quoted here. Where Common’s wording shapes a claim about rank or descent, this page notes the German.

Before you read

Station 5 ended by calling corruption the harvest time of a people. These seventeen shorter sections ask how inherited standards change. Is it through the dissatisfied, through heretics, through changes of taste, or through the people at the top? They also include one of Book I’s bluntest political passages (§40).

The main question: How do historical change and dissent alter inherited standards—and what is left for argument if opinions follow taste?

Read all seventeen once. Mark each with P, H, V, or ? (Nietzsche’s own hedge only, as at station 2). Note who speaks: several sections are small scenes or dialogues.

What to notice

A question that stops itself. §26 defines living, then asks a question about its own definition. What stops it?
Reasons after the fact. §29 says reasons are added to a habit only when it is attacked. Test that claim against §39.
Two groups of people. §24 divides the dissatisfied in two, and §40 divides workers from employers and soldiers from their leaders. What vocabulary does each use to rank them?

Close reading

One way to group the sections

These groups are this guide’s, not Nietzsche’s; the sections run in one numbered sequence under their own titles.

Dissatisfaction and change: §§24, 25, 34, 39.
Life, cruelty, and renunciation: §§26, 27, 28.
Reasons, habits, and heresy: §§29, 33, 35, 37, 38.
Fame, masks, and last words: §§30, 32, 36.
Commerce, work, and rank: §§31, 40.

Two kinds of dissatisfaction

§24 opens by dividing the dissatisfied. “The feeble and as it were feminine dissatisfied people” beautify and deepen life; the strong—“the masculine persons among them, to continue the metaphor”—improve and safeguard it. The weaker kind is never satisfied, and patronizes “opiate and narcotic comforts.” Yet without a surplus of them since the Middle Ages, “the remarkable capacity of Europeans for constant transformation would perhaps not have originated at all.” §24, two dissatisfactions

Mark the section’s parts separately.

The gendered metaphor. Nietzsche calls it a metaphor, but it ranks the “feminine” as feeble and the “masculine” as strong. The point he credits to the feminine kind does not remove the ranking.
The historical claim about Europe. It carries a ?, from “perhaps.”
The claim about China. “China is an instance of a country” in which dissatisfaction and the capacity for transformation “have died out for many centuries.” This is an H about a whole civilization, offered without evidence, and it serves as a warning: European “Socialists and state-idolaters” could bring about “a Chinese ‘happiness.’”

The section ends: “Europe is an invalid who owes her best thanks to her incurability.” Keep the image; the later preface will make convalescence its central metaphor (station 35).

What is living?

§26 is five sentences long, and it turns on itself. “Living—that is to continually eliminate from ourselves what is about to die.” Living is “to be cruel and inexorable towards all that becomes weak and old in ourselves, and not only in ourselves.” Then the section asks: does living therefore mean to be “without piety toward the dying, the wretched and the old? To be continually a murderer?” It ends: “And yet old Moses said: ‘Thou shalt not kill!’” §26, what is living?

Do not stop at the first sentence. The definition moves from what dies in ourselves to others, and the questions test where it leads. The commandment is not refuted; it stands as the last word. Whether it is a rebuke, an irony, or an unresolved objection is left to the reader. The nearby sections show the same pattern of turning. §27 finds that the self-renouncer is really “this affirmer.” §28 says that our strengths can destroy us and others: “our pitilessness is also our greatness.”

Reasons after the fact

§29, “Adventitious Liars,” takes an example from French literary history: the dispute over “the unity of Aristotle,” the classical rule of dramatic unity. When the rule was attacked, its defenders invented reasons for it, rather than admit they were simply used to its authority. Nietzsche generalizes: in every prevailing morality and religion, “the reasons and intentions behind the habit, are only added surreptitiously when people begin to combat the habit.” Conservatives “are adventitious liars.” §29, adventitious liars

§35 turns the suspicion on the other side. “To think otherwise than is customary” comes less from “a better intellect” than from “the activity of strong, wicked inclinations.” “Heresy is the counterpart of witchcraft,” and heretics and sorcerers are “two kinds of bad men” who feel themselves wicked. This continues station 3, where §4 called every teacher of the new “evil” in the eyes of the old. It is not praise of heresy as enlightenment. §35 ends with a historical claim: the Reformation produced both kinds of people “in the greatest profusion.” §35, heresy

§37 applies the same suspicion to science. It was furthered by three errors: the hope of understanding God’s goodness (Newton), belief in the unity of knowledge, morality, and happiness (Voltaire), and belief that knowledge is innocent and unselfish (Spinoza). Mark it H: these are claims about the motives of named people, stated without evidence. Book V will return to science’s hidden faith in §344 (Reading 8).

Taste before opinion

§39 makes the most general claim in the station. “The alteration of the general taste is more important than the alteration of opinions.” Opinions, “with all their proving, refuting, and intellectual masquerade,” are symptoms of altered taste, not its causes. Taste changes when powerful individuals “tyrannically” enforce their judgment, “hoc est ridiculum, hoc est absurdum” (Latin: this is ridiculous, this is absurd). Their different taste comes from their way of life, nourishment, or digestion, “perhaps in a surplus or deficiency of the inorganic salts in their blood and brain.” §39, altered taste

Mark it P and H, with a ? on the physiological guess. Then set it beside §29. If reasons are added to habits after the fact, and opinions follow taste, then argument seems to come last. §34 adds that every great man has “a power which operates backward,” so that history is weighed again on his account: “The past is still perhaps undiscovered in its essence!”

A noble presence

§40 is one of Book I’s bluntest political sections, and it should be stated plainly. Soldiers and their leaders treat one another far better than workmen and employers. “All militarily established civilisation still stands high above all so-called industrial civilisation,” which is “the meanest mode of existence that has ever been.” Workers do not mind subjection to fearsome leaders so much as to the captains of industry, in whom the workman sees “a crafty, blood-sucking dog of a man.” §40, industrial civilisation

The section then explains socialism. Manufacturers lack “those forms and attributes of a superior race” that alone make people interesting. Had they “the nobility of the nobly-born in their looks and bearing,” there might have been no socialism. The masses, Nietzsche writes, “are really ready for slavery of every kind,” provided that the class above them “constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and born to command.” The common man honours nobility, in Common’s English, “as the fruit of protracted race-culture”; the German says only die Frucht langer Zeiten, the fruit of long ages, so “race-culture” is the translator’s expansion. When he sees only the vulgarity of manufacturers with “red, fat hands,” he concludes that chance raised them, decides to throw the dice himself, “and socialism commences.” §40, noble presence

Mark it V, H, and P, and separate the layers.

The criticism of industrial work. Workers sell themselves under necessity and despise those who exploit it.
The explanation of socialism. It is a claim about motive and history, and it needs evidence.
The ranking. The claims that the masses are ready for slavery under a visibly superior class, and that nobility is the fruit of breeding, are anti-egalitarian judgments. The German does speak of a higher race (der höheren Rasse) and of nobility by birth (Geburts-Adel), so the inherited-rank claim is Nietzsche’s, not the translator’s. The passage does not name a particular ethnic people: its contrast is between the nobly born and manufacturers within one society.

Do not soften the section into a critique of capitalism alone, and do not treat its ranking as incidental. Compare station 4, §18, on the ancient slave.

A difficulty

What is left for argument?

§29 says reasons are added to habits only when habits are attacked. §39 says opinions follow taste, and that taste is imposed “tyrannically” by the powerful and rooted in their physiology. §35 says dissent comes from wicked inclinations more than better intellect. If all this is true, arguments look like masks for habit, taste, and temperament. That would include Nietzsche’s own arguments against moralities and his case against industrial civilisation.

There are several ways to respond.

These sections describe how opinion usually changes, not how it ought to.
Nietzsche accepts the consequence, and presents his own work as a change of taste.
The book keeps a place for testing that these sections do not deny. Station 7 will quote it: “Let us put it to the test!” (§51).

Decide which the text supports, and name the sentence that tips it.

Check your understanding

Try answering before opening each suggested response.

How does §26 end, and what does the ending do?

With Moses’ commandment, “Thou shalt not kill!” The section defines living as eliminating what is weak and dying, then asks whether that makes the living “continually a murderer,” and lets the commandment stand as the last word. The definition is tested, not simply asserted.

What does §29 say about the reasons offered for a custom?

That they are usually added only after the custom is attacked, to avoid admitting that people were simply used to its authority. Nietzsche calls the conservatives who do this “adventitious liars.”

According to §39, which comes first, taste or opinion?

Taste. Opinions, with all their proving and refuting, are symptoms of altered taste. Taste changes when powerful individuals enforce their judgments, and their judgments may have physiological roots.

How does §40 explain the rise of socialism?

By the lack of a noble presence in the manufacturing class. Nietzsche claims the masses would accept subjection to a class that visibly shows itself “born to command.” Seeing only chance behind the employer’s position, the worker decides to try his own luck, “and socialism commences.”

Writing prompt

Write 200–250 words answering:

Choose §24 or §40. Separate its criticism of modern conditions from its ranking of people, and say whether the criticism depends on the ranking.

State the criticism in your own words.
Quote the phrase that carries the ranking, and mark its type.
Use §39 or §29 to ask what kind of support the section offers.

A successful response states the gendered or hereditary ranking plainly, does not make the section sound more egalitarian than it is, and keeps its historical claims open to evidence.

Continue

Continue to station 7: Work, Distress, and the Dreamer Who Must Dream On →

Read next: Book I, §§41–56, to the end of Book I.

Previous station: station 5, §§21–23. Return to the route list in the book guide.

A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised September 27, 2026.