Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route
Actors, Lovers, and Anchorites
Optional full-text route · Station 30 of 35
Read: Book V, §§360–365, in full, added in 1887. Begin at §360 and stop before §366.
Allow: About 55–75 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The six sections total about 2,100 words in the free edition; §§363 and 361 are the longest. If you need two sittings, stop after §362.
Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §360 · §361 · §363 · §364.
Quotations on this page follow Common’s free translation, including his section titles. Kaufmann’s wording differs, and none of it is quoted here; this lesson has not been compared with Kaufmann’s text. Where a word drives the interpretation, this page notes the German, from the Projekt Gutenberg-DE text.
Before you read
Book V, added in 1887, continues. These six sections turn from knowledge to performance: the actor, the emperor who made Europe warlike, the lover, and the hermit who wears the clothes people expect. Station 29 ended by warning that §363’s generalizations about the sexes need the same testing as its national claims. That testing begins here.
The main question: How does performance change a claim about love or character?
Keep using the marks: P, H, V, and ? for Nietzsche’s own hedge only. Several sections make sweeping claims about women and about Jews. State them plainly, mark what kind of claim each is, and say what evidence, if any, it offers.
What to notice
- The actor. §361 traces the artist back to the actor, and the actor back to people who had to adapt to survive. Notice whom it names.
- Giving. §361 says of women that they “give themselves airs,” even when they “give themselves.” Hold that sentence against §363.
- Masks. §365’s hermit wears “the clothes in which people know us.” Compare §352’s moral costume (station 27).
Close reading
One way to group the sections
These groups are this guide’s, not Nietzsche’s.
- Causes and aims: §360.
- The actor: §361.
- War and the sexes: §§362, 363.
- The anchorite: §§364, 365.
Causes and aims
§360, “Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded,” introduces its distinction mildly hedged: “It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances” (German Das erscheint mir; mark ?). The cause of acting at all is “a quantum of stored-up force”; the cause of acting in one direction rather than another is often “an insignificant hazard,” “the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder.” Our so-called aims and occupations belong to the matches: “the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded.” It ends: “We still require a criticism of the conception of ‘purpose.’” Mark it P. Compare §356 (station 28), where people became their callings. §360, two kinds of cause
The actor
§361, “The Problem of the Actor,” says that this problem “has disquieted me the longest,” and that the speaker is “uncertain (and am sometimes so still)” whether the artist can be understood through the actor. The actor’s traits are “Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth as power,” and “the inner longing to play a rôle, to assume a mask.” All that “perhaps does not pertain solely to the actor” (German vielleicht; mark ?). The section offers a history: such an instinct “would develop most readily in families of the lower class of the people,” who had to adapt in order to survive, until the ability, “stored up from generation to generation,” begot “the actor, the ‘artist.’” Mark it H: a conjectural history of a type, offered without evidence. §361, the problem of the actor
Two further groups follow, and both must be stated plainly. First, “the Jews, however, the adaptable people par excellence.” Following “this line of thought,” one should expect to see among them “a genuine breeding-place for actors.” The German frames this conditionally (so möchte man in ihnen … gleichsam … sehn, one would, as it were, see in them), then affirms it at once: “in fact the question is very pertinent just now: what good actor at present is not—a Jew?” The next claim has no conditional: the Jew, “as a born literary man,” is “the actual ruler of the European press” (German der thatsächliche Beherrscher der europäischen Presse). The section asserts this as fact and offers no evidence; it is a generalization about a people. Compare §348 (station 27), which credited Jewish scholars with Europe’s logic. Second, “Finally women”: “are they not obliged first of all, and above all to be actresses?” They “give themselves airs,” even when they “give themselves.” “Woman is so artistic.” Mark both P and V. §361, Jews and women
War and the sexes
§362, “My Belief in the Virilising of Europe” (German Vermännlichung, making masculine), credits Napoleon, not the French Revolution, with opening “the classical age of war.” Thanks to him “man in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of ‘woman’ also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity” (German vielleicht; mark ?). Napoleon is praised as “one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance,” who brought back “the decisive block perhaps, the block of granite” of the ancient character (German vielleicht; mark ?). The last sentence is hedged too: “who knows but that” this block will in the end get the upper hand of the national movement (German wer weiss, ob; mark ?). It ends with Napoleon’s aim: “one Europe, which was to be mistress of the world.” Mark it H and V. In 1882, §283 (station 20) greeted “a more manly and warlike age”; in 1887, this section names a man and a century. §362, the virilising of Europe
§363, “How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love,” is the station’s longest section. “I will never admit that we should speak of equal rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights.” What woman means by love is “complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation”; “her love is precisely a faith: woman has no other.” “A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a more perfect woman.” “Woman gives herself, man takes her.” No “social contract” will overcome “this natural contrast,” because love “is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something ‘unmoral.’” For a man, fidelity is not essential to love, which is “a desire to possess.” The section goes further only with a hedge: one “might almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in man” (German beinahe mit einigem Recht … reden dürfte; mark ?). State all of this plainly. Mark it P and V. §363, each sex’s prejudice about love
Three details qualify how the section speaks. Its title calls its subject each sex’s prejudice about love; the German word is Vorurtheil. It hedges in places: if both lovers renounced themselves, the result would be “perhaps a horror vacui?”; the German is vielleicht ein leerer Raum?, perhaps an empty space (mark ?). And it admits a wish “to avoid bringing the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes.” Whether the section describes love or reports two prejudices is the question the difficulty below takes up.
The anchorite
§§364–365 are spoken by a persona: “The Anchorite Speaks” (German Der Einsiedler redet, the hermit speaks). §364 describes “The art of associating with men” as the art of eating a meal whose kitchen one does not trust. It quotes Mephistopheles, and Common renders the line as “the worst society gives thee experience.” The German breaks the quotation off after its first half: die schlechteste Gesellschaft lässt dich fühlen –. Goethe’s full line, in Part One of Faust, goes on: that you are a human being among human beings. Common’s wording loses that. The third principle, “self-hypnotism,” is “a household recipe used in married life and in friendship,” whose proper name is patience. §364, the anchorite speaks
§365 goes further. “We also have intercourse with ‘men,’ we also modestly put on the clothes in which people know us,” and so “mingle in society, that is to say, among the disguised who do not wish to be so called.” Another way to go about among people is as a ghost, even “after we are dead”: “the artifice of posthumous men par excellence.” The section ends with the words of one such man, in parentheses and quotation marks: “only after our death shall we attain to our life and become living, ah! very living! we posthumous men!” Mark the layers: the hermit speaks, and quotes another. §365, the anchorite speaks once more
A difficulty
Does §363 describe love, or perform a prejudice?
§363’s title calls its subject each sex’s prejudice about love, yet its body speaks with certainty: “there are no such equal rights,” “Woman gives herself, man takes her.” Two sections earlier, §361 said that women “give themselves airs,” even when they “give themselves”: performance continues even in surrender.
Three readings are possible.
- A description. The title is ironic. The section states what it takes to be the nature of love in each sex, and its certainty is meant.
- A report of prejudice. The section describes what each sex believes about love, including the man’s belief in woman’s surrender. Its certainty belongs to those beliefs.
- A performance. Read with §361, the surrender §363 describes may itself be a role, played by women and wanted by men, and the section knows it.
Decide which the text best supports. Name one sentence from §363 and one from §361.
Check your understanding
Try answering before opening each suggested response.
What two kinds of cause does §360 distinguish?
The stored-up force that must discharge itself somehow, and the small occasion that directs it one way rather than another. Aims and occupations are usually the second kind.
Where, according to §361, does the actor’s instinct develop?
Among people who had to adapt in order to survive: families of the lower class and, the section says, the Jews, “the adaptable people par excellence.” It also calls women actresses. Each is a generalization offered without evidence.
What, according to §363, does each sex mean by love?
For woman, complete and unconditional surrender, a faith. For man, a desire to possess, which wants that surrender from her. The section denies that there are equal rights in love.
What does Common’s rendering of the Mephistopheles line in §364 lose?
Goethe’s line says that the worst company lets you feel you are a human being among human beings. The German breaks off after lässt dich fühlen, lets you feel; Common’s “gives thee experience” drops the point.
Writing prompt
Write 200–250 words answering:
Choose §361 or §363. Is its claim about women a description, a report of prejudice, or a performance?
- State the claim plainly, and quote no more than two short phrases.
- Say what evidence the section offers, if any.
- Keep your own evaluation distinct from the section’s claim.
A successful response neither softens nor inflates the claim, uses the section’s own title or framing as evidence, and says what would count against the reading chosen.
Continue
Continue to station 31: Hunger or Superfluity: Wagner and Romanticism →
Read next: Book V, §§366–370. Its question: what does the Wagner/Romanticism test explain or leave open?
Previous station: station 29, §§357–359. Return to the route list in the book guide.
A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised .