Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route

We Homeless Ones: Hierarchy, Health, and the Book’s Close

Optional full-text route · Station 33 of 35

Read: Book V, §§377–383, in full, added in 1887. Begin at §377 and stop at the end of §383, before the appendix of songs.
Allow: About 75–100 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The seven sections total about 3,200 words in the free edition; §377 (over 900 words) and §381 are the longest. If you need two sittings, stop after §377.

Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §377 · §379 · §381 · §382 · §383.

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

These seven sections end Book V and the prose of the 1887 edition. §377 is the book’s fullest statement of who “we” are, and it makes political claims that need a slow reading: it rejects equal rights and contemplates “a new slavery,” and in the same breath it rejects nationalism and “race-hatred.” Then the voice changes. A fool interrupts, a wanderer speaks, the author defends his brevity, and at the end the spirits of the book interrupt him. §§382–383 are the two sections of the introduction’s Reading 10; this page reads them briefly and leaves the full analysis to that lesson.

The main question: Can homelessness and great health coexist with §377’s hierarchy?

Keep using the marks: P, H, V, and ? for Nietzsche’s own hedge only.

What to notice

1. Two rejections at once. §377 rejects the slogans of equality and also rejects nationalism and racial self-admiration. Keep both in view; neither cancels the other.
2. Who is speaking. §379 is “The Fool’s Interruption,” §380 is spoken by “The Wanderer,” and §383 gives the last word to the spirits of the book. Track who claims authority, and who takes it away.
3. The sea. §377 ends with “emigrants” who must put out to sea; §382 has “Argonauts of the ideal.” Compare §343’s open sea (station 26) and §124 (station 14).

Close reading

One way to group the sections

These groups are this guide’s, not Nietzsche’s.

• The homeless ones: §377.
• Voices at the close: §§378–381.
• Great health and the epilogue: §§382–383.

The homeless ones

§377, “We Homeless Ones,” addresses those Europeans who may call themselves homeless “in a way which is at once a distinction and an honour.” “We children of the future, how could we be at home in the present?” “The ice which still carries us has become very thin: the thawing wind blows.” The first list is of refusals: “We ‘preserve’ nothing, nor would we return to any past age; we are not at all ‘liberal,’ we do not labour for ‘progress.’” The market’s song of the future is “‘equal rights,’ ‘free society,’ ‘no longer either lords or slaves,’” and it “does not allure us!” In that slogan the German has keine Herrn mehr und keine Knechte: no more masters and no more servants or bondsmen. A kingdom “of righteousness and peace” would be “the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism.” The German Chineserei uses the Chinese as a byword for stagnant uniformity; state it plainly as an ethnic stereotype. Mark it V. §377, the refusals

Then comes the sentence this station must read exactly: “we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the type ‘man’ also involves a new form of slavery.” The German says that we reflect on the necessity (Nothwendigkeit) of new orders, and also of a new slavery (auch einer neuen Sklaverei), and that a new kind of enslavement (Versklavung) belongs to every strengthening and elevation of the type. Separate three things.

• What the text says. Its general claim is unhedged: every elevation of the type “man” involves a new form of slavery. Its first-person claim is reflection on the necessity of new orders, including slavery. Mark it V.
• What the text does not say. It names no one who would be enslaved, no master, no institution, and no programme. It gives no argument for the general claim; the “for” states it as a reason.
• What the context excludes. The sentence answers the slogans “equal rights” and “no longer either lords or slaves.” A reading that makes the slavery only a metaphor for self-discipline has to argue against that context; the section itself does not offer it. The site’s master and slave morality theme sets Beyond Good and Evil §§257–259 (1886), on social hierarchy, beside such passages.

Notice what “free” means here. The only “free” in the section belongs to the slogan “free society,” which the homeless refuse. Their own freedom is homelessness: being ill at ease in “the most humane, gentle and just” age, which they read as “the masquerade—of profound weakening.” They mock the “religion of pity” and “the hysterical little men and women who need this religion” (German Männlein und Weiblein). “We are no humanitarians.” Mankind is “a more hideous old woman” than any, “unless perhaps it were ‘the Truth’: a question for philosophers” (German es müsste denn etwa; mark ?). Keep that last image for station 34’s “In the South” and station 35’s Preface §4. §377, mankind and truth

The second rejection follows at once. “We are not nearly ‘German’ enough … to advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight in the national heart-itch and blood-poisoning” that seals the nations of Europe off from each other “as if by quarantines.” “We homeless ones are too diverse and mixed in race and descent,” and so “little tempted” by the “falsified racial self-admiration and lewdness” now on display in Germany. The German words are Rassenhass, der Rasse und Abkunft nach, and Rassen-Selbstbewunderung; here Common’s “race” renders Rasse. The section attacks “a system of politics” that makes Germany “barren by making it vain”: Common writes “the German nation,” but the German is den deutschen Geist, the German spirit or mind. That system’s “own creation” is not named; this guide takes it to be the German Empire founded in 1871, and the “two mortal hatreds” are not identified in the text. Mark it H and V. §377, against nationalism

The homeless call themselves “good Europeans, the heirs of Europe.” They have outgrown Christianity “just because” their forefathers were Christians “uncompromising in their Christian integrity,” who sacrificed “blood and country” for their belief. “We—do the same.” For what? “it is—once more a faith which urges you thereto!” Compare §344 (station 26), where the will to truth also rested on a faith.

Hold both rejections together. The same “we” refuses equal rights and contemplates slavery, and refuses nationalism and racial self-admiration while praising mixed descent. Do not let the second half excuse the first, or the first half erase the second. The site’s book guide says the same: both belong to Nietzsche’s position here.

Voices at the close

§378, “And once more Grow Clear,” is a brief image: “we” stand in the street “like open fountains,” and birds, boys, and travellers throw their rubbish in; “we take whatever is cast into us down into our depths—for we are deep, we do not forget—and once more grow clear.” Mark it P.

§379 is titled “The Fool’s Interruption” (German Zwischenrede des Narren): a fool speaks. “It is not a misanthrope who has written this book.” To hate completely, “in the fashion of Timon,” one would have to give up contempt, and “refined contempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue perhaps” (German vielleicht; mark ?). “Hatred, on the contrary, makes equal.” We cannot persuade our nose “to abandon its prejudice against the proximity of man.” Mark it P and V, and ask what the title does to the claim. §379, contempt and hatred

§380 is titled “‘The Wanderer’ Speaks.” To judge European morality one must leave it, as a traveller leaves a city to see how high its towers are: “some sort of world beyond good and evil.” That one wants to get there “is perhaps a sort of madness” (German vielleicht eine kleine Tollheit, perhaps a little madness; mark ?). One must be “very light,” and must “‘surmount’ this age in himself,” including “his unseasonableness, his Romanticism.” Compare §370’s retraction (station 31). The quoted phrase “Thoughts concerning moral prejudices” echoes the subtitle of Daybreak (1881), and “beyond good and evil” is the title of the 1886 book; these identifications are this guide’s. §380, the wanderer

§381, “The Question of Intelligibility,” says: “One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also—quite as certainly—not to be understood.” A book found unintelligible may have meant it: “perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author” (German vielleicht; mark ?). The refined laws of style “create distance.” The author treats deep problems “as with a cold bath—quickly in, quickly out,” and asks whether a thing touched in passing must be misunderstood. He mocks “the asses and old maids of both sexes” and closes with a mock quotation, “‘that have I seen’—spake Zarathustra.” “Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are badly placed at present with regard to knowledge” (German Vielleicht; mark ?). The last word is dance: “the dance is his ideal, and also his art, in the end likewise his sole piety, his ‘divine service.’” Compare §371’s “unintelligible ones” (station 32). §381, a cold bath

Great health and the epilogue

Read §§382–383 without stopping; Reading 10 gives them a full close reading. Two notes for this route. First, §382’s “great healthiness” is health “one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires,” because “one continually sacrifices it again.” Common’s “firstlings” renders Frühgeburten, literally premature births. Its ideal is “humanly superhuman” (menschlich-übermenschlich), and it is hedged throughout: “more courageous perhaps than prudent,” “it would seem,” and “perhaps the great seriousness only commences” (German vielleicht, will es uns scheinen; mark ?). It ends: “and tragedy begins.” Compare §342 (station 25), titled “Incipit Tragœdia”: the 1882 book ended with the same words in Latin. Notice also the ideal “to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one’s right thereto.” Keep that sentence for the difficulty below. §382, great healthiness

Second, in §383, “Epilogue,” the spirits of the book “pull me by the ears, and call me to order”: “away, away with this raven-black music.” They call the author “Mr Anchorite and Musician of the Future” (compare §§364–365, station 30) and demand: “No! Not such tones! But let us strike up something more agreeable and more joyful!” The German, Nicht solche Töne! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvollere!, echoes the words Beethoven set before the choral finale of his Ninth Symphony; that identification is this guide’s. Common’s “tantrums” renders Grillen, which means both crickets and whims. The author agrees: “My bagpipe is waiting.” If you misunderstand the singer, that “has always been ‘The Singer’s Curse’”; the note that this is the title of a poem by Uhland is Common’s. Then the prose ends, and the songs begin. §383, the epilogue

A difficulty

Can homelessness and great health coexist with §377’s hierarchy?

§377 contemplates “a new slavery” as the price of any elevation of the type. §382 offers great health as an ideal whose “right” it does not readily grant to anyone. But §380 asks the wanderer to surmount even his own opposition to his age, and §383 lets the book’s spirits call its author to order.

Three readings are possible.

• They belong together. Great health is for few, and §377 says plainly what an order built for the few would require. Homelessness is the condition of those who expect such an order.
• They pull apart. The homeless are at home in no order, and the great health of §382 is always given up again. A fixed order of masters and slaves would be one more home, and these sections refuse homes.
• The book leaves the question open. §377 states a necessity without a programme, and the prose ends with an interruption and an invitation to dance. The reader has to decide whether the claim survives the change of voice.

Decide which the text best supports. Name one sentence from §377 and one from §382 or §383.

Check your understanding

Try answering before opening each suggested response.

Writing prompt

Write 200–250 words answering:

State §377’s claim about a new slavery exactly. Then say whether §§380–383 soften it, sharpen it, or leave it untouched.

• Quote no more than two short phrases.
• Keep what the text says, what this guide infers, and your own evaluation distinct.
• Do not use §377’s rejection of nationalism to excuse its claim about slavery, or the reverse.

A successful response quotes the claim accurately, says what it leaves unspecified, and ties its judgment to a named sentence in §§380–383.

Continue

Optional checkpoint: Reading 10. You have now read both of Reading 10’s sections (§§382–383). Its full close reading of them is a useful review; it takes about 65–80 minutes, an editorial estimate. Reading 10 is the last lesson of the ten-session introduction, and its own Next link returns to the book guide. On this route, come back here afterward: the songs and the preface remain.

Continue to station 34: Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird →

Read next: the appendix of fourteen songs, added in 1887. Its question: what does poetry do to the book’s closing voice?

Previous station: station 32, §§371–376. Return to the route list in the book guide.

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

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