Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route
Artists, Realists, and Women Seen from a Distance
Optional full-text route · Station 8 of 35
Read: Book II, §§57–75, in full, from the original 1882 edition. Begin at the start of Book II with §57 and stop before §76.
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 nineteen sections total about 2,800 words in the free edition; many are only a few lines long.
Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §57 · §68 · §71.
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 a word drives the interpretation, this page notes the German, from the Projekt Gutenberg-DE text. The German alternates between Frauen and Weib/Weiber; Common mostly renders both as “women,” though in §72 he writes “females” for Weiber and Weibchen.
Before you read
Book II opens with the artist’s way of seeing and then turns, within a few pages, to a long run of sections about women. The movement is not an accident of arrangement. §57 tells the “realists” that their reality is still coloured by old passions. §58 says names and valuations grow into things. §59 says lovers and believers hide nature from themselves. Then comes a series of sections about women, and they make different kinds of claim. Some expose how men project images onto women. Some state what women are in general, sketch types of women, or report other people’s sayings. One criticizes how women of the higher class are educated.
The main question: Where does artistic seeing become a claim about women—and does the book’s own account of projection apply to its generalizations?
Use the marks from station 2: P, H, V, and ? for Nietzsche’s own hedges. Note who speaks: a lover’s “we,” a “wise man,” a dancing-master, a saint.
What to notice
- “We artists.” §59 speaks in the first person plural. Whom does it include?
- Who makes the image? §§60 and 68 place the image of woman in men’s longing and making. Watch whether the later sections keep that insight.
- Speakers. §68 is a dialogue, §73 a scene with a saint, §75 two quoted sayings. Do not assign every voice to Nietzsche at once.
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.
- Reality, names, and the artist’s eye: §§57, 58, 59.
- Distance, friendship, and love: §§60, 61, 62, 70.
- Claims about women—general statements, type sketches, and sayings: §§63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72, 74, 75.
- Social criticism of women’s education: §71.
- Will and willingness: §68.
- Revenge and cruelty: §§69, 73.
The hub’s passage notes already discuss §§57, 58, 60, and 68 (Art, appearance, and the distance of desire), and the theme page on women and gender surveys §§59–75. This lesson reads the sections in sequence and does not repeat those notes.
Realists and creators
§57 addresses the “realists,” who believe reality stands unveiled before them—“oh, ye dear images of Sais!” (a veiled statue of legend; Common’s footnote points to Schiller’s poem on it). Their sobriety still carries “a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness”: valuations inherited from old passions. “There is no ‘reality’ for us—nor for you either.” The section ends by granting the realists something: “perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of drunkenness.” §57, the realists
§58 draws a practical conclusion. “Unspeakably more depends upon what things are called, than on what they are.” Names and reputations, often errors in origin, grow “on-and-into things” until they operate as their essence. Exposing the origin does not destroy them: “It is only as creators that we can annihilate!” Station 19 returns to this in §261 on originality and naming. §58, only as creators
We artists
§59 begins: “When we love a woman we have readily a hatred against nature,” recalling “all the disagreeable natural functions to which every woman is subject.” The lover shuts his ears “against all physiology.” Then comes the parallel. The old worshipper of God felt the same about astronomers and physicians: natural law “sounded to him as blasphemy against God.” Both the lover and the believer dream with open eyes. The section ends by claiming the dream for “us”: “We artists! We concealers of naturalness!” §59, we artists
Mark it P. The “we” who love “a woman” is male, and the woman is the object whose nature is hidden. The section’s target is the lover’s idealization, and it includes the speaker among the idealizers. Keep that self-inclusion in view; it is the book’s own lesson that the observer is part of what he sees (compare §54 at station 7).
Distance and projection
§60 is the scene of the ship passing silently beyond the breakers. The noisy man, “in the midst of the breakers of his plots and plans,” sees calm beings glide past and longs for their happiness—“they are women.” Then the correction: even on the most beautiful ship there is “so much petty, pitiable bustling!” The effect of women is “an effect at a distance.” The hub’s note on §60 reads it as male projection that still generalizes about women; this station adds only that it comes directly after §59’s lover who hides nature from himself. §60, women at a distance
§70, “The Mistresses of the Masters,” works the same way from the theatre. A powerful contralto makes us believe, for a moment, in women “capable and prepared for domination over men,” because in them “the best in man, superior to sex, has become a corporeal ideal.” But the voice still carries “a tinge of the motherly and housewifely character.” The possibility is raised by an illusion and withdrawn by the speaker’s “experience.” §70, the contralto
Will and willingness
§68 is a dialogue, and its speakers matter. Told that a youth is being corrupted by women, a wise man reverses the charge: “It is men … who corrupt women,” for “man creates for himself the ideal of woman, and woman moulds herself according to this ideal.” A bystander calls him too tender-hearted. The wise man answers with a “law of the sexes”: “Man’s attribute is will, woman’s attribute is willingness.” The German is Wille and Willigkeit, so the play on the same root is Nietzsche’s. When someone says women must be educated better, the wise man replies, “We must educate men better.” The section ends: “The youth, however, did not follow him.” §68, will and willingness
Hold both halves together, as the hub’s note does. The wise man blames men for women’s faults and calls for educating men. He also states a fixed, unequal “law,” which he himself calls “a hard law for woman.” The last line adds a third voice: the youth, the one being corrupted, does not follow. Whether that makes the wise man ineffective, or right and unheeded, the text leaves open.
General statements, types, and sayings
Eight short sections then make claims about women, but not all of the same kind. §§64, 66, and 72 say what women are, or become, in general. §§65, 67, and 74 sketch particular types or scenes: “noble women with a certain poverty of spirit,” one woman in love, and “Those poor women” who talk too much. A type sketch can still generalize: §74 says such women “always fail of success.” §63 asks a question, and §75 reports two sayings. Read them all plainly. Do not soften them, and do not treat them as the whole book.
- §64: “I fear women who have become old are more sceptical in the secret recesses of their hearts than any of the men are.”
- §66: “Women are all skilful in exaggerating their weaknesses”—as a defence against the strong and all “rights of might.”
- §67: a woman who now loves a man looks out “with as quiet confidence as a cow” (the German also has Kuh), though her unpredictability was what he loved.
- §72: maternal love is the female’s satisfaction of her “lust of dominion”; pregnancy makes women “more submissively inclined”; contemplatives, pregnant with ideas, are “the masculine mothers.”
- §75: a dancing-master says small women seem “of another sex,” and “A small woman is never beautiful—said old Aristotle.” The attribution to Aristotle is Nietzsche’s.
Mark most of these P and V. §64 carries a hedge (“I fear”); mark it ? as well. It is closer to a confession of opinion than to an argument. None of these sections offers evidence.
§71, “On Female Chastity,” is different in kind. It criticizes the education of women “of the higher class,” kept “with as much ignorance as possible in eroticis,” then thrown by marriage into knowledge “as with an awful thunderbolt.” The section describes the confusion this produces with evident sympathy, and ends: “In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women!” It is social criticism of a real practice. It also generalizes about what “wives” feel and want. Both belong to the section. §71, female chastity
Revenge and cruelty
Two sections break the run with violence. §69 says we despise anyone, man or woman, who lacks the capacity for revenge, and asks whether a woman could “fetter” us whom we did not credit with knowing how to use a dagger—against us, “Or against herself,” which Nietzsche calls “the Chinese revenge.” He gives no explanation of the phrase; mark it H as an unexplained claim about a custom.
§73, “Saintly Cruelty,” is a scene. A man brings a newborn child to a saint: it is “wretched, deformed, and has not even enough of life to die.” The saint says, “Kill it,” and then hold it three days and nights, so as never again to beget a child when it is not the time. Many blame the saint for advising cruelty. The section ends with his question: “But is it not more cruel to let it live?” §73, saintly cruelty
State what the section does. It puts the killing of a disabled newborn into the mouth of a saint, reports the objection, and gives the saint the last word as a question. It does not answer the question, and it does not mark the saint as wrong. Mark it V, and name the voice: this is a saint’s advice, framed by a title that calls it cruelty. Do not decide from this scene alone what the book endorses; do not treat the frame as a disclaimer either.
A difficulty
Does the book’s account of projection apply to its own generalizations?
§59 says the lover hides nature from himself. §60 says the image of women’s calm is a projection seen from a distance. §68’s wise man says man creates the ideal of woman and woman moulds herself to it. These are among the sharpest observations in the book about how images of women are made.
The same pages then state what women are: sceptical when old, inventive in weakness, domineering as mothers, submissive after pregnancy. They also sketch types and scenes, such as the woman in love who looks out “with as quiet confidence as a cow.” If the earlier sections are right, these claims look like more images made from a distance by the same kind of observer. Three readings are possible.
- Nietzsche is exposing the projections and then displaying them, so the reader can catch them.
- Nietzsche applies his insight to other men but not to himself.
- The book holds both, and leaves the tension for the reader.
Decide which the text best supports, naming a section. Do not settle it by quoting only §68’s “We must educate men better.”
Check your understanding
Try answering before opening each suggested response.
What does §58 say it takes to destroy a name that has grown into a thing?
Creation. Exposing the name’s arbitrary origin is not enough: “It is only as creators that we can annihilate!” New names and valuations can, in the long run, create new “things.”
In §59, whom does the parallel compare?
The lover who refuses to think of a woman’s natural functions and the old believer who treated natural science as blasphemy. Both dream with open eyes. The section ends by including the speaker: “We artists! We concealers of naturalness!”
What does the wise man of §68 say, and what does the German show?
That men corrupt women by creating the ideal they mould themselves to, and that “we must educate men better.” He also states a “law of the sexes”: man’s attribute is will, woman’s willingness—Wille and Willigkeit, a play on one root. He calls it a hard law for woman. The youth does not follow him.
How does §73 end?
With the saint’s question, “But is it not more cruel to let it live?” after he has advised killing a disabled newborn and others have blamed him. The section leaves the question unanswered.
Writing prompt
Write 200–250 words answering:
Choose one general statement about women (§§64, 66, 72) or one type sketch (§§65, 67, 74). Test it against §60 or §68. Is it a projection of the kind those sections describe?
- Quote no more than one phrase from each section, and mark each one’s type.
- Say who speaks in each.
- End with one sentence on what evidence would support or weaken the claim.
A successful response states the claim plainly, says which kind of claim it is, uses the book’s own account of projection rather than a modern verdict alone, and keeps social criticism (as in §71) distinct from generalization.
Continue
Continue to station 9: Virtuous Stupidity, Fine Talk, and the Magic of Rhythm →
Read next: Book II, §§76–84. The book turns to madness, Greek art, translation, and the origin of poetry.
Previous station: station 7, §§41–56. Return to the route list in the book guide.
A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised .