1
In order to make clear the complexity of Nietzsche’s understanding of race, one should consider the fact that in the course
of his explicit discussion of “the problem of race,” Nietzsche presents clerks as a race (264).
2
Nietzsche presents this mingling that is to result in the “synthesis” of the “European of the future” (256), according to two
biological metaphors, procreation (with respect to the French, Germans, and Jews (and Romans) (248)) and digestion or
nourishment (with respect to the assimilation of the Jews (251)). With respect to his proposal of the hypothesis that will to
power could serve as the sole explanatory principle for all things, Nietzsche indicates that “procreation and nourishment”
are “one problem” (36).
3
There are many other passages in Beyond Good and Evil that might prompt the reader to think about esotericism. For
instance, in section 289 Nietzsche, speaking for hermits, announces that the “hermit does not believe that any philosopher . .
. ever expressed his real and ultimate opinions in books: does one not write books precisely to conceal what one harbors?”
The reader should note that the immediate sections on either side of 289 are both about hiding or strategies of hiding.
4
A careful reader will immediately take note that in this example of possessive love, Nietzsche sketches three types of
human being, not just two. This merely reveals what was surely implied in Nietzsche’s depiction of the distinction between
esoteric and exoteric as that between above and below rather than inside and outside. Above and below are relative and
admit of limitless (not just three) degrees, while inside and outside are absolute.
5
In Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? Princeton University Press, 2002, p.185.
6
This was announced on a page after the title page in the first edition.
7
Losung could also be translated, perhaps more innocently, as “motto.”
8
See the beginning of section six where Nietzsche writes that “the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy
constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.” With this parenthesis, Nietzsche treats immoral
intentions as being of the same kind as moral intentions. The immediate sequel tells the reader who wants to understand a
philosopher to look at what morality he wants, without any separate mention of immorality.
9
Consider section 196.
10
Compare The Gay Science, 380 where Nietzsche characterizes “beyond good and evil” as “a position outside morality”
but then raises the question of “whether one really can get up there.” In part in deference to the difficulty of deciding
whether man can get entirely free of all morality (see Gay Science, 114 end), Nietzsche suggests in that same passage that
one might at least get to “a point beyond our good and evil, a freedom from everything ‘European.’”
11
Cf. 186.
12
Section 13 is flanked on both sides by discussions of physicists, the most important of whom is probably Boscovich, who
appears in section 12 and was an advocate of understanding the world to be made up wholly of forces without matter.
13
One might well wonder what the relationship between the new philosophers and the new ruling caste is supposed to be.
The discussion of the Brahmins in section 61 may suggest something of an answer to this question.
Convention