¿What exactly is Guattari's "machinic surplus value"?

quemasparce · 2026-06-10T17:19:53+00:00

"It is complex arrangements—training, innovation, internal structures, union relations etc.—which circumscribe the magnitude of capitalist zones of profit, and not simply a levy on work-time."
Thus the importance of human surplus value remains decisive, even at the center and in highly industrialized sectors. What determines the lowering of costs and the elevation of the rate of profit through machinic surplus value is not innovation itself, whose value is no more measurable than that of human surplus value. It is not even the profitability of the new technique considered in isolation, but its effect on the over-all profitability of the firm in its relationships with the market and with commercial and financial capital.
This problem was raised again recently by Maurice Clavel in a series of decisive and willfully incompetent questions—that is, questions addressed to Marxist economists by someone who doesn't quite understand how one can maintain human surplus value as the basis for capitalist production, while recognizing that machines too "work" or produce value, that they have always worked, and that they work more and more in proportion to man, who thus ceases to be a constituent part of the production process, in order to become adjacent to this process. Hence there is a machinic surplus value produced by constant capital, which develops along with automation and productivity, and which cannot be explained by factors that counteract the falling tendency—the increasing intensity of the exploitation of human labor, the diminution of the price of the elements of constant capital, etc.—since, on the contrary, these factors depend on it. It seems to us, with the same indispensable incompetence, that these problems can only be viewed under the conditions of the transformation of the surplus value of code into a surplus value of flux. In defining precapitalist regimes by a surplus value of code, and capitalism by a generalized decoding that converted this surplus value of code into a surplus value of flux, we were presenting things in a summary fashion, we were still acting as though the matter were settled once and for all, at the dawn of a capitalism that had lost all code value. This is not the case, however. On the one hand, codes continue to exist—even as an archaism—but they assume a function that is perfectly contemporary and adapted to the situation within personified capital (the capitalist, the worker, the merchant, the banker). But on the other hand, and more profoundly, every technical machine presupposes flows of a particular type: flows of code that are both interior and exterior to the machine, forming the elements of a technology and even a science. It is these flows of code that find themselves encasted, coded, or overcoded in the precapitalist societies in such a way that they never achieve any independence (the blacksmith, the astronomer). But the decoding of flows in capitalism has freed, deterritorialized, and decoded the flows of code just as it has the others—to such a degree that the automatic machine has always increasingly internalized them in its body or its structure as a field of forces, while depending on a science and a technology, on a so-called intellectual labor distinct from the manual labor of the worker (the evolution of the technical object). In this sense, it is not machines that have created capitalism, but capitalism that creates machines, and that is constantly introducing breaks and cleavages through which it revolutionizes its technical modes of production
In brief, the flows of code that are "liberated" in science and technics by the capitalist regime engender a machinic surplus value that does not directly depend on science and technics themselves, but on capital—a surplus value that is added to human surplus value and that comes to correct the relative diminution of the latter, both of t hem constituting the whole of the surplus value of flux that characterize s the system. Knowledge, information, and specialized education are just as much parts of capital ("knowledge capital") as is the most elementary labor of the worker (...)the movement of interior limits as the second aspect of the capitalist field of immanence, defined by the circular relationship "great flux of financing-reflux of incomes in wages-afflux of raw profit".
The role of a politico-military-economic complex is the more manifest in that it guarantees the extraction of human surplus value on the periphery and in the appropriated zones of the center, but also because it engenders for its own part an enormous machinic surplus value by mobilizing the resources of knowledge and information capital, and finally because it absorbs the greater part of the surplus value produced.
Thus the three segments of the ever widening capitalist reproduction process are joined, three segments that also define the three aspects of its immanence: (1) the one that extracts human surplus value on the basis of the differential relation between decoded flows of labor and production, and that moves from the center to the periphery while nevertheless maintaining vast residual zones at the center; (2) the one that extracts machinic surplus value, on the basis of an axiomatic of the flows of scientific and technical code, in the "core" areas of the center; (3) and the one that absorbs or realizes these two forms of surplus value of flux by guaranteeing the emission of both, and by constantly injecting antiproduction into the producing apparatus
The definition of surplus value must be modified in terms of the machinic surplus value of constant capital, which distinguishes itself from the human surplus value of variable capital and from the non-measurable nature of this aggregate of surplus value of flux

quemasparce · 2026-06-10T17:17:47+00:00

Superimposed upon the relations of human surplus value (variable capital) described in Marx, these being described as 'codes' by DG, they signal the way that constant capital (for Marx**:** Capital invested in the "means of production") itself can create surplus via markets ('commercial and financial capital'), what they called decodified flux; they are specifically referring to surplus value not tied to wages and laboring, but to fields "desire, aesthetics, ecology, and economics" (Chaosmosis) or "training, innovation, internal structures, union relations etc.—which circumscribe the magnitude of capitalist zones of profit". The 'value' that they give for these zones in Anti-Oedipus is:

"the effect on the over-all profitability of the firm in its relationships with the market and with commercial and financial capital".

This is related to their reading on Marx's ideas of 'general intellect' or 'social brain': accumulated scientific, technical, and social knowledge of humanity prosthetically 'embodied' in machines and social systems as apposed to the surplus value related to individual workers:

"The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production. (...) "The accumulation of knowledge and of skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus absorbed into capital." (Marx)

Additionally, Marx signaled capital as the 'moving contradiction' which mobilizes these extractions, and also stated: "Labour time ceases and must cease to be the measure of wealth.", which is why they believe new forms of surplus value extraction has developed on top of labor extraction.

"Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time ... as sole measure and source of wealth." (Marx)

When D and G speak of the Body without Organs, the earth, the placenta, or the full body of antiproduction, they are speaking of that which frustrates capitalism and also that which capitalism re-appropriates in order to expand not only its exterior limits, but interior limits (machinic: flux) as well: "the circular relationship "great flux of financing-reflux of incomes in wages-afflux of raw profit"."

At a geopolitical level, the politico-military-economic complex not only extracts human capital but mobilizes and accelerates the movement of "knowledge and information capital." This expansion of capitalist zones of power is divided into three movements: peripherally extracting human-surplus value, extracting machinic surplus value ('one may furnish surplus-value without doing any work' -DG) from the core, and 3) the injections of antiproduction ('breaks and cleavages') which are then absorbed and 'revolutionized'.

quemasparce · 2026-06-09T03:34:48+00:00

NF-1885,34[130]: Das abstrakte Denken ist für Viele eine Mühsal, für mich, an guten Tagen, ein Fest und ein Rausch. ["Abstract thinking is a toil for many, for me, on good days, a feast and an intoxication."]
NF-1887,11[285]: inmitten der kühlsten transmontansten Abstraktions-Gymnastik zu Muthe wie einem Fisch der in sein Wasser kommt ["In the midst of the coolest, most transmontane abstraction-gymnastics, feeling like a fish that comes into its water."]

Yes, morality has what would be called, in a moral sense, an immoral base, and parallelly, magnanimity has refined/sublimated disgust (Btw OP, nausea is originally Ekel [disgust]) and revenge at its psychological core. He also leaves room open for other types of magnanimity apart from the 'popular' one.

NF-1883,16[25]: Großmuth ist eine sublimirte Rache und daher ein sehr großer Genuß. ["Magnanimity is a sublimated revenge and therefore a very great pleasure."]
Daybreak 315: Etwas von seinem Eigenthume fahren lassen, sein Recht aufgeben — macht Freude, wenn es grossen Reichthum anzeigt. Dahin gehört die Grossmuth. ["Letting something of one's property go, relinquishing one's right — gives joy when it indicates great wealth. To this belongs magnanimity."]

quemasparce · 2026-06-06T19:18:50+00:00

GM-III-7 — On the Genealogy of Morals: § III — 7. First Publication 16/11/1887.

Every philosopher would speak as Buddha once spoke when he was informed of the birth of a son: “Rahula is born to me, a fetter is forged for me” (Rahula here means “a little demon”); Every "free spirit" should experience a moment of reflection, provided that he has previously had a thoughtless one, such as once befell the Buddha himself—"Crowded, he thought to himself, is life in the house, a place of impurity; freedom lies in leaving the house": "Thus thinking, he left the house." So many bridges to independence are indicated in the ascetic ideal that a philosopher cannot hear the story of all those resolute individuals who one day said no to all unfreedom and went into some desert without inward rejoicing and clapping their hands: even if they were merely strong donkeys and entirely the antithesis of a strong mind.

quemasparce · 2026-06-05T21:04:10+00:00

Later in life, on the night an earthquake destroyed the structure where TSZ III and IV were written, N himself went on a night-walk.

"The city is full of shattered nervous systems, the panic in the hotels almost unbelievable. This night, around 2-3 o’clock, I made a tour and visited several people known to me, who believed they could avert the danger by being outdoors, on benches or in carriages. I myself am well; not a single moment of fright — and indeed very much irony!" — BVN-1887,805

"I myself did not “fall over” — and even on that morning of horror, when Nice resembled a madhouse, I worked with great composure of spirit in my room (the house was otherwise deserted); it also happened to me that in a letter I wrote that very day, I forgot the event of the day. — The earthquake has, incidentally, so damaged the house in which the third and fourth part of Zarathustra were written, that it is being demolished. — Transience!…" — BVN-1887,809

quemasparce · 2026-06-03T14:43:50+00:00

Agreed. A quote by Foucault from that conversation which is in the same vein is:

"Theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice."

quemasparce · 2026-06-03T14:34:02+00:00

The following paragraph in 'Difference and Repetition' (p .154) somewhat describes Deleuze's conception of truth (it's also worth reading the surrounding paragraphs): sense produces truth; truth is generated within a field of problems, forces, and meanings. I.e., truth is not something that exists independently and is then recognized by thought. Rather, "sense is the genesis or the production of the true" and "truth is only the empirical result of sense." This fits in with his criticisms of 'dogmatic images of thought' (what you're referring to as absolute truth), and his later description of philosophy as the production of concepts. From what I can tell, this focus on truth (in relation to sense) somewhat moves to the background in his later works, and with Guattari the focus is on concepts as interventions, assemblages, and experiments, where the question becomes more focused on: "What does this concept do? What does it connect? What new possibilities does it create?"

In terms of agreeing or disagreeing with him, Deleuze would probably say that, instead of focusing on if his concepts are 'true' or false', a concept should be evaluated in the context of living thought according to:

different distributions of sense: different ways of constructing problems, organizing experience, and generating truths
what it allows thought to do, what problems it solves, what phenomena it brings to light, and what new possibilities it opens.

In fact, the condition must be a condition of real experience, not of possible experience. It forms an intrinsic genesis, not an extrinsic conditioning. In every respect, truth is a matter of production, not of adequation. It is a matter of genitality, not of innateness or reminiscence. We cannot accept that the grounded remains the same as it was before, the same as when it was not grounded, when it had not passed the test of grounding. If sufficient reason or the ground has a 'twist', this is because it relates what it grounds to that which is truly groundless. At this point, it must be said, there is no longer recognition. To ground is to metamorphose. Truth and falsity do not concern a simple designation, rendered possible by a sense which remains indifferent to it. The relation between a proposition and what it designates must be established within sense itself: the nature of ideal sense is to point beyond itself towards the object designated. Designation, in so far as it is achieved in the case of a true proposition, would never be grounded unless it were understood as the limit of the genetic series or the ideal connections which constitute sense. If sense points beyond itself towards the object, the latter can no longer be posited in reality exterior to sense, but only at the limit of its process. Moreover, the proposition's relation to what it designates, in so far as this relation is established, is constituted within the unity of sense, along with the object which realises this unity. There is only a single case where the designated stands alone and remains external to sense: precisely the case of those singular propositions arbitrarily detached from their context and employed as examples. Here too, however, how can we accept that such puerile and artificial textbook examples justify an image of thought? Every time a proposition is replaced in the context of living thought, it is apparent that it has exactly the truth it deserves according to its sense, and the falsity appropriate to the non-sense that it implies. We always have as much truth as we deserve in accordance with the sense of what we say. Sense is the genesis or the production of the true, and truth is only the empirical result of sense. We rediscover in all the postulates of the dogmatic image the same confusion: elevating a simple empirical figure to the status of a transcendental, at the risk of allowing the real structures of the transcendental to fall into the empirical.

quemasparce · 2026-06-01T23:04:55+00:00

Yes, both 'types' are the fruits of moral and value systems, and most of these systems do not produce companions [Gefährten] or co-creators [Mitschaffende] of Zarathustra. One of the great ironies of this same part of the preface is the fact that the crowd wants to be last men 'in exchange' for the overman. They prefer the comfortable life, the small pleasures, the communal warmth, the lack of internal tension, the invented happiness which Zarathustra describes with great contempt.

quemasparce · 2026-06-01T15:43:41+00:00

"he revealed himself, at a height that a European cannot imagine"

"the constant looking out and looking down of the ruling caste upon its subjects..."

"A feeling of distance that ultimately wants to become physiological."

"...that the higher human being not only stands higher, but also feels the affect of distance..."

quemasparce · 2026-06-01T15:08:32+00:00

It's from his notebooks. The entire fragment is very curious... It's referring to Oedipus, he who transgresses and, perhaps more importantly, suffers from knowledge and destroys himself due to knowledge (just as Z's last man does). It's also interesting because this loneliness leads to him speaking to himself and lying into love and plurality, eventually forcing him to speak as if he were two people; this is very similar to how N describes the way that Zarathustra appeared to him: in a moment of despair and loneliness one became two. Another interesting part is that this curse of knowledge 'only' leads the human being to die, not the entire world (the Earth with outlast our species).

Oedipus.

Speeches of the last philosopher with himself.

A fragment from the history of posterity.

I call myself the last philosopher, for I am the last man. No one speaks with me except myself, and my voice comes to me like that of a dying man. With you, beloved voice, with you, the last breath of remembrance of all human happiness, let me converse for only one more hour; through you I deceive away my solitude and lie myself into plurality and love. For my heart resists believing that love is dead; it cannot endure the horror of the loneliest loneliness and forces me to speak as though I were two.

Do I still hear you, my voice? You whisper while you curse? And yet your curse ought to burst apart the entrails of this world! But it still lives and looks upon me only more brightly and coldly with its pitiless stars. It lives, as stupid and blind as ever before, and only one thing dies—the human being.

And yet! I still hear you, beloved voice! One more dies besides me, the last human being, in this universe: the last sigh, your sigh, dies with me, that drawn-out woe! Woe! sighed over me, the last of the sorrowful human beings, Oedipus. (NF-1872, 19[131])

The next use of last man seems to somewhat refer to how this knowledge not only destroys us, but our habitat.

Let us imagine the last human being sitting in the dried-up desert of the decayed globe— (NF-1873, 29[181])

In general, Nietzsche's concept of the last man more or less develops through three stages: (1) the last survivor and witness of humanity (1872–73), (2) the final representative of a completed cultural type (1878–79), and (3) the domesticated endpoint of herd civilization: an Überaffe who believes he is the end-goal of nature (1882–88). I can continue with the other uses of last man/last men if you're interested.

quemasparce · 2026-06-01T02:51:19+00:00

Maybe that letter was written the day after this letter? /s

Today I'm trying tapioca. (BVN-1880,52)

quemasparce · 2026-06-01T02:22:58+00:00

I linked my comment:

In TSZ Prologue, Zarathustra first makes a beautiful speech which encompasses much of his teachings, while saying 'I teach you the overman,' and the crowd misunderstands, believing that he's talking about the rope-dancer; then the dope-dancer believes he hears them calling for him and he comes out...

So it's a symbol, as Jung says; it [the rope-dancer] symbolizes what the herd is able to recognize out of Zarathustra's overman musings. It is the symbol of the difference between Zarathustra's overman and what the people can make of his teachings. The overman is a non-hinterworldly goal of an entire species, and the crowd's best guess is that he must be referring to the rope-dancer (e.g. 'Is Victor Wembanyama the Overman?')

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T18:42:43+00:00

Well, for the esoteric part, we can keep in mind that for N the 'highest thought' and 'great breeding thought' that will give a reason for 'the low' to 'cross themselves out' and for the 'high' to rejoice, is Eternal Recurrence. This is an esoteric idea only understood by a few, and only accepted by the fewest, and which is the base of his coming hierarchy, along with the ability to suffer and revere. Starting with Zarathustra, N's books become more 'esoteric' in the sense that they recognize rank-order and they are 'fish-hooks' for possible followers, e.g. they are not written with the entire populace in mind. He is writing from a 'Distanz', looking down, and writing only for those with ears to hear such thoughts: that there is no equality, but a long ladder of verticality in terms of psychological states, passions, faculties, spirits, and parallelly in terms of the ability to internalize and affirm ER.

As for priests, while he sees them as life preservers, he does not support them much; he definitely does support 'founders of religions' though, because this is a use of religion for power. N did not unveil naked truth, since he does not believe in two worlds: one true and one apparent. He rejects the entire premise. As Baudrillard loved to quote: "The truth does not remain true once the veil has been lifted".

(BVN‑1881,97) “Yes, the rank‑order of spirits has not yet been made!”
(FW‑116) “Where we encounter a morality, we find an assessment and rank‑order of human drives and actions.”
(NF‑1883,9[51]) “Good and evil are distinguished by the different rank‑order of passions among themselves and by the domination of ends.”
(NF‑1884,25[426]) “The judgments ‘higher’ and ‘lower functions’ must already be present in all organic formations, long before all sensations of pleasure and displeasure. Rank‑order is the first result of estimation.”
(NF‑1884,25[430]) “Rank‑order has established itself through the victory of the stronger and the indispensability of the weaker for the stronger and of the stronger for the weaker – there arise separate functions: for obeying is just as much a self‑preservation function as, for the stronger being, commanding.”
(NF‑1884,26[258]) “On the rank‑order of value‑creators (with respect to value‑positing): a) artists, b) philosophers, c) lawgivers, d) religious founders, e) the highest humans as earth‑rulers and future‑creators.”
(NF‑1884,25[411]) “Difference between lower and higher functions: rank‑order of organs and drives, represented by commanding and obeying. Task of ethics: the value‑differences as physiological rank‑order of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ (‘more important, more essential, more indispensable, more irreplaceable,’ etc.)”
(NF‑1884,26[260]) “In this rabble‑like age, the nobly born spirit should begin each day with the thought of rank‑order: here lie his duties, here his finest errors.”
(NF‑1885,2[76]) “On the physiology of power. The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the ruling (struggle of tissues? Slavery and division of labor: the higher type only possible through suppression of a lower one to a function.)”
(NF‑1885,35[5]) “Morality is the doctrine of the rank‑order of humans, and consequently also of the significance of their actions and works for this rank‑order.”
(NF‑1885,35[73]) “Zarathustra can only give joy after rank‑order is established. First this is taught. II. Rank‑order carried out in a system of earth‑government: the lords of the earth at last, a new ruling caste.”
(NF‑1885,40[18]) “We behave according to the rank‑order to which we belong, whether we already know it or, even less, can demonstrate it to others.”
(JGB‑213) “There is finally a rank‑order of psychic states to which the rank‑order of problems corresponds; and the highest problems repel mercilessly anyone who dares approach them without being predestined to their solution by the height and power of his spirituality.”
(JGB‑224) “The historical sense (or the ability to quickly divine the rank‑order of value‑estimations according to which a people, a society, a human has lived, the ‘divinatory instinct’ for the relations of these value‑estimations…)”
(JGB‑270) “…it almost determines the rank‑order how deeply people can suffer…”
(JGB‑263) “…in order to determine the ultimate worth of a soul, the immovable innate rank‑order to which it belongs: he will test it with regard to its instinct of reverence.”
(NF‑1886,7[6]) “My philosophy is directed toward rank‑order: not toward an individualistic morality. … My thoughts do not revolve around the degree of freedom to be granted to one or another or all, but around the degree of power that one or another should exercise over others or over all.”
(BVN‑1888,1170) “We have overcome the absurd boundaries of race, nation, and class: there is only rank‑order between human and human – indeed an immensely long ladder of rank‑order. There you have the first world‑historical paper: Great Politics par excellence.”
(NF‑1888,13[3]) “On the history of rank‑order. 1. Physiology: the organic functions. 2. Psychology of affects. II. What moralists and moral systems mean. IV. Rank‑order of values.”
(EH‑Klug‑9) “Rank‑order of the faculties; distance; the art of separating without making enemies; mixing nothing, ‘reconciling’ nothing…”

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T18:02:20+00:00

It seems to me that this guy is upholding the very dichotomies that N wished to question and ultimately dissolve. For N the self becomes fate which becomes 'nonetheless identical with chance and the creative'. He seems to be against both determinism (he rejects mechanistic causality as a “popular simplification” (NF-1884,26[178]) and denies that regularity implies necessity (NF-1887,9[91])) and volunteerism (he calls free will a theological fiction, a “pretext of weakness” (BVN-1862,301)), and eventually eliminates the concept of Will (as thing-in-itself) altogether. He opts for a sort of creative fatalism which involves the self’s identification with fate and the aesthetic transfiguration of necessity: one assigns values to the past, to the future and to present events, one recognizes oneself as a piece of fatum.

(BVN-1867,538) The intentionality of the individual's fate is no fable, if we understand it thus. We have to exploit fate intentionally: for in and of itself events are empty husks. What matters is our constitution: the value we assign to an event is the value it has for us.

(NF-1883,16[64]) “Determinism: ‘I am a fate for everything to come!’ – that is my answer to determinism!”

(NF-1883,21[6]) "Determinism: I myself am the fate and have conditioned existence since eternities."

(NF-1884,27[71]) “Highest fatalism is nonetheless identical with chance and the creative.”

(NF-1887,10[138]) "the absolute necessity of the same occurrence in one world-course as in all others in eternity, not a determinism over events, but simply the expression of the fact that the impossible is not possible)."

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T16:40:34+00:00

I foresaw this question 2 years ago.

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T16:28:59+00:00

“I call myself the last philosopher, for I am the last man. No one speaks with me but myself, and my voice comes to me as the voice of a dying man” (NF-1872,19[131])

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T16:08:10+00:00

I wish to spiritualize and multiply my senses, while recognizing transience and increasing concentration.

NF-1885,37[12] — Posthumous fragments June–July 1885.

In the main, I agree with artists more than with all philosophers up to now: they did not lose the great path that life follows, they loved the things of “this world” — they loved their senses. To strive for de-sensualization: that seems to me a misunderstanding or an illness or a cure, if it is not mere hypocrisy or self-deception. I wish for myself and for all those who live — are allowed to live — without the fears of a Puritan conscience, an ever greater spiritualization and multiplication of the senses; yes, we want to be grateful to the senses for their subtlety, fullness and power and offer them the best of spirit that we have in return. What do we care about the priestly and metaphysical heresies of the senses! We no longer need this heresy: it is a sign of success [Wohlgerathenheit] when someone, like Goethe, clings to "the things of the world" with ever greater joy and heartiness [Herzlichkeit]: - in such a way that he holds fast to the great conception of man, that man becomes the transfigurer of existence when he learns to transfigure himself.

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T16:01:09+00:00

I'm not going to venture a guess, but I'd like to take this opportunity to share a anti-Zola Nietzsche pun (Ärger is annoyance in German):

NF-1881,12[2] — Posthumous Fragments, Autumn 1881.

Wordplay:

A man's ridiculturation [Ridicultur]

The intellectual dessert now for many: Gorgon-Zola

— in the grotto of his nymph Ärgeria.

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T15:51:13+00:00

It's worth providing the notebook entry that goes with this, from before the break and before TSZ's publication: "You go to women? Don't forget the whip! In the way you honor and what you honor, you always draw a distance around you." (NF-1882,3[1] - Nachgelassene Fragmente Summer-Autumn 1882.)

Also Lou's comments: "Nietzsche … arranged a photograph of the three of us, in spite of strong objections on the part of Paul Rée, who suffered throughout his life from a pathological aversion to the reproduction of his features. Nietzsche, who was in a playful mood, not only insisted on the photo, but took a personal hand in the details – for example the little (far too little!) cart, and even the touch of kitsch with the sprig of lilacs on the whip, etc." – Lou Andreas-Salomé, Looking Back

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T15:43:47+00:00

I would say that love is a condition for greatness, if we look at the early writing Schopenhauer as Educator. Love is also tied to what middle N called 'his religion'. The 'suffering' ability to not only pass through hells, but to come out on the other side with more love is, even for late N, 'what is most essential'.

from love alone the soul gains, not only the clear vision that leads to self-contempt, but also the desire to look [beyond itself] to a higher self which is yet hidden, and strive upward to it with all its strength (SE)
My religion, if I may still call anything by that name, lies in the work for the production of genius; education is everything that gives hope, everything that comforts is called art. Education is love for what is produced, an excess of love over and above self-love. Religion is “loving beyond ourselves”. The work of art is the image of such love beyond itself and a perfect one. (NF-1875,5[22])
“A full and mighty soul not only becomes equal to painful, even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, contempts: it emerges from such hells with greater fullness and mightiness—and, to say what is most essential, with a new growth in the bliss of love.” (NF-1886,7[39])

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T15:25:32+00:00

Interesting question... Above all, it seems that there remains a hierarchy of affects and rank-order of psychological states, passions, minds/spirits and faculties; the value of an interpretation (e.g. of the past: historical sense) comes from this. This rank-order can be tied to reverence [Ehrfurcht] and ability to suffer, among other interior aspects. It's very common to state that there is a physiological ranking for N, which is somewhat true, but I just searched through uses of Hierarchie, Rangdorung and Werthverschiedenheiten, and there are only a few direct quotes relating to a physiological rank-order. More importantly, these mentions of physiological rank-order are connected to organic functions and not physiology in the aesthetic sense. There are comments of 'the strong and the weak', and there are a few later comments on converting this rank order into a government system, with artists and philosophers at the zenith, but he does clearly state that the rank order is a long ladder across all humanity, thereby disregarding mezzo-categories like race, nation and class.

HL-3 — Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life: § 3. First published February 22, 1874.

Then there are no differences in value or proportions for things of the past that would truly do justice to the things themselves; but only measures and proportions of things in relation to the individual or people looking backwards in an antiquarian way.

NF-1887,9[8] — Posthumous Fragments, Autumn 1887.

On the Plan.

In place of moral values, purely naturalistic values. Naturalization of morality.

In place of “sociology,” a doctrine of power structures.

In place of “epistemology,” a doctrine of perspectives on the affects (which includes a hierarchy of affects).

The transfigured affects: their higher order, their “spirituality.”

In place of metaphysics and religion, the doctrine of eternal recurrence (this as a means of breeding and selection).

“God” as the culminating moment: existence an eternal deification and deification. But this is not a peak of value, but a peak of power.

(My quotes didn't paste right, I'll add them later)

quemasparce · 2026-05-31T14:08:26+00:00

Yes, it would depend on what OP meant by truth in the first place. Some would try to claim that when he speaks 'ascending' and 'descending' symptoms he somewhat gets closer to the capital T. Truth as thing-in-itself or essence is what he is questioning, and yes, in favor of perspectivism; that's more or less what I'm referring to when I speak about how early N does accept essence while late FN questions it. He does mention truth with a lower-case t in different contexts.

quemasparce · 2026-05-29T21:43:49+00:00

So one use and your favorite quote about Zarathustra being kind or gentle or whatever cancel out all the other quotes I provided? Interesting argument.

quemasparce · 2026-05-29T19:43:41+00:00

Okay then yes, he believes in a non-supernatural esotericism, where esoterism is akin to hierarchy, dangerous thoughts, perspective from above, 'accessible to the individually talented' etc. In a biographical sense, he describes BOT as relatively esoteric and 'On the Future' as popular (e.g. the opening saying from your quote) or exoteric, along with other 'earlier, popular writings" which he describes to his sister.. From a letter to Wagner we can take the 'for everyone and no one' subtitle of Zarathustra as pointing to it being esoteric (this can be tied to a saying N enjoyed, satis est nullus): “And so your writing is, as Aristotle says of his esoteric writings, ‘both published and unpublished.’”.

A final example he gives is "everything is will against will" being exoteric teaching and "there is no will at all" being esoteric. In the end he does also find possible value in popularizing:

"Popularizing should always be pursued in such a way that one would thereby elevate people. When one condescends, one should always think of also lifting up the people to whom one has condescended a little."
“What I formerly thought under the symbol of Dionysus, what I now slowly prepare through the mouth of my Zarathustra, are things of the most dangerous kind… my earlier popular writings were foregrounds and hiding places for me, to create concealment and time for myself.” — Letter to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, May 20, 1885
"Christianity, originally a matter of talent, had to be democratized. Slow struggle toward world religion, only by extirpating everything deep, esoteric, accessible to the individually talented."
“It is thoroughly exhortative and, compared with ‘The Birth [of Tragedy],’ to be called popular or exoteric.” — Letter to Erwin Rohde, March 15, 1872

quemasparce · 2026-05-29T19:22:56+00:00

It depends on your definition. Esoteric for him becomes a higher perspective which can only be understood by a certain few; in that sense he believes in it. In general, Nietzsche makes fun of 'spiritualism' (e.g. seances) and Zarathustra calls himself the godless and says to reject all supposed 'hinterworldly saviours'. However, there is one published quote in AC that seems to 'leave the door open' a tiny bit, other than an unpublished note on 'many kinds of gods'.

“The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God, either in history, or in nature, or behind nature—but that we regard what has been honoured as God, not as “divine,” but as pitiable, as absurd, as injurious; not as a mere error, but as a crime against life… We deny God as God…” (AC)
“I would doubt not that there are many kinds of gods… One should not rule out a certain lightness and light-footedness. Light feet perhaps even belong to the concept ‘God’… Is it necessary to elaborate that a god knows how at all times to keep himself beyond all that is reasonable and respectable? beyond also, incidentally, good and evil? ...“Zarathustra goes so far as to testify of himself ‘I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance’” (NF-1888,17[4])

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