This is such a fantastic chapter of the 1st book. To my bad, I had jumped straight to Zarathustra after being introduced to Nietzsche. It took a while to comprehend those "writings in blood". But this chapter is so striking. To my understanding it does speak about the good conscience in us. To go to sleep well requires a good conscience. At first I just thought it was general Nietzsche dissed these general morality. But maybe what he is perticularly set out against is maybe virtue ethics, especially maybe that resembling of Aristotle. Well, I guess he found Aristotle's "groundedness" more preferable to that of Plato. But still this 'collecting' virtues things, I don't think he likes that very much, because he said "one virtue is more of a virtue than many". And I think the metaphor of "greenest pasture" stands for the conception of eudaimonia, the good life. Though we cannot go back to the contemporary morality of ancient Greece during the time of Aristotle, well he himself said the non-greeks are fit only to be slaves of the Greeks, but I think he himself represents a slight diversion from his contemporary morality, he maybe thought this maybe not because of "strong do what they wish, week suffer what they must" type of molarity, but a more contemplating, first principal type of molarity, where the ideal order of the world was for the educated/cultured Greeks to lead and rest to follow them, a precursor to Christian molarity. Nevertheless, if we today adopt this virtue ethics, which we are considering the popularity of modern stoicism , it would resemble this "virtue of good sleep" ethics, if we presume today's existencial philosophical framework. That I find so very interesting, Nietzsche would be criticising which we, in a real sense, consider so important. I mean today if you find this stoic man, good in his career, working out to stay healthy type is an ideal for us, which we type even say is today's "master morality". To that today there is the additional baggage of uncompromising compassion and tolerance towards all which our system set for all of us as to be our primary virtue. I mean though figures like Jordon Peterson and influencers like Andrew Tate is fighting against that, I find it amusing that Nietzsche would criticise even them on top of criticising those social justice types and their allies. Making money as the primary virtue for all to strive to towards is itself something he would deem nihilistic I think. All think talks of being millionaire at young age and "escaping the Matrix" is so fake, we know even if one gets that, he wouldn't be satisfied. Very similar to this line in this video where the wise man says "one should keep a moderate tresure". Today's good virtues are all about restraining the virtues for rising in social status. It is something I think Nietzsche was something very opposed to. He favoured the old aristocracy to make full use of their lordly privileges to exersise their passions, which he thought would be very noble by nature. The only think I am not so sure about would he criticise,in our democratic world, someone passionately persuing a grand dream, which many have?What are your thoughts about that? Would Nietzsche agree with this notion of everyone persuing their dreams? I think Nietzsche is too nuanced to just simply comply to that as any other individualistic philosopher.
Really fantastic comment, I appreciate your thoughtfulness, seems really rare these days... You know what's funny... In one version of Zarathustra that I've got, it talks about how its really weird that only in this first section, it starts off the whole section with the title "The Speeches of Zarathustra", but then it eventually comes to to this one, where the speech is actually the "wise man", and not Zarathustra. And so they speculate that in this wise man represents some truths that Nietzsche/Z has recognized over the years (how to sleep well), but that he's ultimately gone beyond that to greater values and priorities. On a personal note, I've noticed it's very much true... To be honest, I've never really had much trouble with sleep (since I was a teen). I think it's because my mind has always tended towards the heavier questions and has always delved deep (I always asked questions that would make others yawn and feel uncomfortable). And so after a day of "abstracting", my mind is really exhausted, and so sleeping is not really an issue for me (and so the "wise man" rings really true to me in this sense). But that being said, for the wise man, the VALUE of life is sleeping well itself ("if life had no other meaning, this would be the best nonsense"), and Zarathustra rejects this sort of valuation as shallow. And although I appreciate very much being able to sleep well (sometimes I sleep too deeply, it's hard to wake up), it's definitely not why I continue on doing what I do. So I guess it boils down to why you want to sleep well. If it's your whole meaning of life, Zarathustra says "Blessed are these sleepy heads, for they are about to nod off (die off)"
And yes, all this "escape the matrix" and Tate etc, for me it is definitely NOT what it portends to be. For me, Tate is just a pimp with a bad conscience (has a hard time admitting this in public). I think, for Nietzsche, it's better to be a pimp that admits and has a proud conscience about it, rather than talking in more private videos how proud you are that you have a pimping degree and then denying it for more mainstream videos (although of course being a pimp is a sort of slavery itself) To me, he's just a broken man who is relentlessly pursuing his own advantage, and he is a cultureless void that doesn't help anything, and I think he actually hates those guys that he is pretending to help. Regarding Peterson, I have a video or two on my channel of Nietzsche directly contradicting him on the question of values, and I see Peterson as just a cultural christian moralizing without the dogma, and I actually see him now as a huge danger to young men in general, and that although he is a good psychologist, he's a terrible historian and theologian and philosopher (on the whole). "essential salts" has gotten into more depth on Peterson than I have, and although I have some disagreements with him, he has some really good content
Regarding everyone pursuing their own dreams, to be honest, N didn't seem to care too much about most individuals (the herd), and saw them only as a means for a *few* to pursue grand dreams. He saw the contented herd animals as incapable of great creativity, but they were important for others to use them as a "stepping stone" (as I see it), and as long as you can get far enough away from them, to envision a new future, or great art, or music, or whatever, and then to come back and shine for the herd (but not too close).
