Human All Too Human

Summary

It's important to note that the work is often published in two volumes. The first volume is the original 1878 book. The second volume typically combines two later works, Assorted Opinions and Maxims (1879) and The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), which Nietzsche intended as continuations.

Volume I: Human, All Too Human (1878)

• Preface (Added later, outlines the book's context and intent)
• First Division: Of First and Last Things
• Second Division: On the History of Moral Feelings
• Third Division: The Religious Life
• Fourth Division: From the Soul of Artists and Writers
• Fifth Division: Signs of Higher and Lower Culture
• Sixth Division: Man in Society
• Seventh Division: Woman and Child
• Eighth Division: A Look at the State
• Ninth Division: Man Alone with Himself
• Aftersong: From High Mountains (Added later, often serves as an epilogue)

Volume II (Combining the sequels):

• Part One: Assorted Opinions and Maxims (Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche, 1879) - This part doesn't have named chapters like Volume I but consists of a numbered sequence of 408 aphorisms
• Part Two: The Wanderer and His Shadow (Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, 1880) - Similar to Assorted Opinions and Maxims, this part consists of a numbered sequence of 350 aphorisms without distinct chapter titles

Notes

Preface

Who is this book for? Nietzsche answers that almost immediately, in section 2 of the preface: he is dedicating the book to "free spirits."

He spends much of the book talking about how free spirits think and behave, what shapes them and what drives them. But he begins the book, in the Preface, by attempting to explain what a free spirit is. And he begins that explanation with an explanation of how free spirits are born (what he calls the great separation):

From the preface:

Thus I invented, when I needed them, the "free spirits" too, to whom this heavyhearted-stouthearted book with the title Human, All-Too-Human is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits", were none - but, as I said, I needed their company at the time, to be of good cheer in the midst of bad things (illness, isolation, foreignness, sloth, inactivity); as brave fellows and spectres to chat and laugh with, when one feels like chatting and laughing, and whom one sends to hell when they get boring - as reparation for lacking friends.

- Preface, Section 2

In the very next section, Nietzsche articulates, at great length, what it is that causes a free spirit to be born - what he calls the "great separation." It's a moment in a person's life when they become unbound to their social role, their duties, their moral universe, and gives up all obligations:

Better to die than to live here, so sounds the imperious and seductive voice. And this "here", this "at home" is everything which it had loved until then! A sudden horror an suspicion of that which it loved; a lightning flash of contempt toward that which was its "obligation"; a rebellious, despotic, volcanically jolting desire to roam abroad, to become alienated, cool, sober, icy: a hatred of love, perhaps a descratory reaching and glancing backward, to where it had until then worshipped and loved; perhaps a blush of shame at its most recent act, and at the same time, jubilation that it was done; a drunken, inner, jubliant shudder, which betrays a victory - victory? Over what? Over whom? A puzzling, questioning, questionable victory, but the first victory nevertheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history of the great separation.

- Preface, Section 3

It is also a disease that can destroy a person, this first outburst of strength and will to self-determination, self-valorisation, this will to free will: and how much disease is expressed by the wild attempts and peculiarities with which the freed person, the separated person, now tries to prove their rule over things!

...There is some arbitrariness and pleasure in arbitrariness to it, if he then perhaps directs his favor to that which previously stood in disrepute - if he creeps curiously and enticingly around what is most forbidden. Behind his ranging activity (for he is journeying restlessly and aimlessly, as in a desert) stands the question mark of an ever more dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all values be overturned? And is Good perhaps Evil? And God only an invention, a nicety of the devil? Is everything perhaps ultimately false? And if we are deceived, are we not for that very reason also deceivers? Must we not be deceivers, too?

- Preface, Section 3

Quotes

Volume I

Preface

Thus I invented, when I needed them, the "free spirits" too, to whom this heavyhearted-stouthearted book with the title Human, All-Too-Human is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits", were none - but, as I said, I needed their company at the time, to be of good cheer in the midst of bad things (illness, isolation, foreignness, sloth, inactivity); as brave fellows and spectres to chat and laugh with, when one feels like chatting and laughing, and whom one sends to hell when they get boring - as reparation for lacking friends.

- Preface, Section 2

Better to die than to live here, so sounds the imperious and seductive voice. And this "here", this "at home" is everything which it had loved until then! A sudden horror an suspicion of that which it loved; a lightning flash of contempt toward that which was its "obligation"; a rebellious, despotic, volcanically jolting desire to roam abroad, to become alienated, cool, sober, icy: a hatred of love, perhaps a descratory reaching and glancing backward, to where it had until then worshipped and loved; perhaps a blush of shame at its most recent act, and at the same time, jubilation that it was done; a drunken, inner, jubliant shudder, which betrays a victory - victory? Over what? Over whom? A puzzling, questioning, questionable victory, but the first victory nevertheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history of the great separation.

- Preface, Section 3

It is also a disease that can destroy a person, this first outburst of strength and will to self-determination, self-valorisation, this will to free will: and how much disease is expressed by the wild attempts and peculiarities with which the freed person, the separated person, now tries to prove their rule over things!

...There is some arbitrariness and pleasure in arbitrariness to it, if he then perhaps directs his favor to that which previously stood in disrepute - if he creeps curiously and enticingly around what is most forbidden. Behind his ranging activity (for he is journeying restlessly and aimlessly, as in a desert) stands the question mark of an ever more dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all values be overturned? And is Good perhaps Evil? And God only an invention, a nicety of the devil? Is everything perhaps ultimately false? And if we are deceived, are we not for that very reason also deceivers? Must we not be deceivers, too?

- Preface, Section 3

Chapter 5

No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it. However many "worldly" elements the Catholic Church may have, its strength rests on those priestly natures, still numerous, who make life deep and difficult for themselves...

The person who wants to gain wisdom profits greatly from having thought for a time that humans are basically evil and degenerate: this idea is wrong, like its opposite, but for whole periods of time it was predominant and its roots have sunk deep into us and into our world. To understand ourselves we must understand it; but to climb higher, we must then climb over and beyond it.

Love is foolish, and possesses a horn of plenty; from it she dispenses her gifts to everyone, even if he does not deserve them, indeed, even if he does not thank her or them. She is as non-partisan as rain, which (according to the Bible and to experience) rains not only upon the unjust, but sometimes soaks the just man to the skin, too.

Volume II

Part One

Origin of justice:

9. Justice (fairness) originates among those who are approximately equally powerful, as Thucydides grasped correctly... Where there is no clearly recognizable power and a fight would lead to fruitless injury on both sides, there the notion arises of coming to an understanding and negotiating the claims on each side: the initial character of justice is the character of a trade. Each satisfies the other inasmuch as each receives what he values more than the other does.

Need is required:

35. We have to be continually giving birth to our thoughts out of our pain and nesting them like birds with all that we have of blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, catastrophe. Life would cease to be life if it had no more needs – likewise if its needs and their satisfaction were different from what they are! – Provided, that is, that one requires greatness and importance of it.

Readiness for contradiction:

76. Everyone knows nowadays that the ability to tolerate contradiction is a sign of high culture. Some even know that the higher man courts contradiction so as to provoke it and thus discover something previously unknown about his own nature.

Enemies of the truth:

99. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Part Two

Knowing how to suffer:

61. The ability to suffer deeply is the condition of all fruitful becoming; but one must also know how to suffer well – perhaps that is the criterion of fruitfulness.

• Suffering as Necessary for Growth ("The ability to suffer deeply is the condition of all fruitful becoming"):
  • Nietzsche rejects the idea that a life of ease, comfort, and avoidance of pain leads to significant achievement or personal development ("fruitful becoming").
  • He argues the opposite: profound growth, creativity, insight, and strength often emerge from confronting and enduring significant hardship, pain, or struggle ("suffering deeply").
  • Think of it like metal being forged in fire. The capacity to withstand intense pressure or difficulty is necessary to become something strong, refined, or valuable. Without this capacity, one remains undeveloped or superficial. Great art, profound philosophy, and significant personal transformations rarely arise from untroubled lives.

• The Crucial Distinction: Suffering vs. Suffering Well ("but one must also know how to suffer well"):
  • This is the core qualification. Simply experiencing pain isn't enough; many people suffer and are merely crushed, embittered, or diminished by it.
  • "Suffering well" implies an active and transformative engagement with hardship.
  • Learning from pain (wisdom, insight, self-knowledge from difficult experiences)
  • Integrating suffering (making it part of strength, part of character, instead of letting it destroy you)
  • Using suffering as fuel (channeling energy and perspective gained from hardship into creative work, self-overcoming, deeper understanding)
  • Affirmation (not succumbing to nihilism, resentment, or victimhood, but finding ways to affirm life despite or even because of its difficulties)

• The Measure of True Growth ("perhaps that is the criterion of fruitfulness"):
  • Nietzsche suggests that the true measure of a person's development or the value of their creations ("fruitfulness") isn't whether they suffered (as suffering is near-universal), but how they processed and responded to that suffering.
  • Did the suffering lead to bitterness and decay, or did it lead to strength, wisdom, and creativity? The way one suffers – whether one "suffers well" – determines if the outcome is genuinely fruitful.

Greatness requires the capacity for deep suffering, but more importantly, it requires the wisdom and strength to metabolize that suffering productively. It's not the pain itself, but what one does with the pain – how one learns from it, transforms it, and uses it to grow – that ultimately distinguishes a fruitful life or creation from a barren one. He elevates the response to suffering as the key indicator of profound development

Possessing one's experiences:

304. It is not enough to have experiences, one must be able to possess them, make use of them, learn from them. Many people have experiences but do not possess them.