Beyond Good and Evil; Anti-Christ

From Beyond Good and Evil: What is Noble?
How then can one attain nobleness? Can being solitude and recluse be understood in tandem with the will to act and hence, the will to power?

Nietzsche proffers [on 287] that “it is not the works but the belief” which will determine the order of rank or nobleness and then later on claims that “The noble soul has reverence for itself”. On various other aphorisms, he speaks of “enthusiasm” which I interpret as drives and energies towards a goal as “representing oneself to be stupider than one really is” [288]. But how can Nietzsche take a state bereft of drives or elevate the importance of the recluse state [289], or even solitude to be a virtue (“a sublime bent and bias to purity” 284) as a means or even sign to nobility? How can one act in solitude? One must necessarily act in a given context or sociality for the act to be meaningful (if we take meaningfulness to be something socially constructed in society). Also, in the Gay science for instance, he almost preaches for the “preparatory men” in a “war like age” wanting people to live dangerously. He says: “send your ships into uncharted seas!” [283] and earlier on in Beyond Good and evil, he also talks about a constant sort of struggle in unfavourable conditions to produce strong idiosyncratic noble individuals [262]. Thus, I wonder if Nietzsche is vacillating in his brief discourses on how to attain nobility. Should one be enthusiastic about taking action and willing his being into being?

From Beyond Good and Evil: Peoples and Countries
The German question: Why really does Nietzsche think of the German soul and culture as unique as opposed to others? Why does he deprecate the English and French?

This is something I have real troubles with in reading Beyond Good and Evil for Nietzsche constantly praises the German culture as “…formless, inexhaustible, [having] a certain German potency and super plenitude of the soul. [240]” He also says “The Germans are more tangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable… there are passages and galleries in the German soul…caves, hiding places and dungeons” and compares the Germans to the English with their “profound mediocrity” and the French’s refined taste [253]. Does this all boil down to how Nietzsche’s take on the enlightenment and modern ideas and hence disliking the English for spearheading such modern factory-like lifestyle and conditions and the French for embodying such “refined tastes” (products of modernity)? I think trying to answer this question will help me also to understand the “North-South” divide that Nietzsche constantly talks about and understand why perhaps why he does not seem to like certain forms of European music.

From The Anti-Christ
On the importance of “pity” in why Nietzsche thinks so badly of Christianity. Hence, what are the effects of “pity” in any society? To what extent then should we accept Nietzsche’s ideas of pity?

Pity has always been to me at least a virtue with a neutral valence. I have never thought of pity as something so destructive. But reading Nietzsche has really thrusted a new albeit striking understanding of the ill-effects of “pity.” These few short passages [The Antichrist: 7] really strike me the most “Pity is the practice of nihilism…It multiplies misery and conserves all that is miserable, and is thus a prime instrument of the advancement of decadence: pity persuades men to nothingness!” “Pity makes suffering contagious!” Although it is counterintuitive, I think to some extent it is true since “pitying” a man simply will get him nowhere and lead to no betterment. But if we take Nietzsche’s line of argument, can we then truly think of a society bereft of pity or sympathy? Would not our society then be made of egotistic individuals whose care is confined only to oneself? Is being pitied “by the Christian God” truly bad if it effects some solace and healing powers?