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willow
this is up there as possibly the most influential passage in my life, one of those things that i’ve thoroughly integrated into my approach to the world
nietzsche and morality, raymond geuss, pg. 186-187, in morality, culture and history This position may seem counterintuitive because the strong impression many readers have is that one of Nietzsche's basic claims is that finally only power (in something like our everyday sense of that term) is truly admirable. I'm suggesting that when Nietzsche is at his most interesting he doesn't think that admiration is locked onto power (in the usual sense) as its object, and admiration is what is finally important for him (cf. GM 1. 12). 'Will-to-power' is an empty, metaphysical concept. 186 Nietzsche and morality Being vital, flourishing, being a 'higher specimen' means being able to inspire admiration. There seems also to be no single substantive trait which all higher specimens have in common by virtue of which they succeed in getting themselves admired; they are admired in different ways for different traits. Admiration (Bewunderung) and its opposite, disgust (Ekel), are for Nietzsche two of the most powerful internal forces that move human beings (JGB §26; GM I. 11, HI. 24, II. 14 etc.).14 Both admiration and disgust in the first instance are elicited by and directed at concrete, individual objects, persons, or situa-tions, and what will be an object of admiration or of disgust varies from person to person and from time to time. In a sense the most important fact about a given person for Nietzsche is which particular objects (or people) that person finds admirable (at what time), and which disgusting, and why. There are no naturally or antecedently fixed criteria of what is worthy of admiration. It doesn't follow from this that no generalizations
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