# Chapter 56 explained — Beyond Good and Evil

> Chapter companion for Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.

## What happens

The narrator critiques the pessimism of Schopenhauer as a half-Christian, half-German narrowness, and by looking beyond good and evil, posits the opposite ideal: a world-affirming, exuberant individual who desires the eternal recurrence of existence as it is.

## Themes in this chapter

### Critique of Traditional Philosophy

Direct attack on Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy as a narrow, moralistic worldview.

### Will to Power

Implied in the description of the world-affirming, exuberant man who makes himself necessary and desires eternal recurrence.

## Character check-ins

### The Narrator

Critiques pessimism and describes the ideal of the world-affirming man who desires eternal recurrence.

### Arthur Schopenhauer

His philosophy is presented as the narrow, world-renouncing form of pessimism the narrator seeks to move beyond.

## Key lines

> Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer’s philosophy

I have long sought to understand pessimism and liberate it from the limited, morally-bound form Schopenhauer gave it.

_Sets up the critique of Schopenhauer._

> the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again as it was and is , for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo

The ideal is a life-affirming person who not only accepts reality but passionately desires its eternal repetition.

_Introduces the counter-ideal to Schopenhauer's pessimism._

> What? And this would not be— circulus vitiosus deus ?

Could this not be described as a 'vicious circle, god'?

_Ends with a provocative, paradoxical question about the nature of this affirming force._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters/56
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/beyond_good_and_evil_se/chapters