What does Nietzsche mean by this quote?
"The man of an era of dissolution which throws the races together and who therefore contains within him the inheritance of a diversified descent, that is to say contrary and often not merely contrary drives and values which struggle with one another and rarely leave one another in peace - Such a man of late culture and broken lights will, on the average, be a rather weak man: His basic wish is that the war which he is should come to an end...If, however the contrariety and war in such a nature should act as one more stimulus and enticement to life- and if, on the other hand, there has been inherited and developed...a proper mastery and subtlety in conducting such a war within oneself: Then there arise those marvellously incomprehensible and inexplicable men, those enigmatic men pre destined for victory and the seduction of others, the fairest examples of whom are: Alcibiades, and Cesar(-with whom I should like to associate the first of Europeans according to my taste , the hohenstauffen Friedrich the second), and among artists perhaps Leonardo da Vinci."
Comments (63)
The paragraph you're proposing starts with races. Nietzsche's racism divides humanity into two: races of lords and races of servants. Lords are dominant, individualistic, violent and instinctive. Servants are intellectual, weak, resentful, moralistic and religious. Lords are healthy, servants are ill. Aryans were masters in the past; Jews are a race of servants.
But these races do not exist in a pure state now. History has mixed them up. Therefore, the battle between lordship and servitude occurs in the same man. When the instincts of power dominate, great men appear in all fields: warriors, kings, leaders, artists and only one philosopher: Nietzsche himself - modesty was not a virtue for him. When the hatred of instincts dominates, the herd dominates. Then, even leaders are unable to let their instincts rise and they preach the morality of the flock and hatred against strong spirits.
Nietzsche believed that he was the prophet of a new race - he was not very modest, I insist - in which the instinct of power would definitely triumph. The overmen. This is another story.
NOTE: If you want to get a sharper insight I recommend that you read the entire chapter V. Here, for example: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/ch05.htm
My criticism of this is that there are more ways to classify members of humanity than just the two that Nietzsche thought of. His view is as simplistic, and therefore as hard to work with, (or let's be honest, useless) as Hobbes'. If the social dynamic and historic causation and individual fates of people were dependent only on the facts that there are only two types of people, and their mix, in existence: the leaders who are strong, and the weak, who are followers, then we discard the poets, the engineers, the doctors, the scientists, the priests, the carpenters, the miners, the accountants, the draftsmen, the mothers, the amazons, the computer programmers, the beggars, the soldiers, the generals, etc. etc. who all strive to better their lives with occupation other than striving for dominance and for avoiding a position of submission.
"Natural selection" is not a Nietzschean concept. The Darwinian concept refers to populations; the Nietzschean concept of instinct refers to individuals. It is more the triumph of the will of power than a biological mechanism.
Superior men do not limit themselves to a particular political activity. Artists, thinkers and other men of action can also be strong.
Nietzsche's position on weak men is ambiguous. He sometimes speaks of their extinction. Other times he refers to a future in which they would only be under strong men. I believe there is an evolution towards an increasingly aggressive and delusional outlook as his personal powerlessness grew. His latest letters are pathetic.
Beyond Good and Evil is hard to fathom without understanding it alongside his other work, so taking one paragraph out of the context of this particular work - AND without understanding the broader interest Nietzsche had - is not going to help much.
Basically a person without Culture, inner or outer, is a weak and dangerous person as they’ll look to disrupt others rather than strengthen themselves through toil and stress (life).
The ‘war’ is in us not out there. Generally no one wishes to admit this though as it means we’re more at fault than others, and the most cutting point is that we are prone to ignoring this in favour of blaming others: the realisation of this self defeating mindset tends to cause more guilt and therefore more refusal to admit responsibililty.
Of you’re really interested in Neitzsche start at the start (The Birth of Tragedy). The problem is you’ll quickly find that you’ll need to learn a good amount about Plato (views on Art and society) and Aristotle (‘Poetics’ especially) before you can get to grips with Nietzsche - he uses the ancient Greeks as a means of expressing a number of ideas.
GL
Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of Poland, passionately played Chopin's Polonaises while exterminating Poles, especially Jews. I don't think the "Culture" prevents social dangerousness.
Quoting I like sushi
Let's not exaggerate. A discreet knowledge of Greek culture can help to understand The Birth of Tragedy. Especially the things that Nietzsche invented about the Greeks. But it's not essential. You can understand Nietzsche pretty well by himself. His philosophy was very personal.
Enjoy and bye :)
In the context of your commentary "a man of Culture" meant what is normally understood. That is: a man who knows and possibly practices arts, humanities or science. Hans Frank or Joseph Goebbels were men of culture in this sense. And your commentary smelt of cultural elitism. This is what I was pointing out. High culture doesn't warrant high morality.
I am sorry, but 1. the first of these two positions is also Darwinian, or not mutually exclusinve with the Darwinian concept 2. earlier you said that the Nitzschean concept is that the Leaders and the Weaks have mixed; this is not per se straight Darwinian, but it does involve some sort of Gregor Mendel type gene mixture, otherwise it would be nonsensical. Therefore if the mixture is possible, like in Mendel's experiment, then the purification is also possible, like in Mendel's experiment.
What I don't know, and you may be the guiding beacon of knowledge here: does Nietzsche say or indicate, that though Leaders and Weak (ubermensch und untermensch, respectively, for my lack of a better knowledge of Nietzsche's nomenclature) are mixed, and therefore people are equally Weak and Leaderish, BUT in some the Leader will triumph in the individual's make-up, due to sheer will power? If he says that, then your squashing my corollary of a possibility of purifying the race back into two pure factions, is valild from a Nietzschean point of view; if he does not indicate positively to what I asked, then the purifying of races is possible.
They are certainly not the first, Plato - Republic, narrating Socrates who has presented such a purely brilliant logical arguement for justice and a sensible city, but only once he has confined the frame of reference to an extent that any arguement to the contrary has been eliminated - before they start the logical debate.
The mafia did the same thing. If you gotta "wack" a guy, you don't take him to the desert, wack him, then dig a hole. By the time you done all that, someone else might turn up. Now you gotta wack them too, and dig another hole. Jees, your gonna be out there all night digging holes. Instead, you dig the hole first. Then you take the guy out to the desert and wack him and bury him.
He means what he says really. It's an application of his basic psychology he builds his philosophy on.
He sees man, the will, as a bundle of instincts and drives vying for controle and pulling in different directions. And like forces in physics, if they pull in different directions they tend to cancel eachother out... and so typically the result is that they won't get you that far in one direction, or any direction.
If however, one manages to master these competing drives, keep them alive, and give them a certain direction, then he thinks these will be that much stronger because I presume he thought they gained in strength from having to compete with eachother constantly.
I don't know how this theory holds up today, but I think that's how he saw it anyway.
That's outdated. Now you first bury the person, then defeat his arguments, then whack him, and finally dig a hole.
I never read Nietzsche, but I read Frantisek Kaffka, and the assessment above applies to him too.
This must be a sign of the German Hangdaruberschrecklichkeitsanfangunterminderschicklichkeitsgefuhl, which loosely translates to English as angst.
Priceless, now that explains why we never leave the desert anymore.
:-)
I also never leave the dessert on the table any more. Explains my 235 lbs for a 5'4" body.
"The need for the hole capacity is growing bigger and bigger by the day. Some people abandoned the idea of whacking me for the sole reason they were too lazy to dig a hole deep and wide enough to properly hide my bodice."
Darwinian selection for survival. Get such a disgusting-looking outer self, that even soldiers of fortune will refuse to touch you, for fear of osmotic transfer of looks.
Thanks for this, it gave me more insight into Nietzsche. The more summarization I read of his thoughts, the more coherent he sounds. He is not a nihilist, as many claim; he is more an organizer, an elitist, a classifier, and solution-searcher. Nietzsche's only problem is that he was born too early. Many new discoveries and insights into human psychology and anthropology escaped him by his not surviving to the modern ages when new information and knowledge have been revealed.
Dr Spooner, you gotta stop, enough already! :smile:
I totally agree. I'm been thinking the same this morning. These people Plato, etc. all lived in a time very different to ours. With different problems and no where near the detailed info (and accessibility to info) we now have. In some ways, you got to hand it to them given what they had, they tried their best.
But one has to ask then, what place does surrender have in this philosophy?
This is why I like Hume. His ideas are as fresh in his time, and as true, as today. Hume is my fave thinker. Unfortunately his writings are impossible for the mere mortal to read. His style is not only irritating and incomprehensible, but it makes the knife open in your pocket, you get so angry due entirely to his style, not content.
Some important clarifications:
Strong and weak are not distributed equally among men and nations. There are weak men and strong men, to the extent that one trend is dominant.
I wrote "Lords", not "leaders". In Nietzsche "Lord" has the sense of someone superior, noble, excellent, proud. The mediocre mob also has its leaders. The paradigm is the priestly class. They are very intelligent people who excel in mediocrity. That is: they preach love to humanity, humility, equality, democracy, hatred of superior men and all that means the joy of living. This is the ideology of the resentment against the nobility. Noble in the sense of vital superiority, of course.
Therefore, we must distinguish some superior leaders, such as Napoleon or Alcibiades, from the shepherds of the flock who are as much sheep as it is. Note that the fate of the great men was their defeat (Alcibiades, Caesar, Caesar Borgia, Napoleon... and others I do not remember).
Nietzsche was explicitly anti-Darwinian -he preferred Lamarck. In his opinion, the struggle for survival entails the triumph of the herd of weaklings and their priestly leaders over superior men. The struggle of the superior men is not to become a better sheep. They can use the inferior men for their purposes, but without losing the luster of their superiority. Therefore, in opposition to the revolutionaries and liberals of this era, Nietzsche did not see Napoleon's coronation as a betrayal, but as a real triumph of the will to power.
To summarize: "power", "strong", "lord", "life" refer to individual and vital forces that oppose the concept of species in biological Darwinism or of nation and race in social Darwinism. That's why he hated German antisemitism.
If you're associating Nietzsche with the mafia, you've certainly got it wrong. But the insecurity isn't in Nietzsche, it's in your reading. Just because there are some debatable things in Nietzsche doesn't mean that any reading can be admitted.
Your explanation reveals to me more valuable insight into Nietzsche's thinking. Thank you.
I appreciate that he openly (or covertly?) denounced Darwin and sided with Lamarc. Thank you, important to know, but it does not brush on my real conondrum I seek to be solved.
What I ask to be explained: the element in his theory, "the mixing of the lords with the sheep" is still yet already jetzt noch immer nicht not fully explained to me in the shape of a conclusive description. From this latest post, the mixing is not genetic, but simply having a crowd, and in it there may be a significantly higher or lower rate of lords over sheep by counts of fully lordlike men and fully sheeplike men; in this scenario the individuals keep their lordlike and sheeplike qualities fully; or else is the picture better described as a genetic or genetic-like mixing within the individual's response system yielding differing magnitudes of lordlike qualities of behaviour as one measures it from individual to individual.
I accept any answer, of course, as long as it's certified to be true. After all, I am not after the real truth, but after what and how Nietzsche actually meant and made to work for his theory.
How do you know it's the style's fault if you haven't understood it? Maybe what Hume says is stupid.
It's the same for me with quantum mechanics. I don't understand anything. But I don't blame quantum mechanics, but my lack of understanding. But I avoid deepening my ignorance by claiming that quantum mechanics is this or that. At most, I ask the one who understands and try to learn. Caution is the virtue of wise men.
This is a friendly opinion, Not a declaration of war.
I confess I didn't understand the alternative.
For Nietzsche, lordship and servitude are innate characteristics of men. They cannot be changed or modified by behavior, although they can be discovered if one questions oneself with insight, which only superior men are capable of doing. Genetics was alien to Nietzsche's thinking. I don't know how the chromosomes fit into this.
Note: I'm saying what I know and remember about Nietzsche. My knowledge has some gaps. Nietzsche and genetics is one of them. I'm not sure he ever mentioned it, though I doubt it. And I'm sure it was in very primitive terms. Not developed genetics.
Others read it and interpreted it. Either all others lied, and made up a harmoniously uniform theory that Hume did not, or else they did not lie. I tend to believe the second explanation (they did not lie).
If I assumed all interpreters lied, I would not be able to rely on your interpretation of Nietzsche, either, would I. But I do, and therefore I believe Hume's theories and thoughts as I understand them ought not to be dismissed by you as worthless knowledge.
Okay, thanks. I will leave this problem as unanswered.
You have given me much valuable insight. Thanks.
You do very well. For example: I'm not sure what he took from Lamarck's transformism. Learned characteristics? Doesn't fit.
You're welcome. If I find something on the subject, I'll tell you.
I don't understand quantum mechanics either. I accept its findings, on pure faith.
But I do understand and appreciate Hume's thoughts after interpretation.
The analogy is faulty in this aspect.
Superiority in life potential. I don't think Nietzsche gave a narrow definition of what he meant by that. You have to look here and there. Superiority in all that it means to be human: pride, desire, strength, freedom of thought. The latter is important: freedom from the rules of the masses. To destroy or "transvalue" the dominant values of the slave society. To be a hero in terms of thought and life. To put oneself above all else by trying to be the best. Never apologize. He was a nihilist in the positive sense: denying everything to create again.
The things that N rejects are the very things we fight for in our society: money, fame, demagogy, business, submission, etc. All the power that comes with filing one's self.
It sounds very attractive, but it has its great dangers.
Not so much. At a certain level quantum mechanics becomes a topic of interpretation and discussions begin. Which are the interesting thing, in my opinion.
When you are married, and want to stay that way, then exceptions to this rule are allowed.
You actually doubted that I could understand Hume. You directly questioned if understanding via interpretation is possible. You gave the analogy that QM is interpreted and you still don't understand it. I said the analogy is faulty, because many things interpreted can be understood, and I insisted Hume's thoughts are one of those things.
Why do you say that the analogy is not faulty?
I understand that you maybe get Hume by directly reading his writings. If that is the case, you are my hero.
Sorry, I was drawing the similarity of "efficiency" with my mafia example, in an attempt to simplify it. Apologies if you read my comment quite so literally.
A wonderful demonstration of humilty leading to wisdom.
I read Hume directly, which doesn't mean I always understand him. Sometimes I get stuck. Other times I read a different interpretation than I do.
Many people are irritated by that kind of uncertainty. I like to deal with it. You discover thoughts you never would have thought of. If the book is too dark, I'll quit. And I get irritated sometimes, too. Depends on days.
Philosophy is like that. Take it or leave it.
Quoting I like sushi
This a basic comment on Nietzsche’s view above. He actually has high praise for the Jews - ‘On the Geneaology of Morals’ was written to tie off any particular misunderstandings in BG&E (he pretty much states this himself from what I recall).
Quoting David Mo
The tied old attempts to parallel Nietzsche’s thoughts with Nazism are ridiculous for starters. Above you implied a meaning to “Culture” as being something entirely different from what I was referring to in reference to Nietzsche.
Note: Nietzsche actually has high praise for the Jews it was his sister who gave him a bad name - that is common enough knowledge. Well, he wasn’t exactly amiable either so dislike toward his bombastic tone doesn’t go unwarranted (a matter of taste perhaps?).
But I was referring to a phrase of yours, not Nietzsche's. If the phrase you were quoting is Nietzsche's, you should show the quote. So the misunderstanding would be undone.
Quoting I like sushi
In the last phase of his life, Nietzsche abhorred German anti-Semites who seemed to him to be stupid and like sheep. But he never rectified the many times he accused Jewish race and culture of being mainly responsible for the decline of the Western world. This is a theory that appears in almost all of his mature writings. Would you like us to look for quotes? I'd like to see the ones you have.
Note that Nietzsche's crudeness and violence has been whitewashed by his current followers, who try to be more politically correct than their exalted idol. It is true that Elizabeth Föster-Nietzsche covered up her brother's anti-German writings, but Nietzsche's followers have done a wash in the opposite direction.
Nietzsche was what he was. Great and obnoxious in equal parts.
Nietzsche didn't write in English.
See:
http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB
He is extremely contrary in places and loved to toy with his readers - call that obnoxious/bombastic or whatever, doesn’t matter to me.
I stand by what I said. TBoT is pretty important to see where he is coming from. I’ve not read everything of his (and probably never will). The core of it runs through the animalistic (dionysus) side of humanity and the rational (apollian) side of humanity. In turn they seem to be sided off against, and complimentary to, each other in terms of individual, uninhibited will and the social aspect of humanity that allows reason to bring us together. The ‘master’ and the ‘slave’ are essential to each other and religions part in this was under some scrutiny from Nietzsche. By this I mean to take what Nietzsche says (rightly or wrongly?) as stating loosely that the ‘norm’ is the destruction of creativity, the passive builds great potential and humanity as one and humans as individuals are under this constant duress whether they notice it or not - the ‘masters’ being those who are willing to face the struggle and whose followers will inevitably become ‘slaves’ to the new ‘norm’ the previous ‘masters’ brought into being. The ‘Beyond’ is recognition of ‘the Good person’ and ‘the Bad person’ as dictated by mass appeal and the haves and have nots, rather than what is actually ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ - hence the use of the term ‘Evil’ - as outlined in the closing part of the first essay of ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’ (the title of that work being a pretty loud call back to The Birth of Tragedy and his view on ancient Greek Tragedy (ill-formed or otherwise).
I think it absolutely necessary to read The Republic, Poetics and The Birth of Tragedy to get to grips with Beyond Good and Evil properly AND then follow it up with On the Genealogy of Morals. From what he himself says ‘Thus Spake ...’ is the best account of his thoughts ... I found it too cumbersome and so I’ve been working my way toward it via the route given (which has been extremely insightful for me along side other works from Schiller, Rousseau and others).
The Poetics cracked it all open for me personally, but I’m sure many others find different routes.
The passage strikes me as a bunch of despicable racist garbage. A good example of the confused romantic tendency to grasp at fiction in anxious reaction to the abuses of a decaying Enlightenment ideology.
Quoting David Mo
Doesn't this metaphor, if that's what it is, seem to neglect the fact that the behavior of herd animals is no less driven by "instinct" than is the behavior of predators and scavengers?
Shouldn't we rather be comparing two different sorts of instinct in comparing herd animals with predators and scavengers, even metaphorically?
Does Nietzsche consistently neglect this asymmetry in his racist psychological poetry, or does he straighten it out somewhere?
Quoting David Mo
Does he acknowledge this distinction somewhere? Does he indicate that the term "instinct" has another meaning in ordinary language? Or does the "Nietzschean concept of instinct" seem to conflate the ordinary use with a peculiar use associated with the "will to power"?
Hume, for instance, manages to speak of "instincts" without anything like this sort of confusion.
Quoting David Mo
How does this jive with the historical account presented in the quotation in the initial post, and with your initial reply to that post?
To judge from those two initial passages, it might seem more accurate to say that in Nietzsche's confused racist poetry, terms like "power" and "strong" are predicates (vital forces, or what have you) applicable to individuals as well as to races; that on Nietzsche's account, in the past there were "pure" races distinguishable from each other in such terms, whereas in the present the races are "mixed", so the terms only function to distinguish some individuals from each other; and that Nietzsche was anxious, delusional, and self-flattering enough to hope and even believe that he was the "prophet of a new race", as you put it, that would be distinguishable from other races in such terms.
Perhaps the "Nietzschean concept of race" is as confused as the "Nietzschean concept of instinct", blurring biological, cultural, and personal attributes with such imaginative and passionate poetic abandon as to make a hash of the whole account?
Your comment does not clarify the author of the phrase about culture we were commenting on -either by Nietzsche or yours-, nor Nietzsche's position on the "Jewish question". You seem to be trying to open up another front, but I'm not clear what it is.
My sentence referred to someone's Darwinian interpretation of the distinction between Nietzsche's "two races": the servants and the lords. I tried to explain that Nietzsche did not understand the will to power in terms of the survival of the fittest. Noble men are strong in excellence not in ability for survival.
The rest of your commentary includes too many questions. Could we limit ourselves to one?
It will take some time to pick out the relevant quotes where he talks about the ‘masses’ and the ‘individual’. You need them?
I was being brief. I thought it was reasonably common knowledge that Nietzsche compares the ‘masses’ and the ‘individual’ in terms of how moral attitudes wax and wane? Maybe I was wrong.
Of course, but the sharp criticism against the Jews is at the heart of his writings, while praises are generally ambiguous and circumstantial.
I don't need any quotes, unless we have a disagreement. I'm not always sure with Nietzsche and on some points quotes are welcome.
I strongly disagree. Nobles and servants, Aryans and Jews, French and German... are not the equals. Nietzsche's thought is extremely aristocratic. He is against any idea of equality: Christianity, socialism, anarchism, democracy and so on.
For example, if the Jewish people had any greatness in the remote past, it was when they placed themselves above all others: as Yahweh's chosen people. As soon as they began to spiritualize their language and preach love, the greatness was over.
The heart of his writings are not about Jews? That’s a strange thing to say. He was concerned with morality and it’s cultural development. Europe is Judaeo-Christian. He hangs far more off ancient Greek mythos than anything else.
Like I said above, he hated nationalism.
So why does he call himself "incorrigible European and anti-Semitic" in a letter to his sister Elizabeth (February 7, 1886)?
Quoting I like sushi
The core of Nietzsche's theory is the criticism of morality as an invention of the powerless to undermine the values of the noble. Revenge, not justice, is at the root of morality. The revenge of the weak and spiteful against those who are more noble than they are. And the Jewish people are one of the main responsible for this "poisonous" feat. Read "The Genealogy of Morals",Treatise I, section 7. For example:
On the other hand, the few times that some text is found against the anti-Semites, when and why does he do it?
Franz Overbeck, who was a commentator and close friend of Nietzsche until his last days, explains it very well:
Obsessed with what? I've simply dismantled the idealized vision you had of Nietzsche.
I’m simply not interested in that stuff. I’m fascinated by what he has to say about religion and culture because I’m interested in how Morality relates to reasoning in general and the role of Art in society.
Everyone’s vision of others is ‘idealized’ to some degree. So what? I adore Bjork’s music - that doesn’t wholly define who I am or why I think the way I think.
In terms of aristocrat and plebeian, I read Nietzsche as stating something about intellectualism and superstition in terms of hierarchy. This echoes back to Dionysus and Apollo in ‘The Birth of Tragedy’. You can disagree, no problem. If I’m ‘wrong’ it certainly isn’t because I’m trying to paint him, or anyone else, in a certain light. It is because I take what I can from what I study and develop my own ideas and thoughts rather than faun over some guy who died hundreds or thousands of years ago - that’s for people with less imagination/time/interest.
Quoting I like sushi
If you are interested in the relationship between reason and morality I recommend The Genealogy of Morals. According to Nietzsche, morality is an invention of intelligent men. However, it is not oriented towards justice, but towards resentment and revenge. A hard thesis for good people to swallow.
One day I’ll get back to it, but other books are more pressing tbh.
I don’t generally disagree with your take, but I have my thoughts and you have yours. What I believe your about doesn’t even interest me, and what I believe you’re correct about isn’t exactly my direct interest.
Either way there is some overlapping interest here I think. I’ll get to it in a fresh thread next week hopefully.
Thanks
I might have expected you to reply to my comments by clarifying your interpretation of Nietzsche's use of the terms "instinct" and "race". I didn't think you seemed the sort who's reluctant to expound.
Thus far your interpretation strikes me as informed, articulate, and provocative. I'm no expert in Nietzsche or in anything else, and I'm interested to hear more of what you have to say on the matter.
I'll try to remember to ask you fewer questions going forward. To pursue the one you've selected:
Quoting David Mo
I had asked how your interpretation of Nietzsche at one point in your discussion "jives" with your interpretation of Nietzsche at another point in your discussion. Here are excerpts from the two passages:
PASSAGE ONE:
Quoting David Mo
PASSAGE TWO:
Quoting David Mo
On my reading, the first passage suggests that Nietzsche's talk of "race" does indeed involve some conception of distinct biological lineages or "stocks" -- feel free to supply your favorite term here -- at least some of which he characterized as "races of masters" and "races of servants", exemplified by Aryans and Jews.
The same passage attributes a historical dimension to Nietzsche's conception of race. It seems to suggest that Nietzsche held that we may distinguish biological lineages or stocks of people in the past -- e.g., Aryans and Jews -- in terms of his distinction between "master" and "servant" races.
I presume the "individual and vital forces" indicated in the second passage, including "power", "strong" and "lord" would be attributed to "master races" in the past, and their opposites would be attributed to "servant races" in the past, in keeping with your interpretation of Nietzsche's account. I presume the "racial" traits indicated in the first passage -- "dominant", individualistic", "violent", "instinctive" and their opposites -- are somehow associated with "individual and vital forces" as well as with past biological lineages or stocks, like Aryans and Jews, held by Nietzsche to be distinguishable in terms of such "forces" and "traits", according to your interpretation.
The first passage also seems to instruct that Nietzsche held "these races" no longer "exist in a pure state", as "[h]istory has mixed them up". Which seems to imply that Nietzsche thought they used to "exist in a pure state" before history mixed them up.
Thus far in your account, it seems open to question whether Nietzsche states or suggests anything about whether those traits might become purified again in biological lineages or stocks at some future point in history, for instance by selective breeding, eugenics, or genocide. And it seems open to question whether he thought the "new race" of which he called himself a prophet was destined to be, or had the potential to be, such a "pure" biological lineage.
Perhaps it's open to question whether Nietzsche thought the "purity" of historically (past and possible future) "pure" races was a matter of biology or a matter of culture. Thus far in the discussion it seems he may have poetically conflated biological and cultural factors in his use of terms like "race" and "instinct", which seems perhaps to amplify confusion in his use of such terms.
His account still sounds like despicable racist garbage to me.
Feel free to clarify.
An excellent point. I agree.
Quoting I like sushi
It remains to be seen in our conversation how this attitude you've attributed to Nietzsche is manifest in his views on race.