Pale Criminal Nietzsche Quotes

Now, the fact that Nietzsche, after the chapter about "Delights and Passions," arrives at the chapter or the stage of "The Pale Criminal" is not abnormal in itself, but perfectly normal; for if one follows the path of passion one will surely come to the place where one's passion becomes abnormal, asocial or criminal, and that is a quality which is in everybody. Therefore, one says, principiis obsta, resist delights and passions, resist in the beginning before it is too late, don't have passions, it is not good taste, it is bad form. The deeper reason is that if one slips too far into such flames, one is sure to land in criminality. But how can you live and have no passion-for then you would escape suffering? Nobody can escape suffering, and to try to escape passion is to try to escape suffering. But as you cannot escape suffering you cannot escape passion; you will suffer from passion either directly or indirectly, and it is much better to suffer directly because indirect suffering has no merit. It is exactly as if nothing has happened. So the indirect suffering in a neurosis has no moral merit. Years lost in neurosis are just lost, without gain. But if you suffer directly and you know for what you suffer, that is never lost. Therefore, Christ said that if you know what you are doing you are blessed, but if you don't know you are cursed.? For then it is a neurosis. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 463-464)

Now he comes to the explanation of the Pale Criminal; hitherto he speaks simply of the criminal. The paleness comes from the fact that the man was made pale by an idea; he begins to think over what he has done, and he gives it a name. You remember we came across this idea before; it was represented as a particular mistake to give a name to your virtues. Of course, unavoidably you will do so; you don't live your virtues simply as the recognition of an indescribable something about yourself which has value, but say it is this or that, and so you give it a name and make it exclusive and cause trouble-quarrels, conflicts between duties and between virtues. While if you have not given it a name, you will have retained the value. So you cause a conflict by giving names, but one cannot see how to do otherwise. The criminal has to give it a name, then. He adopts an idea about his deed and says he has done so and so, and then cannot stand it because he sees himself with ten thousand pairs of eyes. For a name is a collective thing, a word in everybody's mouth. He has heard that word from ten thousand other mouths already; when he says to himself that he has committed a murder, he sees it in printed letters in the newspaper, and what he has done is just that awful thing which is called murder. While if he did not give it a name, it would have remained his individual deed, his individual experience, which is not expressed by the collective noun murder. Such a criminal usually says: "I just beat him over the head, or "I put a knife into him," or "I wanted to tell him something and I put a bullet into him, and afterwards they said he was dead." You see, it was an individual series of events which were not named. Even the premeditated murder is very often accounted for in such a way: "I simply had to give that fellow something to make him quiet because I wanted to get at such and such a thing; naturally I had to shove him aside. And then it turned out that he was dead." That is the way such people use a revolver-as a means to change something. It is a sort of aftereffect or a concomitant circumstance that a corpse was left. How awkward! That it is murder only dawns upon them a long time afterwards when they are told. Then they realize it and get pale, but as long as somebody simply has been removed, well, it was awkward that he was found afterwards with a fractured skull, but that does not make one pale: it is simply regrettable. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 469-470). Princeton University Press.

and is taken home and has rough, violent sex (or even tender, caring sex), then what the hell does she expect?” In other words, I could have told her, in more philosophical terms, that she was Nietzsche’s “pale criminal”—the person who at one moment dares to break the sacred law and at the next shrinks from paying the price.

Then here is a question by Mrs. Baynes: "There seems to be a growing conviction in our world that it is heroic to murder for the sake of the cause one is serving, and lily-livered to be held back by the thought of what that means. Has the pathological element in Nietzsche's idea of the pale criminal helped to foster this point of view?" Well, it is generally said that Nietzsche was at the bottom of the world war and the new revolution in Germany, and so on. Nietzsche himself would be highly astonished to hear such news. He surely never dreamt that he would be called the father of all this modern political evil. That really comes more from the misunderstanding to which Nietzsche is exposed. For he made one considerable mistake which of course would not be generally considered a mistake. But I call it a mistake that he ever published Zarathustra. That is a book which ought not to be published; it should be reserved for people who have undergone a very careful training in the psychology of the unconscious. Only then, having given evidence of not being overthrown by what the unconscious occasionally says, should people have access to the book. For in Zarathustra we have to deal with a partial revelation of the unconscious. It is full of inspiration, of the immediate manifestation of the unconscious, and therefore should be read with due preparation, with due knowledge of the style and the intentions of the unconscious. If a man reads Zarathustra unprepared, with all the naive presuppositions of our actual civilization, he must necessarily draw wrong conclusions as to the meaning of the "Superman," "the Blond Beast," "the Pale Criminal," and so on. And such people will surely draw such conclusions as murder-for-the-sake-of-the-cause. Many suicides have felt themselves justified by Zarathustra — as any damned nonsense can be justified by Zarathustra. So it is generally assumed that Nietzsche is at the bottom of a whole host of evils on account of his immoral teaching, while as a matter of fact, Nietzsche himself and his teaching are exceedingly moral, but only to people who really understand how to read it. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 475-476). Princeton University Press.

Whoever is on the level of the personal unconscious has still a sort of luminosity on top from the sun, but down below it is all moonshine: treacherous, poisonous, evil, not to be trusted. And if you expose this thing on a higher level, you are not only exposed but a victim also. That is what Nietzsche does, not realizing at all. He is quite naive about it: to produce that chapter about the Pale Criminal is really a tremendous naivete. And probably you have noticed that it is profoundly disturbing because it is true, but it should not be told in the daylight, but only told in the night under the seal of secrecy. This idea was by no means strange to Nietzsche. In another place he speaks of the secret teaching in the temples, and how the initiants were put through many degrees in their initiation, harder and harder, always more cruel and more difficult, complete abnegation and mortification and God knows what; and then comes the last ceremony where the grand master himself receives the initiant who of course expects something extraordinary. But the grand master says, "Everything is allowed. Before, everything was forbidden but now everything is allowed." And that means complete licentiousness. This is of course a legend, but it has a kernel of truth: namely, it reverses the values of consciousness, exchanges the values of consciousness for their opposite, absolute shadow. Of course, for that to be said on the surface is criminal, but five hundred or a thousand meters down in the depths, it is a truth. But we cannot imagine what kind of truth it is because we don't know how things look at that depth; it is a truth of the darkness. There are really organized mysteries in which the ultimate teaching is of such a nature; therefore the principle of these mysteries — I am now quoting facts, this is not my imagination — is: Gloria dei est celare verbum, meaning, it is the glory of God to conceal the word. That is the motto of the highest degree of Knights Templars, a contradiction of the more Christian ideas in the lower stages. We say the glory of God is to preach the word; our mysteries are called sacramenta, which means the mysteries of the divine word, and to preach the word is our duty. Yet in the highest degree of initiation it is the glory of God to hide the word. And why? Because, bring it up and the people will be dumbfounded — and worse, they will be misled. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 482-483). Princeton University Press.