The Dawn of Day
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~100,000 words · 477 passages
Cite this work
- APANietzsche. (n.d.). The Dawn of Day. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-dawn-of-day
- MLANietzsche. The Dawn of Day. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-dawn-of-day.
- ChicagoNietzsche. The Dawn of Day. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-dawn-of-day.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Daybreak (1881): the campaign against morality, conducted slowly and without shouting.
Context and history
Nietzsche called it the book of the 'yes' before the great 'no's. Here he does not destroy morality, he undermines it: he shows that the feelings we take to be purest have a history and interests behind them. The most underrated of his books. English translation from the complete edition edited by Oscar Levy (1909-1913), the one in the public domain. It is over a century old and it shows. The original is GERMAN and citation should follow the original, but of this work only the translation is here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
already laid in ruins? Oh, how wrong is the answer which, even in our own day, rolls glibly off the tongue when this question is asked: “Because they have all neglected the prerequisite, the examination of the foundation, a critique of all reason”—that fatal answer made by Kant, who has certainly not thereby attracted us modern philosophers to firmer and less treacherous ground! (and, one may ask apropos of this, was it not rather strange to demand that an instrument should criticise its own value and effectiveness? that the intellect itself should “recognise” its own worth, power, and limits? was it not even just a little ridiculous?) The right answer would rather have been, that all philosophers, including Kant himself were building under the seductive influence of morality—that they aimed at certainty and “truth” only in appearance; but that in reality their attention was directed towards “_majestic moral edifices_,” to use once more Kant’s innocent mode of expression, who deems it his “less brilliant, but not undeserving” task and work “to level the ground and prepare a solid foundation for the erection of those majestic moral edifices” (_Critique of Pure Reason_, ii. 257). Alas! He did not succeed in his aim, quite the contrary—as we must acknowledge to-day. With this exalted aim, Kant was merely a true son of his century, which more than any other may justly be called the century of exaltation: and this he fortunately continued to be in respect to the more valuable side of this century (with that solid piece of sensuality, for example, which he introduced into his theory of knowledge). He, too, had been bitten by the moral tarantula, Rousseau; he, too, felt weighing on his soul that moral fanaticism of which another disciple of Rousseau’s, Robespierre, felt and proclaimed himself to be the executor: _de fonder sur la terre l’empire de la sagesse, de la justice, et de la vertu_. (Speech of June 4th, 1794.…