Nietzsche on Women
After a lonely decade in his mountaintop cave, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra descends from the clouds to reveal the fruits of his meditations to the intellectually impoverished masses. In the section ‘On Little Old and Young Women’ he shares his insights on females:
“Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—that is pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
“A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly [ ... ]
“The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. ‘Behold, just now the world became perfect!’—thus thinks every woman when she obeys out of entire love. And women must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man’s disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.1
Expressing views remarkably similar to Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s (or any other 
‘cultured’ male of the same era), Nietzsche’s comments represent a fairly standard outburst of misogyny. The section ends with one of Nietzsche’s most notorious lines, the frequently cited “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!” It has been argued that this comment refers to the famous photo of Nietzsche and his friends Lou Salomé and Paul Rée (posted here for those who have never seen it before—both of you) in which—shock!—Lou is seen holding the whip. However, even without the ambiguity of this line, the rest of the passage is clear enough about the relative position of women.
Or is it? Other Nietzsche scholars go to great lengths to clear him of misogynism by highlighting the poetic, subjective nature of his work. Take, for example, this apologetic:
Taken out of context, this sounds like Nietzsche is advising that a man should consider women as machines for making babies, and to modern ears this sentence is ugly and daring in its defiance of civility. But the context complicates matters. Whose pregnancy, for example, is being discussed? We know elsewhere that Nietzsche believes that the attraction of women, or of truth, can impregnate man with intellectual curiosity, making a man pregnant with new ideas.2
Granted, at other points in Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche’s trope-drunk alter-ego uses images of fecundity and pregnancy as metaphors for human creativity, but there is absolutely no indication that he is doing so with in ‘On Little Old and Young Women’. The context does not ‘complicate’ anything. The context in fact indicates that the only plausible interpretation is the literal interpretation: women are baby-making machines that are utterly subordinate to the desires and goals of men.
CITATIONS:
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Little Old and Young Women’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufman, in The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Penguin Books, 1954, p.178-9. [Online (different translation) here.]
2. Robert John Ackermann, Nietzsche: A Frenzied Look. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1990, p.123.
Comments
31 Comments so far
I wouldn’t take Ackermann’s line in defending this section of Zarathustra, but I would defend it; it seems quite obvious to me that the little old woman is mocking Zarathustra at the end. “How is it that Zarathustra knows so little of women, and yet is right about them? Is it because with women, all things are possible?” Sounds like a very polite way of largely dismissing Zarathustra’s account, and yet Zarathustra basically accepts her response, and also accepts her “little truth” (the whip thing), which looks like further teasing to me.
This is not to say that Nietzsche did not have unfortunate attitudes regarding women, but with his usual acute self-perception he seems to have recognized that he was not a trustworthy source on that subject, and makes an effort to warn us of that whenever he spouts off on the subject.
“women are baby-making machines that are utterly subordinate to the desires and goals of men.”
It is probable that he said so to make the men rethink their beliefs about women and also to make the women think about their purpose too.
Moreover, he likes using such blatant statement to portray social issues.
Ok, so there’s two possible interpretations of the passage:
(1) Nietzsche, misogynist
(2) Nietzsche, covert women’s rights activist slyly challenging our preconceptions of gender stereotypes by masquerading as a run-of-the-mill misogynist
I don’t see any reason to accept (2) and not take what he says at face value. There is no supporting evidence – merely a highly charitable and unjustifiably complex interpretation – and there are plenty of other places in Nietzsche’s work where he expresses sentiments similar to those above.
And if (2) were true, exactly who would realize what he was getting at? Nietzsche was writing in a fundamentally chauvinistic culture, long before the feminist movement had any impact. It’s hard to imagine any of his contemporaries making the interpretation you do.
I just stumbledupon here, but I like Nietzsche. I like this text some. I think their may be some truth in it, and I would be interested in dissecting and discussing what truth may be found.
What I see here is people only trying to label the passage misogynist (or argue that it is something else entirely) and summarily dismiss it.
That seems in fairly poor taste, and worthless really.
Jesse, if you’d like to dissect it, go ahead. I’d be interested to hear exactly what you think is of merit in a piece of fairly traditional chauvinism. Simply stating that you are inclined to agree without giving any justification is, well, worthless really.
And there is absolutely nothing in ‘bad taste’ about questioning the pronouncements of a prominent and highly influential philosopher. Thinking critically about issues and the exchange of argument and counter-argument are essential parts of what philosophy is. Simply accepting what a philosopher says because you like him or share his prejudices is exactly what philosophy isn’t. It is, in fact, one of the problems this site is trying to draw attention to.
I like Nietzsche too, but that’s no reason to give him a free pass on everything he wrote. (This post, furthermore, barely scratches the surface of the issue of Nietzsche and misogynism.)
[comment deleted because of complete lack of philosophical merit or interest - find somewhere else to air your naked prejudices--CJM]
Nice site. Nietzche from The Gay Science: “I fear that the animals consider man … the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal.” I will conclude from this passage that all men have less rights to existence than non-human animals (no less a ‘literal interpretation’ of that text than the interpretation of the “On little…” passage as meaning Nietzche considered women as baby-making machines completely subordinate to men). The above quote should be under a heading: Nietzche on men (misandroism). I agree with those who say that Nietzche’s subjectivity and emphasis on style make literal interpretations difficult. For example, to take the simple woman/riddle analogy, I interpret it to mean that Nietzche is confused by women (he admits elsewhere that women are more intelligent than men [another gross generalization and blatant instance of man-bashing!!]) and in his experience pregnancy makes women less mysterious (I’m thinking of his drive to understand psychologically). I don’t see how, first of all, this interpretation is any more or less valid than the others, and secondly, how it is hateful. By the way, one more instance of misandry is in the first paragraph quoted above: “man is for woman a means”.
“It’s hard to imagine any of his contemporaries making the interpretation you do.”
Didn’t Nietzsche specifically and repeatedly say he was writing for a future audience?
Sure, he said that, but taking it as proof that he was some type of deep-cover-proto-feminist is, once again, just extravagantly charitable, and seems to originate more from what one wishes to believe rather than what one can reasonably believe, based on the texts.
First of all, I’m sorry for the length of this – seemed to take longer than I thought to get all my thoughts together…
My tuppence on this is a bit of a reiteration of Aaron Boyden’s first point. I am an enormous fan of Nietzsche, but I definately concede that many of his viewpoints on women are a) rather shallow and crude generalisations not worthy of a thinker of his stature and b) yes, in the main, pretty misogynistic and an unfortuanate aspect of his works. The misogyny becomes more virulent in his later
works, possibly due to his frustrations and dissapointments in relationships with women. However, I think that:
a) I agree with Chris Mathews that it is possible and reasonable to say ‘I think Nietzsche is a great philosopher’ and at the same time condemn his more misogynistic comments, which undoubtedly exist.
b) As with many subjects Nietzsche tackles, there is a wealth of variety in his different observations and, while many of his comments on women are drivel, he does also occasionaly make some quite interesting observations – particulaly on the psychology of the ‘battle of the sexes’ and on gender-role differences and performances.
c)Contemporary accounts of Nietzsche have stated, to his defence, that he was always very cordial and respectful to the women he met and they claimed that he listened to their views more intently and with more interest than most other men of the period would.
d) as stated before, Nietzsche at least to his credit had the foresight and modesty to recognise that his views on women were not ‘facts about women’ but rather reflections of his own psychology. If I may quote a reduced part of Beyond Good and Evil:
“In addressing any significant problem an unchangeable ‘That-is-I’ has it’s say; [...] [a thinker can] only discover to the limit what is firmly ‘established’ in his mind about them [...] we see in [these 'convictions'] only footprints on the way to self-knowledge, signposts to the problem that we are – more correctly, to the great stupidity that we are [...]
After paying myself such a generous compliment, perhaps I may be allowed to enunciate some truths about ‘women’, assuming that henceforth people will know from the start how much these are simply – my truths.”
I can’t believe I’m the only one who reads the key sentence from a Darwinian perspective. Look at it again: “Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child.” Notice he says it from the perspective of what the woman wants. and talk of “baby making machines” misses the point unless you conceive of the machine as the one having desire to perform as it was designed. The man’s desire is irrelevant From the point of view of a living organism that wants to replicate itself, the male strategy is sow as many wild oats as possible in the hopes that one or another will take hold and reproduce. Female strategy is exactly the opposite. She has a fixed number of eggs and each replicant (child) comes at a high personal cost and must survive long enough to reproduce. Basic Darwinian theory predicts that a female would be more successful in passing on her genes if she is hardwired to select the mate carefully in a way that makes it likely that HER particular offspring will survive long enough to reproduce. — And yes, I know there is no desire and no strategy in evolution; there is only what successfully reproduces and what does not. I use the terms as shorthand.
So we’re simply slaves to innate Darwinian drives? Does the fact that humans have a strong biological urge to pass on their genes means that men should treat women as playthings and subordinates, and women should regard men as nothing more than sperm donors and bold masters? There’s a considerable problem for deriving prescriptive claims from descriptive ones in this fashion – it’s called the is/ought fallacy. Just because something is so doesn’t mean that it should be so.
How, for example, would you assess the morality of rape from a purely ‘Darwinian perspective’?
p.s. Nietzsche was no Darwinist.
It seems that most of the arguments on this post move between a tenuous attribution to the views of the author – assuming that these are the same over time and can be dissected through his/(their) writing – yet no attempt is made to address the logic that would reveal this; and an attribution of labels, N was an Existentialist, a Darwinist etc. Which, whether correctly applied or not are then used as platforms from whose logic people seek to outline their position, the tail in this case wagging the dog, or indeed: the women holding the whip.
N can be a misogynist and a poet, after all, it is a ‘Man’ who is writing, just because this label has political connotations and is significantly close enough to the border between Power, force and meaning – assuming that we can draw one – to provoke dispute does not mean we should not draw conclusions from it, or isolate it, it place it in a different context. Not to say your arguments are not relevant – to say that would be to undermine mine… – But ’supposing Truth to be a woman” as N does in the very first line in the preface of BGE: “would it not be, that philosophical methods hitherto have proved vastly insufficient for winning a wench?” lamely paraphrased.
I recall that while N was a philologist, he voted to have women included in the works of philology in his department–but the vote came to nil, because other colleagues successfully amassed a majority nay vote.
Curious that we here are so intent on reading in N mere mysogyny when there is in his life an actual positive spin on his writings.
Needless to say, anyone careful, open, and sensitive enough would not willingly engage in such semantic reduction of terms in N’s work, when it is apparent that his writings are truly complex in nature.
G, even IF you were to substantiate that claim, is it really particularly relevant? His voting in favor of female philologists—for whatever reason—absolves him for the numerous misogynistic passages in his later work? Hardly.
And by “semantic reduction” you presumably mean looking for the meaning of his published words? Well then, consider me guilty as charged! You represent another iteration of the empty pretense that the “complex nature” of Nietzsche’s work necessitates we automatically exonerate him of any comments that are—prima facie—offensive, vulgar, stupid, and wrong. That’s not philosophy, it’s zealotry.
Nietzsche himself did not fit into the typical masculine stereotype, and he criticizes social gender constructions of his time. Taken in that context, his “misogynistic” passages take on new meaning. Is he a misogynist, or a critic of social norms? Or both?
For example, “On Female Chastity” (Aphorism 71, Book Two of The Gay Science) he criticizes the education of upper-class women for its contradictions and hypocrisy. It could be read as almost sympathetic.
What can we make of passages such as “On Female Chastity?”
Hi Victoria, here’s the section you mention:
“On female chastity. – There is something quite amazing and monstrous about the education of upper-class women. What could be more paradoxical? All the world is agreed that they are to be brought up as ignorant as possible of erotic matters, and that one has to imbue their souls with a profound sense of shame in such matters until the merest suggestion of such things triggers the most extreme impatience and flight. The ‘honor’ of women really comes into play only here: what else would one not forgive them? But here they are supposed to remain ignorant even in their hearts; they are supposed to have neither eyes nor ears, nor words, nor thoughts for this – their ‘evil’; and mere knowledge is considered evil.”
[Sorry, translator unknown—I dont have a copy of this text at hand and just plucked it from the internets.]
I don’t think this passage really poses too much of a problem. Nietzsche was in many ways a forerunner to Freud in regard to sexuality, and his idiosyncatic version of naturalism would view contemporary sexual norms as merely the poison of Christianity (as evinced above by his reference to the ‘evil’ of sexual knowledge, a clear reference to Christian sexual metaphysics). It would be entirely unsurprising to find him leaning more towards the ‘liberal’ sexual values of the classical world, which differed substantially (to put it mildly). But while we now equate the idea of female sexual liberation with feminist values, there’s no reason you can’t favor more realistic views of sexual education while still regarding females as fundamentally inferior. I therefore don’t see On female chastity as posing any particular difficulty for viewing his other comments on the status of women as misogynistic.
Yes, its relevance is evident in the fact that women were not at that time regarded as competent individuals in academia. N’s support clearly indicates that he more than likely did not think this was the case. His misogyny is put into question on this point here.
But this is not the one and only example.
As far as my comment about “semantic reduction” goes, I meant to emphasize, as in all truly meaningful texts, that there is a web of interrelated meanings, historical underpinnings, and convolutions of thought that are inappropriately ignored by assuming one has a full and complete context that the interpreter then unjustly presumes to be the actual intent of the author. For instance, you use the statement by Zarathustra about women as an example of what N is “really saying”. The book Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a story about a man who changes into his opposite! And need I remark that that quotation you use, as if in condemnation of N “the misogynist”, is in the first part of a four part work?
…
[The second half of this comment devolves into ad hominem attacks and personal abuse and has therefore been deleted - CJM]
Tell me something, are the doctrines of “eternal recurrence” and the “Superman” (expressed in Nietzsche’s work Thus Spake Zarathustra) considered part of the philosophy of Nietzsche or the philosophy of Zarathustra? They’re Nietzsche’s, are they not? It’s just that he uses Zarathustra as his mouthpiece. And as I’ve already commented numerous times, the Zarathustra sections are just some of the misogynistic comments that made throughout his work—comments that only became stronger and more frequent in the works after Zarathustra (see, for example, this work: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01888-7.html )
As for this comment:
“But this is not the one and only example.”
OK, unconvincing and as yet unsubstantiated though that example is, care to say what the others are…?
Does the idea that Nietzsche is being (embarrassingly) reductionist – reducing men into ‘a will to power’ and women to ‘a will to pregnancy’ (probably the most powerful thing most women could do in that context) – have any significance in whether or not he can be considered a misogynist by today’s standards?
Hi, I read something by Nietzsche in college, so my memory is vague. I just had a nagging leftover feeling that he was a misogynist and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t read him though I’ve tried and tried again over the last decade to start. Something just broke through recently though and I started devouring Thus spake Z etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find it fairly fast reading, I was amused and even moved by several passages. Then it starts. The punches and the low blows. Ouch. Guess I was right. I especially “enjoyed” the passage I just read from 14. The Friend , “Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends. (p) Far too long has there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she only knows love. (p) In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.”
Okay, to this point, I could recognize some elements in myself, and though mildly offended at some level, I couldn’t totally disagree. Alas, it continues:
“As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.”
Perhaps in his time this was true but WHOSE FAULT WAS THAT? WHO controlled the reigns, suppressed the education, denied the rights of women? We all know the answer to that, and there are good examples of powerful women who flew under the radar that were definitely NOT cats, birds, or COWS.
Also, he does continue, “As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who of you is capable of friendship?”
a sorry apology in my book, still hanging the crown of men on a laurel branch
well..its an interesting topic.i just wanna suggest Derrida’s perspective about Nietzsche’s way to “use the language”.His deconstruction on Nietzsche’s text is always functional.I agree with him, woman in Nietzsche terminology is so ironic and metaphoric.Nietzsche already sees the language as a metaphore so, 1st better to “understand” what Nietzche “thinks” about the language.
I would have to ponder the intelligence of anyone who can read Nietzsche and think that he is a chauvinist.. Or at the least assume that he or she has not read enough of his work.
Nietzsche seemed chauvinistic or anti-feminist likely because he wrote a lot about the difference between women, and many modern folks like to say that men and women are totally equal. Are they? Of course not.. In terms of citizenship, yes. Human rights, etc… yes, yes, and yes. That’s not what Nietzsche was about. He believed that women, in effect were MORE POWERFUL than men, but not when they tried to behave like a man (the Feminist theory). He thought that women, when they used the gifts that made them splendidly WOMEN (such as beauty, sexuality, sensuality, guile, etc) were the most powerful beings ever created. ‘Wars have been fought over the favor of women…’ he was fond of writing.
So is he a misogynist? No way. He was a bit of a chauvinist sometimes, but he was a man after all. Moreover he emphasized, in straightforward and unblinking logic, that women rule the world because of their femininity. When they try to be men, they fall flat and stupid.
Women are at their best when they are using the qualities that differentiate them from men, not imitating qualities that only men hold. Nietzsche spoke many times of a woman’s power, but it was the power of things that made her WOMAN. I think it’s a fine line, and many get lost when they read one quote and flip out because they think he’s a pig.
Eh, he was a man, after all!
It must be remembered that Nietzsche had a great sense of humor in his writings. Think about the first quote basically he is saying that women are a mystery the only thing about them that is not mysterious is they like a good shag. More to the point he is saying a lot of what Melissa was talking about in particular that men are to women as mere baby factories not the other way around and because of that thinking they wield more power than any man. Some of his thoughts are no different than what would be in a contemporary “Women are from Venus…” book or used be a female comic talking about men. These may have been great thinkers but they did have a sense of humor as well.
You have to study what whips mean historically. The scourge has always represented control through force; however Nietzsche and the overman is all about the destruction of the ego (‘…But the worst enemy you can encounter will always be you…’) in the chapter previous to Little Old and Young Women, (On The Way of the Creator), he clearly demonstrates how idiotic is our concern for others rather than ourselves. This also applies to male-female relationships. Therefore, we can deduce that the scourge mentioned in the following chapter refers to the conquest of the animalistic nature of humans. Pharaohs always held them in their left hand with the sceptre over it with the right hand. I think Lou Salome in the pic with the scourge hints at this control over the bestial nature of man, to give way to the overman. It is exactly like the famous paintings and lithographies of Phyllis riding on Aristotles back. THIS is what he meant.
I think it is entirely possible that Nietzsche’s recondite comments on women remain impenetrable.
Let no one forget Nietzsche spent his childhood in a home dominated by women.
Fascinating back-and-forth between “Chris Mathews” and “victoria.” I might be wrong in assuming that Chris is a man, and Victoria a woman, but my observation might stand even if I’ve got it wrong. It reminds me of several consistent arguments with my girlfriend, Laura, where I will identify some unwittingly gendered dynamic in a movie, book, or work of art, and I will comment on it in a way that is probably consistent with a vague standard of leftist outrage or approval, and then Laura will typically think precisely the opposite; I find the laugh is usually on me.
The point is this: I wonder if the charge of misogyny isn’t often a way for men to identify with the imagined victim, women, and therefore to perpetuate some form of the misogyny itself– either vicariously by feeling offended or simply by assuming the role of ethical watchdog. I can see that this line of reasoning risks confusing the Nietzsche question, akin to saying he respects women enough to say he doesn’t like them, when what we might actually want to know is why he appears not to like them. I also realize that trying to feel the injury of another– or being on the look out for injury in the first place– is not a bad impulse, but in the case of misogyny and its identifiers, I do think it bears some reflection. I also realize that just because my girlfriend doesn’t see misogyny in something doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to or that it’s not there.
By the by, Laura does think Nietzsche is a terrible misogynist, but is not especially outraged by it. She says his life as a “jilted loser” is bound to have some bearing on his philosophy. She also says that the more poignant truth about his misogyny is that the beautiful things Nietzsche says apply equally to men and women, even if he doesn’t realize it, and that he is so ahead of his time in so many ways that his misogyny looks even more dated than in the work of many contemporaries.
I am a woman, and I love Nietzsche. My first experience with his works was Beyond Good & Evil, and there is a large portion of it dedicated to his writings on women. At first I was stunned, even offended. Then I read it again. I have to agree with him on a lot of points about women, and I definitely don’t think he is a chauvinist. He vilifies in one sentence, and praises them in the next. He uses the same judgment of women as he does men- they all have good and bad things about them, thus making them human.
Keep in mind, all of you, the insane employment of sarcasm, parody, and facetiousness that pervades the entire corpus of TSZ. TSZ is meant to mimic the biblical style which, if taken literally at every instance, will contradict itself every which way. In English translation, so much dexterity and subtlety is lost that it nigh impossible to emperically determine where Nietzsche meant XYZ, and where he meant to exact opposite. More important than the sarcasm even is the level of wordplay and punnery— also lost in translation most of the time. These spats over Nietzche’s character multiply like guppies due mostly to our own inability to take translated work with the correct grain of salt… why the late and admirable Robert Solomon so regularly wish that Nietzche ‘…had never written [TSZ} at all”
I think that the problem here comes from translation.
In German, there are two words to say “woman”: die Frau and das Weib. Nietzsche uses das Weib in this text.
The difference is that die Frau refers to the person of feminine gender, while das Weib refers to something between woman and female.
Das Weib basically means the feminine sexuality in its purest form. From that point of view, things start to make sense.
Nietzsche doesn’t reduce women to being baby-makers, he analyzes the sexuality of women. As you can see, he is not really misogynistic.