Inspiration

The genre of the aphorism was already well established at the time of writing this book: in the German tradition, Nietzsche's most important predecessor was a figure of the Enlightenment, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whose writing Nietzsche greatly admired.^[7]: xv Nietzsche's work is indebted also to Schopenhauer's, particularly his Aphorisms for Practical Wisdom (1851). Above all else is the "debt to the French tradition of the aphorism – for Nietzsche's work is a deliberate turn westward".^[7]: xv Nietzsche cites the French aphorists Jean de La Bruyère and Prosper Mérimée, and in Aphorism 221 celebrates Voltaire.

At the beginning of the second section, Nietzsche mentions La Rochefoucauld—named here as a model, the epitome of the aphorist—and it is known that Nietzsche had a copy of La Rochefoucauld's Sentences et maximes (1665) in his library. He had been reading it shortly before beginning to write Human, All Too Human, on the train ride to Sorrento. More than that of the other French aphorists mentioned, it is La Rochefoucauld's work that lies behind that of Nietzsche.^{[citation needed]}

Of First and Last Things

In this first section, Nietzsche deals with metaphysics, specifically its origins as relating to dreams, the dissatisfaction with oneself, and language as well.

On the History of Moral Feelings

This section, named in honor of his friend Paul Rée's On the Origin of Moral Sensations, Nietzsche challenges the Christian idea of good and evil,^[8] as it was philosophized by Arthur Schopenhauer.

At the waterfall. When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient, calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting man's delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculable mechanism.^[9]

From the Soul of Artists and Writers

Nietzsche uses this section to denounce the idea of divine inspiration in art, claiming that great art is the result of hard work, not a higher power or 'genius'.^[10] This can be interpreted as a veiled attack on his former friend Wagner (a strong believer in genius), though Nietzsche never mentions him by name, instead simply using the term 'the artist'.^[11]

Signs of Higher and Lower Culture

Here, Nietzsche criticizes Charles Darwin, as he frequently does, for being naive and derivative of Thomas Hobbes and early English economists, as well as for being without an account of life from the 'inside'. Consider, in this light, Darwin's own introduction to the first edition of Origin; also Nietzsche's critique to the effect that Darwinism, as typically understood, is trading in a new version of the Providential:

Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or 'moral' loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man may see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.^[12]

Nietzsche writes of the 'free spirit' or 'free thinker' (German: freigeist), and his role in society;^[13] a sort of proto-Übermensch, forming the basis of a concept he extensively explores in his later work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A free spirit is one who goes against the herd, and "onwards along the path of wisdom" in order to better society.^[14] 'Better', for Nietzsche, appears to mean ordered toward the production of rare genius and is hardly to be confused with what 'a newspaper reader' as Nietzsche might put it, would expect. The essential thing to keep in mind in considering Zarathustra, in particular, is that Nietzsche presents Zarathustra as failing.

Man in Society and Women and Child

These two sections are made up of very short aphorisms on men's, women's and the child's nature or their 'evolution' in Nietzsche's subtle, anti-Darwinian sense. Scholar Ruth Abbey has commented of works from Nietzsche's 'middle period' that, "Contrary to the common classification of Nietzsche as a misogynist, the works of the middle period do not openly denigrate or dismiss women... Nietzsche's views on women were at this time more nuanced and less vitriolic than they became".^[15] In this section, Nietzsche remarks that the perfect woman is a "higher type of human being than the perfect man: also something much rarer".

Man Alone with Himself

Like sections six and seven, Nietzsche's aphorisms here are mostly short, but also poetic and at times could be interpreted as semi-autobiographical, in anticipation of the next volumes: "He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer".^[16]

Nietzsche also distinguishes the obscurantism of the metaphysicians and theologians from the more subtle obscurantism of Kant's critical philosophy and modern philosophical skepticism, claiming that obscurantism is that which obscures existence rather than obscures ideas alone: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence".^[17]

Oehler and Nazism

Most notoriously, Human, All Too Human was used by archivist Max Oehler, a strong supporter of Hitler, as supposed evidence of Nietzsche's support for nationalism and anti-Semitism, both of which he writes against. Oehler wrote an entire book, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Deutsche Zukunft ('Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Future'), dealing with Nietzsche and his connection to nationalism (specifically National Socialism) and anti-Semitism, using quotes from Human, All Too Human, though out of context.^[20] Nietzsche would speak against anti-Semitism in other works including Thus Spoke Zarathustra and, most strongly, in The Antichrist:^[21] "An anti-Semite is certainly not any more decent because he lies as a matter of principle".^[22] In Zarathustra, Nietzsche set Wagner up as a straw man, lampooning his anti-Semitism in the process.

Oehler also had control of Nietzsche's archive during the Nazis' rule, which he shared with Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a Hitler supporter herself, until her death, when he took it over. It was not until much of Walter Kaufmann's work in the 1950s through the 1970s that Nietzsche was able to shed this connection with nationalism and anti-Semitism.