Tags / 4 quotes from 2 sources
#mankind
Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits
Against Kantian's universal rule of conduct
The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individual such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evinces much simplicity—as if any individual could determine off hand what course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what course of…
each individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own personality
Now, the great majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe, to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own personality like these exceptions: everything…
Everything is necessity—so says the new knowledge: and this knowledge is itself necessity. All is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way to insight into this guiltlessness.
The sun of a new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls of those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever, and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom. Everything is necessity—so says the new knowledge: and…
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Nominalists and realists on human nature
This was the view of the nominalist philosophers of the late Middle Ages, who strongly opposed the then-called realists for maintaining that such entities as Mankind or Human Nature were real “substances” underlying the “accidents” of particular men and women. Every individual…