Unpersuaded by the determining influence of environmental factors, such as sunlight, upon the production of melanin and ignorant of genetics, Nietzsche has a rather outlandish explanation for variations in human skin colour: starting from the assumption that the primal colour of man "would probably have been a brownish-grey", he suggests that blackness is the evolutionary result of anger and whiteness the result of fear.
Nietzsche thus speculates that racial difference is psychological in origin. "Could it perhaps not be", he muses, that blackness is the "ultimate effect of frequent attacks of rage (and undercurrents of blood beneath the skin) accumulated over thousands of years", whilst, on the other hand, "an equally frequent terror and growing pallid has finally resulted in white skin?"
Section 241 of Daybreak would be embarrassing enough for readers and admirers of Nietzsche if this was all that he said. But, unfortunately, there's more - and idiosyncratic philosophizing on human biodiversity seems to betray (as is so often the case) an inherent racism. For Nietzsche goes on to explicitly link fearful white timidity to intelligence and violent black fury to animality.
However, before Nietzsche is once more vilified as a fascist and critical opprobrium again directed towards his writing, it should be recalled that, for Nietzsche, cleverness is a trait he often associates with slave morality and men of ressentiment. Nobility, in contrast, is distinctly bestial in character and frenzied fits of passion are to be admired as a sign of underlying health and vitality.
Thus, if Nietzsche seems to reinforce the classical ideal that equates what is good with fairness of complexion and what is bad with darkness of hair and skin, his notorious concept of the blond beast doesn't merely refer us to blue-eyed Europeans, but equally to those non-white peoples who also "enjoy freedom from every social constraint" and the good conscience of the wild animal.
In sum: when it comes to the question of race (as with the question of woman), Nietzsche is a complex, challenging, and controversial thinker whose work continues to disturb because it so aggressively refuses to conform with the moral and political standards and expectations of liberal humanism. Ultimately, he doesn't seek to enlighten, but to provoke.
In sum: when it comes to the question of race (as with the question of woman), Nietzsche is a complex, challenging, and controversial thinker whose work continues to disturb because it so aggressively refuses to conform with the moral and political standards and expectations of liberal humanism. Ultimately, he doesn't seek to enlighten, but to provoke.
See: Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), IV. 241 and On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), I. 11.
