74 Nietzsche"bright lights" (1,65; BT% 9) in the dark night of the tragic sense of
being alive.
If happiness and freedom of the greatest possible number are given
higher priority, Nietzsche claimed, the result is a democratic culture in
which mass taste triumphs. The orientation of a democratic state to
comprehensive welfare, human dignity, freedom, egalitarian justice, and
protection of the weak impedes any prospects for development of great
personalities. The "bright lights" vanish from history and along with
them any last vestige of meaning.
In his quest to defend aesthetic significance in history, Nietzsche
assailed democracy as far back as the early 1870s, even before his shrill
attacks on the "complete appeasement of the democratic herd animal"
(11,587; WP% 125) some years later. Nietzsche considered the ancient
Greek slaveholder society the paragon of culture for the very reason
that it disallowed concessions to the "democratic herd animal." He
extolled antiquity for being honest enough not to have covered up the
terrible foundation from which its blossom grew. The ancient Greeks
freely confessed to the need for slaves. We can certainly find evidence in
Plato and Aristode just how staunchly and aggressively the need for slav-
ery was defended in the name of the continued existence of culture. Just
as people need brains and brawn, Nietzsche argued, society needs the
hardworking hands of laborers for a privileged class, allowing that class
"to engender and fulfill a new world of needs" (1,766; TGS). Slave soci-
ety is an especially crass example of how refinement and culture rest on
an "awful premise. In order to have a broad, deep and fertile soil for
artistic development, the overwhelming majority must be slavishly sub-
jected to the necessities of life in order to serve a minority beyond the
measure of its individual needs" (1,767; TGS). More recent eras have
glorified the world of work, but glorification is self-deception, because
even the "terminological fallacy" of the "dignity of work" does not alter
anything in the fundamental injustice of life, which metes out mechani-
cal work to some and creative activity to the more highly gifted. Slave
societies were brutally frank about their inequities, whereas our modern