# Why Nietzsche's giving need not refute his egoism

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH03.P020](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P020/#char=1013,1054): "To preach egoism is to practise altruism."

The joke assumes that helping another person necessarily abandons egoism. Nietzsche's own distinction is different. In *Beyond Good and Evil* (first published 1886), §260 describes noble giving and assistance as expressions of overflowing power rather than pity; §265 makes reciprocal respect among equals an expression of egoism itself. Giving instruction could therefore count as self-expression or an assertion of power within his scheme, without becoming the altruism Chesterton opposes to it. [See §§260 and 265](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4363/pg4363-images.html).

These passages do not prove Nietzsche's ethics sound. They show why the bare fact of publishing a teaching does not establish Chesterton's proposed contradiction. His stronger underlying challenge concerns the teacher's relationship to an audience: why seek to improve others if their good has no independent claim? Nietzsche has resources for answering, however objectionable one finds their hierarchical basis. The inspected English witness is Helen Zimmern's translation as reproduced from the 1909–1913 *Complete Works* in Gutenberg; its wording should not be presented as an English edition available to Chesterton in 1908, or as evidence of which translation he read.

## Sources

- [Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Helen Zimmern, Project Gutenberg transcription](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4363/pg4363-images.html), Transcriber's edition note; chapter IX, §§260 and 265

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