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In the book The Dawn of Day, Aphorism 69, Nietzsche said

Inimitable.—There is an enormous strain and distance between envy and friendship, between self-contempt and pride: the Greek lived in the former, the Christian in the latter.

In what ways did the Greeks live with envy and friendship? In what ways did Christians live with self-contempt and pride?

Is it possible that he meant the Greeks lived with envy and self-contempt? (And thus the Christians lived with friendship and pride?)

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    After running the German text through google translate, it seems to me that Nietzsche was saying that both Greeks and Christians were psychologically conflicted like no other cultures. The Greeks conflicted between envy and friendship. The Christians conflicted between self-contempt and pride.
    – Bread
    Nov 12, 2018 at 1:38

2 Answers 2

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Building on the answer of @FrankHubeny, there is one very important point to be made:

In the original, there are words "h i g h l i g h t e d" with spaces. Thus, the correct and full translation of the aphorism reads (with emphases):

Inimitable. — There is an enormous suspense and span between envy and friendship, between self-contempt and pride: the Greek lived in the former, the Christian in the latter.

Mind that I rather use "suspense" for "Spannung" since it can mean "strain", but only in mechanical contexts. The slightly more equivocal translation would be the plain "tension" and this probably transports the ambiguity of the original best but I wanted to induce a counter-intuition to the original translation here. And I use "span" for "Spannweite" since for a native speaker it intuitively hints at the variance and variety indicated. Also, "Spannung" and "Spannweite" are obviously used for rhetorical means, i.e. as a wordplay, and should not necessarily be translated literally, i.e. in mechanical and spatial terms, here.

Thus, Nietzsche indicates that the Greek lived between the extremes of envy and friendship, while the Christians lived between the extremes of self-contempt and pride, as their cultural cornerstones: Friendship and self-contempt* are the corresponding cultural/ethical ideals while envy and pride are their opposites, i.e. the corresponding paths to evil. If you look at ethical writings from both traditions, his observation has some merit.

Additionally, he points out that the span in between these extremes is wide and diverse enough to accommodate a complete cultural spectrum in both cases, i.e. they should not be considered as either-or. This is a pretty Aristotelean point he is making here: The world is not black and white and life happens in shades of grey (pun intended), i.e. between "ideal" good and "ideal" evil.

*Please let us not delve into discussions about how self-contempt can never be the Christian ideal. Nietzsche was not fond of Christian dogma and it indeed is well in-character for him to say such things.

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This is a partial answer.

Here is an image of the German text of Aphorism 69 from the 1887 edition in the Internet Archive:

enter image description here

Consider the second question:

Is it possible that he meant the Greeks lived with envy and self-contempt? (And thus the Christians lived with friendship and pride?)

Nietschze describes the Greeks as living "zwischen Neid und Freundschaft" (Google Translate: "between envy and friendship") and the Christians as living "zwischen Selbstverachtung un Stolz" (Google Translate: "between self-contempt and pride").

Because the translations agree it is not immediately evident that the translator did not express what Nietzsche actually meant.

Consider the first question:

In what ways did the Greeks live with envy and friendship? In what ways did Christians live with self-contempt and pride?

Regardless of whether we are talking about Greeks or Christians, one can see the likelihood of an "enormous strain and distance" between people experiencing both "envy and friendship". Imagine the personal strain of having a friend whom one also envied.

Similarly, regardless of whether we are talking about Greeks or Christians, there would likely be an "enormous strain and distance" between people experiencing both "self-contempt and pride". Imagine trying to be proud of oneself when one also felt self-contempt.

However, it is easier to see "envy and self-contempt" or "friendship and pride" going together. But that does not appear to be what Nietzsche is trying to say.

I will not attempt to speculate on whether Nietzsche is right or not, or why he wants to make this assertion, about either Greeks or Christians. Hence the partial nature of this answer.


Reference

Nietzsche, F. Morgenrothe. 1887 Internet Archive: https://ia802605.us.archive.org/22/items/morgenrthegedan00nietgoog/morgenrthegedan00nietgoog.pdf

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