Sentence Diagraming Exercise

Linked from Essay I, Section 13:
"To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength."

ietzsche writes remarkably long sentences that are sometimes exceedingly difficult to understand. Often the best course of action is to "unpack" the sentence, starting at the root of the sentence and adding, phrase by phrase, the rest of the sentence. Use this example of "diagraming" one of Nietzsche's more complicated sentences to determine the meaning of any of Nietzsche's most convoluted writing.

Step One
Determine the core of the sentence.

"...strength...is just as absurd..."

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Step Two
Place the core of the sentence in context. In this case, Nietzsche speaks to us as readers and uses the implied "you" or "us" as subject, e.g. "[For you or us] to demand..."

"To demand of strength...is just as absurd..."

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Step Three
Begin adding modifying phrases, one at a time. As each modifying phrase is added, determine the meaning of the resulting sentence or sub sentence.

"To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength,...is just as absurd..."

"To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength,...is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength."

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Step Four
Finish adding the rest of the sentence. The result should be that you've broken down and understood each segment of the sentence and can now determine the overall meaning of the entire sentence within its appropriate context.

"To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength."

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Step Five
Analyze and synthesize another unwieldy sentence on your own. Take this sentence from Essay II as an example.

"In this physical cruelty there resides a madness of the will which is absolutely unexampled: the will of man to find himself guilty and reprehensible to a degree that can never be atoned for; his will to think himself punished without any possibility of the punishment becoming equal to the guilt; his will to infect and poison the fundamental ground of things with the problem of punishment and guilt so as to cut off once and for all his own exit from this labyrinth of "fixed ideas"; his will to erect an ideal - that of the "holy God" - and in the face of it to feel the palpable certainty of his own absolute unworthiness."

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