Index
Twilight of the Idols
On the Genealogy of Morals
"Language is the Problem"
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Gay Science
The Birth of Tragedy and Wagner in Bayreuth
By April of 1888, Nietzsche had established himself in Turin, which became his last creative home. Twilight of the Idols was the second work finished this year. He worked on it through the summer of 1888 and made brief additions and changes as late as September. While it was printed during this period, it was not published until the following year, after Nietzsche had suffered his mental collapse. It is the last work that Nietzsche saw through the whole process. Subtitled "How to Philosophize with a Hammer," the book reveals its chief purpose as a "declaration of war" --- a hammering on all the idols of our lives so that we can hear their emptiness. Little of this effort is new but it is a good opportunity to reflect on Nietzsche's positions in their final form. The style departs from his most recent focused works and is more like a "conversation" covering all the issues that have interested him throughout his career.
Socrates and his student, Plato, have not been forgotten! The ugly Socrates is the first to receive Nietzsche's hammer --- appropriately so? After all, he is the idol of Western philosophy. To what does Nietzsche refer his strong objections? It would seem to be Socrates's elevation of reason (dialectics) above all else and, subsequently, the formula for "the morality of improvement," reason = virtue = happiness. Precisely that which Socrates and Plato elevated as an attack on decadence (a declining Athens) leads us into yet a different form of decline. In the core of Nietzsche's objection is the central idea that "to have to combat one's instincts . . . is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one." It is to Socrates and Plato that we owe the idea of "Platonic love" --- that notion of a love that stares through and past its "object" into the eternity of Ideals and misses, therewith, both the erotic energy of the lover and the true ownership of beauty by the beloved. Everything that is vivid but perishable is denied in favor of the Ideal. Life itself is viewed in a bizarrely negative cast, as "embodied" life, hence affirming that real life is outside of the realm of appearance. All life is lived, therefore, in a struggle to connect with what is not appearance, what is deemed real. The dying Socrates has no regrets and looks back at "life" as an illness.
Is this also where ressentiment begins? Is Socrates also waging war on the decadent aristocrats of his time? Quite intentionally making them look small in the cross-hairs of his dialectical scrutiny? Look at the charges against Socrates and look at his Apology.
Ironically, this is where Western philosophy begins its run of more than two thousand years. The love of wisdom becomes fixed to the love of reason and the course of reason is mapped toward being as the denial of becoming. This is no mere "reasoned" outcome; this is the placement of fundamental value on one thing or another. Reality must be something that we do not see and that lies (causally) behind it all. Reason becomes the sole access to being and life is to be seated in being rather than in becoming. But if life itself lies in being, human behavior can only be guided by reason. The instincts which carry us through the realm of becoming must be combated and eliminated so that we are free to perform in accord with being. "Virtue" retires from the realm of individual strengths to be reified as the ideal other-worldly formulae. Happiness is a matter of living contentedly in a world of our rational creation outside the hustle and bustle of the world of Heraclitus.
Were these wise choices? The question means that philosophy itself cannot have died in Athens (an early death indeed) and that the love of wisdom remains possible, even though Western thinkers may have been on the wrong track for all these years. The alliance with Christianity was, of course, a catastrophic coincidence of mind, reifying being in God and giving God the overwhelming power to assail instinct from within. "Life is at an end," Nietzsche says, "where the 'kingdom of God' begins." Can life and wisdom prevail? This, clearly, is Nietzsche's quest.
[It is interesting to consider why science occasionally rubs elbows with Christianity in Nietzsche's mind. In fact, there is considerable similarity between the two, yet there is a side of science that seems "redeemable" and that may be what Nietzsche celebrated in his Gay Science. Christianity and science have always been strongly at odds in the social realm. Perhaps this indicates that they compete for the same stakes. Both are strongly metaphysical; both are reasoned through; both are life denying in Nietzsche's sense. Individuality is negated in both visions, yet in oddly opposing ways. While the individual remains within Christianity, he/she is belittled to the dimension of a mere target of God's wrath so life itself declines into nihilism. In science, the individual gets completely disassembled into mass and energy and remains only as a sort of virtual entity of no genuine importance. It was this state of affairs that European Existentialists popularized as the absurd. But science, unlike Christianity, does not have to be metaphysical. A life of self-honesty can begin where we accept ourselves in becoming and shun escape into other worlds.]
Outside of the overt practices of religion or modern science, we continue to make a number of rationalizations or reasonings that are thematically related to the ultimate "problem of Socrates." Language itself defeats us. Nietzsche explores these as "Four Great Errors."
To escape these fateful rationalizations, means to invent new languages and, hence, new ways of thinking about ourselves. We must remain faithful to the realm of becoming and purge thought of illusory being. "The concept 'God' has hitherto been the greatest objection to existence. . . We deny God; in denying God, we deny accountability: only by doing that do we redeem the world." The challenge, of course, is meeting questions about what life will be without accountability, purpose, etc. We "social animals" have made our home place in such concepts; how will we survive without them?
[Freud (Civilization and Its Discontents) seems to have assumed that we cannot avoid harsh repression of instinctual energy if we are to remain civilized. Herbert Marcuse, on the other hand, (Eros and Civilization) pleased a generation of "flower children" by asserting that erotic energies could be variously self-sublimated without harsh repression. Life can be happy and yet cultivated. In a way, Freud set himself up for this problem by splitting eros and thanatos and using the destructive force, thanatos, to effect repression. Hence, repression would always have to cause unhappiness and you couldn't have re-direction of instinctual energy without pain. Nietzsche's single concept of the will to power enables "sublimation" in diverse directions and forms so long as we have broken down the barriers that attempt to turn all instinctual energies inward onto ourselves. Thus, we find Nietzsche easily suggesting ("Expeditions . . .", #8) that "for art to exist . . . a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication." And he sees "above all, the intoxication of sexual excitement." Certainly, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Pablo Picasso couldn't disagree. What is interesting in this is that Nietzsche sees no problem with assuming that energy can be transformed in many different ways and directions to build a happily cultivated life. It is the metaphysical monsters, the idols, that inhibit this and, ultimately, deny life.]
Did Nietzsche believe that embrace of becoming and abandonment of the moralistic slaughter of instinct would produce an uncivilized race? Heraclitus himself seems to have been a very noble character and no savage. Perhaps Nietzsche's chapter on the Germans is most indicative. His appeal here is for real education and not for no education. Just as he believes in the decadence of German society and its educational system, he clearly believes in the possibility of true education replacing it. And what would true education be? Three tasks of education: to see, to think, and to speak and write. These are probably not dissimilar to what we might have come up with ourselves. As always, the issue for Nietzsche is not in the affirmation but rather in the critique. Do we really do these things in the present system at all?! Consider also his comments on freedom (#38) and modernity (#39). Everywhere the individual has been lost. In a central sense, what civilization has come to mean is a "social system" which is an "alienated" structure in Marx's sense. That is, the individual-in-society has allowed most of his/her power to be taken over by built-in structures of society. Society (poorly) exercises the powers that only humans should. The individual's stance, thus, is to sit back and expect. [This is very close to Ortega's theme in Revolt of the Masses --- that the true problem of European modernity is that fact that people no longer understand what it takes to build the great works of civilization and, instead, simply avail themselves of everything as though such fruits grew naturally on trees.] Nietzsche's "morality" is first of all a restoration of individual activity, a destruction of modern alienation that has made humans into house pets. "The free man is a warrior." Why? Because to be free means to step outside of every way that we have hitherto defined safety, hence, to take risks of self-assertion and to try one's personal strength.
Take note of this. "In Germany they even have phrase-books for the use of lovers, and it will end with lovers sitting together talking anonymously. In fact, there are hand-books for everything, and very soon education, all the world over, will consist in learning a greater or lesser number of comments by heart, and people will excel according to their capacity for singling out the various facts like a printer singling out the letters, but completely ignorant of the meaning of anything. Thus our own age is essentially one of understanding, and on the average, perhaps, more knowledgeable than any former generation, but it is without passion." And "the life of an individual without passion is not the development of a self-revealing principle. On the contrary, his inner life is something hurrying along, always on the move and always hurrying to do something 'on principle'. A principle, in that sense, becomes a monstrous something or other, an abstraction, just like the public." Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (1846).
Nietzsche's productivity was increasing at a phenomenal rate throughout this period. In 1887, he finished On the Genealogy of Morals, and finally, in 1888, he finished no less than five books --- The Wagner Case, The Antichrist, The Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, and Dionysus Dithyrambs. His correspondence throughout the period speaks of his bad health and the often intricate strategies he had concocted --- particular cities, seasons, restaurants, hotels, etc. --- to improve himself. He was acutely aware of the fact that his health inhibited his work. He also discussed at some length his various projects of re-publishing his early works, with long interpretive prefaces. In a letter to Franz Overbeck (dated March 24, 1887, Nice) he shared the "comic fact" that "I have an 'influence,' very subterranean to be sure. I enjoy a strange and almost mysterious respect among all radical parties." But then he goes on, "everything in my life is so uncertain and shaky, and always this horrible health of mine! On the other hand, there is a hundred weight of this need pressing upon me --- to create a coherent structure of thought during the next few years --- and for this I need five or six preconditions, all of which seem to be missing now or unattainable."
By the summer of 1888, Nietzsche's mind began to break. His appearance began to drag and his letters began to show some incoherence. In the first few days of January 1889, he sent off a burst of terse notes to his oldest and best friends --- to Cosima Wagner, "Ariadne, I love you." (signed "Dionysus"); to Franz Overbeck, "Although till now you have had little faith in my ability to remain solvent, I still hope to prove that I am a person who pays his debts. --- For example, my debts to you both . . . I am just having all anti-semites shot." (signed "Dionysus"); and to Jakob Burckhardt, "Actually, I would much rather be a Basle professor than God; but I have not ventured to carry my private egoism so far as to omit creating the world on his account." (signed "Your Nietzsche") On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche wandered into a square in Turin, Italy, and embraced a mistreated horse, pulling a public conveyance. It is not clear whether the horse had fallen, but it is clear that Nietzsche fell and momentarily lost consciousness. His lifelong friend Overbeck rushed to rescue him and conveyed him, in a state of complete mental collapse and incoherence, to Basel and then to his mother, in Naumburg. Nietzsche's care eventually fell to his sister (after his mother's death in 1897) and he lived with her until his own death on August 25, 1900. [There is evidence in correspondence that Nietzsche had already dreamed about the embrace of a horse in the previous May. It is also true that Dostoyevsky's character Raskolnikov (in Crime and Punishment, which Nietzsche had read) dreamt of throwing his arms around a mistreated horse. Hence, it is somewhat possible that Nietzsche "orchestrated" this final moment in his dramatic autobiography. In the early faze of his madness he remained physically and vocally active; he had simply passed beyond what Chamberlain calls "[that] restraint which distinguishes between what is appropriate in life and what is theatre." The journey back to Basel was made difficult by the fact that Nietzsche "would keep singing, incomprehensibly talking to strangers, removing his clothes, falling into a rage, weeping." Overbeck hired a psychiatric nurse to help.]
[For a touching account of Nietzsche's demise, read Leslie Chamberlain's final chapter, "Collapse into the Beyond," in Nietzsche in Turin. The correspondence is available in Christopher Middleton's Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. The numerous haunts that Nietzsche orchestrated as weapons against his bad health during the 1880s are nicely documented in David Farrell Krell and Donald L. Bates's book The Good European.]
A little more than one year after its publication, On the Genealogy of Morals was summarized in Ecce Homo. "Regarding expression, intention, and the art of surprise, the three inquiries which constitute this Genealogy are perhaps uncannier than anything else written so far." "The truth of the first inquiry is the birth of Christianity . . . out of the spirit of ressentiment, not, as people may believe, out of the 'spirit'." "The second inquiry offers the psychology of conscience" which Nietzsche sees arising in the instinct of cruelty (not far from Freud's conclusion). "The third inquiry offers the answer to the question whence the ascetic ideal," for which Nietzsche suggests that "man would rather will even nothingness than not will."
In his first essay, Nietzsche expanded upon the thesis which he already stated in Beyond Good and Evil that the origin of the concept "good" lies in the qualities of an aristocracy. Granting that historians, philosophers, and theologians have constantly attempted to reconstruct our concept of "good" on all manner of grounds, Nietzsche continued his life-long project of understanding our philosophical origins in primordial natural history. [One might remember, for instance, Plato's notion that "good" is the central Idea, analogous to the sun within the realm of appearance.] We must therefore try to imagine the general struggle of primordial humans in which powerful leaders must have arisen above the rest and, compelled by their own will to power, excelled in diverse ways. The psychological strength of such people must have meant substantial self esteem for them; and that in turn must have led them to believe that they were good --- indeed, exemplars of "the good."
Could Nietzsche produce any evidence for this scenario? In fact, he believed that etymology would reveal this in all languages. A thorough study of the evolution of terms would demonstrate relationships between 'good' and 'noble' as well as between 'bad' and 'simple' or 'plebeian'. Certainly, history itself suggests little doubt that our earliest times were universally dominated by powerful and often egoistic, cruel men. An interesting additional insight, however, is Nietzsche's idea that "a concept denoting political superiority always resolves itself into a concept denoting superiority of soul." It is not surprising, then, that a priestly class emerges and that the discussion of "good" and "bad" becomes confusedly combined with a discussion of "pure" and "impure". There are obvious problems for Nietzsche with the emergence of the priestly class since it means a transfer of energy from the essentially physical application of strength to the application of mental strength. However, Nietzsche adds, "it is only fair to add that it was on the soil of this essentially dangerous form of human existence, the priestly form, that man first became an interesting animal, that only here did the human soul in a higher sense acquire depth and become evil."
This discussion tips the balance away from the epoch of good and bad to what Nietzsche calls "the slave revolt in morality." Here begins the era of jealous hatred focused on the self-asserting aristocracy. All the excellence of powerful noble souls is branded "evil" and the situation of the common (herd, slave, etc.) is branded "good". "The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values." (#10) As Nietzsche added, "The 'well-born' felt themselves to be 'happy'; they did not have to establish their happiness artificially by examining their enemies, or to persuade themselves, deceive themselves, that they were happy (as all men of ressentiment are in the habit of doing)." Ironically, 'bad' and 'evil' pretend to be opposites of the same word 'good'. But, as Nietzsche emphasizes, they are opposites of two entirely different concepts of what is good.
Ultimately, the problem with the era of ressentiment is the "diminution and leveling of European man." Becoming timid and common succeeds in becoming our highest value. But this has profound consequences. "Together with the fear of man we have also lost our love of him, our reverence for him, our hopes for him, even the will to him. The sight of man now makes us weary --- what is nihilism today if it is not that? --- We are weary of man."
Having established the evolution of moralities from master-morality to slave-morality, hence the origin of our present system of "good and evil," Nietzsche turned to the associated issues of guilt and bad conscience. At the beginning of the second essay, he takes a very original approach to the idea of being human in the moral sense. "To breed an animal with the right to make promises --- is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man? is it not the real problem regarding man?" In fact, we can speculate that the earliest humans lived "hand to mouth" and remembered little. One must have memory if one is going to make promises that have value. So becoming responsible to others involves developing memory and, probably also, becoming more uniform with (more like) others. Here lies the evolution of what we call conscience.
This discussion sets the entire tone of the second essay. It is a radically original re-thinking of human natural history, something that we are not seriously interested in doing, usually, given our position in cultivated societies. On the contrary, we tend to assume that humans have always been "cultivated" in some sense so we unblushingly use cultivated characteristics as descriptors when pondering evolutionary causes. There is a remarkable similarity between Nietzsche's visions of these primordial processes and Freud's (later) development of human psychology.
Considering the need to produce memory in man, it is all-too-easy to just say that memory must evolve. How was this evolution actually achieved? What forced it to happen? According to Nietzsche, we cannot hide from the fact that it was largely achieved by inflicting pain, indeed, great pain. Much of this was achieved in the context of transactions --- creditor and debtor. In this sense, perhaps, all morality really flows out of the primitive economic relationship between the powerful creditor and the weak debtor. In partial evidence for these ideas, Nietzsche sites ancient laws that allow the creditor to remove limbs or other bodily parts as payment. Nor should we simply interpret all of this in terms of mere physical equivalencies. Humans have always enjoyed --- maybe, in fact, celebrated --- the opportunity to bring pain, often great pain to others.
But how does the feeling of guilt arise? What is the "bad conscience"? In #16 and #17 Nietzsche produces an amazingly insightful conclusion. "All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward." This, in fact, is what begins the development of one's "inner life" or soul. The depth of one's inner life is a direct consequence of the magnitude of that instinctual life that no longer finds an external (outward) home. [Freud either came to the same conclusion or simply appropriated Nietzsche's idea.] The only remaining question is how to describe the instinctual life that turns inward. But however we describe it, Nietzsche sees it as the origin of "bad conscience." "This instinct for freedom forcibly made latent --- we have seen it already --- this instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed, incarcerated within and finally able to discharge and vent itself only on itself: that, and that alone, is what the bad conscience is in its beginnings." What we are facing here is the terrifying turning inward of the will-to-power itself. When the whole of human energy can no longer push outwardly in every direction, it must turn upon itself. But to what uses will it be put there?
Nietzsche calls it an illness but observes that pregnancy is also an "illness." Thus, the inward journey does not necessarily lead to destructive results. Freud also see this as the energy that feeds guilt but imagines that guilt is a necessary component of healthy development. The individual acquires depth and complexity. Repressed energy can be sublimated, and most of the great works of culture are the results of sublimation. The problem with this "illness" is that it represents a terrible power, a power that can easily go bad --- for Nietzsche, that has indeed been the case.
From this basic idea, Nietzsche imaginatively reconstructs the process through which bad conscience ultimately inflated itself into the towering projected image of an omnipotent god before whom all are guilty. But this is not mere guilt; man suffers from "original sin". Existence itself has already made him worthy of guilt before such a projection, God. The psychic possibilities are almost unbounded and, as Nietzsche points out, even leads to that "paradoxical and horrifying expedient . . . that stroke of genius on the part of Christianity: God himself sacrific[ing] himself for the guilt of mankind." Here lies the very center of Nietzsche's complaint regarding Christianized European society. This is why Nietzsche has consistently held that this society represents a No-saying to life. It is, in his estimation, a psychic illness that, even with all its good cultural works, has nevertheless pushed man into a terrible madness. "In this psychical 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. Oh this insane, pathetic beast --- man!" The horror of all this is especially powerful precisely because Nietzsche has discovered its source precisely in the will-to-power itself, the very energy of life itself.
[There is an interesting difference between Freud and Nietzsche that can be seen clearly here. Nietzsche's sole metaphysical commitment is the singular will to power, out of which everything else is spun --- all the more horrifying, then, that the singular life force itself can become responsible for so great a psychic catastrophe. Freud eventually commits himself to a duality --- eros and thanatos --- a constructive force and a destructive force. For Freud, all organisms represent a balance of these two forces and the changing weight of one versus the other explains the birth-and-death cycle of all life. Because social life cannot afford the outward violent thrust of thanatos, much of its energy is turned inward and constructively used to adjust behavior through the developing mechanism of repression and sublimation. In the cultivated individual, neither eros nor thanatos emerges except in highly sublimated forms. But in Freud, this "cultivation" does not have to lead to disastrous consequences such as an excess of self-hatred. For Freud, the "discontent" attached to all civilization is the inwardly directed pain and frustration of natural instinctive energies that makes all the good works of civilized life possible. Nietzsche, I think, agrees that civilized life is good --- with all of its mysterious depth and complexity --- but sees the Christian era as far more disastrous to individuals by projecting self-inflicted pain into enormous proportions. Nietzsche and Freud, after all, were dealing with entirely different clienteles --- Nietzsche with German Lutherans in general and Freud with the more limited phenomenon of hysteria. Freud certainly saw religion as a neurosis but he never followed it out to the depth that Nietzsche did.]
The third and final essay, addresses the ascetic ideal as it occurs in Christian culture. Asceticism is a practice, that is, a carefully controlled mode of living. In that sense, Nietzsche sees it as an admirable application of the will to power. Considering Nietzsche's well developed dietary, climatic, and environmental strategies, one would have to say he was something of an ascetic himself. At the same time, however, asceticism represents abstinence from one or another aspect of a natural life. And for that reason, Nietzsche is always opposed. Examples include the artist, the philosopher, the scientist, and of course the Christian ascetic.
Language is the Problem: Some Personal Notes
In class (March 27th) I suggested that no philosopher I knew had ever implied that belief in his/her particular metaphysical theory would actually change the form of experience. Or perhaps it would be better to say "whatever we actually experience." Going out and kicking a rock does not deny the Idealism of George Berkeley just because it actually hurts one's foot. The problem does not lie in what we experience but rather in what we attempt to say about experience. Language is the problem.
Unfortunately, we tend to "live" within the world that we express. An easy way to explain this is to observe that we "think" in language and that what we call "consciousness" is thinking. Hence, our conscious life depends as much upon our language as it depends upon our sensations. Nietzsche's chief philosophical methodology is to question language. What actually stands behind a particular case of language use? Language makes things appear simple; that, indeed, is its role. Nietzsche suggests that everything is far more complex than we ever realize. We have to begin by tearing down simplistic structures; only then can we proceed by constructing structures of greater complexity.
One example of this is our general concept of "shared experience." It is, perhaps, the grounding assumption for the creation of language. When another individual in our experience utters a word, we identify a word-meaning coordinate with the assumption that a reference point exists in "our shared experience." The concept of "shared experience," then, is one of our most primitive assumptions and, clearly, it has motivated Western metaphysics on the grounds that the "real," in some sense, must be that of which we share our experiences. Nietzsche's primitive assumption of chaos, on the other hand, must be understood as a fundamental denial of human experience being shared. There is, consequently, neither basis nor motive for belief in the "real."
While all of this may sound philosophically outrageous, the ironic twist is that most of us have good empirical evidence to the effect that experience actually isn't shared! That is, if we push language to enough detail and carry our relationships far enough along, we begin to discover contradictory experiences that can only mean that other people experience situations quite differently. As Nietzsche remarks in BGE, #24, "In what strange simplification and falsification man lives!" What we "know," that is, what we can express and depend upon, is necessary for self-preservation. No matter it is erroneous (in the sense of having no real basis). The whole problem, for Nietzsche, lies within the fact that we so easily fall into the trance of this simplicity and forget the complexity. But why not just enjoy this simplistic fantasy? Unfortunately, if Nietzsche is right, simplistic systems usually end up being life-denying; they have a way of collapsing into themselves. If, on the other hand, the will to power accepts life-positing (Yes-saying) as its fundamental value and if the path to this is sufficiently cleared by tearing down the residues of old values, acknowledging the fundamental complexity and uncertainty of human experience, then an age of free spirited thinkers can emerge.
This book, subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future," concluded the series of three books at the middle of Nietzsche's productive thought, spanning the period from 1882 to 1886. Nietzsche had finished Zarathustra, Part IV, in April 1885 and published only 40 copies for distribution. Meanwhile, he began pulling together notes for Beyond Good and Evil. His letters, during this period, disclose a great deal of personal frustration. None of his books had been successful and his publishers were not even distributing them. In an attempt to solidify and justify his thought, Nietzsche was beginning to re-work his older books. Eventually, having re-acquired his rights to publication, he would put out new editions. Beyond Good and Evil itself was finished by April of 1886, with some follow-up work extending throughout the summer. In the summer of 1886, he also began laying out the structure of a large work which he called "The Will to Power: Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values." He never completed this work but did leave extensive, though somewhat confusing notes.
In his "Preface" to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche begins with the astonishing suggestion, "supposing truth is a woman --- what then?" Given the notoriously poor performance of philosophers at winning women (and Nietzsche should know), is it any wonder that none of them have won truth as such? Indeed, as Nietzsche says, "every kind of dogmatism is left standing dispirited and discouraged." It is appropriate, thus, that Nietzsche's first chapter discusses "the Prejudices of Philosophers."
We should begin by returning to aphorism #110 of The Gay Science. Nietzsche makes a radical distinction between truth and knowledge. Knowledge, one must recall, is whatever has evolved through time and whose value can only be supposed as having been life-preserving, species-preserving. It is there, but we can never know why except to acknowledge that it must have had utility through a long time depth. Nietzsche calls these elements of knowledge "errors" precisely because of these obscure origins. On the other hand, in a far shorter period of human history, and therefore really untested, the pursuit of truth has evolved. Just as knowledge represents value given out of our will to power, a truth claim (which is a special value given to an element of knowledge over and against another element of knowledge) is a value given out of our will to power (or our will to truth, as Nietzsche abbreviates it). The will to truth is, in effect, modern man's attempt to work the erroneous elements of human knowledge into a coherent system of some kind. One of the unexpected consequences of the will to truth is that God has become unbelievable.
That being said, we see that philosophers are exemplars of the will to truth. They propose systematic points of view that organize and, hence, give value to elements of knowledge. But we need to be very suspicious about philosophers. Are they really "disinterested" or are they, in fact, always driven by their own unconscious "interests"? Reading even the most obscure philosophy, we should always ask, "toward what morality is this reasoning aimed." As Nietzsche says, "every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author." Also (#6), "in the philosopher . . . there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is."
Of course, there is some kind of blatant "self-contradiction" going on here because Nietzsche himself is a philosopher! Right? Yes, but he is one of a new bunch. "In all seriousness: I see such new philosophers coming up." Note that the first paragraph of aphorism #2 is a quote. It is, in fact, a model of what the old philosophers say and reason. So Nietzsche's reply to the old philosophers is in his second paragraph. It is this model assumption that has justified all philosophies that attempt to ground their "truths" in metaphysics. Therefore, if we throw out the assumptions built into this "model," and if we question the very roots of the will to truth and the grounds of any systematization, with our dangerous "maybes," we will come up with a brave new bunch of philosophers. In this whole section, Nietzsche goes a long way in clarifying what The Gay Science was really all about.
But what is the answer? Note in aphorism #10 that the answer is not nihilism. Nietzsche's course is clearly somewhere between metaphysically based moralities and nihilistically motivated lack of value commitments.
From here to the end of the first chapter, Nietzsche sustains a systematic and coherent attack on the typical prejudices of modern philosophers. Central to this attack is Nietzsche's account of how the human will has been misunderstood and, consequently, misused. This discussion is quite important to an understanding of the very different way in which Nietzsche uses the term 'will' in his expression "the will to power." "Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word --- and it is precisely in this one word that the popular prejudice lurks." (#19)
Moving on to the second chapter, "The Free Spirit," Nietzsche develops the theme of those up-coming philosophers who seek the overman through self-overcoming. He begins, however, with an amazing declaration regarding the utility of simple errors. While we continually sing praises to the truth, Nietzsche always demands that we really don't know whether the truth is that valuable. And, in fact, when we really honestly examine our situation, isn't it always the case that our lives run far more simply and more smoothly banking on error and ignorance. "Here and there we understand it and laugh at the way in which precisely science at its best seeks most to keep us in this simplified, thoroughly artificial, suitably constructed and suitably falsified world." [If one doubts Nietzsche on this, one should study thermodynamics which is purely a fantastic invention built upon the non-existent "ideal gas."]
But how does the free spirited philosopher emerge? "The long and serious study of the average man, and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad contact --- this constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher, perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part." Also, note that, "independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness."
Aphorism #32 begins a series of powerful statements that are crucial to understanding Nietzsche's project. While in primitive time the value of an act was identical with its practical effect, we have passed through an admirable period of development in which the value of an act has been identified with its origin, called an "intention." Nietzsche actually sees this is a great step forward and, in fact, a necessary prelude to self-overcoming. But now we must understand that the final phase of development lies in precisely understanding the conscious intention as only skin deep. "Indeed, we believe that the intention is merely a sign and symptom that still requires interpretation --- moreover, a sign that means too much and therefore, taken by itself alone, almost nothing." "Nietzsche continues, "the overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality --- let this be the name for that long secret work which has been saved up for the finest and most honest. . . the whole morality of self-denial must be questioned mercilessly and taken to court --- no less than the aesthetics of "contemplation devoid of all interest" which is used today as a seductive guise for the emasculation of art, to give it a good conscience."
The remaining aphorisms constitute a powerful set of "directives" in the sense that they offer a sustained statement of how the free spirit must emerge and survive. "Whatever philosophical standpoint one may adopt today, from every point of view the erroneousness of the world in which we think we live is the surest and firmest fact that we can lay eyes on." Aphorisms #32 to #36 give us an especially vivid demonstration of Nietzsche's understanding of human psychology and how it is that the will to power stands centrally in this perspective.
Also note aphorisms #42 and #43. "A new species of philosophers is coming up . . ." And they should be called 'Versucher'" (translated as "attempters" but ambiguously also meaning "tempters"). "Are these coming philosophers new friends of 'truth'?" Yes, as The Gay Science preliminarily suggests, Nietzsche's program is a part of the overall untested program of the will to truth, but they will not be dogmatists! "One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many."
"What Is Religious" is one of the more amazing chapters of this book. Before embarking, read Kaufmann's note regarding the title. It is not entirely clear what the English title ought to be, and either "the being of religion" or "the essence of religion" might also do. The early aphorisms of this chapter are exactly what we expect of Nietzsche and they "anticipate" the sustained arguments of his Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche's critique of Christianity is unrelenting and vitriolic. Yet aphorism #49 betrays Nietzsche's actual direction. "What is amazing about the religiosity of the ancient Greeks is the enormous abundance of gratitude it exudes: it is a very noble type of man that confronts nature and life in this way. Later, when the rabble gained the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant in religion, too --- and the ground was prepared for Christianity." The religious as such can be a powerful instrument in human and cultural development if it is in noble hands and devoted to positive life-affirming ends. This idea is amplified and completed in the concluding aphorisms (#61 and #62). "The philosopher as we understand him . . . will make use of religions for his project of cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever political and economic states are at hand." There are genuine virtues to religion when in the right hands and directed toward to right purposes. The problem, of course, is that Christianity precisely lost its "right purposes" and focused, instead, on those who suffer and brought everything downward in pitying. "In a total accounting," Nietzsche says, "the sovereign religions we have had so far are among the chief causes that have kept the type "man" on a lower rung --- they have preserved too much of what ought to perish." The outcome, far from a "cultivated" type of human, is "a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre . . . the European of today." Not only is the "religious" itself not unfit for Nietzsche's plan, but he outlines the general form of his "religious life" in #295, at the book's end, where he identifies it with "no less a one than the god Dionysus, that great ambiguous one and tempter god."
After his "Epigrams and Interludes," Nietzsche begins his main task, a critique of morality. The historical efforts have all been aimed at providing a rational foundation of morality and not at offering a critique of morality itself. We naturally assume that moral prescriptions exist; the only issue, therefore, is how we are informed about them and why we must feel obligated to adhere to them. "Every morality," says Nietzsche, "is . . . a bit of tyranny against 'nature'; also against 'reason'."
Having said this much, Nietzsche begins the real natural history of morals at #194 where he notes that we not only live under different "tablets of goods" but that we also differ "in what [we] take for really having and possessing something good." Morality evolves out of the self-protective urges of the herd. Fear is "the mother of morals." "Everything that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neighbor is henceforth called evil." The "good" is appropriated from its former, nobler origins and identified, instead, with community or herd. The pathology of all this can be seen in the Judeo-Christian religions and, then, in the movement toward democracies. Nietzsche's comments regarding democracy (end of #202) are especially interesting. While we like to think of ourselves creating and maintaining "free societies," Nietzsche proposes that, "in fact they are at one with the lot in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every other form of society except that of the autonomous herd." [Is this why virtually all fascist states arise out of democracies?] How "free" are democracies? Nietzsche claims, "they are at one in their tough resistance to every special claim, every special right and privilege (which means in the last analysis, every right . . .)." Freedom as truly "individuation" is really not a value in Christianity or democracy. We are much more secure if everyone conforms to our own self-imposed limits. Indeed, we are more secure if we imagine (with some degree of bad conscience) that these limits are ancient and traditional rather than self-imposed. Then, we don't have to blame ourselves for our timidity and we can feel virtuous in freely criticizing others.
The material presented in "We Scholars" is essential to the overall project. After all, where Nietzsche makes reference to "new philosophers upcoming" and similar expressions, aren't we led to believe that the overman lies in some familiar academic direction. The chapter, then, is a disappointing summary of the ills of contemporary scholarship, and no one --- philosopher or scientist --- gets off without rejection.
It is a chance to look around and at ourselves, today, and to take in what we are all about. What really do scientists and philosophers aim at today? How is our "embrace of truth" motivated? Nietzsche suggests there is bad conscience here as well as in morality. In the end, however, the chapter delivers few answers to many questions. In the end, philosophy cannot be taught but has to arise out of blood and experience. At best it is "cultivated" but by what. The leading message seems to be an attack against "objectivity" and "skepticism." Both of these create separation and remoteness. Nietzsche desires engagement and a self-confident "subject." The problem is not in being "interested;" the problem lies in denying our "interests" and acting disinterested with bad conscience. We need commitment, not timidity.
Moving along to his chapter, "Our Virtues," Nietzsche has further opportunities to suggest what it is that characterizes his philosophers of the future. Will even they have their "virtues," and what will these be? All of this is, of course, preceded by a fairly typical tirade on the shallowness of all virtues, as exhibited past and present. Whenever goodness is connected with a human characteristic or capacity, mustn't we explore it critically and especially examine it for all kinds of "bad faith." On the positive side, Nietzsche continues his consistent suggestion that "our virtues" must include risk taking, hardness, and a tolerance for pain. We must be severe even when that may result in pain to others. These are discussions that understandably create suspicion that Nietzsche really did believe in cruel conquests and a thirst for command over others.
In the end, though, in #230 Nietzsche drives home the central thesis which really recovers the momentum of The Gay Science. "This will to mere appearance, to simplification, to masks . . . is countered by that sublime inclination of the seeker after knowledge who insists on profundity, multiplicity, and thoroughness, with a will which is a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste." He continues, "indeed, it would sound nicer if we were said, whispered, reputed to be distinguished not by cruelty but by 'extravagant honesty,' we free, very free spirits." [bold-face emphasis mine] "Why did we choose this insane task? Or, putting it differently: 'why have knowledge at all?'" Here, then, is Nietzsche's life-question. Has he found an answer? In #231, he exclaims, "Learning changes us; it does what all nourishment does which does not merely 'preserve'." But there is a kind of "spiritual fate" at the bottom of this will. "A thinker cannot relearn but only finish learning."
At this point, the chapter takes a bizarre turn. Nietzsche decides to address "a few truths about 'woman as such'" and, from #232 to the end at #239, he takes on the "defeminization" of woman. All of this has, of course, become tastelessly offensive in our own time. How is all of this relevant to "our virtues"? I suspect, in fact, that it is relevant. Tasteless and offensive as this discussion is, shouldn't it call our own attention to the virtue of an "extravagant honesty"? Perhaps all honest inquiries press toward tastelessness and offensiveness because they press past the socially accepted norms of the age and demand more, even when it begins to tighten and hurt. Perhaps, in fact, the collective energy of distaste is a pretty accurate sign to the effect that there is a need for genuine honesty. This is not to say that Nietzsche was correct in his judgments about woman but it is, I think, an interesting glimpse at what the problems of honesty may be. Perhaps these eight aphorisms are not such a bizarre turn at all.
"Peoples and Fatherlands" I leave for cultural historians.
The volume concludes with "What is Noble." It is in this final chapter that Nietzsche makes clear how he sees the idea of "evil" arising and how, therefore, we can (and must) step through and beyond the dichotomy of good and evil. All of this is preliminary to his Genealogy of Morals. His leading assumption is that all human advancement has occurred because of the nobility of individual humans. Nietzsche calls these the "aristocracy" but it is a term we have to watch carefully. It is a class of nobility and not a class of decadence and privilege. The noble person Nietzsche has in mind is self-aware and self-confident, perhaps to an extreme.
On the basis of this assumption, Nietzsche posits the evolution of two great moral systems --- "master morality" and "slave morality." Master morality is constructed on the basis of nobility and hangs on the general idea that what the noble person does is "good." There is little or no need for a dichotomous term, "bad," because it just blankets the rest of what gets done. We simply have the ascent of excellence and whatever gets in the way is brushed aside or crushed. To excel is important enough to human advance, the will to life, that the rest is irrelevant or suppressed. Put crudely, slavery may be essential. As with Nietzsche's discussion regarding "woman," we are likely to take offense to these ideas because we imagine ourselves to live under democratic principles/ideals of equality and we paid dearly in the middle-19th Century to separate ourselves literally from slavery. But this is an important occasion in which to take Nietzsche's teachings quite forthrightly and demand the highest truths regarding what we actually are as a people. American political idealism is probably full of bad conscience!
It is in slave morality, that the dichotomy of good and evil arises and this is because the slave mentality, out of fear and resistance, needs to make the noble human "evil." The leading theme of slave morality is to defend against and destroy, if possible, the nobleman, with all his attitudes and exploitations. It is also, therefore, the theme of leveling and conformity to a non-threatening herd-like existence. In Nietzsche's eyes (see #262), the evolution from master morality to slave morality is virtually an expected part of human natural history. There simply comes a time when the age of nobility has generated an abundant and secure society in which the evolution of new egalitarian ideals can occur. The great acquired power of the aristocracy has given rise to a general empowerment of the people and mediocrity can come to be idealized. But once the mass man has been empowered, what then?
[Compare this to Jose Ortega y Gasset's theme in his Revolt of the Masses. These are questions we should be asking in relation to American politics today, I suspect. One might want to take seriously Nietzsche's suggestion (#242) that "the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the cultivation of tyrants." The tendency toward fascism in Europe was already apparent in Nietzsche's time and did nothing but live up to Nietzsche's insights in the next century. Why does fascism so successfully evolve out of democratic republics? Because it is an easy step from the idealization of mediocrity to the placement of all power in the image of the truly mediocre politician. Slave morality becomes state morality.]
It is really this society of decadence in which Nietzsche locates himself and, for that matter, us. The master morality and its age of self-confident conquerors is gone and not likely to return; the cultural environment is that of slave morality and the politics of common tyrants. Nihilism is a natural result of this decadence. The question, then, is what can be noble in this society. How can a sub-culture of self-overcoming free spirits emerge? And who will be their gods? Nietzsche is far from a nihilist, obviously. His free spirits will not be commanders of people, like the nobility of the past, but rather people who possess extravagant honesty about all things and the personal courage to step away from the herd in at least their person acts. (See his #273) [Was #275 written with Clinton in mind?] What are the virtues of the noble individual? Nietzsche suggests (in #284) "courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude." [See Kaufmann's footnote #32.] But we should especially view #287. Nietzsche is rarely so forthcoming with deliberate formulae! "The noble soul has reverence for itself." The god of this noble self (#295) is, of course and at long last, Dionysus.
An entire year stands between the publication of The Gay Science and the writing of Part I, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It was, however, one of the most tragic years in Nietzsche's life. Nietzsche met Paul Ree in 1873 in Basel while Ree was working on his graduate studies. Ree later published a book on his work, Psychological Observations. He became one of Nietzsche's closest intellectual associates. Another character in the drama was Malwida von Meysenbug, characterized as a "motherly intellectual" who entertained the promising young academics and artists of her day in her home, in Rome, rather after the style of the Parisian salons. Nietzsche and Ree were frequenters of Malwida's when in Italy.
There is some evidence that Nietzsche had made off-and-on clumsy attempts to arrange a marriage in the years preceding and that both Ree and Malwida were aware of this. But in March 1882, after receiving a letter (now lost) from Paul Ree telling him about the 21-year-old Russian woman, Lou von Salome, Nietzsche wrote, "Greet this Russian for me, if that has any purpose: I lust for this species of soul. Yes I shall now look forward to plunder, and with what I have in mind for the next ten years, I will need her. An entirely different chapter would be marriage --- at most, I could agree to a two-year marriage." Of course, without Ree's letter, it is hard to see what might have brought out these bizarre thoughts.
At any rate, this was the beginning of a relationship with Lou Salome that had a strong impact on both Nietzsche and Lou. While Lou went on to embrace extended relationships with Paul Ree, Rainer Maria Rilke, and, much later, Sigmund Freud, she never forgot her connection with Nietzsche and wrote one of the first interpretive books about his thought (Lou Salome. Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (1894)). Nietzsche first met Lou in Rome in April of 1882 and greeted her with his most gallant manners. As time passed (quickly), both Nietzsche and Ree fell thoroughly in love with Lou, though neither seemed aware of the other's intentions or feelings. Meanwhile, Lou herself was looking for intellectual satisfaction and liberation, not love. Lou's hopes turned toward the possibility of a three-way intellectual companionship, or commune (an outrageous idea for the time). Meanwhile Nietzsche and Ree were each trying to win Lou's heart through short romantic trips and deeply intellectual experiences. [All of this is detailed in Siegfried Mandel's extensive Introduction to the English edition of Lou's Nietzsche (University of Illinois Press, 1988).]
Ultimately, Nietzsche's hopes of spending an extended period of time (the summer of 1882) with Lou and Paul Ree were crushed by the manipulations of his mother and sister, Elizabeth. Lou went off with Ree alone and wound up living with him for several years. Nietzsche allowed his jealousy to pour forth and wrote some terrible letters to his two formerly-best friends, also slandering them to other friends. It was an experience that he looked back upon with deep regrets, even guilt. Meanwhile, however, Nietzsche was finding himself alienated from everyone he had known, with the exception of a few friends in Basel. It was a dark period of time and the Overbecks, in Basel, feared that Nietzsche was suicidal.
In many respects, the writing of Zarathustra was the healing process that brought Nietzsche out of this darkness. Part I was written in only about ten days, in January 1883. In February, Wagner died, yielding yet another blow to Nietzsche. Part II was written in June 1883 and Part III, in November. Part IV, written in January 1884, was circulated to only a small group and not published during Nietzsche's lifetime. It was viewed as too blasphemous. The full collection was published together, for the first time, in 1892.
In the Prologue, we see Zarathustra coming down to teach the people the message that god is dead and that man is to be overcome. But his message is not understood and is symbolically confused with the tightrope performer who falls to his death. Zarathustra sees the herd-like quality of the people as a whole and abandons his attempts. Going off to Part I, he grasps the need to teach only a few followers. This, of course, is the position that Nietzsche adopted long ago and echoes throughout his life. He is, after all, ahead of his time and writes for people who do not yet live.
Part I
The spirit (der Geist, or spirit, mind, or intellect) must take on three transformations --- the camel, the lion, and the child. The camel picks up its burden and stocks up on water and, then, ventures out into and across the desert. As Nietzsche has said before, it is a long lonely journey for the free spirit. But the spirit must now become a lion in order to become free. It requires conquest to be free. Nietzsche's imagery is very important here. We have to conquer the "great dragon" which is cloaked in all the "values" of traditional times, that places its "thou shalt" above us, and that denies us our "I will." It is the lion that empowers spirit to say, "I will;" and it must first utter a "sacred No." In the end, the lion must give way to the child because only the child represents a "sacred Yes" --- innocence, a new beginning, first movement. The project of a revaluation of all values begins here.
In a succession of two powerful aphorisms, Nietzsche fully develops his materialist "naturalism." Afterworldly beings are simply human creations and they are creations out of our weaknesses and sicknesses at that. "This god whom I created was man-made and madness, like all gods! Man he was, and only a poor specimen of man and ego (Ich)." We are urged to turn away from otherworldly creations and to place our faith in the body. "Listen rather . . . to the voice of the healthy body . . . it speaks of the meaning of the earth." "Body am I entirely, and nothing else" And, "your body and its great reason: that does not say 'I,' but does 'I'." Underneath it all lies what Nietzsche calls the self (das Selbst). "The creative self created respect and contempt; it created pleasure and pain. The creative body created the spirit as a hand for its will." In short, the way we think about ourselves is highly corrupted by language, driven by long-term dualism and in which the body is shunted into a marginal position. Nietzsche asks us to transcend this language and to re-construct our vision of human life as centered in body. But we must resist understanding this as classic materialism. It is no metaphysical thing-in-itself. One must guess that we know the body like we know all else --- as a self-preserving perspectival "error" that possesses utility. Such knowledge is our evolutionary way of coping with the chaos of experience.
Finally, in the section called "On the Thousand and One Goals," Nietzsche introduces his concept of the will to power in the context of self-overcoming as the creative activity behind our "tablets" of our good. All of this must be understood in the context of Nietzsche's anthropological naturalism and the gradual evolution of human peoples. 'Will' and 'power' are dangerous words for us because their contemporary meanings are charged in directions that can only offer misunderstandings. How does Nietzsche mean "will"? As Kant uses it in his ethics? What does Nietzsche see in "power"? Force exercised over others? All very unlikely. It is best to understand as well as we can the situation of primordial beings emerging out of chaotic experiences, struggling to "put life together," making stabs at species-preserving errors. Physics thinks of force in terms of moving mass. Work is moving mass some distance; and power is work done over time. This is closer to Nietzsche than the metaphoric political concept of power. Force, for instance, does not have to be exerted against something external; it requires force to expand and pull inner material forward into a larger volume. Thus, we can think of Nietzsche's power as the energy required over time for a people or, later, an individual to differentiate and liberate. It is a process of self-creation in which the "resistance" or the "barrier" is really the mass of self-imposed preliminary structures. Hence, our will to power is always both the creative force of new value-giving but also the destructive self-overcoming involved in pulling away from the old inhibiting values.
Part II
When Zarathustra returns from his retreat into the mountains, he is filled with a new spirit (or speech). Indeed, in "On the blessed isles," Nietzsche powerfully returns to and amplifies the themes of The Gay Science. When we look into the sea (nature), we should see overman (human destiny) and not god. God is an unthinkable human conjecture. Man "should think through [his] own senses to their consequences." The will to power as it is manifest in human thinking should be a "will to truth," and that should mean pondering only the thinkable. Repeating his claim that "world" is what we make it, Nietzsche suggests that "creation . . . is the great redemption from suffering, and life's growing light."
The knowledgeable person "walks among men as among animals." There is great suffering in the world, but how do we deal with it appropriately. Largely, in this world we are taught to pity one another for this suffering. But Nietzsche suggests that "man has felt too little joy: that alone . . . is our original sin." How can we feel joy when we are engaged in pitying? That is, in effect, sharing someone's pain and grief, getting down with them ourselves and bathing ourselves in the worst of it all. In pitying, we harm not only ourselves but we harm them. The true direction for man is elevation. As leaders in the culture of pity, the priests are of Zarathustra's blood, but they have gone completely astray. "They did not know how to love their god except by crucifying man" --- to be taken literally (Christ) but also figuratively (life-denying Christian culture). "And if man goes through fire for his doctrine --- what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your own doctrine comes out of your own fire." (my emphasis)
"On self-overcoming" marks a significant amplification of Nietzsche's theory of the will to power. The idea of will to power is crucial in understanding Nietzsche and yet it is also largely misunderstood. Nietzsche himself brings much of this misunderstanding upon himself by continually applying warrior rhetoric and leading us to think of his theory as a simplistic appeal to humans struggling against each other to exert power over one another --- life as a giant pecking order! Once again, then, as above (discussion of Part I), we need to remember Nietzsche's basic assumptions of the situation of human life. In particular, the "universe" is entirely chaotic and we have no organs for understanding it as such. Having found ourselves (in an entirely vague sense) thrust into life, we must struggle (warrior-like) to create footholds for survival. These "footholds" are essentially moments of "valuation" or decisions to put one or another thing, concept, etc. first. This is all the human can do. It is the human's only primitive attribute, our will to power. Power, far from flinging ourselves against others, is a continual exertion toward life, and the tokens of our will to power are our valuations, our footholds which gradually make systematic living possible. Knowledge, Nietzsche has said, is an assortment of self-preserving errors which have "utility" in that sense the they have successfully brought us to where we are. The age of truth and falsehood is just beginning. This "will to truth" represents a thoughtful reconstruction of knowledge along the path to freedom or yes-saying to life. It is a hard path because it means breaking through ancient valuations of good and evil. It is a precarious path because, having no organ for understanding chaos or for understanding the utilities of ancient knowledge, we take great risks in stepping beyond established valuations. But we must do this out of a lust for life because the "safety" of past valuations crushes life. In the advanced stage, the will to power is manifest as self-overcoming. In effect, it is the continuing need to re-value all values. It is the movement toward the overman.
At the end of this section and in the dream described in "The soothsayer," Nietzsche begins an ominous ascent to the idea of "eternal recurrence of the same." The idea itself will not become clear until Part III but it is handled dramatically, here, so as to introduce its overall importance.
Part III
Nietzsche introduces his concept of the eternal recurrence in "On the vision and the riddle." This is the culminating idea connected with Zarathustra so I will devote this entire part to a discussion of that concept. While it seems clear that Nietzsche actually gave some thought to formally proving this idea, it remains possible that it was only a "what if" concept in his mind. I am personally not convinced that this matters. It is seemingly most important as an ethical premise.
The concept of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same must be seen in the light of Nietzsche's concept that god is dead or that god has become unthinkable. Indeed, taking Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical position at its extreme, humans have experience and that is pretty much that. If there is a universal cause of experience, whatever that might be, it is a chaos for which we have no organ of perception and no understanding. What constitutes the human being is a will-to-power, that is, a struggling and energized need to gain footholds out of this chaos by placing value in something. There is a collective aspect to all of this which Nietzsche never articulated well but is implicit in his writing. That is the fact that other humans are parts of what we experience and that language is invented as a means of communicating between humans. While each individual must struggle through his/her own will to power to gain a foothold in life, this occurs in a collective language environment so that we are aided in this by an existing culture. Thus, every culture has its tablets of good and evil, that is, the product of its collective and accumulated wills to power. Equally, we are in possession of primitive knowledge which Nietzsche calls our self-preserving errors. It is "erroneous" because it has no real reference but it does have long-stranding utility.
It is in this total context, that Nietzsche understands the absence of a god or any compelling moral scheme of things. Thus, Nietzsche is fully aware of the "existential" problem that there may be nothing that directs our ethics. Is there, in fact, any conceivable way in which human choice can be constructively directed? This problem is not dissimilar from the problem that Kant faced in the Second Section of his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals where he observed that there is a fundamental problem in "the relation of a will to itself so far as it determines itself only by reason." Even though reason may dictate how one should act according to the categorical imperative, there may be nothing that dictates a human will act in accordance with reason. Kant solves his dilemma by creating the concept of a "realm of ends." "Morality, therefore, consists in the relation of every action to the legislation through which alone a realm of ends is possible." As Kant imagined it, the individual must elect to rule himself by reason for that is the only way to truly manifest human dignity and realizing the realm of ends.
For Nietzsche, the concept of the eternal recurrence meant that every moment counts in that monumental sense that nothing in our past can be passed over frivolously but is, rather, to be returned to us over and over. This was Nietzsche's way of asserting a profound seriousness to every moment. Perhaps without god or morality we really can do anything we please, but if it will return to us over and over, wouldn't we always want to do our best work? Perhaps one does not know what is "best" at any point, but wouldn't one want to bear that moment out of his finest energy, at least?
This is a heavy burden and challenge. No wonder that Nietzsche treated it with so much importance.
Kaufmann dedicated this edition to his granddaughter Sophia ("My Joyful Sophia") in something like a rather confusing pun, 'sophia' being the Greek for "wisdom." At the same time, in his introduction, he assures us that Nietzsche's title, "Die Froeliche Wissenschaft," should not be translated as "joyful wisdom," since 'wissenschaft' always means "science." All of this is certainly sound strategy for translation from German to English, but it is precarious nevertheless. Americans tend to interpret the word 'science' way too narrowly so, even though the German 'wissenschaft' means "science," the German sense of "science" is considerably more broad and does not involve the American tendency to exclude a good deal of scholarship as "soft." It is therefore highly erroneous to look upon this work as the front line of Nietzsche's "Positivist Period," as some have done.
The original version of The Gay Science, which is what we will read, was published in 1882 and did not include the large Preface, Book V, or the Appendix of Songs. From 1872, when The Birth of Tragedy was published to 1882, a great deal happened in Nietzsche's life. In particular, he wrote Untimely Meditations (1873-6), Human, All Too Human (1878-80), and Daybreak (1881) during this period. His relationship with Wagner came to an end, Nietzsche presenting Wagner with a draft of Human, All Too Human and Wagner presenting Nietzsche with a draft of Parsifal, at their last meeting in Sorrento, Italy, in November 1876. No two works could have demonstrated their separate trajectories more emphatically. Nietzsche's health had declined throughout this period and, having already taken several leaves-of-absence, he finally resigned his professorship in Basle in 1879. Having surrendered German citizenship to take the position at Basle and, now, having surrendered that position, Nietzsche was literally a man without a country or institutional foundation. In order to play to better health, he adopted an "annual round" --- spending summer in the Alps, spring and fall in Turin, and winter in Sorrento. Only on occasion did he travel back to see friends or family in Switzerland or Germany.
Nietzsche's health problems were very likely congenital (related to his father's brain maladies); at least, he had suffered from them as early as childhood. They affected his attention span, eyesight, and digestive system, and they gave him excruciating headaches that could completely shut down his work habits. At least for this reason, and probably for other reasons, it became easiest for Nietzsche to write or dictate his thoughts in relatively short "notebook" entries. The composition of his works after Untimely Meditations, then, was achieved by gathering together, organizing, and editing notes with relatable contents. This aphoristic style is fully evident in The Gay Science.
Granting that The Gay Science has many interesting things to say about moral values, religion, and psychology, as well as continuing his ongoing critique of European culture, it centers on a discussion of epistemology. It is, of course, a very different approach to epistemology than anything coming beforehand and it anticipates the more revolutionary approaches of the 20th Century. What Nietzsche wants is a "science" which is free-spirited, joyful, and life-affirming. At the same time, he has not changed his mind about modern theoretical science which he saw, in The Birth of Tragedy, to be borne of Socratism. To the degree that modern epistemology from Locke onward is an accommodation of modern theoretical science, Nietzsche's concept of "science" represents a revolution.
Book I. In the first aphorism and with an Existentialist twist, Nietzsche argues that humans need to fabricate beliefs about their existence, need to find purpose or meaning. This mood feeds directly into aphorism #2 which directly addresses "intellectual conscience." Most people possess no intellectual conscience and will belief what they will without really questioning and challenging it. This declaration, of course, gives Nietzsche the opportunity to suggest a nobler intellect and that feeds directly into aphorism #3 where he introduces a variety of dichotomies --- noble and common, higher and lower, individual and herd. The introduction is completed in aphorism #4 where Nietzsche calls our attention to the fact that the collective people place value in traditional wisdom and call it "good." What is newly advanced and speculative, then, is always "evil." The questioning noble individual is always viewed suspiciously as a bringer of evil. One should also be aware of the way in which Nietzsche uses animals, or natural history, in these introductory aphorisms. This establishes the way in which he will approach all issues of human development. There is a continuity between animal life and human life and he will assume no special status for humans.
Book I ends with another set of four related aphorisms that conclude the introduction. #54 is especially interesting in the light of his references to dreaming and dreamers. This must remind us that The Birth of Tragedy does not argue against Apollo and dreaming but rather for the cooperative inclusion of Dionysus. Appearance is a dream-state and, rather than damaging it, this elevates it. For us, the issue is understanding it as a dream and celebrating our dreaming as a dance. Finally, the noble person will make sacrifices, certainly; but one is not noble merely because of sacrifice. Nietzsche gives us some examples of sacrifices that are noble.
Book II. The first aphorism (#57) is a continuation of introductory material and will be directly addressed in Book III. The world is full of "realists" all of whom want to tell us the way things "really" are. Socrates is a classic example. The "realist" takes power over action because we would never want to act in a way that wasn't sanctioned by what "really" is. Nietzsche's point, of course, is that no one has an edge on reality; hence, no one has definitive power over action.
The remainder of Book II is divided into three parts. The first part, aphorisms #59 through #75 deals with women, though it is not clear that there is any uniform point. For example, while women are mentioned in the first sentence of aphorism #59 and in a somewhat uncomplimentary light, Nietzsche's point has nothing to do with women. He merely uses the harsh way that nature deals with women --- assuming that he means menstruation, PMS, pregnancy, etc. --- as an example of how we generally try to overlook physical nature in preference for a spiritual fantasy. This is art --- Apollinian art, in fact. Some of these aphorisms betray Nietzsche's painful relations with women --- his dominating grandmother, his mother, and his sister. But some are genuinely thoughtful --- e.g., aphorisms #68 and #71.
The second part of Book II deals with artists and art. This includes aphorisms # 76 through #98. Aphorism #76, "The Greatest Danger," should be especially noted, given the fact that Nietzsche went mad almost seven years later. "We others are the exception," Nietzsche notes; and then he says, "there actually are things to be said in favor of the exception." While madness in artists in not the rule, it is not exceptional either --- the poet Hoelderlin, for instance. Note how Nietzsche defines rationality in contrast to madness --- "man's greatest labor so far has been to reach agreement about very many things and to submit to a law of agreement --- regardless of whether these things are true or false." (my emphasis) The rationally real, in other words, is a socially constructed world that we construct in language in response to our collective experiences with appearance. Nietzsche acknowledges that it is important for humans to struggle to construct and maintain this system of thinking. But the value of the exception should not be ignored either.
The third part of Book II, aphorisms #99 through #107, deals with the German people, Wagner, Voltaire, and Schopenhauer. It's all interesting but doesn't particularly add to the general theme of the whole book. Nietzsche was clearly far from ever being a German nationalist! Also, we see his position relative to Schopenhauer very clearly. Aphorism #107 returns to the general thesis of The Birth of Tragedy that art (fantasy) makes life healthy (possible to bear) while "honesty would lead to nausea and suicide."
Book III. Aphorism #108 begins a remarkable tour de force that brings the central material of The Gay Science into focus. "God is dead," declares Nietzsche, but what does this mean. Three aphorisms mark the basic divisions of this book. They are #108, #125, and #153. All deal with the "death of god." The first announces that god is dead; the second announces that we have killed god; and the third takes personal responsibility (in the name of homo poeta) for creating "the tragedy of tragedies" and inquires whether a comic solution would be better than a tragic one.
In #109, Nietzsche points out the manifold ways in which we construct our concepts of the world in analogy with ourselves, as a "living being." These are all errors, false attributions. The project here is to "naturalize humanity" and to "de-deify nature." Moving on, in aphorism #110, Nietzsche addresses knowledge and truth, but in order to understand this we have to capture Nietzsche's minimalist metaphysical vision. Humans are confronted by a chaos of appearances within which life is an effort of putting together a "world." A fundamental portion of appearance is what we should call "social," and language develops out of this social experience. Successful communication through an evolving language leads gradually to concepts that must de facto possess utility. Nietzsche sees all of this as a "natural history" and evolutionary process. That there are such stable concepts is a token of their utility to human survival, but questions about why they possess this utility cannot be answered. We have no organ for seeing back into the primordial experiences out of which such concepts emerged. Knowledge, then, is fundamentally determined by its natural-historic age. How, then, do the concepts of truth and falsehood arise? These, in fact, are very young conceptions, in Nietzsche's mind. Because they are young, they are necessarily weak or experimental. We don't know, at this stage, whether the impulse for truth will ultimately have survival utility.
It is in the core of this discussion that Nietzsche sets up some notions that persist painfully among analytic philosophers as Nietzsche's "problem of perspectivism." As introduced here, the concept of truth is a genuinely "interior" concept, merely an after thought in a discourse that began long ago. Truth and falsehood are ways of expressing or asserting doubts about various beliefs and their emergence signals the emergence of a new personality, the "thinker." "A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for the first fight." But if this is how truth/falsehood emerges, what does Nietzsche mean by "errors?" In fact, in Nietzsche's view not only is everything conceived about "world" in error but every human has his/her own perspective on these errors. As an interior conception, truth/falsehood has nothing to do with the origin of knowledge; hence, all knowledge remains essentially erroneous and perspectival. The thinker is an emerging person who attempts to work on the systematic consistency of knowledge, but we do not know how this will play out in the evolution of human life. Nietzsche does not imply a correspondence theory when he suggests that life-preserving knowledge is all errors; in fact, calling them errors is precisely his way of saying that there is nothing real or stable to which knowledge can be compared or referred. The German word here is 'irrthuemer' which is formed out of the adjective 'irre' and which means "astray," "on the wrong track," "confused," and even "mad." It is different from 'unwahr' or "false." It is important to take note of where Nietzsche stands on this experiment. It would be easy to assume that it is yet another aspect of modernity that he intends to criticize; however, The Gay Science is really about this quest for truth.
The sense in which God is dead is intimately related to this epistemology. In aphorism #343 (written four years later), Nietzsche says, "The greatest recent event --- that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable." Yet throughout this book he has given us images of God's shadow continuing to live onward through centuries, etc. In other words knowing God is one of those epistemological errors that has possessed some kind of utility, cannot be explained, and will linger over a long period. The idea of belief is connected with the young movement of thinkers; that is, belief is connected with finding truth and falsehood in an analysis and comparison of knowledge. Thus, while we (thinkers) have made God unbelievable, it is reasonable to expect that many people will continue to know God.
While the aphorisms from #154 onward to the end of this book are short and seemingly disorganized, they are, nevertheless, of considerable interest. They seem to represent examples of "the gay science," that is, examples of how the perceptive thinker would see through our standard views of things to see them in a truer light. Of special note, consider aphorisms #173, #180, #265, and #270 through #275.
Book IV As Kaufmann notes, the dedication of this book to Sanctus Januarius celebrates Nietzsche's recovery from a long period of depression, loneliness, and dark thinking. By this point in writing The Gay Science, Nietzsche feels his blood running strong. Thus, the opening aphorism is a powerful statement of where he sees himself going. #276 announces Nietzsche's famous embrace of amor fati, or "love of fate," but what does this mean. In particular, is this some kind of determinism? Clearly, it has a very different point. For Nietzsche, the issue is the fact that the whole tendency of civilization has been the construction of "counter-realities," denial of natural necessity through the assertion of these constructions. In Nietzsche's naturalization and de-deification, he seeks to accept natural necessity as beautiful, indeed, to be able to say "yes" to it. His argument against Christianity will become increasingly clear as a condemnation of the ways in which Christianity has said "no" to life. This spirit is echoed in #278, "The thought of death," where Nietzsche concludes, "I should like very much to do something that would make the thought of life even a hundred times more appealing to them." (my emphasis)
At #283 we find an extremely important statement of Nietzsche's ethical project, and this continues through #290. This project will carry us from the few noble souls of his own age to an age of "preparatory humans" who will themselves be replaced by a race of such beings. He even emphatically uses the word 'overcome' in this context. What is it in each of us, indeed in all things, that needs to be overcome? Nietzsche continually uses rhetorical language aimed at heroism, waging war, living dangerously, etc. But it is extremely important to recognize that these are wars of the mind. It is hard to see through the cultural crust that clothes us in habit; therefore, we need to go to ourselves ready for warfare and ready to take the risks of original thought and skepticism. As the theme continues in #285, Nietzsche stresses the constancy of energy necessary in the kind of existence that he is proposing and suggests that, "you will the eternal recurrence of war and peace." And finally, "perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god." Note at #292 his hostility toward morality as such. Nietzsche's project is an ethical system to be taken up by brave and adventurous individuals, not a formula to be laid down over individuals to stifle their own activity. At #301, again, he makes the crucial point that, while we always think ourselves to be "observers" of life, I suppose that "life happens to us," we are really the poets who keep creating life. This is especially true of values. Natural things have no intrinsic value, for Nietzsche, for we are the ones who bestow value. "Only we have created the world that concerns man!"
In #293 and #300, the project is again connected with science, as per the title of this work, and #300 is especially telling in his connection between the rise of science out of magic and the need for a gay science out of an heroic conquest in overcoming. Nietzsche mentions Prometheus, but it is relevant that Native American people of the Western US all associated knowledge and ethical flexibility (sometimes to an outrageous extent) with trickster figures --- Coyote in much of the West and Raven in the Northwest --- all of whom were associated with the creation. This theme culminates with #335, "Long live physics!" As Kaufmann writes in his footnote #67, we have to wonder what Nietzsche meant by "physics." To remain consistent with his earliest discussions, he cannot mean "theoretical physics" or theoretical science generally. Throughout The Gay Science he consistently uses terms like "observation" and "experiment" but never "theory." The kind of science that Nietzsche seems to hold in mind is a daringly critical, carefully observational, and creatively experimental truth-seeking. Nor does Nietzsche restrict this truth-seeking merely to the classic subjects unfolding in 19th Century natural science. As Kaufmann suggests, it is much more likely that Nietzsche means "physics" in the broad Greek sense of Aristotle's "Physics" which is a study of all observable natural things, including human beings and their attributes, such as psychology.
The final aphorisms rap up the collected themes of The Gay Science and lay the groundwork for Zarathustra, though one must recognize that Book I of Zarathustra was an entire year in the future and that Nietzsche experienced an extreme trauma in the meantime. Note, in #339, his declaration that "Yes, life is a woman," and compare this in a later work to "if truth were a woman, what then?" I do not believe that either of these is intended in a negative way; indeed, he seems to be saying that life and truth are beautiful things, though not always easy to understand. His disappointment with Socrates's death scene lies in Socrates's continuing denial of life as a value, and his introduction of the "Eternal Recurrence of the Same," in #341, represents an important step in taking life seriously. Indeed, in living life, we should always ask, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" And finally, the figure of Zarathustra comes forward as the true profit. Elsewhere, Nietzsche observes that he has great admiration for Christ but that he died too young and immature, as well as inexperienced. Zarathustra is mature and experienced, as well as being in contact with the natural world.
The Birth of Tragedy and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth
While Nietzsche came to regret many aspects of his book The Birth of Tragedy, it remains clear that numerous ideas in this book were central to his long-term philosophical projects. The truly regrettable part of the book was his passionate relationship with Wagner and the degree to which he was willing to commit to Wagner as the savior of German culture. Even within this passionate commitment, however, there is much to be learned. While Wagner as a person came to disappoint Nietzsche profoundly, the fundamentals of Nietzsche's aims remained thoroughly in tact. Wagner's great sin lay in failing to meet Nietzsche's expectations. Germany did the same, by the way. Not only had Nietzsche given up his Prussian citizenship to take his position in Basle, but throughout his remaining years he became an uncompromising critic of German culture and German people. [In a letter to his mother, Nietzsche wrote, "for, even if I should be a bad German, I am at all events a very good European."]
Nietzsche's vision of the Apollinian is the beginning point for his entire understanding of Western metaphysics. The Apollinian impulse is a dream! An illusion! The principle of individuation, which he sees as the underlying principle of Apollo, lies at the bottom of all our perspectives on reality. We also have to take quite seriously the connection that Nietzsche places between the Apollinian and the Socratic. Socrates, after all, is the father of all Western philosophy. And through the Gnostic continuation of Socrates the West brought Christianity into its particular theoretical dispositions. For Nietzsche, Socrates is even the founding disposition of Western science. [While we tend to honor Aristotle's empiricism as the founding of science, I think that Nietzsche is quite correct in identifying Socrates's displacement of the real into the imagined Ideas as the true foundation of theoretical science.] All Western metaphysics revolves around these two products of Socratic philosophy --- Christian religion and science.
Equally important, of course, is the vision of the Dionysian that Nietzsche was beginning to work out and that continued to inspire his work right to the end. Unlike the Apollinian, the Dionysian did address universal reality; and, at this point in his life, Nietzsche was willing to follow Schopenhauer and Wagner in believing that a certain kind of music was our only genuine mode of perceiving the universally real. The importance of this concept for understanding Nietzsche ultimately is our recognition that this music does not "perceive" objects or individuals. While objectification is commonplace in Western metaphysics, Nietzsche was already replacing Western metaphysics with a chaotic undifferentiated "energy" which is closely related to the word 'will' as he uses it. [It is easy to believe that Nietzsche's use of the term 'will' is merely a subscription to Schopenhauer's philosophy, but it is important to consider the different slant that Nietzsche was already giving this term --- a term that will ultimately become elevated within his conception of "will to power."]
There is an interesting "urgency" to Nietzsche's book and I suspect this is the same urgency that continued to fire his writing in occasionally excessive dramatizations. The origin of this urgency was undoubtedly personal and it is easy to suspect that it had a great deal to do with his all-too-frequently stifled attempts to overcome the passive and compliant Lutheranism of his mother and sister. That urgency, so far as it can be seen in both readings, here, was a vision that Athenians needed tragic art and lost something of considerable (perhaps inestimable) value when Socratism and Hellenism took over. In the essay on Wagner, we see it again as a need for German cultural "health." I see this urgency as connected with the dramatic urgency that we see expressed in all of Nietzsche's later writings. He is writing "before his time," as he says, always paving the way for something important. He is "dynamite." For all of the energy involved in this tendency to urgency, however, we are left wondering whether he ever does tell us why the Greeks cannot just live in simple Apollinian bliss. Similarly, what is wrong with being a fundamentalist Christian if you're happy? Where does scientific optimism really go wrong?
One suspects that the answers to these questions lie, at least in part, in psychology; and that is one clear reason why Nietzsche wrote speculatively in psychology so extensively that he anticipated Freud and other great 20th Century analysts. In many respects, we encounter the same problems among them. "What's wrong with a little neurosis if it keeps me happy? Maybe, in fact, I'm in love with my neuroses!"
Freud's Future of an Illusion must seem especially relevant here. As he put it, "every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization." Civilizations have to defend themselves in order to create long-term stability, hence, all the rules and regulations that are created to maintain civilization. But this means that individuals must renounce instinctual aims and activities in order to conform. Our Apollinian illusions require conformity, ultimately; and there's the rub. Freud even agrees with Nietzsche about the fact that, "art offers substitutive satisfactions for the oldest and still most deeply felt cultural renunciations, and for that reason it serves as nothing else does to reconcile a man to the sacrifices he has made on behalf of civilization." Like Nietzsche, Freud admired the many positive contributions of civilization to human life. Neither complete surrender to the Id nor dissolution into Dionysian intoxication is a productive direction for human existence. But why, then, is the other side of the dichotomy forbidden as well? The purely Apollinian is as dangerous to us as the purely Dionysian life. The dichotomy must be bridged and escaped in some way; and this is a theme that virtually characterizes all of Nietzsche's thought.
Apollinian civilization is built on individuals, words and objects. But, in an odd way, it is simultaneously destructive to individuals, that is, to real individuals, not ideal individuals. It is the real individual to which Freud makes reference, namely, a combination of conscious and unconscious, ego and id. Much of the confusion over Nietzsche's thought must revolve around trying to understand what the "real individual" is in Nietzsche's mind. This is crucial because "health" or "joy" or "life" all stand in relation to that description. We cannot describe joyous human life if we remain captured by Apollinian preconceptions of individuality. In section 23, he makes this point in terms of the nurturing of myth. Human vitality remains in tact when human life remains founded in myth. Perhaps an understandable example is the difference between a national spirit that has acquired a "realist" perspective on its political state versus one that continues to take seriously its founding myths. The mythic addresses deep and pervasive struggles of a people and remains indefinite and evolutionary. The "realistic" addresses the particular in a closed and analytic formulation, leaving little opportunity for transformation. Presumably, the purely Apollinian person is tied into a concrete world, whereas the "tragic person," encompassing both Apollinian and Dionysian, admits the possibility of transformative change from one concreteness to another. This represents a kind of heroic "vitality" that, one imagines, will ultimately be represented by Nietzsche's Ubermensch.
Updated on April 30, 2003.