Monday, 19 July 2010
The 'Caesar' Problem in Nietzsche.
It seems clear to me that Caesar occupies a very privileged place in Nietzsche's imagination, and is, for him, perhaps at the very summit of human types. Yet, as GS98 makes clear, Nietzsche also approves of Caesar's assassination (by Brutus), once he 'threatens the freedom of other great souls'. Why is Caesar rated so highly by Nietzsche? What societal/political issues does this raise? And, is Nietzsche worthy of being taken seriously here?
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I'm a little surprised that, thus far, no one has commented on this topic, since its importance regarding Nietzsche's whole normative and evaluative project is absolutely fundamental. So, i'll talk to myself. . .
ReplyDeleteAny fool can see that the thrust of Nietzsche's normative and evaluative position resides in the concept of "higher-men". This point of view is made explicit from the very beginning (e.g. "No, the goal of humanity cannot lie in its end but only in its highest exemplars" UM.11.9).
Two questions immediately spring to mind. Firstly, why do these "higher-types" occupy such gigantic "metaphysical" importance? Secondly, who qualifies as an exemplary "higher-type" and why?
Starting with the second question; Nietzsche offers various historical figures throughout his work who may be (provisionally at least) considered suitable candidates for "higher-type" status. Yet none, I think, are seen as favourably as Caesar, certainly in Nietzsche's "mature" years (As a further complicating subtlety or ambiguity we must also bear in mind that, according to Zarathustra, "there has never yet been an Ubermensch").
It is significant that in Daybreak 549, Caesar, along with Alexander, Mohammed, and Napoleon are suspected of being exemplary "men of action" in large part because they were in "flight from themselves" qua epileptics.
The tone Nietzsche adopts here to such types is seldom repeated in the later works. This is very significant. And yet there is, despite this significant difference in ideological colouring, a largely implied continuity between what appears to be almost antithetical value judgements. How is this to be explained? How can the epitome of actualised will to power and affirmation also be seen as "in flight from himself"?
The "answer" to this question, I believe, lies in Nietzsche's conception of the "subject" as a "multiplicity" of competing drives and affects. This I will explore in my next post, using e.g. John Richardson's Nietzsche's Freedoms (http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/johnrichardson) as, rather typically of much recent Nietzsche scholarship, both illuminating and disingenuous regarding Nietzsche's conception of drives and his normativity.
Richardson's essay, which explores Nietzsche's ideas on agency, drives, consciousness, self-mastery and freedom is in many ways excellent and certainly worth reading, but it contains, I believe, a common misrepresentation of Nietzsche's evaluative hierarchy. Nietzsche held that the modern was characterised by the unhealthy juxtaposition of many contradictory and antithetical drives, and that the most common result of this is mediocrity or neurosis. Thus the modern is typically weak and "decadent". (see e.g. TI.Expd.38 & 41).
ReplyDeleteNow, Richardson follows the fashion of offering Goethe as the apex of Nietzsche's 'pre-Nietzschean' conception of "drive unification" and "self-mastery".
Richardson: "Goethe is Nietzsche's exemplar of this unity, this double freedom [i.e. the capacity for conscious agency to examine and discriminate between the drives]. Only Nietzsche himself, according to Richardson, goes beyond this by means of genealogy, which allows Nietzsche to see that agency itself is not neutral but largely socially constructed in the interests of the herd. i.e. agency is actually the common enemy of the drives. This insight requires a more scrupulous and self-critical response to the recommendations of agency.
The only point I wish to emphasise here is the absence of Caesar and the elevation of Goethe as Nietzsche's favourite historical example of drive unification. There is no denying that Nietzsche held Goethe in very high regard, but there is more substantive textual support for Caesar being Nietzsche's favoured embodiment of drive unification.
Yet it's also clear that Caesar qua concrete historical reality is nowhere analysed and evaluated in any sustained and detailed fashion. Given the importance Nietzsche places on the existence of 'higher men' and the exalted position that the name 'Caesar' occupies in Nietzsche's text, this is a rather inexplicable lacuna. There's no principled reason why Nietzsche should be coy and reticent about specifying, in a philosophically robust fashion, and with reference to actual historical 'realities', exactly why Caesar is valued so highly by Nietzsche. The conclusion I draw from this lack of 'justification' is that Nietzsche was well aware, much to his horror and disappointment, that 'Caesar' was, in reality, for Nietzsche, more ideogram than real person.
This is, I believe, a fatal flaw in Nietzsche's idealising propaganda and results, I think, from his hopeless pursuit of "purity" (in the Nietzschean sense). This then begs the obvious question: why is no one ever, for Nietzsche, really "good enough"? And how is this visceral and 'ideological' disposition, this dissatisfaction with the actuality of human types, to be reconciled with his characterisation of his philosophy as "world affirming"?
I will now attempt to introduce some order into my presentation of this subject. I do this for two main reasons: firstly, to challenge anyone familiar with Nietzsche's work to contradict me; secondly, to help anyone interested in this subject, but not overly familiar with Nietzsche's work, to understand why Caesar occupies such enormous significance for Nietzsche.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing to note, as already mentioned, is that Nietzsche rarely pays any attention to the actual details of Caesar's life and work. This means, in large part, that Caesar must be seen as an ideogram, a symbol, a sublime and seductive possibility for Nietzsche. We can see the same speculative psychology at work in Nietzsche's depiction of Jesus in the AntiChrist.
In the AntiChrist he writes: "What I am concerned with is the psychological type of the redeemer. For it could be contained in the Gospels in spite of the Gospels, however much mutilated and overloaded with foreign traits: as that of Francis of Assisi is contained in the legends about him in spite of the legends. Not the truth about what he did, what he said, how he really died: but the question whether his type is still conceivable at all . . ." (A.29).
And so it is, I believe, with Caesar.
But before exploring why precisely Caesar occupies such an exalted place for Nietzsche, I will simply offer some textual support that he does.
In The Gay Science Nietzsche praises Shakespeare's depiction of Brutus in the Caesar play, arguing that "he [Shakespeare] believed in Brutus and did not cast one speck of suspicion upon this type of virtue. It was to him that he devoted his best tragedy - it is still called by the wrong name - . . . Independence of soul! - that is at stake here. No sacrifice can be too great for that: one must be capable of sacrificing one's dearest friend for it, even if he should also be the most glorious human being, an ornament of the world, a genius without peer - if one loves freedom as the freedom of great souls and he threatens this kind of freedom. That is what Shakespeare must have felt. . .What is all of Hamlet's melancholy compared to that of Brutus? . . . before the whole figure and virtue of Brutus, Shakespeare prostrated himself, feeling unworthy and remote . . . twice he brings in a poet, and twice he pours such an impatient and ultimate contempt over him that it sounds like a cry - a cry of self-contempt". (GS.98).
I will explain later why Nietzsche's approval of Caesar's assassination (by Brutus) does not in any way lessen Nietzsche's admiration of Caesar; quite the reverse!
For now it will suffice to note two things: firstly, that Caesar is here depicted as "the most glorious human being, an ornament of the world, a genius without peer"; and secondly, people such as Caesar and Brutus are rated higher that Shakespeare. (See also Schopenhauer as Educator.8).
In Twilight of the Idols Caesar is said to belong to that category which represents "that subtle machine working at the highest pressure which is called genius". (TI.Expd.31).
A little later, in offering his "conception of freedom" Nietzsche writes: "One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome. . . This is true psychologically when one understands by 'tyrants' pitiless and dreadful instincts, to combat which demands the maximum of authority and discipline towards oneself - finest type Julius Caesar. . . (TI.Expd.38)(see also BGE.200).
And in WP.544 he writes "The highest human beings, such as Caesar . . ."
Additional textual evidence could be cited here in support, but the aforementioned should suffice to establish that much of the most discussed contemporary Nietzsche scholarship is not faithfully tracking a central part of Nietzsche's work. e.g. Richardson, Leiter, Katsafanas, to name but a few . . .
ReplyDeleteThe possible reasons for this apparently prudent silence may become clear as we proceed further into this disturbing subject; one can only speculate. But the omission certainly exists, and that strikes me as significant and indicative of the age.
I will subsequently attempt to highlight why Caesar is prized so highly by Nietzsche.
I've said before, but it needs repeating, that far too many commentators (wilfully, I think) misrepresent Nietzsche's attatchment to "nobility" and "culture" in the person of the artistic or intellectual genius. Since no one but the crassest philistine and committed egalitarian is against intellectual and artistic excellence, the implication is that while Nietzsche is undoubtedly an "elitist", it is an "elitism" of a familiar and generally harmless type.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this reading, he essentially values the same things as we all do; he loves art, music, literature, abstract thinking etc, but he values them more highly than the rest of us.
This reading, in my view, is simply preposterous. It continues, however, to spread principally because it erroneously conflates "genius" with "talent". The problem is: there is not the slightest justification for this conflation. It matters little to Nietzsche if one simply has exceptional technical or creative abilities. One could posses the technical proficiency of an Einstein, or Da Vinci, or Wagner, or Shakespeare, and still count for almost nothing in Nietzsche's eyes. Mere talent, even if to an extraordinary degree, means virtually zilch to him.
What does matter is the nature of the content and the personality that this talent emerges from. One can have all the talent in the world but still, for Nietzsche, be little more than a giant dwarf, a glorious specialist, a master of mere nooks and crannies; for one thereby fails to represent a more comprehensive, synthetic, summarizing abstract of mankind, which is precisely the type of greatness he's interested in.
On more than one occasion Nietzsche refuses to designate Kant, for example, as a real, genuine philosopher. Likewise Wagner is ruthlessly criticised, not because he lacks the necessary technical musical ability, but for his deficiencies in other, for Nietzsche, more vital, areas; "for nothing is more easily corrupted than an artist" (GM.111.25).
So let us quickly dispose of the falsehood that Nietzsche placed great value on exceptional intellectual or artistic ability, qua technical ability. He didn't.
When Nietzsche typically uses the word "culture", or when he speaks of "great human beings", he means something very different from most.
ReplyDeleteNow, precisely what he does mean by these terms is very difficult to say (I will deal with this topic more exclusively when I return to the 'sickness' thread), but it is a fairly simple task to identify what he most certainly doesn't mean by these terms. He certainly doesn't think erudition and exemplary technical ability represent anything of great significance. I am somewhat embarrassed (intellectually) by the obviousness of the point i'm making, but this is an issue which all too many are happy to misrepresent.
Many of the deficiencies of the "spiritual" type become clear when we look closer at Nietzsche's relation to Caesar. In GM Nietzsche informs us that few artists have the strength and courage to stand alone, and that they usually await some other figure to pass judgements that the artist subsequently explores and echoes. Nietzsche gives the example of Wagner hiding behind certain Schopenhauerian judgements. Yet, we also know that Nietzsche frequently castigates philosophers for lacking an intellectual conscience, for their refusal to properly explore questions and answers that wound the heart, or offend the powerful (in the modern world the powerful are, for Nietzsche, the "masses").
At the limit, Nietzsche longs for (fantasises) a type of "great man" who will represent a summarizing power, an individual who will have within him all the major passions, tendencies, impulses and abilities of mankind, from the 'lowest' to the 'highest', but who will be able to absorb and affirm this potentially chaotic multiplicity, and by doing so will represent a metaphysical and aesthetic response adequate to the existential predicament we find ourselves in.
The rest of us, Nietzsche believes, can be enriched, elevated, dignified, redeemed, only by the reflected light emanating from these heroic individuals.
Early on, in Schopenhauer as Educator Nietzsche names the philosopher, the saint and the artist as the three exemplary types needed to affirm/justify existence, but in the course of Nietzsche's work these candidates are soon rendered insufficient to the task. The task itself, however, to affirm authentically the human condition in a godless, meaningless universe, remains at the very centre of his project till the end.
Now one of the most significant deficiencies in Nietzsche is that so much of his work insists on the significance of great individual human beings, yet he offers no formulae, criterion, or definition of "greatness" that he is prepared to consistently hold to. Thus he ends up offering disparate models of "greatness", often without any discernible connecting thread between them.
Nietzsche had, of course, no settled view of what precisely constitutes greatness, and passages like BGE.269 (an especially instructive piece of writing), with its sorrowful deflation of the whole pyramidal edifice of greatness, suggest that, in his sober moments he realised, to his immense sorrow and despair, that he was asking the impossible.
Nevertheless, these deflationary realisations didn't actually stop him from repeatedly asserting the significance of "great men" (a question for a psychologist!). And, one of the types of "great men" he valued so highly finds its highest expression in the idea (if not the actual person?)of Caesar.
With these brief background remarks in mind, I return to the question at hand: what, for Nietzsche, is so special about Caesar?