For me, one of Nietzsche's most significant 'errors' is the emphasis (both rhetorical and conceptual) that he places on 'decadence' in the later works. Too often the word is used carelessly and dismissively, as if it represented the foundational key to all evaluative questions, whereas we know, from any attentive reading, that the word qua concept has no clear meaning.
In fact, I would argue, strictly speaking, the concept is meaningless, and Nietzsche's frequent valorized usage is objectively and logically groundless. There is no decadence, nor could there be; 'decadence' (as Nietzsche occasionally admits) is simply a contingent term of abuse he throws at aspects of existence he dislikes and opposes.
Another significant "error" is the apparent fact that Nietzsche never bothered to actually read Darwin for himself. This is a more serious flaw than it may appear; it creates, obviously, serious conceptual problems for Nietzsche (especially with the concept of WP in the biological realm), but more significantly I think, it shows a certain laziness or dishonesty on Nietzsche's part which, I must admit, rather astonishes me. . .
I am of the opinion that the Nietzschean "doctrines" such as "the will to power", "eternal recurrence", and "perspectivism" do him little credit (conceptually). I think much of the academic treatment of these topics is actually bogus and affected, simply giving certain types of people something to write, debate, and argue about, knowing all the while that none of these "doctrines" has an intelligible, coherent, meaningful kernel.
One is constantly reminded of GS.99. Here Nietzsche draws attention to the fact that most of the followers of Schopenhauer pay more attention, and endow with more "respect" many of Schopenhauer's "embarrassments", at the expense of what is most valuable in his work.
I'll return more explicitly to this theme in later posts.
I agree that he made significant error in taking Darwin from other's words and not through his own careful reading.
I personally dislike the amount of suggested importance that he gives to "the moment" and "eternal recurrence," although he personally doesn't discuss the topics at length, and I believe they weaken his presence as a philosopher since most people begin to know him as the bearer of literary thought experiments and maxims and not as the penetrating psychologist that he is..
Thanks for dropping by. I agree that there is a glaring contrast between the importance that Nietzsche (at times) ascribes to the "eternal recurrence" and the paucity of analysis devoted to it. Even in TSZ, it's a noticeable subtlety that it's not Zarathustra but his animals who first proclaim it.
I can only understand such slogans as meaningful in some profound way to Nietzsche (the flesh and blood man), viscerally and psychologically, as contingently useful expedients in relation to certain "ugly truths" that he frequently explores. They're symptoms of the 'weakness' of his "digestive capacity", of his inability to assimilate what he actually knows. They seem to have become, at times, aids in the art of living for him, regardless of their intellectually flimsy content.
Something very significant is signalled by the opening section of part 4 of GS. The idea of "affirmation" (itself an incoherent and unrealisable concept) comes to prominence in subsequent works in ways that are, dialectically, unjustified. I think such changes tell us more about the various sufferings that Nietzsche is trying to escape from, rather than any hitherto undiscovered world he discovers or creates.
What specifically, is the nature of your "dislike" here?
Thanks for posting these questions and offering them for discussion. This has been enjoyable and intriguing!
Well, I do think Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an extremely powerful and enjoyable work to read. I felt that it seduced me, at times, and then violently lashed back at me, at other times, unexpectedly. However, I think the whole adventure is a literary one and if any insights are extracted from it, it should be meta-insights, psychological insights, and not literal ones.
The fact that Nietzsche has some notes indicating his attempt to find empirical evidence for accepting the idea of the "eternal return" draws attention away from his talent as a great psychologist. Then again, Nietzsche says a lot of trendy things that attract people toward reading him and yet divert them away from a more rigorous look at his psychological insights. I suppose I am only worried that since he doesn't introduce his own philosophy with a narrative to explain how he should be understood and what is most important to him, I believe many students of his are bound to get lost and distracted.
Then again, maybe there are some type-facts inherent in the reader that draw them toward a more rigorous reading or toward a more post-modern reading, and not anything that can be prevented through education.
If it's not too personal a question; what things in TSZ seduced and attacked you? (Of course, that's exactly how N felt a reader should react to it. GM. Preface.8.)
This also raises two crucial questions: firstly, why did N continue to view TSZ as his greatest work? Secondly, what do we make of this judgement?
re type-facts: it's a complex and subtle subject, which can easily slide into a sort of post hoc fatalism of the sort we don't want. I know Leiter has an essay on N's "fatalism", but to be honest, I can't remember off hand his views.
There's an analogy to be made with Stephen Hawking's remarks on determinism.
"Is everything determined? The answer is yes, it is. But it might as well not be, because we can never know what is determined".
Even if the type-facts are, in fact, the most determining causal and trajectory-confining factors (and I suspect in some sense they are), the outside (education) environment can still legitimately exert enormous and critical influence on any outcome.
Just a word on the issue of "affirmation": I am not sure, David, why you think it is 'incoherent' and 'unrealisable'. I am curious to know. Thanks for the blog, BTW.
re "Affirmation"- Psychologically and "ideologically", I think it's clear that "affirmation" is very important to Nietzsche, and I think in many ways justifiably so.
However, taken too strictly and literally it breaks down. Negation, denial and "looking away" are inevitably part of the totality, part of the great economy of existence, and it's the totality that Nietzsche (rhetorically at least) at times claims to be affirming, or aspiring to affirm.
This presents both a logical and visceral conundrum: in what way does it make sense to affirm negation (which is part of the totality) that merits characterising such a stance as "affirmative"? Or is one supposed to negate negation itself? If so, then the totality is not being affirmed at all.
Thus I don't see how affirmation is even conceptually possible, given that the totality contains inherently contradictory elements. e.g. BGE.9. One may seek to live in a predominantly affirmative spirit, yes, but this would be appearance. In truth, one can never affirm anything but parts of the whole contingently, the whole itself cannot be affirmed.
Hi David, Well, I think that if you read the Yes saying in context it might be interpreted to make more sense. The chief context, in my view, is GS 276 (and other places where N mentions amor fati): here N makes it clear that what he wishes to affirm is what is necessary in life, namely, those aspetcs of life that cannot be gotten rid off, like pain, suffering, meaninglessness, transience, uncertainty, etc. These are precisely the aspects of life that No-sayers (Christians, pessimists) negated and this is why N is interested in cultivating the opposite attitude towards them. N wants to cultivate a Yes-saying attitude to these aspects and not the whole of reality.
The "necessary" for him does not refer to the whole of reality, just to those aspects that any life whatsoever involves.
To affirm and say Yes to everything would be, like you said, totally nonsensical (to say Yes when a drink you don't like is served to you. Why would N have a problem with that anyway?). But what N is worried about is whether one can say Yes to the ugly, questionable and unavoidable aspects of life.
Your first paragraph is unquestionably true. Relatedly, much of his admiration of the pre-Socratics stems from his depiction of them as "affirming", in word and deed, a tragic form of existence, a "pessimism of strength".
". . . for the will to life eternally to affirm itself, the 'torment of childbirth' must also exist eternally. . . All this is contained in the word Dionysos: I know of no more exhaled symbolism than this Greek symbolism" (TI.WIOTA.4).
Further, in GS.276 itself, even here Nietzsche recognises that the Yes-saying he aspires to, is, in fact, likely to involve the negation of "looking away".
But "looking away" is what he rarely practises. The problem is that, many of the things that "cannot be gotten rid off", are precisely certain aspects of existence Nietzsche manifestly loathes and refuses to accept (mostly, but not always), e.g. the dominance of the indestructible "small man", the victory of "decadent and ascetic values", the "corruption and ruination of 'higher-men'"; and revulsion from this reality produces in Nietzsche "a feeling of anxiety with which no other can be compared" (BGE.203).
It is, of course, precisely because Nietzsche is so susceptible to these corrosive affects (pity and insight frequently leads to nausea in Nietzsche), that he wants to flee (viscerally) into the "sanctuary" of the opposite perspective; halcyon, joyous affirmation of de facto reality. But this rarely happens.
When Nietzsche says in WP that "The man of antiquity . . . alone has hitherto been 'the man who has turned out well'"(WP.957), this harmonises all too recogniseably with the dominant perspective throughout the published work.
Is this what you're referring to when you say - "But what N is worried about [emphasis added] is whether one can say Yes to the ugly, questionable and unavoidable aspects of life"?
It's clear that Nietzsche, in general, couldn't say Yes to the ugly, in spite of his best efforts and claims to the contrary.
I'll quote from Henry Staten here: "Instead of overflowing confidence in life, we are given reaction, paranoia, and nostalgia for antiquity. It is very suspicious that it is almost always in illo tempore [in an undetermined time in the past] that health and strength are located, almost never in this world that Nietzsche inhabits. Nietzsche claims to affirm this world, yet he finesses the issue by affirming a version of this world that is really another world, long ago and far away, and perhaps a world that never was".
Staten is careful to say "almost always in illo tempore" for N clearly lauds Goethe (TI Skirmishes, 49) for saying Yes and not negating. And he also admired Napoleon... So the claim that N really affirmed another world is hyperbolical. With regard to N himself: yes, he says in some letter that he would not be able to live this life again. But this is just a biographical fact which says nothing about the intelligibility of his ideas. The fact that there were such life affirming people means that it is not necessary that everyone would say yes to life - hence, according to my interpretation, it is not something that he aspires to affirm. According to my reading, he is interested to affirm the necessary and ugly aspects of life, one that every life as such invovles. But further, even if N despised the slavish personality, he could still affirm it: he is thankful to his enemies... "Love your enemies" he says somewhere in TI (I think). In other words, even the weak (Christians, pessimists, democrats, etc.) are to be positively valued for they present N with a hurdle, with a challenge to test his strength agasint. Indeed, how could N be N without them??? Lastly, I don't think looking away is a negation. To be indifferent to something is not to negate it. IN GS 276 I believe three basic attitudes are to be found: saying Yes, saying No and looking away. What N wants is to cleanse the soul, so to speak, from negative affects which go against the basic factors of life. But if one cannot conquer them and affirm them, better just ignore them.
"The fact that there were such life affirming people means that it is not necessary that everyone would say No to life - hence, according to my interpretation, it (the fact that there are no-sayers) is not something that he aspires or should aspire to affirm".
Guy, If Nietzsche's work was dominated by analysis and commentary of those (from whatever historical period) he admired as affirmers, and the rest, the other 99% of humanity he effectively ignored, "passed by", and in the vicinity of whom he typically "looked away", then you would have a valid point.
But this is precisely what he doesn't/ can't do very often.
It's true that, at times, Nietzsche reflects on the benefits he derives by virtue of having such opponents, but again, this is a rare, halcyon stance, at odds with the dominant content and tone of the later works.
Zarathustra says: "From the heart of me I love only Life - and in truth, I love her most of all when I hate her" (TSZ.11.10).
The "love" in question, however, doesn't take place in consciousness, it's not experienced by the subject as "love". On the contrary, what's subjectively experienced here is "hatred". At the level of consciousness, I don't think it's credible to argue that Nietzsche "loved his enemies", quite the reverse.
But the argument is plausible at the level of the instincts and unconscious. The problem is, of course, we don't "live" here at this level.
In regard to affirmation (of life), I am on-spot with Guy here.
I believe that Nietzsche’s talk of affirmation is separate from his positive comments and negative criticisms. I think “life” is what Nietzsche affirms, whether that means he writes in an appreciative, praising manner or in a depreciating, critical manner -- I believe he makes this clear, and I find no inconsistency when someone simultaneously affirms life and writes critically. Of course, writing critically to attack those who depreciate life is itself a life affirming act.
Perhaps this is more tangible with examples:
If you are a king and your population of subjects is growing, how do you maintain control over them?
1a. You could poison them, weaken them, and make them easier to manage. 2a. You could strengthen yourself, demand more from yourself, and make yourself more complex so that you are able to manage the increasing population.
If you have a swarm of contrary drives within you, how do you maintain control over them?
1b. You could repress them, allow them to disintegrate into minor neurosis, or allow them to each pursue their own aim (which would result in weakness and disorganization). You would them become a “weak willed” person, since any one of your drives can hold the reins at any time and guide you toward whatever end.
2b. Alternatively, a master drive could sublimate all the weak, repressed and neurotic drives under its own aim. Thus organizing all the drives into a unified individual. What would result would be a “strong will,” since you would be difficult to tempt or distract from your master drive’s aim.
For an in-depth look at the talk about sublimation, see...[Gemes, Ken (2009), “Nietzsche and Freud on Sublimation”]
I think that talk that focuses on the semantic or worries about the word choice in regards to defining affirmation is bound to get a little confused. Personally, I think that standing back and looking at the ways in which he uses his terms and their context makes you realize that cases such as 1a and 1b refer to the negation of life while cases such as 2a and 2b refer to the affirmation of life (separate from any peripheral, vague remarks about whether he is “looking-away” or whatever).
If it's not too personal a question; what things in TSZ seduced and attacked you?
Hmm...well. To put it briefly, I was seduced by Zarathustra’s attitude of standing apart, and then I was hurt by his sort of abandonment at the end of part 1. The reason why I was hurt is that I felt like being seduced into becoming a disciple of Zarathustra didn’t make the world clearer, on the contrary, not only did it leave me alone, but it also made the world more frightening.
This also raises two crucial questions: firstly, why did N continue to view TSZ as his greatest work? Secondly, what do we make of this judgement?
I think he viewed it as his greatest work due to some personal relationship with it. I remember reading a letter in which he admitted that he wanted to shoot himself in the head after writing part 1. As a piece of literature, I believe he thought that he had included so much in it, without any philosophical elaboration however. So the work represents a sort of mine.
I can’t remember where, but I recall him saying that what produced Zarathustra (or Zarathustra’s thoughts) was an endless well. So I think the work as a whole has its source in something fundamental to Nietzsche, and that discovering this source (what I take to be the stance, presuppositions and assumptions beneath all of Nietzsche’s thoughts) would be key to understanding not only Zarathustra but the rest of Nietzsche’s writings.
I think it is an important judgment to take into consideration. We certainly don’t have to accept it as our favorite work, but perhaps we should strive to fully understand what it has in common (what stance it has in common) with his other works.
I'm unsure how to read your "affirmation" post. You seem to equate "affirmation" with a certain conception of "strength". The dangers of a "weakened-personality" are, I agree, very important to Nietzsche, and in some ways I think the "History" meditation is still among his best and clearest work on this problem.
But to call this "affirmation" is, I think, misleading, and leads to the objection Nietzsche provides in his critique of the Stoics in BGE.9. In this context, how could any organism fail to be anything other that an "affirmer"? It would also make it perplexing why Nietzsche is entitled to any criticism of the ascetic priest, since for some individuals, this route offers real opportunities for great social power (sometimes exceeding the King)and drive unification.
Surely someone like Luther or Paul (or simply a proud peasant) would qualify as exemplary 2b types? These are unquestionably "strong-types", but not in a way that Nietzsche admires and not in a way that qualifies them as Nietzschean "affirmers".
Nietzsche's valorisation of the "affirmative" type arises from the fact that, especially for the enlightened and sensitive sort, truth is ugly, frightening, and horrific. Pascal's only refuge from this abyss is Christ. Schopenhauer, as an atheist, refuses this solution but essentially agrees with Pascal's revulsion at existence. Nietzsche, by contrast, is trying to affirm what both of these figures cannot, trying to cultivate a "pessimism of strength" that can digest a huge chunk of "existential" suffering and yet not be fatally wounded by it. But one doesn't overcome this problem simply by being strong or powerful. This is one of the anti-"Darwinian" facts that Nietzsche can't abide, the fact that it's the "weak" who posses most power, that often the "strong" miscarry, degenerate, "malfunction", and generally lose in contests of strength.
The incomparable "anxiety" that Nietzsche feels in BGE.203 is easily visible in every work he ever wrote. This pronounced anxiety is not the hallmark of an affirmer, but, on the contrary, of someone deeply wishing he was an affirmer.
I think Nietzsche's greatness as a thinker is primarily, but not exclusively, due to his insight and honesty as a psychologist. It may seem that psychology is but one aspect among many others, and that profundity in this area leaves many other important areas of human interest largely untouched, such as philosophy, art, science, morality and politics. I think that Nietzsche provides us with very powerful arguments against this view. Our psychology leaves its footprint everywhere that is important to us, and reaches far and deep into our relations with things apparently removed and independent.
The kernel of this view is that we are all innocently and unavoidably "selfish" (viscerally, physiologically, not behaviourally), and that this (often unconscious) "selfishness" is omnipresent and is the brute datum behind all our thoughts, feelings and actions.
This view has been advanced by many others prior to Nietzsche, but no one, as far as i'm aware, had explored this sobering fact with such attention to detail.
And yet the validity and tremendous implications of this doctrine are routinely marginalised or ignored by most of our so-called Nietzschean scholars. Whenever I reflect on this phenomenon I am reminded of Nietzsche's view that most of Schopenhauer's followers respected his errors and faults more than his virtues (GS.99), and that in truth Schopenhauer had little or no effect on most.
This, broadly speaking, seems to me to apply even more so to Nietzsche. It is almost impossible nowadays to find a scholar who shares Nietzsche's revulsion at the faux moralism routinely flouted, at the cultural vulgarity and mediocrity now on top, at the lack of honesty and solitude often displayed by our intellectuals.
Instead, the topics that generate the most commentary are often Nietzsche's excesses and vices: The (pre-TSZ) Will to Power, Perspectivism, Decadence, the Eternal Recurrence, the Ubermensch, Dionysus. Or, alternatively, Nietzsche's views on topics such as free will and language are sequestered in such a manner that they are guaranteed to have no concrete social impact whatsoever. Everything is designed and articulated in a manner co-habitable with the current philistinism. Nietzsche is thereby tamed, rendered sociologically impotent, and while respectable academics and their graduates can make a good living and pass the time pleasantly by nibbling at this quasi-Nietzschean carcass, the general thrust of his whole project is reduced to a personal idiosyncrasy, a dangerous irrelevance, best forgotten.
I have no interest in this artificial and distorted "Nietzsche" at all, and I greatly suspect that anyone overly impressed with contemporary Nietzschean scholarship, which usually goes out of its way to avoid giving offence to the levellers among us, is likely to be unimpressed with my general orientation.
Someone recently acquainted with Nietzsche may reasonably ask why I consider such things as the (pre-TSZ) Will to Power, The Eternal Recurrence, Decadence and Perspectivism as vices and excesses? My answer is simple.
Respect has to be earned, and Arguments from Authority are explicitly counter to the sceptical, realist and critical aspects of Nietzsche that I admire. We must treat Nietzsche's texts with the same enlightened hostility that we routinely apply to the work of others. None of the above "concepts" are seriously demarcated, articulated, and presented with clarity and consistency in Nietzsche's work.
If Nietzsche admitted honestly to his readers (and himself) that he was merely exploring these issues provisionally, that he was pursuing an intuition that something of value resided here underneath and behind all these shifting perspectives, contradictions and rhetorical fog, then his treatment of these issues would be entirely legitimate. But all too often he does no such thing, and he offers these doctrines and slogans (for that's what they are) as if he actually had something novel, earth-shattering and clearly understood and described already in his hands. He doesn't.
All one has to do is imagine another philosopher espousing these "doctrines" with the same grandiose assurance. It is obvious that Nietzsche would, quite rightly, be scathing in his criticisms of such intellectual pretentiousness, and would waste no time in pointing out to the author the numerous conceptual and evidenciary lacunae being conveniently overlooked.
I don't think we do Nietzsche, or, more importantly, ourselves, any favours at all by allowing his errors and shortcomings to go unrecognised. Nietzsche's virtues as a thinker are so great that he can survive perfectly well without this misplaced veneration.
Nietzsche's general treatment of women is basically ludicrous and reeks of ignorance and dishonesty. "The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit" (BGE.75). There is, I think, a great deal of truth in this claim.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche's perceived conditions of preservation and growth seem to cast the female in the role of toxic bait on the route to self-oblivion or mundane self-squandering. It's dispiriting that despite Nietzsche's radicalism and modernity he could never quite free himself from certain reactionary attachments.
To be clear: I think that Nietzsche is quite right to view with scorn and ridicule the notion of universal liberation and autonomy for women, just as this notion applied to men is equally absurd and dishonest. But a rejection of universalism is no excuse for failing to promote a meritocracy, regardless of gender.
I think Nietzsche's greatest fault is his failure to "remain true to the earth". On the face of it, his whole philosophical project is commited to reintegrating man back into nature and freeing it from various types of unworldly veneration. He is adamant that the hitherto considered "trivial" aspects of existence, such as self-love, diet, locality, recreation etc, are, in truth, unspeakably more important than the traditionally concieved concepts such as "God", "sin", "virtue", "eternal life" and "truth".
This orientation, I believe, is where his ultimate significance lies, this is what is truly significant and epoch-making in his work.
And yet, he spends far too much time and energy on denigrating the de facto material that is humanity. Again and again he flees into the distant past or far into the future in order to affirm reality; but this past is frequently romanticised and this future is essentially bereft of any concrete details.
"There has never yet been an Ubermensch" he has Zarathustra say without any sense of irony or shame. But this hopeless evaluation tells me that Zarathustra (and thus Nietzsche) is more unworldly, and more of a blasphemer of the earth, than the humanity he condemns.
I have only very lightly scratched the surface of this issue here, and yet this issue is, in my view, the most important issue of all. For the present I merely wish to register my objection and i'll leave a more detailed contribution for another time.
N.B. It is very easy to quote passages such as: "What justifies man is his reality - it will justify him eternally. How much more valuable an actual man is compared with any sort of merely desired, dreamed of, odious lie of a man? with any sort of ideal man?" (TI.1V.32), in order to apparently refute my position.
The problem is, I can quite easily cite literally hundreds of passages where Nietzsche manifestly doesn't practise what he here preaches.
Nietzsche all too often deals with the important issue of suffering in a strikingly inadequate and misleading fashion. Essentially his doctrine concerning the affirming of suffering has two aspects; firstly, sufferings of some sorts are simply inevitable and cannot be wished away by any political framework or social arrangement whatsoever, nor will suffering be sanctified in the future via a non-existent after-life; secondly, suffering is absolutely necessary if greatness is to be achieved.
Both of these points are perfectly reasonable and valid. Nevertheless, much more needs to be said here, and all too often Nietzsche fails to get beyond this important but preliminary surface grammar and crass sloganeering, under the guise of the great positive spirit, and the affirmer of suffering.
This lack of discrimination and careful examination on the issue of "suffering" on Nietzsche's part is especially odd and disconcerting, coming as it does from a psychologist of such power, fearlessness and insight.
Some very obvious facts that Nietzsche rarely acknowledges and probes, are: firstly, some forms of suffering bring no good whatsoever and should, when possible, be eliminated; secondly, suffering is not evenly distributed. Some people have suffered the most appalling and unimaginable suffering, without the slightest recompense or redemption, and to blithely label those who do not "affirm" such personal horrors as "decadent" or "nihilistic" (as Nietzsche often implicitly does) is, I think, simply contemptible, pretentious chatter on Nietzsche's part; thirdly, it is simply preposterous to claim, as Nietzsche sometimes does, that the "noble man", the "great man", is, in fact, he who has suffered most among humanity.
This seems like a good time to repeat and to emphasise that I offer here serious criticism of Nietzsche within a larger context of tremendous respect and admiration. Nietzsche, for me, remains the most important thinker of modernity; at his best I consider him the most honest, profound and insightful thinker anywhere available for the modern.
But it is precisely because Nietzsche is so important and valuable to me that I endeavour to be as attentive to his faults as I am to his virtues.
For me, one of Nietzsche's most significant 'errors' is the emphasis (both rhetorical and conceptual) that he places on 'decadence' in the later works. Too often the word is used carelessly and dismissively, as if it represented the foundational key to all evaluative questions, whereas we know, from any attentive reading, that the word qua concept has no clear meaning.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I would argue, strictly speaking, the concept is meaningless, and Nietzsche's frequent valorized usage is objectively and logically groundless. There is no decadence, nor could there be; 'decadence' (as Nietzsche occasionally admits) is simply a contingent term of abuse he throws at aspects of existence he dislikes and opposes.
Any thoughts?
Another significant "error" is the apparent fact that Nietzsche never bothered to actually read Darwin for himself. This is a more serious flaw than it may appear; it creates, obviously, serious conceptual problems for Nietzsche (especially with the concept of WP in the biological realm), but more significantly I think, it shows a certain laziness or dishonesty on Nietzsche's part which, I must admit, rather astonishes me. . .
ReplyDeleteI am of the opinion that the Nietzschean "doctrines" such as "the will to power", "eternal recurrence", and "perspectivism" do him little credit (conceptually). I think much of the academic treatment of these topics is actually bogus and affected, simply giving certain types of people something to write, debate, and argue about, knowing all the while that none of these "doctrines" has an intelligible, coherent, meaningful kernel.
ReplyDeleteOne is constantly reminded of GS.99. Here Nietzsche draws attention to the fact that most of the followers of Schopenhauer pay more attention, and endow with more "respect" many of Schopenhauer's "embarrassments", at the expense of what is most valuable in his work.
I'll return more explicitly to this theme in later posts.
I agree that he made significant error in taking Darwin from other's words and not through his own careful reading.
ReplyDeleteI personally dislike the amount of suggested importance that he gives to "the moment" and "eternal recurrence," although he personally doesn't discuss the topics at length, and I believe they weaken his presence as a philosopher since most people begin to know him as the bearer of literary thought experiments and maxims and not as the penetrating psychologist that he is..
Narziss,
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by. I agree that there is a glaring contrast between the importance that Nietzsche (at times) ascribes to the "eternal recurrence" and the paucity of analysis devoted to it. Even in TSZ, it's a noticeable subtlety that it's not Zarathustra but his animals who first proclaim it.
I can only understand such slogans as meaningful in some profound way to Nietzsche (the flesh and blood man), viscerally and psychologically, as contingently useful expedients in relation to certain "ugly truths" that he frequently explores. They're symptoms of the 'weakness' of his "digestive capacity", of his inability to assimilate what he actually knows. They seem to have become, at times, aids in the art of living for him, regardless of their intellectually flimsy content.
Something very significant is signalled by the opening section of part 4 of GS. The idea of "affirmation" (itself an incoherent and unrealisable concept) comes to prominence in subsequent works in ways that are, dialectically, unjustified. I think such changes tell us more about the various sufferings that Nietzsche is trying to escape from, rather than any hitherto undiscovered world he discovers or creates.
What specifically, is the nature of your "dislike" here?
Thanks for posting these questions and offering them for discussion. This has been enjoyable and intriguing!
ReplyDeleteWell, I do think Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an extremely powerful and enjoyable work to read. I felt that it seduced me, at times, and then violently lashed back at me, at other times, unexpectedly. However, I think the whole adventure is a literary one and if any insights are extracted from it, it should be meta-insights, psychological insights, and not literal ones.
The fact that Nietzsche has some notes indicating his attempt to find empirical evidence for accepting the idea of the "eternal return" draws attention away from his talent as a great psychologist. Then again, Nietzsche says a lot of trendy things that attract people toward reading him and yet divert them away from a more rigorous look at his psychological insights. I suppose I am only worried that since he doesn't introduce his own philosophy with a narrative to explain how he should be understood and what is most important to him, I believe many students of his are bound to get lost and distracted.
Then again, maybe there are some type-facts inherent in the reader that draw them toward a more rigorous reading or toward a more post-modern reading, and not anything that can be prevented through education.
Narziss,
ReplyDeleteIf it's not too personal a question; what things in TSZ seduced and attacked you? (Of course, that's exactly how N felt a reader should react to it. GM. Preface.8.)
This also raises two crucial questions: firstly, why did N continue to view TSZ as his greatest work? Secondly, what do we make of this judgement?
re type-facts: it's a complex and subtle subject, which can easily slide into a sort of post hoc fatalism of the sort we don't want. I know Leiter has an essay on N's "fatalism", but to be honest, I can't remember off hand his views.
There's an analogy to be made with Stephen Hawking's remarks on determinism.
"Is everything determined? The answer is yes, it is. But it might as well not be, because we can never know what is determined".
Even if the type-facts are, in fact, the most determining causal and trajectory-confining factors (and I suspect in some sense they are), the outside (education) environment can still legitimately exert enormous and critical influence on any outcome.
Just a word on the issue of "affirmation": I am not sure, David, why you think it is 'incoherent' and 'unrealisable'. I am curious to know.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the blog, BTW.
Welcome Guy,
ReplyDeletere "Affirmation"- Psychologically and "ideologically", I think it's clear that "affirmation" is very important to Nietzsche, and I think in many ways justifiably so.
However, taken too strictly and literally it breaks down. Negation, denial and "looking away" are inevitably part of the totality, part of the great economy of existence, and it's the totality that Nietzsche (rhetorically at least) at times claims to be affirming, or aspiring to affirm.
This presents both a logical and visceral conundrum: in what way does it make sense to affirm negation (which is part of the totality) that merits characterising such a stance as "affirmative"? Or is one supposed to negate negation itself? If so, then the totality is not being affirmed at all.
Thus I don't see how affirmation is even conceptually possible, given that the totality contains inherently contradictory elements. e.g. BGE.9. One may seek to live in a predominantly affirmative spirit, yes, but this would be appearance. In truth, one can never affirm anything but parts of the whole contingently, the whole itself cannot be affirmed.
Any thoughts?
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteWell, I think that if you read the Yes saying in context it might be interpreted to make more sense. The chief context, in my view, is GS 276 (and other places where N mentions amor fati): here N makes it clear that what he wishes to affirm is what is necessary in life, namely, those aspetcs of life that cannot be gotten rid off, like pain, suffering, meaninglessness, transience, uncertainty, etc. These are precisely the aspects of life that No-sayers (Christians, pessimists) negated and this is why N is interested in cultivating the opposite attitude towards them. N wants to cultivate a Yes-saying attitude to these aspects and not the whole of reality.
The "necessary" for him does not refer to the whole of reality, just to those aspects that any life whatsoever involves.
To affirm and say Yes to everything would be, like you said, totally nonsensical (to say Yes when a drink you don't like is served to you. Why would N have a problem with that anyway?). But what N is worried about is whether one can say Yes to the ugly, questionable and unavoidable aspects of life.
In this light, affirmation makes more sense.
Thoughts?
Hi Guy,
ReplyDeleteYour first paragraph is unquestionably true. Relatedly, much of his admiration of the pre-Socratics stems from his depiction of them as "affirming", in word and deed, a tragic form of existence, a "pessimism of strength".
". . . for the will to life eternally to affirm itself, the 'torment of childbirth' must also exist eternally. . . All this is contained in the word Dionysos: I know of no more exhaled symbolism than this Greek symbolism"
(TI.WIOTA.4).
Further, in GS.276 itself, even here Nietzsche recognises that the Yes-saying he aspires to, is, in fact, likely to involve the negation of "looking away".
But "looking away" is what he rarely practises. The problem is that, many of the things that "cannot be gotten rid off", are precisely certain aspects of existence Nietzsche manifestly loathes and refuses to accept (mostly, but not always), e.g. the dominance of the indestructible "small man", the victory of "decadent and ascetic values", the "corruption and ruination of 'higher-men'"; and revulsion from this reality produces in Nietzsche "a feeling of anxiety with which no other can be compared" (BGE.203).
It is, of course, precisely because Nietzsche is so susceptible to these corrosive affects (pity and insight frequently leads to nausea in Nietzsche), that he wants to flee (viscerally) into the "sanctuary" of the opposite perspective; halcyon, joyous affirmation of de facto reality. But this rarely happens.
When Nietzsche says in WP that "The man of antiquity . . . alone has hitherto been 'the man who has turned out well'"(WP.957), this harmonises all too recogniseably with the dominant perspective throughout the published work.
Is this what you're referring to when you say - "But what N is worried about [emphasis added] is whether one can say Yes to the ugly, questionable and unavoidable aspects of life"?
It's clear that Nietzsche, in general, couldn't say Yes to the ugly, in spite of his best efforts and claims to the contrary.
I'll quote from Henry Staten here: "Instead of overflowing confidence in life, we are given reaction, paranoia, and nostalgia for antiquity. It is very suspicious that it is almost always in illo tempore [in an undetermined time in the past] that health and strength are located, almost never in this world that Nietzsche inhabits. Nietzsche claims to affirm this world, yet he finesses the issue by affirming a version of this world that is really another world, long ago and far away, and perhaps a world that never was".
This strikes me as basically true.
Staten is careful to say "almost always in illo tempore" for N clearly lauds Goethe (TI Skirmishes, 49) for saying Yes and not negating. And he also admired Napoleon... So the claim that N really affirmed another world is hyperbolical.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to N himself: yes, he says in some letter that he would not be able to live this life again.
But this is just a biographical fact which says nothing about the intelligibility of his ideas.
The fact that there were such life affirming people means that it is not necessary that everyone would say yes to life - hence, according to my interpretation, it is not something that he aspires to affirm. According to my reading, he is interested to affirm the necessary and ugly aspects of life, one that every life as such invovles.
But further, even if N despised the slavish personality, he could still affirm it: he is thankful to his enemies... "Love your enemies" he says somewhere in TI (I think). In other words, even the weak (Christians, pessimists, democrats, etc.) are to be positively valued for they present N with a hurdle, with a challenge to test his strength agasint. Indeed, how could N be N without them???
Lastly, I don't think looking away is a negation. To be indifferent to something is not to negate it. IN GS 276 I believe three basic attitudes are to be found: saying Yes, saying No and looking away. What N wants is to cleanse the soul, so to speak, from negative affects which go against the basic factors of life. But if one cannot conquer them and affirm them, better just ignore them.
In my last post i meant to say:
ReplyDelete"The fact that there were such life affirming people means that it is not necessary that everyone would say No to life - hence, according to my interpretation, it (the fact that there are no-sayers) is not something that he aspires or should aspire to affirm".
Guy,
ReplyDeleteIf Nietzsche's work was dominated by analysis and commentary of those (from whatever historical period) he admired as affirmers, and the rest, the other 99% of humanity he effectively ignored, "passed by", and in the vicinity of whom he typically "looked away", then you would have a valid point.
But this is precisely what he doesn't/ can't do very often.
It's true that, at times, Nietzsche reflects on the benefits he derives by virtue of having such opponents, but again, this is a rare, halcyon stance, at odds with the dominant content and tone of the later works.
Zarathustra says: "From the heart of me I love only Life - and in truth, I love her most of all when I hate her" (TSZ.11.10).
The "love" in question, however, doesn't take place in consciousness, it's not experienced by the subject as "love". On the contrary, what's subjectively experienced here is "hatred". At the level of consciousness, I don't think it's credible to argue that Nietzsche "loved his enemies", quite the reverse.
But the argument is plausible at the level of the instincts and unconscious. The problem is, of course, we don't "live" here at this level.
In regard to affirmation (of life), I am on-spot with Guy here.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Nietzsche’s talk of affirmation is separate from his positive comments and negative criticisms. I think “life” is what Nietzsche affirms, whether that means he writes in an appreciative, praising manner or in a depreciating, critical manner -- I believe he makes this clear, and I find no inconsistency when someone simultaneously affirms life and writes critically. Of course, writing critically to attack those who depreciate life is itself a life affirming act.
Perhaps this is more tangible with examples:
If you are a king and your population of subjects is growing, how do you maintain control over them?
1a. You could poison them, weaken them, and make them easier to manage.
2a. You could strengthen yourself, demand more from yourself, and make yourself more complex so that you are able to manage the increasing population.
If you have a swarm of contrary drives within you, how do you maintain control over them?
1b. You could repress them, allow them to disintegrate into minor neurosis, or allow them to each pursue their own aim (which would result in weakness and disorganization). You would them become a “weak willed” person, since any one of your drives can hold the reins at any time and guide you toward whatever end.
2b. Alternatively, a master drive could sublimate all the weak, repressed and neurotic drives under its own aim. Thus organizing all the drives into a unified individual. What would result would be a “strong will,” since you would be difficult to tempt or distract from your master drive’s aim.
For an in-depth look at the talk about sublimation, see...[Gemes, Ken (2009), “Nietzsche and Freud on Sublimation”]
I think that talk that focuses on the semantic or worries about the word choice in regards to defining affirmation is bound to get a little confused. Personally, I think that standing back and looking at the ways in which he uses his terms and their context makes you realize that cases such as 1a and 1b refer to the negation of life while cases such as 2a and 2b refer to the affirmation of life (separate from any peripheral, vague remarks about whether he is “looking-away” or whatever).
If it's not too personal a question; what things in TSZ seduced and attacked you?
ReplyDeleteHmm...well. To put it briefly, I was seduced by Zarathustra’s attitude of standing apart, and then I was hurt by his sort of abandonment at the end of part 1. The reason why I was hurt is that I felt like being seduced into becoming a disciple of Zarathustra didn’t make the world clearer, on the contrary, not only did it leave me alone, but it also made the world more frightening.
This also raises two crucial questions: firstly, why did N continue to view TSZ as his greatest work? Secondly, what do we make of this judgement?
I think he viewed it as his greatest work due to some personal relationship with it. I remember reading a letter in which he admitted that he wanted to shoot himself in the head after writing part 1. As a piece of literature, I believe he thought that he had included so much in it, without any philosophical elaboration however. So the work represents a sort of mine.
I can’t remember where, but I recall him saying that what produced Zarathustra (or Zarathustra’s thoughts) was an endless well. So I think the work as a whole has its source in something fundamental to Nietzsche, and that discovering this source (what I take to be the stance, presuppositions and assumptions beneath all of Nietzsche’s thoughts) would be key to understanding not only Zarathustra but the rest of Nietzsche’s writings.
I think it is an important judgment to take into consideration. We certainly don’t have to accept it as our favorite work, but perhaps we should strive to fully understand what it has in common (what stance it has in common) with his other works.
Narziss,
ReplyDeleteI'm unsure how to read your "affirmation" post. You seem to equate "affirmation" with a certain conception of "strength". The dangers of a "weakened-personality" are, I agree, very important to Nietzsche, and in some ways I think the "History" meditation is still among his best and clearest work on this problem.
But to call this "affirmation" is, I think, misleading, and leads to the objection Nietzsche provides in his critique of the Stoics in BGE.9. In this context, how could any organism fail to be anything other that an "affirmer"? It would also make it perplexing why Nietzsche is entitled to any criticism of the ascetic priest, since for some individuals, this route offers real opportunities for great social power (sometimes exceeding the King)and drive unification.
Surely someone like Luther or Paul (or simply a proud peasant) would qualify as exemplary 2b types? These are unquestionably "strong-types", but not in a way that Nietzsche admires and not in a way that qualifies them as Nietzschean "affirmers".
Nietzsche's valorisation of the "affirmative" type arises from the fact that, especially for the enlightened and sensitive sort, truth is ugly, frightening, and horrific. Pascal's only refuge from this abyss is Christ. Schopenhauer, as an atheist, refuses this solution but essentially agrees with Pascal's revulsion at existence. Nietzsche, by contrast, is trying to affirm what both of these figures cannot, trying to cultivate a "pessimism of strength" that can digest a huge chunk of "existential" suffering and yet not be fatally wounded by it. But one doesn't overcome this problem simply by being strong or powerful. This is one of the anti-"Darwinian" facts that Nietzsche can't abide, the fact that it's the "weak" who posses most power, that often the "strong" miscarry, degenerate, "malfunction", and generally lose in contests of strength.
The incomparable "anxiety" that Nietzsche feels in BGE.203 is easily visible in every work he ever wrote. This pronounced anxiety is not the hallmark of an affirmer, but, on the contrary, of someone deeply wishing he was an affirmer.
It's not exactly an "error", but I wish Ecce Homo hadn't been published at all. It's so tragic to see such a great mind decay.
ReplyDeleteHi Lucy,
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say? I think we can see, from private letters of 1888, that something is clearly "wrong", prior to the 1889 collapse.
I think Nietzsche's greatness as a thinker is primarily, but not exclusively, due to his insight and honesty as a psychologist. It may seem that psychology is but one aspect among many others, and that profundity in this area leaves many other important areas of human interest largely untouched, such as philosophy, art, science, morality and politics. I think that Nietzsche provides us with very powerful arguments against this view. Our psychology leaves its footprint everywhere that is important to us, and reaches far and deep into our relations with things apparently removed and independent.
ReplyDeleteThe kernel of this view is that we are all innocently and unavoidably "selfish" (viscerally, physiologically, not behaviourally), and that this (often unconscious) "selfishness" is omnipresent and is the brute datum behind all our thoughts, feelings and actions.
This view has been advanced by many others prior to Nietzsche, but no one, as far as i'm aware, had explored this sobering fact with such attention to detail.
And yet the validity and tremendous implications of this doctrine are routinely marginalised or ignored by most of our so-called Nietzschean scholars. Whenever I reflect on this phenomenon I am reminded of Nietzsche's view that most of Schopenhauer's followers respected his errors and faults more than his virtues (GS.99), and that in truth Schopenhauer had little or no effect on most.
This, broadly speaking, seems to me to apply even more so to Nietzsche. It is almost impossible nowadays to find a scholar who shares Nietzsche's revulsion at the faux moralism routinely flouted, at the cultural vulgarity and mediocrity now on top, at the lack of honesty and solitude often displayed by our intellectuals.
Instead, the topics that generate the most commentary are often Nietzsche's excesses and vices: The (pre-TSZ) Will to Power, Perspectivism, Decadence, the Eternal Recurrence, the Ubermensch, Dionysus. Or, alternatively, Nietzsche's views on topics such as free will and language are sequestered in such a manner that they are guaranteed to have no concrete social impact whatsoever. Everything is designed and articulated in a manner co-habitable with the current philistinism. Nietzsche is thereby tamed, rendered sociologically impotent, and while respectable academics and their graduates can make a good living and pass the time pleasantly by nibbling at this quasi-Nietzschean carcass, the general thrust of his whole project is reduced to a personal idiosyncrasy, a dangerous irrelevance, best forgotten.
I have no interest in this artificial and distorted "Nietzsche" at all, and I greatly suspect that anyone overly impressed with contemporary Nietzschean scholarship, which usually goes out of its way to avoid giving offence to the levellers among us, is likely to be unimpressed with my general orientation.
ReplyDeleteSomeone recently acquainted with Nietzsche may reasonably ask why I consider such things as the (pre-TSZ) Will to Power, The Eternal Recurrence, Decadence and Perspectivism as vices and excesses? My answer is simple.
Respect has to be earned, and Arguments from Authority are explicitly counter to the sceptical, realist and critical aspects of Nietzsche that I admire. We must treat Nietzsche's texts with the same enlightened hostility that we routinely apply to the work of others. None of the above "concepts" are seriously demarcated, articulated, and presented with clarity and consistency in Nietzsche's work.
If Nietzsche admitted honestly to his readers (and himself) that he was merely exploring these issues provisionally, that he was pursuing an intuition that something of value resided here underneath and behind all these shifting perspectives, contradictions and rhetorical fog, then his treatment of these issues would be entirely legitimate. But all too often he does no such thing, and he offers these doctrines and slogans (for that's what they are) as if he actually had something novel, earth-shattering and clearly understood and described already in his hands. He doesn't.
All one has to do is imagine another philosopher espousing these "doctrines" with the same grandiose assurance. It is obvious that Nietzsche would, quite rightly, be scathing in his criticisms of such intellectual pretentiousness, and would waste no time in pointing out to the author the numerous conceptual and evidenciary lacunae being conveniently overlooked.
I don't think we do Nietzsche, or, more importantly, ourselves, any favours at all by allowing his errors and shortcomings to go unrecognised. Nietzsche's virtues as a thinker are so great that he can survive perfectly well without this misplaced veneration.
Nietzsche's general treatment of women is basically ludicrous and reeks of ignorance and dishonesty. "The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit" (BGE.75). There is, I think, a great deal of truth in this claim.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Nietzsche's perceived conditions of preservation and growth seem to cast the female in the role of toxic bait on the route to self-oblivion or mundane self-squandering. It's dispiriting that despite Nietzsche's radicalism and modernity he could never quite free himself from certain reactionary attachments.
To be clear: I think that Nietzsche is quite right to view with scorn and ridicule the notion of universal liberation and autonomy for women, just as this notion applied to men is equally absurd and dishonest. But a rejection of universalism is no excuse for failing to promote a meritocracy, regardless of gender.
I think Nietzsche's greatest fault is his failure to "remain true to the earth". On the face of it, his whole philosophical project is commited to reintegrating man back into nature and freeing it from various types of unworldly veneration. He is adamant that the hitherto considered "trivial" aspects of existence, such as self-love, diet, locality, recreation etc, are, in truth, unspeakably more important than the traditionally concieved concepts such as "God", "sin", "virtue", "eternal life" and "truth".
ReplyDeleteThis orientation, I believe, is where his ultimate significance lies, this is what is truly significant and epoch-making in his work.
And yet, he spends far too much time and energy on denigrating the de facto material that is humanity. Again and again he flees into the distant past or far into the future in order to affirm reality; but this past is frequently romanticised and this future is essentially bereft of any concrete details.
"There has never yet been an Ubermensch" he has Zarathustra say without any sense of irony or shame. But this hopeless evaluation tells me that Zarathustra (and thus Nietzsche) is more unworldly, and more of a blasphemer of the earth, than the humanity he condemns.
I have only very lightly scratched the surface of this issue here, and yet this issue is, in my view, the most important issue of all. For the present I merely wish to register my objection and i'll leave a more detailed contribution for another time.
N.B. It is very easy to quote passages such as: "What justifies man is his reality - it will justify him eternally. How much more valuable an actual man is compared with any sort of merely desired, dreamed of, odious lie of a man? with any sort of ideal man?" (TI.1V.32), in order to apparently refute my position.
The problem is, I can quite easily cite literally hundreds of passages where Nietzsche manifestly doesn't practise what he here preaches.
Suffering.
ReplyDeleteNietzsche all too often deals with the important issue of suffering in a strikingly inadequate and misleading fashion. Essentially his doctrine concerning the affirming of suffering has two aspects; firstly, sufferings of some sorts are simply inevitable and cannot be wished away by any political framework or social arrangement whatsoever, nor will suffering be sanctified in the future via a non-existent after-life; secondly, suffering is absolutely necessary if greatness is to be achieved.
Both of these points are perfectly reasonable and valid. Nevertheless, much more needs to be said here, and all too often Nietzsche fails to get beyond this important but preliminary surface grammar and crass sloganeering, under the guise of the great positive spirit, and the affirmer of suffering.
This lack of discrimination and careful examination on the issue of "suffering" on Nietzsche's part is especially odd and disconcerting, coming as it does from a psychologist of such power, fearlessness and insight.
Some very obvious facts that Nietzsche rarely acknowledges and probes, are: firstly, some forms of suffering bring no good whatsoever and should, when possible, be eliminated; secondly, suffering is not evenly distributed. Some people have suffered the most appalling and unimaginable suffering, without the slightest recompense or redemption, and to blithely label those who do not "affirm" such personal horrors as "decadent" or "nihilistic" (as Nietzsche often implicitly does) is, I think, simply contemptible, pretentious chatter on Nietzsche's part; thirdly, it is simply preposterous to claim, as Nietzsche sometimes does, that the "noble man", the "great man", is, in fact, he who has suffered most among humanity.
Please note:
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a good time to repeat and to emphasise that I offer here serious criticism of Nietzsche within a larger context of tremendous respect and admiration. Nietzsche, for me, remains the most important thinker of modernity; at his best I consider him the most honest, profound and insightful thinker anywhere available for the modern.
But it is precisely because Nietzsche is so important and valuable to me that I endeavour to be as attentive to his faults as I am to his virtues.