If nothing got caught, I am not to blame, there were no fish.
Monday 19 July 2010
What's so special, for Nietzsche, about the Greeks?
This question is, of course, deliberately vague and embryonic. The topic is absurdly vast, complex, and effectively inexhaustible, but, what are some of the primary issues at stake for Nietzsche regarding his beloved Greeks?
Some time ago i read Bernard Williams' 'Shame and Necessity', in many way a fine, subtle and very informative work. Williams is commonly known as a 'Nietzschean' and a fine philosopher himself, so i approached the book optimistically (it's a complex work examining mainly pre-Socratic Greek morality, especially in the context of the modern post-Christian predicament).
However, despite beginning the book by quoting from Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation 'History' work:
". . .for I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely - that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come".
a central contrast at issue for Nietzsche is NEVER mentioned in Williams' entire book. This is the question of equality. Yes, Williams explicitly addresses the question of ('natural')slavery, showing that there were indeed good arguments against it already in existence, contra Aristotle. But the 'equality' issue, the assertion that all people, qua persons, are equally valuable and worthy is conspicuously absent from the book. In the context of a supposedly 'Nietzschean scholar', investigating and contrasting ancient Greek and modern sensibilities, this lacuna is a very large elephant in a very small room!
Why the reticence? Why the omission? This reminds one of Nietzsche (in UM111) invoking the scorn of Diogenes: "How can he be considered great, since he has been a philosopher for so long and has never yet disturbed anybody?". Nietzsche then adds "That, indeed, ought to be the epitaph of university philosophy: 'it disturbed nobody' ".
Nietzsche felt that Greek civilisation had produced more genuinely great and independent men than any other, and that it was not until the Renaissance that anything even approaching the same level of culture again appeared on earth. Modernity, for Nietzsche, limped very far behind these epochs in terms of quality.
The great pre-Socratics, Nietzsche felt, had a much more honest, tragic and noble view of themselves and existence. The moralism of Plato and 'Platonism for the people', Christianity, did not prevail at this time; error, rather than sin, was the default moral position. Nor was the optimism of 'theoretical man', inaugurated and personified above all by Socrates - an optimism antithetical to a tragic outlook and a pessimism of strength - able to gain a sympathetic ear.
Nietzsche is full of awe and admiration for these people, who, without a metaphysical regard for either morality or reason, were nevertheless able to fashion a life for themselves far more natural and affirmative than the civilisations that came after them.
The post BT 'Dionysian' became increasingly for Nietzsche a symbol of tremendous significance. The concept, for Nietzsche, represents the eternal becoming of existence, particularly the way in which all specific manifestations of life end in destruction and oblivion while the great generalised process itself continues unabashed, regardless of the coming and going of individual life forms.
This is horrific, but this is how things actually are. Nothing, not even the best, most cherished, most valuable parts of organic life, are exempted from finitude. Nature's tremendous, unrelenting fertility coexists alongside the deterioration and death of each of its creations. Dionysus thus represents, for Nietzsche, the totality, without exclusion or exception, it represents the mingling together and coexistence of every apparent opposition. Nothing is exempt from this trajectory of birth to death except the generalised Life force itself.
Although Nietzsche knew that it was impossible, even supposing one wanted such a thing, to go back and recreate Greek culture, he felt that, more than any other culture, it had certain exemplary features worth paying attention to and learning from.
Modern civilisation, according to Nietzsche, sooner or later, would face a crisis of conscience, because although it was losing God it was unsure what should or could replace him.
"Through the exaltedness of its ideal, Christianity excelled the moral systems of antiquity and the naturalism that resided in them to such a degree that this naturalism came to excite apathy and disgust; but later on, when these better and higher ideals, though now known, proved unattainable, it was no longer possible to return to what was good and high in antique virtue, however much one might want to. It is in this oscillation between Christianity and antiquity, between an imitated or hypocritical Christianity of morals and an equally despondent and timid revival of antiquity, that modern man lives. . ."(Schopenhauer as Educator.2).
Like the Greeks had done previously, Nietzsche wanted the modern to "organise the chaos within him by thinking back to his real needs" (UM.11.10).
There is, it must be acknowledged, the difficult and disturbing problem of violence and cruelty in Nietzsche's estimation of his beloved Greeks. Put simply, Nietzsche saw the Greeks as the most sensitive and refined people of antiquity.
"The profound Hellene, uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering", and who "having looked boldly right into the terrible destructiveness of so-called world history as well as the cruelty of nature" is "in danger of longing for a Buddhistic negation of the will" (BT.V11).
On the other hand, Nietzsche depicts the Greeks of their very highest culture, Periclean Athens, as openly affirming their cruelty and "evil" just as much as their delicacy and sophistication. This is a problem which no amount of sophistry can erase. Nietzsche really does see this juxtaposition as admirable and as a necessary attribute of a noble culture.
And yet, it is clear that he had no real interest in, and no real admiration for, a thoroughly militarised entity such as Sparta, an entity which would bring his beloved Periclean Athens to its knees.
Much more needs to be said on this ugly, difficult and complex issue, but for now I simply wish to draw attention to the fact that whenever Nietzsche conceives of high culture there is always within this framework instances of externalised and unrepentant cruelty, and without these instances there can be no societal greatness. An individual can indeed sublimate and spiritualise these cruel instincts and achieve greatness, but a whole society which behaved in this manner would be phantasmagorical and ludicrous, Nietzsche believes.
But, on the other hand, a society which lacked any significant spiritualisation and sublimation of its cruel instincts, a society effectively full of brutes, dullards and automatons, is, for Nietzsche, a society of no consequence whatsoever and a thing worthy of shame and disgust.
The shame and disgust, however, results not from the mere existence of violence but from the lack of an adequate response to the human predicament in a meaningless universe, from a lack of cultivation of complexity, nuance and knowledge.
Disgust and shame here is the response to naked and unrepentant "animality", and the "animal", for Nietzsche, is a thing to be pitied and feared; pitied because it can make no sense of its suffering and feared because this inability leaves existence unredeemed (see e.g. UM.11.1 & UM.111.5).
At the conclusion of the second Meditation Nietzsche registers his preference for "the Greek conception of culture", that is, with "the conception of culture as a new and improved physis, without inner and outer, without dissimulation and convention, culture as unanimity of life, thought, appearance and will . . . and that every increase in truthfulness must also assist to promote true culture: even though this truthfulness may sometimes seriously damage precisely the kind of cultivatedness now held in esteem, even though it may even be able to procure the downfall of an entire merely decorative culture" (UM.2.10).
The physis in question here appears to denote a natural, anti-metaphysical perspective regarding nature.
The sentiments behind this passage are visible repeatedly throughout Nietzsche's entire work. There is a level of mendaciousness, inauthenticity, play-acting and confusion in the modern age that Nietzsche simply finds intolerable and repellent. The fact that there is no clear and coherent route out of this malaise, that no readily identifiable formula exists for us to simply follow towards a better life means that, whatever antidotes and strategies we employ, we are bound to encounter difficulties, suffering and failures.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche continued to believe, this journey must begin and continue, again and again, in spite of all difficulties and failures encountered, because without this attempt we are resigned to a level of inauthenticity and mediocrity that Nietzsche finds indigestible. Modern man has to go through a period of nihilism in order to emerge all the better, healthier and stronger having overcome this suffering and danger.
But this can't be accomplished by any simple and single leap. Nihilism can't simply be jumped over and avoided altogether. It has to be confronted, acknowledged, and struggled with before it can, finally, be overcome. The important thing, for Nietzsche, is the direction of force, will and intent.
But the nihilism that typically concerned Nietzsche was overwhelmingly a historical phenomenon. Nihilism, in the form that the modern experiences it, was essentially unknown to the Greeks. Christian theology and Christian practise have helped shape the modern to a tremendous extent, and modern secular, agnostic and atheistic manifestations have not emerged ex nihilo, they have overwhelmingly emerged in the shadow of the Christian God.
This particular shadow, of course, had never visited the Greeks, which is one reason why a "reversion, a turning back in any sense and to any degree, is quite impossible" (TI. Expd.43), for us moderns. But the point, of course, is not to ape the Greeks, but to learn from them, and to value certain fruits of that culture, a culture that came into being without any help from either Plato or Christianity.
Out of this chaotic, vast, arbitrary and contradictory inheritence, Nietzsche wanted to fashion something very different from that which is commonly esteemed, something worthy of reverence, delight and astonishment. The modern has accumulated and inherited too much historical baggage, and rather than rest content with this tepid confusion and unnaturalness, this superficial adornment, Nietzsche wants to apply a rigorous sieve, and to salvage what is valuable and reject what is outdated and harmful.
Much of Nietzsche's estimation of the Greeks has to be seen through the lens of the Christian inheritence, and on so many issues Nietzsche sees the influence of Christianity as deleterious - to health, honesty, joy, innocence, sexuality, art, science, knowledge and politics.
As he says in the Anti-Christ "What sets us apart is not that we recognise no God, either in history or in nature - but that we find that which has been revered as God not 'godlike' but pitiable, absurd, harmful, not merely an error but a crime against life". (A.47).
This is not, however, to suggest that he saw Christianity as wholly bad. On several occasions he draws attention to aspects which gain his approval. Nevertheless, all things considered, he consistently argues that Christianity has been overwhelmingly damaging and regressive.
Some time ago i read Bernard Williams' 'Shame and Necessity', in many way a fine, subtle and very informative work. Williams is commonly known as a 'Nietzschean' and a fine philosopher himself, so i approached the book optimistically (it's a complex work examining mainly pre-Socratic Greek morality, especially in the context of the modern post-Christian predicament).
ReplyDeleteHowever, despite beginning the book by quoting from Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation
'History' work:
". . .for I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely - that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come".
a central contrast at issue for Nietzsche is NEVER mentioned in Williams' entire book. This is the question of equality. Yes, Williams explicitly addresses the question of ('natural')slavery, showing that there were indeed good arguments against it already in existence, contra Aristotle. But the 'equality' issue, the assertion that all people, qua persons, are equally valuable and worthy is conspicuously absent from the book. In the context of a supposedly 'Nietzschean scholar', investigating and contrasting ancient Greek and modern sensibilities, this lacuna is a very large elephant in a very small room!
Why the reticence? Why the omission? This reminds one of Nietzsche (in UM111) invoking the scorn of Diogenes: "How can he be considered great, since he has been a philosopher for so long and has never yet disturbed anybody?". Nietzsche then adds "That, indeed, ought to be the epitaph of university philosophy: 'it disturbed nobody' ".
Nietzsche felt that Greek civilisation had produced more genuinely great and independent men than any other, and that it was not until the Renaissance that anything even approaching the same level of culture again appeared on earth. Modernity, for Nietzsche, limped very far behind these epochs in terms of quality.
ReplyDeleteThe great pre-Socratics, Nietzsche felt, had a much more honest, tragic and noble view of themselves and existence. The moralism of Plato and 'Platonism for the people', Christianity, did not prevail at this time; error, rather than sin, was the default moral position. Nor was the optimism of 'theoretical man', inaugurated and personified above all by Socrates - an optimism antithetical to a tragic outlook and a pessimism of strength - able to gain a sympathetic ear.
Nietzsche is full of awe and admiration for these people, who, without a metaphysical regard for either morality or reason, were nevertheless able to fashion a life for themselves far more natural and affirmative than the civilisations that came after them.
Dionysus.
ReplyDeleteThe post BT 'Dionysian' became increasingly for Nietzsche a symbol of tremendous significance. The concept, for Nietzsche, represents the eternal becoming of existence, particularly the way in which all specific manifestations of life end in destruction and oblivion while the great generalised process itself continues unabashed, regardless of the coming and going of individual life forms.
This is horrific, but this is how things actually are. Nothing, not even the best, most cherished, most valuable parts of organic life, are exempted from finitude. Nature's tremendous, unrelenting fertility coexists alongside the deterioration and death of each of its creations. Dionysus thus represents, for Nietzsche, the totality, without exclusion or exception, it represents the mingling together and coexistence of every apparent opposition. Nothing is exempt from this trajectory of birth to death except the generalised Life force itself.
Although Nietzsche knew that it was impossible, even supposing one wanted such a thing, to go back and recreate Greek culture, he felt that, more than any other culture, it had certain exemplary features worth paying attention to and learning from.
ReplyDeleteModern civilisation, according to Nietzsche, sooner or later, would face a crisis of conscience, because although it was losing God it was unsure what should or could replace him.
"Through the exaltedness of its ideal, Christianity excelled the moral systems of antiquity and the naturalism that resided in them to such a degree that this naturalism came to excite apathy and disgust; but later on, when these better and higher ideals, though now known, proved unattainable, it was no longer possible to return to what was good and high in antique virtue, however much one might want to. It is in this oscillation between Christianity and antiquity, between an imitated or hypocritical Christianity of morals and an equally despondent and timid revival of antiquity, that modern man lives. . ."(Schopenhauer as Educator.2).
Like the Greeks had done previously, Nietzsche wanted the modern to "organise the chaos within him by thinking back to his real needs" (UM.11.10).
There is, it must be acknowledged, the difficult and disturbing problem of violence and cruelty in Nietzsche's estimation of his beloved Greeks. Put simply, Nietzsche saw the Greeks as the most sensitive and refined people of antiquity.
ReplyDelete"The profound Hellene, uniquely susceptible to the tenderest and deepest suffering", and who "having looked boldly right into the terrible destructiveness of so-called world history as well as the cruelty of nature" is "in danger of longing for a Buddhistic negation of the will" (BT.V11).
On the other hand, Nietzsche depicts the Greeks of their very highest culture, Periclean Athens, as openly affirming their cruelty and "evil" just as much as their delicacy and sophistication. This is a problem which no amount of sophistry can erase. Nietzsche really does see this juxtaposition as admirable and as a necessary attribute of a noble culture.
And yet, it is clear that he had no real interest in, and no real admiration for, a thoroughly militarised entity such as Sparta, an entity which would bring his beloved Periclean Athens to its knees.
Much more needs to be said on this ugly, difficult and complex issue, but for now I simply wish to draw attention to the fact that whenever Nietzsche conceives of high culture there is always within this framework instances of externalised and unrepentant cruelty, and without these instances there can be no societal greatness. An individual can indeed sublimate and spiritualise these cruel instincts and achieve greatness, but a whole society which behaved in this manner would be phantasmagorical and ludicrous, Nietzsche believes.
But, on the other hand, a society which lacked any significant spiritualisation and sublimation of its cruel instincts, a society effectively full of brutes, dullards and automatons, is, for Nietzsche, a society of no consequence whatsoever and a thing worthy of shame and disgust.
The shame and disgust, however, results not from the mere existence of violence but from the lack of an adequate response to the human predicament in a meaningless universe, from a lack of cultivation of complexity, nuance and knowledge.
Disgust and shame here is the response to naked and unrepentant "animality", and the "animal", for Nietzsche, is a thing to be pitied and feared; pitied because it can make no sense of its suffering and feared because this inability leaves existence unredeemed (see e.g. UM.11.1 & UM.111.5).
At the conclusion of the second Meditation Nietzsche registers his preference for "the Greek conception of culture", that is, with "the conception of culture as a new and improved physis, without inner and outer, without dissimulation and convention, culture as unanimity of life, thought, appearance and will . . . and that every increase in truthfulness must also assist to promote true culture: even though this truthfulness may sometimes seriously damage precisely the kind of cultivatedness now held in esteem, even though it may even be able to procure the downfall of an entire merely decorative culture" (UM.2.10).
ReplyDeleteThe physis in question here appears to denote a natural, anti-metaphysical perspective regarding nature.
The sentiments behind this passage are visible repeatedly throughout Nietzsche's entire work. There is a level of mendaciousness, inauthenticity, play-acting and confusion in the modern age that Nietzsche simply finds intolerable and repellent. The fact that there is no clear and coherent route out of this malaise, that no readily identifiable formula exists for us to simply follow towards a better life means that, whatever antidotes and strategies we employ, we are bound to encounter difficulties, suffering and failures.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche continued to believe, this journey must begin and continue, again and again, in spite of all difficulties and failures encountered, because without this attempt we are resigned to a level of inauthenticity and mediocrity that Nietzsche finds indigestible. Modern man has to go through a period of nihilism in order to emerge all the better, healthier and stronger having overcome this suffering and danger.
But this can't be accomplished by any simple and single leap. Nihilism can't simply be jumped over and avoided altogether. It has to be confronted, acknowledged, and struggled with before it can, finally, be overcome. The important thing, for Nietzsche, is the direction of force, will and intent.
But the nihilism that typically concerned Nietzsche was overwhelmingly a historical phenomenon. Nihilism, in the form that the modern experiences it, was essentially unknown to the Greeks. Christian theology and Christian practise have helped shape the modern to a tremendous extent, and modern secular, agnostic and atheistic manifestations have not emerged ex nihilo, they have overwhelmingly emerged in the shadow of the Christian God.
This particular shadow, of course, had never visited the Greeks, which is one reason why a "reversion, a turning back in any sense and to any degree, is quite impossible" (TI. Expd.43), for us moderns. But the point, of course, is not to ape the Greeks, but to learn from them, and to value certain fruits of that culture, a culture that came into being without any help from either Plato or Christianity.
Out of this chaotic, vast, arbitrary and contradictory inheritence, Nietzsche wanted to fashion something very different from that which is commonly esteemed, something worthy of reverence, delight and astonishment. The modern has accumulated and inherited too much historical baggage, and rather than rest content with this tepid confusion and unnaturalness, this superficial adornment, Nietzsche wants to apply a rigorous sieve, and to salvage what is valuable and reject what is outdated and harmful.
Much of Nietzsche's estimation of the Greeks has to be seen through the lens of the Christian inheritence, and on so many issues Nietzsche sees the influence of Christianity as deleterious - to health, honesty, joy, innocence, sexuality, art, science, knowledge and politics.
ReplyDeleteAs he says in the Anti-Christ "What sets us apart is not that we recognise no God, either in history or in nature - but that we find that which has been revered as God not 'godlike' but pitiable, absurd, harmful, not merely an error but a crime against life". (A.47).
This is not, however, to suggest that he saw Christianity as wholly bad. On several occasions he draws attention to aspects which gain his approval. Nevertheless, all things considered, he consistently argues that Christianity has been overwhelmingly damaging and regressive.