I intend, in future posts, to think out loud about Nietzsche's early "History" essay. As well as being, I think, a great work in itself, it is perhaps Nietzsche's most sustained and clear "practical" work on our modern predicament. As readers will know, Nietzsche is rarely, if ever "practical" and this essay too is in many ways no exception as regard "cures" and "recommendations" (a lacuna not to be overlooked); but its "practicality" resides in its diagnosis of the nature and cause of the problem at hand: "nihilism". This essay, in fact, rather than TSZ, is really where Nietzsche fleshes out the notion of the "Last Man". The longer I live and the more I reflect on history and humanity, the more I am convinced of the importance and relevance of this essay. The core of this work is incredibly prophetic and devastatingly accurate.
There is also a tension in this work (and this tension is visible in all his works), between Nietzsche the psychologist and "objective" thinker, and Nietzsche the contingent flesh and blood individual. The former has plenty of evidence to support the idea that he has, in fact, glimpsed the future in certain important respects, and as I say, I think modernity, broadly understood, has thus far panned out in exactly the manner Nietzsche foresaw. The latter, by contrast, is horrified and nauseous at what he sees coming and tries to combat it with all his might. This tension is largely Nietzsche's defining signature and he would be unrecognizable without it.
What strikes me above all about this essay is its modernity. With only the slightest editing and modifications, it could have been (and should have been), written yesterday. In fact, it's principally because such a work is not being written today by opinion-formers that gives the clearest testimony to the savage accuracy of Nietzsche's thesis! It's ignored, not because it is irrelevant or controversial but precisely because the enemy has so decisively won! This inevitably begs the question: why then bother if any kind of "victory" is impossible? My answer is simply to give expression to my confusion, disgust (personal and collective) and impotency. A poor answer, granted, but it's my answer nevertheless: "He who has ears, let him hear". As usual, any comments will be welcome, but if none have "ears", so be it.
I've said previously that I don't believe that the traditional philosophical questions were particularly important to Nietzsche (questions regarding epistemology, ontology, metaphysics etc). Such things are ultimately "abstinence doctrines"(BGE 204), which effectively avoid confrontation with life's most pressing problems. Add to this Nietzsche's low opinion of humanity and its most vocalised ideals of democracy, liberalism, consumption, entertainment and a negative conception of happiness, one can see how Nietzsche's "proper audience" is rightfully small in number. Nietzsche, in my view, is primarily for the "sick"; a category to which I undoubtedly belong. Since I think that Nietzsche's most sustained and naked investigation of this "sickness" is to be found in the "History" essay, this work shall be the subject of my next post.
I shall begin by quoting Nietzsche regarding the most essential features of this work before subsequently taking a closer look at the details of the text (This will also be helpful to any observer not yet familiar with the work). As will become clear, the purpose of the work is to be profound, and not merely clever! Things are far too serious for such inconsequential adornments.
The essay begins:
"In any case, I hate everything everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." These words are from Goethe, and may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo [but i'm of the opinion] at the begining of our meditation on the value of history. For its intention is to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge not attended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury must, to use Goethe's words, be seriously hated by us - hated because we still lack even the things we need, and the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary.
To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to comfortably turn away from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the self-seeking life and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life; for it is possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate - a phenomenon we are now forced to acknowledge, painful though it may be, in the face of certain striking symptoms of our age.
I have striven to depict a feeling by which I am constantly tormented; I revenge myself upon it by handing it over to the public.
Perhaps this depiction will inspire someone or other to tell me that he too knows this feeling but that I have not felt it with sufficient purity and naturalness and definitely have not expressed myself with the appropriate certainty and mature experience. Perhaps one or two will respond in this way. However, most people will tell me that this feeling is altogether perverse, unnatural, detestable, and wholly impermissible, and that by feeling it I have shown myself unworthy of the powerful historical tendency of our time . . . [that being the case] I shall obtain for myself something of even more value to me than respectability: to become publicly instructed and set straight about the character of our time.
This essay is also out of touch with the times because here I am trying for once to see as a contemporary disgrace, infirmity, and defect something of which our age is justifiably proud, its historical culture. For I believe, in fact, that we are all suffering from a consumptive historical fever and at the very least should recognize that we are afflicted with it. If Goethe with good reason said that with our virtues we simultaneously cultivate our faults and if, as everyone knows, a hypertrophied virtue (as the historical sense of our age appears to me to be) can serve to destroy a people just as well as a hypertrophied vice, then people may make allowance for me this once. Also in my defence I should not conceal the fact that the experiences which aroused these feelings of torment in me I have derived for the most part from myself and I have drawn on the experiences of others only for purposes of comparison. . .
"Consider the cattle grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again from morn till night from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, neither melancholy or bored. This is a hard sight for man to see, for, though he thinks himself better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envy them their happiness - what he wants, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it for he refuses to be like an animal. . .
But he also wonders at himself, that he cannot l;earn to forget but clings relentlessly to the past: however far and fast he may run, this chain runs with him. . . A leaf
A leaf is flutters from the scroll of time, floats away - and suddenly floats back again and falls into man's lap. Then the man says 'I remember' and envies the animal, who at once forgets and for whom every moment really dies, sinks back into the night and fog and is extinguished forever. Thus the animal lives unhistorically : for it is contained in the present. . . man, on the other hand, braces himself against the great and even greater pressure of what is past: it pushes him down or bends him sideways, it encumbers his steps as a dark, invisible burden. . . That is why it affects him like a vision of a lost paradise to see the herds grazing or, in close proximity to him, a child which, having as yet none of the past to shake off, plays in blissful blindness between the hedges of past and future. yet its play must be disturbed; all too soon it will be called out of its state of forgetfulness. Then it will learn to understand the phrase "It Was": that password which gives conflict, suffering and satiety access to man so as to remind him what his existence is - an imperfect tense that can never become a perfect one. If death at last brings the desired forgetting, by that act it at the same time extinguishes the present and all existence and therewith sets the seal on the knowledge that existence is only an uninterrupted has-been, a thing that lives by negating, consuming and contradicting itself.
If happiness, if reaching out for new happiness, is in any sense what fetters living creatures to life and makes them go on living, then no philosopher is more justified that the Cynic: for the happiness of the animal, as the perfect Cynic, is the living proof of the rightness of Cynicism. The smallest happiness, if only it is present uninterruptedly and makes happy, is incomparably more happiness than the greatest happiness that comes only in an episode, as it were a piece of waywardness or folly, in a continuum of joylessness, desire and deprivation. In the case of the smallest or the greatest happiness, however, it is always the same thing which makes happiness happiness: the ability to forget or, expressed in a more scholarly fashion, the capacity to feel unhistorically during its duration. He who cannot sink down on the threshold of the moment and forget all the past. . . will never know what happiness is . . . Imagine the extremest possible example of a man who did not poses the power of forgetting at all and who was thus condemned to see everywhere a state of becoming: such a man would no longer believe in his own being, would no longer believe in himself, he would see everything flowing asunder in moving points and would lose himself in the stream of becoming: like a true pupil of Heraclitus, he would in the end hardly dare to raise his finger. forgetting is essential to action of any kind. . . Thus: it is possible to live almost without memory, and to live happily moreover, as the animal demonstrates; but it is altogether impossible to live at all without forgetting. Or, to express my theme even more simply: there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to a living thing, whether this living thing be a man, people, or culture.
In order to determine this degree of history and, through that, the borderline at which the past must be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, we have to know precisely how great the plastic force of a person, a people, or a culture is. I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one's own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds.
There are people who possess so little of this power that they can perish from a single experience, from a single painful event, often and especially from a single subtle piece of injustice, like a man bleeding to death from a scratch. On the other hand, there are people whom are so little affected by the worst and most dreadful disasters, and even by their own wicked acts, that they are able to feel tolerably well and be in possession of a kind of clear conscience even in the midst of them or at any rate very soon afterwards.
The stronger the innermost roots of a man's nature, the more readily will he be able to assimilate and appropriate the things of the past: and the most powerful and tremendous nature would be characterised by the fact that it would know no boundary at all at which the historical sense began to overwhelm it; it would draw to itself and incorporate into itself all the past, its own and that most foreign to it, and as it were transform it into blood. That which such a nature cannot subdue it knows how to forget; it no longer exists, the horizon is rounded and closed, and there is nothing left to suggest that there are people, passions, teachings, goals lying beyond it. And this is a universal law: a living thing can be healthy, strong and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon. . .
There is an observation that everyone must have made: a man's historical sense and knowledge can be very limited, his horizon as narrow as that of a dweller in the Alps, all his judgements may involve injustice and he may falsely suppose that all his experiences are original to him - yet in spite of this injustice and error he will nonetheless stand there in superlative health and vigour, a joy to all who see him: while close beside him a man far more just and instructed than he sickens and collapses because the the lines of his horizon are always relentlessly changing, because he can no longer extricate himself from the delicate net of his judiciousness and truth for a simple act of will and desire. . . What deed would man be capable of if he had not first entered into the vaporous region of the unhistorical? Imagine a man seized by a vehement passion for a women or for a great idea: how different the world has become to him! Looking behind him he seems to himself as though blind, listening around him he hears only a dull, meaningless noise; whatever he does perceive, however, he perceives as he has never perceived before. . . All his valuations are altered and devalued. . . he asks himself why he was for so long the fool of the phrases and opinions of others. . . It is the condition in which one is the least capable of being just: narrow-minded, ungrateful to the past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings, one is a little vortex of life in a dead sea of darkness and oblivion: an yet, this condition is the womb not only of the unjust but of every just deed too; and no painter will paint his picture, no general achieve his victory, no people attain its freedom without having first desired and striven for it in an unhistorical condition such as described. As he who acts is, in Goethe's words, always without a conscience, so he is also always without knowledge: he forgets most things so as to do one thing, he is unjust to what lies behind him, and he recognises the rights only of that which is now coming into being. Thus he who acts loves his deed infinitely more than it deserves to be loved: and the finest deeds take place in such a superabundance of love that, even if their worth were incalculable in other respects, they must still be unworthy of this love.
The deafening silence regarding this topic (a topic which is at the very core of Nietzsche's entire project) was, alas, to be expected, but that in itself is no consolation to me whatsoever. In addition, the aim I set myself here was too ambitious logistically. For both of these reasons I've decided to continue this experiment in fidelity no longer. The closer one gets to Nietzsche (i.e. to oneself), the greater grows the distance between oneself and the "world". Thus it ever was and ever shall be . . .
it seems like you take a serious look at a serious tension in nietzsche, and then decide not to pursue it - but then where does that leave us? or lead us?
you pointed out in the opening that what drives nietzsche on into his 'flesh and blood' battle, is his refusal to give in to the horror and the disgust - and i want to add: despair - which is a gateway to nihilism for the few that worry about this ...
so i'm wondering if you now see any hope for 'the sick', or is 'the sick' just doomed to perish so that 'last man' prevails unperturbed ... or do you think that 'last man' could be 'enlightened' by 'objective' psychology? ... or ...
i hope you don't take my questions as a challenge ... i also take this problem as very serious and very personal ... and i'm just trying to open a dialogue ...
I plead guilty to the charge of neglect, for the reasons given in my previous comment. The question at issue itself, however, is never far from my mind . . .
Ideally, I wanted to pay close attention to the central arguments of this essay, and then supplement this with a brief survey of the Schopenhauer essay, since I think in certain ways here is where Nietzsche was most viscerally intelligible and recognisable as a human being.
I think Nietzsche is "sick" in the same way that I think Dostoyevsky and Pascal are "sick". Yet things are complicated by the fact that certain forms of "sickness" are more valuable to me than many forms of "health". Thus there is no "health as such" (GS.120), terms like "health" and "sickness" are contingent upon perceived conditions of preservation and growth. Likewise, I don't believe that Nietzsche's "decadence" slurs have any objective validity; they are themselves symptomatic of Nietzsche's perceived conditions of preservation and growth.
The general thrust of Nietzsche's project is that our "physiology" exerts far more causal force than all our opinions. Let me simplify: if our "physiology" is "healthy", then it will, according to Nietzsche, seek its own advantage in relation to others. If it is fortunate, it will find itself in an environment where its virtues, the things it excels and delights in, will bring it success.
If the cosmos is conceived as the work of the Great Watchmaker, then Newton can pursue his work with a clear conscience and achieve great acclaim. Nietzsche doesn't have that luck. Many of Nietzsche's most impressive writing consists in telling us things we don't want to hear.
From the very begining, in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that "knowledge kills action", and once again, in the context of Hamlet in Ecce Homo we find him declaring that "it is not doubt but certainty which makes mad . . . We all fear truth". Hence his praise of the "superficiality" of the Greeks (GS.2nd.ed. Preface.4).
And in BGE.269 Nietzsche effectively destroys his own idealisation of "great men". This section then concludes with a sorrowful speculation of the psychology of Jesus and ends with the words:"He whose feelings are like this, he who knows this about love to this extent - seeks death. - But why reflect on such painful things? As long as one does not have to.- (BGE.269).
This whole section illustrates Nietzsche's paradoxical predicament (perhaps best summed up in WP.417's "We have to be destroyers"?). The "will to truth" now seems like a will to inaction, despair, self-loathing, nihilism. And yet, he is painfully aware that he is surrounded by people who are not in the slightest seriously diminished by many scientific or psychological insight (i'm thinking of successful intellectuals here more than the "uneducated" masses).
The "Last Man" is able to swallow these conceptual pebbles and thorns like caviar. And the secular successors of the priest (philosophers, politicians, artists, ideologues) have little or no trouble in adjusting themselves to the prevailing moral lies of the age. Nietzsche is sickened by this atmosphere, which either ignores, misrepresents or vilifies so many of his key insights.
My own view is that Nietzsche goes seriously wrong when he forgets his own inevitable sociological impotency and marginalisation, and imagines the "philosopher of the future" as some Lycurgus-like law-giver. I think there are good reasons to think this is plain silly. Daybreak 194. seems, to me, eminently more sensible than the subsequent Zarathustra-like posturings and proclamations.
What do you mean by - "do you think that 'last man' could be 'enlightened' by 'objective' psychology"?
by 'objective' psychology i was referring to your 'Nietzsche the psychologist and "objective" thinker' - but my question was based on thinking that your position might be that, this is the only side of nietzsche that is 'useful' or 'helpful' for the psychic and societal maladies that he and we are concerned about ... so by doing research in psychology, and "objective' thinking we can raise awareness and something good will come out of that …
nietzsche really extends this 'health' and 'sickness' metaphor, and he is also attracted to the idea of the psychologist as a 'physician of the soul' - and like a 'physician' he likes to identify the 'symptoms', make a 'diagnosis', and prescribe a 'cure' ... the way i understand this development in his works, is that: BT is a synopsis of his whole project and is like a rehearsal of what is to come his early essays (UM) are mostly a definition of the problem and the 'symptoms' the middle trilogy (HATH, D, GS) is where he is doing the 'diagnostics' and Z is where he finds the 'cure' and then in his later works, he restates his problematic in this new context that he has discovered …
i think what you are saying is that you like the symptomatics and the diagnostics but not the 'cure' - and that there is no 'cure' - and that nietzsche ultimately knows it too that there is no 'cure' - but i also sense that you are concerned about being 'active', like in a political sense - so you are thinking that the better 'cure' is to be 'active' in a concrete political way (instead of thinking in the abstract, and 'legislating for the future') - or are you saying that one should just accept that there is no 'cure' and get on with real life?
although i realize that nietzsche's 'cure' is very closely tied to nietzsche, the 'flesh and blood' individual, i still think that it is very significant, and cannot be simply dismissed - interpreting the meaning of 'nietzsche' has many complexities, and it can quickly spread to many topics - so i'm asking questions to see your position more clearly, since i agree with a lot of what you say, but there is also some important points of difference …
I think Nietzsche pretends, or at times deludes himself into thinking, that the "cure" is to be found in the notion of "Affirmation". That converting every "It Was" into "Thus I willed it" signifies "redemption". This doctrine, at a visceral level, can, in certain circumstances, provide the individual with strength, courage, refuge, solace etc.
However, conceptually, the doctrine of "Affirmation" is incoherent and totally unrealisable. I think Nietzsche, in his sober moments, knows this only too well. It's an emergency doctrine, viscerally useful in times of crisis. It's a compensatory fantasy invented by a man who was sickened by much of what he discovered.
Life is tragic and there is no way around that, yet for untold millions of people it is not experienced as such! This obvious fact raises profound questions, but no easy universalist answers. But as Zarathustra says "Life meant more to me than all my wisdom ever did".
The key, I think, is to be found in Nietzsche's fondness for comparing the "spirit" to a "stomach" and that everything depends upon our individual "digestive capacity". Although the "stomach" metaphor is found in BGE the issue is explicitly confronted in the History essay and in BT.
I'm not sure what you mean by being "active in a concrete political way"? Again, let me simplify: much of Nietzsche's earlier work explicitly acknowledges certain concrete historical political realities that conspire to work against his conception of "culture". Although he sees the enormous forces stacked against him, he nevertheless often chooses to engage in the battle for a "better world" (as he sees it). As times goes by, his tone changes, and he alternates between two extreme possibilities.
1.He effectively accepts his kind have lost the political/cultural battle and speaks only to "hermits, and hermits in pairs". He chooses the less travelled path. He and his kind go their own way, for the most part contemptuous or indifferent to the bulk of his species . . .
2.He imagines (e.g. in TSZ, BGE and GM) himself as the precursor to some gigantic "philosopher of the future" whose work will take account of all major scientific knowledge and then, deliver value judgements of such authority that the world will be persuaded/forced to accommodate itself to his will.
I think in the first option Nietzsche is far too elitist. I wish he had continued to engage more with the world (but i'm aware that he would have his own reasons for embracing his solitude and impotency).
The second option is, I think, delusional and an act of despair.
I would agree generally with your characterisation of my stance: yes, generally speaking, I do share much (but not all) of his revulsion and contempt. And yes, I do find much (but not all) of his diagnosis of the human condition persuasive. Much of his negative analysis I accept. However, most of his alleged positive constructions I reject.
For me, Nietzsche's problem, in a nutshell, is that he veers too far away from that which he rejects. And this extreme reversal, ironically enough, makes him just as unworldly as Plato and Christianity. But, I share many of his wounds, and that suffices to establish a close relationship with him.
David, I just wanted to thank you for creating this blog. I am only an undergraduate, but my interests are especially geared toward the philosophical and I have come to admire and respect the Nietzschean system, if you can describe it as such.
I just wanted to comment on your notation regrading whether Nietzsche's affirmation in itself is his truest prescription or purely emergency based.
Form my readings of Nietzsche I have always admired the man on the alps not limited by the past and unburdened by history simply affirming life, yet I find it nearly impossible to truly attach myself to this higher man. In my view (which has little currency), the values in such a being are truly noble and healthy, promoting a strong physiology or perhaps emanating from one, but in relation to the eternal recurrence I wonder if any man can truly affirm life at all times without any despair or regret.
Would it be possible that Nietzsche adopts the cocnpet behind Plato's Republic (not any metaphysical claims or objective solutions) but in the sense that the ideal of the perfect state is unachievable, but the mere striving for it leads to the improvement of the organism. Just so one can say the same of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the one who truly affirms life...I recently read an essay by the philosopher Josiah Royce who viewed this higher man, as not an actual occurrence, but by the act of preparing for him by those noble few who listen, they become the closest thing to healthy individuals, their physiology improves as they attempt to follow the regimen, the hearty diet of will of the Ubermencsch. This could be incorrect, but it is how I have tried to rectify the highly noble, but at times intangible objectives for the affirmative prescription.
Please accept my sincere apologies for not accessing your post earlier. My fault entirely.
The ER can only be visceral, psychological, conditional and temporary. As a concept it is incoherent. Despair, negation, denial, ressentiment and hatred are part of the totality, so if actuality is to be affirmed, it must entail affirming these non-affirming states.
I think the appearance of the always "yea"-saying Ass in TSZ.4. is Nietzsche's sign to us that the ER, as a concept, is not to be taken seriously.
However, less universal and unconditional forms of affirmation are extremely important to Nietzsche and are certainly to be taken seriously. But these affirmations (e.g. "selfishness") are not to be confused with adherence to the ER.
I think Nietzsche is entirely correct to highlight the structural similarity between our "spirit" and our stomach's capacity to digest experiences and ideas. Nietzsche is nauseated by much of what passes for normality (e.g. BGE.271 & 278 &282) and life, yet he is determined not to succumb to the bleakness, negation and pessimism of thinkers such as Pascal and Schopenhauer. He wants to affirm, to digest, what they and others cannot stomach, he wants to "remain true to the earth", because "To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence" (TSZ.Prologue).
Or as he says in GS:"The whole pose of 'man against the world', of man as a 'world-negating' principle, . . . the monstrous insipidity of this pose has finally come home to us and we are sick of it" (GS.346).
But the majority of humanity are not sickened so easily. Even the majority of active, practical people, as well as the majority of intellectuals and "free-thinkers", are quite happy to go along with certain forms of lies and nonsense: "Everyone knows this: and everyone none the less remains unchanged" (A.38). Hence:"There are days when I am haunted by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy - contempt of man."(A.38). See also the first few lines of The Anti-Christ.8.
Nietzsche, as both man and thinker, simply cannot adequately function and flourish under these conditions. It is precisely this inability that pushes Nietzsche towards the opposite end of the spectrum, towards the possibility that so much rotten food can, after all, be digested and even loved. But no sooner does he begin to think such thoughts through thoroughly than he begins to throw up again and retreat back into his solitude and to negate people and things with abandon. Thus much of Nietzsche's evaluations take place within this constant oscillation between affirmation and negation, and reflect his inability to remain at home in either for very long.
As I've argued elsewhere, I don't see Zarathustra as an "affirmer" at all! The fact that the Ubermensch never appears in TSZ, even in the fictionalised form of a book!, is no accident. I haven't read Royce's essay, but i'd say it all depends upon the specifics of what, exactly, is to be affirmed and why. Affirmation, as a coherent and livable concept, I can't take seriously.
So many scholars nowadays make a good living partly by wilfully rendering Nietzsche culturally impotent. Like Nietzsche, I have little respect for most of these so-called "free-thinkers". Such a development, given the contemporary power of the masses and the nature of mature capitalism, may be inevitable, but it still somewhat sickens me. I see most of them as actors and flatterers, the heirs of David Strauss . . .
What aspects of "the man on the Alps", "affirmation", and the "Ubermensch" appeal to you and why?
In regards to your last question, I am attracted to these concepts because they seem to impose a spiritual health underachieved by religion and secular ideologies.
The act of affirmation entails an indifference to the prospect of regret which seems to speak of a healthy regimen. One who is not historic, burdened by their past, seems "unstoppable" in their quest to flourish creatively. The man in the alps is the literal figure of this yea-saying.
However, it does occur to me that affirmation is less regenerative in the modern age. If one lives in a poisonous atmosphere of mediocrity and leveling, it is almost a Beowulf like feigned act: the noble type can affirm and attempt to strive, but the reality of his milieu weakens the range of his creative flourishing. Indeed, it seems more often than not, that we have come to the fork in the road. Will follow an opportunity to overcome nihilism or are we as a species inexorably pulled to the road leading to the Last Man?
Have you ever read John Gardener's "Grendel." Perhaps my favorite work of fiction, next to Blood Meridian, which really emphasizes the bleakness that is coming as man can't seem to find a healthy regimen to overcome nihilism. It's sad that when I say I'm fond of Nietzsche people are somewhat disgusted or confused as if he where the monster, not society.
I'm afraid i've read neither of the works you name. Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, a work that greatly impressed Nietzsche, is probably the modern work that i've come across which has the deepest affinities with Nietzsche's characterological project.
I think "nihilism", as Nietzsche conceives it, is above all a characterological event; and as such, it will never be experienced by the overwhelming majority of humanity in any substantive sense, under any circumstances. The problem simply doesn't exist for most people, and I include in that most intellectuals and most professional Nietzsche scholars. This relates to the "sickness" in the title of this thread, and this "sickness" is not an affliction of the masses, it pertains to those more strangely consituted souls who have different conditions of existence.
I think you're right to emphasise the influence of the enviornment, something Nietzsche increasingly ignored or trivialised. I think this was an act of defiant despair on Nietzsche's part. But flourishing creatively usually entails that one comes down from the alps.
I think that mediocrity and levelling are here to stay (culturally, not economically), but I think that's less to do with "affirmation" in any sophisticated sense, and more to do with the juxtaposition of advanced capitalism and the striving for distinction (in countless petty and mundane ways), as most people understand it.
I would recommend Blood Meridian. It's by Cormac McCarthy, perhaps one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century (at least post WWII). This novel as well as his other work No Country For Old Men are full of Nietzschean ideas. The latter has more connection to the "sovereign individual" and his power to promise.
I agree that affirmation is not a purely "practical" means to overcome nihilism. I agree that most will never understand as social selection (the way man has imposed counter drives, if you will, to mold us as social beings; this loads and underwrites the values we take for granted as objective)will ensure that man never responsibly notices the death of God, but merely morphs into the Last Man nature without ever realizing his conditions and values have changed. That is both the genius of man's artificial Darwinian tinkering and the great lie it induces.
You may be inclined to check out Professor J. Richardson at NYU who has written some of the best essays on Nietzsche's concept of agency (how free will and freedom must be re-valuated through genealogy) which offers some views on how Nietzsche may have found more of comprehensive solution than affirmation. I have noted your antipathy for most scholars as pseduo free thinkers, but I think you'll find his explanations enlightening. And I remember Nietzsche saying in BGE that we need researchers to provide the data for the re-valuation.
I would recommend "Nietzsche's Problem of the Past"
I haven't read the Richardson essay you cite. Thanks, i'll have a look at it.
However, I deal with an essay of Richardson's in the "Caesar" thread which concerns some of these issues you raise. Specifically, I think Richardson, like almost all currently prominent Nietzschean scholars, is deliberately misrepresenting Nietzsche on this question.
I still think Richardson is worth reading generally, but i'm opposed to the lack of an intellectual conscience that these scholars now routinely display regarding certain controversial subjects; Leiter is among the worst offenders on this score. Rather than depict Nietzsche and his arguments and valuations as they actually exist in his text, and then respond to these accordingly, these scholars prefer to misrepresent Nietzsche at crucial points. But almost everything significant about Nietzsche hinges on certain very disturbing and controversial points, and to casually elide these controversies is effectively to consign Nietzsche's whole cultural project to irrelevance.
My complain is not that they don't agree with many of Nietzsche's opinions (why should they?), but that they often don't even acknowledge them. This preference for general utility and general edification on the part of academic philosophy is, of course, a large part of why Nietzsche saw it as basically ludicrous and harmful to genuine culture; something that most of our academics keep conveniently silent about.
Just for me my own open-minded inclinations do you have any major areas where you think these academics dilute or misrepresent Nietzsche? I'm just interested as a student of philosophy who wants to open to multiple interpretations and I want to understand where you think they go wrong.
Of course they do on some level as they don't seem to buy into all of Nietzsche's ideas or at the very least, think them over all incompatible with modern society. I have read some of Leiter, Reginster, etc and can understand where you find a moving away from the controversial of Nietzsche. However, in some of their works I think they do a decent job examining and explaining Nietzsche, examining his many concepts. I think it fair to say that most of them find aspects of Nietzsche they "like" and discard or ignore the rest, but when you combine their various perspectives (the niches they each claim) you can attempt to piece together a comprehensive tablet on Nietzsche's views. I think it quite unlikely to ever find a scholar who takes on all of Nietzsche at once, or even agrees with him.
From my own reading, in this case of Richardson's essay I noted of, I found him quite upfront about the brutal truths of Nietzsche's view of agency and he never attempts to say "well here's what we can use or gloss"; he seems to admit (whether he agrees I can't be sure) that Nietzsche's prescription is quite radical and one must take it or leave it. All I am suggesting is that these various scholars can provide markers to come to know Nietzsche without the young thinker falling into "their interpretations."
Have you read, for example, the second and third Untimely Meditations? All your questions are answered there.
e.g. Leiter, Gemes, and Janaway all pretend that Nietzsche's most valued human type is the "creative genius" of a thoroughly respectable kind, who the majority of humanity have no cause to fear or hate.
Richardson, in the context of an essay on Nietzsche's conception of drives and freedom, fails to even mention that on precisely this subject Nietzsche explicitly named Caesar as the highest type.(see TI.Expd.38).
And none of them, as far as I know, highlights Nietzsche's critique of the contemporary "good man", and the quantity of coercion, self-deceit, hypocricy, immorality, indoctrination, and egoism that is required to promote and maintain it.
These omissions on the part of the above mentioned scholars are deliberate, they are not the result of honest mistakes, or a lack of familiarity with Nietzsche's text. They exist because none of these scholars wish to give (serious)offence to those who promote the currently dominant morality.
This doesn't, of course, mean that these scholars necessarily have nothing interesting to say about certain essentially harmless, abstract questions, such as Nietzsche's views on consciousness, causality, language, psychology, metaphysics, science, truth, art, epistemology etc. But none of the above honestly represent Nietzsche on the nature and significance of "culture", and none of them are inclined to seriously undermine and deflate the status of the contemporary "good man". i.e. the subjects Nietzsche himself thought most important.
I intend, in future posts, to think out loud about Nietzsche's early "History" essay. As well as being, I think, a great work in itself, it is perhaps Nietzsche's most sustained and clear "practical" work on our modern predicament. As readers will know, Nietzsche is rarely, if ever "practical" and this essay too is in many ways no exception as regard "cures" and "recommendations" (a lacuna not to be overlooked); but its "practicality" resides in its diagnosis of the nature and cause of the problem at hand: "nihilism". This essay, in fact, rather than TSZ, is really where Nietzsche fleshes out the notion of the "Last Man". The longer I live and the more I reflect on history and humanity, the more I am convinced of the importance and relevance of this essay. The core of this work is incredibly prophetic and devastatingly accurate.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a tension in this work (and this tension is visible in all his works), between Nietzsche the psychologist and "objective" thinker, and Nietzsche the contingent flesh and blood individual. The former has plenty of evidence to support the idea that he has, in fact, glimpsed the future in certain important respects, and as I say, I think modernity, broadly understood, has thus far panned out in exactly the manner Nietzsche foresaw. The latter, by contrast, is horrified and nauseous at what he sees coming and tries to combat it with all his might. This tension is largely Nietzsche's defining signature and he would be unrecognizable without it.
What strikes me above all about this essay is its modernity. With only the slightest editing and modifications, it could have been (and should have been), written yesterday. In fact, it's principally because such a work is not being written today by opinion-formers that gives the clearest testimony to the savage accuracy of Nietzsche's thesis! It's ignored, not because it is irrelevant or controversial but precisely because the enemy has so decisively won! This inevitably begs the question: why then bother if any kind of "victory" is impossible? My answer is simply to give expression to my confusion, disgust (personal and collective) and impotency. A poor answer, granted, but it's my answer nevertheless: "He who has ears, let him hear". As usual, any comments will be welcome, but if none have "ears", so be it.
I've said previously that I don't believe that the traditional philosophical questions were particularly important to Nietzsche (questions regarding epistemology, ontology, metaphysics etc). Such things are ultimately "abstinence doctrines"(BGE 204), which effectively avoid confrontation with life's most pressing problems. Add to this Nietzsche's low opinion of humanity and its most vocalised ideals of democracy, liberalism, consumption, entertainment and a negative conception of happiness, one can see how Nietzsche's "proper audience" is rightfully small in number. Nietzsche, in my view, is primarily for the "sick"; a category to which I undoubtedly belong. Since I think that Nietzsche's most sustained and naked investigation of this "sickness" is to be found in the "History" essay, this work shall be the subject of my next post.
I shall begin by quoting Nietzsche regarding the most essential features of this work before subsequently taking a closer look at the details of the text (This will also be helpful to any observer not yet familiar with the work). As will become clear, the purpose of the work is to be profound, and not merely clever! Things are far too serious for such inconsequential adornments.
ReplyDeleteThe essay begins:
"In any case, I hate everything everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." These words are from Goethe, and may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo [but i'm of the opinion] at the begining of our meditation on the value of history. For its intention is to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge not attended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury must, to use Goethe's words, be seriously hated by us - hated because we still lack even the things we need, and the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary.
To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to comfortably turn away from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the self-seeking life and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life; for it is possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate - a phenomenon we are now forced to acknowledge, painful though it may be, in the face of certain striking symptoms of our age.
I have striven to depict a feeling by which I am constantly tormented; I revenge myself upon it by handing it over to the public.
Perhaps this depiction will inspire someone or other to tell me that he too knows this feeling but that I have not felt it with sufficient purity and naturalness and definitely have not expressed myself with the appropriate certainty and mature experience. Perhaps one or two will respond in this way. However, most people will tell me that this feeling is altogether perverse, unnatural, detestable, and wholly impermissible, and that by feeling it I have shown myself unworthy of the powerful historical tendency of our time . . . [that being the case] I shall obtain for myself something of even more value to me than respectability: to become publicly instructed and set straight about the character of our time.
This essay is also out of touch with the times because here I am trying for once to see as a contemporary disgrace, infirmity, and defect something of which our age is justifiably proud, its historical culture. For I believe, in fact, that we are all suffering from a consumptive historical fever and at the very least should recognize that we are afflicted with it. If Goethe with good reason said that with our virtues we simultaneously cultivate our faults and if, as everyone knows, a hypertrophied virtue (as the historical sense of our age appears to me to be) can serve to destroy a people just as well as a hypertrophied vice, then people may make allowance for me this once. Also in my defence I should not conceal the fact that the experiences which aroused these feelings of torment in me I have derived for the most part from myself and I have drawn on the experiences of others only for purposes of comparison. . .
(foreword)
"Consider the cattle grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again from morn till night from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, neither melancholy or bored. This is a hard sight for man to see, for, though he thinks himself better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envy them their happiness - what he wants, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it for he refuses to be like an animal. . .
ReplyDeleteBut he also wonders at himself, that he cannot l;earn to forget but clings relentlessly to the past: however far and fast he may run, this chain runs with him. . . A leaf
A leaf is flutters from the scroll of time, floats away - and suddenly floats back again and falls into man's lap. Then the man says 'I remember' and envies the animal, who at once forgets and for whom every moment really dies, sinks back into the night and fog and is extinguished forever. Thus the animal lives unhistorically : for it is contained in the present. . . man, on the other hand, braces himself against the great and even greater pressure of what is past: it pushes him down or bends him sideways, it encumbers his steps as a dark, invisible burden. . . That is why it affects him like a vision of a lost paradise to see the herds grazing or, in close proximity to him, a child which, having as yet none of the past to shake off, plays in blissful blindness between the hedges of past and future. yet its play must be disturbed; all too soon it will be called out of its state of forgetfulness. Then it will learn to understand the phrase "It Was": that password which gives conflict, suffering and satiety access to man so as to remind him what his existence is - an imperfect tense that can never become a perfect one.
If death at last brings the desired forgetting, by that act it at the same time extinguishes the present and all existence and therewith sets the seal on the knowledge that existence is only an uninterrupted has-been, a thing that lives by negating, consuming and contradicting itself.
If happiness, if reaching out for new happiness, is in any sense what fetters living creatures to life and makes them go on living, then no philosopher is more justified that the Cynic: for the happiness of the animal, as the perfect Cynic, is the living proof of the rightness of Cynicism. The smallest happiness, if only it is present uninterruptedly and makes happy, is incomparably more happiness than the greatest happiness that comes only in an episode, as it were a piece of waywardness or folly, in a continuum of joylessness, desire and deprivation. In the case of the smallest or the greatest happiness, however, it is always the same thing which makes happiness happiness: the ability to forget or, expressed in a more scholarly fashion, the capacity to feel unhistorically during its duration. He who cannot sink down on the threshold of the moment and forget all the past. . . will never know what happiness is . . . Imagine the extremest possible example of a man who did not poses the power of forgetting at all and who was thus condemned to see everywhere a state of becoming: such a man would no longer believe in his own being, would no longer believe in himself, he would see everything flowing asunder in moving points and would lose himself in the stream of becoming: like a true pupil of Heraclitus, he would in the end hardly dare to raise his finger. forgetting is essential to action of any kind. . . Thus: it is possible to live almost without memory, and to live happily moreover, as the animal demonstrates; but it is altogether impossible to live at all without forgetting. Or, to express my theme even more simply: there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to a living thing, whether this living thing be a man, people, or culture.
In order to determine this degree of history and, through that, the borderline at which the past must be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, we have to know precisely how great the plastic force of a person, a people, or a culture is. I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one's own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds.
ReplyDeleteThere are people who possess so little of this power that they can perish from a single experience, from a single painful event, often and especially from a single subtle piece of injustice, like a man bleeding to death from a scratch. On the other hand, there are people whom are so little affected by the worst and most dreadful disasters, and even by their own wicked acts, that they are able to feel tolerably well and be in possession of a kind of clear conscience even in the midst of them or at any rate very soon afterwards.
The stronger the innermost roots of a man's nature, the more readily will he be able to assimilate and appropriate the things of the past: and the most powerful and tremendous nature would be characterised by the fact that it would know no boundary at all at which the historical sense began to overwhelm it; it would draw to itself and incorporate into itself all the past, its own and that most foreign to it, and as it were transform it into blood. That which such a nature cannot subdue it knows how to forget; it no longer exists, the horizon is rounded and closed, and there is nothing left to suggest that there are people, passions, teachings, goals lying beyond it. And this is a universal law: a living thing can be healthy, strong and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon. . .
ReplyDeleteThere is an observation that everyone must have made: a man's historical sense and knowledge can be very limited, his horizon as narrow as that of a dweller in the Alps, all his judgements may involve injustice and he may falsely suppose that all his experiences are original to him - yet in spite of this injustice and error he will nonetheless stand there in superlative health and vigour, a joy to all who see him: while close beside him a man far more just and instructed than he sickens and collapses because the the lines of his horizon are always relentlessly changing, because he can no longer extricate himself from the delicate net of his judiciousness and truth for a simple act of will and desire. . . What deed would man be capable of if he had not first entered into the vaporous region of the unhistorical? Imagine a man seized by a vehement passion for a women or for a great idea: how different the world has become to him! Looking behind him he seems to himself as though blind, listening around him he hears only a dull, meaningless noise; whatever he does perceive, however, he perceives as he has never perceived before. . . All his valuations are altered and devalued. . . he asks himself why he was for so long the fool of the phrases and opinions of others. . . It is the condition in which one is the least capable of being just: narrow-minded, ungrateful to the past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings, one is a little vortex of life in a dead sea of darkness and oblivion: an yet, this condition is the womb not only of the unjust but of every just deed too; and no painter will paint his picture, no general achieve his victory, no people attain its freedom without having first desired and striven for it in an unhistorical condition such as described. As he who acts is, in Goethe's words, always without a conscience, so he is also always without knowledge: he forgets most things so as to do one thing, he is unjust to what lies behind him, and he recognises the rights only of that which is now coming into being. Thus he who acts loves his deed infinitely more than it deserves to be loved: and the finest deeds take place in such a superabundance of love that, even if their worth were incalculable in other respects, they must still be unworthy of this love.
The deafening silence regarding this topic (a topic which is at the very core of Nietzsche's entire project) was, alas, to be expected, but that in itself is no consolation to me whatsoever. In addition, the aim I set myself here was too ambitious logistically. For both of these reasons I've decided to continue this experiment in fidelity no longer. The closer one gets to Nietzsche (i.e. to oneself), the greater grows the distance between oneself and the "world". Thus it ever was and ever shall be . . .
ReplyDeletemay i re-kindle this thread?
ReplyDeleteit seems like you take a serious look at a serious tension in nietzsche, and then decide not to pursue it - but then where does that leave us? or lead us?
you pointed out in the opening that what drives nietzsche on into his 'flesh and blood' battle, is his refusal to give in to the horror and the disgust - and i want to add: despair - which is a gateway to nihilism for the few that worry about this ...
so i'm wondering if you now see any hope for 'the sick', or is 'the sick' just doomed to perish so that 'last man' prevails unperturbed ... or do you think that 'last man' could be 'enlightened' by 'objective' psychology? ... or ...
i hope you don't take my questions as a challenge ... i also take this problem as very serious and very personal ... and i'm just trying to open a dialogue ...
ok,
ReplyDeleteI plead guilty to the charge of neglect, for the reasons given in my previous comment. The question at issue itself, however, is never far from my mind . . .
Ideally, I wanted to pay close attention to the central arguments of this essay, and then supplement this with a brief survey of the Schopenhauer essay, since I think in certain ways here is where Nietzsche was most viscerally intelligible and recognisable as a human being.
I think Nietzsche is "sick" in the same way that I think Dostoyevsky and Pascal are "sick". Yet things are complicated by the fact that certain forms of "sickness" are more valuable to me than many forms of "health". Thus there is no "health as such" (GS.120), terms like "health" and "sickness" are contingent upon perceived conditions of preservation and growth. Likewise, I don't believe that Nietzsche's "decadence" slurs have any objective validity; they are themselves symptomatic of Nietzsche's perceived conditions of preservation and growth.
The general thrust of Nietzsche's project is that our "physiology" exerts far more causal force than all our opinions. Let me simplify: if our "physiology" is "healthy", then it will, according to Nietzsche, seek its own advantage in relation to others. If it is fortunate, it will find itself in an environment where its virtues, the things it excels and delights in, will bring it success.
If the cosmos is conceived as the work of the Great Watchmaker, then Newton can pursue his work with a clear conscience and achieve great acclaim. Nietzsche doesn't have that luck. Many of Nietzsche's most impressive writing consists in telling us things we don't want to hear.
From the very begining, in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that "knowledge kills action", and once again, in the context of Hamlet in Ecce Homo we find him declaring that "it is not doubt but certainty which makes mad . . . We all fear truth". Hence his praise of the "superficiality" of the Greeks (GS.2nd.ed. Preface.4).
And in BGE.269 Nietzsche effectively destroys his own idealisation of "great men". This section then concludes with a sorrowful speculation of the psychology of Jesus and ends with the words:"He whose feelings are like this, he who knows this about love to this extent - seeks death. - But why reflect on such painful things? As long as one does not have to.- (BGE.269).
This whole section illustrates Nietzsche's paradoxical predicament (perhaps best summed up in WP.417's "We have to be destroyers"?). The "will to truth" now seems like a will to inaction, despair, self-loathing, nihilism. And yet, he is painfully aware that he is surrounded by people who are not in the slightest seriously diminished by many scientific or psychological insight (i'm thinking of successful intellectuals here more than the "uneducated" masses).
The "Last Man" is able to swallow these conceptual pebbles and thorns like caviar. And the secular successors of the priest (philosophers, politicians, artists, ideologues) have little or no trouble in adjusting themselves to the prevailing moral lies of the age. Nietzsche is sickened by this atmosphere, which either ignores, misrepresents or vilifies so many of his key insights.
My own view is that Nietzsche goes seriously wrong when he forgets his own inevitable sociological impotency and marginalisation, and imagines the "philosopher of the future" as some Lycurgus-like law-giver. I think there are good reasons to think this is plain silly. Daybreak 194. seems, to me, eminently more sensible than the subsequent Zarathustra-like posturings and proclamations.
What do you mean by - "do you think that 'last man' could be 'enlightened' by 'objective' psychology"?
by 'objective' psychology i was referring to your 'Nietzsche the psychologist and "objective" thinker' - but my question was based on thinking that your position might be that, this is the only side of nietzsche that is 'useful' or 'helpful' for the psychic and societal maladies that he and we are concerned about ... so by doing research in psychology, and "objective' thinking we can raise awareness and something good will come out of that …
ReplyDeletenietzsche really extends this 'health' and 'sickness' metaphor, and he is also attracted to the idea of the psychologist as a 'physician of the soul' - and like a 'physician' he likes to identify the 'symptoms', make a 'diagnosis', and prescribe a 'cure' ...
the way i understand this development in his works, is that:
BT is a synopsis of his whole project and is like a rehearsal of what is to come
his early essays (UM) are mostly a definition of the problem and the 'symptoms'
the middle trilogy (HATH, D, GS) is where he is doing the 'diagnostics'
and Z is where he finds the 'cure'
and then in his later works, he restates his problematic in this new context that he has discovered …
i think what you are saying is that you like the symptomatics and the diagnostics but not the 'cure' - and that there is no 'cure' - and that nietzsche ultimately knows it too that there is no 'cure' - but i also sense that you are concerned about being 'active', like in a political sense - so you are thinking that the better 'cure' is to be 'active' in a concrete political way (instead of thinking in the abstract, and 'legislating for the future') - or are you saying that one should just accept that there is no 'cure' and get on with real life?
although i realize that nietzsche's 'cure' is very closely tied to nietzsche, the 'flesh and blood' individual, i still think that it is very significant, and cannot be simply dismissed - interpreting the meaning of 'nietzsche' has many complexities, and it can quickly spread to many topics - so i'm asking questions to see your position more clearly, since i agree with a lot of what you say, but there is also some important points of difference …
I think Nietzsche pretends, or at times deludes himself into thinking, that the "cure" is to be found in the notion of "Affirmation". That converting every "It Was" into "Thus I willed it" signifies "redemption". This doctrine, at a visceral level, can, in certain circumstances, provide the individual with strength, courage, refuge, solace etc.
ReplyDeleteHowever, conceptually, the doctrine of "Affirmation" is incoherent and totally unrealisable. I think Nietzsche, in his sober moments, knows this only too well. It's an emergency doctrine, viscerally useful in times of crisis. It's a compensatory fantasy invented by a man who was sickened by much of what he discovered.
Life is tragic and there is no way around that, yet for untold millions of people it is not experienced as such! This obvious fact raises profound questions, but no easy universalist answers. But as Zarathustra says "Life meant more to me than all my wisdom ever did".
The key, I think, is to be found in Nietzsche's fondness for comparing the "spirit" to a "stomach" and that everything depends upon our individual "digestive capacity". Although the "stomach" metaphor is found in BGE the issue is explicitly confronted in the History essay and in BT.
I'm not sure what you mean by being "active in a concrete political way"? Again, let me simplify: much of Nietzsche's earlier work explicitly acknowledges certain concrete historical political realities that conspire to work against his conception of "culture". Although he sees the enormous forces stacked against him, he nevertheless often chooses to engage in the battle for a "better world" (as he sees it). As times goes by, his tone changes, and he alternates between two extreme possibilities.
1.He effectively accepts his kind have lost the political/cultural battle and speaks only to "hermits, and hermits in pairs". He chooses the less travelled path. He and his kind go their own way, for the most part contemptuous or indifferent to the bulk of his species . . .
2.He imagines (e.g. in TSZ, BGE and GM) himself as the precursor to some gigantic "philosopher of the future" whose work will take account of all major scientific knowledge and then, deliver value judgements of such authority that the world will be persuaded/forced to accommodate itself to his will.
I think in the first option Nietzsche is far too elitist. I wish he had continued to engage more with the world (but i'm aware that he would have his own reasons for embracing his solitude and impotency).
The second option is, I think, delusional and an act of despair.
I would agree generally with your characterisation of my stance: yes, generally speaking, I do share much (but not all) of his revulsion and contempt. And yes, I do find much (but not all) of his diagnosis of the human condition persuasive. Much of his negative analysis I accept. However, most of his alleged positive constructions I reject.
For me, Nietzsche's problem, in a nutshell, is that he veers too far away from that which he rejects. And this extreme reversal, ironically enough, makes him just as unworldly as Plato and Christianity. But, I share many of his wounds, and that suffices to establish a close relationship with him.
David, I just wanted to thank you for creating this blog. I am only an undergraduate, but my interests are especially geared toward the philosophical and I have come to admire and respect the Nietzschean system, if you can describe it as such.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to comment on your notation regrading whether Nietzsche's affirmation in itself is his truest prescription or purely emergency based.
Form my readings of Nietzsche I have always admired the man on the alps not limited by the past and unburdened by history simply affirming life, yet I find it nearly impossible to truly attach myself to this higher man. In my view (which has little currency), the values in such a being are truly noble and healthy, promoting a strong physiology or perhaps emanating from one, but in relation to the eternal recurrence I wonder if any man can truly affirm life at all times without any despair or regret.
Would it be possible that Nietzsche adopts the cocnpet behind Plato's Republic (not any metaphysical claims or objective solutions) but in the sense that the ideal of the perfect state is unachievable, but the mere striving for it leads to the improvement of the organism. Just so one can say the same of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the one who truly affirms life...I recently read an essay by the philosopher Josiah Royce who viewed this higher man, as not an actual occurrence, but by the act of preparing for him by those noble few who listen, they become the closest thing to healthy individuals, their physiology improves as they attempt to follow the regimen, the hearty diet of will of the Ubermencsch. This could be incorrect, but it is how I have tried to rectify the highly noble, but at times intangible objectives for the affirmative prescription.
Nate.T,
ReplyDeletePlease accept my sincere apologies for not accessing your post earlier. My fault entirely.
The ER can only be visceral, psychological, conditional and temporary. As a concept it is incoherent. Despair, negation, denial, ressentiment and hatred are part of the totality, so if actuality is to be affirmed, it must entail affirming these non-affirming states.
I think the appearance of the always "yea"-saying Ass in TSZ.4. is Nietzsche's sign to us that the ER, as a concept, is not to be taken seriously.
However, less universal and unconditional forms of affirmation are extremely important to Nietzsche and are certainly to be taken seriously. But these affirmations (e.g. "selfishness") are not to be confused with adherence to the ER.
I think Nietzsche is entirely correct to highlight the structural similarity between our "spirit" and our stomach's capacity to digest experiences and ideas. Nietzsche is nauseated by much of what passes for normality (e.g. BGE.271 & 278 &282) and life, yet he is determined not to succumb to the bleakness, negation and pessimism of thinkers such as Pascal and Schopenhauer. He wants to affirm, to digest, what they and others cannot stomach, he wants to "remain true to the earth", because "To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence" (TSZ.Prologue).
Or as he says in GS:"The whole pose of 'man against the world', of man as a 'world-negating' principle, . . . the monstrous insipidity of this pose has finally come home to us and we are sick of it" (GS.346).
But the majority of humanity are not sickened so easily. Even the majority of active, practical people, as well as the majority of intellectuals and "free-thinkers", are quite happy to go along with certain forms of lies and nonsense: "Everyone knows this: and everyone none the less remains unchanged" (A.38). Hence:"There are days when I am haunted by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy - contempt of man."(A.38). See also the first few lines of The Anti-Christ.8.
Nietzsche, as both man and thinker, simply cannot adequately function and flourish under these conditions. It is precisely this inability that pushes Nietzsche towards the opposite end of the spectrum, towards the possibility that so much rotten food can, after all, be digested and even loved. But no sooner does he begin to think such thoughts through thoroughly than he begins to throw up again and retreat back into his solitude and to negate people and things with abandon. Thus much of Nietzsche's evaluations take place within this constant oscillation between affirmation and negation, and reflect his inability to remain at home in either for very long.
As I've argued elsewhere, I don't see Zarathustra as an "affirmer" at all! The fact that the Ubermensch never appears in TSZ, even in the fictionalised form of a book!, is no accident. I haven't read Royce's essay, but i'd say it all depends upon the specifics of what, exactly, is to be affirmed and why. Affirmation, as a coherent and livable concept, I can't take seriously.
So many scholars nowadays make a good living partly by wilfully rendering Nietzsche culturally impotent. Like Nietzsche, I have little respect for most of these so-called "free-thinkers". Such a development, given the contemporary power of the masses and the nature of mature capitalism, may be inevitable, but it still somewhat sickens me. I see most of them as actors and flatterers, the heirs of David Strauss . . .
What aspects of "the man on the Alps", "affirmation", and the "Ubermensch" appeal to you and why?
David,
DeleteI apologize for not responding.
In regards to your last question, I am attracted to these concepts because they seem to impose a spiritual health underachieved by religion and secular ideologies.
The act of affirmation entails an indifference to the prospect of regret which seems to speak of a healthy regimen. One who is not historic, burdened by their past, seems "unstoppable" in their quest to flourish creatively. The man in the alps is the literal figure of this yea-saying.
However, it does occur to me that affirmation is less regenerative in the modern age. If one lives in a poisonous atmosphere of mediocrity and leveling, it is almost a Beowulf like feigned act: the noble type can affirm and attempt to strive, but the reality of his milieu weakens the range of his creative flourishing. Indeed, it seems more often than not, that we have come to the fork in the road. Will follow an opportunity to overcome nihilism or are we as a species inexorably pulled to the road leading to the Last Man?
Have you ever read John Gardener's "Grendel." Perhaps my favorite work of fiction, next to Blood Meridian, which really emphasizes the bleakness that is coming as man can't seem to find a healthy regimen to overcome nihilism. It's sad that when I say I'm fond of Nietzsche people are somewhat disgusted or confused as if he where the monster, not society.
Nate,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid i've read neither of the works you name. Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, a work that greatly impressed Nietzsche, is probably the modern work that i've come across which has the deepest affinities with Nietzsche's characterological project.
I think "nihilism", as Nietzsche conceives it, is above all a characterological event; and as such, it will never be experienced by the overwhelming majority of humanity in any substantive sense, under any circumstances. The problem simply doesn't exist for most people, and I include in that most intellectuals and most professional Nietzsche scholars. This relates to the "sickness" in the title of this thread, and this "sickness" is not an affliction of the masses, it pertains to those more strangely consituted souls who have different conditions of existence.
I think you're right to emphasise the influence of the enviornment, something Nietzsche increasingly ignored or trivialised. I think this was an act of defiant despair on Nietzsche's part. But flourishing creatively usually entails that one comes down from the alps.
I think that mediocrity and levelling are here to stay (culturally, not economically), but I think that's less to do with "affirmation" in any sophisticated sense, and more to do with the juxtaposition of advanced capitalism and the striving for distinction (in countless petty and mundane ways), as most people understand it.
David,
ReplyDeleteI would recommend Blood Meridian. It's by Cormac McCarthy, perhaps one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century (at least post WWII). This novel as well as his other work No Country For Old Men are full of Nietzschean ideas. The latter has more connection to the "sovereign individual" and his power to promise.
I agree that affirmation is not a purely "practical" means to overcome nihilism. I agree that most will never understand as social selection (the way man has imposed counter drives, if you will, to mold us as social beings; this loads and underwrites the values we take for granted as objective)will ensure that man never responsibly notices the death of God, but merely morphs into the Last Man nature without ever realizing his conditions and values have changed. That is both the genius of man's artificial Darwinian tinkering and the great lie it induces.
You may be inclined to check out Professor J. Richardson at NYU who has written some of the best essays on Nietzsche's concept of agency (how free will and freedom must be re-valuated through genealogy) which offers some views on how Nietzsche may have found more of comprehensive solution than affirmation. I have noted your antipathy for most scholars as pseduo free thinkers, but I think you'll find his explanations enlightening. And I remember Nietzsche saying in BGE that we need researchers to provide the data for the re-valuation.
I would recommend "Nietzsche's Problem of the Past"
http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/JohnRichardson.html
Nate,
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the Richardson essay you cite. Thanks, i'll have a look at it.
However, I deal with an essay of Richardson's in the "Caesar" thread which concerns some of these issues you raise. Specifically, I think Richardson, like almost all currently prominent Nietzschean scholars, is deliberately misrepresenting Nietzsche on this question.
I still think Richardson is worth reading generally, but i'm opposed to the lack of an intellectual conscience that these scholars now routinely display regarding certain controversial subjects; Leiter is among the worst offenders on this score. Rather than depict Nietzsche and his arguments and valuations as they actually exist in his text, and then respond to these accordingly, these scholars prefer to misrepresent Nietzsche at crucial points. But almost everything significant about Nietzsche hinges on certain very disturbing and controversial points, and to casually elide these controversies is effectively to consign Nietzsche's whole cultural project to irrelevance.
My complain is not that they don't agree with many of Nietzsche's opinions (why should they?), but that they often don't even acknowledge them. This preference for general utility and general edification on the part of academic philosophy is, of course, a large part of why Nietzsche saw it as basically ludicrous and harmful to genuine culture; something that most of our academics keep conveniently silent about.
David,
ReplyDeleteJust for me my own open-minded inclinations do you have any major areas where you think these academics dilute or misrepresent Nietzsche? I'm just interested as a student of philosophy who wants to open to multiple interpretations and I want to understand where you think they go wrong.
Of course they do on some level as they don't seem to buy into all of Nietzsche's ideas or at the very least, think them over all incompatible with modern society. I have read some of Leiter, Reginster, etc and can understand where you find a moving away from the controversial of Nietzsche. However, in some of their works I think they do a decent job examining and explaining Nietzsche, examining his many concepts. I think it fair to say that most of them find aspects of Nietzsche they "like" and discard or ignore the rest, but when you combine their various perspectives (the niches they each claim) you can attempt to piece together a comprehensive tablet on Nietzsche's views. I think it quite unlikely to ever find a scholar who takes on all of Nietzsche at once, or even agrees with him.
From my own reading, in this case of Richardson's essay I noted of, I found him quite upfront about the brutal truths of Nietzsche's view of agency and he never attempts to say "well here's what we can use or gloss"; he seems to admit (whether he agrees I can't be sure) that Nietzsche's prescription is quite radical and one must take it or leave it. All I am suggesting is that these various scholars can provide markers to come to know Nietzsche without the young thinker falling into "their interpretations."
Nate,
ReplyDeleteHave you read, for example, the second and third Untimely Meditations? All your questions are answered there.
e.g. Leiter, Gemes, and Janaway all pretend that Nietzsche's most valued human type is the "creative genius" of a thoroughly respectable kind, who the majority of humanity have no cause to fear or hate.
Richardson, in the context of an essay on Nietzsche's conception of drives and freedom, fails to even mention that on precisely this subject Nietzsche explicitly named Caesar as the highest type.(see TI.Expd.38).
And none of them, as far as I know, highlights Nietzsche's critique of the contemporary "good man", and the quantity of coercion, self-deceit, hypocricy, immorality, indoctrination, and egoism that is required to promote and maintain it.
These omissions on the part of the above mentioned scholars are deliberate, they are not the result of honest mistakes, or a lack of familiarity with Nietzsche's text. They exist because none of these scholars wish to give (serious)offence to those who promote the currently dominant morality.
This doesn't, of course, mean that these scholars necessarily have nothing interesting to say about certain essentially harmless, abstract questions, such as Nietzsche's views on consciousness, causality, language, psychology, metaphysics, science, truth, art, epistemology etc. But none of the above honestly represent Nietzsche on the nature and significance of "culture", and none of them are inclined to seriously undermine and deflate the status of the contemporary "good man". i.e. the subjects Nietzsche himself thought most important.