Shaun P. McGonigal
Nietzsche Seminar
Term Paper—
Introduction
I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obey?
Oh no! And govern? No indeed!
Only
who dreads himself inspires dread
And
only those inspiring dread can lead.
I
love to lose myself for a good while,
Like
animals in forests and the sea,
To
sit and think on some abandoned isle,
And
lure myself back home from far away,
Seducing
myself to come back to me.[1]
Philosophers
are generally unlike the common person, being somewhat separated by a rare
disposition. We philosophers look at the
world differently from most people, this is clear enough. But one must wonder
(especially philosophers) whether it is the temperament that makes the
philosopher or philosophy that creates the temperament. Further, what kind of temperament is this,
and what kind of effects does it have on the philosopher’s relationship with
the rest of the world.
The solitude that a philosopher, or a
“free spirit,” feels is a theme that Nietzsche utilizes frequently in his
writing. This feeling of difference or
distance from others is primarily due to a natural disposition of the
person. However, it is a kind of method,
a perspectivism, that Nietzsche describes and utilizes that puts the
wedge between the philosopher and the common person. The disposition of looking at the world
differently is what allows people to develop differently from others.
There is a point, in our
philosophical education, at which there is no easy return to common thinking. It was this wedge that separated Nietzsche
from many of his contemporaries, and what separates a free spirit from the
cultures in which they live. Nietzsche
recognized a perspectivism that was largely responsible for his solitude, and
this is so for all who follow in similar footsteps.
Nietzsche’s writings reflect a kind
of perspectivism. This perspectivism is
based on the notion that there is no standard for concepts such as truth, and
that the metaphysical implications of language, context, and our “will to
knowledge” are all responsible for what we, erroneously, deem to be the truth.[2] Nietzsche is clearly not trying to formulate
a systematic philosophy, but rather a method of understanding the world based
in skepticism. However, Nietzsche is not
advocating skepticism wholesale, as he recognizes two kinds of skepticism; one
that he repudiates and one that he proposes as part of the method for his
conception of the “new philosopher.”
The first kind of skepticism
Nietzsche associates with the notion of disinterest and objectivity. Here we have the scientific man, the “objective
spirit” who utilizes “disinterested knowledge.”[3]
This objective man is an “instrument” for scientific and dispassionate
measurement, a skeptic who
is
frightened all too easily; his conscience is trained to quiver at every No,
indeed even at a Yes that is decisive and hard, and to feel as if it had been
bitten.[4]
He has trained himself to never
accept any definite conclusion and to remember that theories are falsifiable
and thus fallible. This seems to
Nietzsche as an attempt to remain removed from the question, which is only
possible if we are truly able to distinguish between our drives and our Reason,
which Nietzsche rejects. This kind of
skepticism is seen as a disease of European proportions:
How
seductive the finery looks! This disease
enjoys the most beautiful pomp- and lie-costumes; and most of what today
displays itself in the showcases, for example, as “objectivity,” “being
scientific,” “l’art pour l’art,” “pure knowledge, free of will,” is merely
dressed-up skepticism and paralysis of the will….[5]
Disguised as disinterest and science,
this disease is a form of insecurity due to the mixing of cultures and classes,
which helps create uncertainty as to the foundations on which culture
lies. This type of skepticism succeeds
only in causing a splintering of a European will, and a splintered will is a
weak will.[6] Nietzsche is here talking overtly about
Europe needing to solidify it’s will in order that it will not become weakened,
but Nietzsche’s point may be broader than cultural commentary.
As Steve Kirby has shown,[7]
Nietzsche often uses political examples to make broader points. In this case, the point might be that we, as
individuals, cannot allow ourselves to be divided in our wills. Nietzsche talks about the possibility of the
“soul as subjective multiplicity,”[8]
and so it would not be difficult to derive from this the danger of having this
multiplicity divided. If a person were
unable to have his multiplicity of souls integrated into a coherent self, this
would result in a weakness that would manifest in various and apparently
chaotic behaviors. Such a person would
not exist well in solitude or among others, as a will divided cannot
stand.
After critiquing this kind of
skepticism, Nietzsche talks about a different kind of skepticism by using two
examples. The first utilizes various
historical figures, such as
This
skepticism despises and nevertheless seizes; it undermines and takes possession;
it does not believe but does not lose itself in the process; it gives the
spirit dangerous freedom, but it is severe on the heart….[10]
This “German form of skepticism,”
based on “critical and historical mistrust,” is different from the scientific
disinterest in that there is no necessary distancing of the self from the
objects of its consideration. Yes, it
still “does not believe,” like the former kind of skepticism, but it also “does
not lose itself”—that is its integration of self—in the process of this
epistemological distance. Rather than
acting at a distance, this kind of skeptic rushes the battlefield to confront
that of which it is skeptical, it consumes it in order to digest it properly,
in order that it may know that which it questions intimately.
The “new philosopher” is skeptical in
a critical way, an experimental way—he is to be an attempter.[11] Here is the key to the methodology of
Nietzsche’s perspectivism, as well as the key to the solitude that often
follows from it. This notion of
skepticism is at the core of Beyond Good and Evil, as from the beginning
Nietzsche is telling us that we should be compelled by the dangerous “maybe,”[12]
that we must allow for possibilities and not to conclude—neither a Yes or a
No. This is an obvious attack upon
Scholastic notions, based in part on this idea of Sic et Non.[13] Further, it is a direct attack on all notions
of black and white dichotomies, on the notion of opposites which
Nietzsche also attacks from the very beginning of Beyond Good and Evil.
Perspectivism is for the rare, and is
thus not intended for the masses. These
notions of opposites, dichotomies, etc are found in common circles, and lay at
the basis for the common construction of the world, based upon the language
that we use and the metaphysics that this language supports. To transcend this metaphysical point of
view—the linguistic constructions that our descriptions are trapped in—we need
to gain a different and higher perspective (or perspectives). Nietzsche seems to think that this higher
perspective, this higher spiritualization, is for the rare “free spirits”:
In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain
for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined,
and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.[14]
Nietzsche’s “free spirit” or “new
philosopher” is the rare person Nietzsche is writing for. We have to wonder what kind of people would
have these perspectives; who is the intended audience for Nietzsche’s writing. Nietzsche’s intended audience consists
primarily of the rare people who are, for various reasons, already alienated
from common culture and society. The
free spirit or the new philosopher will know solitude because there are so few
who can keep them company.
Thus Nietzsche’s perspectivism asks
us to create a distance between certainty and the world we apprehend. If we remain skeptical, then we do not as
easily and readily accept the common notions of the world. Thus Nietzsche kind of perspective is
responsible for what places a wedge between ourselves and most others with whom
we might interact.
Nietzsche’s solitude is based on a
fundamental difference in social and cultural constitution, making interaction
with the common man often difficult.
Because the new philosopher is always testing or tempting the world
around him, he puts himself at odds with the common man because the common man
accepts the world according to traditional metaphysical and linguistic notions,
and views the skeptic as a danger to his way of life; a way of life shared by
most of the people around him. The new
philosopher will understand that there is no inherent power in numbers,
however, and the masses of those who subscribe to common perspectives will mean
little to him. The perspective of the
new philosopher and the common man differ in such a way that the philosopher
finds communication with most people uninteresting, or at least trying, for
both of them.
The criterion for the difference
between the new philosopher and the common person is not intelligence or
thought per se. It is not as
simple as to argue that philosophers think and the common person does not. Nietzsche makes it clear that thought can
lead us astray, as the origins of logic and rationality are suspect,[15] being
based on this Platonic notion of a distinction between rationality and
desires. Our common notions of truth,
says Nietzsche, are the result of errors, some of which “proved to be useful
and helped preserve the species.”[16] So the common man can be a thinker, being
stuck in erroneous conclusions from errors in our intellectual past. Therefore the new philosopher will not necessarily
be a better thinker or a stronger intellect, although these attributes may not
hurt.
As for what criteria will be considered
for our new philosopher, our free spirit, we can pull some clues from
Nietzsche’s text. To begin with, we can
see that the new philosopher will need to be patient:
Being
able to wait is so hard that the greatest poets did not distain to make the
inability to wait the theme of their poetry.[17]
But this difficulty in waiting must
be overcome, as the reward for patience is often knowledge and greater breadth
of perspectives. Once they get a taste of this breadth of perspectives, the new
philosopher will be driven by the “sweetness” of knowledge. He will know that his separation from others
is but a sacrifice for something more desirable.
Do you think this kind of life with this kind of goal
is too arduous, too bereft of all comforts? Then you have not yet learned that
no honey is sweeter than that of knowledge, and that the hanging clouds of
sadness must serve you as an udder, from which you will squeeze the milk to
refresh yourself.[18]
This sweetness does not come easily,
but is worth the struggle and pain:
To understand all this can cause great pain, but
afterwards there is consolation. These
pains are birth pangs. The butterfly
wants to break through his cocoon; he tears at it, he rends it: then he is
blinded and confused by the unknown light, the realm of freedom. Men who are capable of that sorrow (how few
they will be!) will make the first attempt to see if mankind can transform
itself from a moral into a wise mankind.[19]
Here is where it becomes clear that
this new philosopher, the free spirit, will be the rare soul; “all that is rare
for the rare.” The new philosopher will
truly be a philosopher; a lover of wisdom. Thus, Nietzsche’s new philosopher might be a
backward glance—yet not an atavistic one! —at the origins of philosophy where
Socrates would desire for the beauty of wisdom, as a symbol of Eros, the
hunter.[20] That is, the lover of wisdom is a hunter of
wisdom. In similar fashion, our new
philosopher will be a hunter of wisdom, driven by his desire to attain this
beautiful prize that is perpetually beyond reach. I’m reminded of Tantalus.
In Nietzsche’s particular case, his
consistent illness and pain throughout his life would help initiate this
perspective, it would act as a catalyst for the difference between himself and
others—including those such as Schopenhauer who also spoke about suffering and
pain, but without this perpetual actual pain
and suffering that Niezsche knew so well. It is this kind of beginning, a philosophical
point of origin, that might help in separating a thinker from others. Nietzsche’s case is an extreme one, but his
philosophy is also often extreme. For
someone to fully understand his perspective, perhaps one would have to also
have known similar extremes, thus perhaps most of us will never fully
comprehend Nietzsche.
There is also a sense that the rare
things are not accessible to the common even if they try—indeed that they
perhaps should not try.
All higher education belongs to the exceptions alone:
one must be privileged to have a right to such a high privilege. Great and fine things can never be common
property: pulchrum est
paucorum hominum.[21]
Nietzsche point here is that German
culture of his time had tried to offer higher education for all, which is based
on egalitarian notions that Nietzsche abhors.
Thus, it seems, the free spirit is not so much made as found, or at last
cultivated from a strong seed in good soil.
Of this last point I am not
convinced. While I will concede that
some, like Nietzsche, have a unique and extreme perspective due to certain experiences
or dispositions, I do not agree that we should conclude from this that we
should limit higher education to the exceptions. There is some degree to which even those who
are not exceptional can gain valuable perspectives from higher education, even
if they are not to lead or master the status of the new philosopher or a free
spirit. The fact that there will
inevitably be a distance between these rare souls and the more common persons—even
the educated ones—is not helped by further widening that gap. That is, while the new philosopher might not
mind his solitude, there is no reason to intentionally push away further those
from whom he is distant.
Nietzsche knows that this perspective
is not for most and that the sweetness of knowledge is not seen as something
worthy of sacrifice; a sacrifice that will only bring them loneliness and
solitude that comes with it. It is not
that solitude is the prize, but that it is often the natural result of wisdom
as an end in itself for some, but not for others. Thus, while we may have no need to push the
common person away by denying them higher education, there is also no purpose
in trying to pull people towards being free spirits and new philosophers
either. Nietzsche simply writes for a
rare audience who will appreciate his thoughts, which help to deepen the
experience of people that already understand the perspectives he writes
about. It is a beautiful free gift that
will not be accepted by most, but will be cherished by those few who do.
Perhaps one aspect of the relation
between the new philosopher and his distant cousin, the common person, is
captured best here:
To
translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly
enthusiastic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled
and painted over the eternal basic text of homo natura;
to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in
the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature, with
Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old
metaphysical bird catchers who have been piping at him all too long, “you are
more, you are higher, you are of a different origin!”—that may be a strange and
insane task, but it is a task.[22]
This quote can be seen as a rally cry
for those who already feel somewhat separated from the rest of the world. That
is, some will read this and become inspired, while others will read it and feel
some uneasiness within, as if someone had taken the ground from beneath their
feet. It is this perspective that is the
criterion for the free spirit; it is this task that will separate the
rare from the common, and will determine who will be left alone and who will
mingle with the masses. Those who are
gripped by Nietzsche’s perspectives will be swept away from the shore, into the
solitude of the sea, where those fraternizing on the beach will be oblivious
what the beach looks like from afar.
To pierce out our eyes and to cover
our ears from the sweet songs of metaphysical propositions is for many a
daunting task. So ingrained into the
common psyche are these metaphysical worldviews, that to question them seems to
be to throw away any possibility of significance and to capitulate to the
darkness of nihilism and to chaos. But
this darkness is merely our eyes having to adjust to awaking from a fantastic
dream. That enterprising philosopher who
freed himself from Plato’s chains to the outside of the cave awoke to find that
he had been dreaming, and that his chains are now, if anything, his sense of
nausea at the attempt to wish into existence of an “outside” of the cave. There is a certain point at which realizing
that the cave has no mouth and that the sun—the “Good”—is merely an
abstraction, when we are no longer able to deceive ourselves any further. It is at this point that we have begun to become
Nietzsche’s “new philosopher.”
For those that have yet to taste the
sweet ambrosia of the new philosopher—which they seem to have stolen from the
gods who have died—solitude will seem an undesirable position. However, it is a position of necessity for
others; the free spirit might not choose to remain alone, it is just that they
are unable to persist in the games and errors that dominate the perspectives of
the common person riddled with weaker wills and parochial perspectives. When they venture back to shore to interact
with the people there, the new philosopher will feel the sting of his distance
from the commoner in the back of his mind even while they speak to one-another;
especially when they talk
Perhaps the best example of this new
philosopher is Zarathustra, who spent ten years in the mountains away from his
home. When he decides to return, and
upon encountering the old man—the lover of God—Zarathustra is engaged thus:
‘How
changed Zarathustra is! Zarathustra has become—a
child, an awakened one: what do you want now with the sleepers?
‘You
lived in solitude as in the sea, and the sea bore you. Alas, do you want to go ashore? Alas, do you
want again to drag your body yourself?’
The old man has removed himself from
the world of “sleepers” as well, but in order to love God, and to despise
men. Zarathustra, on the other hand,
still loves mankind, and offers to bring them a gift. Upon being asked the nature of this gift that
Zarathustra bears for the people, Zarathustra says ‘But let me go quickly, that
I may take nothing from you,’ at which they part, both laughing.
This
confrontation, this laughter, is the best example of the difference between
perspectives that is illuminated by Nietzsche.
For the old man laughs as at a child’s foolishness, while Zarathustra is
amused that this man has failed to realize that God is dead. It is this that Zarathustra is avoiding
taking from him, causing him to make haste in leaving. This sense of being pulled away is often
shared by the free spirit who runs into the common person in the woods, on the
street, or elsewhere. In a sense this
coming down from the mountain is a metaphor for what happens when a philosopher—a
hunter of wisdom—interacts with one for whom wisdom is but a distractive word,
an ambiguous term that evokes a sense of being smart or articulate. The philosopher is pulled down from his
heights for just a moment, as he is too far away to even see way up there. The sense of nausea from such a sudden drop
in altitude is often a dizzying experience, and sometimes it slows their climb
back to the mountain.
The imagery here is that of the
childlikeness of Zarathustra and the old man’s sense of certainty in his
truth. The lesson for us, if we are to
be new philosophers, is that we must remain childlike; skeptical and
curious. Whether this gift will be
accepted to those whom we visit upon swimming ashore or descending the mountain
is not our concern. However, the rare
will sometimes find one-another, and in this lies the true potential for
substantive interaction between perspectives.
Hadot, Pierre. 1999. Philosophy
as a Way of Life.
Kirby, Steve, “The Internalisation
of Nietzsche's Master and Slave Morality.”
Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, Jan2003, Vol. 14 Issue
1, p14, 9p
Kaufmann,
Walter [trans. and ed.]. 1992. Basic
Writings of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
1996 Human all too Human: A Book for
Free Spirits. Marion Faber and
Stephen Lehmann [trans.].
—1974. The Gay
Science. Walter Kaufmann [trans.].
—1990. Twilight
of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. R.J. Hollingdale
[trans.].
Ronen, Shoshana. “Nietzsche and Wittgenstein: On Truth,
Perspectivism, and Certainty.” Dialogue & Universalism, 2001, Vol. 11
Issue 5/6, p97, 19p
[1] “Joke, Cunning, and Revenge,” #33, from The Gay Science.
[2] Cf. Ronin (2001).
[3] Beyond Good and Evil, §207
[4] ibid, §208
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] Cf. Kirby (2003)
[8] Beyond Good and Evil, §12
[9] Cf. §209. Nietzsche reports Napoleon’s response upon meeting Goethe as saying “‘Violà un homme!’—that meant: ‘But this is a man! And I had merely expected a German.’” Nietzsche is here commenting on the conception of the German “spirit” shared by other Europeans.
[10] Beyond Good and Evil, §209. The culture that such individuals grow up in, in this particular case of Frederick the Great, is that of Romanticism, which Nietzsche is clearly at odds with here and elsewhere; cf. The Gay Science, §370.
[11] Kaufmann tells us in a footnote here that the German word is ambiguous, and can mean “experimenter” or “attempter.” Cf. §210 and accompanying footnote, as well as the footnote accompanying §42, where Kaufmann elucidates Nietzsche’s wordplay with the German words versucher (tempters or experimenters) Versuch (attempt or experiment) and Versuchung (temptation). The triple word-play better illustrates what Nietzsche is here trying to convey with the new philosopher and his skepticism.
[12] BGE, §2
[13] Nietzsche’s use of the terms “Yes” and “No” seem to be a direct attack against these Medieval notions, derived significantly from Peter Abelard’s work Sic et Non.
[14] Beyond Good and Evil, §43.
[15] Cf. The Gay Science, §110-111 for example
[16] ibid, §110
[17] Human all too Human, §61
[18] Human all too Human, §292. Cf. also §252
[19] Human all too Human, §107
[20] Cf. Hadot (1999), pp. 159-165. This is Hadot’s discussion of what he calls Socrates’ “erotic irony.”
[21] Twilight of the Idols, “What the Germans Lack,” §5. The Latin phrase translates as “beauty is for the few.”
[22] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §230.