"... the detail seems to contain an incredible amount of personal experience and ... suffering which is intelligible only to me -- there are some pages [in Thus Spoke Zarathustra] which seemed to drip blood."
Friedrich Nietzsche's letter to Peter Gast, August, 1883.
I. Introduction.
Friedrich Nietzsche may be the most influential philosopher of modern times. Quotations from his writings are found everywhere -- in television shows, movies, pop music. I find a Nietzsche quote even on a juice carton purchased for my child to take to school with her lunch. Nietzsche was indeed "born posthumously." At last, the once burgeoning fascination with Nietzsche's writings, thanks largely to his French admirers in the late twentieth century, seems to be waning.
German and British idealism -- especially Kant and Hegel, also Bradley and McTaggart -- have become objects of interest and rediscovery. It should not surprise us that these were the philosophers (that is, Nietzsche along with the German and British idealists) who were most often dismissed in the first half of the twentieth century as worthless. Nietzsche and the British idealists, incidentally, may be interpreted as developing theories of human flourishing, leading to an ethics of self-realization. Bertrand Russell disposed of Friedrich Nietzsche with these words:
"I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. [Is the existence of an emotion not a fact, Lord Russell?] Nietzsche despises universal love. I feel it the motive power of all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end."
A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), pp. 772-773.
Russell admits to being puzzled by the "fact" that Nietzsche's "Superman" resembles one of Wagner's Operatic heros:
"Nietzsche's Superman is very like Siegfried, except that he knows Greek. This may seem odd, but that is not my fault."
Ibid., at p. 760.
Scholars may wish to associate David L. Norton, Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 102-103 ("In Sartre's words, character, like temperament, is a 'vow.' ... there is no character, there is only a project of oneself.") with Keiji Nishitani, "What is Religion?," in Religion and Nothingness (Los Angeles: University of California, 1982), pp. 3-6. ("One might as well pursue the view that it is only in religion that man becomes truly himself, that the self encounters its 'original countance.' ...") I suggest that you look to Yukio Mishima's novel, The Confessions of a Mask.
"Professor Taku Yamada of Kanazawa University compared Mishima's suicide to that of an early nineteenth-century rebel against the Shogunate -- a virtuous youth who had been influenced (like Mishima) by the fifteenth-century Chinese scholar Wang Yang-ming, who believed that 'to know and act are one and the same.' [Idealism.] The Japanese, the professor noted, in adapting this philosophy to their own needs, simplified it into a sort of death cult with the caveat 'one is not afraid of the death of the body, but fears the death of the mind.' ..." ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Gore Vidal, "The Death of Mishima," in Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 380. Please read Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959) and "'Inception': A Movie Review."
The other great influence on Mishima is Nietzsche's Romanticism. The restoration of Nietzsche's American reputation is owed largely to Walter Kaufman's post-war efforts. "When I began work on Nietzsche," Kaufman said, "it seemed needful to dissociate him from the Nazis and show that he had been a great philosopher." Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, and Antichrist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. iii. There is no philosopher who has inspired more varied and intense reactions, including Russell's unfair assessment.
I will not attempt to defend Nietzsche. My own feelings and reactions to Nietzsche's work are mixed. I think that it is strange that feminists now often invoke Nietzsche's name, though he was as much (if not more!) of a misogynist than Arthur Schopenhauer, whom the feminists delight in burning in effigy. For some reason, Nietzsche is now hunky-dory with our militant gal-pals. Weird, but O.K. with me. Mind you, I would also use Nietzsche to argue "for" gender freedom -- against his expressed views -- since I believe that much of Nietzsche's suffering was the result of imprisonment within the straightjacket of traditional gender categories. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
January 17, 2010 at 1:06 P.M. A letter was deleted from the foregoing paragraph, probably by Cubanazos using N.J. government computers. Perhaps Senator Bob can shed some light on this mystery? Conspiracies to violate civil rights and suppressions or alterations of copyright-protected speech are federal crimes, Senator Bob. ("Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You Are Perfect Together!'")
Rumors of Nietzsche's Debbie Poritz-like "homosexuality" (I doubt it) make him acceptable to fashionistas, or even Nietzsche's recent French popularity may make him a hit on American campuses, or in coffee shops everywhere. Nietzsche is certainly not someone for feminists to embrace uncritically. Lesley Chamberlain's recent book "gushes" with enthusiasm for the man who said: "... woman is intended for the recreation of the warrior." For instance, in Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography (New York: Picador, 1996) at p. 3, the author sighs: "This book is an attempt to befriend Nietzsche." (Only two new "errors" inserted since last time is not too bad.)
I will focus on an early essay that may be associated with some of my comments elsewhere on Shopenhauer's aesthetics. The most interesting part of Nietzsche, for me, has nothing to do with politics or feminism, nor with the pronouncement that "God is dead." An American bumper sticker proudly responds: "Nietzsche is dead! -- God." Rather, I believe that Nietzsche is a great psychologist and aesthetician, one who would be appalled (for good reason) by contemporary American psychology's decision to, as it were, "get into bed" with power. I wonder how we all "feel" about that?
The cruelty and indifference to the suffering they cause on the part of the powerful would, perhaps, meet with Nietszche's approval. I am more responsive to arguments for being cruel to the cruel. However, those quaint old-fashioned Christian values tend to get in the way of such emotions. The role of so-called therapists in designing and implementing sadistic tortures aimed at gathering information from victims in places like Abu Ghraib (or New Jersey) should result in their loss of any right to be called "therapists." Such people are reminders of the depravities to which even educated or professional persons may fall in exchange for the all-mighty dollar. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
I should warn the reader that future defacements of this text must be expected by New Jersey's legal whores and/or their hirelings, probably at the hands of people like Tuchin and Riccioli. I begin with a biographical comment; I will focus on Nietzsche's essay "Schopenhauer as Educator"; I then conclude with some brief criticisms of his essay as well as some remarks concerning the influence of this early work on Michel Foucault's development.
II. Biography.
Friedrich Niezsche was born in Prussia, in 1844, and he died in 1900. The final ten years of Nietzsche's life were lost in madness. The incident that pushed him over the edge into insanity, it is said, was the whipping of a horse in a Turin Street. No single incident ever does that "pushing over the edge." Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister who died insane when Niezsche was only four. The future philosopher was raised by women, spinsters mostly, in a militaristic and sexist society. The sensitivity and emotion cultivated in his early life were subject to repression thereafter, as the myopic warrior set about to "adjust" to the Prussian version of machismo, together with the sort of virile culture that is much loved, in my experience, only by lesbians who like to beat up men in downtown bars. More power to them.
That's for you, Debbie. How does it feel? During the 1860s, Niezsche was conscripted into the Prussian military, which is like asking Woody Allen to become a U.S. Marine. Nietzsche was involved in a riding accident and -- in the fashion of the time -- simply rode off, as though nothing had happened, only to collapse moments afterwards. The burden of masculinity and the denial of the feminine aspects of human nature was never greater than in nineteenth century Prussia, nor was there a people that suffered more from this particular idiocy than Germans. "Back to the Black Forest with them!" said Nietzsche.
I believe that this bizarre and unfortunate situation had much to do with Niezsche's life-long suffering. Nietzsche's emotional life -- especially as regards women -- was also a "fall" that resulted in devastating emotional injury. Nietzsche was clearly a gentle, kind and sensitive man. He could not allow himself to be the person that he was, I think, because there was something feminine in himself that he had to deny at all times. Yes, I know about "Brokeback Mountain"; and no, this does not mean that Nietzsche (or that I) happen to be "gay." This has nothing to do with sexual-orientation, necessarily, but with gender codes in his time and place that I can only describe as suffocating for a person "like" Nietzsche.
I try to anticipate the moronic objections of New Jersey persons. I figured out that gender codes were (and are) bullshit while still in high school. Nietzsche lived in a different era when this insight was proscribed or maybe impossible. Many others must have suffered as Nietzsche did. Many persons still suffer, even today, from the failure to recognize that "masculine" and "feminine" are words that describe aspects of what is universally human (Jung, Butler), both of which exist, as possibilities, within all of us. Latino men who find themselves admiring a sunset or a flower arrangement, therefore, should not rush to call a therapist. It's normal, I promise. You can relax. A true measure of Nietzsche's courage, of his being a man who lived "in the future," would have been a celebration of the feminine in himself, without any sacrifice of his masculinity or sexual interest in women, but as an enrichment of that masculinity. I believe this sense of gender freedom remains a necessary lesson for some -- or many -- men and women today.
In Nietzsche's world "men were men" (whatever that means). Accordingly, Nietzsche's advice "when thou goest to woman take thy whip," should be understood to indicate that he was probably "whipped," in every sense, by women. No, there is no evidence that Nietzsche was "into" sadomasochism. It seems likely that he had only one sexual encounter in his life, probably with a prostitute, after a visit to a brothel as a university student. Nietzsche later claimed that he only played the piano on that occasion. My guess is that he played more than that:
"[In 1865, Nietzsche] visited Cologne. According to the account he gave to his friend Paul Deussen he asked a porter to take him to a restaurant. Either the porter misheard him or he assumed that hunger was not the only appetite that needed satisfying because the student found himself escorted to a brothel. Trying to make the best of the situation Nietzsche claimed he suddenly noticed there was a piano there and so played a few short pieces, made some excuses and left."
Travis Elborough, Nietzsche (London: Pocketessentials, 2001), p. 12.
As they used to say on the old "Get Smart" television show: "... a likely story." Niezsche entered boarding school in 1858, leaving the world of women, to which I think (subconsciously) he always hoped to return. This is true, again, regardless of his sexual-orientation. He was a brilliant student, going on to study theology, philosophy, classical philology at the University of Bonn. He then went to Leipzig where he read Kant (Nietzsche's "will to power" is the "transcedental ego" or Kantian "free will" unconstrained by duty). Nietzsche also discovered Arthur Shopenhauer's philosophy. Nietzsche then found the music of Richard Wagner. The overture to Rienzi will affect any sentient human being, even in Trenton, New Jersey.
At the age of twenty-four, in 1869, Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship at Basel, even though he did not yet have his doctorate. The authorities quickly gave him one anyway, based on his "obvious genius," an achievement which university students have been trying to emulate ever since: "Why should I be bothered with a final examination in 'Intro to Biology,' when a mere glance at my eyes reveals the simmering power of genius?" Why indeed. These are the students who usually don't do very well. They tend to hack into the computers of rivals in order to delete letters from the envied writings of others. Does this ring any bells for you?
The essay by Nietzsche to which the balance of this work is devoted appeared in 1874, and is collected in Untimely Meditations. I will refer to the R.J. Hollingdale translation. Nietzsche's discovery of Shopenhauer's Romantic pessimism and Wagner's music were the most important intellectual and aesthetic experiences, respectively, of his early life. Nietzsche remained concerned with both, though he turned against Wagner, eventually, and cooled slightly towards Shopenhauer. Yet he always regarded the "old man" (Shopenhauer) as a great philosopher and teacher. At the risk of alarming feminists, I must admit that I agree with Nietzsche that both men were geniuses and (equally) assholes. Feminists tend to agree with the asshole part of this evaluation. You are welcome to decide the same about me.
I think that Nietzsche's madness was the result of emotional difficulties and not attributable to secondary syphilis. This is an issue which has attracted many experts, resulting in a great deal of controversy. It seems clear, to me, that the burden of repressing so much of his personality (not necessarily homosexuality), Nietzsche's sensitivity and emotional frailty -- his "femininity," if you like -- which was impermissible for a man to display in his Prussian, militarist world; also, professional frustration and the blinkered, idiotic responses to his work during his lifetime, together with the failure to find a meaningful relationship, culminating with the fiasco involving Lou Andreas Salome -- all of these things, finally, became too much for Nietzsche's coping mechanisms.
Madness was Nietzsche's final form of self-defense from a cold, hostile, non-comprehending world. To some extent, madness always is a kind of defense. After 1879, Niezsche's health made teaching impossible. Nietzsche's remaining sane years were spent wandering from one resort town to another, writing his books and coping with a variety of ailments. Nietzsche was not very successful with women, as I suggested earlier, and his rejection by Lou Andreas Salome may have been a final painful and humiliating "defeat" in his emotional life, from which he never fully recovered, adding to his life-long hostility towards women. For Andreas-Salome's side of the story, see Lou Andreas-Salome, Looking Back: Intimate Friendships With Nietzsche, Freud, and Rilke (London: Paragon, 1998). Promiscuity is another way of being unsuccessful in relationships that amounts to the same syndrome experienced by Nietzsche in his abstinence.
It appears that Lou "got around" -- although she limited her sexual interest to alienated geniuses. One senses, again and again, Nietzsche's powerful effort to repress his feminine side, thus over-compensating on the masculine side. In pre-Jungian terms, this effort of "avoidance" must have been highly damaging to his psychic health and to his precarious "balance." (If we throw in a few of these psychobabble terms, the shrinks will have multiple orgasms when they read this.) Recent biographical efforts suggesting that Nietzsche may have been "gay" are purely speculative. I doubt it. Come to think of it, he "may have been" anything.
Nietzsche was probably strongly and enthusiastically heterosexual, but unable to communicate with most of those he came accross -- especially in his family circle -- making it impossible for him to find supportive and loving relationships that might have provided an outlet for his gentle, nurturing emotions and sensitivities. More interesting for understanding Nietzsche is Jungian analyst Liliane Frey-Rohn's book-length study, suggesting some compensatory fantasy in the creation of the "Superman." Most of us settle for being "Averageman," not Nietzsche: "If there were gods," Nietzsche writes, "how could I not be one?" See Dr. Frey-Rohn's Friedrich Nietzsche: A Psychological Approach to His Life and Work (Zurich: Daimon-Verlag, 1984).
"Nietzsche suffered from delusions of grandeur!" Psychobabblers love to say this sort of thing. This may be the moment to acknowledge, publicly, that I am the proud owner of a "Superman" t-shirt, a Monty Python t-shirt, Strand Books t-shirt, a "I love quantum physics" t-shirt, along with several others -- including a Nietzsche t-shirt purchased at the old "Colosseum Books." Make your judgments, if you must. (That's how they spelled it in the bad old days.)
This effort to be "a god" may have been Nietzsche's unconscious effort at "winning" the love of an understanding "other self." Ideally, an attractive "other self." Despite his admiration for Wagner's German Operas, Nietzsche's greater fascination with Bizet's "Carmen" suggests a fondness for fiery "brunnettes." Who can blame him? I say "Carmen," by all means, but "Michaela" -- or, better yet, "Isolde" -- wouldn't hurt either. His solitude, however, did hurt him, deeply and in the end, lethally. Nietzsche concurred in my irrefutable judgment that "curvy" women are to be preferred to skinny females whatever their hair color may be.
December 31, 2007 at 12:44 P.M. -- numerous calls this morning, difficulties in accessing MSN, blocking:
http://m1.2mdn.net/viewad/1141010/7-1x1.gif (illegal tracking? criminal spyware?)
http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N3880.SD2527.3880/... (NJ? Shame on you, Ms. Milgram.)
November 12, 2008 at 4:49 P.M. More harassment, defacements of texts, cyberwarfare. Maybe they finally indicted Senator Bob. What a shock that would be ...
III. Schopenhauer as Educator.
Nietzsche discovers Schopenhauer's writings in the midst of a life-crisis, as his Christian faith is more than waning. Nietzsche seeks to find the path which will be his own. Nietzsche detests the middle class "morons" obsessed with empire building and wealth accumulation. He admires the heroic ideal of Romanticism, which plays a role in his fantasy life. Nietzsche knows that he is a thinker and that he is called upon to strike out on his own by forging (eventually "with a hammer") a philosophy of self-creation:
"When the great thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like factory products, things of no consequence and unworthy to be associated with or instructed. The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: 'Be yourself!' Every youthful soul hears this call day and night and trembles when he hears it; for the idea of its liberation gives it a presentiment of the measure of happiness allotted to it from eternity -- a happiness to which it can by no means attain so long as it lies fettered by the chains of fear and convention. And how dismal and senseless life can be without this liberation! There exists no more repulsive and desolate individual in the world [Alex Booth, Esq.?] than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to the left and right, behind him and all about him. [Terry Tuchin?] In the end such a man becomes impossible to get hold of, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes, a decked out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainly not pity." (See "Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichman, and The Banality of Evil" and the film "Wanted.")
This leads to the crucial insight in Nietzsche's work:
"No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods [Hitler, Stalin, Elvis?] which would bear you through this stream; but only at the cost of yourself: ... You would lose yourself."
"Schopenhauer as Educator," in Untimely Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 127.
The image of a bridge is useful because it suggests Nietzsche's concern to argue that the connection is from one's unfinished state to a more complete version of the self in the future, a self that is always meant to remain unfinished. Nietzsche wishes to indicate that incomplete freedom is essential to this project of self-creation. Important answers in life will not come from outside the self, from ready-made packages of ideas and attitudes, only from within the self. I am sure that, today, Nietzsche would rant against the politically correct thought police and trendy Leftist fashionistas as much as "neo-conservative" fundamentalists of all sorts. "Think for yourself! Be yourself! Be!" Nietzsche shouts these slogans at the reader. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Identity or the self would become, for Nietzsche, the ultimate work of art. The self, as a narrative of one's own construction, is my life-task and yours. Hence, the gospel of Nietzsche's Zarathustra -- spoken to a herd of cattle (that is, most people are "cattle," only by choice, in Nietzsche's so-called "elitist" vision) -- and the sense in which Nietzsche saw himself as the new Christ or Antichrist, not exactly a modest ambition, boils down to a single instruction: "become the person you are." ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" and "Arthur Schopenhauer's Metaphysics of Art.")
This attitude by Nietzsche lends itself to misunderstanding by fascists and others, who will interpret Nietzschean philosophy as an invitation to beat up other people and impose one's will upon them through violent assertions of ego. Nietzsche's project and suggested adventure for the psyche is a quest for authenticity. Identity is a "metaphysical" concept (look it up, if you don't know the word) and a category of moral suspicion. Nietzsche's philosophy may be linked to Jung's idea of "individuation." No, Jung was not a Nazi, in my opinion, and his work clearly was not Nazi-inspired. Jung was a universalist (anti-Nazi) in his view of human nature. However, another student of Nietzsche's writings, Martin Heidegger, certainly was a Nazi. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "Babalu and Free Speech Too.")
Nietzsche is -- here comes my academic "sin" -- a highly "religious" thinker, despite his atheism, whose greatest flaw was the failure to see love as the missing element in his formula. Nietzsche would have benefitted from a return to Hegel's early religious writings. Hegel's Das Leben Jesu is an anticipation of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche failed to recognize how much he needed a lover's and companion's understanding in order to expose his wounds as well as his toughness. To achieve and keep himself he had to give himself away, to share his most painful memories and fragile hopes, to care for others. Nietzsche was blind to love's power of liberation by way of self-sacrifice. Kenosis. Hegel once explained this idea in a phrase: "Die to live." Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Heidegger's metaphysics (as opposed to Heidegger's biography) set forth in Being and Time.
Love makes true Christianity not a slave religion, but the choice to share the fate of slaves rather than to be a master of slaves. It is love that bonded the Jewish people to one another and to God in antiquity. It is love that liberated Jews from slavery. Love may have done the same for African-Americans, thanks to leaders like Dr. King. Love made Jews an ancient people who have endured the full horrors of modernity, prevailing into "postmodernity," when their enemies have not. Hegelians will wish to substitute the word "spirit" for "love." Jews will speak of the "Law" -- but what is at the heart of the Law? Love. Think of Hegel's maxim, "Give your life to others and you will truly keep if for ever, as your own life." Is this what Cubans mean by a "Revolutionary"? ("'Che': A Movie Review.")
No wonder these thoughts are considered so dangerous that it is necessary to deface my texts. Nietzsche's detested Jesus is really only a middle class, German "Christian" of the nineteenth century, who works in a bank and is rather dull. I also do not like that figure very much. That caricature of the "Good Christian" is not the first century Jewish mystic and spiritual warrior. Scholars have recently rediscovered the "Jewish Jesus," rabble-rouser and spiritual teacher ("Jesus is my home boy," says my t-shirt), offering love as indestructible power over evil. Love as resistance and a gentle, "feminine" overcoming of evil, which is also something fierce. Have you ever seen a woman really pissed off? I rest my case.
That fiery preacher, militant, "Israeli" Jesus would have thrilled Nietzsche. The first century Jesus offers ethical wisdom for you -- with or without faith in the supernatural, by the way -- speaking a direct language of simple humanity and charity. The Jesus found in the Scriptures -- especially in gnostic Christianity -- invites your interpretations. That street corner messiah's message is simple and powerful, also true: "Love your neighbor as yourself." See Richard Harries, "The Jewish Jesus and the Christian Christ," in After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Oxford: 2003), pp. 188-201, then John Mathews, The Elements of the Grail Tradition (Mass.: Element, 1991), pp. 104-121 ("Knighthood for Today"). Finally, I suggest that you ponder these words by Nietzsche's negative image or his "spiritual brother":
"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what am I to do, not what am I to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea [persons] for which I can live and die."
Soren Kierkegaard, "The Idea for Which I Can Live and Die," in Roger Poole & Henrik Stangerup, eds., The Laughter is on My Side: An Imaginative Introduction to Kierkegaard (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 164-165.
Read Nietzsche alongside Jung and Heidegger, also with Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno by way of Richard Wolin, whose essays I am now studying. Do not lose sight of the "Jewish Jesus." And then take another look at Cornel West's "combative spirituality." Also, try reading Nietzsche along with Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer and Tillich, or Buber -- all of them as theologians. Here is Nietzsche, becoming a Christian mystic without knowing it:
"... each of us has but one task: to promote the production of the philosopher, the artist and the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of nature. For, as nature needs the philosopher, so does it need the artist, for the achievement of a metaphysical goal, that of its own self-enlightenment, so that it may at last behold as clear and finished a picture that which it could see only obscurely in the agitation of its evolution -- for the end, that is to say, of self-knowledge."
The historical Jesus must have been, among other things, a combination of Leonardo Da Vinci, Baruch Spinoza, G.W.F. Hegel and Lenny Bruce, not to mention of the militant anti-Christian-Christian Friedrich Nietzsche and our Jewish saint, Simone Weil:
"[The saint is] one in whom the ego is completely melted away and whose life of suffering is no longer felt as his own life -- or is hardly so felt -- but as a profound feeling of oneness and identity with all living things: the saint in whom there appears that miracle of transformation which the game of becoming never hits upon, that final and supreme becoming-human after which all nature presses and urges for its redemption from itself. It is incontestable that we are all related to the philosopher and artist; [Christ?] there are moments and as it were bright sparks of the fire of love in whose light we cease to understand the word 'I,' there lies something beyond our being which at these moments moves accross into it, and we are thus possessed of a heartfelt longing for bridges between here and there." ("Schopenhauer as Educator," at pp. 160-161.)
This is to answer Kierkegaard's question. Love is the truth for which to live or die.
IV. Foucault and Gadamer Read Nietzsche.
To love another person is to strive to build a bridge to that other -- a bridge from "here to there" -- and the way we do this is by becoming ourselves. In a way, this blog is a kind of bridge from here to there, from where I find myself to where those readers I need may be found. It is my Beast's "Magic Castle" to which Beauty is always invited. Nietzsche's words had a powerful impact on the very young Michel Foucault. Foucault's biographer James H. Miller writes:
"[This book is] a narrative account of one man's life-long struggle to honor Nietzsche's injunction to become what one is."
The Passion of Michel Foucault, p. 5. Compare Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 170-200, with Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (R. Hurley, trans.: New York; 1978). This point is noted by Ian Hacking in his essay "Self-Improvement," in David Couzens Hoy, ed., Foucault: A Critical Reader ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 235, then see Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Theory (California: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 167-174. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "Beauty and the Beast.")
This is about spiritual struggle, not violence. Christ's teaching -- and Nietzsche's -- are methods for altering the self, as both Foucault and Hacking see clearly, so that the project of becoming what one is may be transformed into a matter of discipline, a task of developing "technologies of the self" through living as moral beings. Foucault offers a Nietzschean reading of Kant that is really a new interpretation of Christianity. This is a view of his work which the anti-humanist and atheist Foucault would hate. Nietzsche's archeology as the realization of human freedom, leading us necessarily to others, by way of discovering our common roots in culture. Perhaps the self -- like God -- is something to experience, not something we can ever know with certainty. There is no other way to become yourself than by becoming the other, either by means of domination or through love as self-giving. Which will you choose? "Zarathustra or the Crucified One?" (Nietzsche says: "Dionysious or the Crucified One?" and "'The American': A Movie Review.")
This tragic choice for an entire civilization taking a turn into the thrills of domination is dramatized in Jonathan Little's The Kindly Ones. Foucault could never decide between domination and self-surrender. Mr. Little's novel appears to explore an analogy between the witch craze in early modern Europe and the Holocaust at the end of Modernity, both were episodes of collective madness and "sanctioned" violence against "demonized" others -- mostly women -- reflective of a corruption of ancient ideas found in Greek tragedy and philosophy, transmitted through Christianity and the high culture of the West, in Modernity's politics and philosophy as well as literature and psychology, then into our newly-born century. When will Western civilization experience another spasm of sexual delight in cruelty? Abu Ghraib? Nanking? The killing fields of Cambodia? Uganda? Sudan? Vietnam? Iraq? Pakistan?
"Couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? This was not some vapid plea for aestheticism, but a Kantian plea to separate our ethics, our lives, from our science, our knowledge. At present rhetoric about the good life is always based on some claim to know the truth about desire, about vitamins, about humanity or society, but there are no such truths to know." (Hacking, p. 239.)
Perhaps not, but what if there are truths that we can "be"? Like love. Love is a truth that we can be. It is the truth that we can only live in relationships or community. John MacMurray's work is helpful on this issue. And what if love is not a wishy-washy emotion -- for Foucault, we experience "tough love" -- but more like a passing through the flames, a "bleeding for" the other in a "theater of cruelty"? As Nietzsche would say, "What then my brothers and sisters?" Rather than accepting the pain of the other (love) there will always be those who seek to impose pain on the other (hate). Will you be saint or sinner? Much will depend on the persons in your life. Marilyn? I am the mirror. ("'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review" and "God is Texting Me!")
Perhaps the only way to transcend cruelty is with self-giving love for the demonized other who is the object of society's destruction and loathing. Foucault's studies under Ludwig Bingswanger and his fascination with the case of Ellen West, illustrate these themes that would mature only with his late work The History of Sexuality, which may also be seen in early form in Discipline and Punish. What if the price of my love is the encounter with my daimon, the struggle with evil? Many or most of us will not wish to pay this price. However, a few of us will. Jesus may "need" Judas.
If you can imagine putting together the poetry of Jose Marti with Michio Kaku's physics of "hyperspaces," then you will find yourself contemplating Salvador Dali's "Crucifixion Hypercubus."
I have not read Jonathan Little's novel. However, I suspect (based mostly on French reviews) that Mr. Little pursues this inquiry concerning the entwinement of good and evil in agon, "struggle" for self-realization. Mr. Little's protagonist is called "Aue" -- agoniste? in "dubious battle" (Milton) with or succumbing to the Furies? The Furies were highly relevant to the agonistic journey.
"... if probing beyond the limits of reason, the mind sooner or later -- in dreaming, in drinking, in moments of shared erotic rapture -- discovers that 'being' and 'the nothing,' life and death, are the 'Same,' what, then, is the point of the 'great Nietzschean quest' or any quest at all?" (Miller, p. 81.)
The point is to become oneself, what one is, to achieve one's identity or humanity with and through love for another. The point is to become fully human. (See again: "The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Do you love her enough to accept the gift of her pain to the extent of allowing her to live you, even at the cost of your life? Notice where this takes us, right back to Nietzsche's mystical insight and to good old fashioned Christianity:
"Merton has a sense of the monk as a man who was free, part of the FLUENCIA, the flowing, able to belong everywhere, to give himself where this was needed, just because he had abandoned the vested interests that are an inescapable part of the life of those who beget children, engage in commercial enterprise, or become pillars of society. The monk was free to observe, to comment, to take part, or just to 'be' in the world, in the classical Oriental tradition of 'wu-wei' (without action), just because he was, by choice nothing."
This is feminine wisdom in terms of traditional Western binary oppositions and gender categories. I am suggesting that this power of feminine "love as self-giving" is central to Christianity and, ultimately, prevails over the masculine urge to domination. I hope. Notice the similarity also in what Nietzsche, Foucault and Merton fear. It is always good to ask: "What does a philosopher fear?"
"Merton's fear, at this stage of his life, was not of any kind of wicked 'Them' who persecuted the defenseless -- he had become too clearly aware of the guilt of the ordinary bystander to project in that way -- but rather was a fear of the 'dehumanized' man who did what he did for 'good,' logical reasons, or simply obeyed orders. [Alex, this is you.] He thought and wrote at length about Adolf Eichman, a man, not psychotic, who was responsible for the torture and death of thousands or millions, as Merton observed, it was the sane men we had now to fear most."
Monica Furlong, Merton: A Biography (New York: Bantam, 1980), pp. 279-280.
"Eichman" or "Eichmann" are equally correct. Hence, my delight in frustrating would be hackers by alternating the spelling of this name that I am fitting around their necks. If the monsters of the twentieth century have unique faces, then they must resemble Eichman (bureaucrat-lawyer) and Mengele (physician-scientist), "professionals" placing themselves at the service of the State, rather than benefitting humanity. Their hideousness consists in that impersonality -- that becomes inhumanity -- which they regard as the essence of their professionalism. ("It is nothing personal.")
These "impersonal" types are the truest and worst whores in America. The loss that deforms them is the sacrifice of imagination and feelings. Be professional, by all means, but be human -- a person -- first and most importantly. Compare Neil A. Lewis, "Official Defends Signing Interrogation Memos," The New York Times, April 29, 2009, at p. A12 and David Johnston & Scott Shane, "Torture Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Prosecutions," The New York Times, May 6, 2009, at p. A1 with Hannah Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York & London: Penguin, 1963), pp. 234-280 and Donald G. McNeil Jr., "U.S. Infected Guatemalans With Syphilis in '40s," in The New York Times, October 2, 2010, at p. A1. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
John, this Bud's for you. We need good lawyers and doctors -- most people in those professions are good -- yet what makes them good is not some rule book. Their goodness is a personal achievement. Goodness flows from humanity. It is only by being good persons that we can do good for others. How did we reach the stage when American lawyers are rationalizing secret tortures as Constitutional? Mr. Holder, prosecute these lawyers and torturers.
V. Conclusion.
So the choice for us, as readers, is to interpret Nietzsche's project as either: 1) a quest for "splendid isolation" in "superiority" over others; or 2), as reworking key insights found in the Christian and Western religious traditions for our time. The young Nietzsche invites us to achieve ourselves, through a freedom that will take us to others, with love, compassion and humility, through eros or self-giving, charity or struggle for social justice (Simone Weil meets Noam Chomsky). Karl Marx fans should step up to the plate here. ("A Christmas Wish.")
What we must not become is "evaders of ourselves," normal men (like Eichman or Mengele, Alex and Terry), empty bags of clothes at the service of power, social opinion, convention, or cash. Stuart Rabner, Esq.? How much do you need, Stuart? To become ourselves is not to play it safe. There will be a price to pay for "speaking truth to power." (Malcolm X) Yet we must not hesitate to pay that price. Call no one a philosopher who fails to disturb others, Nietzsche tells us, reminding us that "philosophy" or "love of truth is something fearsome and mighty."
