The negatives Denken, from Hobbes through Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, is founded on the "negative" impossibility of an inter homines esse, of a common "inter-est" or goal in the pursuit of which the human species can unite. Yet, in distinction from Nietzsche, for both Hobbes and Schopenhauer it is possible for human beings - as in-dividuals! - to agree to a contractum unionis that instantly becomes a contractum subjectionis, either on the basis of rational fear (Hobbes) or on the basis of a rational "sym-pathy". The State, formed as the result of this contract, simply preserves the Egoism of in-dividuals by restraining it. For Nietzsche, instead, the State is quite simply an expression of conflict, not its resolution or overcoming (Aufhebung), but rather its dynamic "balancing": the State is a "balance of forces" always precarious and in peril. Here we examine the "physio-logical" origins of this Nietzschean conception of the State and of its corresponding "morality". In a later section, we shall examine the more expressly "political" understanding of the State on the part of Nietzsche.
If indeed all we achieve with our “Will to
Truth” is the ability “to describe” the world, “to utilize it”, to turn the
world and life into a “utensil”, an “instrument” – if by doing all this we can
never “explain” the world, but we can seek only some “advantage”, some “gain”,
then the “abstraction” of “truth”, our “positing” or “privileging” of “Truth”
as a pursuit over and above “personal needs” must amount to “a misunderstanding
of the body” because we “forget” that we are part of the “truth” that we are
seeking:
2…Every philosophy that ranks peace above
war, every ethic with a negative definition of happiness, every metaphysics and
physics that knows some finale, some
final state of some sort, every predominant aesthetic or religious craving
for some Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above, permits the question whether it was not
sickness that inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguise of physiological
needs under the cloaks of the objective, ideal, purely spiritual goes to
frightening lengths—and often I have asked myself whether, taking a large view,
philosophy has not been merely an interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding
of the body.
Behind
the highest value judgments that have hitherto guided the history of thought,
there are concealed misunderstandings of the physical constitution—of
individuals or classes or even whole races. All those bold insanities of metaphysics, especially answers to the
question about the value of existence, may always be considered first of
all as the symptoms of certain bodies.
And if such world affirmations or world negations tout court lack any
grain of significance when measured scientifically, they are the more valuable
for the historian and psychologist as hints or symptoms of the body, of its success or failure, its
plenitude, power, and autocracy in history, or of its frustrations, weariness,
impoverishment, its premonitions of the end, its will to the end.
I am still waiting for a philosophical physician
in the exceptional sense of that word—one who has to pursue the problem of the
total health of a people, time, race or of humanity—to muster the courage to
push my suspicion to its limits and to risk the proposition: what was at stake in all philosophizing
hitherto was not at all "truth" but something else—let us say,
health, future, growth, power, life. (GS)
Gaya
Scienza 2 Jede Philosophie, welche den Frieden höher stellt als den Krieg, jede
Ethik mit einer negativen Fassung des Begriffs Glück, jede Metaphysik und Physik,
welche ein Finale kennt, einen Endzustand irgend welcher Art, jedes vorwiegend
aesthetische oder religiöse Verlangen nach einem Abseits, jenseits, Außerhalb,
Oberhalb erlaubt zu fragen, ob nicht die Krankheit das gewesen ist, was den
Philosophen inspiriert hat. Die unbewusste Verkleidung physiologischer
Bedürfnisse unter die Mäntel des Objektiven, Ideellen, Rein-Geistigen geht bis
zum Erschrecken weit, — und oft genug habe ich mich gefragt, ob nicht, im
Großen gerechnet, Philosophie bisher überhaupt nur eine Auslegung des Leibes
und ein Missverständnis des Leibes gewesen ist. Hinter den höchsten
Werturteilen, von denen bisher die Geschichte des Gedankens geleitet wurde,
liegen Missverständnisse der leiblichen Beschaffenheit verborgen, sei es von
Einzelnen, sei es von Ständen oder ganzen Rassen. Man darf alle jene kühnen
Tollheiten der Metaphysik, sonderlich deren Antworten auf die Frage nach dem
Wert des Daseins, zunächst immer als Symptome bestimmter Leiber ansehn; und
wenn derartigen Welt-Bejahungen oder Welt-Verneinungen in Bausch und Bogen,
wissenschaftlich gemessen, nicht ein Korn von Bedeutung innewohnt, so geben sie
doch dem Historiker und Psychologen um so wertvollere Winke, als Symptome, wie
gesagt, des Leibes, seines Geratens und Missratens, seiner Fülle, Mächtigkeit,
Selbstherrlichkeit in der Geschichte, oder aber seiner Hemmungen, Ermüdungen,
Verarmungen, seines Vorgefühls vom Ende, seines Willens zum Ende. Ich erwarte
immer noch, dass ein philosophischer Arzt im ausnahmsweisen Sinne des Wortes —
ein Solcher, der dem Problem der Gesamt-Gesundheit von Volk, Zeit, Rasse,
Menschheit nachzugehen hat — einmal den Mut haben wird, meinen Verdacht auf die
Spitze zu bringen und den Satz zu wagen: bei allem Philosophieren handelte es
sich bisher gar nicht um Wahrheitg, sondern um etwas Anderes, sagen wir um
Gesundheit, Zukunft, Wachstum, Macht, Leben ...
Despite repeated
references to “the body”, Nietzsche interprets every form of inter-esse as
being an “imposition”, an extrinsic “heteronomy” that is external and
oppressive to “the ontogeny of thought”. No heed is paid to the “specific”
evolution of human faculties, sensory and intellectual. Though central to a new
“gaya scienza” (see Preface to that work), and though they place in the right
perspective “the grand self-affirmation of ‘will to life’”, the full
sensuousness of the body, of sexuality, of libido, psychology and semeiotics –
these “awakening sciences” are always seen by Nietzsche in an ontogenetic, personal perspective; they
describe exclusively “physiological needs” that are “personal”, not “specific”,
and that exude “war” and aggression, not co-operation or even communication.
In true continuation of
Schopenhauer’s negatives Denken,
Nietzsche all but obliterates the Arbeit,
the “labour” of homo faber privileged
by Classical Political Economy as the locus of an organic evolution of human
faculties into human communities. Because human actions are “unconscious”, they
are always “necessarily physiologically personal” and “personally
physiologically necessary”.
102 "Man
always acts for the good."39 We don't accuse nature of
immorality when it sends us a thunderstorm, and makes us wet: why do we call
the injurious man immoral? Because in the first case, we assume necessity, and
in the second a voluntarily governing free will. But this distinction is in error.
Furthermore, even intentional injury is not called immoral in all
circumstances: without hesitating, we intentionally kill a gnat, for example,
simply because we do not like its buzz; we intentionally punish the criminal
and do him harm, to protect ourselves and society. In the first case it is the
individual who does harm intentionally, for self‑preservation or simply to
avoid discomfort; in the second case the state does the harm. All morality allows the intentional
infliction of harm for self-defense; that is, when it is a matter of self-preservation!
But these two points of view are sufficient
to explain all evil acts which men practice against other men; man wants to get
pleasure or resist unpleasure; in some sense it is always a matter of self‑preservation.
102 No life without pleasure; the struggle
for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual fights this
battle in ways such that men call him good or such that they call him evil
is determined by the measure and makeup of his intellect.
99. Innocence of so-called evil actions. [Das Unschuldige an den sogenannten bösen Handlungen]
All "evil" actions are motivated by the drive for preservation, or,
more exactly, by the individual's intention to gain pleasure [Lust] and avoid
unpleasure [Unlust]; thus they are motivated, but they are not evil.
"Giving pain in and of itself" does not exist, except in the
brain of philosophers, nor does "giving pleasure in and of itself"
(pity, in the Schopenhauerian sense). In conditions preceding organized
states, we kill any being, be it ape or man, that wants to take a fruit off a
tree before we do, just when we are hungry and running up to the tree. We would
treat the animal the same way today, if we were hiking through inhospitable
territory. Those evil actions which outrage us most today are based on the error
that that man who harms us has free will, that is, that he had the choice
not to do this bad thing to us. This belief in his choice arouses hatred,
thirst for revenge, spite, the whole deterioration of our imagination; whereas
we get much less angry at an animal because we consider it irresponsible
[unverantwortlich]. To do harm not out of a drive for preservation, but for
requital--that is the result of an erroneous judgment, and is therefore likewise
innocent [unschuldig].
99. Das Unschuldige an den sogenannten bösen
Handlungen. — Alle "bösen" Handlungen sind motiviert durch den
Trieb der Erhaltung oder, noch genauer, durch die Absicht auf Lust und
Vermeidung der Unlust des Individuums; als solchermaßen motiviert, aber nicht
böse. "Schmerz bereiten an sich" existiert nicht, außer im Gehirn der
Philosophen, ebensowenig "Lust bereiten an sich" (Mitleid im
Schopenhauerischen Sinne). In dem Zustand vor dem Staate töten wir das Wesen,
sei es Affe oder Mensch, welches uns eine Frucht des Baumes vorwegnehmen will,
wenn wir gerade Hunger haben und auf den Baum zulaufen: wie wir es noch jetzt
bei Wanderungen in unwirtlichen Gegenden mit dem Tiere tun würden. — Die bösen
Handlungen, welche uns jetzt am meisten empören, beruhen auf dem Irrtume, dass
der Andere, welcher sie uns zufügt, freien Willen habe, also dass es in seinem
Belieben gelegen habe, uns dies Schlimme nicht anzutun. Dieser Glaube an das
Belieben erregt den Hass, die Rachlust, die Tücke, die ganze Verschlechterung
der Phantasie, während wir einem Tiere viel weniger zürnen, weil wir dies als
unverantwortlich betrachten. Leid tun nicht aus Erhaltungstrieb, sondern zur
Vergeltung — ist Folge eines falschen Urteils und deshalb ebenfalls unschuldig.
Der Einzelne kann
im Zustande, welcher vor dem Staate liegt, zur Abschreckung andere Wesen hart
und grausam behandeln: um seine Existenz durch solche abschreckende Proben
seiner Macht sicher zu stellen. So handelt der Gewalttätige, Mächtige, der
ursprüngliche Staatengründer, welcher sich die Schwächeren unterwirft. Er hat
dazu das Recht, wie es jetzt noch der Staat sich nimmt; oder vielmehr: es gibt
kein Recht, welches dies hindern kann. Es kann erst dann der Boden für alle
Moralität zurecht gemacht werden, wenn ein größeres Individuum oder ein
Kollektiv-Individuum, zum Beispiel die Gesellschaft, der Staat, die Einzelnen
unterwirft, also aus ihrer Vereinzelung herauszieht und in einen Verband
einordnet. Der Moralität geht der Zwang voraus, ja sie selber ist noch eine
Zeit lang Zwang, dem man sich, zur Vermeidung der Unlust, fügt. Später wird sie
Sitte, noch später freier Gehorsam, endlich beinahe Instinkt: dann ist sie wie
alles lang Gewöhnte und Natürliche mit Lust verknüpft — und heißt nun Tugend.
Here finally we have the Freudian “pleasure
principle”. Again – no “inter-esse” (Hegel, Marx) even based on fear or reason
(Hobbes) - and above all no “com-passion” (Schopenhauer), no “oceanic feeling”
(Romain Rolland, quoted by Freud in Die
Unbehagen der Kultur [Intro., from personal correspondence]), no
“pantheism”, no “substratum” or “substance”, no “subject” or “intelligible
freedom”. All these “conscious” concepts are the “resultant” of the conflicting
impulses – they represent their “reconciliation” and their “presentation of the
self in society”: they are “the ego”, “the Reality Principle”. There is only
“necessity”, even the “necessity of awareness”: and necessity is “innocence”.
But what does this mean - Amor fati? And what is the “goal” (Zweck) Nietzsche
mentions: is it an “aspiration”? No. “The awareness of necessity and the
necessity of this awareness”? Then we need to descend into the details of what
exactly we need to “be aware of” – necessity -, and what we need “to beware of”
– “awareness or consciousness”.
301. Illusion of the Contemplative.—Higher
men are distinguished from lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in
a thoughtful manner—and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the
animal, and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes fuller
for him
SANCTUS JANUARIUS
235
who grows up to
the full stature of humanity; there are always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown
out to him; the number of his stimuli is continually on the increase, and
similarly the varieties of his pleasure and pain,—the higher man becomes always
at the same time happier and unhappier. An illusion^ however, is his constant accompaniment
all along: he thinks he is placed as a spectator and auditor before the great pantomime
and concert of life; he calls his nature a contemplative nature, and thereby
overlooks the fact that he himself is also a real creator, and continuous poet
of life,—that he no doubt differs greatly from the actor in this drama, the
so-called practical man, but differs still more from a mere onlooker or
spectator before the stage. There is certainly vis contemplativa^ and re-examination of his work peculiar to him
as poet, but at the same time, and first and foremost, he has the vis creativa, which the practical man or
doer lacks, whatever appearance and current belief may say to the contrary. It is we, who think and feel, that actually
and unceasingly make something which did not before exist: the whole eternally
increasing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, gradations,
affirmations and negations.
This composition of ours is continually learnt,
practised, and translated into flesh and actuality, and even into the
commonplace, by the so-called practical men (our actors, as we have said). Whatever
has value in the present world, has not it in itself, by its nature,—nature is
always worth-less [value-less, wert-frei]: — but a value was once given to it,
bestowed upon it
236 THE JOYFUL
WISDOM, IV
and it was we who gave and bestowed! We alone have created the world which is of
any account
to man!—
There is an evident conflict here between
“poiesis” (cf. Arendt, Human Condition)
and “nature”. How is the vis creativa “possible” if it “actually and
unceasingly make[s] something which did not before exist”? It is true that we
create “within” nature – but if we exclude the “pro-jectuality” and therefore
the “ideal-ity” of vita activa, does “nature” then not become a “residuum” that
is “annihilated”, much in the Hegelian and “nihilist” fashion? (Lowith, Saggi su Heidegger, p.116) Nihilism suppresses “values” and denies their
“ec-sistence” whilst assigning absolute “freedom of the will” and “authorship”
(auctoritas, poiesis) to human being in the abyss of “meaning-lessness” and
Nicht-heit that is the world. Nietzsche, by contrast, dismisses such
“existential Angst”, the despair of the Russian nihilists: -“Nihilism in the St Petersburg style (that is
to say, in the belief in unbelief, even to martyrdom for it!)” (GS, Aph 347 on
“The need to believe”).
Yet whilst he wishes us to “be-aware” of
our poiesis, he also wants us “to beware” of it and denounces this as the
source of “consciousness”, that is, of that “distancing” of ourselves from
“nature” that gives rise to “values”. To “overcome” this consciousness is “to
overcome man”. The “tension” of the
Wanderer between Subject and Object (Heidegger’s “horizon”), those walls
separating us from the past and the future, that wall again separating the
desert of nihilism from the city of “values” that we need “to pass-by” (‘Zar.’,
ch51) is the “Mit-tag” where we need to stand.
638 The
wanderer. He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel
on earth otherwise than as a wanderer-though not as a traveler towards a final
goal [letzten Ziele], for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and
keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore
he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be
something wandering within him, which takes its joy in change [Wechsel] and
transitoriness [Verganglichkeit]. To be sure, such a man will have bad nights,
when he is tired and finds closed the gates to the city that should offer him
rest; perhaps in addition, as in the Orient, the desert reaches up to the gate;
predatory animals howl now near, now far; a strong wind stirs; robbers lead off
his pack-animals. Then for him the frightful night sinks over the desert like a
second desert, and his heart becomes tired of wandering. If the morning sun
then rises, glowing like a divinity of wrath, and the city opens up, he sees in
the faces of its inhabitants perhaps more of desert, dirt, deception,
uncertainty, than outside the gates-and the day is almost worse than the night.
So it may happen sometimes to the wanderer; but then, as recompense, come the
ecstatic mornings of other regions and days. Then nearby in the dawning light
he already sees the bands of muses dancing past him in the mist of the
mountains. Afterwards, he strolls quietly in the equilibrium of his forenoon
soul, under trees from whose tops and leafy corners only good and bright things
are thrown down to him, the gifts of all those free spirits who are at home in
mountain, wood, and solitude, and who are, like him, in their sometimes merry,
sometimes contemplative way, wanderers and philosophers. Born out of the
mysteries of the dawn, they ponder how the day can have such a pure,
transparent, transfigured and cheerful face between the hours of ten and
twelve-they seek the philosophy of the forenoon.
Der
Wanderer 638. Der
Wanderer. — Wer nur einigermaßen zur Freiheit der Vernunft gekommen ist, kann
sich auf Erden nicht anders fühlen, denn als Wanderer, — wenn auch nicht als
Reisender nach einem letzten Ziele: denn dieses gibt es nicht. Wohl aber will
er zusehen und die Augen dafür offen haben, was Alles in der Welt eigentlich
vorgeht; deshalb darf er sein Herz nicht allzufest an alles Einzelne anhängen;
es muss in ihm selber etwas Wanderndes sein, das seine Freude an dem Wechsel
und der Vergänglichkeit habe. Freilich werden einem solchen Menschen böse
Nächte kommen, wo er müde ist und das Tor der Stadt, welche ihm Rast bieten
sollte, verschlossen findet; vielleicht, dass noch dazu, wie im Orient, die
Wüste bis an das Tor reicht, dass die Raubtiere bald ferner bald näher her
heulen, dass ein starker Wind sich erhebt, dass Räuber ihm seine Zugtiere
wegführen. Dann sinkt für ihn wohl die schreckliche Nacht wie eine zweite Wüste
auf die Wüste, und sein Herz wird des Wanderns müde. Geht ihm dann die
Morgensonne auf, glühend wie eine Gottheit des Zornes, öffnet sich die Stadt,
so sieht er in den Gesichtern der hier Hausenden vielleicht noch mehr Wüste,
Schmutz, Trug, Unsicherheit, als vor den Toren — und der Tag ist fast
schlimmer, als die Nacht. So mag es wohl einmal dem Wanderer ergehen; aber dann
kommen, als Entgelt, die wonnevollen Morgen anderer Gegenden und Tage, wo er
schon im Grauen des Lichtes die Musenschwärme im Nebel des Gebirges nahe an
sich vorübertanzen sieht, wo ihm nachher, wenn er still, in dem Gleichmaß der
Vormittagsseele, unter Bäumen sich ergeht, aus deren Wipfeln und Laubverstecken
heraus lauter gute und helle Dinge zugeworfen werden, die Geschenke aller jener
freien Geister, die in Berg, Wald und Einsamkeit zu Hause sind und welche,
gleich ihm, in ihrer bald fröhlichen bald nachdenklichen Weise, Wanderer und
Philosophen sind. Geboren aus den Geheimnissen der Frühe, sinnen sie darüber
nach, wie der Tag zwischen dem zehnten und zwölften Glockenschlage ein so
reines, durchleuchtetes, verklärt-heiteres Gesicht haben könne: — sie suchen
die Philosophie des Vormittages.
The “horizon” of human ec-sistence, of being there (Da-Sein) is explicit
in the headings of the chapters in HATH: “Of First Things” (the beginning of
life) and “Of the Last Thing” (the end of life). Between these two “boundaries”
lies “being”. The mental dis-orientation of the Wanderer stranded at the gates
of the walled city to face the advance of the desert represents the “tension”
that allows us an insight into the “horizon” of being, of what lies beneath
consciousness (but was Nietzsche not supposed to banish these “obscure veils”?).
The desert is metonymous with the Vollendung
of metaphysics, the Rationalisierung
and its soul-lessness or dis-enchantment, Entseelung,
has “spread” the desert to the gates of the walled city. The walled city stands
for the consolation of “truth”. This “tension” is not a metaphysical need: no
such “con-sol-ation” (Lt. solum, sun)
is granted to the Wanderer in the de-sol-ate
desert (Lt. solus, soil): he sits “outside” the city walls, never enters its
gates – he “passes-by”. These are not, contra Heidegger (cf Lowith, pp116-7),
reassertions of faith in “values”, but rather an attempt to catch up with one’s
shadow, which is possible only with “die Philosophie des Vormittages”. But this
“tension” cannot be held forever; nor can its political equivalent, the
constituent power of insurgency (Negri), be applied indefinitely (cf. Kalyvas
on ‘Politics’).
This “tension”,
this “dis-orientation” is merely an “a-void-ance”
of the “respons-ibility” (or
“answerability”, Verantwortlichkeit)
we have over the de-cisions we “must” make. The “necessity” lies in the choice
(Sartre), not in the pre-conditions or in the outcome. And the “out-come”, the
“e-vent” or “e-venience” of our actions even
when it is “in-nocent” or “in-nocuous” (recall Schopenhauer’s “do no
harm!”) is far from being “blame-less”
(un-schuldig). That is why
Nietzsche’s “Un-schuld-igkeit” should
never be translated as “innocence”: - because that is clearly not what Nietzsche intends! It is
misleading and wrong to read “in-nocence” into “blame-lessness”, because Nietzsche
most certainly does not mean that human actions are “in-nocent” or
“in-nocuous”: they most certainly are not! To speak of “innocence” would
suggest that “guilt” is at issue – with the concomitant connotations of “good”
and “evil”. (The German “guilt” is also expressed by “Schuld”, whose best
equivalent is “fault” or “blame” or indeed “blemish”, just as “colpa” in
Italian and “faute” and “coupable” in French - in all cases much more
“technical” than “moral” epithets, as in “a faulty implement”. One could speak
of “vitium”, vice, or “blemish” which is more of a “natural pro-pensity” or
“liability” (“is liable to”), an “instinct” such as that of the wolf hunting
lambs or snakes biting. This reminds one of Schopenhauer’s “character”, except
that Nietzsche “ex-culpates” it from “responsibility” [re-spons-um, reply,
answer or Ant-wort connoting “spons”, spontaneity, - hence “free will”,
Augustinian “initiative”, “quod initium esset, homo creatus fuit”].)
107 Irresponsibility
[Unaccountability] and innocence [blame-lessness]… Between good and evil actions there is no
difference in type; at most, a difference in degree. Good actions are
sublimated evil actions; evil actions are good actions become coarse and
stupid. The individual's only demand, for self-enjoyment (along with the fear
of losing it), is satisfied in all circumstances: man may act as he can, that is, as he must, whether in deeds of
vanity, revenge, pleasure, usefulness, malice, cunning, or in deeds of [self-]sacrifice,
pity [Mitleid], knowledge. His powers of judgment determine where a man will
let this demand for self-enjoyment take him. In each society, in each
individual, a hierarchy of the good is always present, by which man determines
his own actions and judges other people's actions. But this standard is
continually in flux; many actions are called evil, and are only stupid, because
the degree of intelligence which chose them was very low. Indeed, in a certain
sense all actions are stupid even now, for the highest degree of human
intelligence which can now be attained will surely be surpassed. And then, in
hindsight, all our behavior and judgments will appear as inadequate and
rash as the behavior and judgments of backward savage tribes now seem to us
inadequate and rash… (HATH)
107. Unverantwortlichkeit
und Unschuld…. Alle diese Motive aber, so hohe Namen wir ihnen geben, sind aus
den selben Wurzeln gewachsen, in denen wir die bösen Gifte wohnend glauben;
zwischen guten und bösen Handlungen gibt es keinen Unterschied der Gattung,
sondern höchstens des Grades. Gute Handlungen sind sublimierte böse; böse
Handlungen sind vergröberte, verdummte gute. Das einzige Verlangen des
Individuums nach Selbstgenuss (samt der Furcht, desselben verlustig zu gehen)
befriedigt sich unter allen Umständen, der Mensch mag handeln, wie er kann, das
heißt wie er muss: sei es in Taten der Eitelkeit, Rache, Lust, Nützlichkeit,
Bosheit, List, sei es in Taten der Aufopferung, des Mitleids, der Erkenntnis.
Die Grade der Urteilsfähigkeit entscheiden, wohin Jemand sich durch dies
Verlangen hinziehen lässt; fortwährend ist jeder Gesellschaft, jedem Einzelnen
eine Rangordnung der Güter gegenwärtig, wonach er seine Handlungen bestimmt und
die der Anderen beurteilt. Aber dieser Maßstab wandelt sich fortwährend, viele
Handlungen werden böse genannt und sind nur dumm, weil der Grad der
Intelligenz, welcher sich für sie entschied, sehr niedrig war. Ja, in einem
bestimmten Sinne sind auch jetzt noch alle Handlungen dumm, denn der höchste
Grad von menschlicher Intelligenz, der jetzt erreicht werden kann, wird
sicherlich noch überboten werden: und dann wird, bei einem Rückblick, all unser
Handeln und Urteilen so beschränkt und übereilt erscheinen, wie uns jetzt das
Handeln und Urteilen zurückgebliebener wilder Völkerschaften beschränkt und
übereilt vorkommt. —
Having inverted Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
finally inverts Kierkegaard. The reductio ad absurdum of Schop’s ethics can be
one and only one: the uniquely “singular” rapport between the individual soul
and the divinity. This “accord” alone can be the basis of the community and of
the State: - not an “inter-esse” horizontally and immanently established but
rather an A-skesis trans-scendentally and mystically accessible. “Reverence”
alone can be the raison d’etre of human interaction. Either/Or. And yet again,
Nietzsche demurs: To judge, he reminded us earlier, is to be unjust. Every
human “relation” is a compromise and a “measure”, a “reverence”. In our
“twilight of the idols”, we can bow or revere no longer. How do we elide or
evade or elude or abolish these “reverences”, these “measures”, these
comparisons, this barter, these “equal powers” – this “value” – without thereby
abolishing “ourselves”?
346 Our question mark. But you do not
understand this? Indeed, people will have trouble understanding us. We are
looking for words; perhaps we are also looking for ears. Who are we anyway? If
we simply called ourselves, using an old expression, godless, or unbelievers,
or perhaps immoralists, we do not believe that this would even come close to designating
us: We are all three in such an advanced stage that one—that you, my
curious friends—could never comprehend how we feel at this point. Ours is no
longer the bitterness and passion of the person who has turned himself away and
still feels compelled to turn his unbelief into a new belief, a purpose, a
martyrdom. We have become cold, hard, and tough in the realization that the way
of this world is anything but divine; even by human standards it is not
rational, merciful, or just. We know it well, the world in which we live is
ungodly, immoral, "inhuman"; we have interpreted it far too long in a
false and mendacious way, in accordance with the wishes of our reverence, which
is to say, according to our needs. For man is a reverent animal. But he
is also mistrustful; and that the world is not worth what we thought it
was, that is about as certain as anything of which our mistrust has finally got
hold. The more mistrust, the more philosophy.
We are far from
claiming that the world is worth less; indeed it would seem laughable to
us today if man were to insist on inventing values that were supposed to excel
the value of the actual world. This is precisely what we have turned our backs
on as an extravagant aberration of human vanity and unreason that for a long
time was not recognized as such. It found its final expression in modern
pessimism [i.e., Schopenhauer’s philosophy], and a more ancient and stronger
expression in the teaching of Buddha; but it is part of Christianity also, if
more doubtfully and ambiguously so but not for that reason any less seductive.
The whole pose of
"man against the world," of man as a
"world-negating" principle, of man as the measure of the value of
things, as judge of the world who in the end places existence itself upon his
scales and finds it wanting—the monstrous insipidity of this pose has finally
come home to us and we are sick of it. We laugh as soon as we encounter the
juxtaposition of "man and world," separated by the sublime
presumption of the little word "and." But look, when we laugh like
that, have we simply not carried the contempt for man one step further? And
thus also pessimism, the contempt for that existence which is knowable by us?
Have we not exposed ourselves to the suspicion of an opposition—an opposition
between the world in which we were at home up to now with our reverences that
perhaps made it possible for us to endure life, and another world that
consists of us—an inexorable, fundamental, and deepest suspicion about
ourselves that is more and more gaining worse and worse control of us Europeans
and that could easily confront coming generations with the terrifying
Either/Or: "Either abolish your reverences or—yourselves!" The
latter would be nihilism; but would not the former also be—nihilism? —This is our
question mark. (GScientia)
The “sym-pathy”, the “pity” that Schop
praised and that is really a return of the operari but a wish to negate it,
Nietzsche firmly eschews. What he rejects is the “ideality” of it, its
“teleology”, its “astute theology” - what Schop had failed to quash once and
for all. Once again he never seems to detach himself conceptually (or
emotionally?) from the need to see all human “reality”, as opposed to “reason”
and “morality”, from the perspective of the “person”, truly ontogenetically, in
the sense that the human “species”, from homo faber to homo sapiens, begins and
ends with “homo”. The state, the needy, morality tout court – even science! –
have ensured that “our mind has… been forcibly
diverted from… our own personal need… as if it were something bad that had
to be sacrificed”. And all for the sake of “maintaining a ‘community’, a
people”.
96. Mores and Morality When men determine
between moral and immoral, good and evil, the basic opposition is not
"egoism" and "selflessness," but rather adherence to a
tradition or law, and release from it. The origin of the tradition makes
no difference, at least concerning good and evil, or an immanent categorical
imperative;.34 but is rather above all for the purpose of
maintaining a community, a people. Every superstitious custom,
originating in a coincidence that is interpreted falsely, forces a tradition
that it is moral to follow. To release oneself from it is dangerous, even more
injurious for the community than for the individual (because the
divinity punishes the whole community for sacrilege and violation of its
rights, and the individual only as a part of that community).
It is this “community” that is the source
of pleasure and displeasure which “man” seeks or avoids for the sake of “[self-]preservation”.
Thus, Nietzsche preserves Schop’s initial emphasis on “the will to life” but
this time divested of its “metaphysical need”, of its “intelligible freedom”.
“Blame-lessness”
restricts the moral and scientific spectrum right down to the bare skeleton of
causality. Even the “causal” connection between “action” and “consequence” is
nearly removed by Nietzsche with his doctrine of “necessity”. Let us recall
that Schop himself had set the outer limits of “legitimate” deontology for
“Egoism” at the “noli laedere” precept – “do no harm”; - which meant that harm
caused in “self-defence” – a “negative” action or “re-action” - could not be
the object of “blame”. Yet, on the contrary, Nietzsche is “physically”
incapable of conceiving human actions (Tun) or intentions as anything other than “antagonistic” and
belligerent: - not just the objectification of the “will to live”, but rather
the affirmation of the “will to power”,
the subjugation of other contrary “wills”. Therefore, the negative injunction
“do no harm” cannot possibly curtail the sphere of “legitimate” individual
action. And Nietzsche can only countenance it with scorn:
186… Hear, for example, with what almost venerable innocence
Schopenhauer still presented his task, and draw your own conclusions as to how
scientific a `science' is whose greatest masters still talk like children and
old women: ‑ 'The principle', he says (Fundamental Problems of Ethics), the
fundamental proposition on whose content all philosophers of ethics are
actually at one: neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva ‑ is actually
the proposition of which all the teachers of morals endeavour to furnish the
rational ground ... the actual foundation of ethics which has been
sought for centuries like the philosopher's stone. (BGE)
What Nietzsche
means by “unschuldig” is “blame-less” rather than “in-nocent” because all human
actions are “necessary actions” and categorically (toto genere) “beyond good
and evil” - “im-moral” in the sense of “a-moral”.
107 Irresponsibility
[Unaccountability] and innocence [blame-lessness ]…. 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. In those individuals, the sun of a new gospel is casting its first ray
onto the highest mountaintop of the soul; the fog is condensing more thickly
than ever, and the brightest light and cloudiest dusk lie next to each other. Everything is necessity: this is the new
knowledge, and this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is innocence: and
knowledge is the way to insight into this innocence. If pleasure,
egoism, vanity are necessary for the generation of moral phenomena and
their greatest flower, the sense for true and just knowledge; if error and confusion of imagination were
the only means by which mankind could raise itself gradually to this degree of
self-illumination and self-redemption -- who could scorn those means?
Who could be sad when he perceives the goal to which those paths lead?
Everything in the sphere of morality has evolved; changeable, fluctuating,
everything is fluid, it is true: but everything is also streaming onward--to
one goal. Even if the inherited habit of erroneous esteeming, loving, hating
continues to govern us, it will grow weaker under the influence of growing
knowledge: a new habit, that of understanding, non-loving, non-hating,
surveying is gradually being implanted in us on the same ground, and in
thousands of years will be powerful enough perhaps to give mankind the strength
to produce wise, innocent (conscious of their innocence)41 men as
regularly as it now produces unwise, unfair men, conscious of their guilt42--these
men are the necessary first stage, but not the opposite of those to come.
(HATH)
Dies Alles
einzusehen, kann tiefe Schmerzen machen, aber darnach gibt es einen Trost:
solche Schmerzen sind Geburtswehen. Der Schmetterling will seine Hülle
durchbrechen, er zerrt an ihr, er zerreißt sie: da blendet und verwirrt ihn das
unbekannte Licht, das Reich der Freiheit. In solchen Menschen, welche jener
Traurigkeit fähig sind — wie wenige werden es sein! — wird der erste Versuch
gemacht, ob die Menschheit aus einer moralischen sich in eine weise Menschheit
umwandeln könne. Die Sonne eines neuen Evangeliums wirft ihren ersten Strahl
auf die höchsten Gipfel in der Seele jener Einzelnen: da ballen sich die Nebel
dichter, als je, und neben einander lagert der hellste Schein und die trübste
Dämmerung. Alles ist Notwendigkeit, — so sagt die neue Erkenntnis: und diese
Erkenntnis selber ist Notwendigkeit. Alles ist Unschuld: und die Erkenntnis ist
der Weg zur Einsicht in diese Unschuld. Sind Lust, Egoismus, Eitelkeit
notwendig zur Erzeugung der moralischen Phänomene und ihrer höchsten Blüte, des
Sinnes für Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit der Erkenntnis, war der Irrtum und die
Verirrung der Phantasie das einzige Mittel, durch welches die Menschheit sich
allmählich zu diesem Grade von Selbsterleuchtung und Selbsterlösung zu erheben
vermochte — wer dürfte jene Mittel geringschätzen? Wer dürfte traurig sein,
wenn er das Ziel, zu dem jene Wege führen, gewahr wird? Alles auf dem Gebiete
der Moral ist geworden, wandelbar, schwankend, Alles ist im Flusse, es ist
wahr: — aber Alles ist auch im Strome: nach Einem Ziele hin. Mag in uns die
vererbte Gewohnheit des irrtümlichen Schätzens, Liebens, Hassens immerhin
fortwalten, aber unter dem Einfluss der wachsenden Erkenntnis wird sie
schwächer werden: eine neue Gewohnheit, die des Begreifens, Nicht-Liebens,
Nicht-Hassens, Überschauens, pflanzt sich allmählich in uns auf dem selben
Boden an und wird in Tausenden von Jahren vielleicht mächtig genug sein, um der
Menschheit die Kraft zu geben, den weisen, unschuldigen (unschuld-bewussten)
Menschen ebenso regelmäßig hervorzubringen, wie sie jetzt den unweisen,
unbilligen, schuldbewussten Menschen— das heißt die notwendige Vorstufe, nicht
den Gegensatz von jenem — hervorbringt.
Here once more we
find “the awareness of necessity and the necessity of this awareness”. Even the
“instrumentality” of logico-mathematics has been “bent”, “ap-plied”, “ad-apted”
to this “utility”: “if error and confusion of imagination were the only means
by which mankind could raise itself gradually to this degree of
self-illumination and self-redemption -- who
could scorn those means?” But what can “men conscious of their blamelessness” mean if this “consciousness” is
not the “reified” consciousness of morality and the Will to Truth? Certainly
not the “construction” of a “pacified harmonious existence”, because this is
precisely that “reconciliation of impulses” that is “reflected” in the
“average” consciousness of the “everyday self”, of the reality principle. It is
possible that by “conscious” Nietzsche means here “aware” or “mindful of”, the
Latin “memor”: this “awareness” is a “remembering”, a redemption from ossified,
sclerotic “forgetfulness” (Gr. Lethe; Nietzsche had earlier spoken of
“concealment” of mental “identities” into the objects of science; cf. also
Heidegger’s a-letheia, “un-concealment”) of a “balance of forces” that existed
primordially and that “accompanies” human beings, bodies, all along – because
it is part of their “constitution”, “nature”, “physis” (Cf. Heidegger’s
homonymous concept in ‘SZ’ and ‘Kantbuch’):
92 Origin of
justice. Justice (fairness)
originates among approximately equal powers, as Thucydides (in the
horrifying conversation between the Athenian and Melian envoys)30
rightly understood. When there is no
clearly recognizable supreme power and a battle would lead to fruitless and mutual
injury, one begins to think of reaching an understanding and negotiating the
claims on both sides: the initial character of justice is barter. Each
satisfies the other in that each gets what he values more than the other. Each
man gives the other what he wants, to keep henceforth, and receives in turn
that which he wishes. Thus, justice is
requital and exchange on the assumption of approximately equal positions of
strength. For this reason, revenge belongs initially to the realm of justice:
it is an exchange. Likewise gratitude.
Justice naturally goes back to the viewpoint of an insightful self‑preservation, that is, to the egoism of this consideration: "Why should I uselessly injure myself and perhaps not reach my goal anyway?"
So much about the origin of justice. Because men, in line with their intellectual habits, have forgotten the original purpose of so called just, fair actions, and particularly because children have been taught for centuries to admire and imitate such actions, it has gradually come to appear that a just action is a selfless one. The high esteem of these actions rests upon this appearance, an esteem which, like all estimations, is also always in a state of growth: for men strive after, imitate, and reproduce with their own sacrifices that which is highly esteemed, and it grows because its worth is increased by the worth of the effort and exertion made by each individual.
How slight the morality of the world would seem without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had stationed forgetfulness as a guardian at the door to the temple of human dignity.
Justice naturally goes back to the viewpoint of an insightful self‑preservation, that is, to the egoism of this consideration: "Why should I uselessly injure myself and perhaps not reach my goal anyway?"
So much about the origin of justice. Because men, in line with their intellectual habits, have forgotten the original purpose of so called just, fair actions, and particularly because children have been taught for centuries to admire and imitate such actions, it has gradually come to appear that a just action is a selfless one. The high esteem of these actions rests upon this appearance, an esteem which, like all estimations, is also always in a state of growth: for men strive after, imitate, and reproduce with their own sacrifices that which is highly esteemed, and it grows because its worth is increased by the worth of the effort and exertion made by each individual.
How slight the morality of the world would seem without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had stationed forgetfulness as a guardian at the door to the temple of human dignity.
30. In Bk. 5,
85-113, Thucydides recounts the surrender of Melos
in 416 B.C. (HATH)
Meditation on
History (p72, toward end of Ch8):
Is it not justice,
always to hold the balance of forces
in your hands and observe which is the stronger and heavier?
3 To smell out "beautiful souls,"
"golden means," and other perfections in the Greeks, or to admire
their calm in greatness, their ideal cast of mind, their noble simplicity--the
psychologist in me protected me against such "noble simplicity," a
niaiserie allemande anyway. I saw their
strongest instinct, the will to power:
I saw them tremble before the indomitable force of this drive--I saw how
all their institutions grew out of preventive measures taken to protect each
other against their inner explosives. (ToI)
Yet again, Nietzsche is at pains to
“de-strukt” the “sociality” and “civility”, the false “reconciliation” of what
are conflicting impulses and instincts, and to show that the former “civilized”,
“refined”, “decadent” notions are “out-comes”, “pro-ducts” or “resultants”, of
those conflicts and struggles. Just like “consciousness”, even the notion of
“justice” and therefore the State is a reified, hypostatized, false “ideal” of
what is truly a “convention”, an “equilibrium”, a “balance of forces” – the
result of a “barter” or “exchange” that has nothing to do with the
“idealistic”, moralistic notion of “justice”.
Most
important of all, Nietzsche once more seeks to demonstrate that there is no
“species-consciousness” to human reality: that for all that they may “share”,
humans remain “separate beings”; they have no “inter-esse”; they are not
aspects of “being human”; they have no possible commonality of being or goals.
This is the essence of the negatives Denken. Not “the destruction of Reason”, then,
(either in its fictitious teleological sense or in its effective
“instrumental”sense [rationalization]) is what Nietzsche operates, but rather
the destruction of “con-science”!
35.
Critique of the morality of decadence. -- An "altruistic" morality--a
morality in which self-interest wilts away--remains a bad sign under all
circumstances. This is true of individuals; it is particularly true of nations.
The best is lacking when self-interest begins to be lacking. Instinctively to choose what is harmful for
oneself, to feel attracted by "disinterested" motives, that is
virtually the formula of decadence. "Not
to seek one's own advantage"--that is merely the moral fig leaf for quite
a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: "I no
longer know how to find my own advantage." Disintegration of the
instincts! Man is finished when he becomes altruistic. Instead of saying
naively, "I am no longer worth anything," the moral lie in the mouth
of the decadent says, "Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth
anything." Such a judgment always remains very dangerous, it is
contagious: throughout the morbid soil of society it soon proliferates into a
tropical vegetation of concepts--now as a religion (Christianity), now as a
philosophy (Schopenhauerism). Sometimes the poisonous vegetation which has
grown out of such decomposition poisons life itself for millennia with its
fumes. (ToI)
Notice how Nietzsche with most vehement
though astonishing lack of dialectical refinement falsely equates
“dis-interestedness” and “altruism” with “what is harmful to oneself”! It is
not decline that manifests itself in disease; it is the disease that is a sign
of decline. For “nature” (physis) to manifest itself, the “need”, the “will to
power” must be there in the first place.
36 Morality for Physicians… The sick man is a
parasite of society…. Pessimism, pur
vert, is proved only by the self-refutation of our dear pessimists: one
must advance a step further in its logic and not only negate life with
"will and representation," as Schopenhauer did--one must first of all
negate Schopenhauer. Incidentally, however contagious pessimism is, it still
does not increase the sickliness of an age, of a generation as a whole: it is
an expression of this sickliness. One falls victim to it as one falls victim to
cholera: one has to be morbid enough in one's whole predisposition. (ToI)
The
notion of “nature-as-physis” then acquires an ominous and disturbing
“political” connotation and in-tention – one that only the “rationalized
genocide” of the Nazi dictatorship finally brought to light in all its
ferocious truculence. The denial of human “action” (ago – agree – augere [grow,
august] – augurium - auctoritas – authorship) consequent on the categorical
“abolition” of consciousness and a fortiori of “con-science” – a deed that even
Schopenhauer had been unwilling to perpetrate – comports the mindless,
un-conscionable discharge of a cosmic duty in pursuance of an ineluctable and
inexorable “destiny”, of a “Wille zur Macht” that is the eternal re-currence of
a “fate” that “volentes ducet, nolentes trahet” (Spengler – it is to him that
Mazzarino [‘PSC’, Vol3] turns to exemplify the denouement of Nietzsche’s vision
of “history” in the sense of “historical [analogical] recurrence”, like
Polybius and Vico, and not “cosmological [identical] recurrence”) – an iron law of nature pursuant to which both the executioner and the victim
are – blameless! (Recall Hungarian film, “Unschuldig”; and Cacciari on “the
inexorable law without ‘mercy’ [grazia]. Recall also Arendt’s “Volo ut sis!” at
end of ‘OT’.)