Penn State University Press
Review
Author(s): Keith Ansell-Pearson
Review by: Keith Ansell-Pearson
Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 35/36 (SPRING-AUTUMN 2008), pp. 198-200
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20717947
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198
Book Reviews
discussion ofHL is one part of a larger thesis that I find highly plausible. Specifically,
he argues that all fourUMs are variations on themes already present inBT( 176).Whereas Nietzsche
Dahlkvist's
attacks the cultural depravity and superficial optimism of Strauss in the first essay and Hartmann's
life-threatening worship of the Weltprozess in the second, Dahlkvist argues that the essays on
Schopenhauer andWagner present a positive cultural alternative designed to help us fight cultural
mediocrity and the life-denying tendencies of themodern pessimists.
Dahlkvist's final chapter is an analysis of pessimism inNietzsche's
lateworks, where he discusses
four new topics: pessimism's relationship to nihilism and the eternal return and Nietzsche's views
and Leopardi. While Dahlkvist does not intend the chapter to be an exhaustive treatment
on Hamlet
of the issue, I am surprised thatHH receives little attention. Although Nietzsche clearly wants to
suspend any questions about the value of existence (T///28,33), thework seems to be nothing more
than an exercise
in establishing factual pessimism by means of illusion-destroying science.
Nevertheless, Dahlkvist is quite successful in connecting Nietzsche's early concern with pessi
mism to central elements of his later philosophy. This is especially true of his treatment of nihilism
and eternal return.With respect to the former, Dahlkvist's aim is to substantiate the claim, already
put forth by others, thatpessimism is a limited form of nihilism (220). At the same time, he tries to
distinguish between pessimism and nihilism, arguing thatwhereas the former is the view that life
lacks value, the latter is the view that life lacks meaning (230). Though one might quibble about the
significance of this distinction, Dahlkvist insightfully connects active nihilism, where meaningless
ness is a welcomed precondition for creating new values, with Nietzsche's pessimism of strength,
which Dahlkvist correctly defines as "acknowledging that life is painful and cruel, and wanting life
tobe just as it is" (232). It is interesting that the attitude identified here seems tobe precisely thekind
of attitude necessary to affirm eternal return.Though he does not explicitly establish this connection,
does emphasize the pessimistic context of thedoctrine. Here, he not only shows how eter
nal return appears innumerous pessimistic writers before Nietzsche but also identifies itspresence
Dahlkvist
as early as HL. Whereas
the pessimistic writers insisted that no one would want to live the same
life over again, Dahlkvist
argues that the laterNietzsche envisages the ?bermensch, an individual,
likeMontaigne, as being strong enough to affirm the eternal recurrence of all things (277).
In sum, Dahlkvist has presented a valuable contribution to the study of nineteenth-century
pessimism and its influence on Nietzsche's
thought. Even ifmy criticisms are correct (and theymay
not be), he has still succeeded in showing that any serious interpreterofNietzsche's philosophy must
take pessimism
into consideration
and be sensitive to its various manifestations
during the period
inwhich Nietzsche wrote.
Boston University
com
mattmeyer@hotmail.
Speculating on theMoment: The Poetics of Time and Recurrence in Goethe,
and Nietzsche. G?ttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005. 359 pp. ISBN: 3-89244-968-6.
Nicholas
Rennie.
Leopardi,
Paperback.
Keith
Ansell-Pearson
Nicholas Rennie offers this study on time and recurrence in his three chosen intellectual figures as a
contribution to the fields of comparative literature and intellectual history. In particular, he sets out to
probe the development of the "moment" as a poetic motif and theoretical construct inNietzsche, with
Goethe's and Leopardi's contrasting poetics of time taken as models forNietzsche's early negotiations
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Book Reviews
199
in the untimely meditation on history. Indeed, he wishes to go as far
as toclaim thateternal recurrence inNietzsche can only be effectivelyunderstood bymeans ofhis relation
with the problem of themoment
seen as playing the two figures against one another.
Rennie acknowledges that the history of themotif of themoment in themodern period is a long
and varied one, with key contributions being made by the likes of Pascal, Leibniz, and Hume. He
suggests thatGoethe and Leopardi reformulate, in fact, Pascal's famous wager, inwhich the ultimate
to these two literarypredecessors, with Nietzsche
decision over the time of one's life takes the form of a gamble: either we bet on our lives on earth
having no significance beyond what they appear to be or we can commit ourselves to a faith in the
infinitely greater value. This provides us with a contrast
possibility of an afterlife that possesses
life,which has the value of a mere instant, and the eternal condition
is interesting in this conception, in spite of the theological character
is that the present acquires a special urgency and worth as the site of a transformative
between the time of our mortal
of death or immortality.What
of thewager,
decision (as some commentators have noted?Hannah
Arendt for example?Nietzsche's
thought of
recurrence can be construed as a thought about immortality, albeit of a highly unorthodox kind).1 As
Rennie writes: "The present has no inherent value, but I can ascribe value to itby treating itas the
signifier of a future condition of immense importance" (9). We find an echo of this inNietzsche's
construal of eternal recurrence: on the one hand, itrequires a superhuman creature for itsaffirmation;
on the other, such a thought helps to cultivate such an extraordinary creature. Eternal recurrence is
a thought thatwants us to have belief in the future,with the superhuman standing for the new Sinn
of the earth that is required in thewake of God's death. The wager is required for Pascal because
neither empirical evidence nor rational proof of God's
and Leopardi
thewager
is appropriated
existence can be made use of. In both Goethe
so as to conduct an experiment with the present moment
thatwagers itself. In Rennie's account, Goethe represents, forNietzsche, the possibility of revising
and endorsing the gamble in Pascal's wager as an act by which the individual radically affirms the
strength and unity of his or her subjectivity; by contrast, Leopardi represents an opposing, self
destructive attitude toward the same gamble.
If, for Pascal, thewager opens up the possibility of
salvation, Leopardi insists that themost logical conclusion of the gamble is suicide.
The study has a number of important and innovative features, not least the attention itbestows
on Leopardi
a fascinating figure in Italian letters and Romanticism and also an
(1798-1837),
portrayed as the first nihilist?who
important figure inmodern European thought?sometimes
was read by Schopenhauer and the early Nietzsche (Nietzsche continued to read him into the 1880s
and greatly esteemed him as a writer of distinction). He was
to roundly reject his thinking later on
and for reasons similar to his rejection of Schopenhauer's metaphysical pessimism and world denial.
Although the relation between Leopardi and Nietzsche has been the subject of an extensive literature
in non-English literature, especially Italian and German, Rennie's prioritizing his significance for
a full appreciation of Nietzsche contains fresh insights for English-speaking readers. The study is
later theory of eternal recurrence can
perhaps especially innovative in suggesting thatNietzsche's
be fruitfullyapproached in the context of the concerns and ideas expressed in the untimely medita
tion on history, and the part of the book devoted toNietzsche
concentrates almost exclusively on it.
inprevious research, Rennie maintains that although the essay on history considers the thought
experiment of recurrence only to reject it, its question is never, in fact, resolved. Of course, the
claim made that themanner inwhich Nietzsche formulates his conception of time in theGoethean
As
and Leopardian metaphors characterizing the essay on history anticipates his latermature thinking
on time and history will be taken to be a highly contentious one by many readers. But I think it is
a claim worth taking seriously, even ifRennie's attempt tomake the case for itdoes not, in the end,
completely persuade or persuade to the level one would like. The study also sets itself the laudable
ambition of seeking to show that inNietzsche's
"stylized adoption" of Goethe and Leopardi we
that have come to haunt the reception of the texts of both. It is one of
illuminating and richest appreciations ofNietzsche's essay on history I have read for some
find a disruption of cliches
themost
time, an essay that in recent years has become
the subject of pedestrian readings and is in need of
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200
Book Reviews
enlivenment. Rennie
stochastic wcoherence
good in showing that one of its primary concerns is with "the
of themodern historical consciousness"
(324), and he provides many valuable
is especially
insights intoNietzsche's thinking on chance and contingency. The author succeeds admirably in one
of his principal aims, namely, to show in clear and instructive fashion thatNietzsche's engagement
with Goethe and Leopardi is indeed crucial to an adequate understanding of the text and subtexts
thatmake up themeditation on history.
Rennie's study will appeal especially
to those working in literary history and literary theory.
is plenty of talk of "empty signifiers" and a "poetics of non-presence" running throughout
think
the book. However, thematters of genuine philosophical substance that surround Nietzsche's
There
ing on time (and recurrence) are not adequately dealt with in the study. This is simply because the
relevant material is never looked at or, when it is, it is treated too cursorily and strictly in terms of
the concerns of literary theory.The author's most important claims and theses fail topersuade simply
the book provides no properly sustained analysis of the key latermaterials, which iswhat
because
is needed to ultimately make the argument a convincing one. Though the odd aphorism from Dawn
and sections from Zarathustra and the Genealogy are made use of here and there, the later texts
receive no sustained treatment. Perhaps themost glaring omission is the lack of any reference to, and
treatment of, theMill,
1,notebook of 1881, which contains Nietzsche's first sketches of recurrence,
including the remarkable first one, and where all the essential philosophical issues to be considered
and deciphered are displayed. It is here thatNietzsche first tries out all the different aspects of the
thought of recurrence: as a historical singularity, as a cosmological hypothesis, as a replacement for
Christian belief, and as a practical incorporating maxim. Nietzsche's first sketch features motifs and
movements of thought yet to be properly analyzed in the literature, and Rennie has thehermeneutical
skills to do valuable work here. Inmy view a tremendous opportunity has been missed.
Also omitted from the study are surrounding materials from theperiod ofNietzsche's development
that is ofmost concern to the ambit of the study, such as the lectures on the pre-Platonic philosophers
and the time atom theoryfragment of 1873. A treatment of thesematerials would have added support
to the author's claim that at this particular moment of his intellectual development, where we find
struggling to clarify and resolve the contradictions between theGoethean moment and
the Leopardian one, he is beginning to develop his mature philosophy of time and history. The book
intellectual
makes no attempt to explain or analyze the complex and intricate nature ofNietzsche's
Nietzsche
development, including thatof his relation to Schopenhauer, and inmy view no real justification can
be offered for treating themeditation on history in isolation from themeditation on Schopenhauer,
is surely equally important for understanding Nietzsche on time, being and becoming, and
recurrence. In the book, nothing ismade of the determinism and fatalism of the 1878 moment in
which
(volume 1 of HH), of the emergence of the thought of recurrence in 1881-82 and the
way this thought attempts to reconfigure determinism and fatalism, of how the tensions between
determinism and freedom as they are conceived by Nietzsche are played out inZ, and so on. These
Nietzsche
perhaps not matter if the author did not wish
the interpretation of the essay on history offered in the book.
critical points would
tomake
such major
claims for
Having drawn attention to these omissions and lacunae, letme emphasize that this is a very rich
study and a welcome addition to the literature.Any reader ofNietzsche keen to cultivate a literate
and informed appreciation ofmatters of time and recurrence inNietzsche's work will greatly profit
from reading it.
University ofWarwick
ac. uk
KJ.Ansell-Pearson@warwick.
Note
1. Hannah
Arendt,
(New York: Harcourt,
"Nietzsche's
1978),
Repudiation
of theWill,"
in The Life of theMind,
158-72.
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vol. 2