KEITH ANSELL-PEARSON
TOWARD THE ÜBERMENSCH:
REFLECTIONS ON THE YEAR OF NIETZSCHE'S DAYBREAK*
In this book you will discover a "subterranean man" at work, one who
tunnels, mines, and undermines [...] Does it not seem äs though some faith
wereleading him on, some consolation offering some compensation? As
though he perhaps desires this prolonged obscurity, desires to be incomprehensible, concealed, enigmatic, because he knows what he will thereby also
acquire: his own morning, his own redemption, his own daybreafä ... He
will return, that is certain [...] äs soon äs he has "become a man" again. (M
"Preface" I)
Your real nature lies ... immeasurably high above (über) you, or at least
above that which you usually take to be yourself. (SE 1)
As always, it costs me the greatest effort to come to a decision to accept life.
I have much ahead of me, upon me, behind me [...] Forward my dear Lou,
and upward!1 (Letter to Lou Salome, 8. 9. 82)
Ja! Ueber das Dasein hinlaufen! Das ist es! Das wäre es! (FW 60)
Utopia ... is not a "something" that is "outside" (i. e., "beyond" "the world
of sense" ...), but is, äs it says, "no place", which perhaps suggests no place
eise, but this place transfigures. (Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and
Unhandsome (1990), p. 20.)
* l restrict myself in this essay to dealing with English-speaking commentary on Nietzsche's
notion of the overman. I have, however, learned a great deal from Professor Wolfgang
Müller-Lauter in my Interpretation of Nietzsche, and I should Hke to acknowledge my debt
to his work here. For support and Inspiration I am indebted to Sebastian Barker, Daniel
Conway, David Owen, and David Wood.
Readers should note that throughout the essay I have adopted the practice of slightly
modifying the existing English translations by W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale for the
sake of uniformity or accuracy without explicitly stating so. For the German I have used
the following edition: Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. by G. Coüi and M.
Montinari (dtv and Walter de Gruyter, München and Berlin and New York, 1967—78, and
1988).
1
Quoted in Lou Salome, Friedrich Nietzsche. The Man in bis Work, Black Swan Books, 1988
(first published 1894; fürst English translation by Siegfried Mandel). Salome adopts the noble
practice of only citing from the correspondence between Nietzsche and herseif where it casts
light on the leitmotifs of his work.
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I Of Visions, Riddles, and Ascetic Ideals
l bcgin with a vision and a number of riddles.
Who is Nietzsche's Übermensch? What does it mean to become those who
\ve are? What is it to posit the task of rcading Nietzsche äs one of travelling
über Nietzsche? Might it not be that the nqtion of the "overman" in Nietssche's
writings denotes neither an ideal or model of human perfection, nor simply
a transfigured humanity which resides at some distant point in an unknown
future, but rather names those "future" readers of Nietzsche who constitute
themselves (in the legislative sense) through the experience of reading his
work in terms of a double task in which "they" become those who "they
are": an Untergang and an Übergang? If this is the case, how is such an
experience possible? What is the "Way" to the "overman"? And what does
it mean to be "/Vfor" man? One of the most astute readings of Nietzsche on
this question is that of Lou Salome who, in her underrated srudy of
Nietzsche's life through his works, raises the question of what it means to
be "über Nietzsche" in terms of the question of Zarathustra's identity.2
It is clear that the notion of the overman in Nietzsche's work is deeply
problematic and sits uncomfortably beside his critique of the ascetic ideal. If
God is dead, and all gods should now be laid to rest, äs Zarathustra urges
us, and if we^should venture forth to distant lands across new seas, then how
is it possible for Nietzsche to invent the figure of Zarathustra to teach that
God is dead and that the overman should now be the meäning of the earth?
Is the overman simply to take the place and assume the throne of the old
God? One solution to this problem, recently adopted by a number of
commentators, is to abandon the notion of the overman altogether and
discount it for its lack of coherence. This is a strategy, for example,· adopted
by Laurence Lampert, Robert Pippin, and Daniel Conway, all of whom argue
that it is necessary to read the story of Zarathustra's Untergang to human
beings in terms of a narration in which the initial teaching of the book is
progressively and decisively abandoned in favour of the teaching of eternal
return. Lampert, for example, is opposed to any reading which places the
Übermensch (which he translates äs "superman") at the centre of Nietzsche's
2
Ibid., especially p. 139. Salome gives önly the btiefest accounts of Nietzsche's biography
before swiftiy exploring with great insight his work in terms of "the meäning of the thoughtexperience in Nietzsche's mental constitution -r the confessions in his philosophy" (p. 5).
Long before European men and women had read Freud, and long before she became
acquainted with hifn, Salome wrote: "Nietzsche became the battleground of conflicting and
contentious drives, out of whose painful abundance alone came development. Through this
turmoil — the wiH to mastery and the need to serve, the rape of one by the other — we see
in Nietzsche ä replay of the origins of all culture and the struggle from which a sbperior
culture was to evolve äs the very summit of creation" (p. 114)!
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thought because, he argues, this is to impose on the story of Zarathustra's
down-going a notion of the eschatological fulfillment of time which
Nietzsche's thinking seeks to overcome. Nietzsche's prefiguration of "the
one who must come one day" (Zarathustra/the Über'mensch/the Anti-Christ)
possesses all the hallmarks of the theological "day of judgement" from which
the beautiful teaching of eteraal return liberates us. Similarly, Conway argues
that the proclamation of the immanent arrival of the reign of the Übermensch
in the prologue of Zarathustra betrays a nihilistic commitment to the deficiency
of the human condition and is a perfect example of the ascetic ideal. Finally,
Robert Pippin argues that Zarathustra's demand to create the overman is
motivated, like the ideals of Christian-moral culture, by a kind of revenge
against time and a resentment towards reality.3
Moreover, "is it not the case that the notion or the ideal of the overman
completeiy disappears in Nietzsche's writings after the publication of Zarathustra, only making a brief and inconsequential appearance in section four
of the Anti-Christi Is nothing easier, therefore, than simply to recognize the
overman äs a parodoxical fantasy on Nietzsche's part which he himself never
took seriously? Elsewhere — another time, another place — I have tried to
show that the notion of the overman is inseparable from the experience of
Untergang contained in the eternal retürn since it is the thought-experiment
of return which discloses the kind of experience of time (what I call the
primordial existential constitution of time) out of which Menschen are to
become those that they are — the Übermenschen* Properly thought, therefore,
the notion of the overman is not to be construed äs an ideal at all for this
would turn it into something unattainable by mere mortals — the superman
of legend. When we undergo the experience of return our ordinary serial
conception of time, in which we experience time äs a seriality of past, present,
and future (before, now, and aftei), is suspended, and through the experience
of the "moment" (Augenblick — literally glance of the eye) we gain the
experience of "eternity" (the conjunction**of past, present, and future äs
revelation and Illumination). When understood in the context of the thoughtexperiment of eternal return, it can be seen that the vision of the overman
tias to be conceived rieither along fantastical lines (äs in the superman) nor
3
See L. Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987, especially
p. 258; D. W. Conway, "Overcoming the Übermensch: Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values",
Journal of the Britisb Society for Phenomenologyy 20, no. 3 (October 1989), pp. 211-24,' p. 212;
and R. B. Pippin, "Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra", in M.* A.
GiJIespie and T. B. Strong (eds.), Nietzsche's New Seas, Chicago, University Press of Chicago,
1988, p. 55.
4
See my essay "Who is the Übermensch? Time, Truth, and Woman in Nietzsche", Journal of the
History of Ideas (AprU-June 1992), pp. 309-33.
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in spatial rcrms äs diät which simply comes "after" man, but rather in ternns
of the cxistential constitution of time (tune's timeliness) in which "we" become
thosc who "we are": thus, to go beyond or across (über) is also to go "back",
to go "after" is to go "before", and so on — repetition äs original creation.
I would go so far äs to claim that the key to understanding the "postmodern" Nietzsche lies in grasping the significance of the "#fer" in the notion
of the Übermensch, and in recognizing the creative entanglement of the vision
of the overman and the riddle of eternal return. In the middle of the 1880's
Nietzsche came to realize that owing to the deforined nature of modern
humanity it would be the fate of his philosophy to be a philosophy "of the
future". It is imperative, however, that we properly understand the nature of
this "future" and how it is to be constituted. Instead of construing Nietzsche's
philosophy äs no more than an incoherent and contradictory ascetic critique
of the present, I would suggest that we construe its meaning aiid significance
in terms of the metaphor of the bridge; namely äs providing a "Way" across
man which does not rely on the tfaditionäl conception of time found within
Western or Aristotelian metaphysics. As readers of Nietzsche we are always
traversing the bridge über Nietzsche (we "find" Nietzsche in the act of
"rejecting" him): we are always "on the wäy" toward Nietzsche — and, by
the same tokeri, toward the overman. Nietzsche's writings are designed to
be an exemplification of a "Way" tö the Overman. The questiön is — and it
is one which was of great concern to Nietzsche — does Nietzsche's "Way"
merely reflect the personal odyssey of the philosopher-legislator Friedrich
Nietzsche, or does it possess a more universal significance? A clue — a
difficult one — can be found in the following poem (number 7) from the
"'Scherz, List und Rache', Vorspiel in deutschen Reimen" which precedes
Nietzsche's performance in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft:
Vademecum — Vadetecum
Es lockt dich meine Art und Sprach,
Du folgest mir, du gehst mir nach?
Geh nur dir selber treulich nach: —
So folgst du mir — gemäch! gemach!
Seduced by my style and language,
you follow me, you go after me?
Go after your own seif truly —
And thus you follow me — slowly! slowly! (my trans.)
* . ' , " '
,
<*
In what follows I want to show, thröugh a cohsideration of the year of
Nietzsche's "daybreäk" in 1886, that the readiag advanced by Lampert,
Conway, and Pippin, which urges us to abandon the riotiori.of the overman
in favour of that of eternal return misunderstands the identity of the Overman
in Nietzsche work and the task he sets us äs readers of his Worki If we
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wish to be readers of Nietzsche, and inheritors of the task of the seifovercoming Of moralhy he bequeathed to modern humanity, then we need
to recognize that there is no escaping the fate of the overman — only
buffoons thkik man can be leaped over. This is not to deny that the overman
is a deeply problematic notion in Nietzsche, for it undoubtedly is. But what
Nietzsche-interpretation has so far failed to do is to relate the notion to
questions about Nietzsche's authorship and questions about the identity of
his readers (a discourse qn "Reading and Writing" is placed at the centre of
the first book of Also sprach Zarathustra), I want to show that it is only in
1886 — several years after completing the first part of Zarathustra — that
Nietzsche for the first time in his work begins to give his readers clues äs to
the identity of the overman. The Übermenschen are we: but then, one must
ask, who are."we"? Such a question has, I believe, profound implications for
what it means'to be a "reader" of Nietzsche and to "follow" his example. In
my concluding remarks I shall contend, contra Alexander Nehamas and
Richard Rorty, that to read Nietzsche is not equivalent to any simple or
straightforward exercise in self-mastery in which we learn how to give the
story of our Ihres die form of a coherent narrative. Rather, we need to be
much more aware of the fragility and anxiety which characterizes Nietzsche's
perilous task of inaugurating, through the example and sacrifice of his own
identity äs a philosopher, a new dispensation and a new legislation.
II Of tbe Enigma of Liberation
The "we" in Nietzsche assumes various guises in the prefaces that he
wrote to the new editions of his books published in 1886 and 1887. At
various times they are described äs the "affirmers", the "self-overcomers of
morality", the "good EuropeaAs", the "free spirits", and the "tragic pessimists". Who is the "we"? The "we" in Nietzsche, I would argue, refers to
the Community of readers who constitute, through an Auseinandersetzung with
his texts, the destiny and destination of his authorship. It refers to those
moderne Menschen Nietzsche speaks of in the preface of the Genealogy of Mora/s,
the ones who "practise the art of Interpretation (Auslegung^ and become
those who they are — the post-modern (äs in "post-/ra«") Übermensch. Let
me try and demonstrate these claims through a reading of these crucially
important and highly revealing prefaces.5
The 1886 prefaces (along with the 1885 prefacc to Bejond Good and Evil and the 1887 preface
to the Gemalogy of Morals) have been presented in one volume together with an Interpretation
by Claus-Artur Scheier, in Ecee Aucfor. Die Vorreden von 1886t Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag,
1990. Schcicr does not, however, interpret the significancc of the 1886 prefaces in terms of
the way in which they illuminatc the identity of the Übermensch in Nietzsche's work.
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The opcning scntcnce of the prcface to the first volume of Human, All
Too Human^ written in Nice in thc Spring of 1886, contains all that I have
bcen talking about so far. Nietzsche writes:
I have bccn told often enough, and always with an exprcssion of great
surprisc, that all my writings, from the Birtb of Tragedy to the most reccntly
published Prelude to a Philosoph) of the Fuiure [Nietzsche's philosophy would
always have to assume the character of a prelude because its fate lies beyond
— über — him], have something that distinguishes them and unites them
together: they all of them, I have been given to understand, contain snares
and nets for unwary birds and in effect a persistent invitation to the
overturning of habitual evaluations and valued habits. What? Everything only
- human, all too human? (MA I "Preface" 1)
Nietzsche describes bis writings äs a schooling in "suspiciofi", "contempt",
"courage", and "audacity". As a critic of the present it is quite easy to feel
oneself alone and isolated, Nietzsche inforrns us. It is necessary, therefore,
that one artificially invents for oneself a fiction pr two. What eise, Nietzsche
asks, have poets ever done; what other end does art serve? Here is one clue
to the identity of the overman: the notion is Nietzsche's consolation prompted
by the weary prospect that the thought-experiment of eternal return would
never be actualized, for modern Menschen (including Nietzsche himself) are
simply too crippled and deformed to be able to overcome thernselves;
Nietzsche needs^to conceive of a type of Mensch that would be able not only
to endure but to affirm the abysmal thought that everything, including the
ugly man and the small mäh, will return. In addition, Nietzsche accepts that
all bis thinking may be not only a consolation but also a "deceptiöri". But
this is to speak "unmorally, extra-morally, 'beyond goöd and evil'".
Nietzsche confesses that "the free spirits" are such a fictional product of
his Imagination which he needed to invent for himself so äs not to feel alone.
In section 2 of the preface of Human, All Too Human^ Nietzsche says that
although they do not äs yet exist he can see them coming, the free spirits,'
and he will describe "in advance under what vicissitudes, upon what paths"
he sees them "coming". (M^.1 "Preface" 2) He speaks of the "decisive
experience" of a "great liberatibn" (MA I "Preface" 3) in which individüals
will have learned how to overturn the past and to revalue previous values "
to the extent that they ask themselves, "Can all values not be tufried round?
Is good perhaps evil? and God only an invention of the Devil?" (MA I
"Preface" 3) Initially, and perhaps for not an inconsiderable length of time,
such a spirit will experience the icy breath of solitude and even'run the risk
of intoxicated madness on the road to the achievement of great supefabundant
health. To live experimentally, extra-rnorally and beyond good and evil is
certainly for Nietzsche to run the risk of madness. Along the way from man
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129
to overman — for surely this is the experience Nietzsche is here naming —
there will be long periods of "convalescence" in which the free spirit begins
to see himself for the first time. (MA I "Preface" 4,5)
In sections 6 and 7 Nietzsche gives some substance to the notion of the
free spirit, and thereby to the overman, when he speaks of the "enigma of
liberation" in terms of a process of self-mastery. He writes:
You shall become master over yourself, master also over your virtues.
Formerly they were your masters [...] You shall get control over your For
and Against and learn how to display first one and then the other in
accordance with your higher goal. You shall learn to grasp the sense of
perspective in every value judgement — the displacement, distortion and
merely apparent teleology of horizons and whatever eise pertains to perspectivism [...] You shall learn tp grasp the necessary injustice in every For
and Against, injustice äs inseparable from life, life itself äs conditionedby the
sense of perspective and its injustice. (
"Preface" 6)
When it has become what it is, the free spirit has become the spirit which
has unlearned the heteronomous command of "you shall" and earns the right
to declare to itself the autonomous command "I can" and "I may" (
"Preface" 6). In section 7 Nietzsche argues that this imperative of the free
spirit must become universal by becoming a categorical imperative ^ a "we". The
free spirit generalizes its own case and learns to adjudicate on the basis of
this experience — the experience, Nietzsche teils us, of "midday":
"What has happened to me, he says to himself, must happen to everyone in
whom a task wants to become incarnate and 'come into the world'. The
secret force and necessity of this task will rule among and in the individual
facets of his destiny like an unconscious pregnancy — long before he has
caught sight of this task itself or knows its name. Our vocation commands
and disposes of us even when we do not yet know it: itas the future which
regulates our today." (MAJ "Preface" 7)
It is clear, therefore, that Nietzsche's thought, like that of Marx, is
determined — "regul^ted" — by the fünfte. It also cpntains, however, a
negation of the present. Nietzsche wishes only to be a yea-sayer, not to say
no, and to affirm reality — the grand economy of life — äs it is, without
subtracrion, addition, or any kind öf selection at all. But he cannot, for the
economy of life demands negation äs well äs affirmation; in order to be a
yea-sayer one must also be a nay-sayer, and this entails not only the creation
of new law-tables but the destruction of old ones too. Nietzsche's thinking,
for example, is determined by a desire for a new supra-ethical politics beyond
the spirit of ressentimenty and yet it is füll of contempt towards the present
and towards modern humanity (the difference between the two is äs follows:
if you resent someone you secretly desire to be like them and this reflects
your own inadequacy or inferiority; if you feel contempt towards someone
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Kcith Amcil-Pearson
you do not rcspect thcm but fecl superior to thcm. The diffcience is perhaps
crucial: i t is the difference between thc self-prcservation of the siave and the
self-overcoming of the noble —· "we" arc the site of a struggle between the
two). As Nietzsche admits to hitnself in a telling passage in Ecce Homo:
"Disgust at mankind, at the rabble, has always been my greatest danger".
(EH "Why I Am So Wise" 8) Nietzsche's thinking is deeply paradoxical in
that it urges us to overcome die philosophy of ascetic priests, which teaches
humanity always to sacrifice the present for the promise of a better and illdefmed future, by also teaching us to sacrifice the present for the sake of the
future. "I love him", Zarathustra says in the prologue, "who justifies the
humanity of the present and redeems the humanity of the past, for he wants
to perish by the present". (Za "Zarathustra's Prologue" 4) Furthermore, in
order to overcome the ascetic ideal we must, practise our own asceticism
(there can be no doubt about this — one has only to look at Nietzsche's
own lifestyle), and in order to liberate ourselves of our need for redemption
we need a teaching of redemption (the doctrine of eternal return). As I have
already indicated, the "example" is a difficult one to follow.
///
Of Romanticism: Nietzsche "contra" Rousseau
In between the prefaces to the first and second völumes of Human, All
Too Human (the latter was composed in Sils-Maria in September 1886),
Nietzsche wrote in Sils-Maria in the August of 1886 his well-known and
highly esteemed "attempt at a self-critique" to his jßrst published book of*
1872, The Birth of Tfagedy. Here he is preoccupied with the nature of
romanticism andVith distinguishing his own trägic form of pessimism from
the mortally sick and morbid type of pessimisrn he describes äs "rpmantic
pessimism" (a type of pessimism he often associates with a thiriker like.
Rousseau — so close to and yet so distant from himself). This attempt to
distinguish the two kinds of pessimism is, in fact, an overriding theme of
the year of Nietzsche's "daybireak".
Nietzsche realizes in this year that he too is a sick animal for he also, like
the ascetic priests and rnoralists he castigates throughout !his writkigs, suffers
from life. He feels, however, that his suffering from life is not the same äs
that pf priests and moralists. In the "self-critique" he poses a question that
becomes decisive in his final writings where he ättempts to formulate a
Dionysiari and trägic view of life. He asks:
Is pessimism mcessärily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weary and
weak instincts ^ äs it önce was in India and npw is, to all appearances,
among us "modern" men and Europeäns? Is there a pessimism of strengtfö
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An intelicctual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect
of existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowmg health, by tii&futtness
of existence? Is it perhaps possible to suffer precisely from overfullness?
(GT "Attempt at a Self-Critique" 1)
In this "self-critique" he draws a number of oppositions: between Christ
and Dionysus, between art and science, between life and morality. Concerning
the latter, for example, he writes:
For, confronted with morality (especially Christian, or unconditional morality) life must continually and inevitably be in the wrong, because life is
something essentially amoral — and eventually crushed by the weight of
the contempt and the eternal No, life must then be feit to be unworthy of
desire and altogether worthless. (GT "Attempt at a Self-Critique" 5)
What is the difference between thinking morally and extra-morally? What is
the über that separates them? To think that Nietzsche simply overcomes
morality by affirming life is to miss completely the tragic dialectic which
characterizes his life-work; it is to fail to recognize bis struggle with resentment, and the sentimentality which is a necessary part of his work and our
reception of it. Surely this is what Thomas Mann was trying to show us in
his 1947 lecture when he argued that our attitude towards Nietzsche must
be a mixture of veneration and pity: "It is the tragic pity", Mann wrote, "for
an overloaded and overcharged soul which was only called to knowledge,
not really bofn to it and, like Hamlet, was destroyed by it; for a dainty, flne,
good soul for which love was a necessity, which inclined toward noble
friendship and was never meant for loneliness, and which yet was condemned
to just this ..."6 Nietzsche was far closer to the moralistic and misanthropic
Rousseau than he ever dared admit to himself or to his readers. Nietzsche
attempted to distance himself from Rousseau by differentiating between
Rousseau's plebeian origins and.his noble origins, but this is Nietzsche at his
disingenuous best. Does Nietzsche really expect his claim that he is the
advocate of life and Rousseau its denieirto be taken seriously? Perhaps
Nietzsche was simply a better artist than Rousseau? Any attempt to construe
the relationship between Rousseau and Nietzsche in terms of a simple Opposition, äs is done *by Derrida, *for example, who draws an Opposition
between Rousseauian seriousness and nostalgia for lost origins and Nietzschean playfulness and mockery of origins, shows itself to be guilty of the
most supreme foolishness.7
Thomas Mann, Nietzsche in the Light oj' Contemporary Events, Washington, Library of Congress,
1947, pp. 3-4.
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", in
Derrida, Writing and Differencet trans. Alan Bass, London, Routledge, 1973, pp. 278—95,
p. 292.
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Both Rousseau and Nietzsche are compelled to construe their authorship
in terms of a destiny which lies in the temporal future: in Rousseau's case,
in a providential future, and, in Nictzschc's, in an unknown future to be
actively willed by modern Menschen. In bis lifetime Rousseau is widely read
but he is not properly or effectively understood by his audience, for when a
"Frenchman" reads one of his books he does not read what is before him,
Rousseau protests, but reads in accordance with the eommon prejudices of
the public Imagination which Stands in the way of a true appreciation of his
work and his genius. One day there will be a day of jüdgement in which
Rousseau's teaching will be seen for what it really is, and Rousseau himself
will also be seen for what — and who — he really is. At least this is
Rousseau's great hope and dream.8 Nietzsche, on the other band, is read
neither well nor badly in his own lifetime, justjgnored, and, äs a result, he
hands over his authorship completely to posthumous destiny — the only
kind he can hope for. Like Rousseau, however, he construes his destiny in
terms of an eventual day of decision in which those who read him will reach
a fateful and terrible jüdgement about their lives arid the future existence of
humankind. He realizes that even those who will consider themselves "contra
Nietzsche" will, in fact, vindicate him and be "pro Nietzsche" because his
writings will have forced them into making a decision.
Both Rousseau and Nietzsche were convinced of the utter uniqueness of
their experierice and yet, ät the same tifne, believed that, in spite of this
uniqueness, their experience of life and reflectioris on it constituted, in some
way, a fate which was destined to become part of the eommon concern of
modern human beings. It would be to indulge in caricature to counterpose Nietzsche and Rousseau in terms of a fundamental Opposition or antagonism,
say in terms of their politics (a struggle between democracy and aristocracy,
for example). Both are committed to the idea of an elective aristocracy — a
society based on the severest self-discipline for the good of the polity and
culture, and the cultivation of a meritocrätic order — and, for both, the
modern malaise stems from the fact that we suffer from a narrowly defined
individualism which conceals\ a timid conformity and which is perfectly
compatible with a liberal order of sovereign individuals.9 The key insight of
8
See Rousseau's remarkable work, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialoguest ed. R. D. Masters and C.
Kelly, tr. J. R. Bush, R. D. Masters, and C. Kelly, Hannover and London, Uriiversity Press
of New England, 1990. Rousseau's dedication to the Book reads: "If I dared address a prayer
to those into whose hands this writing will fall, it would be to read all of it before rnaking
use of it and even before talking about it with anyone. But very certain beforehand that this
favor will not be granted to mej I keep silent and give over everything to providence".
9
See S. S. Wolin, Politics and Vision· Continuity and Innovation in Western PoliticaL Thought^
Boston, Little Brpwn & Co., 1960, p. 343.
':t
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both into the ethico-political dilemmas of the present age is-that we moderns
are no longer "material" for society. Both seek a politics öf tränsfiguration
in which bourgeois possessive individuals will be encouraged and enticed to
overcome themselves: a transfiguration which for both entails that "we" learn
how to transform ourselves fröm Menschen into Übermenschen™
IV Romantic Pessimist* and Good Europeans
Let us return to our questioning after the identity of the overman. At
the end of the 1886 preface to the first volume of Human, All Too Human,
Nietzsche pqses the question of who can be regarded äs the most receptive
to his call for the emergence of free spirits: The Russians, French, or Germans?
It is in the 1886 preface to the second volume of Human, All Too Human
that he begins to provide an answer to this question in terms of a notion of
"the good Europeans".
The preface begins with Nietzsche declaring that "one should speak only
when one may not stay silent" because everything eise is "chatter, 'literature',
lack of breeding". (MAII "Preface" 1) His writings, he informs his readers
— and one should now have the Impression that Nietzsche primarily wrote
the prefaces of 1886 for his future readers and posthumous audience — speak
only of his overcomings. In these prefaces we witness Nietzsche becoming
what he is and, by extension, what we are. In becoming what he is, he is also
returning to himself and finding himself for the first time: Nietzsche äs
educator.
In section 2 of the preface to the second volume of Human, All Too
Human, Nietzsche says that the aphorisms of "Assorted Opinions and Maxims"
and of "The Wanderer and His Shadow" (first published in 1879 and 1880
respectively) contain "precepts of health" \which may be recommended to the
more Spiritual natures of the present generation who will read him in terms
of a "disciplina voluntatis". (
"Preface" 2) His writings, he teils us, are
certainly those of a pessimist, but also of someone who has risen above (über)
romanticism. In the foreword to Ecce Homo Nietzsche says that it is imperative
for him to declare who he is: "Listen to me! for I am thus and thus. Do not, above
all, confound me with what I am not!". (EH "Foreword" 1) In this preface
Nietzsche considers eqüally important for him to say who he is not. In section
10
For Rousseau see the Geneva manusccipt of Du contract social, "The General Society of the
Human Race", in G. D. H. Cole, The Stcial Contract and Discounts, London, Dent, 1973,
pp. 155—64; for Nietzsche sce, The Cay $cicncet trans W. Kaufmann, New York, Random
House, 1974, section 356.
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4, for cxamplc, Nietzsche says that through aclopting the attitude of a deep
mistrust towards himsclf he was able to take sides against himself and, in
this way, find bis way to "that courageous pessimism that is the antithesis of
all romantic mcndacity". (MA II "Preface" 4) In section 5, moreover, he
reveals that he learned the Speech of the solitary and how to speak "without
witnessess". He learned the art of appearing cheerful, objective, inquisitive,
and healthy. The charm of his writing is that "here a sufferer and self-denier
speaks äs though he were not a sufferer and self-denier". (MA II "Preface" 5)
Nietzsche's suffering and ascetic lifestyle is born of romanticism — this is
the sickness which it is his task to overcome. Who, therefore, is Nietzsche
not? Who is he trying to distance himself from in this preface? I would say
most of all Wagner and, to a lesser extent, Schopenhauer.
The way in which Nietzsche interprets the significance of his overcoming
of romanticism is both paradoxical and ironic. This can be clearly seen in
section 5 of the preface under discussion. Here Nietzsche says that he now
conducts a patient campaign against "the uhscientific tendency" of "romantic
pessimism" which attempts to Interpret and inflate "individual personal
existence into universal judgements, and, indeed, into condemnations of the
world ..." (Rousseau would be the perfect example of such a romantic
pessimist). (
"Preface" 5) Nietzsche's overcoming of romanticism, so
clearly signalled in the 1886 prefaces, is ironic and paradoxical because out
of his critique of the universalist pretensions of the romantic pessimist
Nietzsche goes on to draw the same universalist conclusions for his own selfappointed task äs a tragic pessimist. Listen to the following, for example:
Life itself rewards us for our tough will to live, for that long war such äs I
then waged with myself against the pessimism of weariness of life, even for
every attentive glance our gratitude accords to even the smallest, tenderest,
most fleeting gift life gives to us. Finally, our reward is the greates't of life's
gifts, perhaps the greatest thing it is able to give of any kind — we are
given our task back. (MA II "Preface" 5)
Moreover, in section 6 Nietzsche himself beckons the decisive question:
— Shall my experience — this history of an illness and recovery [...] have
been my personal experience alone? And only my "human, all-too hurnan"?
(MA II "Preface" 6)
*".
And how does Nietzsche answer this most urgent, puzzling, and enigmatic
question concerning the Status of his work? He answers with his own
categorical imperative (an imperative which by definition -* and contrary to
the mis-reading of Kant which Nietzsche provides in section 1 of the AntiChrist — must be universal in its.application):
Today I would like to believe that my travel books were not written soiely
for myself, äs sometimes seems to be the case. May I fiow, after six years
of growing confidence, venture to send them off ag'ain? (MA II "Preface" 6)
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In what does Nietzsche's categorical imperative consist? Namely, that he may
only become what he is when m become what we are. The fate of Nietzsche's
texts is inseparable from that of the Community of readers who will constitute
his authorship.
Who does Nietzsche hope (and that is all he can do) will constitute his
authorship? How are his readers to be recognized? Section 6 of this preface
again provides a clue. Nietzsche wishes his writings to be taken up by those
who are burdened with the past and who still have sufficient spirit left to
suffer from the past. Why? Because they will be the ones most in need of a
teaching of redemption. He addresses himself to the courageous ones who
have to be:
the cpnscience of the modern soul and äs such have to possess its knowledge^
and in whom all that exists today of sickness, poison and danger, comes
together — whose lot it is to be sicker than any other kind of individual
because you are not "only individuals" ... whose comfort it is to know the
way to a new health, and alas! to go along it, a health of tomorrow and the
day aftef, yoü predestined and victorious men, you overcomers of your age,
you healthiest and strengest men, you good Europeans\ (MA II "Preface" 6)
But the matter of Nietzsche's authorship, of who is to constitute his writings,
lies beyond his control. Nietzsche's writings can äs readily be taken up and
deployed by the revengeful and resentful äs they can by self-overcomers and
self-creators. Nietzsche simply cannot prevent people from doing mischief
with him.
V Of Mora/Sj Conscience, and Cows
The preface to the second ecjition of Daybreak was written in Ruta, near
Genoa, in the autumn of 1886. The figure of Jean-Jacques is explicitly spoken
of for the first time in these prefaces. Untü.this point Nietzsche had kept a
cautious and dignified silence: not any longer. In section 2 of this preface
Nietzsche declares his return to life. His desire is to be man again. What could
easily have become a funeral oratiqn — the year of 1886 and all that led to
it — is celebrated by Nietzsche äs a "self-overcoming" to good health and
courageous wisdom. Nietzsche Stresses, in contrast to his yearning for solidarity in the Human, All Too Human prefaces, the singularity of his solitary
path. "At that time", he writes, "I undertook something not everyone may
undertake: I descended into the depths, I tunnelled into the foundations [..„]
I commenced to undermine ouxfaith in moraliPf\ (M "Preface" 2)
The "self-overcoming of morality" is now identified explicitly by
Nietzsche äs the principal task of nis writings and his readers (the good
Europeans). At the beginning of section 3 he writes:
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Hithcrto, the subject rcflccted on teast adequateJy has becn good and cviJ:
it was too dangeroüs a subject Consciencc, teputation, Hell, sometimes
cvcn thc policc havc pcrmittcd and continue to permit no impartialhy; in
thc prcscnce öf morals, äs in thc facc of any aüthority, onc is not allomd to
think, far less to cxprcss an opinion: hcre onc has to — obey\ (M "Preface" 3)
1s it not immoral, Nietzsche asks, now to venture a critique of morality?
Philosophers from Plato to Kant, he argues, have built their philosophical
Systems of truth and knowledge under the "seduction of moraüty". Kant,
says Nietzsche, was bitten by the "moral tarantula" Rousseau, and had need
of a "logical 'Beyond' " only so äs to make the moral realm unassailable. (M
"Preface" 3) Nietzsche further notes sarcastically that Kant was a pessimist
who believed in morality "not because it is demonstrated in nature and
history, but in spite of the fact that nature and history continuaily contradict
it". (M "Preface" 3)
In section 4 Nietzsche identifies the fundamental paradox of his critique
of morality: namely, that it withdraws fäith in morality "out of morality".
"There is no doubt", Nietzsche informs his readers, "that a 'thou shalt' still
speaks to us too, that we too still obey a stern law set over us". (M "Preface"
4) Nietzsche names this "the last moral law" which is able to make itself
audible "to us". Again, he calls upon the coming generation in terms of "the
men of cons£i£nce" and äs those who do not wish to return to that which
has grown outmoded and decayed, be it "God, yirtue, truth, justice, charity".
These "men of conscience" will be hostile to every kind of contemporary
faith, "hostile to the half-and-halfness of all romanticism and fatherlandworship [...] hostile, in short, to the whoje of Europeany^^//«///^ (or idealism,
if yöu prefer that word), which is for ever 'drawing us upwärd' and precisely
thereby for ever 'bringing us down'". (M "Preface" 4)
In the final section of the preface (section 5) Nietzsche urges his readers
to "read him well". In the midst of the age of work, it is necessary to cultivate
the habit of reading slowly and unhurriedly. He and his readers, Nietzsche
teils us, should be "friends pf ietito". "We" are to become philologists, for
philology is the venerable art of the goldsmith which has nothing but delicate
and cautious work to do, and which demands of its votaries the^connoisseurship of the word\ äs well äs the ability to "go aside, tp take time, to
become still, to become slow ..." (M "Preface" 5) Nietzsche will return to
this matter of reading well and slowly in the preface to the Gemalogy of
Morals,, which he composes ki Sils-Maria in July 1887. Again, in the last
section of that preface he draws attention to the importance of "the practice
of reading" äs an art which has been thoroughly unlearned today. Nietzsche
closes the preface to the Genealogy by declaring that it may be sorhe time
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before his writings are "readable" because "modern man" is altogether lacking
in the patience and virtue of a cow — namely, in "rumination". (GM
"Preface" 8)
VI Of Convalescence, Transßguration, and Rebirth
The preface to the second edition of the Gay Science, äs well äs the added
fifth part to the book, which Nietzsche wrote in Ruta in the autumn of 1886,
contains some of the finest and most important passages Nietzsche ever
wrote. It represents the summation of the daybreak he experienced in 1886.
Nietzsche begins the preface by suggesting that it is a book which may
require more than the one preface and doubting whether there is another
human being (shades of Monsieur Rousseau) who has ever lived through
such experiences. Is it possible, Nietzsche asks, for a preface to bring a reader
close to "the experience of a book"? What is expressed in the book above
all is the "gratitude of a convalescent". Nietzsche writes, dropping clues all
the while:
"Gay Science": that signifies the saturnalia of a spirit who has patiently
resisted a terrible, long pressure, — patiently, severely, coldly, without
submitting, but also without hope — and who is now all at once attacked
by hope, the hope for health, and the intoxication of convalescence. (FW
"Preface" 1)
The book, Nietzsche says, Signals his rebirth. After "long privation and
powerlessness" it rejoices in the attainment of strength and reveals a "reawakened faith in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense
and anticipation of the future". Nietzsche's philosophy, therefore, including
the tasks it sets modern man, dsaws its raison d'etre^ from the future; more
specifically, from its constitution by the future. It can only have a sense, an
intimation, of "impending adventures and of seas that are open again". Even
äs a convalescent in the year of 1886 Nietzsche realized that his authorship
would be tragically and fatefully condemned to being a posthumous one.
It is in this preface that Nietzsche admits for the first time, both to himself
and to his readers, that his "radical retreat into solitude" is a "retreat", and
that it expresses his feeling of lofty Isolation from humanity. He thus teils
us, for example, in a remarkably telling passage, that his stubborn pursuit of
solitude is a form of "self-defence". Self-defence against what? Against "a
contempt for men that had become pathologically clairvoyant". His "nauseä"
at man, Nietzsche confesses in this preface (we are still with section 1),
developed out of a spiritual diet called "romanticism". Nietzsche ends the
first section of the preface by drawing our attention to the double manner
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in which hc attempts to overcome the romanticism of both himself and of
"man" — through both tragcdy and parody. The rebirth of tragedy and the
overcoming of romanticism are only possiblc in the modern age through
wild, intoxicated laughter (see die opening section of The Cay Science). This
intense fecling of Isolation is also accompanied on Nietzsche's part by a
deeply ambivalent attitude towards his posthumous existence and to those
who will "go after him". He wants his work to have an impact — to be
"dynamite"; he also expresses a horror of being nusunderstood, of being
confounded with somebody eise (with what he is not), and a perverse desire
not to be read. His "triumph", he teils us, is the opposite of Schopenhauers:
he says "non legor^ non legar" ("I am not read, I shall not be read") (EH
"Why I Write Such Excellent Books" 1)
Nietzsche begins section 2 of the preface by Jeaving behind "Herr
Nietzsche", for of what consequence is it trlat this gentleman "has become
well again"? For the philosopher who has a training in psychology, Nietzsche
says, the decisive question concerns the xelation between health and philosophy. If one is a person then, he surmises, one will have the philosophy that
belongs to that person. However, there is an important difference, Nietzsche
teils us, in that in some it is their deprivations and suffering that philosophizes
and in others it is their strength and riches. Whereas the former need
philosophy äs their "sedative, niedicine, redemption, elevation, or self-alienation", for the latter it is merely "a beautiful luxury", the expression of "a
triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to-inscribe itself in cosmic letters
on the heaven of concepts". (FW "Preface" 2) But Nietzsche is too good a
psychologist, too frank with himself and too cruel towards himself (at lea$t
on this occasion), to fail to realize that such a distinction between two types
of philosophers is to a large extent completely artificial and quite afbitrary
in its point of division. The two modes of philosophizing are born from the
same soil and the same sun. Nietzsche knows that bis philosophy is born of
sickness. Is it, moreover, his right to assume and to arrogate to himself the
role of confessor and Interpreter of his writings? If it is truly his destiny to
be born posthumously, this Js surely something better left to his readers, to
those will read his signs and constitute his authorship with their own
signatures.
The great significance of this particulär preface is that 'it dawns on
Nietzsche that his daybreak is only possible through the way of self-overcoming; it is impossible to express gratitude towards life ünless one has first
suffered from some acute sickness. In other words, one qanriöt experience an
Übergang without first having had the Untergang, Nietzsche himself astutely
notes in a passage that is cruciäl for our questioning of the path "toward the
overman": . .
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Every philosophy that ranks peace above war, every ethjc with a negative
definition of happiness, every metaphysics and physics that knows some
finale, some final state of some sort, every predominantly aesthetic or
reiigious craving for some Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above (Abseits, Jenseits,
Ausserhalb, Oberhalb), permits the question whether it was not sickness that
inspired the philosopher. (FW "Preface" 2)
The key question which we äs readers of Nietzsche must ask, therefore,
paying attention to the self-portrait above, is what kind of sickness it is which
inspires Nietzsche's desire for the über in man. This yearning for the overman
which characterizes Nietzsche's writings of the 1880s needs to be subjected
to the kind of physio-psychological analysis which Nietzsche discusses in this
preface in terms of the tracing of unconscious instincts and drives of the
body of the philosopher. For, äs Nietzsche says at the end of section 2 (and
who would want to argue against him?), what is at stake in all philosophizing
is not "truth" but something eise — "let us say, health, future, growth,
power, life" (this does not mean that "truth" or "truths" do not exist or
cannot be created).
That Nietzsche does recognize the artificiality of his neat, all too neat
division of styles of philosophizing into one of sickness and one of health,
is made clear in section 3 where he speaks of a philosopher who traverses
many kinds of health and keeps traversing them äs someone who has passed
through an eqüal number of philosophies (I am taking it äs axiomatic that
one must read Nietzsche äs the philosopher of masks, indeed, äs the masked
philosopher par excellence).u Nietzsche calls this capacity for transposing
bodily states into Spiritual form and distance the "art of transfiguration"
(philosophy). (FW "Preface" 3) In the end the honest philosopher who can
fairly claim his entitlement to integrity is the one who affirms his or her body
äs the condition and site of philosQphy. In the foUowing passage, for example,
Nietzsche affirms his own suffering from sickness in such terms. If one recalls
Zarathustra's admonition that only a "buffcon" thinks man can be leaped
over, one will better appreciate the significance of the following passage äs
an Illumination of the way from man to overman:
We are not thinking frogs, nor objectifying and registering mechanisms with
their innards removed: constantly, we have to give birth to our thoughts
out of our pain and, like mothers, endow them with all we have of blood,
heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and catastrophe.. Life
— that means constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame
— also everything that wounds us; we simply can do not other. And äs for
sickness? Are we not almost tempted to ask whether we could get along
11
For further Illumination see Graham Parkes, **Facing the masks: Persona and Seif in Nietesche,
Rilke, and Mishima*', Mosaie, 20, no. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 65—79.
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without i t? Only great pa'tn is thc ultimate liberator of spirit.,. (FW
"Prcfacc" 3)
It is only great pain that compels us to descend, to go down, into the depths;
it is only the actuality and fatality of death which encourages us to question
and intcrrogate life; it is only by freely undergoing the fate of eternal return
that it is possible for us to endow ouHives with meaning (with "weight")
in a godless world; and, finally, it is only because we are human, all too
human that we desire to be over-human, all too over-human.
It is not, Nietzsche Stresses, a question of the experience of great pain
making us "better" human beings but only "mqre profouruF ones. The game
is life and the art or s kill required to endure and affirm it is the exercise of
"self-mastery". Through rigorous self-questioning the trust in life disappears
and life becomes "a problem". And yet, Nietzsche encourages us, we should
not "jump" (äs rightful or legitimate readers of Nietzsche we are to imitate
chewing cows not fretful frogs) to the conclu.sion that this realization makes
one despondent and gloomy. Love of life is still possible, Nietzsche teils us,
only that now "one loves differently. It is the love for a woman that causes
doubt in us". (FW "Preface" 3) In the end, what is truly important is that
one return from one's abysses and one's severest sicknesses "newborn". (FW
"Preface" 4) We have shed our skin, flown away and then returned home.
But although we have returned we are not the same but "changed". We have
become what we are. Now we are more subtle, more sophisticated, we have
"a second dangerous irinocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred
times subtler than one has ever been before". We need to be like the Greeks
who were superflcial, Nietzsche says, "out of profundity". (FW "Preface" 4)
Book V of the Gay Science^ which Nietzsche added in 1886 (the new edition
was published in 1887), contains many clues which are helpful to unravelling
the mystery of the overman's identity. In this book Nietzsche makes everything much more explicit than previously in his writings. He üow takes -it
upon himsclf to explain the meaning of his cheerfulness at the event-of God's
death (section 343); he reveals what it is that motivätes the unconditional
will to truth (section 344); he explairis why, from which ever way we approach
it, nihilism is our contemporary fate (section 346); he explains "unconditional
honest atheism" in terms of the destiny of German philosophy (Kaßt, Hegel,
Schopenhauer) (section 357); he clarifies the nature of his alleged misogyny
(section 363); he poses the question, what is romanticism? (section 370); and
he illuminates the identity of the overman (sections 377—383).
Who are the ones who are "over-man"? Only in the fifth.part of the
second edition to the Gay Science does Nietzsche explicitly address the matter.
The "ones" are the homeless o'f modern Europe whose destiny it is to be the
"children of the future". In the following passage Nietzsche demolishes many
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of the myths which surround the Interpretation of his worL It is also a key
passage for understandinga fateful äs it is and must be, the question of
"Nietzsche and pölitics", including his Opposition to the principal ideologies
of the modern epoch, such äs capitalism, liberalism, and socialism:
We children of the future, how could we be at home in this world today?
We feel disfavour for all ideals that tnight lead one to feel at home even in
this fragile, broken time of transition [...]
We "conserve" nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods;
we are not by any means "liberal"; we do not work for "progress"; we do
not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place
sing of the future: their song about "equal rights", "a free society", "no
more masters and no more servants" has no allure for us. We simply do not
consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established
on earth [...] we are delighted with all who love, äs we do, danger, war,
and adventure, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and
castrated. (FW 377)
What we see here is Nietzsche engaged in the important, but ultimately futile,
task of establishing for himself an audience, a "we". Such a task is futile
because it is something which lies "beyond" his control. His writings open
up the promise of a new future but also signal, both in their open-endedness
and in their call to create the new and destroy the old, the most frightful
and terrifying possibilities. Nietzsche himself clearly recognized this — it is
the destiny of the legislator — and even affirmed many of its worst aspects,
such äs slavery for example. The "necessity of new Orders" simply demands,
he informs us, "a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement
of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement". (FW 377)
Again Nietzsche names in this passage the "ones" who have travelled
"over" man äs "the good Europeans". Importantly, in the light of the above
question mark, he explicitly distances the homeless ones of modern Europe
from any association with "the mendacious racial self-admiration and racial
indecency that parades in Germany today ..." In section 382 he argues that
the ones who overcome man are by neccessity nameless because they are new
and "premature births of an äs yet unproven future". Nietzsche recognizes
that the attainment of a "superhuman well-being and benevolence" will appear
"inhuman" when it comes into confrontation with existing European morality
and seriousness.
It is in section 380 that the key to solving the identity of the overman is
to be found. It is one of the most crucial passages not only in part five pf
the Gay Science but in the whole of Nietzsche's corpus. It casts much light
on the meaning — and the difficulty — of the über in Nietzsche. Because of
its importance (its gravity) it is best to cite the passage in füll. A "wanderer"
is speaking:
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If one wouJd Hkc to scc our European morality for once äs it looks from a
distancc, and if one would Uke to measure it against other moraJities, past
and future, then one has to procecd like a wandere* who wants to know
how high the towers in a town are: he leavts the town. "Thoughts about
moral prejudices", if they are not meant to be prejudices about prejudices,
presuppose a positipn outside morality, some point beyond (Jenseits) good
and evil to which one has to risevciimb, or fly — and in the present case
at least a point beyond our good and evi], a freedom from everything
"European", by which I mean the süm of the imperious value judgements
that have become part of our flesh and blood. That one wants to go precisely
out there, up there, may be a minor madness, a peculiar and unreasonable
"you must" — for we seekers after knowledge also have our own idiosyn-r
cracies of "unfree will" — the question is whether one really can get up
there.
This may depend on manifold conditions. In the main the question is how
light or heavy we are — the problem of our "specific gravity". One has to
be very light to draw one's will to knowledge into such a distance and, äs it
were, over (über) one's time, to create for oneself eyes to survey rhillenia
and, moreover, clear skies in these eyes. One must have liberated oneself
from many things that oppress, inhibit, hold down, and make heavy precisely
us Europeans today. The human being of such a beyond (Jenseits) who wants
to behold the supreme measure of value of his time must first of all
"overcome" (überwinden) this time in hknself — this is the test of his strength
— and consequently not only his time but also his prior aversion and
contradiciton agawstMs time, his suffering frorn this time, his un-timeliness,
his romanticism ... (FW 380)
The key question remains: does Nietzsche speak for one or for more than one?
Does he speak for all or for none? Who can decide?
Conclusion: Contra Nehamas and Rorty
What conclusions can one derive from a reading of the 1886 prefäces, the
year in which Nietzsche provides vital clues äs to his ideiitity, ais Well äs
expressing his hopes and fears about his possible future readers? What does
Nietzsche's "daybreak" in 1806 teil us about his authorship, about its authoritVj itientity, and anxiety?
I would like to be provocative by contending that what is missing from
a great deal of Nietzsche-scholarship and Interpretation today is a quality
which Nietzsche himself valued highly and which he placed at the centre of
his work, namely: the capacity for self-parody. Even the most light-hearted,
playful readers of Nietzsche — the deconstructionistSj for example — can
seem very poker-faced and serious in their claims. And even, äs I.have had
occasion to witness, the anti-christs lack a sense of humour and take themselves, and their Nietzschean inheritance, fär too seriously. I often fear that
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Nietzsche-readers and Interpreters are in danger of turning themselves into a
new Community of ascetic priests.
Take, in this regard, a highly influential reading of Nietzsche — at least
in the Anglo-American world — developed by Alexander Nehamas and taken
up by the anti-föundationälist Richard Rorty. In his celebrated book of 1985,
Nietzsche* Life äs Literatur^ Nehamas presents us with a "Nietzsche" who
creates himself into a work of art, a literary character who is beyond good
and evil, supra-ethical, and totally singular and unique. This is the "aestheticist" Nietzsche (p. 3) who, out of the fragments of his life, out of its
suffering, pain, but also its joy and overcomings, transforms the multifarious
parts into a unified, coherent, organic whole. The test of one's ability to
weave the discordant parts of one's contingent, inessential seif into such a
whole is conducted through submitting oneself to the imperative of the nonor extra-moral thought-experiment of the eternal return of the same. Nehamas
writes:
The eternal rccurrence is therefore not a a theory of the world but a view
of the ideal life. It holds that a life is justified only if one would want to
have again the same life one already had, since, äs the will to power shows,
no other life can ever be possible. The eternal recurrence therefore holds
that our life is justified only if we fashion it in such a way that we would
want it to be exactly äs it had been already.12
The ultimate test in life, therefore, is whether one can liberate oneself from
one's entanglement in the past in order to create anew for the future, so that
it is possible for one to be "born again". For Nietzsche, Nehamas believes,
"redemption" from the past becomes possible by willing the attitude of
positive and unequivocal affirmation which is contained in the "thus I willed
it" declaration of the backward/forward-looking glance of the eternal return.
This is the "moment" of redemption.
In spite of Nehamas's warning that a moral philosophy is not to be found
in Nietzsche, this is precisely what Richard Rorty takes from his reading of
Nietzsche in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Rorty writes äs an
advocate of the "liberal ironist". This is a person so post-modern they no
longer believe in truth, in depth, indeed, in anything, and yet, who nevertheless holds that life is still worth living, believes that being cruel towards
others is "the worst thing we do", and who cultivates an attitude of irony
towards this lack of truth and depth in life ("For liberal ironists, there is no
answer to the question 'Why not be cruel?'", p.xv). There can be np
transhistorical "grounds" for any of our beliefs, values, or commitments.
12
A. Nehamas, Nietzsche. Life äs Uttraturt, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985,
p.7.
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144
Kcith Ariscll-Pcarsori
Self-knowledge is self-creation: a task compoundcd by the fact that the "seif
does not exist, it is a mere artifice by which we create a fictional "ccotre" to
life. He writcs:
The drama of an individual human life, or of the history of humanity äs a
whole, is not one in which a preexistent goal is triumphantly reached or
tragically not reached. Neither a cpnstant external reality nor an unfaiiing
interior source of Inspiration forms a background for such dramas. Instead,
to see one's life, or die life of one's Community, äs a dramatic narrative is
to see it äs a process of Nietzschean self-overcoming. The paradigm of such
a narrative is the life of the genius who can say of the relevant portion of
the past, "Thus I willed it", because she has found a way to describe that
past which the past never knew, and thereby found a seif to be which her
precursors never knew was possible.l3
Freedom is equated with ceaseless and'perpetual re-description and rein vention of one's life. Rorty has an important qualification to make, however,
to bis conception, and this is that self-.creation rmast be restricted to the
private domain and not be allowed to overflow irito the public realm. Rorty
is able to reach the mind^blowing conclusion that it is possible for a modern
human being to be, "in alternate moments, Nietzsche and j. S. Mi]l"i14
What is problematic about Rorty's conception of aesthetic freedom (the
freedom to invent oneself) is not that it rests on a dubioxis priväte-public
distinction —'though such a distinction is deeply problematic in bis work —
but rather that it is so-incredibly idealistic: in' the midst of the facticity of
history, of tradition, of one's Community, and so on, it is presumed that the
individual has almost total ("Sartrean") freedom to re-shape and re-describ*e
their life at will. Moreover, äs Daniel Conway has astutely pointed out, the
narrative strategies of self-creation advocated by Rorty for us to pursue
"engender solipsistic, world-denying strategies of redemption ..·. The narrative self-creation that Rorty recommends would oblige many (or most) of us
to adopt the ascetic strategy of world-denial that is characteristic of slave
morality".15 Aesthetic freedom (aütonomy) on this accöunt is not, äs it is in
Nietzsche, an activity that 1s part of the public agon, overflowing with
meaning and significänce, but has become something domesticated and of no
cultural import or importance. Rorty invites us to turn our bacKs on the
world and to concentrate our energies on our private fantasies (this is what
Conway means by this kind of 'freedom' resembling that of a slave rnorality).
13
R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity> Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989,
p. 29.
14
Ibid., p. 85.
15
D.W. Conway, "Thus Spoke Rorty: The Perus of Narrative Self-Creadon?>, Pbiiosophy and
Literature, 15 (1991), pp. 103-110, p. 107 and p. 103.
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Toward the Übermensch
145
What is missing fromthe portrait of Nietzsche we find in Nehamas and
Rorty is any appreciation of the anxiety informing Nietzsche's authorship.
Instead, we are offered a classic, archetypal account of the artist äs genius,
äs the figure who is in control, who is master of his own destiny, and who
is able to construct for himself a coherent identity in the absence of a stable
"metaphysical" seif. Nehamas and Rorty take Nietzsche's remarks about his
identity — about how he became what he was in Ecce Homo, for example —
at face value and do not see the self-doubt, the fear and trembling, the
contempt and the horror, and above all, the mocking tones of self-parody in
Nietzsche's presentation of his authorship. Nehamas and Rorty have been
seduced by his style and language into thinking that Nietzsche's heroic effort
at self-overcqming offers some kind of example capable of imitation in a
post-modern age in which a universalist ethics is dead. But I believe that the
importance of the 1886/7 prefaces in Nietzsche's oeuvre is that they reveal a
Nietzsche uncertain of himself and his self-appointed task, a Nietzsche worried
by his future audience of readers who will do all sorts of mischief with him.
"1886" shows us an enigmatic Nietzsche, one who wishes to conceal himself
from his readers and who enjoys playing all sorts of tricks on them.
The question I am left with at the end of these reflections is this: is
Nietzsche now part of the comedy of our existence, or are we still living in
an age of nihilism in which we have yet to learn, not only how to create new
values, but even how to laugh at Nietzsche's example? Where does Nietzsche
fit into the tragedy and comedy of life, its eternal cycle of destruction and
creätion? Is he, äs he claimed, the bringer of glad tidings? Is he the comedian
of the ascetic ideal? Or is he perhaps a new and dangerous kind of ascetic
priest who seduces his readers into believing that they know how to become
those that they are by following his example? (see especially The Gay Science
section 1) Reader, it is time ... it is time: go slowly, go slon>ly\
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