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It is my belief that both the defenders and the detractors of Nietzsche ignore
the substantive basis to his comprehension of Modernity. This comprehension
has two main aspects. The first is a diagnosis of nihilism to describe the sickness
of modern human beings, the malaise we suffer from; and the second is a
projected overcoming of nihilism, which consists in preparing the ground for a
philosophical paideia or education, namely a philosophy of the future which
proclaims itself to be 'beyond good and evil'.
The starting-point must be to recognise the crucial importance of the concept
of nihilism in Nietzsche's thinking. If nothing is true, and everything is permitted,
if G o d is dead and a crisis of faith in values is to be the fate of occidental humanity
for at least the next two centuries, then all philosophy from now on, including
Nietzsche's own, is caught up in the web of nihilism. If it is the case that truth can
no longer be legitimated in the old ways (the ways of the ascetic ideal), if our faith
in the categories of reason has been severely tested and we must now call into
question our will to truth, then what becomes of the status of forms of truth and
knowledge, including the truthfulness of this truth-claim about the condition of
nihilism? It is this fundamental epistemological conundrum which, in my
opinion, accounts for many of the paradoxes and contradictions of Nietzsche's
philosophy. Nietzsche's problematic response to nihilism is to argue that
philosophy should not concern itself with 'truth' but with 'power' with the
enhancement and overcoming of 'life'.
It is important to realise that for Nietzsche the crisis of Modernity is in large
part a political one, a problem of legitimacy. In Twilight of the ldols, for example,
he construes Modernity in terms of a crisis of political authority. I quote:
Criticism of Modernity--Our institutions are no longer fit for anything: everyone is
unanimous about that. But the fault lies not in them but in us. Having lost all the
instincts out of which institutions grow, we are losing the institutions themselves,
because we are no longer fit for them... The entire West has lost those instincts out
of which institutions grow, out of which the future grows: perhaps nothing goes so
much against the grain of its 'modem spirit' as this. One lives for today, one lives
very fast--one lives very irresponsibly: it is precisely this which one calls 'freedom'.
That which makes institutions institutions is despised, hated, rejected so that
whenever the word 'authority' is so much as heard one believes oneselfin danger of
a new slavery. The decadence in the valuating instinct of our politicians, our
political parties, goes so deep that they instinctively prefer that which leads to
dissolution, that which hastens the end... (l~ilight of the Idols, 'Expeditions of an
Untimely Man', section 39).
For Nietzsche the capacity to build a new future depends on our ability to see a
fundamental continuity with the strengths of the past, namely traditions. It is this
which is lacking in Modernity, and which results in a lack of direction, an
ignorance of where we have come from and of where we are going. This leads
Nietzsche to making his crucial point, namely, that we moderns are no longer
political animals in the fundamentally classical Greek sense that we know
ourselves, and can organise ourselves, as 'material for society'. The crucial
passage here is section 356 of The Gay Science. In this passage Nietzsche
describes the Modern age as one in which Modern human beings are not only
actors--people in all ages are role-players--but know themselves to be playing a
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Nietzsche's Post-Modern Identity from Epoch to Ethos
119
role, have become self-conscious o f this fact, and, as a result, become actors. For
Nietzsche this aspect o f Modern life has far-reaching consequences for politics
and for social life in general:
It is thus that the maddest and most interesting ages of histoxy always emerge, when
the 'actors', a/l kinds of actors, become the real masters. As this happens, another
human type is disadvantaged more and more and finally made impossible: above
all, the great 'architects': The strength to build becomes paralysed; the courage to
make plans that encompass the distant future is discouraged; those with a genius for
organisation become scarce: who would still dare to undertake projects that would
require thousands of years for their completion? For what is dying out is the
fundamental faith that would enable us to calculate, to promise, to anticipate the
future in plans of such scope, and to sacrifice the future to them--namely, the faith
that man has value and meaning only insofar as he is a stone in a great edifice; and to
that end he must be solid first of all, a 'stone'--and above all not an actor!
Nietzsche continues, reaching his dramatic conclusion:
To say it briefly (for a long time people will keep silent about it): What will not be
built any more from now on, and cannot be built any more, is--a society
(Gesellschaft) in the old sense of that word; to build that, everything is lacking,
above all the material. All of us are no longer materialfor a society; this is a truth for
which the time has come.
Nietzsche goes on to speak in a sarcastic manner of socialism and its failure to
appreciate this point. Instead, it prefers to believe that it is possible to cultivate a
new human type out of 'wooden iron'.
Given that he sees socialism as na~'ve and unrealistic, how does Nietzsche
envisage a possible overcoming of nihilism? Nietzsche reaches certain antihumanist conclusions, espousing an 'aristocratic radicalism' which rests on a
number of dangerous fantasies, chiefly, that it is possible and desirable--through
forms of slavery--to 'sacrifice' the existence of the many for that of the few. What
is clear for Nietzsche, and which now appears as one o f the central features of the
post-Modern affliction, is that the rule of universal, unconditional morality has
been rendered obsolete. We have to learn to live in a period of decay, corruption,
and experimentation:
All sorts of new what-fors and wherewithals; no shared formulas any longer;
misunderstanding allied with disrespect; decay; corruption, and the highest desires
gruesomely entangled; the genius of the race overflowing from all cornucopias of
good,and bad; a calamitous simultaneity of spring and autumn, full of new charms
and veils that characterise young, still unexhausted, still unwearied corruption.
Again danger is there, the mother ofmorais, great danger, this time transposed into
the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the alley, into one's own child,
into one's own heart, into the most personal and secret recesses of wish and will: and
what may the moral philosophers emerging in this age have tO preach now? (Beyond
Good and Evil, section 262).
For Nietzsche, therefore, Modernity is characterised by a loss of universality. A
key passage here is section 108 of Daybreakin which he informs we Moderns that
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Keith Ansell-Pearson
it is 'trivial and irrational' for us to want to impose the demands of morality upon
mankind since what is lacking in the Modern epoch is precisely that which would
give sanction to such a desire, namely a universally-recognised goal that would
enable us to decide collectively what is the right course of action for humanity to
pursue. 'Nihilism' is thus the name Nietzsche gives to describe the condition
which afflicts our epistemology, our politics and our ethics. It is a condition in
which no proposition is believed to be true in any objective and universal sense,
and in which all political structures are revealed to be based on lies (some noble,
others not so noble). The strengths and weaknesses of Nietzsche's writing,
including its dangerous excesses, are a result of the fact that his thought is itself
determined by the logic of nihilism it so perspicaciously exposes.
I agree with Agnes Heller and Ference Feh6r that the term 'post-Modern'
should be taken to signify neither a new historical epoch nor a fundamental
rupture with Modernity, but rather a particular and peculiar way of experiencing
ourselves as 'Modern'. 5 Where they perhaps go wrong is in suggesting that to be
Modern or post-Modern is a matter of choice rather than an affliction which all
Moderns in some sense bear. For human beings to live in the present and be
aware of themselves as 'post-Modern' is to live 'in the present while at the same
time, both temporally as well as spatially, they are being after'. Or, as Nietzsche
says, we are compelled to be human beings who must become accustomed to
'living beyond' the 'old morality' (Beyond Good and Evil, section 262).
Nietzsche's attempt to think through the problem of nihilism can, I believe,
usefully be construed in terms of a Modern epoch to describe the historical
actuality of our present and a post-Modern ethos to designate the condition
which results from a growing awareness that to be modem is to live in anxiety and
uncertainty.6 Nietzsche's writings explore the possibility of a whole new way of
feeling and thinking about existence. The aim of his writing is, through the
cultivation of a philosophical training, to find a way of surviving the Modern
nihilistic condition. What is required is that we train ourselves in the 'art of
transfiguration' (in philosophy) (The Gay Silence, Preface). Nietzsche gives some
hints as to what such a training might involve in the new preface he wrote to the
second edition of The Gay Science and the new fifth part of the book, both of
which he wrote in 1886-1887. He speaks in section 377 of that work, for example,
of a 'we'--as in 'we want to become those who we are: the ones who create
themselves and give themselves their own laws' (The Gay Science, section
335)--in terms of the 'children of the future'. His philosophy, his gaya a scienza, is
directed at all those Europeans who feel homeless in the present, this 'fragile,
broken time of transition'. These 'people' are neither reactionaries or
revolutionaries, but fundamentally untimely:
We 'conserve' nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not
by 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 slaves' has no allure for us.
Nietzsche explicitly states in this section that his philosophy of the future wants
nothing to do with either the position of racism or the petty politics of
nationalism, both of which appeared to him at the time he was writing to be the
twin dynamic forces propelling the motor of Modern European politics.
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Nietzsche's Post-Modern Identity from Epoch to Ethos
121
We who are homeless are too manifold and mixed racially in our descent, being
'modem men', and consequently do not feel tempted to participate in the
mendacious racial self-admiration and rac/al/indecencythat parades in Germany
today as a sign of a German way of thi~tlri~ ~ that is dOllb~yfalse and obscene
among the people of the 'historical sense'. We are, in one word--and let this be our
word of honour--good Europeo~, the heirs of Europe, the rich, oversuppfied,but
also overly obligated heirs of thousands of years of European spirit.
Section 1 of the original edition of The Gay Science instructively sets up the
way in which Nietzsche seeks to express his 'post-Modem' response to the crisis
of truth and values which afflicts the Modem condition. It is entitled 'The
Teachers of the Purpose of Existence'. Nietzsche begins by arguing that one of the
strongest instincts of the human herd which can be found operating in both men
of benevolence and men of evil, is the instinct to do what is good for the preservation of the human race. Already Nietzsche anticipates his later philosophy of
seeing things 'beyond good and evil'. We may think it appropriate or correct to
divide human beings into good and evil types. However, when we look at things
from the perspective of 'large-scale accounting' we discover that such a division
is all too simple, human, all too human if you like. For 'even the most harmful
man may really be the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the
species'. Furthermore:
Hatred, the mischievous delight in the misfortune of others, the lust to rob and
dominate, and whatever else is called evil belongs to the most amazing economy of
the preservation of the species. To be sure, this economyis not afraid of high prices,
of squandering, and it is on the whole extremelyfoolish. Still, it isproventhat it has
preserved our race so far.
The most important aspect of section 1 of The Gay Science, for the purposes of
clarifying Nietzsche's post-Modern identity, is the demand he makes that in order
to bear the tragic nature of our present condition and, ultimately, in order to
overcome it, it is necessary to cultivate the art of laughter, of langhing 'out of the
whole truth'. When we are able to laugh at the 'truth' (the truth which reveals that
the preservation of the species is everythins, that of the individual nothing), then
laughter will forge an alliance with wisdom and we shall have the 'gay science'.
For the present, however, Nietzsche says, 'the comedy of existence has not yet
'become conscious' of itself. For the present, we still live in the age of tragedy, the
age of moralities and religions'. Nietzsche defines the peculiarity of the human
animal in terms of a fundamental need to raise, and find an answer to, the
question of the purpose of existence. We cannot be content with existing, but
must raise the question of its aim and value. What the'ethical teacher' forgets, or
ignores, however, is that his or her teaching on the purpose of existence will
inevitably, owing to the pitiless logic of time, be seen as comical. The insight at
which Nietzsche arrives, in conclusion, is that all of this--laughter, gay wisdom,
and the tragic--is necessary to existence and the preservation of the species. He
writes:
Consequently. Consequently. O, do you understand me, my brothers? Do you
understand this new law of ebb and flood? There is a time for us too!
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Keith Ansell-Pearson
Here Nietzsche recognises that the time of the children of the future will one day
come, but that it too, like all revolutions, will inevitably meet a comic fate. What
is required is the cultivation of a kind of conscious innocence in which we affirm
truthfully the insight that we know the lie to be a lie and, moreover, that we know
that our transfiguration of reality will inevitably experience a period of decay and
corruption, and result in another period of transition and self-overcoming. Do
we have the strength, the fortitude, and the courage, to be able to laugh at this
tragic insighff Are we able to laugh at our seriousness on this matter? Are we able
to return from our sickness 'with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more
childlike and yet a hundred times subtler' than we have ever been before7 (The
Gay Science, Preface 4).
Nietzsche demands a new style of thinking and a new attitude towards life. In
section 382 in the fifth book of The Gay Science he speaks of the 'new, nameless'
ones and, the 'premature births of an as yet unproven future', who require a new
health, tougher, more audacious and gayer than any previous health. These ones
of the yet undecided future must adopt a playful attitude towards the present.
Moreover, they must play naively--'that is, not deliberately but from
overflowing power and abundance'--with everything that has so far been
understood as being holy, good, sacrosanct, and divine. This is Nietzsche's ideal
of a 'superhuman well-being and benevolence' which must appear 'inhuman'
when it comes into contact with all things human, all too human, for it
transforms all 'earthly seriousness' into a joyful wisdom through the power of
intoxicated laughter. Nietzsche ends this section by anticipating the new tragic
age his thought seeks to instigate:
... in spite of all of this, it is perhaps only with him that great seriousnessreally
begins, that the real question mark is posed for the first time, that the destiny of the
soul changes, the hand moves forward, and the tragedy begins.
Nietzsche's texts pose a challenge to their readers: will they respond to his
depiction of nihilism in terms of despair? Or maybe in terms of resignation? Or
perhaps in terms of resentment and anger? Or will they, as he hopes, and as he
seeks to educate them, respond in terms of a lightness and gaiety of touch, in
terms of a celebration of their dual nature, both tragic and comic, in terms of a
new-found and newborn conscious innocence, and in terms of a playful wisdom
in which they are able, perhaps for the first time, to laugh at their seriousness and
to take their laughter seriously?
Keith Ansell-Pearson
University of Warwick
NOTES
For a much more detailed interpretation of this question of Nietzsche's 'post-Modem'
identity see my essays 'Who is the Obermensch?Time, Truth, and Woman in Nietzsche',
Journal of the History of Ideas (April-June, 1992), and 'Towards the Obermensch:
Reflections on the Year of lqietzsche's Daybreak', Nietzsel~-$tudien (1993).
History of European Ideas
Nietzsche's Post-Modern Identity from Epoch to Ethos
123
Throughout the essay I have adopted the practice of slightly modifying the existing
translations of Nietzsche by Hollingdale and Kaufmann without explicitly stating so.
1. See J. Habermas, The PhiiosophicalDiscourse of Modernity, trans, by F.G. Lawrence
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
2. See J. Derrida, Spurs. Nietzsche Styles, trans, by B. Harlow (Chicago: University of
Chieago Press, 1979).
3. M. Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
4, W. van der Will, 'Nietzsche and Postmodernism', paper delivered at the annual
conference of the Nietzsche Society of Great Britain held at Warwick University,
April 1991.
5. F. Feh~r and A. Heller, The Postmodern Political Condition (Oxford: Polity Press,
1988), p. 1.
6. I have borrowed this distinction from David Owen. See his review essay,
on my work 'The Judgement of Nietmche: Philosophy, Politics, Modernity', History
of Human Sciences (Autumn 1992).
Volume 20, Nos 1-3, January 1995