Nietzsche's Death of God and Italian Philosophy
286
Nietzsche's Death of God and Italian Philosophy
286eBook
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Overview
Nietzsche's abyssal announcement of the Death of God - "mein Wort für Ideale" - highlights the necessity to rethink the connection between theory and praxis. This is particularly evident in the works of Italian thinkers such as Vattimo, Cacciari, Colli, Masini e Severino, who in large part have read Nietzsche's philosophy through the philosophical filter of Marxian culture, trying to show the emancipatory charge present in Nietzsche's work and the necessity to rethink the boundaries of the political, over the limits of political theology. Emilio Carlo Corriero demonstrates how the reception of Nietzsche's pronouncement, with its theoretical consequences, reveals the specific character of Italian philosophy, its eclectic attitude and its attention to the practical-political meaning of philosophical thought, but also its constant reflection on the concept of history and the origin of Being.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783488148 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/31/2016 |
| Series: | Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 286 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Translated by Vanessa di Stefano MA.
Read an Excerpt
Nietzsche's Death of God and Italian Philosophy
By Emilio Carlo Corriero, Vanessa Di Stefano
Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Emilio Carlo CorrieroAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-814-8
CHAPTER 1
Nietzsche's Actuality or Untimeliness?
NIETZSCHE AND 'LES TERRIBLES SIMPLIFICATEURS'
In recreating the cultural climate in which Nietzsche was received in post-fascist Italy, one must also closely consider the Nazist interpretations and appropriation of his theory, since the philosopher's reception in the second half of the twentieth century was based on the assertion that his theory was politically untimely.
It seems superfluous now to think in terms of the political actuality or untimeliness of a thinker like Nietzsche, yet considering the controversy in recent years over Heidegger and the publication of his Black Notebooks, one realises that the topic can probably not be ignored.
Heidegger's case is, of course, different. He lived during the time of national socialism and in 1933 gave the fateful rectorate speech where, to all intents and purposes, he publicly stated his affinity with the regime. Today the hysterical polemic buffeting around the infamous Black Notebooks, with the incredible 'discovery' of Heidegger's ideological proximity to Nazism and the subsequent ludicrous mea culpas by eminent Heidegger scholars, seems to ignore the historical evidence of facts known for decades and which have not prevented anyone from studying or interpreting Heidegger, a thinker who, however, never offered a moral or political philosophy, but rather always remained on an exquisitely theoretical plane.
If the 'discovery' of a Nazist Heidegger leaves one puzzled at best, in Nietzsche's case, who died in 1900 (though already intellectually in 1889, thanks to his psychological collapse in Turin), the accusation is of having sympathised with and influenced a cultural climate that would inexorably lead to Nazism, to the point where he was considered the prophet and inspiration for the dark decades of Nazism in Germany. However far the Nazi appropriation went, in and of itself already very problematic and controversial, as we shall see the image of Nietzsche as the Nazi prophet and unwitting ideologist remained a constant perception for the average European intellectual in the years and decades that followed the collapse of the Third Reich.
If between the 1950s and 1960s, in Italy, the name Nietzsche was still linked to Nazi ideology, and approaching the philosopher required a radical purging of the deliberate posthumous manipulations of some of his excerpts, as well as of dreary clichés, then in the years that followed and almost as a repercussion, Nietzsche became a milestone in the European philosophical consciousness that every important thinker of the twentieth century was compared to, often with a light-heartedness that betrayed the original Nietzschean theory, and sometimes deliberately neglecting those unpleasant and somewhat uncouth traits which nevertheless still typified Nietzsche's work in part. Today I believe I can say that in Western culture in general, Nietzsche's works are no longer overshadowed by vitalistic-style political misrepresentations. Interpretations such as those made by Löwith, Jaspers, Bataille and Heidegger had the merit of getting rid of most of the comments that risked twisting Nietzsche's 'malleable' expressions. It is true, however, that numerous works and interpretations that contributed to Nietzsche's 'fate' had focused on the Nietzschean tension upon overcoming the present condition, exacerbating an alleged vitalistic characteristic that would be translated into the aspiration to become the Übermensch, constantly misunderstood as a form of a subject/individual developed in its singularity and exceptionality.
As noted by Giorgio Penzo, it is more than likely that the misunderstandings that occurred in the early twentieth century in Germany about Nietzsche's theory derived from an approach that considered the dimension of life as the ultimate principle of philosophising. This way of considering life becomes the focus primarily in opposition to the horizon of the intellect, in an a-rational dimension, that is a dimension without rationalism so to speak, that ends up making the philosophy of life a sort of metaphysics of the irrational, that is, the opposite of the rational, as per Lukács' interpretation. Specifically, those thinkers that were close to national socialism emphasised the biological concept of life, they intertwined the heroic character of existence and, in accordance with a typically Hegelian setting, they expected to show a new metaphysical concept that expresses itself in the deepest way within the myth of Germanism. 'If one bears in mind this metaphysics of the irrational, that wants to be the philosophy of national socialism,' Penzo writes, 'it is clear why the theoreticians of this movement, who thought similarly to Nietzsche, give a very particular interpretation of his problematic nature. From there, the creation of the myth of Nietzsche. With his theory of the Übermensch, Nietzsche would become the forerunner of national socialism and would bring the historical-existential phenomenon of Germanism to its ultimate expression, acquiring a metaphysical value with some authors.'
Certainly, the intention with which a philosopher's theory is approached affects the reading of it by pushing the reader along a path of rigid constraints that are impossible to overcome without incurring obvious contradictions. Furthermore, interpreting Nietzsche by starting with the assumption that his is a 'system' means looking for a meaning, a justification, a reason, the founding of individual aphorisms, a progression starting with the writings from his youth building up to a compilation which is then abandoned, of his systematic work par excellence: The Will to Power. The interpretations that strove to render Nietzsche's theory politically relevant, all had at their core the idea that the fragments of The Will to Power summarised the original Nietzschean thought, to the point of creating a theoretical system that, however, was never realised during the life of the philosopher. As is known, and as will become clear during the course of the book, Nietzsche flees from 'the will to system', even describing it as 'a disease of character'. Besides, the same 'polyvocal' character of Nietzsche's expressions induces the interpreter to abandon a hermeneutic that presupposes a 'system' at its basis. If one does not want one's understanding of Nietzsche's work to simply be a neutralisation, as much in the sense of a forced actualisation as in that of an unfaithful acquittal that insists on the untimeliness of all his works, then one must renounce a reading that intends to reconstruct Nietzsche's philosophy in a systematic form.
However, regardless of which interpretation one chooses to follow, the interpreter's honesty is absolutely fundamental, as well as the consideration of the works in their entirety, without cuts or omissions, without falsifications or manipulations. The poetic nature of Nietzsche's work renders the task of the interpreter difficult, and often Nietzsche's expressions appear enigmatic, begging to be unveiled, to even be continued, and this peculiarity gives rise to the freest of readings, often with aims other than a passion for the truth. In the following pages we will be tracing Nietzsche's unlikely responsibility for the development of the Nazist ideology, showing on the one hand how laughable such an idea is, and on the other highlighting how some of the Nazi culture appropriated Nietzsche's work, and thus representing the fateful confirmation of the prophecy made by Nietzsche himself, who in fact feared falling victim to such terribles simplificateurs. The leonine quality, the harshness towards oneself, the courage and intellectual honesty were thus degraded to empty buzzwords, precepts of oppression and violence expressed by that ressentiment of the 'unsuccessful' that had its most sinister manifestation in the followers of Nazism.
According to Hans Langreder, a young German scholar who in 1970 presented a dissertation to the University of Kiel on Die Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche im dritten Reich (The Discussion On (and With) Nietzsche in the Third Reich), in the 12 years of Nazi Germany there was in fact no unanimous opinion on Nietzsche. During his research, he did not find any consistency within the Nazi ideology and culture either, and instead noted the presence of a positive and negative Nietzsche-Bild (Nietzsche-Image). Among the ideologists of the Reich, some sought to bend Nietzsche's theory to their concept of the world, others found the troublesome, individualistic and impolitical Nietzsche completely unacceptable. Officially, the positive Nietzsche-Bild was preferred. Beyond Langreder's close analysis, the key person to annex Nietzsche's theory into Hitlerism was undoubtedly Alfred Bäumler. Before becoming a national socialist, Bäumler was above all a follower of Nietzsche. After Hitler seized power and his own participation in the burning of 'non-German' books, Bäumler was called to the chair of political pedagogy at Berlin University, a role that was specifically created for him. Shortly thereafter, Bäumler became the director of the Science Division in the department of Hitler's government that controlled the cultural and philosophical training and education of everyone in the national Socialist Party, the so-called Rosenberg Department.
As mentioned, Bäumler's passion for Nietzsche predates the rise of Hitler. Already in the early 1930s he began to be known as an editor and interpreter of the work of the philosopher. Initially he published two collections of texts, taken from The Will to Power, entitled Nietzsches Philosophie in Selbstzeugnisse. I. Das System. II. Die Krisis Europas (Nietzsche's philosophy expounded with Nietzsche's own texts and declarations. First part: The system. Second part: The crisis in Europe). Immediately after, he published Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker (Nietzsche: Philosopher and Politician, 1931), which was Bäumler's true interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. In addition to the publications of Nietzsche's works, another fact that revived the interest in the philosopher was that at about the same time Erich F. Podach published the medical reports of the Jena mental hospital for the first time, where Nietzsche had been admitted in the first two years of his illness (1989–1990). The document caused a sensation among the public, triggering heated debates in which Nietzsche's octogenarian sister tried to save her brother's honour, which had been compromised by the syphilitic infection clearly mentioned in the clinical journal. Nietzsche's private life became the target of a demythologisation drive, which was a reaction to the image of the 'holy' laic that had always been touted by the Weimar Archive.
Bäumler's intention was to interpret Nietzsche as a philosopher and not simply as a 'virtuous of a style which was profound yet concise at the same time', as was much in vogue in Germany at that time; in short, not simply like the poet in Zarathustra. For Bäumler, the real Nietzsche emerges from the consideration of his later works, and the public attention paid to the 'average and more personal' works (Bäumler here refers to Nietzsche's works published between 1878 and 1882) is connected to an under-evaluation of Nietzsche's later and posthumous work. Bäumler was therefore convinced that Nietzsche's true philosophy lay in his posthumous papers, and he also believed that in order to judge Nietzsche's work it was necessary to take on the job of logically connecting his works, something that, according to Bäumler, Nietzsche did not have time to do. Bäumler's aim was, deep down, to 'force' Nietzsche's philosophy into a kind of theoretical premise for a 'Germanic' ideation policy. Bäumler accepted without any criticism (unlike Jaspers and Heidegger, despite the fact that the latter prefers, in fact, the fragments of Wille zur Macht at the expense of other works of Nietzsche) the compilation that made history under the title of The Will to Power by Peter Gast and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. While acknowledging that The Will to Power, despite having a certain consistency within it, was not a finished book, and that on the basis of a future critical edition (after some corrections) one could not in any case have achieved what Nietzsche aimed to achieve by collecting those famous fragments, Bäumler had no hesitation in declaring The Will to Power as the main work of the philosopher. Indeed, the posthumous fragments in their incompleteness had a sort of esoteric value for Bäumler, almost as if Nietzsche said what he really thought in his posthumous papers. A similar thought, even if supported by other theoretical assumptions, would, for that matter, underpin Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari's critical edition, who, as we shall see, believed that Nietzsche essentially wrote in two expressive registers and in two different moments, one esoteric, intimate, the other exoteric, aimed at the reader. What interests us here is that the theoretical value assigned by Bäumler to The Will to Power was directed at actualising Nietzsche's thought through an openly political lens. Bäumler considered Nietzsche a radical and passionate atheist who, unlike Plato, had the courage of reality, and who, like Heraclitus, would embody a philosophy of becoming and of the struggle: a philosophy that translates, in fact, into will to power. Bäumler talks of a fight against consciousness, against the spirit, that Nietzsche led both theoretically and in practice, in favour of life. In order to bend Nietzsche to his interpretation, Bäumler was forced to uproot him from his historical and cultural context. Thus in Bäumler's work there is no trace of the anti-teleological Nietzsche, and as far as he is concerned Nietzsche did not live in nineteenth-century Europe, nor did he have anything in common with intellectuals such as Stendhal, Baudelaire, Dostoevsty, Tolstoy. For Bäumler, it is as if Nietzsche never spoke that sentence in Ecce Homo: 'Although I am a decadent I am also the reverse of a decadent.' In the end Bäumler was even forced to make the fundamental knowledge on which Thus Spoke Zarathustra is based, that is, the theory of the eternal recurrence of the same, disappear from his systematisation of Nietzsche's thought, even if in the plans for The Will to Power, Nietzsche had intended this theory to be the climax of his final book. On the basis of the adjudicators and mutilations that have been mentioned, Bäumler could prepare the decapitated Nietzsche, whom he needed for the second part of his operation: a pseudo-revolutionary political philosophy. In Bäumler's interpretation, the anti-German Nietzsche becomes a kind of Germanic warrior; his Germanism is not reasoned out, but simply and irrefutably stated, with phrases such as 'the immanence of Nietzsche's philosophy should be seen together with the heroic aim that it proposes'; 'what truly Germanic sentiment would side with the defence that Zarathustra makes for the people against the State'; 'Nietzsche subconsciously expresses the entire secret of German history'. To corroborate his political arguments, Bäumler sets the Greeks against the Romans and wants Nietzsche to play along with him, since in his view the Romans were the founders of that non-German thing called the State (and here his attack is aimed at the Weimar Republic, which was a non-German State). But the attempt is unfeasible. As Nietzsche says in Twilight of the Idols (1888): 'One will recognise in my writings, even in my Zarathustra, a very serious ambition for Roman style, for the "aera perennius" [more enduring than brass] in style. I received absolutely no such strong impressions from the Greeks.' Then again in The Antichrist (1888): 'That which stood aere perennius, the Imperium Romanum, the most grandiose form of organisation under difficult conditions which has hitherto been achieved, in comparison with which everything before and everything since is patchwork, bungling, dilettantism – these holy anarchists made it an "act of piety" to destroy "the world", that is to say, the Imperium Romanum, until not one stone was left standing on another – until even Teutons and other such ruffians could become master of it.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nietzsche's Death of God and Italian Philosophy by Emilio Carlo Corriero, Vanessa Di Stefano. Copyright © 2016 Emilio Carlo Corriero. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd..
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