eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
In the years before his collapse into madness, Nietzsche completed his masterful Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as six additional works that developed a new, more systematic teaching rooted in the idea of the eternal recurrence. Cutting against the grain of current Nietzsche scholarship, Michael Allen Gillespie presents this later thought as Nietzsche himself intended, drawing not only on his published works, but also on notes and correspondence discussing works he was unable to complete.
Gillespie argues that the idea of the eternal recurrence transformed Nietzsche’s thinking and provided the grounding for the new logic, ontology, theology, and anthropology he intended to create with the aim of a “revaluation of all values.” Nietzsche believed that the final culmination of this thought would enable the redemption of humanity. At the same time, he recognized its terrifying, apocalyptic consequences, since it would also produce wars of unprecedented ferocity and destruction.
Through his careful analysis, Gillespie reveals a more radical and more dangerous Nietzsche than the humanistic or democratic Nietzsche we commonly think of today—but also a thinker deeply at odds with the one many imagined as the forefather of Fascism. Gillespie’s essays examine Nietzsche’s final teaching and provides an in-depth critical examination of its meaning for us today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226476919 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 266 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Nietzsche's Final Teaching
By Michael Allen Gillespie
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2017 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-47691-9
CHAPTER 1
Nietzsche and the Anthropology of Nihilism
It has become commonplace to portray Nietzsche as the preeminent philosopher of nihilism. This reading, however, is highly questionable, since the term "nihilism" does not appear in his notes until 1880 or in his published work until 1886. In fact, nihilism is only one in a series of concepts that Nietzsche employed in his attempt to come to terms with the spiritual crisis of European civilization. Moreover, he used it only briefly and then abandoned it in favor of the concept of decadence.
Nihilism for Nietzsche grew out of the death of God. God, as Nietzsche's Zarathustra argues, died out of pity for human beings, that is, because humans were no longer powerful enough to sustain him. The death of God is thus the reflection of a fundamental degeneration of humanity. Humans are no longer capable of creating or sustaining gods. As Nietzsche remarks in The Antichrist, "Almost two thousand years — and not a single new god" (KGW VI 3:183). The death of God, however, opens up new possibilities, freeing human beings in a way unknown since the tragic age of the Greeks.
According to Nietzsche, humanity can now become more than it has been or less, rising to glorious new heights or sliding into dark depths. In his final teaching, he associates the ascending path with Dionysus and the descending path with the Crucified. The future of humanity, in his view, rests upon our decision for one or the other of these two possibilities. The contrast could hardly be more stark — choosing the Dionysian path is saying Yes to life in all of its terrifying chaos and complexity; choosing the path of the Crucified is rejecting life in favor of an imaginary beyond. It is within this formulation of these two possibilities that Nietzsche deploys the concept of nihilism.
Nietzsche's use of the term "nihilism" almost certainly derives from his reading of Ivan Turgenev, but Dostoevsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Mikhail Bakunin, Alexandr Herzen, and Pyotr Kropotkin were also important sources for his understanding of the phenomenon (NL, KGW III 4:26; GS, KGW V 2:264; GM, KGW VI 2:424; NL, KGW VIII 1:2). Nihilism, for Nietzsche, thus initially meant Russian nihilism. However, Nietzsche was misled about the character of Russian nihilism by Prosper Mérimée and the French critic Paul Bourget, who wrongly believed that the nihilist movement in Russia was essentially Schopenhauerian. Nietzsche thus came to believe that nihilism was a consequence of resignation and rejection.
Although Nietzsche's use of the term "nihilism" is relatively rare in his published works, he developed the concept more fully in a series of late notes in which he lays out a morphology or genealogy of nihilism. First, he distinguishes incomplete and complete nihilism. Incomplete nihilism he identifies with positivism, materialism, and utilitarianism, which attempt to escape from nihilism without facing the problem of values that arises from the death of God. Complete nihilism, by contrast, is deeply troubled by God's death and the collapse of all eternal values. It takes one of two forms. It is either passive nihilism, which in Buddhistic fashion rejects the world, or it is active nihilism, which seeks to destroy it. Nietzsche identified the former with Schopenhauerianism and the latter with Russian nihilism. Both of these are fundamentally negative and stand in sharp contrast to an affirmative ecstatic nihilism or Dionysianism that Nietzsche saw as the outgrowth of and solution to nihilism.
In trying to come to terms with Nietzsche's conception of nihilism, however, we are on treacherous ground because of the problematic status of this unpublished material. Fortunately, we do not have to rely merely upon these notes. Since the death of God is fundamentally an anthropological event, Nietzsche's conception of nihilism is ultimately concerned with the degeneration not of God but of man. We should thus be able to gain some purchase on Nietzsche's concept of nihilism through an examination of his anthropology.
In what follows, I will examine this anthropology as it is presented in the prologue and part 1 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, showing how the argument that Nietzsche develops in this text already maps out the fundamental figures of his later conception of nihilism. I will then try to show that Nietzsche's anthropology and the normative conclusions that he draws from it not only fail to come to grips with the problem of nihilism but exacerbate it.
ZARATHUSTRA'S ANTHROPOLOGY
Near the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra leaves his isolated mountaintop to return to the world of men. Zarathustra declares that he "wants to be a human being again" (KGW VI 1:6). What, however, does it mean to be a human being for Zarathustra? He gives us an answer to this question in his speech to the crowd gathered to watch a tightrope walker in the town of the Motley Cow: "Man is a rope, tied between beast and Übermensch — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is a going over and a going under" (KGW VI 1:10–11).
Human being is a rope stretched between beast and Übermensch, a being whose being consists in being pulled in opposing directions, indeed, a being that only remains in being as a result of the tension generated by these two conflicting attractions. Thus, humans do not simply leave behind what they have overcome. As Zarathustra argues, human beings were once apes and are now humans, but they are still apes, still drawn toward the beast. Or to put the matter in other terms, even the wisest is "also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost" (Z, KGW VI 1:8). Even now, Zarathustra tells the crowd, fragments of the Übermensch can be found scattered within a fallen humanity, afloat in "a polluted stream" (Z, KGW VI 1:9). The line that defines human being in this sense is not a mere temporal transition from lower to higher but a continual and unending struggle of conflicting alternatives. Human being is the site of the contestation of these alternatives, and the principal question for Zarathustra is how the higher can be brought to predominance.
Zarathustra claims he has returned to human beings to bring them a gift. This gift is the vision of the highest human possibility, the Übermensch. It is not clear, however, that the people want this gift. Indeed, when he presents it to them, they do not appear to understand him, taking his speech about the Übermensch to refer to the tightrope walker who is about to perform in the marketplace. In a further effort to make himself understood, Zarathustra describes not the highest human possibility but the lowest, the last man. Zarathustra explains to them that just as they already in some sense are the Übermensch, so they are also the last man, the human who seeks mere happiness and has lost sight of anything beyond the momentary satisfaction of his desires. Despite the fact that Zarathustra characterizes him as "the most contemptible," the people cry out that they want this man, that they want to be this last man.
In what sense, though, is the last man last? I want to suggest that the figure of the last man must be understood in the context of Nietzsche's image of the tightrope. The last man is thus not the historically last man, the post-historical man that Hegel imagined, but the last man who is still man, that is, the last human possibility before the beast.
We could display this diagrammatically as shown in figure 1. The last man is only one of our possibilities of being, as is the beast and the Übermensch. However, these are not the only possibilities. Zarathustra has yet to describe the other human possibilities that lie on this line.
The crisis of our age, which Nietzsche for a time called nihilism, is a crisis of human being, a crisis that arises because of the necessity of a momentous decision about what human being is to be. Humans do not inevitably progress from beast to Übermensch, as humanity's decline since the time of the Greeks made clear to Nietzsche. Rather they are constantly in tension, pulled both upward and downward, and thus constantly in danger of falling, of becoming the last man, or indeed a mere beast. The production of the Übermensch is thus not inevitable but something that must be willed. Man must overcome himself, or more exactly it is only by a series of self-overcomings that man can become the Übermensch.
The path of these overcomings is outlined in "The Three Metamorphoses" at the beginning of part 1 of Zarathustra. The spirit, according to Zarathustra, first becomes a camel, then a lion, and finally a child. I want to suggest that these possibilities must also be understood in terms of the image of the tightrope, and could be diagrammed as in figure 2. The camel spirit, Zarathustra tells us, is the dutiful spirit, the reverent spirit that would bear much, the spirit who lives according to a divinely sanctioned code of values, under the hegemony of the dragon whose name is "thou shalt." The camel spirit in this sense is a step above the last man, for the last man lives according to his momentary passions, while the camel's passions are ordered by an external or positive moral law.
The camel spirit, however, is not content with its lot and goes into the desert and is there transformed into the lion. The lion spirit is the next higher human possibility. In the desert, the camel liberates itself from the dragon that the spirit will no longer call lord and God. The lion is thus the denier of God and morality. In place of the "thou shalt," the lion sets the "I will," denying the givenness of the moral law. The dragon asserts that all value was long ago created, and while the lion cannot create new values with its "I will," it does win its own freedom with its sacred No. This skeptical, destructive spirit thus obliterates the externally imposed ordering of the passions that lifted the camel spirit above the last man, but this destruction does not simply produce chaos because the lion spirit itself is made possible by a higher form of discipline, not imposed from without but generated from within.
It is this discipline that is the foundation for the transformation of the spirit into the child. The child is not a reactive but an active spirit. It is not driven by resentment or hatred of that which has hitherto imposed order upon it. In contrast to the lion, it is capable of forgetting and thus of a new innocence. Therefore, it can be a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes. This spirit not only denies its former oppressor, the great dragon and its "thou shalt," but it also affirms itself and creates new values. This spirit in other words wills its own will. Out of this child comes the Übermensch.
The rest of part 1 of Zarathustra is a discussion of these three possibilities. Aphorisms 2–7 deal with the camel spirit; aphorism 8 is a transition; aphorisms 9–14 treat the lion spirit; aphorism 15 is a transition; aphorisms 16–21 consider the child; and aphorism 22 is a conclusion. The final metamorphosis of the child into the Übermensch is not detailed in part 1, because Zarathustra himself labors there under the mistaken impression that the child and the Übermensch are the same. In parts 2 and 3, however, he increasingly comes to see that innocent creativity is only possible for a being who has overcome the desire for revenge against the "it was" by replacing it with a "thus I willed it." It is this seemingly impossible feat that the doctrine of the eternal recurrence makes possible. This was the step that Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov was unwilling to take and which led him to give back his ticket, that is, to rebel against God and life. Zarathustra also has great difficulty taking this step since it means rejecting all pity, but he is ultimately able to say Yes to this most horrible thought and thus to become truly free and creative. It is, however, a freedom beyond good and evil. Thus, insofar as the Übermensch can only come to be on the basis of the doctrine of the eternal recurrence, he is weighed down by this thought. The creation of the Übermensch thus depends upon a recognition of the tragedy of existence that undermines the innocence of the child. The possibility of the Übermensch is no longer an unqualified gift, but also a hammer that may shatter humanity.
The psychological ground for this anthropology is laid out by Zarathustra in part 1. The essence of human being, he argues, is not the soul or the self-conscious ego but the body, and the body is nothing but affect or passion. Passion, however, is not a unity but a multiplicity, and each of the individual passions constantly struggles for expression. Human being is thus fundamentally conflictual, for the body is constantly at war with itself. Human life is thus suffering, and most morality and religion aims at ameliorating this suffering, either by establishing peace among the passions or by devaluing this world of the passions and escaping into an imaginatively constructed beyond (NL, KGW VII 2:27).
If human being is passion, however, human thriving cannot be produced by eliminating passion. The first positive step for Zarathustra is thus the liberation of man from his servitude to the good. This is the task of the lion spirit. Such a liberation, however, is also a liberation of our wicked instincts, as Zarathustra admits in the aphorism "On the Tree on the Mountainside." The internal and external war that such a liberation entails is the foundation for a new internal discipline, the discipline of the lion or warrior spirit.
If human being for Zarathustra is passion, then the measure of one's position on the line that Zarathustra uses to define human being is determined by the strength of one's passions. This strength, however, depends not merely on the force of the individual passions but also and preeminently upon their hierarchical organization (NL, KGW VII 2:27). We can imagine them as vectors. If very powerful passions are pulling in opposite or multiple directions, they will counterbalance one another. If, however, they all stand in the service of one drive or master passion, their force will be similarly increased. Therefore, the farther one moves along the line from beast to Übermensch, the greater the discipline or rank order of the passions must be. The line that represents human being is thus a measure of power, for power is nothing other than the breadth and effective coordination of the passions under a single head.
For Zarathustra, the psychology of the passions is thus grounded in the will to power. This term first appears in Nietzsche's published work in the aphorism "On the Thousand and One Goals" in part 1 of Zarathustra. Zarathustra argues there that a people is constituted by its values. These values separate a people from their neighbors and give them a positive character of their own. The tablet of these values is a tablet of their self-overcomings, that is, a record of their triumph over themselves, over what was most difficult and indispensable for them. It is the record of the subordination of their often contradictory passions to one master passion aiming at a single goal. In this sense, these values are the voice of a people's will to power, of what Zarathustra characterizes as a love that will rule and a love that will obey.
The psychological foundation of the passions in the will to power is spelled out more fully in "On Self-Overcoming" in part 2 of Zarathustra. Building upon his previous account in part 1, Zarathustra characterizes the will to power as the unexhausted procreative will of life: "Where I found the living, there I found will to power; and even in the will of those who serve I found the will to be master" (Z, KGW VI 1:143–44). The passions are moments of the will of life itself that constantly strives for power. Their energy and multiplicity are conceived in terms of a fundamental self-opposing, self-overcoming will intrinsic to life itself. In and through this discussion of the will to power, Zarathustra's account of human nature is put in the context of an interpretation of life as a whole. In this sense, the line that Zarathustra uses to define the human possibilities must be understood as a mere section of a longer line of life itself.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nietzsche's Final Teaching by Michael Allen Gillespie. Copyright © 2017 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PrefaceIntroduction
Nietzsche’s Deepest Thought
Nihilism and the Superhuman
Nietzsche and the Anthropology of Nihilism
Slouching toward Bethlehem to Be Born: On the Nature and Meaning of Nietzsche’s Übermensch
Nietzsche as Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence
What Was I Thinking? Nietzsche’s New Prefaces of 1886
Nietzsche’s Musical Politics
Life as Music: Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo
Nietzsche’s Final Teaching in Context
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on Nihilism and the Superhuman
Nietzsche and Plato on the Formation of a Warrior Aristocracy
Conclusion
What Remains
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index