NIETZSCHE’S IDEAS cannot be distilled from the brilliant prose in which he expressed them without great loss, so a book such as this demands that the reader also confront Nietzsche’s own books, face to face. In a passage entitled “Faced with a Scholarly Book,” Nietzsche describes his own reaction to a particular reading experience “just now as I closed a very decent scholarly book—gratefully, very gratefully, but also with a sense of relief.” The relief was a reaction to leaving the “closet air, closet ceilings, closet narrowness” of the book.1
We can confidently predict that Nietzsche’s own books will not inspire this reaction. Yet Nietzsche’s books are very far from easy reading. They are engrossing, but often hard to follow. Nietzsche did not try to be accommodating. He even took some pride in being difficult. “It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just ‘anybody.’ ”2
One might read this statement as a display of Nietzsche’s “sour grapes” attitude toward his readers. Indeed, his books did not sell well, and he was often distressed by what some readers made of his writings. More positively, however, Nietzsche’s comment indicates that he did expect to find readers who could grapple with his ideas. He hoped for a meeting of minds with readers who could appreciate his concerns, get his jokes, share his sense of mission to address the modern world’s spiritual crisis. Readers of this sort would be active readers. They would not merely follow Nietzsche’s drift, but be inspired to their own original thinking. They would be Nietzsche’s companions in thought.
Nietzsche therefore leaves a great deal for his readers to do. He challenges them to reconsider their standing beliefs and to take fresh views of their circumstances. He chooses strategies as a writer that will further these efforts. In order to incite his readers to reevaluate their own views and values, he does not dictate doctrines. Instead, he makes jokes and startling observations. He leaves it to his readers to glean the implications of such comments. His preference for aphorisms reflects his goals, as his character Zarathustra indicates.
Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks—and those who are addressed tall and lofty.3
Nietzsche attempts nothing less than a personal, even intimate relationship with his reader. He is like an engaging conversationalist, who both invites and requires the interlocutor to respond. Much of the fun of the encounter is its interactive nature. Nietzsche’s styles and formal strategies ask the reader, “What do you think?” They also allow Nietzsche to confide his own way of thinking—not just the content, but the whole experience of thought. Nietzsche often compares his writing to music. He wants his reader to experience along with him, much as one shares experiences with musical performers by listening actively, or by dancing. “Thinking wants to be learned like dancing, as a kind of dancing.”4 Nietzsche sees literary style as a tool for such learning by doing. “To communicate a state, an inward tension of pathos, by means of signs, including the tempo of these signs—that is the meaning of every style.…”5
The difficulty of Nietzsche’s works is not due to murky writing. His statements are highly polished, exemplars of exactitude and nuance. Nietzsche disdains opaque expression. He bears in mind his own admonition: “Those who know they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.…”6 Nietzsche knew he was deep, and so strove for clarity.
The difficulty of Nietzsche’s prose is that he packs so much into terse and elegant formulations. He wants his statements to brim with hints and intimations, to reward being taken to heart. “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book.”7 Nietzsche’s education in theology and philology offered models for his rich formulations. He was taught how to probe the full scope of passages from Scripture and the classics of antiquity. He attempted himself to write passages that would merit such interpretive care.
Another consequence of Nietzsche’s extensive education is that he was learned across the humanities. He makes allusions to the classics of philosophy and several European literary traditions. Nietzsche’s wit often draws from his erudition. This, too, causes problems for readers. Those who have not read as broadly as Nietzsche will miss some of his jokes. Fortunately, his favorite sources for allusions remain well studied. The best-known passages from the Bible, Plato, and Kant, are regular reference points for Nietzsche, as are the most popular works of Shakespeare and Goethe.
So how should we approach a book by Nietzsche? Most importantly, we should be open-minded. Besides forgetting the rumors about Nietzsche, we should forget what we expect of philosophical writing. We will not find the typical fare of philosophical essays, which focus steadily on a topic and present a logical sequence of arguments in support of a particular view. Nietzsche does not tell us what he’s going to say, then tell us, then tell us what he’s told us. Summary statements are rare in his writings. We will not find him often reviewing the literature or anchoring views with a pile of footnotes. We will find some outlandish images, and sometimes jokes that at first look quite somber. Perhaps most disorienting, Nietzsche sometimes seems to contradict himself, and quite blatantly, in consecutive passages.
An acquaintance with the typical format of scholarly writing will certainly not help to orient us in Nietzsche’s writings. We can gain our bearings, however, by facing his books with our own questions. The following are often especially useful:
• Is Nietzsche making a consistent case, or is he contradicting himself? If the latter, is contradiction a deliberate strategy?
Sometimes Nietzsche offers sustained analysis. The Birth of Tragedy, although written to engage our attention, unfolds a theory about the origin and purpose of Athenian tragedy, with only a few digressions, at least until he turns to the broader implications of assessments of cultures, particularly of the modern age. The Antichrist similarly varies pace and format to captivate readers, yet it offers a sustained attack on Christianity as an institution and a moral worldview.
In many of his writings, however, especially the “aphoristic” works, Nietzsche moves quickly from one topic to another, or moves from one view of a topic to another view of it, often returning to themes after much has intervened. In these works a reader is likely to observe tensions or outright incompatibilities between two “takes” on a topic. The most likely explanation is that these contrary views reflect Nietzsche’s perspectivism, his view that knowledge and insight are always relative to a given point of view, and that points of view vary among individuals and even among different moments in the same individual’s experience. Nietzsche rejects the common objective in Western philosophy of formulating statements that are “true” under all circumstances. He insists that rigid statements do not reflect our world’s reality. Any statement is at best provisionally useful for navigating our experience, and any statement held as dogma is really a prejudice, more misleading than enlightening.
Nietzsche tries to disabuse us of the hope of finding perfectly secure beliefs, but he suggests that this should not discourage us. If we shift from dogmatism to perspectivism, we will understand our world much better. Perspectivism, in other words, is an epistemological tool, enabling us to arrive at a more nuanced awareness of the world. The possibility of doing a double take that increases and focuses our awareness depends on perspectivism, according to Nietzsche, and therefore so does the possibility of really learning from experience. Perspectivism allows us to take account of things from various viewpoints, to appreciate a situation in some respects despite misgivings from other viewpoints. Nietzsche’s seeming contradictions remind us that even illuminating statements fail to tell us the entire story. It is always worth our while to reexamine, to see if we may have missed some feature of value in an object, a person, or a situation. As temporal beings, we can revise our assessments of things. What sounds like contradiction is actually a sign of our ongoing engagement with reality.
• Is Nietzsche juxtaposing several lines of thought?
Nietzsche’s aphoristic works, particularly, zip from one topic to another. The reader comes to expect a shift beginning with each new section. What can look like fits and starts, however, are often subtle manipulations of the reader’s awareness. Nietzsche took considerable care in organizing the sequence of aphorisms. He moves from topic to topic with the aim of manipulating and motivating the reader’s own discoveries.
For example, the early aphorisms of Daybreak (subtitled Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality) make a number of claims about social customs and also a number of statements about morality. By juxtaposing reflections on these two categories, he prompts the reader to notice similarities between the two. Nietzsche does not say outright that much of morality is cultural habit; but by showing it, he comes so close to saying it that the reader will probably draw this conclusion.
In addition, the pace of changing aphorisms sets up a rhythm. Nietzsche orchestrates like a musician, including the reader’s own movement along with the beat. When this happens, the reader’s mind internalizes the rhythm, and ideally responds with its own conjectures. The rhetorical force of this strategy is powerful. Conclusions that we reach by ourselves are more powerful than those handed to us. Insofar as Nietzsche tries to motivate our abandonment of dogmas, his juxtapositions offer hints of other ways to think, while letting the reader make the decisive, liberating step. The rhythmic movement also induces us to a pace of shifting gears. The aphoristic momentum takes over once the reader begins interacting with the text, propelling a flow of reflection.
• Is Nietzsche mimicking other writers? If so, is this a lampoon, an homage, or both?
Nietzsche seems to enjoy writing parodies, best of all when he splices two or more together. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s only extensive foray into fiction, conjoins many parodic elements. The opening passage makes simultaneous allusions to the New Testament account of Jesus’ life and to Plato’s famed Myth of the Cave. In the latter, a society trapped in a cave sees only shadows, and it takes these and themselves to be the totality of existent things. When one person is able to leave the cave and discover the sun and the world beyond, he wants to share his discovery with others. This parable of the philosopher’s mission compares to the Scriptural mission of Jesus, who longs to bring the Good News to others. Both stories take tragic turns. The cave society concludes that their benefactor has ruined his eyes, and when he insists on his claims they want to kill him. Jesus, too, attracts enemies, who ultimately succeed in having him crucified.
The opening of Thus Spoke Zarathustra describes its hero, the Persian religious innovator Zarathustra (or Zoroaster, 628–551 B.C.E.) leaving his mountain cave to bring good news to his society. Zarathustra had left his home to reflect in solitude at the age of thirty, the age when Jesus went to the desert. Details that associate Zarathustra with Jesus and Plato’s philosopher begin to accumulate, but so do some points of contrast. Jesus leaves his desert after forty days to begin his mission; Zarathustra lives in solitude for ten years before returning to human society. Like Plato’s philosopher, Zarathustra returns by descending, but he goes down to a valley with the news of what he learned in a cave, the realm of individual awareness and personal insight, reversing the Platonic valuations of inner and outer world.
The combination of similarities and dissimilarities between the models and the new text is inherent in the project of parody. It is also an indication of Nietzsche’s complex responses to his models. While critical of the Christian and Platonic worldviews, he sees their founders as turning points of history, admirable for the force of their individual visions, even if those visions should now be transcended. Nietzsche poses Zarathustra as a comparable alternative to Jesus and Socrates, the Platonic philosopher par excellence.
His use of parody does not necessarily indicate Nietzsche’s hostility toward a predecessor; it is also an acknowledgment, even a gesture of admiration while moving onward. Being alert to Nietzsche’s parodies, then, makes us aware both of the traditions Nietzsche honors as our heritage as well as of new possibilities for the way our continuing story may unfold.
A corollary question asks if Nietzsche makes any allusions to a well-known text or saying. His penchant for punning and scholarly witticisms makes this question worth asking, even if we acknowledge that these may not all speak to us. When an allusion is recognized, it is worth probing and is often extremely amusing.
For example, Zarathustra is asked by one of his auditors about a speech he made some time before: “Why did you say that the poets lie too much?” Zarathustra begins his answer by saying that the reasons for his previous statement may not remain valid today, and he adds, “But Zarathustra too is a poet. Do you now believe that he spoke the truth here? Why do you believe that?”8 The claim that the poets lie too much is a paraphrase of a famous claim by Socrates in Plato’s Republic, a claim that he uses as a rationale for claiming that poetry should be distrusted and censored. Nietzsche’s allusion, coupled with Zarathustra’s further comment about himself, draws attention to Plato’s inconsistency in writing his philosophical works in literary form (dialogues) while having his main character cast aspersions on the “lies” of literary form.
Zarathustra’s remarks also raise questions about how we are taking Zarathustra’s own speeches. Are we taking them to be gospel truth? If so, are we not contradicting the spirit of Zarathustra’s message? One might also reconsider Nietzsche’s double parody in this light. Does Plato not contradict the philosophical independence preached by his teacher, Socrates, by constructing a character whose words may well be taken as absolute truth by his readers? Could one not read Scripture similarly, asking whether Jesus’ disciples have not distorted the existential import of his message by insisting that they be interpreted in an orthodox manner and taken as absolute truth? (Chapter 3 includes a more in-depth discussion of the ways in which Nietzsche thinks that Jesus’ disciples distorted his teachings.) On the other hand, why should we take Zarathustra’s comments seriously, if he admits that he is a lying poet? Is he unusually honest, or is he merely joking?
• What metaphors are prominent?
Metaphor is one of Nietzsche’s suggestive strategies, designed to prompt his readers’ reflection and interpretive imagination. He favors metaphors with long histories of symbolic resonance. Among these are images of height, of health and disease, of animal species, and of times of the day (such as daybreak and twilight). Some of his metaphors are virtually cartoons. His Zarathustra describes, for example, a giant ear on the horizon, which turns out to have a tiny human being dangling from it like an earring. This comical picture pokes fun at those who are admired for a single talent that may have truncated their persons as a whole.
When we make note of Nietzsche’s favorite metaphors in the Appendix (“Nietzsche’s Bestiary”), our aim is not to preempt our own readers’ speculations. In some cases, however, those who read Nietzsche in translation are likely to miss the ways in which he adds to his metaphors’ force by engaging in plays on words. His notebooks reveal how much he enjoyed punsical word play—for example, the note fragment in which he cites “the intellectual dessert for many: Gorgon-Zola.”9 The sound is the name of a cheese, and a smelly one. But in its written form, a hyphen conjoins the name of a mythical monster, the Gorgon, and that of Emile Zola, the French novelist who specialized in realistic depictions of the underprivileged. The word splice clearly reflects Nietzche’s contempt for the novelist and is far more devastating than a wordy “critical review.” (Perhaps he still has cheese in mind when he remarks in Twilight of the Idols, “Zola: or the delight in stinking.”)10 As this example suggests, Nietzsche enjoys a degree of self-indulgence in his wordsmanship. Fortunately, in his published works, most of his allusions are publically accessible, even when they are also private jokes.
• Is Nietzsche praising anyone? If so, what is he praising? Is his praise ironic, for shock effect?
One should never put irony past Nietzsche. Apparent praise or criticism should be taken in context. Sometimes Nietzsche’s praise is loaded with sarcasm. Similarly, his self-assertions can be aggressively ironic (for example, in his autobiography, where he titles chapters “Why I Am So Wise” and “Why I Am So Clever”). In one passage where he criticizes Wagner as writing music that jangles the nerves, he mentions that a Wagnerite once told him, “Then you really are merely not healthy enough for our music.”11 A man of chronic illness, Nietzsche may seem to be letting Wagner off the hook with this comment. After all, Nietzsche was not healthy enough for much of anything. However, the Wagnerite comes off as a true believer, assuming that if Nietzsche isn’t one of them, the fault must lie with him. Once again, Nietzsche lets us draw our own conclusion, but there is little doubt what he thinks.
Nietzsche’s praise is often genuine. When this is so, he usually has some reason to think it worth reporting. Rarely does Nietzsche simply add his vote to the popular opinion. He shares a few of his heroes with contemporaries. Goethe is a striking case in point; however, when Nietzsche praises Goethe, he praises him for reasons rarely noted (Goethe’s “Dionysian” character, for instance). Another mode of Nietzsche’s praise is the genuine but shocking. Nietzsche might describe some admirable feature of someone history sees as a monster—the Emperor Tiberius, for example. Occasionally, he reiterates others’ shocking admiration, as when he praises Shakespeare’s Brutus, as some French literary critics had done.
The shocking tribute is another expression of perspectivism. It is also a demonstration of moving “beyond good and evil” in moral assessment. Even perpetrators of infamy are not devoid of merit. By viewing them with some degree of sympathy, we practice the art of idealization, an outlook that Nietzsche associates with theater. Through theater we learn to appreciate others’ characters and motivations, and thus also to appreciate our own. This more artistic way of looking at things is not malicious; nor does it encourage self-hatred or viciousness. Through these outlooks, we become more humane, and we can start to overcome moral judgmentalism.
• Is Nietzsche using hyperbole?
Nietzsche often sounds like an extremist. He doesn’t merely criticize Christianity, he “condemns” it. He is not a mere critic of tradition; he tells us “I am dynamite.”12 However polite he may have been as a person, Nietzsche as a writer is not known for his tact, nor is his Zarathustra. “What? does life require even the rabble? Are poisoned wells required, and stinking fires and soiled dreams and maggots in the bread of life?”13
To some extent, Nietzsche is quite judgmental, exemplifying the moralism he attacks. Although unbridled in this respect, he is not inconsistent. He suggests that one’s moral background poisons one’s outlook, a phenomenon he knows well. On the other hand, the extremity of Nietzsche’s statements is often a rhetorical device, not a measured reflection of his views. He exaggerates, like a stand-up comedian, drawing our attention to problems we have failed to notice by making statements that are excessive—though not so excessive as we might like to think.
• Who are Nietzsche’s targets?
Nietzsche is hardly secretive. He usually opts for direct attacks. He relishes the ad hominem, the attack on the person and not just the view. Many logic texts cite the ad hominem argument as an informal fallacy, insisting that the merits of a view should not be assessed on the basis of the person who holds it. Nietzsche, by contrast, urges this as a very good test of a view. He does not consider it the only test; but he thinks we should ask, “What kind of person would believe this?” Opinions are often fronts for the motives that prompt them. A sour view held by a sick person may serve as a symptom, and a reason to discount it. Nietzsche’s ad hominem case against Socrates, for example, explains Socratic rationalism as a symptom of decadence. If Western thought has embraced it, maybe it, too, is sick, or sickened by it.
Although Nietzsche is direct and sometimes hyperbolic toward his targets, he does not always mention them specifically. Thus, while Nietzsche takes Saint Paul’s teachings and temperament as the epitome of what is deplorable in Christianity, he does not always single out Paul when he attacks the Christian worldview. It is therefore worthwhile to take notice of those individuals whom he takes as exemplars of objectionable outlooks. Nietzsche tries to avoid global moral pronouncements. Not every Christian is attacked when he attacks Christianity. If we recognize his specific targets, we can also recognize the characteristics that he finds especially objectionable, as well as those individuals in whom he sees much to admire, despite some blame. (We will consider some of Nietzsche’s targets below, in chapter 5, “Nietzsche Ad Hominem.”)
With such questions in mind, let us now turn to the peculiarities of Nietzsche’s particular books.
Nietzsche was already an associate professor of philology at the University of Basel when he published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). The book offered a speculative theory of the nature and purpose of Greek tragedy. As he did not observe the developing conventions of scholarly writing, which required extensive references to earlier philological literature and the use of footnotes, the reception by Nietzsche’s academic colleagues was largely unfavorable. The book was better appreciated by Wagner, for it described Wagner’s music dramas as a revival of the spirit that had motivated tragedy. This discussion of popular developments in contemporary music was a further basis for scholarly disdain. One member of Nietzsche’s professional peer group, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, wrote a sneering pamphlet against Nietzsche’s contribution, calling it “Zukunftphilogie (“philology of the future”) and lampooning Nietzsche’s admiration for Wagner’s efforts to create a “Kunstwerk der Zukunft,” or an “artwork of the future.”
Nietzsche analyzes Athenian tragedy as a synthesis of two artistic principles that agree with the respective religious outlooks celebrated by the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo, as the sun god who mythically gave light to the world, was the patron of order and illuminating clarity. Nietzsche described artistic images that featured beautiful form and clear structure, accordingly, as Apollonian. He considered sculpture to be a paradigmatic example of an Apollonian art. Dionysus, by contrast, was the originally foreign god of wine, sexual abandon, loss of self in the frenzy of group experience, and other forms of excessive behavior. Nietzsche considered music, which intoxicates the listener and breaks down divisions between individuals, as the quintessentially Dionysian art. Nietzsche’s Apollonian principle conforms with the classical ideal for art in the aesthetic tradition of Kant, in which a well-formed image is an object of disinterested contemplation. Nietzsche’s emphasis on the importance of the Dionysian principle, therefore, represents an implicit critique of that tradition—that it fails to recognize the role of passion and engagement in great art, and fails, also, to appreciate the importance of passion in living a meaningful life.
Greek tragedy achieved a balance of these artistic principles. According to Nietzsche, the value of this achievement was not simply a formal artistic achievement, but a spiritual accomplishment as well. Tragedy provided the Athenians with an opportunity to address the central religious problem, the problem of evil: How can human life be meaningful if human beings are subject to undeserved suffering and death? The plots of Athenian tragedy were stories that poignantly raised this question. The Apollonian beauty of the tragic drama was one response to the question of meaning. Human life becomes meaningful through the transformation of distressing material into objects of beauty. This would be hollow comfort, however, if not for the tragedy’s simultaneous evocation of the Dionysian effect, the intoxication of the audience with a sense of participation in something larger than the individual self. The tragic chorus, captivating the spectator with music, caused one to remember that just to be part of the roaring flow of life was so powerful and joyous that life was unquestionably worth its susceptibility to suffering, the price of admission. Nietzsche contends that this is the only adequate solution to the problem of evil. “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”14
Unfortunately, even the Athenians lost sight of this solution. Socrates, with his insistence on consistency and rational comprehension of all things, popularized a worldview that left little room for Dionysian experience. The tragic drama itself, in the plays of Euripides, began to observe Socratic injunctions. The Birth of Tragedy is the first of Nietzsche’s many works that criticize the Western philosophical tradition. He subjects Socrates, usually considered that tradition’s founder, to critical reassessment, suggesting that Socrates’ rationalistic optimism, his view that all flaws in human experience are correctable, promoted a conception of life that is dangerously false and psychologically unhealthy. Nietzsche also criticizes the modern, scientific worldview, which he sees as the latest version of the Socratic faith in reason’s omnipotence. He suggests that our worldview ignores the murky Dionysian side of experience and leaves us ill-prepared to confront the irrational side of our natures.
The series of essays that followed The Birth of Tragedy were, in Nietzsche’s own words, “untimely,” “unmodern,” “unfashionable.” Each provides a nonstandard assessment of a recent phenomenon, expressing opinions that went against the grain of contemporary thought. The first of these, “David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer” (1873), was an attack on theologian David Strauss. Strauss was a pioneer in historical criticism of Scripture, which attempted to ascertain and assess the historical facts of the Bible’s construction and of the life of the real person Jesus. In light of Nietzsche’s own later complaints that the Christian Church distorted the facts of its origins, his vituperative account of David Strauss is perplexing; it certainly shocked Strauss himself, who mused that he could not understand such hatred from a man who had never met him. The explanation is that Nietzsche made this assault on behalf of Richard Wagner, who had previously been denounced by Strauss.
The essay is also a manifestation of Nietzsche’s ambivalence toward demythologizing strategies, despite his own many efforts to debunk the moral tradition, and despite his own admiration for Strauss’s early analysis of the historical Jesus. But now Strauss had written an unscholarly book called The Old and the New Faith, which struck Nietzsche as a banal defense of cheap patriotism and scientific materialism. Strauss appeared to him a bit like Euripides, as one whose efforts to explain away the irrational undercut his society’s mythic heritage without any concessions to the genuine psychological needs that prompted them. The simplistic optimism Strauss encouraged was, in Nietzsche’s opinion, an aggravation, not a solution, to the problems of the age.
Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditations, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874), more directly considers his era’s outlook, in particular its enthusiasm for historical knowledge. Nietzsche challenges the view that historical accuracy is intrinsically good, suggesting that history is valuable only when it assists the main project of the current age, that of living well in the present. According to Nietzsche, three approaches to history are beneficial to contemporary society. Monumental history, which commemorates great accomplishments, is useful because it helps us to appreciate what human beings can do. Antiquarian history takes a reverential view of the past, and it provides the living with a sense of gratitude and of the resources that inhere in their own way of life. Critical history attempts to learn from history, using its assessments of previous conditions as a basis for critically reassessing the present.
Despite the many benefits of historical knowledge, Nietzsche thinks that history can diminish the present. This happens when historical knowledge is treated as valuable for its own sake, without much thought about what use we will make of this knowledge. Too often, the accumulation of facts about the past convinces the living that humanity’s great periods lie behind them or that present efforts make little difference when considered in the sweep of history. Historical scholarship should not be allowed to encourage people to belittle their present lives or to adopt a cynical attitude toward their own endeavors.
Modern society should also be aware that history is not the only lens through which we should observe our experience. Art and religion serve as antidotes to the tendency to visualize every human enterprise as slipping away; they provide an impression of stable foundations for the projects that we mount within the fluid of history. We should also allow ourselves to consider our efforts within the framework of the limited horizons of given projects. We should certainly attempt to rid ourselves of the fantasy that history places determining constraints on the human capacity for greatness. Human greatness is not a function of historical progress. Instead, it is possible at all times, and society should make efforts to organize its institutions, particularly its educational institutions, to foster the development of great individuals whenever they arrive on the scene.
The most obvious target of Nietzsche’s attack on contemporary approaches to history is Hegel, and in this he follows his philosophical hero, Arthur Schopenhauer. The third of the Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as Educator” (1874), presents Schopenhauer explicitly as the kind of educator that might inspire others to overcome their sense of ineffectualness in the face of history and to aspire to greatness on their own terms. Strangely, the essay does not say much about Schopenhauer’s thought. Schopenhauer is presented as a genius, an original human being who serves as an example to others precisely because he is so completely an individual. As Nietzsche later said of Wagner, “his life … shouts at every one of us: ‘Be a man and do not follow me—but yourself! Be yourself.’ ”15 This essay endorses the sentiment expressed in one of Nietzsche’s favorite slogans, borrowed from the Greek poet Pindar, “Become who you are.” Schopenhauer’s greatness was that he lived by this motto.
“Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” (1876) was the fourth and last of the Untimely Meditations. Although Nietzsche set out to write a kind of homage to the composer, growing strain in the two men’s friendship affected the essay that emerged. Wagner’s treatment of Nietzsche as a junior partner was one factor. More substantially, however, Nietzsche was becoming increasingly disturbed by what he saw as Wagner’s willingness to compromise too much for the sake of theatrical effects. Yet, on balance, the essay is still favorable. It presents Wagner as a man of his time, embodying both its virtues and its vices. Nietzsche allowed, for the moment, that Wagner remained true to his ideals, but he did not maintain this assessment much longer. Many later works attempt psychological and cultural analyses of Wagner, but never again with so much effort to be sympathetic.
Nietzsche originally intended to write thirteen Untimely Meditations, but he published only these four. During the period of writing them. Nietzsche also wrote a number of drafts and partial manuscripts that he did not publish, one of which has attracted much scholarly attention in recent years. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (1873) is a suggestive essay in which Nietzsche considers the ways in which language imposes its own shape on our experience, with the effect that it does not accurately reflect the world as it is. Our experiences are unique, but language makes experiences labeled with the same words appear to be the same. Language is inherently metaphorical, translating phenomena into images that are more standardized, and more anthropomorphic, than reality justifies, but we usually forget this fact. We imagine that we have penetrated appearances to something secure when we claim we have reached a “truth.” Nietzsche makes similar claims in later works, but this essay is noteworthy for some expressive images. “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.”16 Nietzsche suggests that the modern era should reassess its commitment to truth at any price, much as it should reassess its aspiration to historical knowledge.
Human, All Too Human (1878) initiates a new phase in Nietzsche’s thought. He had lost faith in both Wagner and Schopenhauer. In a later preface to the book, he describes his condition in writing it: never, he claims, had he felt so alone. But his loneliness only spurred his independence of thought, and it is this independence that the book celebrates. In contrast to his earlier emphasis on metaphysical approaches to the meaning of life and on mythic responses to the tragic human condition, Nietzsche now displays enthusiasm for science and naturalistic explanation. Many passages consider the causal determinants of how things appear to us and of why people think and behave as they do.
Human, All Too Human is the first of Nietzsche’s “aphoristic” works, with numbered aphorisms and short discussions, but without explicit transitions connecting one to another. Nietzsche’s migraine headaches and eyestrain had something to do with this form: he could dictate short discussions even when he was suffering. But he soon came to appreciate the power of the aphorism and came to prefer this format. It provided a literary expression for his claim that every description of the world and its phenomena is shaped by the perspective of the interpreter. This “perspectivist” position is the basis for many of Nietzsche’s critiques in Human, All Too Human and later works. In particular, Nietzsche criticizes the moral outlook associated with Christianity as motivated by (and as reinforcing) a perspective that is inherently unhealthy.
In 1886, Nietzsche published a second edition of Human, All Too Human which included the entire first edition and two aphoristic works that he had written subsequent to the first edition. These were Assorted Opinions and Maxims (1879) and The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880). In large measure they deal with the same themes as the first volume but show greater mastery of succinct statement.
Nietzsche makes his first sustained assault on the Christian moral worldview in another aphoristic work, Daybreak (1881). The book’s extensive psychological analyses suggest that the motives behind Christian virtue are far from savory. By postulating that our moral nature is corrupt, the Christian account uglifies its believers’ impression of themselves. Consequently, Christians are motivated to look for ways to improve their extremely judgmental self-assessments. The most straightforward way to accomplish this is to see other people as at least as bad as oneself, and, optimally, far worse. In this way, the Christian moral framework motivates contemptuous outlooks on others, despite its professed celebration of “love of neighbor.” This framework encourages both vilification of our natural instincts and harmful efforts to rid ourselves of our appetites. Presented as the cure for our moral failings, this framework is what causes us to think ourselves “ill” in the first place, according to Nietzsche. He envisions a transformed perspective that would reenchant us with ourselves and the natural world.
Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1882) continues his exploration of what might restore a sense of innocence to our natural experience, now focusing on our modern intellectual outlook and the grim scholarship (Wissenschaft, or science) that it produces. Nietzsche calls for a new lightheartedness, in the manner of the Provençal courtiers, who abandoned traditional moral conventions in favor of devotion to beauty. Nietzsche continues his psychological analyses of the mechanisms involved in Christian morality, attempting to demonstrate that ostensibly self-sacrificing values are often veiled efforts to assert control over others.
The Gay Science introduces some of Nietzsche’s most well-known ideas. One of these is the shocking announcement that “God is dead.” The God-centered worldview that once grounded the Western way of life, Nietzsche tells us, is no longer real for most Westerners. Instead, most modern Europeans base their lifestyle on scientific materialism, which is not well suited to establish values. The consequence is modern nihilism, the sense that life has no purpose. Nietzsche does not propose that “God” be resuscitated. Instead, he provides suggestions throughout The Gay Science as to how a modern person might develop a naturalistic sense of meaning. Much of the work might be considered practical advice for the spiritually sensitive atheist.
Nietzsche recommends two more of his most celebrated ideas, the ideal of amor fati (love of fate), which is an appreciative acceptance of one’s life in all its circumstances, and the vision of eternal recurrence. The latter notion postulates that time is cyclical, reiterating the same sequence of events over and over again. If one can face such a prospect with enthusiasm, one has successfully found meaning in life. In this light, eternal recurrence can be seen as an indicator of the extent to which one has overcome nihilism.
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85) is probably his most famous work. It is a fictional account of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), the great Persian prophet, whom Nietzsche introduces at the end of The Gay Science (in its first edition, before a fifth part was added). Like the historical prophet, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is a sage with a message, but his message is addressed to modern Europe and its contemporary crisis of nihilism. The book includes multiple parodies, with references to Plato’s dialogues and the New Testament. Zarathustra, these parodies suggest, is akin to Socrates and Christ in offering a fundamentally new way of approaching human life.
Zarathustra preaches on a wide spectrum of philosophical ideas, including the “will to power” and the idea of eternal recurrence. Zarathustra also presents the idea of the Übermensch (the super-man), the ideal aim of human development, although such a being transcends human capacities. In particular, the Übermensch is devoid of human timidity. The Übermensch aspires continually to greatness, living a life of creative adventure. Zarathustra contrasts the Übermensch with “the Last Man,” his caricature of a person who is too risk-averse to pursue any aim beyond comfort, to such an extent that even procreation is too exerting. Zarathustra poses these as two alternative goals, asking modern individuals which mode of existence their own lives embody and promote.
Beyond Good and Evil (1886) begins a new phase of Nietzsche’s work, focusing on the “revaluation of all values” and an explicit “critique of modernity.” The book attacks the dogmatism that has afflicted philosophy so far, particularly regarding the nature of truth and morality. Philosophers’ pretense to objectivity is just a pose. In fact, any philosophy or morality is an “unconscious and involuntary memoir” of the person who presents it.17 Accordingly, we do well to ask ourselves, when confronted with any viewpoint, the question Nietzsche asks with respect to Kant’s categorical imperative: “What does such a claim tell us about the man who makes it?”18
Nietzsche calls for “new philosophers” who would create new values through a process of open-minded experimentation. The philosopher, accordingly, has a significant political role, directing cultural development. Nietzsche urges philosophers to articulate an outlook that is “beyond good and evil,” in other words, beyond the simplistic, judgmental moral categories employed as basic terms in the Christian worldview. While the articulation of new values is a challenging ambition, it is not an impossible dream. Moral values have already historically changed along with circumstances, so they are clearly malleable.
Nietzsche offers us a “natural history of morals.” The currently reigning moral outlook is a form of “slave morality,” which devalues any behavior that is assertive and self-assured. More wholesome is “master morality,” which takes one’s own way of living as the standard of goodness. (Nietzsche acknowledges that an individual person’s morality may be a combination of the two, but he tends to see one or the other as characteristic of a society, or of a faction within a society.) Better than master morality would be subtle discernment in judging, “to be able to see with many different eyes and consciences, from a height into every distance, from the depths into every height.”19
Of Nietzsche’s published writings, Beyond Good and Evil provides the fullest descriptions of the “will to power.” Nietzsche postulates a fundamental drive to ever greater vitality and life-enhancement, and suggests that this characterizes not only human motivation but the behavior of all that lives. “[L]ife itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.”20 Nietzsche’s Zarathustra makes a similar point: “The most concerned ask today, ‘How is man to be preserved?’ But Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask, ‘How is man to be overcome?’ ”21 The psychological motivations of morality that Nietzsche so aptly describes are, on this account, all expressions of will to power. Nietzsche contends, however, that such expressions are not equally healthy. He also denies that people are equal in value, proposing instead that they naturally fall into “rank order.” The highest human beings are the goal of the species, but they are necessarily quite rare.
On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) continues Nietzsche’s analysis of the origin of moral values. By contrast with his aphoristic works, Genealogy is composed of three focused inquiries. The first pursues the development of master and slave moralities. Master morality is the orientation of those who are masters of their own lives, like the free Athenians of antiquity. They do not question the value of their own way of living. They simply consider those who are not masters to be base, or bad. Many of these people are (literally) enslaved by the masters, and they are consequently discontent with their own conditions. They resent the masters who oppress them. Their primary moral judgment is motivated by this hostility, and it deems the masters and everything they stand for as “evil.” Nietzsche’s formula “beyond good and evil” proposes the rejection of such resentful judgments, in favor of a less reactive, more self-assertive way of life.
The book’s second essay seeks the origins of “bad conscience” and the associated concept of guilt. Their basis, claims Nietzsche, is cruelty, a natural human disposition that is displayed unabashedly in punishment. Bad conscience is the same cruelty turned inward. Although the person afflicted with bad conscience suffers, this suffering is mingled with self-satisfaction about causing and enduring such pain. The Christian saga of sin and atonement plays on these feelings. Moreover, the very notion of God’s justice ascribes our own cruel psychology to God. God is interpreted as being vindictive about slights to his honor and demanding the satisfaction of seeing the most perfect human being tortured, in the form of Jesus’ death on the cross.
The third essay asks how ascetic (self-denying) ideals developed. If vitality, the love of life, and self-enhancement are basic motives, what could motivate the ideal of self-denial in Christian and other moral worldviews? Nietzsche answers that this ideal is only apparently life-denying. It actually promotes life in its own devious way. Ascetic ideals are also more widespread than is usually believed. They are not just restricted to monks and hermits. The scientific quest for truth is also ascetic. The dogged pursuit of science sometimes betrays itself as an evasion of life. Indeed, the psychology of asceticism shapes our secular world as well as the great religions of the West. The person who works constantly and is thus unable to enjoy the fruits of this labor is a paradigm case of the ascetic, in Nietzsche’s sense.
The trauma of ending his friendship with Wagner plagued Nietzsche for many years, as is evident in these two works, both written in 1888. In The Case of Wagner (1888) Nietzsche analyzes Wagner as an emblem of his decadent culture. He describes Wagner’s style as a “chaos of the atoms,” geared to stimulating the nerves without liberating the spirit.22 About Wagner, Nietzsche no longer states his points politely. “He has made music sick.”23 The book was not designed to please Wagner enthusiasts, and it provoked a hostile response. Nietzsche contra Wagner (1895), the last work before the Turin collapse, is a short anthology of passages on Wagner that appear over the span of Nietzsche’s writings. The Case of Wagner was his most uninhibited, but his qualms about Wagner had been surfacing over the years.
The title of Nietzsche’s 1889 book Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung) puns on the title of one of Wagner’s operas, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). At the same time, it casts Nietzsche as one who, following Francis Bacon, exposes the deceptive “idols” of philosophy and culture. The subtitle, How One Philosophizes with a Hammer, reinforces this pose. Nietzsche describes himself in the preface as using a hammer to “sound out” idols, to determine whether they were hollow. But the connotation of a hammer as a harsh and destructive instrument cannot be denied.
The “revaluation of all values” is another of Nietzsche’s characterizations of his aim in the book. However, his primary targets are people, not values as such. Much of the book consists of ad hominem attacks upon Socrates, Kant, and a large number of contemporary as well as traditional writers. He describes many of these assaults as the “skirmishes of an untimely man,” suggesting once again that his views are unfashionable. He also reintroduces Dionysus, now associating him with eternal recurrence, described as life’s cyclical renewal.
The Antichrist (1895) is, as one might expect from the title, the most conscientiously blasphemous of all of Nietzsche’s books. It offers a historical and psychological account of the development of Christianity. Despite the title, Nietzsche’s portrait of Jesus is essentially positive. Jesus is presented, in Gary Shapiro’s phrase, as a free spirit who is “blissed out” by the immanent presence of God here and now.24 The book’s villain is Paul, the main organizer of the Church, and the inventor of the interpretation of Jesus’ death as an atonement for humanity’s sins. Against the judgmentalism of Christianity, Nietzsche pronounces his own judgment: “I condemn Christianity.… I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption … the one immortal blemish of mankind.”25
Ecce Homo (1895) is Nietzsche’s autobiography, begun on his forty-fourth birthday. Its title is Pontius Pilate’s statement made when he presented Jesus to the crowd that was calling for his crucifixion, “Ecce Homo”—“Behold the man” (John 19:6). Besides comparing himself to Jesus, Nietzsche casts himself as Socrates, the Delphic oracle’s “wisest man in Athens,” when he ironically titles his chapters “Why I Am So Wise” and “Why I Am So Clever.” Nietzsche goes so far as to claim that he is “a destiny.” Some commentators conclude that Nietzsche was already mad when he wrote this book, but they miss its dark ironic humor. Soon after completing this summary volume, however, Nietzsche’s working life came to an end.
A curious perversity in Nietzsche scholarship is that some commentators have preferred Nietzsche’s scrambled notes to his masterful publications. The “book” known as The Will to Power is actually a compilation of materials from Nietzsche’s notebooks (the Nachlass, or “leftovers”). Speaking of this compilation, Martin Heidegger, one of Nietzsche’s most influential interpreters, claims that Nietzsche’s greatest work was one that he never completed. Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth, is responsible for giving this dubious, posthumous volume the title The Will to Power, a title that Nietzsche had once envisioned but had never yet used when he collapsed. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was the original editor of this volume, which she produced with the help of several assistants, organizing Nietzsche’s notes around themes that suited her political agenda (“breeding,” “power,” “race”). Scholars have attempted to undo Elisabeth’s handiwork, and most now make an effort to corroborate claims in Nietzsche’s notebooks with statements in his published works. In other words, they treat the Nachlass as an alternative source of juicy one-liners, but hardly a “book,” let alone a masterpiece.