Nietzsche

The utility of musing, pondering and speculating is not always obvious, although it is generally something we enjoy doing. A lot of practical concerns are focused on what is directly ahead. So big, swirling thoughts seem almost like the opposite of what is useful. But sometimes there is a pay-off. It depends upon how we muse. One key idea is perspective: we can reframe our immediate concerns in the light of a bigger picture. But immediate concerns do not themselves provide that picture.

We can see how this works by looking at one of the ideas Nietzsche eventually became famous for, provocative assertion: ‘God is dead.’

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly: ‘I am looking for God! I am looking for God!’ – Because many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there he excited considerable laughter. ‘Have you lost him then?’ said one. ‘Did he lose his way like a child?’ said another. ’Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?’ – Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are all his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not getting darker and darker all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet but the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? – Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives – who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it?’

(The Gay Science, 1882)

Surprisingly, Nietzsche is not really describing a conflict between Christians and atheists. His target here is what he thinks of as the light-minded atheist. The end of profound religious faith strikes Nietzsche as almost a crime (even though he is a non-believer). He is deeply impressed by the majestic imaginative power of the idea of God; he might be thinking with awe and reverence of the best things that have been done out of religious conviction, the way faith harnessed effort and resources to monumental achievements: the greatest cathedrals, the music of Bach and Mozart, the poetry of Dante, the novels of Tolstoy, the collective sense of moral destiny and obedience to a higher power. A false, but noble, belief gave rise to all this. Can anything replace that belief, anything that will drive us to the same level of creative grandeur? The rejection of religious conviction is not – he is saying – the end of the matter; it is the start of a much more difficult task: how to rebuild an equally noble outlook, an equally motivating set of beliefs, without relying on the idea of God.

The importance of a belief is different according to whether or not it is true. For example, in a domestic disagreement proving that your partner is wrong might be counterproductive. The belief is not really describing the world, but giving vent to the needs of the person who holds it. So disproving the belief is not in itself much of a help, for the need remains unaddressed. For instance: suppose your partner (or a parent) holds some political views which strike you as naive (to put it gently). They might hold that peace will come to the Middle East when people learn to enjoy each other’s cuisine or that the rise of China will bring wisdom to the world. You set yourself to change their mind. You deluge them with facts, you sit up late together watching documentaries, you cut out powerful articles from newspapers and send them links to relevant websites. One possible outcome is that after all this, and some apparent willingness to agree with you, your partner (or parent) simply reverts to their original position: ‘I see what you mean, but I still think …’ Or it may be that they agree but feel sad. Nietzsche would say that their belief was not about how things really are or are likely to be in the world, but rather express the desire that people can learn to understand one another, that enmity can be overcome by small acts of mutual enjoyment – which is a very nice idea, even if it clearly does not apply to geopolitics. Or they may wish that something would bring wisdom to the world (an honourable wish) and they project this onto whatever big theme happens to be around.

In other words, the ‘bigger picture’ here concerns what a belief is and what a belief is for. Such abstract questions are obviously not our daily fare, but it turns out they are relevant to how we deal with everyday problems, like an argument over the dinner table.

Nietzsche’s ideas about religious belief did not arrive fully formed in his mind. He had to work them up from a confused mass of observations, questions to himself, doubts, worries, excited observations. This is inspiration for a notebook: push the idea harder. We could imagine hundreds of little moments for Nietzsche: that guy is a phoney. Why do people have religious faith? What was it like before Christianity came along? Why can’t I believe, when lots of intelligent people used to believe (and still do)? Could it be that it used to be different? If I don’t accept Christianity, how is it I’m so impressed by Christian art? All these starting points are developed. He does not merely observe and note; he tries to fuse his observations and thoughts into a big-picture thesis.

A similar big-picture thought experiment is conveyed in his slightly bizarre idea of ‘eternal recurrence’.

The heaviest burden. What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: ‘This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence – and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and in the same way this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned again and again – and you with it, you dust of dust!’ – Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in you in which you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!’ If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you. The question is always: ‘Do you want this again and again, times without number?’ This lies as the heaviest burden upon all your actions. Or how well disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal.

(The Gay Science, 1882)

Lesson: ask yourself, is this thing I am doing worthy of being done again and again? Or am I doing it only for makeshift reasons? Is it a stopgap – or is this how my life really should be?

The point of the thought-experiment is not really to make a claim about what might actually be true. Rather its function is to intensify the sense of the importance and weight of the present moment, so as to counteract our normal tendency to think: I’ve got lots of time, I’ll get serious another day. We can imagine Nietzsche struggling with procrastination, and giving himself orders: Get on with it, treat each moment as precious! And then trying to get this idea to stick in his mind, so that it is always to the fore. He invents a story – with a demon in it.

Or consider another natural frailty: we easily become despondent. We try and try, but are conscious that even though we are proud of our efforts, they really leave so much undone. Envy sets in: others will do better; we will be surpassed. Nietzsche invents for himself an image of heroic failure.

All those brave birds which fly out into the distance, into the farthest distance – it is certain! somewhere or other they will be unable to go on and will perch down on a mast or a bare cliff-face and they will even be thankful for this miserable accommodation! But who could venture to infer from that, that there was not an immense open space before them, that they had flown as far as one could fly? All our great teachers and predecessors have at last come to a stop; and it will be the same with you and me! But what does that matter to you and me! Other birds will fly farther! This insight and faith of ours vies with them in flying up and away; it rises above our heads and above our impotence into the heights and from there surveys the distance and sees before it the flocks of birds which, far stronger than we, still strive whither we have striven, and where everything is sea, sea, sea! – And whither then would we go? Would we cross the sea? Whither does this mighty longing draw us, this longing that is worth more to us than any pleasure? Why, just in this direction, to there where all the suns of humanity have hitherto gone down? Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach an India – but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity?

(The Gay Science, 1882)

Yes, you will fail. But you are still an ‘aeronaut of the spirit’. Hold onto that name. When you feel envy say: ‘But I am an aeronaut of the spirit,’ and don’t be disheartened.

So much crosses our minds, so much happens but is hard to describe. The journal, diary and notebook are places of hope, in which we long to work out what we think, capture what a day has really meant, define a relationship, memorialize a picnic or an especially wounding row. As you read something strikes you, you underline a striking sentence, scribble in the margin. You press open a new jotter, or find a half-empty page in an old one. But over time, the notes build up. You can’t recall quite what it was that struck you, or why it seemed so powerful at the time. The painful fact is that only a few thoughts really stick. If something is to make a difference to our thinking, we probably have to return to it again and again.

A strategy for using Nietzsche is to see him as a balancing agent. He is very insistent on some themes – the need for inner strength, for confronting opposition, for disliking people, for being judgemental – which we tend to downplay. A lot of cultural development over the last several decades has placed a premium on being nice to people, on holding back from strong personal judgement, on avoiding or reducing conflict. And of course there is a great deal to be said in favour of this line of progress. But there is also something to be said against it, and that is often what we hear from Nietzsche. This is the function of an aphorism. Rather than work up a lot of ideas into a big-picture thesis, the aphorism tries to cast a single useful thought in the most abbreviated – and therefore most memorable – form.

One has been a bad spectator of life if one has not also seen the hand that in a considerate fashion – kills.

(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

Point: not all the bad things that happen to us come with noise and drama. Such things have happened often. So when they happen to us, it is not a unique curse.

Under conditions of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.

(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

Point: you will find that you attack yourself, get very self-critical and angry at your own mistakes and missed opportunities. This is not because you are doing anything wrong. It is your strong qualities finding something to do. Give them another and better task – go to war in some way (though not literally, of course).

One is punished most for one’s virtues.

(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

Point: when people attack us or criticize us, our instinct is to experience this as ‘punishment’ for our failings, to see it as our fault and therefore as something we deserve. Of course, sometimes that is precisely what is happening. But we must remember that quite often it is good things about us that other people don’t like or get frustrated or annoyed by. We must learn to distinguish between these two kinds of attack because they have such different meanings. I can protect my inner sense of self-respect by hanging onto this aphorism.

One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation.

(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

Point: we’ve all had a lot of conversations that, on reflection, did not go very well. And a few that were truly constructive. What went well in those good cases? Sometimes we felt the other person really wanted to help us bring our thoughts to life – a bit like a midwife, really, helping deliver a baby, not a pleasant experience, but incredibly important. So that might explain why some of the best conversations we have had were not especially pleasant – but something important happened in them. Of course, there’s no point in having a midwife around if there’s no one is labour. So good conversation involves someone needing help, as we have all often done, I suppose, although we did not realize this at the time. We must remember that good conversation has this structure.

Our culture gives a special privilege to the moment of discovery – to the first encounter with an interesting or striking idea. It takes the side of the discoverer, inventor, explorer. But we are generally the users of ideas, so we should put a premium on what makes them stick in our minds. And that’s where the aphorism comes in. The point is to be memorable – to be at the front of one’s thoughts when the occasion to make use of them arises. That’s why repetition is so important, because that is a key mechanism through which ideas get traction in our conduct, which is what we really want.