The reader of Ecce Homo is asked to consider nutrition as one of the fine arts, or at least to give it the virtue of a poetics. The hyperborean science of nutrition is not unrelated to Fourier’s gastrosophy – taste is given an architectonic task in an endeavour to resolve the problems of the real. Nietzsche calls ‘the casuistry of selfishness’ that care of the self that relates to nutrition, place, climate and recreation.1 Similar considerations allow him to make a work of art of his life. The guiding idea of an active Gay Science lies in the injunction ‘to be the poets of our lives – first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters’.2 Dietetics is a moment in the construction of the self.
Nietzsche’s concern with things that are close at hand, and only those things, assumes this polarization of the self. The reader is instructed in the hierarchy of problems as practised by the philosopher:
I am much more interested in a question on which the ‘salvation of humanity’ depends far more than on any theologian’s credo: the question of nutrition. For ordinary use, one may formulate it thus: how do you, among all people, have to eat to attain your maximum strength, of virtù in the renaissance style, of moraline-free virtue.3
The new Nietzschean evaluation makes dietetics an art of living, a philosophy of existence with practical effects: an alchemy of efficacy.
More than any other philosopher, Nietzsche has told of the determining role of the body in the development of a thought or of a work. He very early established the relationship between physiology and ideas: ‘The unconscious disguise of physiological needs under the cloaks of the objective, ideal, purely spiritual goes to frightening lengths – and often I have asked myself whether, taking a large view, philosophy has not been merely an interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding of the body.’4 Metaphysics as a residue of the flesh.
Nietzsche’s purification of the body is somewhat reminiscent of Plotinian asceticism. For the loyal follower of Dionysus it is a matter of familiarizing the body with those elements that bring lightness, that invite one to dance. For a genealogy of the god of obscure forces, Apollo can be useful. The concern with dietetics is Apollonian: it is the art of the sculpture of the self, of creative power and of a controlled mastery. It is a subtle dialectic of restraint, of the contained and auxiliary energy of jubilation. Dionysism is a powerful alchemy: with it, man ‘is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art’.5 Dietetics is the metaphysics of the immanent – practical atheism. It also incarnates the principle of experimentation that founds the logic of the halcyon: the body is put to the service of a new aesthetic of knowledge. Nietzschean gastrosophy is a gateway to new continents.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asks thinkers occupied with moral questions – the ‘philosophical labourers’ – to reconsider their domains of investigation. He says that ‘So far, all that has given colour to existence still lacks a history.’6 Nothing on love, avarice, envy, the conscience, piety, cruelty. Nothing on the law and punishment, on the ways we divide up our days, or the logic of the timetable. Nothing on the experiences of communal living, of moral climates, or of the manners of creative people. Nothing on dietetics either: ‘What is known of the moral effects of different foods? Is there any philosophy of nutrition? (The constant revival of noisy agitation for and against vegetarianism proves that there is no such philosophy.)’7
A new history of this kind will inevitably bring valuable knowledge. Surprises will appear in the course of such investigations and without doubt diet is the cause of more forms of behaviour than people imagine. Thus, after deploring that ‘neither our lower nor higher schools yet teach care of the body or dietary theory’, Nietzsche establishes that a criminal is perhaps an individual who requires ‘the prudence and goodwill of a physician’ capable of integrating dietetic knowledge in the way he understands his cases.8 Here we find a trace of Feuerbach, who says ‘Man is what he eats.’
Diet determines behaviour, so could dietetics provide a way of transcending necessity? How can the non-existence of free will be reconciled with the possibility of acting on oneself, of constructing oneself, of willing oneself to be. To choose one’s diet is to plan one’s essence. Nietzsche argues that our choice is to accept necessity, which we must first discover. To illustrate his point he makes reference to Alvise Cornaro (1475–1566), the Venetian author of Discourses on the Sober Life, and to his work, ‘in which he recommends his meagre diet as a recipe for a long and happy life – and a virtuous one too’. The Italian thinks the regimen he follows is the cause of his longevity. Wrong, writes Nietzsche: confusion of cause and effect, inversion of causality: ‘the prerequisite of a long life, an extraordinarily slow metabolism, a small consumption, was the cause of his meagre diet. He was not free to eat much or little as he chose, his frugality was not an act of “free will”: he became ill when he ate more’.9
In fact, you do not choose your dietary regimen; you only discover what is most in harmony with the needs of your own organism. Dietetics is the science of accepting the reign of necessity through the mediation of the intelligence – it is a matter of understanding what best suits the body rather than choosing at random, or following criteria uninformed by bodily necessity.
The concern with dietetics is a pragmatic illustration of the theory of amor fati as well as an invitation to the ascetics of ‘become who you are’. The regimen is the will to self-harmony, the demand for the consonance of appetition and consent. It presumes the choice of what is imposed, the selection of the necessary. Hence Nietzsche’s jubilation and his satisfaction at being ‘so wise’.
How does one go about making a virtue of this necessity? First of all by determining the negative: what must not be done. Subsequently, the positive can be distinguished: what must be done. The negative dietetic is that of quantity; the positive, that of quality. ‘To the devil with the meals people make nowadays – in hotels just as much as where the wealthy classes live!’10 Overloading the table signifies the will to appearance: ‘what, then, is the purpose of these meals? – They are representative! Representative of what, in the name of all the saints? – Of rank? – No, of money: we no longer possess rank!’11 The meal as an external sign of wealth.
Nietzsche takes up arms against ‘The nourishment of modern man . . . [who] understands how to digest many things, indeed almost all – it is his kind of ambition’. Our epoch lies in the middle, between the lavish and the precious. In the meantime, ‘homo pamphagus is not the most refined of species’.12 Vulgarity lies in the indiscriminate. The omnivore is a mistake.
A failure of quality, a lack of suppleness, of lightness and of finesse are the characteristics of a negative diet, of which German cuisine is the archetype. This cuisine alla tedesca is characterized by ‘Soup before the meal . . . overcooked meats, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of pastries and puddings into paperweights!’13 The lot is washed down with copious quantities of spirits and beer. Nietzsche detests the national drink, which he considers responsible for the heaviness of civilization. He denounces ‘that bland degeneration that beer produces in the spirit’.14 No spirits either. In an autobiographical passage he confides that ‘Strangely enough, in spite of this extreme vulnerability to small, highly diluted doses of alcohol, I become almost a sailor when it is a matter of strong doses’.15 He experienced this as a high-school student. The right quantity is one glass – wine or beer – per meal. Bread is also to be banned: it ‘neutralises the taste of other foods, expunges it, that is why it is a part of every more extended meal’.16 Of the vegetables, carbohydrates are to be banished. Strangely, Nietzsche sees the excessive consumption of rice as leading to the use of opium and narcotics. In the same vein, he associates too much potato with the drinking of absinthe. In both cases the ingestion will produce ‘ways of thinking and feeling that have narcotic effects’.17 His reasons for this are obscure; no oral or symbolic tradition, no custom, provides support for these arguments.
Nor is vegetarianism a solution. If it was the choice of Wagner for a while – and subsequently of Hitler – it is not at all in keeping with Nietzsche’s preferences. For him, a vegetarian is ‘one who requires a [fortifying] diet’, whose strength is exhausted by vegetables just as others are by what is bad for them.18 However, out of friendship with Gersdorff, Nietzsche for a time experimented with a range of vegetables. In a letter to a friend, he opens up about his reservations on the question:
The rule which experience in this field offers is this: intellectually productive and emotionally intense natures must have meat. The other mode of living should be reserved for bakers and bumpkins, who are nothing but digesting machines . . . To show you my well-meaning energy, I have kept to the same way of life till now and shall continue doing so until you yourself give me permission to live otherwise . . . I do agree that in restaurants one is made accustomed to ‘overfeeding’; that is why I no longer like to eat in them. Also it is clear that occasional abstention from meat, for dietetic reasons, is extremely useful. But why, to quote Goethe, make a ‘religion’ out of it? But then it is inevitably entailed in all such eccentricities, and anyone who is ripe for vegetarianism is generally also ripe for socialist ‘stew’.19
Nietzsche’s biographer C. P. Janz finds it hard to understand why Nietzsche associates vegetarianism with socialism, other than that at the time of his letter from Basel (September 1869) the city hosted Bakunin and the fourth congress of the International Workingmen’s Association.20 But that is not it at all. In fact, vegetarianism has its illustrious representative in Rousseau; Nietzsche is making his dietary regimen as close as possible to that of he who knows primitive man. Furthermore, the author of Emile issues a warning for carnivores: ‘great eaters of meat are in general more cruel and ferocious than other men.’21 Hence the equations meat = strength = cruelty, vegetables = weakness = kindness, which produce a division between the weak and the strong, and between aristocrats and elites, and democrats and socialists.
Nietzschean dietetics is a science of measure: neither excess (rice, potatoes) nor insufficiency (meat), and proscriptions (alcohol, stimulants) – in order to promote a harmony, a coherence between hygienic practice and necessity.
Housewives’ ignorance of these basic rules of nutrition has produced a Germany that is coarse, heavy, without subtlety. Nietzsche criticizes ‘stupidity in the kitchen’, attacks ‘the woman as cook’ and inveighs against ‘the dreadful thoughtlessness with which the nourishment of the family and the master of the house is provided for’. So ‘it is through bad female cooks – through the complete absence of reason in the kitchen, that the evolution of man has been longest retarded and most harmed: even today things are hardly any better.’22 For a long time the stupid idea has held sway that a man can be made to order at little cost – simplistic eugenicism or the mysterious management of the body. Nietzsche falls into the trap of this platitude and thinks that an appropriate diet has the capacity to produce a well-defined species, with distinct qualities. Nourishment as means of selection. A harmonious balance will produce a controlled vitality, for ‘species which receive plentiful nourishment and an excess of care and protection soon tend very strongly to produce variations of their type and are rich in marvels and monstrosities.’23 Plato falls into just as simplistic a mythology of dietetics as the instrument of eugenicism. Happily, Nietzsche does not pursue this argument. It seems that the hypothesis remains unique in his work and without further development. His lack of any major concern with collective solutions leads him to restrict his science of dietetics to uniquely individual ends.
To German cuisine, heavy and devoid of subtlety, Nietzsche opposes that of Piedmont, which he sees as light and delicate. Against alcohol he lauds the virtues of water and confides that he always carries a cup to drink from the many fountains that adorn Nice, Turin and Sils-Maria. Rather than coffee, he suggests drinking tea, but only in the morning, very strong and in small quantities: ‘Tea is very unwholesome and sicklies one o’er the whole day if it is too weak by a single degree.’24 He also likes chocolate and recommends drinking it for irritating climates unsuitable for drinking tea. He compares the respective merits of the Dutch Van Houten and the Swiss Sprüngli cocoas.25
Beyond the nature and quality of food and drink, Nietzsche integrates into dietetics styles of eating, conduct of meals, and the requirements of the nutritional operation. The first imperative is to ‘know the size of one’s stomach’.26 The second is to eat a hearty meal rather than a light one. Digestion is easier when it has a full stomach to work on. Finally, the time spent at the table must be calculated – neither too long, to avoid putting on weight, nor too short, to avoid strain on the stomach muscle and excessive gastric secretion.
On the question of the alimentary regimen, Nietzsche confesses that his ‘experiences in this matter are as bad as possible’. He continues: ‘I am amazed how late I heard this question, how late I learned “reason” from these experiences. Only the complete worthlessness of our German education – its “idealism” – explains to me to some extent why at precisely this point I was backward to the point of holiness.’27 In fact the whole of his correspondence with his mother testifies to the primitive character of his mode of nutrition, and this throughout his life. At no time did Nietzsche seem to want to break from charcuterie and fatty foods.
In 1877 his dietary programme was the following:
Midday: Soup, of a quarter of a teaspoon of Liebig extract, before the meal. Two ham sandwiches and an egg. Six to eight nuts with bread. Two apples. Two pieces of ginger. Two biscuits. Evening: an egg with bread. Five nuts. Sweetened milk with a crispbread or three biscuits.28
In June 1879 his diet is still the same, but he has added figs and increased his consumption of milk, probably to relieve stomach ache. There is virtually no meat – it is expensive. During the 1880s a large part of his correspondence with his mother consisted in orders for sausages and hams – of which he deplored the lack of skill in the salting – and in requests to stop sending parcels of pears. During the time he spent in Engadine he was concerned about his provisions and was constantly checking that he could buy tins of corned beef. In 1884 his letters told the whole story of his deteriorating body: stomach cramps, unbearable headaches, poor vision, vomiting. At that time he made do with a simple apple for lunch. Reading Foster’s Textbook of Physiology converted him to the remedy of English beers – stout and pale ale. He forgot his anathemas against his compatriots’ preferred drink, but it was to help him sleep – at least that is what he believed. The following year, in Nice, he lunched on millet bread and milk, then dined at the Pension de Genève, where ‘everything is nicely roasted and without fat’, in contrast with the Menton, where ‘they cook like Württembergers’.29
Dairy products appear in 1886, in Sils-Maria. In a letter to his mother he extolled the virtues of ‘quark with fermented milk added, in the Russian style’. He goes on: ‘I have now found something that seems to be doing me good – I eat goat cheese, with milk . . . And then I ordered five pounds of malto-leguminose directly from the factory . . . Let’s leave off the ham for the moment . . . also . . . the soup tablets.’30 If the dairy products were for the benefit of his stomach, the consumption of maltoleguminose was not to facilitate digestion. As for charcuterie, it seems to have been dropped less from dietetic reasons than because the curing was dreadful and revolting. Lack of money, however, prohibited the hearty meals that he would have wished for. Poverty and physical deterioration create privation and reduce the latitude of choice. The lack of meat is what most upset him.
At Sils-Maria in August 1887 Nietzsche moved his summer quarters to the Albergo d’Italia and ate half an hour before everyone else to avoid the noise from the hundred-odd fellow lodgers, including many children. He told his mother of his refusal to
allow myself to be fed en masse. I therefore eat alone . . . every day a lovely rare steak with spinach and a large omelette with apple marmalade . . . In the evening some small slices of ham, two egg yolks and two bread rolls, and nothing else.31
At five in the morning he made himself a cup of Van Houten chocolate and then returned to bed to awake an hour later to drink a large cup of tea.
However, charcuterie was still a favourite topic in his correspondence – ‘ham à la Dr Wiel’, ‘ham sausage’ – as well as honey, chopped rhubarb and sponge cake. During his last year of lucidity – 1888 – he denied himself wine, beer, spirits and coffee. He drank only water and confessed to ‘an extreme regularity in [his] mode of living and eating’.32 But he still maintained the combinations steak/omelette, ham/egg yolks/bread. That summer he was sent 6 kilos of Lachsschinken (a mild ham) to last four months. When he received the package from his mother Nietzsche hung the sausages – ‘delicate to the touch’ – on a string suspended from his walls: imagine the philosopher drafting The Anti-Christ beneath a string of sausages . . .
Some weeks before his collapse Nietzsche finally began to eat fruit. In Turin, where he was staying, he confided that ‘What flattered me most of all was that old costermonger women won’t relax until they have found their sweetest grapes for me.’33 It took until this period of his life for fruit and vegetables to appear in the diet of the philosopher. There was never any question of fish. In Nice, where fresh seafood could be guaranteed, he showed no interest in the produce of the sea.
However much he denies it, Nietzsche practises a heavy dietetics – a meridional heaviness certainly, a heaviness of the South, but a heaviness all the same. If German cuisine is undoubtedly the densest and most indigestible, the Piedmontese cuisine he opposes to it is scarcely any lighter – apart from white truffles, the area’s speciality, Piedmont produces stews and pasta, nothing very ethereal. There is no clear inflexion in Nietzsche’s biography to show the influence of dietetics: ‘Indeed, till I reached a very mature age I always ate badly, morally speaking, “impersonally”, “selflessly”, “altruistically” – for the benefit of cooks and other fellow Christians.’34 In fact, with his ailing stomach, his deplorable physiology, his deteriorating body, his poverty, and his life as a nomad doomed to family lodgings better known for their cheap food than their gastronomic care, everything conspired against a beneficial diet. Where you might expect boiled or steamed fish (his mother had sent the equipment), Nietzsche consumed sausages, ham, tongue, game, venison . . .35
If you want to be Nietzschean, you have to remember what he wrote in the Untimely Meditations: ‘I profit from a philosopher only insofar as he can be an example.’36 By this standard Nietzsche would himself be discredited. He never puts into practice the dietetics of his theories. On the brink of madness he wrote in one of his books: ‘I am one thing, what I write is another matter.’37 Nietzsche’s dietetics is in fact a virtue dreamed of, fantasized about, a way of warding off ingestion that all too often becomes indigestion. Food is an analogon of the world. Unsuccessful as a poetics, Nietzsche’s rhetoric of nutrition remains an aesthetic of the harmonious relation between the real and the self, but once again an aesthetic only dreamed of. Dietary regimen also stems from a will to produce one’s body, to wish for one’s flesh. Faced with the pure necessity of disharmony, Nietzsche cannot save a will that yet had promised so much: the transparency of the organism, the fluidity of mechanisms, the lightness of the machine.
Nietzsche’s dietetics is a fundamental driver of the confusion of ethics and aesthetics, one of the fine arts whose object is the style of the will. It acts as a support for the exuberant exercise of the will, or at least of the effort towards jubilation. Art of the self, banishment of necessity, technique of immanence, it functions as a theoretical logic and as a will to the ennobling of the body through a noble style of life. It is enough to give form to Dionysus while the stale smell of the Crucified still lingers. Gay Science . . .