Nietzsche Read online

  NIETZSCHE

  A complete introduction

  Roy Jackson

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  A time of change

  On reading Nietzsche

  On interpreting Nietzsche

  1 The young Nietzsche

  Nietzsche’s background

  Tragedy strikes

  Nietzsche’s education

  The professor

  2 Philosophical influences

  The influence of Wagner

  The influence of Schopenhauer

  The influence of Plato

  Descartes and Spinoza

  Locke and Berkeley

  Hume and Kant

  3 Nietzsche’s later life and death

  Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée

  Nietzsche’s wanderings

  The writing of Dawn

  Lou von Salomé

  The final years

  Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

  4 The Birth of Tragedy

  The ‘theoretical man’

  Apollo and Dionysus

  The importance of culture

  The value of Greek tragedy

  5 The revaluation of all values

  Nietzsche and moral philosophy

  The death of God

  Nietzsche’s naturalism

  Slave morality

  Criticism of the priests

  The idea of the Superman

  6 The will to power

  The enigma of the will to power

  The objective interpretation

  The subjective interpretation

  The empirical interpretation

  Conclusion

  7 Zarathustra, the Superman and the eternal recurrence

  Thus Spoke Zarathustra

  A brief summary of Thus Spoke Zarathustra

  The eternal recurrence

  Zarathustra and the Superman

  After Zarathustra

  Nihilism

  Amor fati: love your fate!

  8 On truth and perspectivism

  The theory of knowledge

  Nietzsche’s perspectivism

  Reason and the senses

  The importance of language

  9 Nietzsche and religion

  Nietzsche’s religiosity

  Nietzsche as a ‘sort’ of atheist

  Nietzsche the Lutheran

  Nietzsche and ‘inspiration’

  Religion as life enhancing

  On Islam

  Myth, modernity and monumental history

  Religion and the state

  On Buddhism

  10 Nietzsche and politics

  On democracy

  The immoralist?

  On women

  The philosophers of the future

  Does Nietzsche have political views?

  11 Nietzsche’s legacy

  Nazism

  Twentieth-century French philosophy

  The analytic tradition

  Art and literature

  Nietzsche’s writings: abbreviations and translations used

  Timeline of important events in Nietzsche’s life

  Answers

  Preface

  Welcome to Nietzsche – A complete introduction.

  My first encounter with Nietzsche was in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I was a first-year undergraduate at the time and, although there have been occasional frustrations and moments of despair, my love affair with Nietzsche’s works has remained fairly consistent over the years.

  I am currently Reader in Philosophy and Religion at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK. I have written books on Nietzsche, Plato, the philosophy of religion and Islamic philosophy. Previously, I taught philosophy and religion in schools and sixth forms, and was an A-level chief examiner. I have written A-level texts and accessible articles for Dialogue and The Philosopher’s Magazine, and I give talks at schools and colleges.

  Nothing gives me more satisfaction than teaching students about Nietzsche, especially when this results in a greater understanding and appreciation of what Nietzsche really says. This was also my main intention, and hope, in writing this book.

  Roy Jackson

  An eternal recurrence with Annette is reason enough for amor fati.

  Introduction

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is probably the most widely read philosopher in the modern world, yet he also continues to be the most misunderstood. His writings were almost totally ignored during his lifetime, and after his death his philosophy was neglected and badly translated until the mid-twentieth century. Until then his influence had been claimed in areas as diverse as vegetarianism, anarchism, Nazism and religious cultism. It is only more recently that Nietzsche has undergone something of a rehabilitation; and a deserved recognition has emerged that here was a man who ranks among the great and original thinkers of the modern age.

  Nietzsche is most famous for his declaration that ‘God is dead’ and his consequent belief that we must therefore create a new man, a ‘Superman’. With this declaration that ‘God is dead’, Nietzsche was the first philosopher fully to confront the prevailing loss of religious belief in Western Europe. What Nietzsche meant by this was that society no longer had a need for God, for He had outlived His usefulness. Nietzsche was therefore calling for humanity to stand on its own two feet without the support of faith or dogma of any kind. He was not only attacking religious faith but also a belief in objective values or truths. He was saying that we must choose our own values. The reason people persisted in a belief in God or truth, Nietzsche argued, was because of their reluctance to face the reality of their situation: it is a form of self-deception. Rather it is better to face and, indeed, to embrace, the temporary nature of existence and the apparent meaninglessness of life.

  Nietzsche suffered from severe illnesses throughout much of his life, including migraines, which meant that he often lay in a darkened room, unable to leave his bed. He went insane in January 1889, and his illness and insanity may well have been the result of contracting syphilis, although he suffered from headaches even as a boy. Nietzsche, however, saw illness in a positive way, providing him with the inspiration to write and think: great works come from suffering, he believed. Indeed, he was able to write his greatest works during perhaps the times of his worse suffering, both physically and mentally. Works such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals were all written between 1883 and 1887.

  A time of change

  Nietzsche was born in what is now Germany (then Prussia) at a time of great change. The age of the telegraph had arrived in the year of Nietzsche’s birth, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published when Nietzsche was four and, in the same year, revolutions were breaking out across Europe with the growth in new values and ideas such as popular liberalism, nationalism and socialism. Over the next two decades Germany (under Bismarck) and Italy achieved political unification, Austria and Prussia eliminated feudalism and, in 1861, Russia freed the serfs. From the 1870s the second phase of the Industrial Revolution led to mass production of goods and the mechanization of society.

  Importantly, from a religious perspective, belief in God was on the decline: Marx had declared it to be the opium of the masses and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution raised serious religious questions regarding the authority of the Bible. Nietzsche was to present a critical eye over these changes: he saw dangers in Enlightenment ideals, in increasing mechanization and secularization, in democracy and liberalism and in nihilism. In many respects, Nietzsche can be seen as a prophet of his time, yet also out of step with his time, as prophets often are. While many head like lemmings towards the cliff edge, singing the praises of science and political enlightenment, Nietzsche stands on the top of a high mountain
and looks down from another perspective, one of caution and warning of the possible dangers of this new age.

  Nietzsche is certainly the most controversial and notorious philosopher to have lived, as well as being one of the world’s most interesting and scintillating thinkers you will come across, in the realms of philosophy at least. When people think of Nietzsche today they associate him with his harsh criticisms of religion, specifically Christianity, as well as his attack on the belief in ‘another world’. Previous to his rehabilitation, however, many did not regard him as much of a philosopher at all but as someone who should be banned from the bookshelves. The reasons for this perception of Nietzsche will be unravelled as you read on, and even the current understanding of him can be considered as open to debate. The fact that today you can attend Nietzsche conferences, where he is discussed by serious and highly professional philosophers, should be sufficient evidence that here we are talking about Nietzsche as a very serious philosopher indeed.

  On reading Nietzsche

  The best way to get to know Nietzsche is to read him for yourself. His unusual style and lyrical approach to philosophy can, for the reader coming to him for the first time, be both unnerving and confusing, especially if that reader is used to the more conventional linear and discursive approach to argument. Even Nietzsche’s mature and most coherent work can still leave the student searching for thematic hooks from which to hang the philosopher’s cloak. One scholar of Nietzsche, Michael Tanner, remarked upon what is perhaps Nietzsche’s best book, Beyond Good and Evil:

  ‘If one goes through the text of Beyond Good and Evil using a highlighter, one’s likely to find that one has marked more than half the book. It comes as a shock when one rereads it a month later, say, and finds not only that one is reading many of the highlighted passages as if for the first time, but that one is scandalized by one’s non-highlighting of other wonderful passages, and occasionally bewildered at what one did mark.’

  However, not only does Nietzsche present unambiguous themes in this text but also, with patience and perseverance, it can be seen that Nietzsche writes in a lucid and logical manner. When reading commentaries on Nietzsche, the reader must be aware that only relatively recently has he experienced a rehabilitation. You will not have to dip very far into the past to read works by scholars that rely upon poor translations of Nietzsche’s work or take his published notes (not published by Nietzsche himself but by his anti-Semitic sister Elisabeth) as evidence of his final philosophy.

  Nietzsche’s works do not, on the whole, lend themselves to a straightforward understanding – using, as he does, metaphor, symbol, irony, sarcasm and ‘in jokes’. This is certainly part of his attraction for readers, but also helps explain why his works were condemned by the academic community for their lack of academic rigour, detailed research, compartmentalization or high standards of source evidence.

  If you take the time to read some of Nietzsche’s works chronologically, you will see how he gradually develops his own voice, breaking away from the influence of the composer Richard Wagner and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and developing a distinctive writing style that, though hard-hitting and poetic, was not regarded as the correct form to use for works of good philosophy. Nietzsche started writing in aphorisms: catchy passages varying in length from a single sentence to a short essay of several pages. This style may well be a result of Nietzsche’s long walks in the mountains when he would stop at various points and jot down some idea or other. Whatever the reason, Nietzsche developed an undeserved reputation for writing in a jumbled and ill-considered fashion. In fact, Nietzsche always thought long and hard about the structure of his books, which, more recently, has caused analogies to be made between his writings and the sonata form in music. In fact, Nietzsche did also compose some music.

  Yet aphorisms are a hazardous form of writing. A good aphorism strikes the reader as brilliant and memorable, whereas a bad aphorism will be quickly forgotten. Fortunately, Nietzsche was, on the whole, a brilliant aphorist. Yet the reader has to approach an aphorism differently from linear, discursive argument. Whereas the latter, if it is any good, flows along in a gradual manner, revealing its premises one by one, each aphorism, on the other hand, has to be treated as both self-contained and yet part of a greater whole. There are times when Nietzsche seems to slip in an aphorism that leaves the reader pondering over its relevance and it may be some time later in the book before that relevance becomes clear – if, that is, the reader can remember having read it! Aphorisms share a number of features with poetry, especially in their intention of engaging the reader on a personal level and requiring you to agree and be affected by what they are attempting to illuminate. Like good poetry, an aphorism can be enlightening and life changing. As Nietzsche comments in his work Ecce Homo, he writes so that his reader can dip into his books as if they were jumping into a glacial stream, that is, in and out quickly with the expectation that the experience will be remembered for some time to come.

  However, because aphorisms are not simply intended to inform, describe and present a thesis, it is difficult for the student especially (as opposed to the casual reader) to know what is relevant, to know – referring to Michael Tanner’s quote above – what to highlight. How can you argue with an aphorism? In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche says, ‘He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.’ (TSZ, Part 1, ‘Of Reading and Writing’). Nietzsche – something of a child prodigy – would no doubt have had to commit many works, classics especially, to memory at his public school, Pforta. The advantage of this kind of study may not be immediately obvious, but those who still operate in this way argue that it pays in the future when the relevance can be seen. However, unless you intend Nietzsche to become your guide for life, the student can hardly be expected to learn Nietzsche’s aphorisms by heart, nor would it particularly benefit your understanding in the more immediate term. A more pragmatic approach needs to be adopted.

  In reading Nietzsche, it is difficult to find the ‘real Nietzsche’: that is, to find the answer to the question, what did Nietzsche really think? But if someone were to ask you what you really think, how sincerely could you answer that question? We all have a collection of thoughts and some are more certain than others, yet we also change our attitude and beliefs about things over time as we learn more. Nietzsche, like so many philosophers before and after him, is no exception to this. There seems to be a view by some that those ‘in authority’ cannot change their minds, but it could be said that the real thinker is someone who is open-minded enough to acknowledge that views can change. As you read Nietzsche, you will see that there are certain key topics that he keeps coming back to with new insights, amendments and better arguments. His views do change over time and, as such, his writings must be seen as a process, as thinking things through. This can prove to be very frustrating for the interpreter, but can also be something of an intellectual joy.

  Another point to keep in mind when reading this book is that it is simply not possible to cover all aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. His writings are wide-ranging indeed, covering such traditional topics as moral philosophy, politics, aesthetics (theory of art), epistemology (theory of knowledge) and religion. However, he also talks about history, women, food, sex, the self, mysticism, and so on, in an often bizarre and controversial manner that can leave the reader questioning the writer’s grip on reality. On that point, although he did have a mental breakdown in 1889 from which he was never to recover, there is no reason to suppose that any of his writing previous to this is the product of an insane man: a genius and unconventional thinker, yes, but a madman, no. Having said that, as Nietzsche would readily admit, the line between madness and genius is very thin indeed.

  On interpreting Nietzsche

  If you get more involved in Nietzsche, perhaps studying him at university, doing some independent research or attending conferences, you will note that over the past 50 years or so two very distinct interpretive sch
ools of philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche have developed, with differing approaches to studying his work. First, there is the Continental approach, which was dominant in French philosophy especially from the 1960s onwards and has been championed by such philosophical greats as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida (see Chapter 11). The Continental tradition, though something of a gross generalization to say this, concentrates more on Nietzsche’s style: his playful and clever use of language, his poetic and imaginative use of metaphor and humour, and so on. This is not to say that content is not important, but that the content has to be understood within the context of Nietzsche’s play on words and his use of the German language. The Continental tradition has generally defended Nietzsche as someone who is something of an existentialist, who argues for no objective moral values, and that knowledge is a matter of perspective.

  Again, though something of a generalization, the Continental tradition sees Nietzsche as more radical and ahead of his time than the other philosophical school, the analytic tradition, would have him. Analytic philosophy is a multi-faceted phenomenon, but essentially what characterizes it from other traditions in philosophy is that it tends to align itself closely with the sciences and to focus on clarification of terms rather than produce whole systems of philosophy, which is more common in the European tradition.

  In this sense, analytic philosophy may seem less ambitious but, at the same time, perhaps more realistic in achieving targets. Analytic philosophers – who are largely part of the Anglo-American world – see Nietzsche in a more traditional sense rather than as a radical existentialist figure.

  In this work, it is hoped that both these traditions are given due worth, but ultimately such distinctions should not matter. The fact remains that Nietzsche has something to say, whether you are an adherent of a particular philosophical school or just someone who enjoys a good read.

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