Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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Part 7, Our Virtues
Are not Nietzsche's doctrines simply monstrous?
Roger wrote: "Are not Nietzsche's doctrines simply monstrous?"Maybe so, but I hope it has still been worthwhile to read him. Nietzsche spends a lot of time criticizing and mocking ideas he disagrees with in order to slowly, gradually, artfully reveal what he actually believes. I disagree with most of what I understand him to be saying, but reading Nietzsche critically, even cynically, can be helpful in the same negative way. Or maybe this is just the way I read everything, with Socrates' question always in mind: Ti esti? What is it?
Nietzsche wrote to one of his colleagues the following:
"It is absolutely unnecessary, and not even desirable, for you to argue in my favor; on the contrary, a dose of curiosity, as if you were looking at an alien plant with ironic distance, would strike me as an incomparably more intelligent attitude toward me."
--letter to Karl Fuchs, July 29, 1888
I have heard that Nietzsche has appeared on a list of the most over-rated philosophers of the last 200 years, and also on a list of the most under-rated. I am trying to understand it, I can see that some places he is working out the logical consequences of (seriously wrongheaded) first principles with admirable forthrightness. Other places he seems to babble incoherently.
Roger wrote: "Are not Nietzsche's doctrines simply monstrous?"I've been thinking about this chapter quite a bit--primarily the last few paragraphs that deal with women. I think Roger mentioned in one of the other chapters that it seemed as though people read Nietzsche and saw what they wanted to see (or words to that effect--sorry if I'm misquoting), and this may be an instance where I've looked at the ink-blot and saw a butterfly, but the chapter did make me think.
I'm not saying this is what N's meaning is or trying to paraphrase him--this is what thoughts his writing engendered:
If one believes that gender is purely a societal construct, then probably best to slip BG&E into the nearest circular file. If, on the other hand, one does believe in masculine and feminine properties--while admitting that it's doubtful any one individual is all masculine or all feminine and that there are an infinite amount of gradations possible--then it seems to me we are back into the area of 'tension' that N has mentioned previously. That nothing worthwhile comes unless as a result of tension, and that there is a tension between masculine and feminine that elevates each, provided they maintain that tension.
N seems to be against those who would like to eliminate this tension, or eliminate differences. When women try to become more like men, they lose out on the very things that give them power.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with this--I certainly think that N is mistaken when it comes to regarding women as 'confinable property', or as subservient. I think this is misplaced will to power. I don't think it's necessary or even desirable, though it's obvious enough that there are people who do live that way, by choice or not. On the other hand, I do believe there are fundamental differences.
Other aspects of the chapter are noteworthy--I'm going to have to read it again, maybe twice, before commenting more.
|223| the ‘cap doesn't fit’!He’s talking about Charles Bovary, isn’t he?
prepared as no other age has been for the carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual Shrovetide laughter and wild spirits, for the transcendental heights of the most absolute nonsense and Aristophanic universal mockery.
I don’t know, Nietzsche, if you’re appointing yourself the role of comedic playwrite after Aristophanes, you’er going to have to try harder. I don’t think your insults and mockeries are quite on par.
And I think Flaubert managed to provoke a stronger public moral outrage — and admirations — than Nietzsche managed to.
Bryan wrote: "N seems to be against those who would like to eliminate this tension, or eliminate differences. When women try to become more like men, they lose out on the very things that give them power. ."I think that's right. The tension of opposites gives a relationship, or society, vibrancy. I think this tension is what appeals to him from an aesthetic perspective. But from a practical or political perspective this tension between opposites is most productive when it inspires competition, and the idea that certain people or classes of people are by nature or by fate superior to others quashes that competition. Like a lot of things, Nietzsche seems to get it half right and half wrong. Maybe that is only fitting for him...
Lia wrote: "I don’t know, Nietzsche, if you’re appointing yourself the role of comedic playwrite after Aristophanes, you’er going to have to try harder. I don’t think your insults and mockeries are quite on par. "I'm not sure if he means section 234 in jest, but I hope he does, because it's hilarious. Especially: "Woman does not understand what food means -- and wants to be cook." I have no idea what the hell that means, but it did make me laugh.
Btw, I'll be spending all day in the kitchen tomorrow.
Suppose that Thomas is a woman – WUT!?!?!I hope you've got the feminine instinct to preserve life by
What if it's somewhere between a joke and a provocative metaphor?
Lia wrote: "Who are you going to transform, Tom? Will they turn into pigs? You haven't got the cruelty of Circe, I hope."By the time I'm done with them they will know the wisdom of Elpenor.
Let us not make excuses for Nietzsche. The man is insufferable, even allowing for the limited perspective of his age. In the first chapter he disparages "Prejudices of Philosophers." In this chapter he indulges his own prejudices against women.
Cphe wrote: "When he refers to flags and banners is N referring to the suffragette movement, the right to be heard?"I believe so, yes. Nietzsche was writing BGE during the era of "first-wave" feminism, so much of this chapters appears to find him in a reactionary mood to events happening around him. That said, I'm not sure to what extent he's reacting to events in Germany or to events elsewhere – notably the UK, US, Australia, Scandinavia, etc, where the feminist movement at that time was more advanced.
Thomas wrote: "Nietzsche's analysis of morality has once again turned to the subject of taste. What is the connection between morality (or immorality) and instinct and taste? "He seems to be saying that many modern men have become dull and uninteresting in their virtue, having lost a taste for cruelty, tragedy and the cathartic effects of suffering. I'm thinking in particular of the passage (#224):
As men of the “historical sense” we also have our virtues; that cannot be denied: we are unpretentious, selfless, modest, courageous, full of self-overcoming, full of devotion, very grateful, very patient, very accommodating; but for all that we are perhaps not paragons of good taste.
Does anyone know what "historical sense" means in this context?
Roger wrote: "Let us not make excuses for Nietzsche. The man is insufferable, even allowing for the limited perspective of his age. In the first chapter he disparages "Prejudices of Philosophers." In this chapte..."I don't think so. N uses loaded language in part to goad us. I don't think he believes women don't know what food means, I think he is pointing out the utter absurdity of such a prospect. He's saying that woman cannot be equal to man because no human can be equal to another human- we all have different subjective experiences, skills, moralities, etc. So, in a way, cheers to diversity of the human experience!
But then, I might be seeing majesty in the inkblot as well. It's all subjective.
Given the ink spilled so far on the mockery of the “scholarly asses of the male sex”, or the stupidity of the (male) dogmatists and their caricature as failed chaser of truth (which is a woman), and the general insults hurled at men he clearly thought worthy of intellectual engagement, it would be condescending to talk about the ladies’ turn in modernity with kid gloves on. I’m more or less with Bryan in thinking for Nietzsche, male and female wills are counterpoised to perform some kind of productive function, and his critique of modernity is not that there’s something especially wrong with feminine nature itself, but rather, that both genders have been demasculinized and defeminized.
Towards the end of Part 7, Nietzsche alluded to “woman” being carried away by horned beast, while crying “O Europe!”, surely he’s talking about Europa/ Jove, (except this time she’s carried away by an idea.
And is woman now being deprived of her enchantment? Is woman slowly being made boring? O Europe! Europe! We know the horned beast which always attracted you most, which again and again threatens you with danger! Your ancient fable could once again become ‘history’ – once again a monstrous stupidity could master you and carry you off! And no god concealed within it, no! merely an ‘idea’, a ‘modern idea’!…
That’s one of the stronger clues that Nietzsche’s “woman” isn’t some blockhead assertion of essential, unchanging, biological, eternal, ahistorical female essence, but rather, somewhat farcially (I think it’s farcical and ripe for parody, I’m not sure if Nietzsche meant for them to come across as funny) Nietzsche keeps using “woman” as metaphor — metaphor for “truth,” (prelude BGE), metaphor for Europe (Part 7 last paragraph), metaphor for life (“life is a woman” Gay science 339.)
Edit: As for reactionary, it’s worth nothing that Nietzsche fought hard to have women admitted to Basel University, and many of his closest associates throughout his life were women whom were promoting feminism. (See Julian Young’s biography of Nietzsche, also Carol Diethe’s Nietzsche’s Women: Beyond the Whip)
Ashley wrote: "I don't think he believes women don't know what food means, I think he is pointing out the utter absurdity of such a prospect..."IF by “woman” he means Europe, and if women cook and feed (nourish) men, transforming them, and if Nietzsche is a critic of what modern Europe / Europeans are turning into (democratic, flattening hierarchy, with no sense of taste, no ability of judgment or discrimination), then I read this as Nietzsche saying “woman” (Europe) played her role in being stupid and feeding men food (nourishment can be education as well) that will sustain the weak and sickly but are detrimental to the “higher type.” She “didn’t know what she’s doing.”
Recall back in BGE 30
“What serves the higher type of man as food or refreshment must to a very different and inferior type be almost poison. The virtues of the common man would perhaps indicate vice and weakness in a philosopher; it may be possible that if a lofty type of man degenerated and perished, he would only thus acquire qualities on whose account it would prove necessary in the lower world into which he had sunk henceforth to venerate him as a saint.”
The food that nourished Odysseus turned his herd into pigs. (Nietzsche even name-dropped Circe And her spicey potion!). The food that (merely) sustained the herd ended up domesticating the “higher men” (who got so high they went tripping down Hades on Hermes’ Molis. Maybe Tom is right about Elpenor.)
" 'the spirit' is more like a stomach than anything else" Sect. 230
Ashley wrote: "" 'the spirit' is more like a stomach than anything else" Sect. 230"I jotted down “so Odysseus” on the margin! Ostensibly, Achilles is a man driven by his spirit (anger,) and Odysseus by his stomach 😂
So, do we blame Circe for taking the spice out of her potion?
Lia wrote: "Given the ink spilled so far on the mockery of the “scholarly asses of the male sex”, or the stupidity of the (male) dogmatists and their caricature as failed chaser of truth (which is a woman), an..."I think he mocks the suggestion that women are equal to men for the same reason that he mocks the idea that all men are equal: he thinks this is a "levelling" of an essential and natural hierarchy. I find it hard to ignore him when he says in clear terms things like:
"Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for a secondary role" (BGE 145)
because it fits perfectly well with everything else he says about natural hierarchy and the relationship of power between people. One of the consequences of this "levelling" is that women become boring like scientific and democratic man. Equality is boring.
I think what Nietzsche objects to most strongly is that women should be given equal rights, rather than earning them by force of will. He thinks woman is more powerful as a "cat" woman, exercising her natural instincts -- her "genuine, cunning suppleness", her naive egoism (things Nietzsche loves) -- than as an equal to man. "Perhaps she seeks mastery," he says, but this is evidently not her talent. Her talent is for the "art of the lie" (232) -- i.e., power by another means. It's a very subtle argument, but still extraordinarily chauvinistic.
At the root of all this is the notion that some classes of people are naturally superior to others, an idea for which he still has not provided a coherent rationale.
Ashley wrote: "" 'the spirit' is more like a stomach than anything else" Sect. 230"Is this a curious observation from a man who had notorious stomach problems? All these food metaphors...
I found Niezsche's analogy in 215 of the two differently-colored suns shining on a single planet surprising and a great image. He seems to be saying that the colors are "moralities," that is, moral systems, and "modern men" are subject to diverse influences rather than one clear beam. It reminded me of this passage from Paul Valéry (1919), a devoted reader of Nietzsche:...For all I need is a vague general recollection of what was being thought just before the [Great] War, the kinds of intellectual pursuit then in progress, the works being published. So if I disregard all detail and confine myself to a quick impression, to that natural whole given by a moment's perception, I see... nothing! Nothing... and yet an infinitely potential nothing.
The physicists tell us that if the eye could survive in an oven fired to the point of incandescence, it would see... nothing. There would be no unequal intensities of light left to mark off points in space. That formidable contained energy would produce invisibility, indistinct equality. Now, equality of that kind is nothing else than a perfect state of disorder.
And what made that disorder in the mid of Europe? The free coexistence, in all her cultivated minds, of the most dissimilar ideas, the most contradictory principles of life and learning. That is characteristic of a modern epoch....
Well then! Europe in 1914 had perhaps reached the limit of modernism in this sense. Every mind of any scope was a crossroads for all shades of opinion; every thinker was an international exposition of thought. There were the works of the mind in which the wealth of contrasts and contradictory tendencies was like the insane displays of light in the capitals of those days: eyes were fatigued, scorched.... How much material wealth, how much labor and planning it took, how many centuries were ransacked, how many heterogeneous lives were combined, to make possible such a carnival, and to set it up as the supreme wisdom and the triumph of humanity?
Thomas wrote: "I find it hard to ignore him when he says in clear terms things like..."Do you think it’s significant that he’s talking about “man and woman on the whole?” That he detects “an almost masculine stupidity” in the emancipation of woman, and that he mocks the “scholarly asses of the male sex” who are advising woman to imitate the stupidities of modern European manliness: “they would like to reduce woman to the level of ‘general education,’ probably even of reading the newspapers and talking about politics. Here and there they even want to turn women into freethinkers and scribblers . . .”?
Somewhat similar to what Bryan was saying about gender as construct, it reads to me like Nietzsche thinks men’s will to power drive them to control and possess women and act to create “women-as-such” after their own values, their own prejudices. So these “dolts” crafted a creature that is defanged and stupid (after their own bad taste). Which goes back to support the frame of “woman as a whole”-is-a-construct.
I agree it’s dishonest to ignore what he clearly states, but I think it’s also important to keep Nietzsche’s “frame” story in mind — if “truth” is not universal but a matter of perspective, and Nietzsche is so overtly, with comedic exaggerations, displaying his misogyny, then surely whatever “truths” about women he espouses are
1) subjective “truths” that belongs to him and him alone, no one else is entitled to it, he’s not saying that’s the universal Truth (with the cap on, which doesn’t fit, and is funny)
2) a somewhat honest self-critique, of his own psychology, his own resentment and subjective projection, dressed in costumes, placed on stage.
Whatever emancipation of women means, it’s going the wrong direction if they (we) are simply imitating men, simply participating in their boring, “indifferent,” objectivist enterprise after being taught by men to do so. Like Joyce’s Molly, Nietzsche’s depiction of feminine virtues include her uneducability, the cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger’s claw under the glove, the inner wildness, and the incomprehensibility, scope ... not being a woman, no doubt he projects his own reactionary insecurity into it, and that apprehension is put on stage for all the see, and I think we are meant to see the ludicrous but funny absurdity of that.
TL;DR, IMO: Nietzsche’s (local, subjective) misogyny is displayed knowingly, intentionally, to demonstrate his overall argument about Will to Power; he’s not presenting his depiction of women-as-a-whole as a tautology.
Given the reality that he actively fought alongside feminists to admit women into University, and also published statements that called the debarment of women from having opportunities to exercise their intelligence “a tragic waste” elsewhere, I read this “performance” as a challenge for women to come up with our own idea of what it means to be emancipated, to contribute to the the intellectual development of Europe, and not to blindly imitate the sublime-slave-asses that are “we scholars.”
I have some weird theories about Nietzsche’s peculiar class-hierarchy assertions (have something to do with metempsychosis if you want to know how weird), but most of the textual clues are from other Nietzschean texts, I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to post them here. (And even if I did post my theory, it won’t make his class-discrimination any less offensive to democratic taste.)
As for making unsupported assertions: it’s worth nothing that BGE is one of Nietzsche’s many publications from in his middle-late period, he advertises “next” publication on the back of each book like it’s a series, like each book is written for readers whom have already read his previous books. And he did explicitly state that BGE is saying the same thing as Zarathustra, but Z is poetic and BGE is philosophical. AND he told his publisher that GM is the appendix to BGE — it would be charitable to consider BGE as an incomplete work, and some of the assertions are more elaborately clarified and dissected in his other works (some of which are unfinished.)
Dave wrote: "As men of the “historical sense” we also have our virtues; that cannot be denied: we are unpretentious, selfless, modest, courageous, full of self-overcoming, full of devotion, very grateful, very patient, very accommodating; but for all that we are perhaps not paragons of good taste.Does anyone know what "historical sense" means in this context?
..."
As Nietzsche hints later, the "historical sense" was a reaction (centered in Germany, but influential throughout Europe) to the French Revolution's armed expansion of 'the universal rights of man.'
German historians of the early 19th C. worked hard to demonstrate that there were no 'universal rights of man,' only customs which had evolved locally, through time.
"citiation needed?"- this, which doesn't go into the pre-history, pardon the expression of the "historical school."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histori...
But what Nietzsche seems to be describing, incredibly early, is postmodernism. There is no genuine standpoint, only an openess to all standpoints, as something to 'try on,' like a costume which doesn't fit very well.
Lia wrote: "if “truth” is not universal but a matter of perspective, and Nietzsche is so overtly, with comedic exaggerations, displaying his misogyny, then surely whatever “truths” about women he espouses are 1) subjective “truths” that belongs to him and him alone, no one else is entitled to it, he’s not saying that’s the universal Truth (with the cap on, which doesn’t fit, and is funny)..."
Subjective truths that belong to him alone are of very limited use to others, although they may be misunderstood by others and misapplied in horrific ways (and they have been.) So I wonder why Nietzsche chose to present his worldview as philosophy instead of art, or poetry. He seems to me much more like an artist or poet than a philosopher in his desire to excite emotions and empower individualism. Did he realize that this subjectivism could have practical consequences? That what he is advocating, if taken seriously, could lead to real tragedy? (And afterwards might not be excused as mere farce?)
It seems to me that these consequences might not have been so profound if he had acknowledged his subjectivity to be an aesthetic philosophy instead of a moral one. Joyce had only to let his family starve as he packed them around Europe creating his masterpieces. Nietzsche enabled far worse.
Thomas wrote: “ So I wonder why Nietzsche chose to present his worldview as philosophy instead of art, or poetry. He seems to me much more like an artist or poet than a philosopher in his desire to excite emotions and empower individualism. Did he realize that this subjectivism could have practical consequences? That what he is advocating, if taken seriously, could lead to real tragedy? ” My immediate response is he did both. My hunch (supported by some not entirely convincing secondary texts) is that Nietzsche reads Plato as doing exactly that; and he’s performing a radicalized version of it.
I think we can at least agree it’s not easy to come up with any certain and definitive interpretation of Nietzsche. Anyone who would use Nietzsche to justify their moral absolutes are going to look like buffoons, though the audiences may or may not have the sensibilities or humor to laugh.
Another response I have is that if we read Nietzsche as the dynamite who blows up the confused, vacuous “science of [objective] morality”, of absolute good, then it seems the only thing left for animals like ourselves is subjective values, contextualized “truths” based on localized culture, understandings, sensibilities.
But that a horrifying prospect: Nietzsche wrote at a time when people were losing faith in the Church (or theology in general) but desperately clutching at whatever justification for what’s left of their social organization, with a confused mix of nationalism and antisemitism and sentimentalism and romanticism and enlightenment and positivism and kantianism and whatnot. Out of that ruinous fragments repository, what consensus, what “ethos,” what practice can he fall back on?
Hence the nod at the artists, at least that’s what I think. Out of chaos and desperate times, Homer and Aristophanes and myth makers born with certain talents had always been the ones to put the pieces back together in some kind of intelligible vision. And I think that’s the local, temporal, true for one time and one place only “diagnosis” (kind of like Socrates’ final drink is presented as a diagnosis and solution to contemporary social turmoils, re-presented by Plato the philosopher-artist. )
Zarathustra was the poetic piece, Joyce too wrote essays. And even BGE comes with epigrams (which to me seem substantially different from the overall aphorisms) and interludes, as though he’s composing staged musical performance or drama. (Pretty sure Plato inserted proems and other conventionally musical chunks into his “treatises” as well, which might not be treatises afterall.)
So maybe the genre-boundary isn’t so neat and tidy, or else Plato and Nietzsche are naughty transgressors who violate them.
Also, going back to BGE 25, while mocking those who think they need to martyr themselves to defend “the truth,” looking back, it also looks as though Nietzsche is defending his choice to put on masks and put on a play, an artistic performance, rather than some formal, straight-forward, argumentative philosophical treatise: Of suffering ‘for the sake of truth’! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, it makes you obstinate against rebuffs and red rags, it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish if in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, casting out and even grosser consequences of hostility you finally even have to act as defenders of truth on earth – as if ‘truth’ were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending! And precisely by you, you knights of most sorrowful countenance, you idlers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! After all, you know well enough that it cannot matter in the least whether precisely you are in the right, just as no philosopher hitherto has been in the right, and that a more praiseworthy veracity may lie in every little question-mark placed after your favourite words and favourite theories (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all your solemn gesticulations and smart answers before courts and accusers! Better to step aside! Flee away and conceal yourselves! And have your masks and subtlety, so that you may be misunderstood! Or feared a little! And do not forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work. And have about you people who are like a garden – or like music on the waters in the evening, when the day is already becoming a memory;
Poor me, foolish enough to imagine Nietzsche needs defending. Oh look! There’s that donkey laughing again!
If Nietzsche can't be bothered to make his meaning clear, why should we be bothered divining what true meaning, if any, may lie behind his words?
It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, it makes you obstinate against rebuffs and red rags, it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish if in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, casting out and even grosser consequences of hostility you finally even have to act as defenders of truth on earth – as if ‘truth’ were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending! Nietzsche does argue that morality can be relative, but does he say the truth is relative? This quote which Lia posted is more about the "martyr for truth' straying from THE truth out of moral indignation- being backed into a corner.
Incidentally, I was reading some more of the Leo Strauss Nietzche seminar, 1967, and though he is dealing with an earlier part of BGE, it seems apropos to our current discussion:
...Do you have The Genealogy of Morals here? The end of the Preface, paragraph 8. We don’t need the first half: “In other cases, the aphoristic form.”
Reader: “the aphoristic form may present a stumbling-block . . . a whole science of hermeneutics.”
LS: “of interpretation”: if he (the translator) uses it in the first case, he should use it in the second case.
Reader: “In the third essay of this book, I give an example of what I mean by true interpretation—”
LS: “a model” more than an example.
Reader: “an aphorism stands at the head . . . difficult to digest.”
LS: So here Nietzsche has [inaudible] one of you came to my office and complained about—or not “complained” but noted with regret—the difficulty he had in understanding a certain short paragraph, an aphorism. Here you have the explanation:
Nietzsche was aware of that difficulty. He wrote in aphorisms, in separate, relatively short statements. The connections with the preceding and the following ones are not made clear. They are integrated in a very general way by the chapter headings in this
particular work, but this is of course not sufficient. Nietzsche’s choice of the aphorism form had a variety of reasons. The most important point can be stated as follows, in the words of Nietzsche. The alternative to the aphorism or aphorisms is the philosophic
system, as it was made by the famous German philosophers of the early nineteenth century, but also by earlier ones in modern times. The aphorism is the opposite to the system, and according to Nietzsche the system is incompatible with probity, intellectual
probity. The aphorism belongs to a way of thinking which is thoroughly honest.
The philosopher is supposed to know the essence of all things. If you look, for example, at the works of Hegel, there is no part of the world, of the human world in particular, which is not discussed there systematically. But no man can do that. Think of very simple things: How can a man write an aesthetics with a section on music if he is not musical? How can he discuss mathematics if he is not a mathematician, or at least [a] very well trained mathematician? I choose these examples because Nietzsche happened to be very
inadequate in mathematics, but he understood quite a bit of music. More precisely, the aphorism imitates the insights as they occur, and not as they are called forth in order to fill lacunae, because that is already tampering with the evidence somewhat. They imitate the insights which occur as they will, and not as the conscious ego wills.
https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leo...
Christopher wrote: "But what Nietzsche seems to be describing, incredibly early, is postmodernism. There is no genuine standpoint, only an openess to all standpoints, as something to 'try on,' like a costume which doesn't fit very well."I was thinking of postmodernism too!
Thomas mentioned the dashes earlier. From a letter to his sister:"...everything I have written hitherto is foreground; for me the real thing begins only with the dashes... these things are for me a recreation but, above all, hiding places behind which I can sit down again for a while"
The dashes may be another one of N's masks, but they also require us to do some creative interpretation as readers- to fill in the blank.
Christopher wrote: "but does he say the truth is relative..."I’m so glad you brought this up, because I can assert with some certainty that no, he does not decisively declare “truth is relative.” To out right declare that would be a tautology. He does, however, reticently muse that
|BGE 43| ‘My judgement is my judgement: another cannot easily acquire a right to it’ – such a philosopher of the future may perhaps say. One has to get rid of the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with many.
The reason I’m glad we’re having this conversation is because I think this goes back to my quarrel with Thomas about whether Nietzsche is proposing, prescribing, asserting, some formal philosophical treatise, or is he confusingly giving us a ... song? A poem? A play? A farce? Why would Nietzsche choose to put us through such a monstrous chimera, as opposed to some clear syllogism?
One reason, I think, is because he’s avoiding the method of a dogmatist, who insists on chasing some eternal, absolute, solidified, undisguised, naked “Truth”. The whole book is flowing along, a movement, a becoming.
I am aware some scholars argue Nietzsche is “Truth-friendly,” perhaps the disguise is more about exo vs eso readings, maybe he’s trying not to get stung while poking the hornet’s nest. I just don’t find them very convincing ... I enjoy reading their arguments, but their certainty, their leap to conclusion, is absolutely infuriating to me. (Clark, for example.)
Cphe wrote: "I don't know how he comes to the conclusion that only a well reared woman in any period can be termed "sensible"...."
But Cphe, he doesn't say *only* well-reared (or well brought-up) women are sensible, he say a well brought up woman is always sensible.
"All well-reared women are sensible" does not = "all sensible women are well-reared."
Thomas wrote: "At the root of all this is the notion that some classes of people are naturally superior to others, an idea for which he still has not provided a coherent rationale. ..."
So, Thomas, is it the equality of 'classes of people' which is self-evident, or is there a coherent rationale for it which I don't know about?
I don’t want to act like I’m complaining — like Bryan said, I’m obviously enjoying this discussion, I most definitely am getting a lot more out of the book by reading with this group, but, RE Roger @33 — to play the role of a broken record — I did say I voted against BGE, and I’d like to ask people who voted for it the same thing — why should we read Nietzsche? Why have you decided it’s a good idea for us to all read Nietzsche? I don’t see why anybody should have to read it, or want to read it even. I wrote a note down but I can’t locate it at the moment, but I’m 99% certain that somewhere between the preface and Part I, Nietzsche gave some kind of cryptic warning for readers to turn around, this book isn’t for you. And I think he heavily implied that to survive the labyrinth, the cunning strategy involves making the book seem funny, laughable to the exoteric readers; so that they will not be threatened but only amused. It should only be seriously sensible to the very rare and few (unfortunately I’m uninvited to that party, so I’m just here to laugh at it.)
I’m vaguely describing my own perception, of course. It’s possible that I misread him.
The “well-brought-up” thing sounds really, really, really Aristotelian. Like it’s a prerequisite for attending his Nicomachean Ethics lecture or something.Of course, that’s also the first thing Kant shot down in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Could Nietzsche be a modern Aristotelian?
Roger wrote: "If Nietzsche can't be bothered to make his meaning clear, why should we be bothered divining what true meaning, if any, may lie behind his words?"I think Nietzsche's project is primarily one of demolition. He doesn't make his meaning clear because he doesn't have one to offer; "true" meaning in the objective sense simply does not exist for him.
Lia wrote: "I think we can at least agree it’s not easy to come up with any certain and definitive interpretation of Nietzsche. Anyone who would use Nietzsche to justify their moral absolutes are going to look like buffoons, though the audiences may or may not have the sensibilities or humor to laugh. ."Yes, we do agree on that. There are no moral absolutes here, but that leaves open a whole world of possibilities, and as finite creatures we must still make decisions about the way we treat each other and the world. The question then is: how?
Lia wrote: "Out of that ruinous fragments repository, what consensus, what “ethos,” what practice can he fall back on?
Hence the nod at the artists, at least that’s what I think. Out of chaos and desperate times, Homer and Aristophanes and myth makers born with certain talents had always been the ones to put the pieces back together in some kind of intelligible vision."
Is it possible that Nietzsche wants us to each create our own mythology to fall back on? It doesn't seem that we can share mythologies, lest we join the ranks of herd animals and agree on collective values... But a subjective mythology does seem to be necessary if objective truth is not available.
Thomas wrote: “Is it possible that Nietzsche wants us to each create our own mythology to fall back on? It doesn't seem that we can share mythologies, lest we join the ranks of herd animals and agree on collective values... But a subjective mythology does seem to be necessary if objective truth is not available.” That can be the case, but you’ll have to make the case.
I would argue that Nietzsche doesn’t think it is possible, or even desirable, to eliminate the herd. I don’t think he’s trying to promote a random collection of free-floating isolated units of self-contained mythologies, I suspect he’s working on re-building a public despite a million conflicting visions and values and ~isms and roles and costumes and ideas. (Not unlike what Plato was facing, given soldiers and statesmen and foreigners all want different things and assert different justices and values and goods ... Or better yet, Joyce’s attempt to forge the conscience of his race, or whatever those pesky modernists were trying to do.)
Christopher wrote: "So, Thomas, is it the equality of 'classes of people' which is self-evident, or is there a coherent rationale for it which I don't know about?"I do think there is a coherent argument for the equality of men and women, the classes at issue here. I don't think this is the place to make that argument, but you don't have to search far to find one.
Lia wrote: " I suspect he’s working on re-building a public despite a million conflicting visions and values and ~isms and roles and costumes and ideas. ."Based on what? What makes one subjectivity superior to or preferable to another in rebuilding the public? (Asking for a friend...)
It’s not objectively superior. Whatever succeeds will not be because it’s “more true”. But if Europeans are no longer able to believe in Christianity, or metaphysics (which I read Nietzsche as diagnosing, as describing, and not deliberately causing it,) they’re going to have to reform the public somehow. I think Nietzsche is suggesting how to train a few talented souls who can be sensitive enough to hear and see an artistic vision out of this crumbling chaos, and help them survive in a culture that is at his time, in that specific location, historically speaking, hell bent on crushing the different, the rare, on shackling the “megalopsuchia.” And I think (as Ian suggests) it’s going to be based on human psychology (soul-logos!) — like the Republic. I think it’s fair to say that Nietzsche did end up influencing a number of figures that turned out to be cultural giants — Yeats, Shaw, Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, maybe Joyce and Eliot — and they more or less worked on forming new vision of the new human soul, new culture, new national identities, new image of international community .
And maybe that’s all that he’s trying to do — come up with a program for people whom are willing to stand alone, whom have the discipline and single-mindedness to listen for and make whatever is new.
Nietzsche says pretty clearly that there is no absolute morality, but it seems there is for him a real and dangerous truth, which may be wooed, but perhaps is better left alone by most people.
Thomas wrote: “Based on what? What makes one subjectivity superior to or preferable to another in rebuilding the public? (Asking for a friend...)” I went quote hunting in the forest of BGE (to support my perception that Nietzsche told us to get off his lawn), I found this instead:
He who wills adds in this way the sensations of pleasure of the successful executive agents, the serviceable ‘under-wills’ or under-souls – for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls – to his sensations of pleasure as commander. L'effet, c'est moi: what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as I have said already, of a social structure composed of many ‘souls’: on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within the field of morality: that is, of morality understood as the theory of the relations of dominance under which the phenomenon ‘life’ arises. –
That comes ... pretty close to a tautology. I think he’s basing this on the idea that our sensations, our drives, our impulses, are the most basic phenomena that are immediately observable to us. (Kind of like Descartes, but replace thinking with willing.) At first, this reads like a rejection of treating “the Will” (Schopenhauer? Kant?) as a simple, singular thing (as opposed to a complicated composite.)
Looking back, this would seem to be a strong candidate for where Nietzsche might be heading — Our own body itself is a social structure of “many souls” (Plato’s tripartite? Or some modification of it?), and the commonwealth (which I casually called “the public”) is “best” if organized according to the organization of that soul. To get there, we have to figure out our “psyche” “logos” ...
Lia wrote: "That comes ... pretty close to a tautology."Well, it is a tautology. Aristotle says the same thing about "many souls," but he has to anchor the soul to something solid and unmoving to avoid the tautology. In Aristotle's case it is the intellect that serves as the soul's "prime mover," the "commanding soul" that doesn't move but moves other parts of the soul.
Ultimately there has to be something unmoving and unchanging outside of oneself to provide a context for the self. There is an alternative available that obviates the need for an objective reality -- that there is no self -- but Neitzsche seems pretty set on the notion of Self. I don't see a clear way out of the tautology here. He seems to believe that the tautology is our reality.
Lia wrote: " went quote hunting in the forest of BGE (to support my perception that Nietzsche told us to get off his lawn), I found this instead..."I found this in the forest the other day: "In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired. "
This sounds to me an awful lot like "Love loves to love love."
Thomas wrote: "Well, it is a tautology. Aristotle says the same thing about "many souls," but he has to anchor the soul to something solid and unmoving to avoid the tautology..."The postmodern-Nietzsche is dead. We have killed him-you and I. All of us are his murderers. Have we stopped plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Have we finally reaffirmed our up or down? Must we snuff out the jack-o-lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying pomo-Nietzsche? Do we smell nothing as yet of the pomo-Nietzschean decomposition? Nietzsche, too, decomposes. Nietzsche is dead. Nietzsche remains dead. And we have killed him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ahem, sorry, I think I overdosed on my untimely medications. It’s too late to lit a lantern; too early to drink. Le sigh.
If Aristotle can sidestep the tautology by anchoring the soul to something else that remains inaccessible, can Nietzsche sidestep it by calling (or at least I think he’s implying) this soul/commonwealth-mirror an “invention” as opposed to a “discovery”? That’s not strictly speaking a cap-wearing Truth-claim, is it? (read this with tone of complete diffidence. I’m not even arguing, just hopefully suggesting at this point.)
Because, if we kill pomo-Nietzsche, then I think we’re left with a Truth-friendly dogmatic Nietzsche who just happens to be playing with esoteric indecipherables.
Lub lubs to lub lub, indeed. (Was Joyce Nietzschean? Is Nietzsche the proverbial Cyclopes in Joycean bestiary? Or is it a thoroughly Nietzschean thing to do to mock Nietzsche himself?)
Lia wrote: "The postmodern-Nietzsche is dead. We have killed him-you and I."Killing Nietzsche strikes me as similar to killing the Buddha. It's what he expects us to do. The difference of course is that Nietzsche would like us to create new worlds after we have killed the old one. Or rather, he expects free spirits to create new worlds. It's this "inventiveness" that makes me think of Nietzsche's "free spirit" as more of an artist than a philosopher.
Aristotle, by contrast, thinks there is a world already there to discover, and his concern is with how we do that. He's an observer with an interest in first principles that already exist. He is most assuredly not right about everything, but because his frame of reference is the world, and not himself, he can be wrong without being tautological.
Lia wrote: "I overdosed on my untimely medications..."Very funny. Put the lime in the coconut and then you'll feel better.
But is Nietzsche being tautological?Is his free spirits, his virtues, his program not based on what's in this world? Not singular laws (a la Kant) that applies universally as if they were some clockworks, or heavenly bodies (unless the kinds with two Suns...), but rather, a catalogue, a historical account of what people (specifically European people) struggled for, and how we got to here and now? Is that not practice-based ethics -- hence "virtue", "habits"?
Maybe Nietzsche is more Aristotelian than Platonic afterall (or both. Why not both.)
So anyway, I’ve been loitering in that forest with Tom’s inquisition of “Based on what!?!?” still ringing in my ears.
And then stumbled upon this dangerous maybe [BGE 2]:
With all the value that may adhere to the true, the genuine, the selfless, it could be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for all life might have to be ascribed to appearance, to the will to deception, to selfishness and to appetite. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and honoured things resides precisely in their being artfully related, knotted and crocheted to these wicked, apparently antithetical things, perhaps even in their being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! – But who is willing to concern himself with such dangerous perhapses! For that we have to await the arrival of a new species of philosopher, one which possesses tastes and inclinations opposite to and different from those of its predecessors – philosophers of the dangerous ‘perhaps’ in every sense.
Let’s say for Nietzsche, the whole Platonic tradition of nature-as-mere-appearance (i.e. devalued) is in its last throes. The scoffers would have you believe that we’re done with that. Suppose that’s what the first line of the quote is referring to.
The future strategy as envisioned by Nietzsche — the bold bits — reticently conveyed as some “maybes”, is apparently very difficult to talk about, so hard that he’s being coy about it.
But still, we are told: what constitutes the value of those good and honoured things resides precisely in their being artfully related, knotted and crocheted to these wicked, apparently antithetical things. The artists are the bridge builders. (And a pier is a disappointed bridge!)
The opposition stands: high and low, valuable and debased, honored and wicked. The “faith in opposite values.” He’s not denying that the antithesis is intelligible to us, we share such pre-judgments. His dangerous assertion is not that what is wicked is actually virtuous (that would be the Christians), or that what is virtuous is only virtuous in appearance (the Platonists). Or that nothing is valuable and value is mere illusions (the nihilists.)
Rather, his radical assertion is that the oppositions are hopelessly entangled, there can be no masters without slaves, no males without females, they are mutually dependent and absolutely inseparable. The judgment is illusory, yet it stands — illusory because what seem opposite are in fact mutually implicated, it stands because the construct is necessary for life. A bit like saying logic is the falsest of all falsehoods and we must accept it. Like the soul conceived as hierarchical parts are in fact what constitute one conflicted individual. Like jostling Germans and French and Russians are in fact all good-Europeans.
Rethinking his misogynistic construct of females-on-the-whole — however debasing his construct, it’s made obvious that it’s just a construct, and it’s not separable from himself. He contains that opposition within him. Whatever he’s putting down (women, herd, plebian, prejudice, religion, morality…) he’s embracing the high and the low, the male and the female, the whole set. He acknowledges the valuation, but he affirms both as mutually implicated and inseparable.
I think that's pretty good, Lia. We're back to the tension again.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (other topics)The Nicomachean Ethics (other topics)
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (other topics)
The proper ranking of values is instinctual. The instincts of modern Europeans have been corrupted, however, by the "democratic mingling of classes and races... our instinct now runs back everywhere; we ourselves are a kind of chaos." This turns out to be a good thing for the "spirit" in that "we have secret access in all directions, as no noble age ever did; access to the labyrinths of unfinished cultures and to every semi-barbarism... We enjoy Homer, again, for example..." but also Shakespeare's "synthesis of tastes that would have all but killed an ancient Athenian of Aeschylus' circle with laughter or irritation." (224)
Nietzsche's analysis of morality has once again turned to the subject of taste. What is the connection between morality (or immorality) and instinct and taste?
Great art -- the art of free spirits -- is unrestrained, blissful and dangerous. "Measure is alien to us; let us own it; our thrill is the thrill of the infinite, the unmeasured. Like a rider on a steed that flies forward, we drop the reins before the infinite..." What would be an example of this kind of art?
It is often difficult to tell exactly what Nietzsche is arguing for because of his penchant for contradiction and ad hominem arguments. It is easier to say what he is against than what he advocates, but in section 228 there is a passage of unusual clarity;
None of these ponderous herd animals... wants to know that...'the general welfare' is no ideal, no goal, no remotely intelligible concept, but only an emetic -- that what is fair for one cannot by any means for that reason alone also be fair for others; that the demand of one morality for all is detrimental for the higher men; in short, that there is an order of rank between man and man, hence also between morality and morality.
But one should not pity those of lesser rank. Pity and compassion for those who suffer is misplaced; well-being is not a goal, and suffering is the discipline that "has created all enhancements of man so far." (225) Even cruelty (or “extravagant honesty” as in 230) has its place. Suffering in itself is no more a goal than well-being, but a life oriented toward pleasure or the avoidance of pain is not acceptable either. Does this mean that one should delight in suffering or cruelty when it leads to the “goal” (whatever that might be)?
In art, as well as in life, the free spirit is attracted to cruelty and suffering: “Almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition. That ‘savage animal’ has not really been ‘mortified’; it lives and flourishes, it has become — divine.” (229) Hence the appreciation for "the painful voluptuousness of tragedy.”
Pain seems to be a natural part of life, and the free spirit does not seek to lessen it.. Rather, it seems that cruelty is simply a kind of honesty. Nature is cruel. That one man is naturally superior appears cruel to the lesser man, but the honest man acknowledges this and resists the urge to ignore it. Rank seems to be natural for Nietzsche, perhaps even fated (231).
The last few sections are devoted to Nietzsche's paradoxical and conflicted thoughts on women. The only consistent theme that I can locate is that equality for women is similar to, and just as bad as democracy for men. It seems to follow his theory of natural rank and exposes the weakness of that theory in the process.