Hey Kids! Nietzsche!

So I’m four weeks into teaching recent continental philosophy and some things have worked. One thing I did – sort of for myself, sort of for the class – was collect all the bits of Nietzsche where he talks about Kant. The idea was to give my lecture on the legacy of Kant by bouncing off a series of selected Nietzsche bits. So I would end up introducing Kant and Nietzsche simultaneously, getting most of the 19th Century in between. (This was the theory. My mileage varied considerably.)

To get my bits I went to the Nietzsche Channel and searched likely terms, then cut and pasted. Then arranged chronologically. That was easy. Then I added bits this method missed. I ended up with about 18,000 words. It turned out to be an engrossing read when I got it all laid out, end to end. As Nietzsche says somewhere or other … damn, can’t find the quote. Something about the long logic of his thought on eternal recurrence. Anyway, there’s often a long logic to Nietzsche’s recurrent treatments of given themes. Also, he talks about Kant when he wants to generalize about broad currents in the history of modern philosophy, so in this case there’s breadth as well as length. (I would be quite grateful if someone would make neat little editions of all the bits of Nietzsche about eternal return, or about pity, or about Plato and Socrates. But maybe that’s just me.) Anyway, I made a start at my own English translations of the bits I collected. (My German is rusty and needs exercise.)

First, to propitiate the translation gods, a bit of silly poetry from The Gay Science:

1. Invitation
Try this new dish on the menu
Later it tastes better, then you
Let it grow on you another day.
Then, if you want more, why not
Take what I put in the pot
And cook up your own entreé.

1. Einladung
Wagt’s mit meiner Kost, ihr Esser!
Morgen schmeckt sie euch schon besser
Und schon übermorgen gut!
Wollt ihr dann noch mehr,—so machen
Meine alten sieben Sachen
Mir zu sieben neuen Muth.

OK, if that doesn’t anger the translation gods, nothing will. Now let’s get to the Kant stuff.

Again, from The Gay Science, two bits that are mostly just amusing:

§97. Of the garrulity of writers.— There is a garrulity of wrath—typically met with in Luther as well as Schopenhauer. A garrulity due to overstocked inventories of conceptual formulations, as in Kant. A garrulity due to delight in ever new twists of the same thing: you find this in Montaigne. A garrulity of gloating natures: anyone who keeps up with contemporary writing will be put in mind of two writers of this type. A garrulity due to delight in good words and language forms: not at all rare in Goethe’s prose. A garrulity due to inner pleasure in clamor and confounded emotion: for example, in Carlyle.

And:

§193. Kant’s joke.— Kant wanted to prove to Everyman, in the most browbeating manner, that Everyman was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the learned on behalf of popular preconceptions, but for the learned and not for the people.

Now, getting down to business. First, from The Birth of Tragedy (1872):

§18. … While in the lap of theoretical culture drowsing disaster gradually begins to frighten modern man, and he anxiously ransacks the stock of his experience for means to avert the danger, albeit without entitlement to belief in these means; while the implications of his situation begin to dawn on him: great Natures, gifted in all things, have with all deliberateness become equipped and acquainted with the paraphernalia of science itself, to expound the general limits and relativity of knowledge, and thus to deny decisively the claim of science to universal validity and universal aims. Through their arguments this illusion was for the first time exposed as such—this pretense to plumbing the innermost essence of things along causal lines.

The tremendous courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer have won through to the most difficult victory, to victory over the optimism that is hidden in the heart of logic, that is as well the basis of our culture. Shored up by seemingly unassailable aeternae veritates, this optimism assumed all the riddles of the universe could be found out and fathomed, and had treated space, time, and causality as entirely unconditional laws of the most universal validity, until Kant showed these really served only to elevate mere appearance, the work of maya, to the position of the sole and highest reality, as if it were the innermost and true essence of things, thereby rendering impossible any true knowledge of them and, as Schopenhauer says, sending the dreamer still more soundly to sleep (World as Will and Representation, p. 498 [I: Appendix: Critique of the Kantian Philosophy, 2]). This insight inaugurates a culture that I venture to call tragic. Its most salient characteristic is that science is dislodged from its pedestal as highest end, and its place is taken by wisdom, which, undeceived by the attractive distractions of the sciences, bends an unwavering glance towards a comprehensive picture of the world, thereby, with sympathetic feelings of love, to grasp eternal suffering as its own. Let us imagine a coming generation with such unappalled eyes, with such heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their back on all the weaklings’ doctrines of optimism in order to “live resolutely”, completely and fully: would it not be necessary for the tragic man of this culture, having pulled himself up through seriousness and terror, to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical solace, to desire tragedy as his own proper Helen, and to exclaim with Faust:

Why not, under the sway of sheer desire
In life, the fairest form acquire?
[From Goethe’s Faust, II, 7438-9.]

But now that the Socratic culture can only bear up its scepter of infallibility with trembling hands; now that it has been assaulted on two fronts—once by fear of its own consequences, only now dawning on it, and again because it no longer has naïve self-confidence in the eternal validity of its foundation: the dance of its thought makes a sad spectacle, rushing longingly after ever-new forms, embracing them and then, with a shudder, releasing them as suddenly as Mephistopheles does the seductive Lamiae. It is certainly the hallmark of that “fracture”, to which everyone’s talk of the fundamental malady of modern culture pays lip service, that the theoretical man, alarmed and unsatisfied with his own implications, no longer dares entrust himself to the terrible icy current of existence: he runs timidly up and down the bank. He no longer wants to take anything whole, all in all with the natural cruelty of things. Such is the degree to which he has been pampered by his optimistic views. In this way he feels that a culture built up on the principle of science must be demolished when it begins to grow illogical, to retreat, that is, before its own consequences. Our art reveals this universal neediness: in vain does one imitatively lean on all the great productive periods and natures; accumulate the entirety of “world-literature” around modern man for his consolation; situate oneself in the midst of the art styles and artists of all ages, so that one may, like Adam to the beasts, give a name to each: one still remains externally hungry, the “critic” without delight or power, the Alexandrian man, who is at bottom a librarian and proof-reader, wretchedly gone blind from book dust and misprints.

§19 … But let the liar and the hypocrite beware of German music: for in the midst of all our culture it is really the only genuine, pure, and purifying fire-spirit from which and toward which, as in the teaching of the great Heraclitus of Ephesus, all things move in a double orbit: all that we now call culture, education, civilization, must some day appear before the unerring judge, Dionysus.

Let us recollect further how the spirit of German philosophy streamed from similar sources, how Kant and Schopenhauer made it possible to destroy scientific Socratism’s complacent delight in existence by establishing its boundaries; how this rigorous delimitation heralded an infinitely more profound and serious view of ethical questions, and of art, which we may designate Dionysian wisdom caught in concepts. At what, then, does the mysterium of this unity of German music and philosophy point, if not a new form of existence, with whose character we can strain to acquaint ourselves only on the basis of Hellenic analogies. For us, who stand on the borderline between two different modes of being, the Hellenic model retains this immeasurable value, that all these transitions and struggles are stamped out into a classically instructive form. It is only that we, as it were, experientially and analogically traverse the chief epochs of the Hellenic genius in reverse order, and now seem, for instance, to be stepping backwards from the Alexandrian age to the period of tragedy. At the same time it feels as if the birth of a tragic age simply means a return to itself of the German spirit, a blessed self-rediscovery after monstrous, invasive, external forces had for a long time compelled it, living as it did in helpless and self-abandoned barbarism, to formally submit to servitude. Now at last, having returned to the wellspring of its being, it may venture to stride forth boldly and freely before the eyes of all nations, untied from the leading strings of any Romanic civilization; if only it understands how to study assiduously one people—the Greeks, from whom to be able to learn at all is already a high honor and a rare distinction. And when before now were we in greater need of these highest of all teachers, now that we are experiencing a rebirth of tragedy and stand in danger neither of knowing nor clarifying whence it comes and whither it is bound?

OK, translation questions. I use the phrase ‘attractive distractions of the sciences’, for “die verführerischen Ablenkungen der Wissenschaften.’ But perhaps standardized test jargon has ruined the phrase, alas. I have two specific questions about the German (if anyone can help me.) First: “Das ist ja das Merkmal jenes “Bruches,” von dem Jedermann als von dem Urleiden der modernen Cultur zu reden pflegt …” That’s the part about the ‘fracture’. I didn’t really get it about the ‘zu reden pfegt’ and I guessed that Nietzsche is saying ‘lip service’ is being paid.

Second: “Zeitalters für den deutschen Geist nur eine Rückkehr zu sich selbst, ein seliges Sichwiederfinden zu bedeuten habe, nachdem für eine lange Zeit ungeheure von aussen her eindringende Mächte den in hülfloser Barbarei der Form dahinlebenden zu einer Knechtschaft unter ihrer Form gezwungen hatten.” I got a bit puzzled about what ‘dahinlebenden’ is supposed to be doing and I just went for “self-abandoned”.

Next, a bit that isn’t exactly about Kant. But I use it to frame Nietzsche’s attitude toward post-Kantian developments – Hegel, in particular. From Daybreak (1881)

§544. How Philosophy is done today.—I mark it well: our philosophizing youths, women and artists of today demand of philosophy precisely the opposite of what the Greeks derived from it! Whoever does not hear the sustained cheer that resounds through every speech and counter-speech of a Platonic dialogue, the cheer over the new invention of rational thinking, what does he understand of Plato, of the philosophy of antiquity? In those days, souls were filled with drunkenness, when the stringent and sober game of concept, generalisation, refutation would carry them off by force—with that drunkenness which the great ancient stringent and sober contrapuntal composers perhaps also knew. In those days there still lingered on the Greek tongue that other antique and anciently all-powerful taste: over and against which the new taste presented so enchanting a contrast that one sang and stammered of dialectics, the ‘divine art’, as though in a delirium of love. That ancient way, however, was thinking under the spell of custom, for which there was nothing but established judgments, established reasons, and no other grounds than those given by authority: so that thinking was a ritual echo and all pleasure in speech and language had to lie in the form. (Wherever the content is regarded as eternal and universally valid, there is only one great magic: that of changing form, that is, of changing fashion. In their poets, too, from the time of Homer on, and later in their sculptors, what the Greeks enjoyed was not originality, but its opposite.) It was Socrates who discovered the antithetical magic of cause and effect, of ground and consequence: and we modern men are so accustomed to and educated in the necessity of logic that it lies on our tongue as the normal taste, and as such, cannot help being repugnant to the lustful and aloof. These take delight in whatever contrasts with it: their more refined ambition would all too gladly have them believe that their souls are exceptions, not dialectical or rational beings but—just for example, ‘intuitive beings’, gifted with an ‘inner sense’ or with ‘intellectual intuition.’ But above all they want to be ‘artistic natures’, with a genius in their head and a demon in their belly and consequently enjoying special rights in both this and that world, and especially the divine privilege of being incomprehensible.—That is what now drives philosophy! I fear they will one day see that they have exhausted this stock—that what they want is religion!

Here’s another bit from Daybreak – from the preface added in 1886:

§3. Hitherto the unsoundest conceptions have concerned good and evil: this was always too dangerous a subject. Conscience, reputation, Hell, sometimes even the police neither permitted nor permit impartiality; in the presence of morality, as before all authority, we must not even think, much less speak: here there is only—obey! Since the world began, no authority has submitted to being made subject to criticism; and to criticize morality—to take morality as a problem, as problematic: what? was that not—is that not—immoral?— But morality has at its disposal not only every means of intimidation with which to preserve its person from critical hands and implements of torture: its security lies rather in a certain art of enchantment, in which it excels—it knows to “enthrall.” It can often petrify the critical will with a single glance, even seduce to itself. Yes, there are even cases in which morality can turn the critical will against itself; so that then, like the scorpion, its sting strikes its own body. Morality has from antiquity been adept with all manner of infernal devices of persuasion: there is no orator even today who would not turn to it for assistance (just listen to our anarchists, for instance: how they moralize, so as to convince! In the end they even call themselves “the good and the just”.) Ever since the first talkers and smooth talkers walked the earth, morality has revealed herself to be the most exquisite mistress of seduction—and, what concerns us philosophers even more, she is a veritable Circe of philosophers. What shall we put it down to, then, that from Plato on, all the philosophic architects in Europe have built in vain? That it all looks ready to subside, or is already in ruins, what they themselves honestly maintained to be aere perennius [more lasting than bronze]? Oh, how wrong is that answer which, even in our own day, constitutes the stock response to this question: “Because they have all neglected the conditions of possibility, the examination of the foundation, a critique of all reason”—that fateful answer made by Kant, who has certainly not thereby lured us modern philosophers to firmer and less treacherous ground! (and, come to think of it, was it not rather strange to demand of an instrument that it criticize its own capacity and functionality? that the intellect itself should “recognize” its own worth, power, and limits? was it not just a little ridiculous?) The right answer would rather have been that all philosophers, including Kant himself, were building under the seductive influence of morality—that they only seemed to aim at certainty and “truth”. But in reality their attention was directed towards “majestic moral edifices”—if we may help ourselves once more to the innocence of Kant’s mode of expression, who deems it his “less brilliant, but not unremunerative” task and work “to level the ground and lay a solid foundation for the building of those majestic moral edifices” (Critique of Pure Reason, ii. 257 [Akademie-Ausgabe III, 249]). Alas! He did not succeed in his aim, quite the contrary—as we must admit today. Such a fanciful object merely made Kant a true son of his century, which more than any other deserves to be called the Age of Enthusiasm; on the upside, this is also how he kept in contact with its good side (for example, via that solid slice of sensuality that he introduced into his theory of knowledge.) He, too, had been bitten by the moral tarantula, Rousseau; he, too, had been burdened in his soul by that notion of moral fanaticism, whose executor another disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre, felt himself and proclaimed himself to be: “de fonder sur la terre l’empire de la sagesse, de la justice et de la vertu” [“to found on earth the empire of wisdom, justice and virtue”].On the other hand, no one with such a French fanaticism in his heart could have cultivated it in a less French, deeper, more fundamental, more German—if the word German is still permissible in this sense—manner than Kant did: in order to make room for his “moral kingdom,” he saw that he would need to establish a location in an indemonstrable world, a logical “beyond”—that was why he needed his critique of pure reason! To put it another way: he wouldn’t have needed it, had he not deemed one thing more important than all else: to render his moral kingdom unassailable by—or, better still, intangible to, reason—for he felt too keenly the vulnerability of a moral order of things in the face of reason. For in the face of nature and history, in the face of the fundamental immorality of nature and history, Kant was, like all good Germans down the ages, a pessimist: he believed in morality, not because of its demonstration through nature and history, rather in spite of its incessant contradiction by them. To understand this “in spite of” we should perhaps recall something kindred in Luther, that other great pessimist, who with true Lutheran audacity once impressed upon his friends: “If we could conceive by reason alone how God could be merciful and just, who shows so much wrath and malignity, what use should we have for faith?” For, from time immemorial, nothing has ever made a deeper impression upon the German soul, nothing has ever “tempted” it more this most dangerous of all deductions, which for every true Latin is a sin against the spirit: credo quia absurdum est [I believe because it is absurd]. German logic hereby steps forth for the first time into the history of Christian dogma; but even today, a thousand years later, we Germans of the present—late Germans in every way—catch a whiff of truth, of the possibility of truth from behind the famous fundamental principle of dialectics with which Hegel secured the victory of his stage of the German spirit over Europe—: “contradiction moves the world; all things contradict themselves.” We are nothing if not—even unto our logic—pessimists.

I figure the bit about obey! is a swipe at Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” Which praises the formula, ‘reason about whatever you want, but obey!” I’ve got some more bits done but that’s good for starters. Any help with the translation would be welcome. (If the Nietzsche Channel is still online – I see it just went down – you can use that as a source.) Otherwise, consider this your Monday night, hot Nietzsche-on-Kant action open thread. I’ll just sign off with another bit of mangled poetry from The Gay Science.

59. Pen Scrawls
Scrawl – this pen’s from scribbler’s hell!
I’ll take it back there if I go.
Boldly dip it in the well!
Then suddenly an inky flood
Mighty river, watch it flow!
Of course, it’s all as clear as mud.
Still, no one reads the stuff, you know.

59. Die Feder kritzelt
Die Feder kritzelt: Hölle das!
Bin ich verdammt zum Kritzeln-Müssen? —
So greif’ ich kühn zum Tintenfass
Und schreib’ mit dicken Tintenflüssen.
Wie läuft das hin, so voll, so breit!
Wie glückt mir Alles, wie ich’s treibe!
Zwar fehlt der Schrift die Deutlichkeit—
Was thut’s? Wer liest denn, was ich schreibe?