Encounters with Nietzsche: An Initial Skirmish
Beyond the name and cacophony of literary devices, “the lone and level sands stretch far away” (Shelley, 1876)
Opening Thoughts
I was not an angry young man when I first encountered something written by Nietzsche. Fortunately. When I did, it was not interpretations of his doctrines of will to power and Übermensch (‘over-man’/’higher-being’).
The association of Nietzsche’s ideas with angry, or disaffected, people seems common. And if we take ’s perspective, probably damaged, deranged, dangerous people as well.
This association is born of his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche. As his literary executor, she posthumously associated Nietzsche with the proto-Nazism principles of herself and her deceased husband, Bernhard Förster — nationalism, fascism, totalitarianism, antisemitism, xenophobia. Principles grounded by malevolence as an expression of human nature ‘in the wild’.
Put in a slightly more contemporary polemic, Nietzsche’s intent so construed became the ‘go to’ justification ‘philosophy’ for natural arseholes.
Übermensch in this sense turns ‘Over-man’ into Arsehole Man.
German-American philosopher, , an acknowledged and respected 20th century Nietzsche interpreter/translator, cogently argues otherwise. It is well-documented that Nietzsche despised these principles. Übermensch was not the repugnant misconception of ‘over-man’ as angry, aggressive, domineering, violent man — Homo Noxius — many seem to want to embrace for personal reasons. Nietzsche himself was, apparently, not an angry person as such in respect of relations with other people.
A different, deeply insightful, vainly self-righteous, frail, utterly lonely (from self-imposed asceticism of solitude), plagued by ill health, iconoclastic, obsessed with his ‘destiny’, sanctimonious and, by Nietzsche’s own account, polite if occasionally rude man. But not Arsehole Man in a maleficent sense.
It is plausible to say he was not angry about existence as such. In fact, while he had reason to be angry about his physical state of affairs, it was a matter of pride, “good conscience,” for him as a “good European” that he overcame the temptation to wallow in self-pity, or the pity of others. He had the ‘strength’ to overcome what many would not. However, he certainly waged ‘war’ against bad ideals with vigour, vehemence and vitriol — violence — as if there were no tomorrow.
Bad for whom? Humanity of course; in spite of his denials he was not setting out to ‘improve’ humanity. Otherwise, why bother telling (European) society it had killed God and its values were bullshit. Why not just look on disdainfully while enjoying the life of a higher being looking down on all lower beings lost in the nihilism of Christian morality?
He certainly used terms like ‘immoralist’, ‘strength’ and ‘war’. He proclaimed to the world that it was nothing but will to power, and ‘joy’ existed in virtue of increasing that power. But it would be an understatement to say literal interpretations of his ideas ignore the unmistakable undertow of metaphor, irony, sarcasm. And avoid the problem of nihilism.
It would also wrongly interpret Nietzsche’s basic premise of Homo Psyche as being no more than Homo Noxius.
So, what if we try to leave our sub-conscious confirmation biases behind, and take a psychological perspective Kaufmann argues for? Where does this lead us to? What lies beyond the ageing, sanctimonious, vainglorious proclamations of Nietzsche-Zarathustra to the world?
There is an obvious answer that is not Arsehole Man.
Virtual Skirmish
Some time back I made the ‘mistake’ of engaging online over a Nietzschean concept — Dionysus versus the crucified. The concept is secondary to why the ‘skirmish’ has relevance. Suffice to say, the other person framed the concept to allude to Nietzsche’s doctrine of will to power which also relates to another, Übermensch (‘over-man’ or ’higher-being’).
As a very rough conceptual sketch, will to power is the intrinsic (sub-conscious) drive to be, be in, and be acknowledged by, the world. It is prior to all other subconscious drives. By ‘world’ Nietzsche implies human society, people. For ‘the world’ minus people, or ‘nature’ as Cain implies, is not capable of giving a shit. Or so the story goes.
For Nietzsche, the ‘real’ (and only) world that matters is that of “our world of passions and desires,” “our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will — namely of the will to power.” (Nietzsche, BGE, §36, p. 48, bold is my emphasis)
“The world viewed from inside, the world defined according to its “intelligible character” — it would be will to power and nothing else.” (Nietzsche, BGE, §36, p. 48)
“Inside” means our sub-conscious. Those parts of our psyche we are not consciously aware of that Nietzsche refers to as ‘drives’. How will to power manifests outwardly (consciously) is thoroughly personal. Different sub-conscious drives influencing our ‘world view’ in different ways at different times. More elegantly put as an expansion from his critique of philosophers to people in general, we are all wily spokespersons for our own prejudices (sub-conscious drives) which we baptise as ‘truths’ (Nietzsche, BGE, §5, p. 12).
To return to the skirmish, I suggested a (not ‘The’) way of thinking about Nietzsche’s will to power, and therefore Dionysus versus the Crucified, might be through Jung’s therapeutic objective of psycho-analysis — individuation. This is the process of self-actualisation through the ‘inner work’ of integration of the conscious and the sub-conscious. The objective is growth towards a more rounded, ‘authentic’ integrated self, a ‘higher’ whole self. (Stein, I, 2005, my emphasis). In other words a kind of becoming through self-mastery or self-overcoming.
The response back was aggressively scornful, and contemptuous — ‘violent’. Nietzsche’s will-to-power “had nothing to do with Jung’s mysticism nor his quasi-Christian take on ‘spirituality’ […] two things that Nietzsche hated […]. The explanation is much simpler. You are extremely lazy, and do not have the mental discipline to stay in the bounds of what you know, whilst admitting what you don’t know. You are also extremely pompous.”
Apparently, I foolishly credit myself with having the kind of prophetic insight Nietzsche had. It is not open to lesser mortals, lower beings, like me to take the meaning of Nietzsche away from Nietzsche. The ‘weakness’ of laziness and/or reliance of any kind on other people, is deserving of nothing more than scorn and contempt.
Ouch! Guilty as charged on all counts. 😂
No explanation was offered, probably because there was no room for anything other than vitriol. Obviously there was more to it, but this captures the guts of the exchange, of which two aspects are relevant.
- Firstly, the actions of the other party seemed to not only suppose, but also express, the common Nietzsche-as-philosopher-of-violence interpretation of the ideas of will to power and Übermensch as ‘the right (and only) interpretation’, i.e. Nietzsche’s actual intent.
- Secondly, and somewhat ironically, Jung’s process of individuation scrubbed of his spiritual Christian (Gnostic, actually) mysticism/faith can be said to be nothing more than growth towards a more rounded, integrated self through closer alignment between the conscious and sub-conscious, i.e. exercising the Socratic maxim to know ourselves.
Individuation is development towards a ‘higher’ whole individual through self-mastery, or self-overcoming (Stein, I, 2005). It is an amoral psychological process, the moral content of which is entirely dependent on the psyche of each individual.
In this sense, a psychological interpretation is not a contradiction of Nietzsche’s thinking. Nor is a neutral, i.e. mysticism-free, comparison. Nietzsche is acknowledged in academic philosophy and psychology as having anticipated depth psychology. Nietzsche thought of, and referred to, himself as a psychologist — see, e.g. Nietzsche, TI, pp. 25, 64, 90; BGE, pp. 21, 70, 108; EH, pp. 44, 67, 137, among others.
Further, the admiration of Nietzsche and his ideas by the early pioneers in psychology and psycho-analysis — Freud, Adler, Jung, et al — is well documented. So to suppose there was some cross-over is not at all unreasonable. It was not for reasons of mere puffery that Sigmund Freud wrote of Nietzsche that he had “a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live”. (Jones, SF, p. 385) Besides, given Nietzsche’s critique of absolutes and universals, what else can he have been philosophising over?
But, does this mean we should take every aphorism, epigram, maxim, utterance, literally as that of ‘The Oracle’, whether in a psychological sense or otherwise? No, certainly not.
Two Problems of Nietzsche (For Now)
Firstly, his breakdown. After a decade of what could be said to be one of the most sustained creative philosophical outputs in recent history, all that was left of his will to power was primitively biological, vegetative. His will to power ran out of ‘Nietzsche’.
That this is a euphemism is not relevant. What is relevant is that he left an unfinished body of work, which is best found in the quasi-biblical form of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and repeated in the more accessible form of Beyond Good and Evil.
The idea that we can take what he had published as all he wanted to say in a literal, complete sense is dubious at best. Not least because iconoclasm for its own sake points to the nihilism Nietzsche railed against. But mainly, to avoid the nihilism of iconoclasm for its own sake, because it was clear he intended to finish what he started when he announced the death of God — a need for a revaluation of all values — but had not. (Kaufmann, N, p. 7)
Secondly, it is a struggle to look over the sheer sanctimony, self-righteousness, vaingloriousness to see what lies beyond. It takes messianic-like chutzpah to write a book with chapters titled, ‘Why I am So Clever’, ‘Why I Write Such Good Books’, ‘Why I am Destiny’.
But there is only so much irony and sarcasm that can be brought to bear before resistance kicks in. This is where a psychological reading of Nietzsche gets scary. For it to be plausible with any degree of clarity, it can only reflect the mind of the reader.
Before anything else, we must “contend with unconscious resistance in the heart of the investigator [us]”. (Nietzsche, BGE, §23, p31)
Put in different words, as an old black-letter lawyer friend once observed, we habitually read what we want to read. A psychological interpretation of Nietzsche entails asking what lay beyond the sanctimony, self-righteousness, vaingloriousness — “beyond good and evil”?
Unfortunately, this is where we circle back to the first problem, and come to a stop. For an obvious answer in the absence of ‘God’, and Nietzsche-Zarathustra, in the absence of absolutes and universals, is us. Individual persons with a natural tendency to perceive ‘the world’ as ‘humanity’ made in our (individual) perception (image) of it. This is why a psychological interpretation is both the most consistent and most coherent.
For Nietzsche, there is no ‘God’ ‘out there’ bestowing a frame of reference on us to make sense of, give meaning to, the world. And there is nothing in ‘nature’ sans humans doing likewise. Instead of ‘God’, we find the promise of Nietzsche’s Übermensch — the higher (individual) being creating values.
We are by nature meaning-making-needing animals, both actively and passively.
If I were to draw an obvious interpretation from my encounters with Nietzsche’s ideas so far, this would be the most likely. And the most problematic. For the only way to avoid concluding they are no more than a turd of naturalistic fallacy, elegantly and brilliantly polished into a sparkling gem by literary and philosophical genius, is to reject the claim they are the philosophy of an arsehole.
‘Nature’ sans humans may well be ‘amoral’, but this is not how the world is. Is it?
This is not to deny the existence of arseholes. Nietzsche was not arguing for an amoral world of ‘higher (individual) beings’, just a world as he thought it ought to be. Surely he did not think it ought to be a world measured against the values of arseholes?
‘Right’ Interpretation? Or Reasoned?
Do the actions of my vitriolic tormentor reflect the ‘right’ interpretation of Nietzsche’s will to power and Übermensch?
No, I don’t think so. But not for obvious reasons.
All they did was reflect something about themselves through their interpretation of what they think of as his ‘mature philosophy’. A philosophy of violence as justification for being an arsehole. A justification of a need to dominate others, to forcefully assert my (personal) view of the world on others considered inferior, ‘low’. To do violence of some kind to them to satisfy some kind of sub-conscious psychological need to feel superior through external domination.
Yes, Nietzsche’s will to power and Übermensch doctrines could be interpreted this way and, indeed, other ways. But as the most ‘right interpretation’?
Nietzsche’s abhorrence of ‘strength’ expressed only in a vulgar, ‘low’, way can clearly be read from his abhorrence of the markers of proto-nazism — nationalism, totalitarianism, fascism, antisemitism — documented more clearly in his letters, as well as his works e.g. see Nietzsche, GS, pp 186, 194–196, 338–340. For Nietzsche, ‘strength’ construed in ‘higher being’ entails overcoming one’s weaknesses, not being a slave to a life-denying drive as an expression of will to power.
Nowhere is it clearer than in Ecce Homo, the last coherent book he wrote. It is an autobiographical reflection on his work written specifically to overcome this kind of mistaken interpretation.
- “it seems indispensable to me to say who I am […] Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else” (Nietzsche, EH, §1, p. 219, his emphasis).
- “Whoever knows how seriously my philosophy has pursued the fight against vengefulness and rancour, even into the doctrine of [Christian] “free will” […] will understand why I am making such a point of my own behaviour” (Nietzsche, EH, §6, p. 231, my emphasis).
- “I am warlike by nature […] My practice of war can be summed up in four propositions […]. [1] I only attack causes that are victorious […]. [2] I only attack causes […] so that I compromise myself alone […]. [3] I never attack persons […]. [4] I only attack things when every personal quarrel is excluded” (Nietzsche, EH, §7, p. 232).
Nietzsche’s conception of nihilism cuts both ways. Just as attempting to negate suffering by pursuing a suffering(sin)-free (Christian) ideal as the only value is an attempt to negate life, so attempting to promote malevolence by pursuing dominance and aggression as a ‘strength’ ideal as the only value is also an attempt to negate life.
Attacking a person merely to satisfy sub-conscious psychological needs is not making ‘war’ as a higher being. The higher being makes ‘war’ on falsehoods and hollow ‘sacred cows’ (idols). Not people. They actively compromise both themselves and ideas, most particularly nihilist attempts to deny or extinguish one aspect of the paradoxical nature of being human.
The great irony of Nietzsche as a masterful literary magician, is that he unexpectedly left us with a choice. Quite the predicament created by an “old psychologist” who rejected the idea of Christian free will. Yet, he advocated two ideas that entail choice if they are to be at all coherent. Will to power as the driving force of the being and becoming of each individual, and self-overcoming as the task of the ‘higher being’ (Übermensche).
In this light, we can interpret the absence of ‘God’, and Nietzsche-Zarathustra — or better put, what lies beyond them — in two ways.
- Positively, through values grounded by the inescapable fact of standing in relation to each other while striving to become ‘higher beings’ as individuals, if at all. In other words, pace Socrates — an examined life is worth living.
- Negatively, through a literal interpretation of ‘will to power’ as a philosophy of violence — domination to satisfy a psychological need of a lower being — you will bow to my interpretation of the world because I say so. In other words, contra Socrates — an unexamined life is worth living.
Not Beyond, But Between
The problem with this line of thinking is that it is a false dichotomy, which is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s reasoning. But, there seems to be mixed signals when extending inquiry to include his personal account.
In this light, it is open to think of the moral arc of self-overcoming, for it necessarily is moral, as bending towards the positive. Life for Nietzsche’s ‘higher being’ leans towards creating values that favour the positive end of the human spectrum between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in balancing the demands of the individual and their society, while acknowledging the basic moral spectrum of being human.
Why otherwise would he have abhorred collective trends towards nationalism, totalitarianism, antisemitism — all expressions of a deep-seated psychological need to dominate others for arbitrary reasons — yet be bothered to tell the world it had a serious problem by critiquing Christianity and democracy?
Nietzsche’s last sane crafted, written statement of intent was, “Have I been understood? — Dionysus versus the Crucified.-“ (Nietzsche, EH, §9, p. 335, his emphasis). Those who interpret Nietzsche as condoning dominance over, and/or violence against, others to satisfy arbitrary personal psychological needs may benefit from some self-reflection. Unless, of course, they just enjoy being an arsehole.
Closing Thoughts
The journey is far from over. Not least because cherry-picking in search of an alternative meaning to an author’s idea is not considered ‘good scholarship’. It does not follow, however, that it is necessarily ‘bad philosophy’. Otherwise, we risk just worshipping idols.
There are hints, clues, of what lies beyond the absence of God and the proclamations of Nietzsche-Zarathustra. But no sharply focussed picture.
To return to Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. The most we can say with any certainty is that what lies beyond Nietzsche, beyond the demand to “Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley, O, 1876, p. 72), is nothing but the lone and level sands of interpretation stretching out into the future. But it is not a blank canvas, not a shimmering heat haze of nothingness.
There is something in the near distance that, undoubtedly, is a sufficiently familiar and unmistakable shape — us, humans.
I think it is reasonable to argue Nietzsche’s ‘war’ is conceptual ‘war’, intellectual violence against idols, ideas, to get to the most reasonable interpretations of truth. Not necessarily real ‘war’ against real people merely for the sake of an inflated sense of superiority borne of some kind of arbitrary, i.e. individual, psychological, or even material, weakness.
After all, imagine a world full of Übermenschen as ‘superior’ beings? Cocky, sanctimonious Zarathroosters all strutting around proclaiming at the world about their individual values and ideals, even as ‘the world’ hasn’t asked for them. All ready to do violence at the drop of a hat on whoever threatens them with the slightest provocation of saying No! to them?
Not No! to life, but No! to them. No! to their will to power.
If ever there was a nightmarish nihilistic vision, surely it would be this. Forever on the edge of . In this light, and in the current western cultural zeitgeist, it is no stretch to say that Nietzsche probably abhorred bullshit and liars, no matter their metaphysical, philosophical, or political stance. In other words, at least for now, I like to think he would probably have abhorred arseholes.
Epilogue
I have no doubt I will change my mind as the journey continues. After all, I am only part way through Nietzsche’s dream.
There is still a very large amount of conceptual territory I haven’t explored in both primary and secondary sources. So, there are quite probably positions, beliefs, ideals, I hold that I will need to do violence to, to overcome. Beyond these, there are only people. People making meaning in and of ‘the world’ through their mediated relations, no matter the existence or otherwise of God, or Nietzsche-Zarathustra.
Funny thing that, eh?
References
- BGE > Nietzsche, F., 1989 (1886), Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans., Kaufmann, W., Vintage Books Edition.
- EH > Nietzsche, F., 1989 (1888) Ecce Homo, trans., Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R., Vintage Books Edition.
- GS > Nietzsche, F., 1974 (1882/1887) The Gay Science, trans., Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R., Vintage Books Edition.
- I > Stein, M., 2005, “Individuation: Inner Work,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Proactive, vol. 7, №2.
- N > Kaufmann, W., 1974, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Princeton University Press.
- O > Shelley, P. B., 1876, ‘Ozymandias’ in Rosalund and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems, C. and J. Ollier print.
- SF > Jones, E., 1955, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, vol. 2, Hogarth Press.
- TI > Nietzsche, F., 1911 (1888), Twilight of the Idols: Or How to Philosophise with a Hammer, trans., Ludovici, A., The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. sixteen, ed. Levy, O.
