Part Nine: What is Noble? (Was ist Vornehm?)

小心

What follows are personal reflections on some of the main ideas and themes that I picked up from a reading of the last chapter of Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’: What is Noble? It is, of course, by no means exhaustive. Following previous entries, $ refers to the section number (standard across translations and editions) and the number to the page ref in my Kaufmann, 1992, Modern Library Edition.

1/Aristocratic Radicalism and the Will to Power

The final chapter opens with clear statements of Nietzsche’s ‘aristocratic radicalism’: “Every enhancement of the type ‘man’”, Nietzsche declares, “has been the work of an aristocratic society … that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other” ($257/391). Nietzsche also praises the “noble barbarian castes” who “hurled themselves upon weaker … more peaceful races” ($257/391) and argues that society “must not exist for society’s sake” but instead as the scaffolding “on which a choice type of being is able to raise itself to its highest task and to a higher state of being” ($258/392). We must be clear that Nietzsche is not arguing for a return to the values of a ‘barbaric primitive culture’ (Carlisle, 2003). He admires not so much the cruelty and violence of the ‘masters’, but the affirmative, creative origins of their values; and he is critical of the reactive nature of ‘slave’ morality which rests on a corrupt foundation of ressentiment. This is extended in section 259 through a discussion of the will to power as the law of being throughout the organic stratum (“life simply is will to power” p. 393). The will to power is understood as the differential and genetic element of relations of force to force (Deleuze, 2001). The concept of force is, by nature, victorious (overpowering, appropriating) because the relation of force to force, understood conceptually, is one of domination: when two forces are related one is dominant and the other is dominated. Nietzsche thus understands “the slowly arising democratic order of things” ($261/399) and the demand for equality in nineteenth century Europe as the triumph of reactive forces – where the weak have conquered, where the strong are separated from what they can do, where the slave who has not stopped being a slave prevails over the master who has stopped being one (Deleuze, 2006). Here nihilism triumphs and the will to power becomes a “will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay” ($259/393). Will to negation.

2/ Master Morality and Slave Morality

Section 260 introduces and distinguishes between ‘master’ and ‘slave’ morality (Nietzsche would clarify and develop this analysis a year later in Genealogy of Morals). Immediately, however, Nietzsche makes it clear that these two types are often combined within one culture, and “even in the same human being, within a single soul” ($260/394). This helps to explain why moralities, often assumed to be rational and coherent, usually turn out to be riven with tensions, hypocrisies and contradictions. In ‘noble’ societies, the masters will dominate the slaves, and so what is good and valuable will be determined by the “noble type of man” ($260/395). Taking pride in their strengths and talents, the noble human is thus a creator of values and new principles of evaluation (Deleuze, 2001). Unable to take revenge on their oppressors by means of force, the slaves label the aggressive, arrogant ethic of their masters as ‘evil’, and preach values such as humility, meekness and pity ($260/397). In effect, this ‘slave morality’ makes a virtue out of necessity, turning weakness into moral virtue and expecting everyone to conform to it. According to Nietzsche, the ethical teachings of Judaic law and Christian love spring from the thirst for vengeance exercised by the weak upon the strong ($219): from “the weight of negative premises, the spirit of strength, the power of ressentiment” (Deleuze, 2006: 114). Nietzsche argues that it is through the slave revolt in morality that the famous opposition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is born ($260/397): ethical determination, that of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (understood in a vitalist sense of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’), gives way to moral judgement. The good of ethics has become the evil of morality, the bad has become the good of morality. Life is thus judged according to values that are said to be superior to life: “these pious values are opposed to life, condemn it, lead it to nothingness; they promise salvation only to the most reactive, the weakest, the sickest forms of life” (Deleuze, 2001: 78).

3/ Suffering and the Mask of Illness

Skipping forward a few sections, in 270 Nietzsche introduces the theme of suffering and its relation to noble life, arguing that “profound suffering makes noble; it separates” ($270/410). “By virtue of his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, and that he knows his way and has once been ‘at home’ in many distant terrifying world of which ‘you know nothing’” ($270/410). This is interesting in relation to Nietzsche’s own health and illness. In his illness, Nietzsche saw a point of view on health; and in health, a point of view on illness. As Deleuze writes, “illness is not a motive for a thinking subject, not is it an object for thought: it constitutes, rather, a secret intersubjectivity at the heart of a single individual” (p.58). Illness as an evaluation of health, health as an evaluation of illness: such is the ‘reversal’ the ‘shift in perspective’ that Nietzsche saw as the crux of his method and his calling for a transmutation of values (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo). As long as Nietzsche could practice the art of shifting perspectives, from health to illness and back, he enjoyed, sick as he may have been, the ‘great health’ that made his work possible. We thus return to the importance and virtue of the mask. Illness is thus understood as a mask that conceals and expresses other kinds of forces – forces of life, forces of thought. However, and as Nietzsche’s final years testify, masks can become paralysing, no longer shifting and communicating, merging into a death-life rigidity. The overall paralysis marks the moment when illness exits from the work, interrupts it, and makes its continuation impossible (Deleuze, 2001: 64).

“Recreation? Recreation? You are inquisitive! What are you saying! But give me please”

“What? What? Say it!”

“Another mask! A second mask!” ($278/414).

4/ The Force of Laughter, The Shock of Thought

Skipping forward again, this time to section 294 where we have an interesting section on laughter as an attitude toward the world, toward life, and toward oneself. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche (1992) writes that “laughter means: to rejoice at another’s expense [schadenfroh sein], but with a good conscience” ($200). For Nietzsche, laughter becomes less a physical phenomenon than a symbol of joyous affirmation of life: it is not a consolation for our weakness (ala Hobbes) but an expression of joy, a sign of our power (Hardt and Negri, 2009: 382-383).

I also particularly like sections 292 and 296 which are beautifully written accounts of thought. In $292, for example, Nietzsche describes ‘the philosopher’ who is constantly struck by lightning bolts of thought; “who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a fatal human being around whom there are constant rumblings and growlings, crevices and uncanny doings” ($292/420). For me, this has clear resonances with Deleuze’s (2004) perspective on thought in Difference and Repetition, where he writes that subject does not choose to think, but is instead forced to think through the shock and contingency of an encounter (p.176). Thought is thus recast as a creative and ontogenetic force that pulses through and deterritorialises actual bodies. In $296, Nietzsche argues that this thinking is not contained in the designations, manifestations and significations of language as owned by the subject. These are only partial expressions of it: pale reflections of its flash (Massumi, 2002). The “colours” that we scholars, writers, “mandarins with Chinese brushes” give to our (re)presentations of the event of thought are thus “always only storms that are passing, exhausted, and feelings that are autumnal and yellow!” ($296/426-427; See also Dewsbury, 2010: 158).

“We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer – only weary and mellow things! And it is only your afternoon, you, my written and painted thought, for which alone I have colours, many colours perhaps, many motley caresses and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds: but nobody will guess from that how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude, you my old beloved – wicked thoughts” ($296/427)

References

Carlisle, C. (2003) Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: ‘Why insist on the truth?’ Richmond Journal of Philosophy. 4

Deleuze, G. (2001) Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. New York: Zone Books

Deleuze, G. (2004) Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum

Deleuze, G. (2006) Nietzsche and Philosophy. London: Continuum

Dewsbury, J-D. (2010) Language and the event: the unthought of appearing worlds. In B. Anderson and P. Harrison (Eds.) Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography

Hardt, M., and Negri, A. (2009) Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Massumi, B. (2002) Like a thought. In B. Massumi (Ed.) A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari.

Nietzsche, F. (1992) Basic Writings of Nietzsche. New York: The Modern Library

Beyond Good and Evil - Chapter Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands

Note: references given in brackets refer to the paragraph numbers, rather than page numbers, as between us we appear to have quite a broad collection of translations / editions.

Chapter eight of Beyond Good and Evil sees Nietzsche address the topic of nationalism, in relation to what he refers to as an emergent 'European Spirit'. Nietzsche opens the chapter with a nostalgic encounter with Wagner's Meistersinger overture, describing its "certain German massiveness and abundance of soul" (240). There is, it seems, something undeniably 'German', in Wagner's composition; in Nietzsche's own words, this is something "multifarious, unformed, and inexhaustible" (240) that is typical to the German tradition. However, moving into 241, such practices of 'hearty fatherland-ism' are portrayed in less favourable light, perhaps as more of an arbitrary fancy rooted to the past? The reader is introduced to a population of 'Good Europeans' - a group that Nietzsche appears to align himself with. Even these Good Europeans, Nietzsche argues, are liable from time to time to indulge in the kinds of 'fatherland-ism' made manifest in the previous encounter with Wagner - "hours flooded through with feelings for the nation, patriotic anguish, and all sorts of other archaic emotional convulsions" (241). Whilst such nostalgia for the nation might be unavoidable, Nietzsche emphasises the need for a quicker digestion and metabolism of these indulgences, as he puts it; we should avoid getting caught-up or 'lumbered' with the "atavistic attacks of fatherland-ism and attachment to the soil" (241). In these opening sections, Nietzsche appears to be opening-up a problem space by re-contextualising national identity in relation to the possibilities of a European future.

Moving into 242, Nietzsche's re-orientation towards 'Europe' touches upon the theme of environmental determinism - choppy waters for geographers, perhaps! According to the narrative, Europe was witnessing the gradual emergence of a more nomadic human. Interestingly, Nietzsche stresses the importance of physical - i.e. bodily - changes, supposedly as nomadic movements encourage a more adaptive human, "having a maximum of adaptive skills and powers" (242). As was mentioned in Friday's reading group, we might want to question such a reading of Darwinian evolution. For me, it does seem to be flavoured with a heavy dose of Lamarckism, in that it suggests an environmentally-determined evolution taking place over the course of centuries. On the other hand, perhaps this is less a question of environment, but instead of racial-mixing? Either way, I think the important point to take from Nietzsche's argument is that, in his own words, "this process probably ends with results that were least anticipated by its naive sponsors and apologists, the apostles of 'modern ideas'" (242). Thus, the intentions of democratic sponsors will always be exceeded by the physical inter-minglings of bodies and environments. Do we detect a hint of vitalism here?

The main body of chapter eight goes on to explore what Nietzsche sees as the strengths and shortcomings of various nationalities, placing each within the context of a European 'becoming'. Indeed, no 'nation' is immune to Nietzsche's onslaught of terse criticism. Populated by 'multifarious' souls, the youthful German nation escapes definition in its "maze of passageways" (244). In fact, Nietzsche portrays this uncertainty as a brilliant discovery for German philosophy - "the German himself is not, he is becoming, he 'is developing'" (244). However, the 'inner tightrope dance' of the German soul is also its weakness through its "boorish indifference to taste", and its inability to 'digest' the events that befall it. It seems, therefore, that these weaknesses are in opposition to the advent of the 'Good European'. According to Nietzsche, then, German music "was threatened by its greatest danger: to cease being the voice of Europe's soul and to deteriorate inter mere fatherland-ism" (245). Sections 246 and 247 address German literature, and its supposed lack of tempo, musicality, colour - in short, artistic creativity / expression. Personally, I think these two sections are among my all-time favourites, as we get glimpses of Nietzsche-as-writer, as an experimental sculptor of language. The approach is, in places, explicitly performative, at least in my translation: "How resentfully we face the slowly circling swamp of sounds without resonance, of rhythms without dance that Germans call a 'book'" (246). It would be interesting to do a bit of digging here regarding the translation, and whether or not such a translation retains the sibilance - indeed the resonances - of the German. For Nietzsche, the Germans' lack of linguistic musicality stems stems from a forgetting of the physicality of language, particularly the natural rhythms and colourations that emerge through the act of oration. Provocatively as ever, Nietzsche thus declares the greatest German masterpiece to be "the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: The Bible has ben the best German book so far" (247).

Moving on into 251, Nietzsche addresses the Jewish people, viewing the contemporary 'anti-Jewish' sentiment as "little becloudings of the German spirit and conscience" (251). Whilst bordering somewhat uncomfortably upon essentialism (e.g. German stomachs and German blood have found it difficult to deal with influxes of 'Jew'), Nietzsche positions himself in opposition to the anti-Semites. For Nietzsche, the Jews are a strong race, more than capable of ruling over Europe. This, however, is not the Jewish objective, and Nietzsche seems keen to propose an intermingling of Jewish and German races, as part of the coming 'European Problem' of "breeding a new caste to rule over Europe" (143).

What might the English contribute to the coming Europe? Not a lot, it seems, for to be English is by definition to be mediocre: "they are not a philosophical race, these Englishmen" (252). Worse still for Nietzsche, the English exhibit a 'boorish solemnity', their will-to-creativity shackled by the "Christian gesture and prayer and the singing of psalms" (252). At worst, "a penitent's spasm really may be the relative highest 'human' achievement that it can aspire to" (252). But perhaps, Nietzsche offers, dry Englishness is more suited to the creation of 'common facts', a la Charles Darwin (!). For Nietzsche, common facts are not enough; "in the end they have to more than to merely perceive, and that is to be something new" (253). In a defence of the English, and in light of STS, might we instead argue that Darwin's common facts required a creativity - and perhaps a personal transformation - par excellence?

With their promotion of 'art for art's sake', the French are painted in a more favourable light. Nietzsche also appears fond of a 'psychological sensitivity' characteristic of the French, and their ability to offer a "tolerably successful synthesis of North and South" (254). Most importantly, however, is the French propensity "to understand and accommodate those rare and rarely satisfied people who are too expansive to find their satisfaction in any kind of fatherland-ism" (254). Presumably, Nietzsche might place his own way of life within this rarer type. From a less cynical perspective, however, this is clearly a critique of a rigid identity welded to tradition and the past, and perhaps instead a call to imagine a Europe of fluid identities to come.

Nietzsche finishes the chapter by arguing that, contrary to the superficially divisive nature of contemporary politics, "Europe wants to be one" (256). There is, it seems, some kind of will-to-Europe, a trans-individual drive that should not be denied, "experimentally anticipating the European of the future" (256). This drive manifests itself, according to Nietzsche, through "abundant, impetuous art", and is ushered into existence by those "ruled by literature", who are often "writers themselves, in fact, poets, intermediaries and interminglers of the arts and the senses" (256). These 'good Europeans, it seems, are united in their modes of 'seeking' - "fanatics of expression at all costs". In my reading, there is something stubbornly egotistical in the heroism of Nietzsche's new Europeans, "nearly destroying themselves by their work". That being said, I can't help but turn the question back upon my self; what am I presenting, expressing, creating? And, perhaps, what are my own 'fatherlands' and 'hours of indulging' that obscure new opportunities? Ignorant of the destination, an 'experimental anticipation' is necessarily an act of creation.