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INFOKARA RESEARCH ISSN NO: 1021-9056

Nietzsche in the Context of Schopenhauer Dr. S.Sridevi*

Abstract Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was a German and cultural critic. He deconstructed the subjective beneath western religion, and that were supposed to have . He was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a German philosopher whose writings influenced , which has been established by scholars. This paper looks at these negotiations and also looks into a few poems of Nietzsche analyzing their themes. Key words: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche Nietzsche was interested in the enhancement of personage of humanity and cultural health of the human race. Nietzsche’s revitalizing thinking has inspired leading figures in all walks of intellectual life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, , sociologists and social revolutionaries. In 1865, Nietzsche discovered ’s The as and Representation (1818) in a local bookstore. He was then 21 years old. Schopenhauer’s atheistic and turbulent vision of the world, in conjunction with his high praise of music as an form, captured Nietzsche’s imagination. (Wicks). Reason helps us to set free ourselves from , says Schopenhauer. It can assist us appreciate things objectively. Judgments are probable only if rationale is applied. In spite of conceptual , illusions do prolong to exist. As man has unreasonable tendencies, the practice of reason is very important. Reason can only prevent error, that is, a judgment on insufficient grounds, by opposing to it a ; as for example, the abstract knowledge that the cause of the weaker light of the moon and the stars at the horizon is not greater distance, but the denser atmosphere; but in all the cases we have referred to, the illusion remains in spite of every abstract explanation. For the understanding is in itself, even in the case of man, irrational, and is completely and sharply distinguished from the reason, which is a faculty of knowledge that belongs to man alone. The reason can only know; remains free from its influence and belongs to the understanding alone. (Schopenhauer 56) The is an essential conception in the thinking of Nietzsche. He views it as an irrational force. It guides the , body and spirit of the people. , A Book for All and None (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, 1883–85), is one of Nietzsche’s most renowned works, and Nietzsche regarded it as among his most noteworthy. Thirty years after its initial publication, 150,000 copies of the work were printed by the German government and issued as inspirational reading, along with the Bible, to the young soldiers during WWI. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is poetic and uses a prophetic manner of writing. It relies upon many Old and New Testament allusions. Nietzsche fills the work with metaphors. He invokes animals, earth, air, fire, water, celestial bodies and plants. He describes the spiritual development of Zarathustra who is portrayed as a solitary, reflective, exceedingly strong-willed, sage-like, laughing and dancing voice of heroic self-mastery. Zarathustra is accompanied by a proud, sharp- eyed eagle and a wise snake. Nietzsche refers to this superior mode of as superhuman (übermenschlich) (Wicks). Nietzsche absorbed the Schopenhauerian view that non-rational forces exist in the foundation of all . These forces are artistically conveyed in music, Nietzsche felt. He identifies a strongly instinctual, untamed, amoral, Dionysian power within pre-Socratic Greek society as an essentially creative and vigorous energy. He locates its major idiom in the tragic choral group and it is Schopenhauer who similarly argues that man has enormous will power which cannot always be controlled by rational thinking. Schopenhauer believed that this earth is lived with anguish and pain and declared that life is a wretched business. He regarded optimism as absurd and as a bitter mockery of the unspeakable of humanity and rational thinking is only a mask to hide irrationalism. He had a rich impact on , the famous German music composer. Nietzsche was strongly influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer and his later writings reflect a celebration of human will. But for Schopenhauer who was influenced by and , it was renunciation or that helped man to conquer this illusionary world or as discussed earlier it was art that helped man to conquer the of this world (Blumenau). Approaching life from a Schopenhauerean perspective, that is, considering that the human Will brought miserable pressure and his argument that philosophy brought some solace to humanity in its deterministic viewpoint makes us believe that there are no left for people in their lives as our and vices are inborn, and our Will rules us completely directing our day to day behaviour. The World as Will *Associate Professor of English, CTTE College, Chennai 11

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and was published in 1819 and did not receive much acclaim as the public went to listen to Hegel’s lectures and Schopenhauer sometimes lectured to an empty room. Hegel was an optimist who believed in human freedom, understanding and reason, and on the contrary, Schopenhauer believed that man is doomed. As an idealist influenced by , Schopenhauer holds that the world we live in is ultimately an illusion, and the opening words of his masterpiece are “The world is my representation,” and the closing words are “To those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very world of ours with all its suns and galaxies – is nothing,” as his philosophy is an amalgam of , Kant and the (Caldwell). Being influenced by Schopenhauer, in his first book, The Birth of Nietzsche posits what he calls a Dionysian impulse as the source of and draws his argument from Schopenhauer: What then did Schopenhauer think about tragedy? He says, “What gives all their characteristic drive for elevation is the working out of the recognition that the world and life cannot provide any just satisfactions, and thus our devotion to it is not worthwhile; the tragic spirit lives on in that , and it leads from there to resignation” (The World as Will and Idea, II, 495). Oh, how differently speaks to me! Oh, how far from me then was just this entire doctrine of resignation! (Nietzsche in Birth of Tragedy 5) The will to power as Nietzsche conceives of it is neither nor bad as it is a basic drive found in everyone, but one that expresses itself in many different ways; The philosopher and the scientist direct their will to power into a will to truth; Artists channel it into a will to create; Businessmen satisfy it through becoming rich. One particular form of the will to power that Nietzsche devotes much attention to is what he calls “self-overcoming.” Here the will to power is harnessed and directed toward self-mastery and self- transformation, guided by the that “your real self lies not deep within you but high above you” (Birth of Tragedy 11). Nietzsche further states: In the Dionysian dithyramb man is aroused to the highest intensity of all his symbolic capabilities. Something never felt before forces itself into expression—the destruction of the veil of Maja, the sense of oneness as the presiding of form, of nature itself. Now the of nature must express itself symbolically; a new world of symbols is necessary, the entire of the body, not just the symbolism of mouth, face, and words, but the full gestures of the dance—all the limbs moving to the rhythm. And then the symbolic powers grow, those of music, rhythm, dynamics, and —all with sudden spontaneity. To grasp this total unleashing of all symbolic powers, man must already have attained that high level of freedom from the self which seeks to express itself symbolically in those forces. Because of this, the dithyrambic servant of Dionysus will understand only someone like himself. (Birth of Tragedy 11) Humanizing morality began in the eighteenth century that released morality from religious codes philosophers began to frame it in non-religious frameworks as it viewed that religion empowered the weak against the strong creating a new order of right and wrong, and became a tool for power. Nietzsche arrived at Kierkegaard's idea that the crowd is untruth: the self-legislating has trained himself to docility conforming to standards of morality and the normative behavior has been customized as normal. The self of man has herd mentality, Nietzsche argues, but the individual has the potential to become something else as at any moment the self can accommodate itself to new ideologies and moralities. It is autonomous and can go beyond the conceptions of society which defines the good and the and man has the capacity to create new systems of thought using his fundamental drives; he can survive without transcendent support systems. Nietzsche or Kierkegaard has not codified this system of thinking with a scientific and philosophical rigour (Crowell). This search for newer ways of looking at life is a search for truth which goes beyond any existing system of intellectual platform or any living social code, and it means a new interpretation of life, a new way of understanding which might help us live better. And for the consolation of those who in any way and at any may have devoted strength and life to the noble and hard battle against error, I cannot refrain from adding that, so long as truth is absent, error will have free play, as owls and bats in the night; but sooner would we expect to see the owls and the bats drive back the sun in the eastern heavens, than that any truth which has once been known and distinctly and fully expressed, can ever again be so utterly vanquished and overcome that the old error shall once more reign undisturbed over its wide kingdom. This is the power of truth; its conquest is slow and laborious, but if once the victory be gained it can never be wrested back again. (Schopenhauer 66) Nietzsche argues that we have to rewrite social and cultural codes so that life can be reconstructed. Schopenhauer accepts human suffering and suggests that the self is a combination of contradictions just like

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the combination of madness and genius. This kind of philosophizing suited the post-war European society as it could explain the and ambiguity in human lives. It explained the twentieth century’s negotiations with will and power overriding rational thinking. Schopenhauer’s understanding of the human mind became a tool to analyse the war torn human of Europe captured well by Sartre, Camus and Beckett. How far life gives humans a ? Life is more ambiguous in its conception of freedom. Do we really have the freedom even to wear the expressions we want to have? Camus’ Meursault takes up this question of self-honesty and posed it as an existential problem. Beckett presents two men who think life is nothing, making them sound like madmen. In the Phædrus also Plato distinctly says that there can be no true poet without a certain madness; in fact, that every one appears mad who recognises the eternal Ideas in fleeting things. also quotes: Negat enim sine furore, Democritus, quemquam poetam magnum esse posse; quod idem dicit Plato. And, lastly, Pope says— Great wits to madness sure are near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide. (Schopenhauer 254) Two poems written by Nietzsche after 1965 will help substantiate the impact of Schopenhauer. The poem “After a Nocturnal Thunderstorm” was written in 1871, when Nietzsche was twenty seven years old. The thunder hangs as “misty cover” around his window like a “goddess of dark cloud, /Ashen flakes eerily hover / To a roaring brook's angry sound.” There are “sudden lightning flashes” and the “untamed thunder” booms in “valleys poisoned and noxious” and the poet tells the thunderstorm: “Your death-drink, sorceress, was brewed!” the storm howls and awakes him with a jolt and the poet wakes up to see it “with blazing eyes, / For a piercing thunderbolt.” It speaks: "Now hear what I am! I'm the Amazon, eternal and great, Never dovelike, weak or womanly — Warrioress full of scorn and manly hate, The victress and the tigress, equally Where I tread, I trample corpses, In my brain, poison do flow, With fierce grim eyes, I hurl torches, Now kneel, worm—pray! Or melt in my mad glow!" (The Nietzsche Channel) The power of nature and its will and energy are portrayed vividly and the poet celebrates this superhuman power of the elements. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra written between 1883 and 1885, Nietzsche presents a dialectic in the platonic Socratic and viewpoint, in which an argument takes place between Zarathustra and one of his disciples. The disciple tells the master that poets lie too much and Zarathustra replies analyzing his stand on poets drawing on his personal of writing : What did Zarathustra once say unto thee? That the poets lie too much? But Zarathustra also is a poet. Believest thou that he there spake the truth? Why dost thou believe it?... we do lie too much. We also know too little, and are bad learners; so we are obliged to lie. And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars; many an indescribable thing hath there been done. (121) Poets have “special secret access to knowledge” and as we believe in the people and in their wisdom, poets believe “that whoever pricketh up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the things that are betwixt heaven and earth.” Poets get “tender emotions” and imagine that “nature herself is in love with them.” They think that nature “stealeth to their ears to whisper secrets” and also imagine that nature whispers “amorous flatteries.” They “plume and pride themselves” but actually these things are what they “have dreamed.” Zarathustra ends his monologue on poets saying, “Ah, how I am weary of the poets!” (122) The poem “This is the autumn” was written in 1877, when the Nietzsche was thirty three years old. The description is picturesque and visual imagery is dominant: “The sun crawls along the mountain / And climbs up / And rests with every step. / Upon worn, strained threads / The wind plays its song.” And after this brief description, he breaks into worrying as “hope flees” and he begins thinking about the fruit of the tree that falls on the ground when it is shaken. He is asking the fruit: “O fruit of the tree, / Shaken, you fall! / What lone secret did the night / Reveal to you, / That icy horror veiling your cheeks, / Your crimson cheeks?” The ice on the fruit is a horror, Nietzsche imagines visualizing the impact it must have had on the fruit. His travels further on the ground and he notices starflowers and they speak to him: “I'm not beautiful /… But I love people, / And I comfort people, /They should see flowers now, / Bend down to me, /Alas! and break me —/ In their eyes then shines / Memory of more beautiful things / And .” The positive note of the starflower redirects the poet to the aspect of living. People can get happiness not only by looking at the fruit on top of a tree which falls down and we interpret that as failure, whereas the star flower is always on

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the ground and that can bring happy memories to human . Even the star flower has to leave this world and hence it says: “I see it and then die, / And die gladly.” (The Nietzsche Channel) After seeing people’s happiness the flowers happily leave this earth, after fulfilling their mission. Fruits and flowers have a purpose and after they fulfill it, they quietly leave and that is autumn. Death is inevitable and flowers and fruits are created for a brief period only to serve a purpose and hence, species do not have much freedom to choose to live or leave. Nietzsche says in Beyond (1886): The martyrdom of the philosopher, his sacrifice for the sake of truth forces into the light of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration…Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case – merely a satiric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real tragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin. (19) The pain of a philosopher who sees the tragedy of life in a Schopenhaueran sense is also reflected in the earlier book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85): “If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary.” As life is like a brief candle, attending only to momentary things is a sign of not believing in the eternity of life. Those who immerse themselves in the life of the particular moment do not have any individuality: “But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you – nor even for idling. Everywhere resoundeth the voice of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached. Or ‘lie is eternal’; it is all same to me – if only they pass away quickly!”(37) Death is an important aspect of this world, and one has to accept that life is a brief affair. During the twentieth century, punctuated by the world wars, the westerners approached the philosophy of Nietzsche to explain the absurdity of human freedom of choice. Hence the Nietzschean model of thinking becomes a mainstream idea for art to explain the human . Reference [1] Blumenau, Ralph. “Wagner and Philosophy by Bryan Magee.” Philosophy Now. Issue 34. https://philosophynow.org/issues/34/Wagner_and_Philosophy_by_Bryan_Magee. Web. August 15, 2019. [2] Caldwell, Roger. “Schopenhauer.” Philosophy Now. Issue 86. https://philosophynow.org/issues/86/Schopenhauer. Web. August 15, 2019. [3] Crowell, Steven, "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Web. August 15, 2019. [4] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. New York: Dover Publications, 1997. [5] Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Nietzsche Poems: Nietzsche’s Writings as a Student.” The Nietzsche Channel. http://www.thenietzschechannel.com/poetry/poetry-dual.htm [6] Nietzsche, Friedrich. . Translated from German by Ian C. Johnston. Last revised June 2003. Blackmask Online. Web. August 15, 2019. [7] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra . New Delhi, Robin Books, 2007. [8] Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea. Translated From The German By R. B. Haldane, M.A. And J. Kemp, M.A. Vol. I. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.1909. [9] Wicks, Robert, "Nietzsche's Life and Works", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Declaration This is to certify that the article Nietzsche in the Context of Schopenhauer submitted for publication is an original work by me based on my research. I have duly acknowledged in the said paper the work or works of others I used in writing this article. I have duly cited all such work/s in the text as well as in the list of references. I have presented within quotes all the original sentences and phrases, etc. taken from the sources that I have consulted in writing this article. Dr. S.Sridevi Associate Professor, Research Department of English C.T.T.E. College for Women, Chennai-11. Email: [email protected] Contact No.: 9940519005

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