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Nietzsche's Gay Science Nietzsche’s Gay Science Also by Monika M. Langer MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION: A Guide and Commentary Nietzsche’s Gay Science Dancing Coherence Monika M. Langer © Monika M. Langer 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-58068-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-58069-5 ISBN 978-0-230-28176-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230281769 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Langer, Monika M. Nietzsche’s Gay Science : Dancing Coherence / Monika M. Langer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. 2. Philosophy. 3. Religion—Philosophy. I. Langer, Monika M. II. Title. III. Title: The Gay Science. B3313.F73l36 2010 193—dc22 2009048522 10987654321 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 I dedicate this book to my parents, Harald and Anne Langer, with gratitude for their interest and encouragement. This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi Nietzsche’s Preface 1 “Joke, Cunning, and Revenge.” Prelude in German Rhymes 14 Book One Book One: Sections 1–10 31 Book One: Sections 11–33 43 Book One: Sections 34–56 58 Book Two Book Two: Sections 57–75 77 Book Two: Sections 76–85 91 Book Two: Sections 86–98 98 Book Two: Sections 99–107 105 Book Three Book Three: Sections 108–125 117 Book Three: Sections 126–153 137 Book Three: Sections 154–275 147 Book Four Book Four: Sections 276–290 165 Book Four: Sections 291–298 177 Book Four: Sections 299–306 184 vii viii Contents Book Four: Sections 307–315 189 Book Four: Sections 316–325 193 Book Four: Sections 326–334 197 Book Four: Sections 335–342 201 Book Five Book Five: Sections 343–355 215 Book Five: Sections 356–365 229 Book Five: Sections 366–374 237 Book Five: Sections 375–383 249 Appendix: “Songs of Prince Vogelfrei” 261 Selected Bibliography 266 Index 268 Acknowledgements I want to thank the University of Victoria for two grants (SSHRC and RGLS) that allowed me to undertake research in Europe. These grants enabled me to examine Nietzsche’s notebooks and handwrit- ten manuscripts of the first and second editions of The Gay Science (on microfilm and in printed hardcopy). I was thus able to resolve ques- tions that had arisen because of inconsistencies in the various modern German editions of the text. I wish to express my gratitude to Frau Dr. Roswitha Wollkopf of the Goethe-Schiller Archiv (in Weimar), and to Frau Giesela Nebiger of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek (like- wise in Weimar). Their assistance was invaluable in procuring items for my examination, including several books with Nietzsche’s handwitten marginalia. I also want to thank my family, friends, and colleagues for their unflagging encouragement and cheerfulness during this project. ix This page intentionally left blank Introduction The Gay Science is among Nietzsche’s most remarkable and significant works. In his “Translator’s Introduction” Walter Kaufmann called it “one of Nietzsche’s most beautiful and important books”. Richard Schacht declared “for one interested in Nietzsche as philosoper, Die Frohliche [sic.] Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) is without question one of his finest, most illuminating, and most important published works”. He added: “If there is any one of his published works in which ‘the essential philosophical Nietzsche’ is to be found, it would seem to me to be this one.”1 More recently, David Allison said The Gay Science is one of “Nietzsche’s most celebrated and widely read texts”. He pointed out Nietzsche regarded it as his most personal work, and it contains virtually all his major philo- sophical themes. Allison said of all Nietzsche’s texts, The Gay Science “is probably his most important”.2 The Gay Science is clearly central to Nietzsche’s philosophy. Yet so far there has not been a book to help the reader grapple with its complex- ity, from the opening Preface to the concluding Appendix of songs. My book seeks to meet that need. There has been a heightened inter- est in The Gay Science, thanks largely to Ruth Abbey’s Nietzsche’s Middle Period, Kathleen Higgins’ Comic Relief: Nietzsche’s Gay Science, and David Allison’s Reading the New Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Genealogy of Morals.3 To indicate how my book differs from these, it is worth summarizing Abbey’s, Higgins’, and Allison’s respective approaches. Ruth Abbey argues the works of his middle period (Human, All Too Human, “Assorted Opinions and Maxims”, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, Daybreak, and the first four Books of The Gay Science) reveal a Nietzsche who is “more careful”, “more open”, less individualist, “less extreme”, and more productively engaged with the philosophical tradi- tion than in his later writings. Abbey maintains the middle period works provide a superior inquiry into the psyche’s complexity. Moreover, they “realize more fully some of Nietzsche’s own values, such as self-reflexive criticism, antidogmatism, openness to possibilities”, and sensitivity to becoming, contingency, and construction.4 To make her case, Abbey focuses on Nietzsche’s approach to morality, psychology, vanity, pity (as well as its cognates: empathy, sympathy, and xi xii Introduction benevolence), friendship, science, women, marriage, and the western intellectual tradition. She recognizes her emphasis on central themes and recurrent concerns is at variance with the approach of many commentators, who question such imposition of order and unity on apparent chaos and diversity. Abbey says these commentators presup- pose Nietzsche’s aphorisms and multiple styles (such as paragraphs of different lengths, short philosophical dialogues, and anecdotes) imply a diversity of thought and of subject matter in his writings. However, she points out Nietzsche challenged this assumption that his apho- risms and diverse styles indicate discontinuous thinking and patchwork writings.5 Like Abbey, Kathleen Higgins observes The Gay Science “has typically been read as a collection of freestanding sections, their interconnections scarcely noted”.6 By contrast with this approach, Higgins interprets the work as a unified project that is “very carefully orchestrated”.7 She ana- lyzes the shape of its first edition (consisting of the Prelude of poems and the first four Books) and concludes the prose sections are deliberately framed in terms of tragedy and comedy. Higgins contends Nietzsche presents these alternative theatrical forms as paradigms for divergent (but complementary) perspectives on life. Concentrating on his pre- sentation of comedy in The Gay Science, she explores his “attempt at lighthearted scholarship”, his “use of humorous strategies”, and his “parodic play with literary precedents”.8 Higgins says The Gay Science “is intricately assembled in deliberate segues of aphorisms”. She suggests the “image of the postal writer” is a fitting metaphor for its format, each new aphorism appearing “as a new missive”.9 Higgins thinks “Nietzsche’s perspective ...is [as] eccentric and disjointed as a series of postcards from a traveler” who records his observations.10 She says “by structuring his presentation as a series of fragments, Nietzsche directs our thinking into specific sequences, manipulating our experience of reflecting to provoke certain associations”.11 Nevertheless, Higgins does not analyze The Gay Science according to its patterns of “fragments”/“postcards”/aphorisms. Instead, she focuses largely on Nietzsche’s treatment of some principal themes (such as perspectivism, the interplay of tragedy and comedy, the death of God, eternal recurrence, and Zarathustra), as they become prominent. Unlike Higgins, David Allison does not regard The Gay Science as a uni- fied and carefully orchestrated work, although he interprets it as having a central concern. In his view, that concern is “to question the posi- tion and significance of human existence within an age that no longer seemed to have a discernible
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