Leo Strauss Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil A course offered in 1971–1972 St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland Edited and with an introduction by Mark Blitz With the assistance of Jay Michael Hoffpauir and Gayle McKeen With the generous support of Douglas Mayer Mark Blitz is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He is author of several books on political philosophy, including Heidegger’s Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1981) and Plato’s Political Philosophy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), and many articles, including “Nietzsche and Political Science: The Problem of Politics,” “Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Part I),” “Heidegger’s Nietzsche (Part II),” “Strauss’s Laws, Government Practice and the School of Strauss,” and “Leo Strauss’s Understanding of Modernity.” © 1976 Estate of Leo Strauss © 2014 Estate of Leo Strauss. All Rights Reserved Table of Contents Editor’s Introduction i–viii Note on the Leo Strauss Transcript Project ix–xi Editorial Headnote xi–xii Session 1: Introduction (Use and Abuse of History; Zarathustra) 1–19 Session 2: Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorisms 1–9 20–39 Session 3: BGE, Aphorisms 10–16 40–56 Session 4: BGE, Aphorisms 17–23 57–75 Session 5: BGE, Aphorisms 24–30 76–94 Session 6: BGE, Aphorisms 31–35 95–114 Session 7: BGE, Aphorisms 36–40 115–134 Session 8: BGE, Aphorisms 41–50 135–152 Session 9: BGE, Aphorisms 51–55 153–164 Session 10: BGE, Aphorisms 56–76 (and selections) 165–185 Session 11: BGE, Aphorisms 186–190 186–192 Session 12: BGE, Aphorisms 204–213 193–209 Session 13 (unrecorded) 210 Session 14: BGE, Aphorism 230; Zarathustra 211–222 Nietzsche, 1971–72 i Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil Mark Blitz Leo Strauss offered this seminar on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil at St John’s College in Annapolis Maryland. It began on October 6, 1971 and concluded on May 24, 1972. Strauss had given a course on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 1959 at the University of Chicago, and a course on Nietzsche in 1967 at the University of Chicago, with three sessions on Zarathustra, nine on Beyond Good and Evil and four on the Genealogy of Morals. The present seminar covers each of the nine books of Beyond Good and Evil, and begins with a short discussion of material from Zarathustra and includes occasional references to the Use and Abuse of History, The Gay Science, and other works. There are no tapes for large portions of the seminar: discussions of some or almost all of Beyond’s chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 were not recorded. The present transcription, however, does contain a significant amount of newly transcribed material which has been added to the original transcription, which has itself been clarified in several places. This seminar does not depart markedly from the discussions of Beyond Good and Evil in 1967 or from Strauss’ essay Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, first published in 1973 in Interpretation (Interpretation 3, nos. 2 and 3 [1973]) and reprinted in Studies in Political Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1983). The three presentations differ, of course, and some of what we see in this transcript supplements or further clarifies the essay, perhaps especially the important, but compressed, discussions with which it concludes. Some of the present discussions, moreover, are not reprised in the article, at least not directly. Of special concern to students of political science in this regard is Strauss’ analysis of the degree of Nietzsche’s responsibility for Hitler and Mussolini. “Nietzsche produced the climate in which Fascism and Hitlerism could emerge. One must not be squeamish about admitting this dubious paternity. One must emphasize it. Every fool can see and has seen that Nietzsche abhorred the things for which Hitler in particular stood and to which he owed his success.” (session 1) “I made this quite clear at the beginning of the course when I said that there is some connection, tenuous but not negligible, between Nietzsche and the violent, passionate, anti– democratic movement of the 20th century. There is no doubt about that. Nietzsche did not mean it in the way people like Hitler and Mussolini meant it, but through his negations, he prepares it. No doubt about that.” (session 8) The seminar is also marked by lively and probing discussions between Strauss and St John’s tutors and students. At least some sessions were attended by Strauss’ friend Jacob Klein, who was for years St John’s dean. Strauss also makes evident the importance of Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche, especially its first (German) volume: “[T]here is one absolutely outstanding book on Nietzsche, and that is the first volume of Heidegger’s book entitled Nietzsche, and Heidegger’s unrivaled philosophic passion and thoroughness are eminently helpful if one wants to penetrate more deeply in to Nietzsche’s thought.” (session 2). He also mentions and then criticizes Karl Jaspers (sessions 1, 6). He does not, Nietzsche, 1971–72 ii however, explore in detail these or other secondary or contemporary works. He shares with Heidegger the view that will to power and eternal return are central in Nietzsche’s understanding, although he barely touches on Heidegger’s claim that will to power is Nietzsche’s understanding of the constitution, character, essence, or whatness of beings, and the eternal return of their how, their that, their existence, or their way to be. The seminar is not a direct confrontation with Heidegger, of course, but is Strauss’ attempt to understand Nietzsche directly. Unlike Heidegger, who concentrates on particular sections of Zarathustra and on material that Nietzsche left unpublished which his sister gathered topically in a volume she called The Will to Power (notes that have been redistributed chronologically in the current German edition edited by Colli and Montinari), Strauss works through and comments on one book, here, Beyond Good and Evil. Also unlike Heidegger, whose understanding of Nietzsche ultimately is oriented within, although it perhaps expands, Heidegger’s own standpoint, Strauss is concerned primarily to understand Nietzsche as he understands himself. He characteristically attempts to find Nietzsche’s full coherence, or to make him as thoughtful as he can, or to put him on high ground. Nietzsche, after all, “is the most comprehensive and the most profound questioner at least in the last six generations. He reminds us of Socrates even if and precisely if he questions Socrates.” (session 1) This effort requires or permits Strauss to glance at Plato, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud. Strauss’ Nietzsche belongs to and is, indeed, a culminating point in the philosophic emphasis on production that we see beginning in Locke or even Machiavelli, and that we recognize clearly in Kant, and in the emphasis on history, following Hegel. Nonetheless, Strauss, unlike Heidegger, does not stress how Nietzsche’s discussion of will to power is the final step in uncovering the being or possibilities of will that Kant first brings forward. Rather, Strauss is especially concerned with the difficulties involved in Nietzsche’s assertion that will to power is true, or that it is the fundamental fact, while also suggesting that all such assertions are (merely) interpretations, and with his view that the truth that no species are fixed and that all is becoming is deadly, while also indicating that this deadly truth, summarized as “God is dead,” need not be deadly for those who are genuinely creative. “What then shall be done? Suppression of the deadly truth is impossible. One can state Nietzsche’s answer in a more general way and better provisionally as follows. One must transform these deadly truths into life–giving truths, into truths which make possible the highest life that ever was and ever will be.” (session 1) But, “if he is to be taken seriously,” Nietzsche also “must show . the courage or bravery of conscience which admits openly the problematic nature of his own assertions.” This is why his reasoning is hypothetical, but perhaps not “undogmatic in spite of its hypothetical character.” (session 6) Strauss’ own concern with the problem of nature, or nature and history, also allows him to highlight how nature is another of Nietzsche’s central although often overlooked themes. Strauss’ more natural Nietzsche, moreover, also differs notably from the kinder, gentler Nietzsche that some academics have recently purported to discover. Strauss does not shy from Nietzsche’s discussions of cruelty. Nietzsche believes that understanding his Nietzsche, 1971–72 iii deadly truth can be edifying, but only for a few, who are not prone to idealizing. (Cf. the concluding sentence of Thoughts on Machiavelli). Beyond Good and Evil strikes Strauss as Nietzsche’s most beautiful book, something he also says in 1967, and in the essay. He does not discuss precisely what he means, although he does contrast this beauty with the polemical Genealogy of Morals, and connects its attraction for him to its distance from what is ugly. Perhaps we find the book’s beauty in its reflection of the high and free standpoint from which it is written. Strauss suggests that everything in it is considered from the standpoint of philosophy: the clue to this is Beyond’s subtitle – prelude to a philosophy of the future. Nietzsche presents it as preparatory to Zarathustra; we may say that it is the most visibly comprehensive of Nietzsche’s mature books. Strauss recounts in the seminar the familiar division of Nietzsche’s works into three periods but he describes or explains the division as others do not. Nietzsche was trained as a classicist but precisely as a classical educator opposed the spirit of his times, an opposition also “inspired” by his admiration for Schopenhauer and Wagner.