!!! Z?T ? I C E N N? ?S

N? H N !!! N ! NIETZSC ? HE? NIETZSCHE ! tragic trajectory of the prophet of a dying civilization [224] • a god, demon, angel of light, genius, madman, prophet, human- all too human…? • tortured soul : god-seeker, god-killer ? • Kaufmann, Reinhardt [KR], Barrett, Bornedal… philosophy as autobiography

• union of biography and output as an integral whole (Goethe, Hegel…) • philosophy as autobiography : Nietzsche calls Goethe’s Letters to Eckermann “the best German book” Thus Spake Zarathustra , ,… [Augustine, Goethe, Nietzsche…] useful references

• The Existential Revolt, Kurt F. Reinhardt, (Frederick Ungar, 2nd Ed.,1960) [ KR ] • Irrational Man, William Barrett [WB] • The Surface and the Abyss, Peter Bornedal • Walter Kaufmann : many works [WK] • , Nietzsche, (tr. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics) [BGE] brief biography (1844-1900)

• Oct. 1844: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche born in Röken, Prussian Saxony, into a committed Lutheran family • 1849: Carl Ludwig Nietzsche dies of brain tumor; the Nietzsches leave Roken and move to Naumburg • 1864: Nietzsche enters Bonn University as a student of Theology and Philology • 1865: transfers to Leipzig University; abandons his study of Theology; encounters the works of • 1869: Appointed Chair of Classical Philology at Basel; awarded his Doctorate from Leipzig without examination • 1872: Publishes his first book, • 1879: resigns his post at Basel • 1889: Mental followed by physical collapse • Aug. 25, 1900: F. W. Nietzsche dies major works

• The Birth of Tragedy (1872) [BT] • Human All Too Human (1878) [HH] • The Joyful Wisdom (1882) [JW] • (1883-85) [TSZ] • The (1883-85) [WP] • Beyond Good and Evil (1886) [BGE] • On The Genealogy of Morals (1887) [GM] • The Anti-Christ (1888) [AC] • Ecce Homo (1888) [EH] • (1889) [TI] Beyond Good & Evil (1886) Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future Twilight Of The Idols (1889) How One Philosophizes with a Hammer! ECCE HOMO / behold The Man (1889)

ECCE HOMO  Why I am so wise  Why I am so prudent  Why I am writing such excellent books  Why I am a Fate  War strategy : to attack only matters that are victorious; …only where he stands alone without any allies; never to attack persons, but to use them only as a “huge magnifying glass” to make visible some creeping but as yet intangible crisis.  Self-evaluation : …contradicted as no one has dared contradict, nevertheless the opposite of a spirit of negation…the bearer of glad tidings…a Yea-sayer with whom the hope of the human race has been restored… [KR, 112] The Man (wielding the hammer)

• A man of spiritual depth needs friends, unless he still has God as a friend. But I have neither God nor friends. (letter to sister, 1886) • For thus it has always been and thus it will always be : one cannot aid a cause more effectively than by persecuting it , by hunting it with all hounds …This I have done. ( KR,62)

• All alone with myself , I am in danger of losing myself in a forest…I need help. I need disciples; I also need a teacher, a master. I should find it sweet to obey…If only I could find someone capable of clarifying for me the value of our moral ideas…But I find no one; no disciples, to say nothing of teachers. (KR,106) • ---Sunday morning incident (Nice, France) : Not every truth is for everyone; if I had troubled the heart of this young girl, I should have felt disconsolate. ---Florence astronomer item : I wish this man had not read my books. He is too good. My influence on him could be very disastrous. (KR,106) To the Unknown God Once more before I part from here And turn my glance toward the future I raise my hands in solitude Unspeakably terrible Thou To thee, to whom I flee, art! To whom, in the depth of my heart, Thou huntsman behind the clouds!... I have solemnly dedicated altars… Thou, God unknown!... I am His, even though to this hour I have remained in the impious crowd. Speak, at last! I am His---and I feel the snares What does Thou ask of me, Which drag me down, fighting, Thou thief of the great And, whithersoever I flee, highways?... Force me into His service… Thou wantest me---all of me? I wish to know thee God unknown, Thou who seizest my innermost soul, (KR, 63-4) Thou who roarest through my life like a storm…

DEOCIDE • Without the Christian faith…you will be to yourself a monster and a chaos. [Pascal] (Nietzsche underlined these words, 1885) (KR,106) • If there were gods, how could I bear it not to be a god?

Therefore, there are no gods! [TSZ, 2) (KR,101) • I believe in the ancient Germanic saying: . all the gods must die. [BT] (KR,115) • The ‘mad-man’: “ Have you not heard…” [JW, #125] DEOCIDE

• . God remains dead. And WE have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must WE ourselves not BECOME GODS simply to appear worthy of it? ( [JW], Section 125, tr. WK ) love/hate

• Thus the cycle began, and it goes on, but where will it end? After having run the full course, whither are we to turn?...Perhaps we will have to make a new start with faith? Perhaps a Catholic faith? ( to Lou Andreas- Salome) [KR, 94] • Christ-the only christian : “…a new way of life that was to bring peace and harmony to the human soul, so that the pacified soul might then effect the transfiguration of all things. “ ( The Anti-Christ ) • I call the One great Curse , the one immortal mark of shame of the human race. (The Anti- Christ ) • I hope I shall never show myself ungrateful to Christianity, for I owe to it the best experiences of my childhood. ( letter to Peter Gast ) • Can anyone imagine anything that equals in miraculously enchanting force the symbol of the ‘Holy Cross’? Nothing equals in impressive strength that paradox of a ‘Crucified God’… of a God crucifying Himself for the salvation of men… this sign and symbol…triumphs eternally over any ideal. (GM, #1) [KR,111] the last days (13/11/88 – 25/08/1900) • hallucinations of dual presence of Dionysus and Christ • gradual loss of identity : signed letters on costly papers: to Strindberg (Nietzsche Caesar); to the Pope , the papal secretary of state, and the King of Italy (The Crucified ); to others (Dionysos) • incident with an abused horse: transformed into the dual deity • Piano improvisation and singing : sublime, wonderfully visionary and unspeakably horrible things about himself as the successor of the defunct God • asylum in Jena, January,1889 ; assigned to mother, March, 1890 ; 1897 death of mother , assigned to sister until his death. [KR,112-3]

the Hammer (context)

• Enlightenment, Counter-Enlightenment • Contra Hegel • Pascal (Aug) • Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky • rescuing the individual from the herd • back to excellence • Ideology and its dehumanization • the leveling effect anti-Enlightenment

• scholarship/ science devoid of vitality : death of emaciated Reason :: will-to-power • and whitewashed sepulchers : death of God :: transvaluation of conventional values • conformism disguised as Progress : exposing all ISM’s (anti-ideology) Anti-Enlightenment / supremacy of reason

• Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. • One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. • For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.

[ From the Preface to On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense ] • As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey. This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. [ From the Preface to On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense ] anti-ideology

Platonism (Descartes) [ 190, 191 ] Christianism (Kierkegaard’s ‘Christendom’ ) , Utilitarianism, Socialism, Feminism… [225, 228,252,260…]

((Nietzscheanism ?!!!...)) state of the art confrontation

• Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents a pale shadow/tame reverberation of Nietzsche’s head-on promethean confrontation with the civilization of his day. (Tsunami / no garden- variety flood ) The last thing I would promise would be to improve mankind. I erect no new idols; let the old idols learn what it means to have legs of clay. To overthrow idols (my word for ‘ideals’) – that rather is my business. [Ecce Homo] Nietzscheanism ??? weapons / assault

Revaluation (transvaluation) of values

A return to meaning from the morass of slogans . If what is mean, mediocre, hypocritical, reductive = what is currently on sale as TRUTH, then the only appropriate response is to value UNTRUTH (life). . If REASON = deadly , lifeless, academic, abstraction then rescue DESIRE (life) [ 1-4, 46… ] truth/untruth

The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment… The question is to what extent it is life advancing, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding… [ 4 ] …revaluating…

• If LOVE is a warm feeling, then SELFISHNESS has been highly underrated • If COMMUNITY means soporific conformity, then long live ISOLATION and SOLITUDE • If HUMILITY means hypocritical , then long live PRIDE • If PLEASURE is HAPPINESS, for God’s (RIP) sake, bring on SUFFERING Will to Power replacing Supremacy of Reason

A living thing desires above all to vent its strength – life as such is will to power.

[13, 23…] the thirst for Life Abundant : Masters versus Slaves • yea-sayers / nay-sayers • excellence / mediocrity • masters / slaves (herd) • noble / mean, servile, slavish, hypocritical • forthright / occult • misunderstood, persecuted / popular, fashionable, successful • challenges society / benign humanism [44, 199, 260 ] the search for authentic humanity: the ubermensch

Society should not exist for the sake of society but only as foundation and scaffolding upon which a select species of is able to raise itself to its higher task and in general to a higher existence.

[ 258] the overman A people is a detour of nature to get to six or seven great men – Yes: and then to get around them. [126] • Man in himself, the absolute man, possesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties…

• The majority of men have no right to existence…

(notes from The Will To Power ) The last thing I would promise would be to ‘improve’ mankind. …more WMD’s in his arsenal

• Survival of the unfittest [ 262 ] • Eternal recurrence [ 56 ] • Leveling---ressentiment (powerless resentment), conformism, mediocrity [ 46 ] • Benign liberalism/ democracy [ 199, 228 ] • Simplify / falsify [ 4,192 ] simplify / falsify

The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment… The question is to what extent it is life advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species- breeding… without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world… without a continual falsification of the world… mankind could not live. [4] simplify- falsify

• Descartes’ “I think, I am ” ( the rational “I” ) • Kant’s TUofA ( the ‘puppeteer’ ) • , Aristotle, Lucretius…( definitions of the human soul ) [ Possible exceptions ??? ] • Augustine’s “abyss” : memory / understanding (existential)/ will (love-desire-delight) ? ? • Berdyaev : freedom NOT free-will ?? beyond categorization

• the simplify/falsify syndrome : Nietzsche himself and the main objects of his attack : three colossi : Plato (Whitehead), Christ, and liberal Democracy • Nietzsche’s : beyond garden- variety relativism… unity of life and thought [ Kierkegaard : truth is subjectivity ] food for thought

• Reflect in Nietzschean terms : What has he demolished? (survivors ?) Any predecessors? Recognize any current targets worthy of a Nietzschean assault (not just the same old ones) ? …You have committed one of the greatest stupidities— for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti- Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. [...] It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clear and unequivocal in relation to anti- Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings… My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible --- and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times. (Letter to his sister, Christmas 1887)