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THE PHILOSOPHER and the VOLCANO on the ANTIQUE SOURCES of NIETZSCHE's UBERMENSCH Babette Babich

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THE PHILOSOPHER and the VOLCANO on the ANTIQUE SOURCES of NIETZSCHE's UBERMENSCH Babette Babich Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Philosophy Collections 2011 The hiP losopher and the Volcano Babette Babich Fordham University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons, and the Continental Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Babich, Babette, "The hiP losopher and the Volcano" (2011). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 42. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/42 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE VOLCANO ON THE ANTIQUE SOURCES OF NIETZSCHE'S UBERMENSCH Babette Babich Happy and blessed one, you shall be a god Hence and in order to get to Empedocles, I ar­ instead of a mortal. gue that it is necessary to read Nietzsche's Thus Empedocles Spoke Zarathustra as an overtly Menippean sat­ It has traditionally been observed that the fig­ ire as Nietzsche refers to this tradition. Inasmuch ure of Empedocles is key to Nietzsche's as the satires attributed to the cynic Menippus of Zarathustra. But the nature of this significance is Gadara happen to be lost, I read Nietzsche's Thus less commonly detailed: in part this is Nietz­ Spoke Zarathustra via the second century AD sche's fault, as and although he includes Lucian's "high" or serious, i.e., truth-purposing Empedocles in his notes for the Pre-Platonic (as the ancients described it) kind of parody 1­ Philosophers, Nietzsche excludes Empedocles where Lucian relates to Menippus, at least in from his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the some part, as Plato does to Socrates. 2 Greeks-both of which are unpublished. Simi­ In addition, it is useful to note that there are larly unpublished and a bit less widely known are obvious parallels between some of Nietzsche's Nietzsche's drafts of the Death of Empedocles more characteristic loci and Lucian's favorite im­ which tend to interest Gennanists who are them­ ages, including Nietzsche's references to truth selves usually more interested in Hblderlin's sub­ and Lucian's True Story [Alethe Diegemata] stantially more developed drafts for his own which includes the paradoxically Cretan claim Death of Empedocles. For my part in what fol­ that "not a word" he will utter is "true," and that lows, I read Nietzsche's Zarathustra as an echo of what makes his account distinctive is solely that Empedocles' as orator or speaker but also in he will be a more "honest liar th!ln his predeces­ + terms of Empedocles' esoteric Katharmoi or sors."3 Thus we read Lucian's preface to the Purifications. This means that I read Zarathustra reader: "I too have turned to lying-but a much in tenns of the eternal return of the same as the more honest lying than all the others. The one and teaching of going to ground, that is: death and re­ only truth you'll hear from me is that I am lying. birth (and Targue that death is present at the start By frankly admitting that there isn't a word of and already at work as I later show, in the section truth in what I say, I feel I am avoiding the possi­ entitled The Adder's Bite: indeed, I show that this bility of attack from any quarter.,,4 Lucian could is explicitly at work as the tcaching of the over­ not make his warning plainer: "I am writing man). For Nietzsche's Zarathustra tells us, like about things I neither saw nor heard offrom a sin­ Empedocles, that the human being is something gle soul, things which don't exist and couldn't that should be overcome. and thus it makes a dif­ possibly exist. So all readers beware, don't ference that we hear Zarathustra proclaim this believe any of it."s teaching as the tightrope walker begins his The tonality is not Nietzsche's to be sure, but doomed dance over the marketplace and that the point is hardly foreign to Nietzsche who fa­ Zarathustra's fate. at least immediately, concerns mously wonders about our preference for truth the downward fall of this overman overcome by rather than lies. Where, so Nietzsche argues, the danger of his calling. This same teaching con­ some truths are deadly, we survive or live by joined with Zarathustra's diagnosis of ubiquity means of life-saving illusions or lies. 6 In addition of the will to power, especially among the to Nietzsche's reflections on the language of weakest. also underlines an arch or parodic turn "laws" in nature and in science and on the kind of and even mockery. philosopher who is impressed by physicists, PHILOSOPHY TODAY SPEP SUPPLEMENT 2011 213 there is also Nietzsche's satirical comparison of ries dead Athenian philosophers gain a reprieve human beings to insects at the start of his On from the underworld for a single day to return to Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense where the life in order to harry Lucian for his mockery: "Let perspective view from atmospheric heights him reap the fruit of his revilings" cries the tem­ above the earth is indebted not only to the Stoics' porarily resurrected Socrates. I I cosmic or higher perspective but also to Lucian The satirical parallel concerns the perplexing who is also important for Nietzsche as it has long "Honey Sacrifice" that introduces the patently been argued that Lucian's Kataplous, is the parodic and "fourth" book of Thus Spoke source for Nietzsche's term Ubermensch or Zarathustra, originally only for private circula­ Overman. A dialogue of the dead, the Kataplous tion (and so much was Nietzsche opposed to pub­ addresses the representation/perception of the lication that he subsequently sought to reclaim 'v1!£pav8pOJ1!or; [hyper-anthropos] in the here the printed copies from his friends to have them and now by contrast with the afterlife or under­ destroyed). Here the coincidence between world. 7 Here it is significant that the context of Empedoc\es and the "honey sacrifice" invoked Lucian's Kataplous (Downward Journey), in­ Nietzsche's Zarathustra-text could not be more cluding its thematic focus on the tyrant in the un­ evident as Empedocles writes of sacrifices in an derworld contrasting with this life and the per­ original or "golden age" as follows: spective on human glory and its inevitable Among them was no war god Ares worshipped nor reversals, offers a contextualization of the battle cry, nor was Zeus their King ... but Zarathustra's teaching that the human being is Cypris IAphroditel was qucen. propitiated with 8 something that ought to be overcome. But for holy images and paintings of living creatures ... this rellection on death, as on birth and rebirth, pure myrrh and sweet scented frankincense, there is a needed reflection on Empedocles inas­ throwing to the ground libations of yellow honey. much as the doctrine of recurrence is Empe­ (Empedocles, Katharmoi, OK 128; KRS 41 I) doclean, articulating an older Orphic tradition that also inspires Heraclitus, Pythagoras, As we know, the doxography details that Pannenides, and Anaximander. Empedocles was known both for his high stand­ By proposing such a reading, I join those ing or family wealth and for the nature and kind many scholars who argue that Nietzsche's of his donations to the public benefit, including a Zarathustra is parodic ally modeled on some­ large ox made of barley cake, figs, and honey­ thing"-be it the Bible, or Plato's Republic, or not that this was necessarily received as a "good Wagner's Ring. Although I think there are intrin­ thing" for an ancient Greek public that tended to sic limitations to all such parallels and I am by no expect certain gifts from the noble classes in the means seeking to reduce Nietzsche to either classical form of a decent barbecue or "animal Lucian or Empedocles for that matter, I do ar­ sacrifice" if only because ancient Greek culture gue-rather radically as we shall see-that in with all its problems with bloodshed made it Nietzsche's case we must also include a clear ref­ more than ordinarily difficult to simply shed erence to Lucian both for his own picture of blood at will, that is: one needed to practice Empedocles as well as for his satires or paro­ slaughter not only "with a prayer" (Empedocles, dies. 11l Thus we note Nietzsche's emphasis in Katharmoi, DK 137; KRS 415) but a very Twilight ofthe Idols of the enduring importance specific ritual. of satire for his own style from the start of his The Empedoclean language of the honey sac­ writerly life and throughout (TI, What lOwe the rifice also has an echo in Zarathustra's Prologue: Ancients ~ 1). "Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee I cannot explore this here beyond a first that has gathered too much honey; I need hands sketching but we may also note the relevance of outstretched to take it," but the parody I trace here Lucian's The Dead Corne to Life or the Fisher­ corresponds to Lucian's language in his Piscator man, a dialogue in which the original and centu- or Fisher, wh~re Lucian cites baited fish hooks as PHILOSOPHY TODAY SPEP SUPPLEMENT 2011 214 a means to test the waters for the appropriate fish -Salmo Cyniscus: good gracious what teeth ..
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