Nathalie Lachance German Studies McGill University, Montréal August 2009 ‘Thou shalt not believe (me)’ : Nietzsche’s Ethics of Reading and the Movement for Emancipation A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Nathalie Lachance, 2009 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments 3 Abstract 4 Résumé 6 1. Introduction. Nietzsche and the Question of Emancipation 8 2. Emancipation in Platonic, Christian, and Kantian Fall Narratives 50 3. Emancipation in the Fall Narratives of Schiller, Kleist, and Heine 87 4. Emancipation in Nietzsche‟s Counternarrative of the Fall in Also sprach Zarathustra 119 5. Nietzsche‟s Ethics of Reading and the Movement for Emancipation 176 Concluding Remarks 218 Bibliography 222 3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank McGill University and Le Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture for their financial assistance, as well as Dr. Karin Bauer, thesis supervisor, for her invaluable insights, firm guidance, and joyful wisdom. She has made me richer and stronger in countless ways. On a more personal note, I wish to thank Dr. Helmut Famira, an agonal educator who does not even like Nietzsche; my family, for love and laughters; Katia, for joy in movement; and Martin, for making sense out of it all. 4 Abstract This dissertation explores Nietzsche‟s ethics of reading. I argue that narrative strategies such as metaphors, irony, and parody, amongst others, must be interpreted against the backdrop of Nietzsche‟s utterances on reading and statements addressed to the reader. These strategies are interpreted as pedagogical tools which serve the education of an emancipated reader - a reader aware of the responsibility to emancipate himself from (meta)narratives. Nietzsche‟s ethics of reading consists in principles deriving from his preoccupation with agonistics: suspicion, contest, and performance. The reader must be aware of the constructed nature of texts and suspicious of textual assertions; the act of reading also consists in the reader‟s response to textual assertions and challenges. This dissertation thus contributes to Nietzsche scholarship by investigating the significance of agonistics for Nietzsche‟s ethics of reading, by linking this ethics of reading to his call for a revaluation of values, and by showing that both partake in the same narrative of emancipation Nietzsche‟s ethics of reading is interpreted here as his response to the ethics of reading which arose out of the Platonic, Christian, and Kantian traditions. In order to show this, I use the chapter “Der Genesende,” from Also sprach Zarathustra as case study. I show that “Der Genesende” is Nietzsche‟s counternarrative to fall narratives found in Plato (Phaedrus; the parable of the cave), Christianity (Genesis 3), and Kant (Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte). Nietzsche undermines the teleological and dualistic worldviews of these narratives as well as their use of dialectics, prohibitions, and imperatives, to show that these narratives restrict the freedom of movement (of thought) of the individual and reader. In contrast, Nietzsche‟s style in Also 5 sprach Zarathustra (the entwinement of Zarathustra‟s teachings, for example, which underpin and undermine one another) is interpreted as his way to promote movement in the reader‟s mind. The study ends with readings of Nietzsche‟s early writings on education, language, and agonistics. These preoccupations coalesce in Ecce Homo, a text which, because of its confusion of genres, provocative questions and statements, and agonistic style reveals itself to be not so much about Nietzsche‟s own identity construction but about the reader‟s. 6 Résumé Mon sujet est l‟éthique de la lecture chez Nietzsche. J‟y soutiens que ses stratégies narratives - métaphores, ironie, et parodie, entre autres - doivent être interprétées en tenant compte de ses déclarations sur la lecture et de ses remarques adressées au lecteur. Ces stratégies sont des outils pédagogiques pour éduquer un lecteur conscient de la responsabilité qu‟il a de s‟émanciper des (méta) récits. L‟éthique de la lecture chez Nietzsche se base sur des principes découlant de son intérêt pour l‟agonistique : scepticisme, compétition, et performance. Le lecteur doit être conscient de la nature construite des textes et être sceptique quant aux affirmations textuelles; lire est la réponse du lecteur aux affirmations et défis d‟un texte. Cette étude contribue à la recherche sur Nietzsche car elle démontre l‟importance de l‟agonistique dans son éthique de la lecture, elle relie cette dernière à la promotion d‟une transvaluation des valeurs, et elle révèle que toutes deux construisent un même récit de l‟émancipation. L‟éthique de la lecture chez Nietzsche est interprétée ici comme sa réponse à l‟éthique de la lecture du Platonisme, du Christianisme, et de la philosophie kantienne. Pour démontrer cela, j‟utilise le chapitre « Der Genesende, » d‟Also sprach Zarathustra comme étude de cas. « Der Genesende » est un récit qui s‟oppose aux récits de la chute chez Platon (Phaedrus; l‟allégorie de la caverne), dans la Genèse, et chez Kant (Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte). Nietzsche mine la téléologie et le dualisme de ces récits, et leurs utilisations de la dialectique, d‟interdictions, et d‟impératifs, pour démontrer que ces récits limitent la liberté de mouvement (de pensée) du lecteur. À l‟opposé, le style de Nietzsche (l‟interdépendance des enseignements de 7 Zarathustra, par exemple) est interprété ici comme une stratégie qui encourage le mouvement. Cette thèse se termine par des lectures de textes du jeune Nietzsche sur l‟éducation, la langue, et l‟agonistique - préoccupations que l‟on retrouve dans Ecce Homo, un soi-disant texte autobiographique qui, en raison de son genre indéfinissable, de ses questions et déclarations provocantes, et de son style agonistique ne sert pas tant la construction de l‟identité de Nietzsche que celle du lecteur. 8 Welches Problem erschließt sich uns da, wenn wir nach dem Verhältniß des Wettkampfes zur Conception des Kunstwerkes fragen - !1 keinem Gedanken Glauben schenken, der nicht im Freien geboren ist und bei freier Bewegung2 Chapter 1. Introduction. Nietzsche and the Question of Emancipation In this dissertation, I explore the points of intersection, in Nietzsche‟s work, between philosophy, philology, and education, in order to formulate a Nietzschean ethics of reading. The Nietzsche reader cannot help but notice how frequently Nietzsche addresses him or her, in a challenging or provoking way, providing warnings, issuing disclaimers, giving tips on how to read in general and how to read him in particular. This has received little attention in Nietzsche scholarship, whereas Nietzsche‟s narrative strategies (his rejection of concepts, his reliance on metaphors, his use of parody, his irony, his confusion of genres, etc.) have been the subject of many a study. I contend that any analysis of Nietzsche‟s style ought to address, on the one hand, Nietzsche‟s questions and remarks addressed to the reader, and, on the other hand, his many utterances regarding the act of reading itself. 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homers Wettkampf,” KSA 1, Eds. G. Colli, and M. Montinari (München: DTV, 1999) 790-91. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo,” KSA 6, Eds. G. Colli, and M. Montinari (München: DTV, 1999) 281. 9 The Ethics of Reading is the title of a study by J. Hillis Miller, which I want to mention briefly here in order to show where I situate myself with this dissertation. In his study, Miller defines the ethical moment in the act of reading as follows: “On the one hand it is a response to something, responsible to it, responsive to it, respectful of it. (…) On the other hand, the ethical moment in reading leads to an act.”3 I do not wish to address this definition in any detail here. I just want to point out, as one scholar remarks, that Miller‟s study is a response to attacks on deconstruction, which its detractors deem nihilistic and relativist.4 Jonathan Culler writes that the relationship between deconstruction and ethics has become a major topic of interest in recent years.5 My own study of Nietzsche could be said to gravitate around the scholarship that tackles this problem. The filiation between Nietzsche and deconstruction has long been established; Nietzsche‟s call for a revaluation of values has been deemed, long before deconstruction, nihilistic and relativist. What I wish to show here is that Nietzsche‟s call for a revaluation of values is inextricably linked to his ethics of reading and that both partake in a narrative of emancipation which aims at making the individual and reader aware of his or her responsibility to emancipate him- or herself from (meta)narratives. Nietzsche wishes to educate an emancipated reader but he certainly does not pretend that this emancipation can ever be fully achieved. Nietzsche understands freedom not as a goal which has been attained but rather “als Etwas, das man hat und nicht hat, 3 J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading : Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James and Benjamin (NY : Columbia University Press, 1987) 4. 4 Éva Antal, “The Ethics of Reading – a Postmodern Theory?,” Pedagogy Studies (Pedagogika) 71 (2004): 16. 5 Culler writes this in the 2007 preface to the 25th anniversary edition of his book on deconstruction. See Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2007) 6. 10 das man will, das man erobert…”6 As Herman Siemens remarks, freedom in Nietzsche is an exercise which requires tension, conflict, resistance.7 I thus speak, in this dissertation, of a movement for emancipation, instead of emancipation or freedom as a state (Zustand). One could be said to be emancipated inasmuch as one realizes the need for the movement for emancipation, the responsibility to direct one‟s energy against (meta)narratives which seek to disempower one.