4

Learning to Love: Nietzsche on

Love, Education and Morality

Tracy B. Strong

This is an age without passion: it leaves everything as

it is, but it cunningly empties it of si if'icance. Instead
of culminated in a rebellion, it reduces outward reality
of all relationships to a reflective tension which leaves
everything standing but makes the whole of life
ambiguous.
- S. Kierkegaard, The Present Age

Catastrophe: whether one should not believe in God,

not because he is true (but because he is false)
1
-Nietzsche, WKG VIII2 , p. 382

Plato begins his dialogue about the philosophical availability

of excellence- the Protagoras- with an erotic badinage between
Socrates and an unnamed friend. Socrates is hurrying from

In memorium Sarah Kofman, a great spirit, who left life voluntarily

on Nietzsche's 150th birthday.
appointment, we later fmd out) when he encounters his
7'2 Tracy B. Strong
friend who tease him with the suggestion that he is in hot
pursuit of Alcibiades Not really so, responds Socrates, he
the comp ny of Protagoras (to keep an urgent
 has been in pursuit of knowledge with Protagoras. He then Learning to Love 73
proceeds to give a full account of his encounter with the
great Sophist - we must pre ume tha his appointment If love is a form of, a necessary part of, knowledge, it is
was to make knowledge not sufficient simply to announce this fact. What forms may
<wadable to his friends, and, through Plato, to his readers. that relation take? What are possible interactions? Much has
The
been written recently about what one might call non-rational
point of the exchange is not, I think, to indicate that Socrates'
forms of cognition.2 I do not want here to replay that work,
friend is mistaken about Socrates' intent; it is rather to show
except to call attention to the fact that important anticipations
that love and knowledge are similar passions.
of it are in Nietzsche, as they were in Plato. In general,
Importantly, the story bet,rins with the account of how
authors who fol low in this line of thought find it important
the young Hippocrates had come crashing into Socrates'
not to detach the considerations of questions for that of the
bed room in the pitch dark, inquiring if Socrates were
relations that exist between particular persons, nor, indeed,
asleep or awake. Hippocrates' enthusiasm is due to his
form the relations a person might have to him - or herself.3
having just learned that Protagoras is in town; he intends
I want then to look at what Nietzsche has to say about love.
to learn from him. We_ are meant, I think, to be dubious of
While I shall be looking at what he says about Liebe, this will
Hippocrates's prep_aratwn for philosophical knowledge; after
require me to look, at least in passing, at what he says about
all, his first mqmry of Socrates was the paradigm of the
Eros. It will raise the following questions. What is the relation
question that has but one possible - and uninteresting -
of morality to love? If God loved the world, whom or
answer. We also learn immediately that Hippocrates' slave
what may or do humans love? What does it mean to know
Satyrus has just run away.
love? What is the relation of love and law? And, finally, if
Hi_rpocrates cannot manage his eroticism and is not
one is "beyond good and evil," where exactly is one?
ready for phll_osophy. Socrates, by contrast, has integrated
Some general considerations first. In The Gay Science,
both eros and philosophy. Indeed, Socrates moves easily
Nietzsche glosses Spinoza's claim that laughing, lamenting
from the love of an other to the love of knowledge. The erotic
and detesting are other than understanding by asserting that
appears in the
intelligere is in fact the "form in which we come to feel the other
tagoras, as it will in the Symposium, as an integral part of
three at once."4 Nietzsche is concerned here to deepen both
cog mtion. However, there are two dangers that arise from
the notion of thought and that of understanding. Most of our
this link: that oflove overwhelming knowledge, and that of
cognitive activity, he says, "takes place unconsciously and
knowl edge going wrong for being without love. Hippocrates's
unfelt." Indeed, "conscious activity, especially that of the phi
eros is out of control- as his question and the escape of his slave
losopher, is the least vigorous and therefore also the relatively
who
mildest and calmest form of thinking; and thus precisely phi
-and will take anything for an answer. The reverse situation losophers are the most apt to be led astray about the nature of
is that we can have too little of it, such that nothing appears to
knowledge.
be an answer. Or so Plato shows us a few pages later in the
"
dia logue when the eunuch guarding the door of the The following paragraph in The Gay Science extends the
house in which Protagoras is residing denies entrance to thought in a specific direction. It is entitled "One must learn
Socrates on the grounds that he is a Sophist. A lack of Eros to love" and suggest that loving is a cognitive capacity
makes it impos sible to recognize those who seek knowledge. analogous to being able to hear a musical figure. We must, he
says, isolate it, tolerate it, be patient with it until we are
used to it. Such goodwill, patience, fair-mindedness and
gentleness - all Njetzsche's terms- with what is strange
leads to the revelation
74 Tracy B. Strong Learning to Love 75

of a new beauty. Nietzsche's montage of these two paragraphs Trampedach in April 1876. About a month after she declined,
underscores first that love is a form of knowledge, albeit not he wrote to Erwin Rohde in relation to the publication of
conscious in origin and, secondly, that even unconscious Rohde's book on the Greek novel. He told his friend that he,
forms of knowledge have to be learned, i.e. they are not in Rohde, had, like others including Burckhardt, avoided the
some crude sense of the word, "natural." They are an acquired topic of pederasty.
nature that may become our first nature.5
Both love and sexuality are fused with what a person is. In (T)he idealization of Eros and the most pure and wist
Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche notes that "The de_gTee and ful feeling for the passion of love among the Greeks
kind of a person's sexuality ( Geschlechtlichkeit) reach up into first grew upon this ground [of pederasty], and, it
the last peaks of his understanding ( Geistes)."<i While seems to me, was only transferred from there to pro
Nietzsche's comments on Eros and the erotic are not many, creative [geschlechtliche]love, whereas earlier it actually
they are not categorically disjunctive with what he says about hindered the more delicate and higher development
9
love. The erotic is not, I think, of central interest to Nietzsche. of procreative love.
But it is a way into what he thinks about love. If we take the
notion of Wollust to be the equivalence of the erotic, the con The older Greeks had not been able to make the transition
siderations in "On the Three Evils" in Zarathustra indicates from pederastic love to procreative love. But such a transition
only that Wollust is a motile emotion, differing in its actualiza is possible and tells us something about what love can consist
tion n relation to character. Or, in the general process of of. Rohde's avoidance or omission had kept him from seeing
workmg up a theory of what we would call sublimation, he the way in which <j>tA.ta, which Nietzsche identifies with
remarks that "pity and the love of mankind [is a] development pederastic love, and to which the "Aphrodite aspect of Eros is
of the sexual drive" and that "all virtues are really refined pas not essential but only occasional and accidental," is at the
sions."7 The point here is not to suggest that at the bottom all centre of things Greek.
that goes by the name of moral discourse, that all considera It is important to realize here that Nietzsche sees in this
tions of justice are merely sublimations of our drives, but that both a strength and weakness of Greek culture. Women, he
n understanding of such judgments must, if it is to be true, says in a remark in Human All Too Human a few years later,
mclude a consideration of the whole person by whom they are were to masculine Greek culture only publicly endurable on
made. stage. Their social role was to produce bring forth "beautiful
We need then, for an understanding of what Nietzsche powerful bodies." 111 This relegation of women leads to,-as the
means by love, look, if too briefly, at what he says about sexual a
next paragraph makes clear prejudice in favour of bigness
8
passion. Sexuality is from early on in Nietzsche a topic which and to the monstrous development of only one part of their
e re ogni es as avoided in philosophy by most others, abilities. "Men (Manner) subject themselves from habit to all
11
mcludmg his friends. During the middle 1870's, for instance, that wants to have power."
the eroti_c was _much on his mind. His friends were marrying There is a four-part sequence here. Nietzsche is consider-
and havmg children. It is clear from a letter to Rohde on july ing the dynamics that can attach themselves to a philosophical
18, 1876, on te occasion of his friend announcing his engage education. He note in the Greek experience a progression
men, that N etz_sche expected from marriage a "completely from <j>tA.ta to the love of boys, to that is Eros and pederasty.
trustmg soul, With whom when found one might find oneself From there erotic love is idealized from its origins in male edu
on a "higher level." He himself proposed to Mathilde cation. His indication is that the image we have of procreative
- often translated misleadingly these days as "sexual
76 Tracy B. lo love" - that is, the image we have of erotic love between
Strong ve men and women is distorted because we have derived it
from an idealization of the pederastic developments Learning to Love 77
emerging from male philosophical education. The point is,
I think, that love and education (each of the other) are part of Untimely series. It is bodily, personal. As everyone notes it is
any complete relationship. not really a discussion of Schopenhauer. It is a discussion of
It is not hard to read in this some of Nietzsche hopes himself and of the possibility of his relation to Schopenhauer.
for and disappointment in his erotic relations with women. The tone of the essay is strongly influenced by Nietzsche's
The subject is much on his mind in his letters in the 1870's. reading of Emerson. Indeed, two of Emerson's essays ("Expe
The same hopes will appear again during the period of his rience" and "Circles") make an explicit appearance. And here
relation with Lou Salome. I do not wish to pursue that topic again Nietzsche's tone, as is Emerson, is of a illingness to
here, nor do I wish to pursue the general relation of
investigate the bounds of limitations of morality. (For those
pederasty to Eros and knowledge and/or politics. It has
who doubt this in Emerson: "We permit all things to
in any case been recently done better than I might. 1 What ourselves, and that which we call sin in others, is experiment
is clear though is that when connected with education the
for us.... I would gladly be moral . . . but I have set
notion of love and the erotic has a polymorphous sexual
my heart on
element for Nietzsche from early in his writing. ")16
honest y....
Schopenhauer is here seen as an image of the hardest
I "Selbstsucht, Selbstzuchf' - self-seeking, self-rearing. It is thus
I about how one finds oneself by making or changing or con
structing a self that one acknowledges as oneself. The essay
All of this is significant for Nietzsche's understanding of points, Nietzsche claims, to a way of seeking expression of
the human condition when read in relation to his being that is something new. It is, in other words, an essay
examination of the relation of the passion for human
about a kind of practicum, about how one becomes what one
knowledge to its acquisi tion. This topic - that of the
.r is. 17 It is also an essay that poses as the model of Erziehung
Protagoras - is already at the centre of the third of the 'f.
the relationship that Nietzsche found in Greek male
Thoughts Out of Season, Schopenhauer as Educator. Two qualities
education. While Nietzsche's criticism of love between men
of this essay are noteworthy. First, the essay has an almost
and women in the culture as he experiences it probably owes
breathless erotic quality - that of the eromene to the
a good deal to the problematic idealization of the erotic I
erastes. Nietzsche starts out by a description of himself as
noted above,_ he does retain the early vision oflove as a model
what can only be seen as philosophical cruising. "In those
for what a philo sophical education would be like. I want to
days, I roved as I pleased through wishes of all kinds ... I tried
now to xplore _the relation of love to Nietzsche's
this one and that." His first stance is thus that of the young
understanding of a phtlosoph!Cal education, not so much to
Hippocrates, in "need, distress and desire" for
say something about the latter as
philosophy, but unable to rest with it. 13 His encounter with
Schopenhauer is described in self-consciously explicit about the former.
The aim of Schopenhauer as Educator is to establish what is
"physiological terms." 14 The question he poses himself is that necessary for it to be possible for one to attach one heart,
of given life to a bodily form. 15 ere to a great man. As he planned the essay, Nietzsche
The tone is different from that of the other essay in entertamed the possibility of calling
the
Schopenhauer the Germa? Zuchtmeister, the
taskmaster. 18 The figure of Schopenhauer IS what is called
here an "exemplar." An exemplar is what one recognizes as
part of ones self but which one inot yet, bto which one feels
the obligation of becoming. It IS a recognition which
happens only occasionally, when "the clouds are rent
 Learning to Love 79
78 Tracy B. Strong
this that the essence of tragedy is transformation
asunder, and we see, how we in common with all nature, press
19 Verwandlung- what he also calls transfiguration.H
towards something that stands high over us." Although this
This experience is generally associated by Nietzsche with
relationship is explicitly said to be available, indeed, required
coming to know the place where one finds oneself, as if the self
of all. 0 This relation is hard to obtain because "it is impossible
were a journey and not in place. Famously, Nietzsche begins
to teach love."21
the Preface to the Genealogy of Morals with "We are unknown
We shall look later at how love can be learned if it is impos
to ourselves, we men of knowledge." He continues, less
sible to teach. I wish to look at now what the consequences of
famously, in the next line by asking "how it could happen that
this difficulty might be. It is the case that, if you will excuse me,
we should ever find ourselves." 5 He goes on to intimate that
what the world needs is love. "Never was the world ... poorer
in love.... The educated classes ... become day by day restless, what is wrong with humans is that none of us appear to have
thoughtless and loveless." They have, in other words nothing sufficient earnestness for "experiences" and that this is the case
to love, especially after "the waters ofreligion" have receded.
22
because we only care about "bringing something home." <>
I take these considerations to refer to the claim that there is The question then is what has to be the case for one to find
nothing in the modern world for anyone to love- and that this where one is. The first answer in the Genealogy is that one
is one of the reasons that philosophy has become impossible. should not rush about with ones only intention being to "bring
Nietzsche is here concerned in Schopenhauer as Educator to something back home." I take this to be related to the implied
establish the following claims. critique of Aristotle which I take to govern The Birth of Tragedy
First, the question oflove and philosophy- of education - Aristotle having held, in Nietzsche's understanding, that who
is not one of self-recognition. The question is if it is possible to one was was something that would be revealed at home, and
find exemplars that one can recognize as one's own and with that one's task, willy-nilly, was to get back. So Oedipus rec
the explicit knowledge that one is not (yet) the exemplar. It is ognizes himself at the end in the home of his parents which,
thus not coming to know how you know yourself. " Wie finden tragically, is also his home. Home, after all is the place at
wir uns selbst wieder' ? 3 It is a question of finding and how one which, when you go there, they have to let you in - which
will recognize something as oneself own find. Nietzsche explicit Robert Frost noted as a tepid consolation of necessity in an
rejerts what one might call the artichoke model of the person absence of freedom.
where one could discover the real person, the heart, by The presumption in Nietzsche's version of Aristotle is that
peeling away the inessential layers. The focus of Schopenhauer one must encounter who one is, as if who was is needed only to
as Educator is to the future: to becoming what one is. Knowl be seen. (The key passage for Aristotle is the moment of recog
edge must be a form of becoming rather than recognition. But nition in Oedipus the King). For Nietzsche, rather, "one must not
what one is has no existence prior to its existence. look back towards oneself for each glance will become the
This is a complex theme in Nietzsche. In The Birth of Trag 'evil eye'."27 The governing trope in this situation is not sight
edy, Nietzsche had argued against the Aristotelian notion of but oversight and love. One will have found oneself when one
anagnorisis, against, that is, the idea that the high point of trag has lost oneself and been freed from what one is by love:
edy came in the recognition of self by the protagonist. Such "What have you ... truly loved? What has pulled out your soul,
a moment, for Aristotle, occurs, for instance, when Oedipus mastered it and at the same time made it joyful"? Love pulls us
finally comes to the recognition of who he is and blinds away from ourselves and dissolves the self into what Nietzsche
28
himself. He sees rather than finds. Nietzsche argues against here calls "Freedom."
Love and freedom are linked. Love we know is learned. So
80 Tracy B. Strong Educator is whereas before freedom had been learned
from models, in the present day and age these models
how is freedom learned? The second claim in Schopenhauer as are not avail able. (As I noted above, Nietzsche, is
incidentally, quite clear that such models are in principle Learning to Love 81
available to everyone). Why, however, are such models - the
ones that one might love, that are the principle of freedom and was from this condition, Nietzsche says, that he found release
finding - not available? Nietzsche's answer is the beginning of when he found an educator.
what will be a life-long theme. He tentatively attributes this to But such an educator, such love- the capacity for philoso
a double fact: first, Christianity had triumphed over antiquity, phy- is rare, almost non-existent. Why so? Nietzsche then ties
and, secondly, it is now in decline. This has as consequence that this to a tendency in modern philosophy to moralize the world
when the "better and higher ideals" of Christianity proved and morality in particular, to become a "reformer of life"
unattainable, one could no longer relinquish them to go back to rather than a philosopher. 31
the still extant but now devalued "good and high ideals" of The third point in Schopenhauer as Educator is then a consid
antiquity. The comparative leaves people in a "vacillation."The eration of what is wrong with modem so-called philosophy.
passage is worth citing at some lenhrth; Nietzsche here approaches this question without discussing
the answer. He only asserts, with no real preparation, that the
In this back and forth (Hin und Her) between Christian answer is that of Empedocles. In the next Untimely Meditation,
and Ancient ( Christlich und Antik) between an imitated or "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth," Nietzsche will link the name of
hypocritical Christianity of morals and an equally Schopenhauer with that of Empedocles (and that of Wagner with
disheartened and self-conscious (hefangen) antiquitizing Aeschylus, that of Kant with the Eleatics).33
lives the modern human being and he finds himself \Vhat did Empedocles signify for Nietzsche? Nietzsche's
quite unhappy with it. The inherited fear of the natural admiration is important here in that Empedocles understands
and the renewed attraction of this naturalness, the the world as the interaction between love and hate. He thus
desire to have some place to stop, the impotence of his sees even that which appears in the world as rational as resting
knowledge, a reeling back and forth between the good on "profound irrationality." This is for Nietzsche a political
and the better - all this brings out a restlessness, a position which, however, was not to acquire the world-histori cal
confusion in the modern soul which condemn it to be importance that became that or Socrates. The indication is that
unfruitful and joyless.30 a philosophy based on dynamics such as those of
Empedocles could have provided a continuation of what had
We are caught in an unresting pendulum swing, drawn been achieved in the tragic age. Empedocles is a reformer of
towards two incompatible poles by virtue only have been Greek life who stood as a possible opponent to Socrates.
hung between them. I might note here that Nietzsche is careful to "With Empedocles ... the Greeks were well on their way
say a "Christianity of morals" ( Christlichkeit der Sitte) and not toward assessing correctly the irrationality and suffering of
Christian morals.31 It is what Christianity has done rather than human existence; but thanks to Socrates, they never reached the
what it is that is the problem. The contemporary world is char goal."34
acterized by Nietzsche as always going someplace, but with no The important thing about this passage is that it adds an
destination able to evince the quality of being satisfactory. It explicitly political dimension to the analysis of the Birth of
Tragedy. It is worth remembering that the Birth is about how it is
possible to be Greek and that Nietzsche fully recognizes the
centrality of agonistic politics in Greece. The material that
found its way to the essay "The Greek State," one of"Five Pref
aces to Five Unwritten Books" presented to Cosima Wagner
was originally intended to be part of an expanded form of the
82 Tracy B. that value and beauty may be found only in the world, not
Strong outside of the world, nor under the world, nor in abstract
forms that give meaning to the world. We should rather
Birth of Tragedy.35 There existence had only admitted of look here, rather than run back out of the world to home. It
an aesthetic justification (which tells us more about is also the case, I think that the reason that "we are
justification than existence, I believe). Now, had unknown to ourselves" when we are men of knowledge
Empedocles carried the day, the Greeks would have seen is because we are men of knowledge, i.e. that we are
 trying to locate where we find ourselves by means of
Learning to Love 83
knowled
ge. all of you, to reach it, just as I will help everyone
Humans may seek to know, but they do not look and who recot,rnizes the same thing and suffers the same
see.
thing. By thus, at last, may again spring up the
They find nothing in the space of human activity. And person who feels himself infinite in knowing and
thus they are blinded by illusions of which it has been loving, in seeing
forgotten that they are illusions. Thus his famous claim from and capacity, and who is completely of and in nature,
"Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense" is a claim that i I
what we need to be human does not depend on knowing.36 as the judge and criterion of that which
It is not precisely that we have too much knowledge, but 3
is. x
that what we have keeps us from being. Existence cannot be
built on a foundation of knowledge, indeed, it cannot be Note the Empedoclean democracy: "Everyone ... all
built at all. "How do we find ourselves"? Empedocles, who of you ... I will help everyone." The kind of being who
would have provided the alternative to Socratic rationalist can do this must be one who loves. Nietzsche goes on to
knowledge, is quietly recog nized by Nietzsche to be a say that it is hard to place someone in this kind of fearless
"democrat, who has social reform up his sleeve." He is self-knowledge because, as we have seen, it is impossible to
identified with "love, democracy and communal proper teach love. In"love alone does the soul win for itself not only
ty. "37 the clear, analytical (zerteilended} and contemptuous view of
The discussion of Erziehung has taken us to that of the itself but also gains the passion to overlook (iiberschauen)
self itself and to seek with all its might a higher self that is still
(how does one find oneself), to that oflove, and, in a quiet hidden somewhere." Here again the argument parallels the
way, to politics, a politics that has elements of democrac_Y consideration of the same question in the Protagoras.
in it, in that the possibility of finding oneself in an exemplar Socrates holds, after many twists and turns, all of which are
IS open to all. Nietzsche is quietly transforming or essential to the complexity of his position, that virtue
revealing the task of education to involve love of others in cannot be taught as a skill but that once acquired it
the world (and thus of the world). Later in Schopenhauer as becomes part of what one is. Here, Nietzsche's investigation
Educator Nietzsche writes as follows: of love is an investigation of what it means to be able to
find something or someone to be an education. It is thus an
Everyone who recognizes himself as of a culture explo ration of what was not made explicit in the
expresses himself on it in this manner: I see Protagoras.
something higher and more human than I am above Love conjoins clarity, analysis and
me; help me, contemptuousness; these are combined with or lead to
the passion to overlook itself and thereby seek that
39
which it is not. In love, for Nietzsche, one finds oneself
not in oneself, but in overlooking oneself. Overlooking
oneself is a combination of the qualities mentioned.
As Nietzsche notes in Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, love
is
what produces is a transformation and the freedom of the
self from the self to a life "set among the stars."40 If it is the
case that the Birth of Tragedy was intended by Nietzsche as a
critique of Aristotle and thus of the notion of identity as
something that one has but does not know and comes to
recognize, how is Verwandlung achieved? What are the
dynamics that Nietzsche found in tragedy other than
the Aristotelian positing of
84 Tracy B. Strong
Learning to Love 85
anagnorisis. In the eight chapter of the Birth he had tried
give some account of the kind of audience that a Greek was for his The audience, in the Birth, is in a Dionysian state; so also is the
theatre. He will again use the notion of "overlooking" to chorus. Through the chorus the audience is swept up onto the
describe this possibility. stage to contemplate the action but not to affect it. (The chorus
never does anything in Aeschylea.n tragedy.) Nietzsche writes:
A public of spectators as we know it was unknown to the "The proceeding of the tragic chorus is the dramatic
Greeks: in their theatres, the terraced structure of the protophenomenon: to see oneself [as embodied in the chorus]
concentric arcs of the place of spectatorship transforn:ed before ones very eyes [as spectator] and to begin to
(Zuschauerraumes) made it possible for everyone actu ally act as If one had actually entered into another character."13
to overlook the whole world of culture around him and My suggestion here is that what Nietzsche means by love in
imagine in sated contemplation that he was a choristY Schopenhauer as Educator is descriptive of same state of affairs as is
his an lysis o.f the true spectators relation to tragedy. It
The word for overlook here is iibersehen, and it permits the mvolves bemg besides oneself and being brought to acknowl
same sense, I think, as the iiberschauen of the Schopenhauer as edge, while besides oneself (hence the call for analytical clar ity)
Educator text. Both words allow the double meaning of "sur vey" that experience as ones own experience. Being besides oneself
and "fail to see." The audience is in "sated contempla tion," is, I remind you, the literal meaning of ecstasy. This is why one
that is, there is nothing missing from what it is the audience can trace a pattern from Eros to love and why educa tion
for. During this time it finds itself in the place of spectatorship. It exemplifies both.
knows that there is everything occurrin·g be fore it cannot be With this, we have, I hope, a bet,rinning of the answer to the
affected by its actions. (As Shakespeare had noted: "Love is not task Nietzsche sets us in the Gay Science: "we must learn to
love which alters when it alteration finds.") This is what Nietzsche love." The reason that we must learn to love is not just that like all
means by a Dionysian state- the erotic origins of Dionysus are other human qualities, love is acquired rather than innate, but
key. The spectator will not therefore, Nietzsche indicates, "run also that love is lost from the world (and hence are also
up on stage and free the God from its torments." education, freedom, philosophy, and politics) and for these
The rel2.tions of audience and r:l.rama are somewhat like qualities to be available again we must learn to love. Our gates are
the love relations to an educator.4 As characters, the actors on t,'llarded by fierce eunuchs.
stage are in the presence of the audience but the audience is not But: is this to love not what Christianity commands us to do?
in their presence. There is no way in which the audience can, as There are two great commandments: to love God and one's
audience, compel the action on stage to acknowledge it indeed the neighbour. I shall have more to say about the command ments to
educator who makes philosophy possible is in Nietzsche's love but for now we must look at the question of love
111 the context of what Nietzsche says about Christianity and the
words "let loose" on the planet, as if on a great stage.
(Nietzsche quotes here from Emerson's Circles). person of Christ.
Throughout Sclwpenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche seeks to make
available a position in which one might actually look at III
Schopenhauer. But it is precisely not a relation to another. The
theatre of philosophy is made possible by love and oversight. I begin with two texts:

''Wl1atever ·Is done out of love is done beyond good

and cviJ."l4

These two passages are from the central section of

8() Tracy B. Strong Beyond Good and Evil. That book is Nietzsche's most extended
investi gation of a kind of transcendental deduction of
Jesus said to hisJews: "The law was for servants -love knowledge. More precisely it is an investigation of what
God as I love him, as his son! What are morals to us occurs to a person
sons of God ?4 5 " who makes claims of knowledge. It starts by raising the
t
 4(i 1
ques- tion of what would be the case were truth a woman. Learning to Love 87
notes
that philosophers are not expert around women. One might
relationship that threatens always to transform one between
conclude from this that philosophy has little to do with truth. It is, 4
however, more natural to conclude that philosophers do not persons to one be t ween obJ" ec ts. V
know h...· love women - or truth. Love is, one might say, a Yet Nietzsche is unlikely to share with Kant the same valu
quality that one must manifest in order to raise authentic lly the ation oflove as potentially harmful to morality. In understand ing
question if something be true or false. Insofar as love IS a form this, it is important to remember the intimate link between
of cognition - and we saw at the beginning of this essay that for morality and law. For Kant, we find the moral realm only as a
Nietzsche it is- the consideration oflove here is a con sideration law - that is the only way we can experience morality. This
of what happens to us when we encounter the world tells him something about the relation of human beings to
in love, that is as philosophersY morality: as we are not perfect beings we must experience the
The first question the passages point at is what it would moral realm (which Kant acknowledges as the realm of free
mean to be or go "beyond good and evil," beyond, I take it, the dom) as an imperative, i.e. as law. Nietzsche shares much of this
realm in which moral categories apply to ones actions. More understanding of morality; but he is less likely to worry about
bluntly, when one has gone beyond good and evil (who can do calling into question the status of morality. Kant, on the other
this? How is it done?) where does one find oneself? The sec ond hand, must at some level devalue that which cannot be
passage raises a question about the difference betwee love and experienced as law, as imperative. Is love commensurable
law. It suggests that for Nietzsche the figure of Jesus IS a kind of with morality as law?
immoralist or amoralist and that he knows something about love An additional question is raised by the comparison of
that entitles him to claim that he is liberated from the realm of Nietzsche with Kant, as would be with most moral philoso
law and perhaps that of morality. phers. Typically moral philosophers have argued that the
The notion that love stands in a dangerous or perhaps validity of morality depended on the universalism of the claim of
antagonistic relation to morality is not new to Nietzsche. Kant reason (or utility, or whatever). That is, the principles on which
makes a distinction between pathological and practical love and a true morality (as opposed to historically codified social
practices) rested must be able to evaluate every relevant
suggests (both in the Doctrine of Virtue and the Critique of
human act. (Exceptions were made, of course, for the realm of
Practical Reason) that will-governed practical love (as opposed to
Naturwissenschaft as well as for analytical statements). There
what he calls pathological love) only is consonant with moral
was, in other words a moral imperative that underlay morality
behaviour.4 s He suggests that marriage is a valuable
itself. Nietzsche's questions here open the possibility that
institution because it provides a moral framework for a
there may be occasions when we might choose as valued
actions which would not, however, be judged morally correct.
We must thus also determine how and who determines what is
and is not moral.50
Does Christ do this? Clearly. Thus we must ask about
Him- how does he and who is he to determine what is moral.
Jesus stands for Nietzsche as the example of the man who
knows more and loves more than anyone else has - he is the
human being who has "flown highest yet and gone astray the
most beautifully."51 Thus the investigation of Nietzsche on love
properly goes through an investigation of Nietzsche on Christ.
"against" either of them. (This is not to say that he was not, N
88 Tracy B. only that the conclu sion cannot be facile.) Even a book i
Strong like Der Antichrist is much of the time better translated e
The Antichristian. There is throughout Nietzsche's t
Nietzsche's relation to Christ, as that to Socrates, is writing about Christ a distinct note of z
multi ple and complex. Nothing can be more wrong or admiration, not to say sometimes jealousy.
52
Christ,
more mis leading than a facile conclusion that he was s
says
che, is "the noblest man;" he wanted to "take the notion of Learning to Love 89 E
punishment and judgment out of the world;" he was "the v
i
destroyer of the law." permanence. Nietzsche considers Christ_ to have attacked l
Nietzsche focuses on Christ's life, not really on his
teach- all form. Christ "denies Church, state, soCiety, art,
N
53 knowledge, culture, civilization;" Nietzsche associates i
ings. Christ taught, a "new praxis" by which
this attack with e
Nietzsche means that what Christ was was exemplified by 55
what all wise ones (aile Weisen) have done: Christ's life, t
his life and actions. Der einverfleischte Gott - God made
His z
flesh - is what Nietzsche's attention is drawn to. And, as
praxis, is for Nietzsche a life of complete and per ected s
the importance is what Christ did, not what he urged, what
interiority, abandoning all relations to others, almost a kmd c
we might call Christ's identity was for Nietzsche never
of self-referential solipsism. A consequence and an h
fixed. Indeed, much of Nietzsche's analysis of Christ
indication of this for Nietzsche is that the life of Christ is only e
sounds at times like all that which we normally a
possible in iso lation from society. At the beginning of Thus
associated with Nietzsche seems to value. Christ is "a free r
Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra encounters an old man who
spirit: he has nothing to do with that which is fixed (allem g
has not yet heard that God is dead. Zarathustra hurries on,
Festen) ... he believes only in life and the living and such u
54 without telling the old man. The reason is not simply to
'is' not, such becomes." e
spare him the bad news - Nietzsche rarely refrained from
But one may respond, Nietzsche clearly is not s
preaching public pronouncements of this nature. The reason is that
for Christ. And surely he curses Christianity. Some the life the old man lives - imitatio Christi- is in fact
possible, but only as a hermit, only in
commen tators have here sought a tempting distinction
between the founder and the institutionalization - a sort isolation from society.
From this it follows that the import and significance of
of sophomore reading of the Grand Inquisitor chapter the
of The Brothers Karamazov- and argued that Nietzsche actuality of God's death has to do with its consequences
distinguishes the gen ius and the institutionalizing for our relations with other beings. For Nietzsche, God is
rationalist, in this case between Christ and St. Paul (about impor tant in terms of human interaction, not just as a
whom Nietzsche has almost nothing favourable to say). "belief." Along these lines Nietzsche's discussion of Christ
This will not quite do. There has to be something in the is resolutely non world-historical. The significance Christ
manner in which Christ approached the world that is assumes is not as the head of the great social movement
responsible for what happened. If Christ is presented so which we know as Christi anity, but as a particular being,
favourably- so Dionysianly- something has to unique in the history of the world. In fact, Nietzsche
go wrong. declares that there "has been only
The Dionysian prototype is Hamlet, the person one Christian and he died on the cross." Such a life, he
who contin
56
knows that there is no good reason for anything to ues, is still possible, not "as a faith but as a doing."
have What then was wrong with Christ? Christ establishes
a
new way of life in which only so-called "inner
realities" countY The Gospels, claims Nietzsche, totally
annihilate the distance between God and humans. This is
not a matter of faith or believing in something but of lead a
"different" kind of life. Salvation - redemption - is our
reality. The problem of Nietzsche is that "inner realities"
abandon effectively all crite-
ria of judgment.
The most interior form of praxis possible is a requirement
of
and for love. In a important section of Beyond Good and
 I
,,

90 Tracy B. Strong Learning to Love 91

It is possible that under the holy fable and dis,t;uise of them) "we understand all, we live all, we no longer retain any
Jesus' life there lies concealed one of the most painful hostile feelings." We claim that "all is good- and that it give us
cases of the martyrdom of knowledge of love: the martyr pain, to deny anything. We suffer if we were once to be so
dom of the most innocent and desirous heart, never unintelligent as to take a stand against something."6 l
having enough of human love, demanding love, to be \Vhat does Christ know about love that leads Him to seek
loved and nothing else, with hardness, maniacally (mit death? I think it is something like this. The exclusivity of love as
Wahnsinn), with terrible eruptions against those who interiority means that the only way to overcome the exist ence
denied him love, the story of an unfortunate person, of evil is to bring it inside you and transform it into one self.
unsatcd and insatiable in love, who had to invent hell Emerson writes on this topic in "Experience," his essay which
in order to send to it those who did not want to love l. be.t,rins with the question of "Where do we find our selves?",
him - and who finally, having gained knowledge <
f that "conscience must feel sin; as essence, essential evil. That it
about human love, had to invent a God who is all love, all [i.e. sin) is not: it has an objective existence, but not subjective."("
ability to love - who has mercy on human love In other words, evil is not and cannot be subjec tive. It is only
because it is utterly so wretched and unknowing. Any one actual or concrete (There is a deep criticism of Hegel here)
who feels that way, who knows this about love - seeks and one can only take a stand against it. For Nietzsche, what
death.5x is wrong with Christ's love is that it pushes him to justify his
life by requiring that others love Him. Since He is all love, in
This passage occurs in the section of Beyond Good and Evil Him all evil will be redeemed. I cannot replay it here, but
entitled "what is noble." It is preceded by the claim that one Nietzsche is opposed to the very idea of redemp tion, as an
who knows the heart will know that "Even the best and analysis of the "On Redemption" chapter in Zarathustra
profoundest love" is "more likely destroy than to save." There is shows.64
an opposition here between godly and human love. The The centrality of love in Christianity derives from the
question is why does Christ love require of him that he seek Scriptures - "God so loved the world that He gave His only
love, to be loved. Key, I think, to this passage is that Christ is begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him would not per ish
seen as "never having enough" of human love. There is no but have everlasting life." Oohn 3: lG) Augustine made love
satiation, none of that state which made the ecstasy of love and central to his understanding of human action, incorporating
the actuality of audience possible. The indication in the pas into it the direction or object of love. Calvin took up Augus
sage is that Christ's love found or must find human love insuf tine's challenge against the apparent legalism of the Catholi
ficient. In terms of the analysis of audience and exemplars cism he opposed. In the Institutes, he writes that a central part of
given above, we might say that Christ could never be an audi "Christian liberty" is that one be released from the "yoke of the
ence for himself.50 law" so that God's love may be available as a loving son and
What is it about Christ's life that might make this so? not a terrified servant.('5
Again, it is His life that must be the problem for Nietzsche. His To think then about Christ on love, we have also to think
life is "the road towards a holy mode of existence."(;o It leads about the status of the law in Nietzsche.G6 The law, he writes,
him towards death, to what Nietzsche explicitly calls a suicide has been most at home in the realm of the "active strong, spon
disguised as a judicial murder, one which Nietzsche thinks is taneous, aggressive" individuals.(>? The founding of law is thus an
the same in mode as that of Socrates.61 This happens because in opposite of ressentiment; and ressentiment is explicitly
the fulfilment of the teachings of Christ (if we were to live linked by Nietzsche with anarchists and anti-Semites. The
I cannot explore this at length here. Suffice it to say that
92 Tracy B. Strong
the Jews are the people of the law and as such are a people of
affirmation and aggression. This is because the law, as under
Christ-like opposition to law as a mode of governing beha
stood here, is not everyday law, but is rather the establishment
viour is thus complexly linked to Nietzsche's understanding of
of good and evil, a way of organizing the world, a manifesta
his relation to the Jews.
tion of a positive will to power. The law is a creation of hori Learning to Love 93
zons, and horizons are we know from Kant and Nietzsche the
condition of life. with morality thus appears to occur for Nietzsche when
From this it seems that one way of not being a person of the humans - especially loving humans - deny that they are in
law is to focus, as does Christ, entirely on inferiority. Christ, contact with others. Morality is thus a form of the problem of
however, was the only Christian and "he died on the cross." skepticism or of other minds. If this is true, then the Christian
This imperative towards innerness, towards privacy and away need not make any distinctions between those he or she
from others has special consequences in the case of Christ. encounters, which means that paradoxically the Christian
Christ loves everyone, unconditionally. Such a great and need encounter no person. This is (of course) disguised. In
unselfish affirmation destroys all horizons, all that might Human-All-Too-Human, Nietzsche notes the cleverness of
shape the world in his teaching. Christ's love is a kind of Christianity to have focused on love:
absolute freedom and terror - sois mon frere ou je te tue. The
universality of Christ's love requires that all love him. There is in the word love something so ambiguous and
"What have we to do with the law?" By demanding a life suggestive, something which speaks to the memory
outside and beyond any structure or organization Christ and future hope, that even the meanest intelligence
makes impossible or unnecessary any form of organised and coldest heart still feels something of the lustre of
human existence. (Christianity, notes Nietzsche in 1888, is the this word. The shrewdest (kliigste) woman and the
"abolition of the state."68) And this also renders impossible commonest man think when they hear it of the
that seeing which is at the same time overlooking that was nec relatively least selfish moments of their whole life,
essary health or love. "The wisest man would be the richest in even if Eros has paid them only a passing visit; and
contradictions; he, as is were, has feelers for all kinds of men; those countless numbers who never experience love, of
and right among them has his great moments of grandiose har parents of children, or lovers, especially, however,
mony." Nietzsche refers to this state as one ofjustice.li 9 when the women and men of sublimated Christianity,
How are humans drawn instead towards the life of Christ have made their discovery (Fund gemacht) in
a life which dissolves itself? The gospels, in Nietzsche's read: Christianity.71
ing, in fact seduce by "means of morality."70 They promise,
that is, that the rewards for moral behaviour will occur by Love can go wrong. This passage is an argument against
means of redemption. Redemption is, however, the stance the use that Christianity makes of Eros, a subject to which
that one can by one's own actions (or by no actions at all) find Nietzsche occasionally returned.n But it is more interesting as a
ones being changed. Others are not necessary. The problem reflection on love and the status of the self that loves. Com pare
it, for instance, to this passage in Schopenhauer as Educator.
Nietzsche has just suggested that the fundamental import of
what he calls culture is to "further the production of the phi
losopher, of the artist and the saint within and without us."
Three types: the philosopher makes becoming available to us;
the artist makes "a clear and distinct image" of what is never
seen "in the flux of becoming." The saint is the person whose

individual ego has entirely melted away and who feels

his suffering life as an identity, affinity, and unity with
94 Tracy B. Strong
Nietzsche goes on to applaud this state as at the root of our
all that is living.... There is no doubt that we are all hatred of ourselves (thus our ability to be outside ourselves)
related and connected to this saint as we are to the phi and thus of the pessimism that Schopenhauer sought to
losopher and the artist; there are moments and as it "reteach our age." Love breaks down the Apollonian. Like its
were, sparks of the brightest fire of love in the li ht of parent Eros it is the dissolution of definition the
which we no longer understand the word "1".... 73 deconstruction of limits. '
 But alone it cannot suffice. The problem with Christ is that
his knowledge of love leads him to want death. Death is a dis Learning to Love 95
solution - so much Nietzsche had gotten from Schopenhauer.
Love is a form of death in this sense - so much Nietzsche had exemplars, that is, we cannot, in fact, find ourself as not yet
recognized in Wagner. In fact, should two be in love with each ourself in them. Why then the attraction? There are two
other (which is not the education model) a species of madness important lessons here. First, morality is what keeps us from
results. Nietzsche writes: "Both parties ... consequently aban dying on the cross. Morality thus preserves a life that is
don themselves and want to be the same as one another." In constantly seeking to deny itself in love. There is an indication in
the end, neither knows what he or she is supposed to be imitat the Antichrist that humanity has become addicted to
ing, what is to be dissimulated, what is pretense. "The beauti ful moraline, that is to a dangerous and destructive drug which,
madness of this spectacle is too good for this world and too however, one cannot do without. We constantly run towards
subtle for human eyes."74 Love in itself produces nothing that God and must at the same time make it impossible for us to
can continue in this world. reach Him. This is a form of nihilism. But it also means that not
So the question must be what is loved. For Christ and God anyone, as any time, can, for any reason, simply shake off the
this is clear. I noted the great commandments before. God demands of morality. One cannot go cold turkey on morality
loves the world. But whom do humans love? They love God without a serious reaction - and the danger that humanity
with all their heart and mind and strength; and they love their might in this century do so is at the source of Nietzsche's
neighbours as themselves. Do they love themselves? In the distress about the century he foresaw. This is what sons of God
way they love God, I suppose. But what is left for our have to do with morals.
neighbours if we must love them as we love God, uncondition Second is the lesson that Cordelia tried to teach to her
ally and with the sundering intensity that Nietzsche attributes to father. To love according to ones bond, that is to what one is (I
Christ. Christ really did love others as he loved himself as he did not say who - Nietzsche calls on us to become what we
loved God. And that is death. Such love loves not wisely but too are) - is all that can be required and no more should be
well - as Othello discovered and Nietzsche intimates expected. In the refusal of the acknowledgment of this lesson,
Christ knew.75 there is only silence, or death. Such silence - the still between
In other words, God and Christ do not function as two soundings, Nietzsche calls is,·is the only possible human
acknowledgment of the absolute.
It is noteworthy that Nietzsche counterposes himself to
morality as a "Hyperborean," as, that is, a worshiper of Apollo
during the winter months.76 He suggests that his love of
humans is such as to excise the emotion of pity from human
beings. In a late note, Nietzsche remarks that the
Hyperborean is in fact a particular kind of philosopher: "one
who is in no ways a moralist." In fact without not being a
moralist there is no other way to bring "philosophy back into
respect." 77 In fact: "There is nothing for it; there is no other
way to bring philosophy back to honour but to hang all the
moralists."78
Morality thus keeps philosophy from happening: It trans
forms the human love that allows one to be besides oneself
and thus always with oneself- into one that requires that one
9G Tracy B. Strong Against this Nietzsche occasionally counterposes what he
calls "human love." As he found himself in diagnostic
be dissolved into another. Christian love was a form of solip explora tion of the will to morality he found himself
sism, a solipsism only mitigated by morality and the promise of increasingly alone. The denial of the universal applicability
redemption. The costs of the moral point of view, Nietzsche of the moral point of view seemed to leave only death open
suggests will be "hecatombs."79 as a way of making contact with others. He indicates,
therefore, that he sought form. "I had artificially to enforce, Learning to Love 97
falsify, and invent a suitable fiction for myself." What he
needed, he continues, was the belief that he was not alone, that It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It
he was not thus iso lated and not alone in seeing as he did.xo has to face the men of the time and to meet
Recognizing that life requires deception, he deceived himself. The women of the time. It has to think about war
Recognizing this, he indicates in a letter to Oberbeck on And it has to find what will suffice. It has
February 3, 1888 that his writing must henceforth find release in To construct a new stage.
attack. "No one would expect a suffering and starving animal to This is where, and how, we find ourselves.
attack its prey grace fully. The perpetual lack of a really
refreshing and healing human love, the absurd isolation it
NOTES AND REFERENCES
entails, makes almost any residue of a connection with people
merely something that wounds one." It is worth noting that
1. Citations from Nietzsche are given with reference to the Werke.
Elizabeth forges a letter dated about the time of this one to the Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino
effect that Nietzsche is longing for female companionship - her Montinari (Berlin. Gruytcr, 1966-). The work will be cited by
in fact. In her usual book {abbreviated thereafter} and internal subdivision (e.g. para
graph number) then as WKG, Volume number (e.g. VIII =1
Volume VIII, number 2), then by page number.
2. I am thinking, of course, of works like Martha Nussbaum, Love's
Knowledge (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1990); Bernard
Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge. Cambridge U.P., 1981);
Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (Chicago.
University of Chicago Press, 1990) indeed, of any philosophical
thought that draws on literature, as well as those who have
sought to revive a theory of moral sentiments (e.g. Annette Baier, A
Progression of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise (Cam
bridge, Harvard University Press, 1991) and Postures of the Mind
{Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
:-J. Sec Bernard Williams, op. cit., p. 2; Stanley Cavell, op. cit., 108-
ll.'l.
perverse way, Elizabeth understood something of her brother. 1. FW 333 WKG V 1 p. 238.
The perversion oflove in Christianity means that we are in 5. UB-NN 3 WKG III p. 266. One should recall the passage in
danger of seeking an ideal in which to loose ourself. And this is Twilight of the Idols, What the Germans Lack 3 WKG Vl p.3 102:
not just on what one might be tempted to call the political "One has to learn to see; one has to learn to think; one has to
learn to speak and write." Sec the discussion (albeit with more
level. "We must keep ourselves from becoming an ideal of
oedipal anxiety about sight than I think merited) in Gary
another," Nietzsche writes around 1880.x 1 At all costs then, we Shapiro, "In the· Shadows
1 of Philosophy," in David Michael
must keep a distance on the other and on ourselves. This, how Levin, cd. Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (University of
ever, can only be done, by living in and of this world. If we run California Press, 19), pp. 124-141.
outside of it, we not only will deny tlw actuality of evil (in the 6. JGB 75 WKG VI1 p. 87.
I. VI I I p. 704.
name of love) but we will be unable to tolerate the existence of
8. For a revealing discussion of Nietzsche as air erotic see the con
others. We need, he writes in the Preface to Human-All-Too tribution by Robert Pippin to this volume.
Human, a "blindness for tvvo.'' Or, as Stevens wrote in "Of 9. Letter to Rohde, 5/23/76.
Modern Poetry": 10. MAM i 259 WKG IV 1 pp. 217-218.
II. MA,\;1 i 2Ci0 WKG IV1 p. 218. I cannot help hearing here an
Learning to Love 99
98 Tracy B. Strong

anticipation of the scene of the cripples at the bridge in 32. UB-SE 3 WKG III, p. J58.
Zarathustra. Z ii On Redemption WKG VI, pp. 173-174. 33. UB-RWG 4 WKG Ill, p. 18.
12. For two views see Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship, chapter on 13. UB-SE 2 WKG III, p. 342.
Symposium; Sarah Monoson, Erastes and Eromenes, POLITI 14. Ibid., p. 345. Bloom (op. cit., p.) notes something of the same in
CAL THEORY last issue. The standard book on pederasty in passin
Greece is Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality ().
 g. 34. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth. cd., Brezeale (Humaniteis
15. On this general question sec my jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics Press, New Jersey, 1990), pp. 135-U7. Cf WKG IV, pp. 182 ff.
ofthe Ordinary (SAGE, 1994), pp. 46-50 and Stanley Cavell, The 35. WKG III 3, p. 34ti. For a discussion of the political clements in the
Claim of Reason (Oxford, 1984), part IV. Birth of Tragedy, sec my "Nietzsche's Political Misappropria tions,"
16. Emerson, "Experience," Essays and Lectures (Library of America. in B. Magnus and K. Higt,rins, cds. Cambridge Companion
New York, 1983), pp. 488, 483. to Nietzsche (Cambridge, 1995) and "Aesthetic Authority and Tra
17. EH why 1 write such good books - The Untimely ones 3 WKG dition: Nietzsche and the Greeks," History of European Ideas, Vol.
VI pp. 3
317-318. II, 1989, pp. 989-1007 ( 1989).
18. WKG III, p. 411. 36. WL I WKG III2 p. : 74-5.
19. UB-SE 5 WKG III, p. 374. : 7. WKG IV 1, p. 189, 195.
20. Ibid., p. 378; UB-SE 7 WKG III, p. 401 ("The artist and 38. UB-SE 6 WKG III, p. 381.
philosopher ... strike only a few and should strike all.") For 39. There is thus a parallel between the clements of love and the
revelatory discussion of this question in Nietzsche see Stanley clements of the three kinds of history set forth in the preceding
Cavell, op. cit., pp. 49-54 and a soon to be published essay by Untimely. See UB-NN 2 WKG III, pp. 260-261.
James Conant. See also Steven Mulhall, "Perfectionism, Politics, 40. UB-RWG II, IV" pp. 79, 81.
and the Social Contract," journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 2, 41. GT 8 III, pp. 55-56.
Number 3 (September 1994), pp. 222-239. 42. Augustine, incidentally, uses the same parallel of spectatorship and
21. UB-SE 6 WKG III" p. 381. love to explain the political realm.
22. SE-UB iii 4 WKG III, p. 362. 43. GT 8 III, p. 56.
23. SE-UB iii 1 WKG III, p. 336. Nietzsche here is probably echo 44 . .JBG 153 WKG Vl 2 p. 99.
ing the opening line of Emerson's "Experience" "Where do we 45. JBG 164 WKG VI 2 p. 101.
find ourselves?" 46. For the best investigation of this sec Sarah Kofman, Baubo in M.
24. For a fuller discussion see my "Aesthetic Authority and Tradi Gillespie and T. Strong, cds. Nietzsche's New Seas (Chicago, 1988), pp.
tion: Nietzsche and the Greeks," History of European Ideas, Vol. II, 175-202.
1989, pp. 989-1007 (1989). 47. For a full discussion of the fact that in Nietzsche selfhood is
25. GM Preface 1 WKG VI, p. 259. consequent to modes of apprehending the world and does not
26. See the discussion in Tracy B. Strong, The Idea of Political Theory precede them, see my "Texts and Pretexts: Reflections on
(Notre Dame, 1990), Chapter Five; and Stanely Cavell, This New Nietzsche's Doctrines of Perspectivism," in Political Theory (May,
Yet Unapproachable America, (Living Batch Press. Albuquerque, 1985) reprinted with modifications as Chapter Ten of the
1989), pp. 24-26. expanded edition of my Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Trans
27. GD-Skirmishcs 7, WKG VI3 p. 109. figuration. (University of California Press. Berkeley and Los
28. "Pulled out" here calls to mind Emerson's discussion of "provo- Angeles, 1988).
cation" in The Divinity School Address, op. cit., p. 79. 48. See I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (Babbs Merrill.
29. UB-SE 2 WKG III, pp. 340-341. Indianapolis, 1956), p. 85: "We must not [in love) by an egotis tical
30. Ibid., p. 341. illusion subtract anything for the authority of the law." The Doctrine
31. Hollingdale's translation, which is usually good, falls off badly of Virtue (Philadelphia, 1979), p. 447. For a critique see Annette Baier,
here. "How can Individualists Share Responsibility," Political Theory, 21,
2 (May, 1993), pp. 228-248. I am conscious here of a general
influence of Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowl edge, especially
chapters 13 and 14, to which I owe the Kant references.
49. See Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral judgment (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA 1993).
also Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche and Christianity (Chicago. Gateway,
100 Tracy B. Strong
50. See my "Nietzsche's Political Misappropriations," Cambridge
Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus, forthcoming. Similar
considerations are central to the chapter "Knowledge and the
Basis of Morality" in Stanley Cavell, The Claim ofReason. Indeed,
the final question of this paragraph appears in a sharper form on
pp. 269-270, as I rediscovered not to my surprise.
51. JBG 60 WKG VIp. 77. Walter Kaufmann thinks this refers to
Moses.
52. Frederick Copleston's Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosopher of Culture
(London, 1942) expresses the surprise of a Jesuit who cannot
quite figure out why Nietzsche so seems to dislike Christ. See
 Learning to Love 101 prompted by Sarah Kofman, Le mipris desjuifs. Nietzsche, les]uifs,
l'antisimitisme (Galilee, Paris 1994).
(i-1. See my Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, pp. (i7. GM ii II WKG VIp. 327.
221-237. (i8. WKG VIIIp. 337.
liS. J.Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 19 (ed. (i!J. WKG VII , pp. 179-180; See Martin Heidcggcr, Nietzsche
Beveridge), Vol. 2, p. 133). (l'fiillingen, Neske, 19GI) I, pp. 632ff. See my "Texts and Pre
()(i. Some of the material in the next paragraphs draws from or is texts," op. cit.
70. AC 44 WKG Vl3 p. 218.
l9GI ). One must resist, as I hope to make clear, the tendency to 71. MAM ii VM 95 WKG IV 3 pp. 50-51.
assert in a more or less sophisticated fashion the claim that 72. e.g. JBG 168 WKG Vll p. 102: "Christianity gave Eros poison
Nietzsche never quite got rid of his childhood and that both his
to drink>."
rejection and his fascination with Christ are due to that. See 73. UB-SE 5 WKG 111 1 p. 378.
Egcn Biser, "Nietzsche's Relation to Jesus," in Claude Jeffre and 74. M 532 WKG VI P· 308.
Jean-Pierre Jossua, eds. Nietzsche and Christianity (Seabury Press. 75. See WKG VIII 3, p. 336.
New York, 1981), pp. 58-64; sec also W.L. Hohmann, Zu 76. AC 7 WKG VI:p. 172.
Nietzsche Fluck auf das Christentum oder Warum Wurde Nietzsche 77. WKG VIII:pp. 411-412: "As long as philosophy continues to
nicht fertig mit dem Christentum? (Die blaue Eule, Essen, 1984): speak of happiness and virtue only old ladies will be persuaded to
"His existence (Dasein) was a tension between evasion and go into philosophy."
rebellion" (p. 69). 78. WKG VIII3 p. 412.
53. WKG Vlll2 p. 351. 79. Ibid., 413.
54. Ibid., p. 406. 80. MAM 1886 Preface I WKG IVp. 8.
55. Ibid., p. 338. 81. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Unschuld des Werdens (ed. Baumler) I #
56. AC 39 WKG Vl 3 p. 209. 902 (p. 296).
57. AC 34 WKG Vl p. 204. If this sounds like a strong version of
3
salvation by faith alone, one might note the importance of
Lutheranism in Nietzsche. He means that the state of being of the
Christian is what counts. Nietzsche docs not mean "spiritual" as
opposed to "fleshly" however.
58. JGB 269 WKG VIp. 235.
59. If this is a correct reading of Nietzsche's understanding, then the
most difficult moment for Nietzsche to grasp fully must be the
scene in Gcthscmane, before the arrest. "Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt."
(Matthew xxvi, 39). It is the supreme moment of Christ's
humanness. For Nietzsche it is a suicide. See below.
60. WKG VIII1 p. 58.
61. MAM ii VM 94 WKG IY1 p. 50.
62. WKG VIIIp. 409.
6- R.W. Emerson, "Experience," Essays and Lectures, p. 489. I owe
a debt here to the chapter "On Political Evil" in George Kateb.
The Inner Ocean (Cornell U.P., Ithaca, l'\.Y., 1992).