尼采文集及研究专著尼采、真理与救赎：对后现代主义尼采的批判

Nietzsche:
Truth and
Redemption
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Nietzsche:
Truth and
Redemption
Critique of the Postmodernist Nietzsche
Ted Sadler
THE ATHLONE PRESS

London & Atlantic Highlands, NJ
First published 1995 by
The Athlone Press
t Park Drive, London NW11 7SG
and 165 First Avenue,
Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716
©Ted Sadler, 1995

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0485 114712
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sadler, Ted, 1952-

Nietzsche : truth and redemption / Ted Sadler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-485-11471-2
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
2. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900-Influcncc.
3. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. I. Title.
B3317.S23 1995 94-46838
193-dc2() CIP
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-

duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or other-
wise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
the University Press, Cambridge
To Veronica
There is perhaps nothing about the so-called cultured, the
believers in 'modern ideas', that arouses so much disgust
as their lack of shame, the self-satisfied insolence of eye
and hand with which they touch, lick and fumble with
everything; and it is possible that more relative nobility of
taste and reverential tact is to be discovered today among
the people, among the lower orders and especially among
peasants, than among the newspaper-reading
demi-monde of the spirit, the cultured.
(Beyond Good and Evil, no. 263)
Contents
Preface x
Notes on References and Method of Citation xi
Introduction 1
1 Perspectivism and its Limits 15
2 Hierarchy of the Spirit 67
3 Redemption and Life Affirmation 116
4 Nietzsche and Heidegger 174
Conclusion: How to Read Nietzsche 209
Notes 216
Bibliography of Works Cited 253
Index 261
Preface
The present study attempts an alternative to the subjectivist

interpretation of Nietzsche popularized by those whom I
call the 'postmodernist commentators'. What I hope to
show is that Nietzsche's critique of'men of modern ideas'
applies also to their contemporary descendents, and that,
contrary to what recently has become orthodox opinion,
Nietzsche is a resolute spokesman for philosophy and
truth. If Nietzsche emerges as less timely and familiar than
he is commonly taken to be, but more challenging and
thoughtworthy, my aim will have been achieved.
I am grateful to the publishers for permission to use parts
of a previously published article 'The Postmodernist
Politicization of Nietzsche', from Paul Patton (ed.),
Nietzsche: Feminism and Political Theory, Routledgc,
London,1993.
Note on References and
Method of Citation
Wherever possible, Nietzsche is cited according to the

Nietzsche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, edited by Giorgio
Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter,
1967fT, abbreviated KGW. A few texts are only available
in the old edition of Nietzsche Werke, edited by Otto
Crusius and Wilhelm Nestle, Kroner Verlag, Leipzig, 1913,
abbreviated GA. The few references to Nietzsche's corre-
spondence can be located in Nietzsche Briefwechsel, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, edited by Colli and Montinari, Berlin,
Walter de Gruyter, 1975-1984. In most cases easily avail-
able English translations (which I have often modified
without notice in quoting Nietzsche) will be co-cited with
the KGW according to aphorism or section number (or
heading), as well as by page number. The translations used
are as follows (with abbreviations):
Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin,

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1973 (BGE).
The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter
Kaufmann, Vintage, New York, 1967 (BT and CW).
Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1982 (D).
xii Truth and Redemption
The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New

York, 1974 (GS).
Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986 (HAH I
-HAH III)
On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter
Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage, New York,
1967 (GM and EH).
Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of
the Early 1870s, trans. Daniel Breazeale, Humanities
Press, New Jersey, 1979 (PT).
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne
Cowan, Gateway, Chicago, 1962 (PTAG).
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1973 (Z).
Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, trans. R. J. Hol-
lingdale, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Middlesex, 1968
(TIandAC).
Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1983 (UMI-UMIV).
The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New
York, 1968 (WP).
Details of other literature can be found in the

bibliography.
Introduction
We, openhanded and rich in spirit, standing by the road like open wells
with no intention to fend off anyone who feels like drawing from us -
we unfortunately do not know how to defend ourselves where we want
to: we have no way of preventing people from darkening us: the time in
which we live throws into us what is most time-bound; its dirty birds
drop their filth into us; boys their rubbish; and exhausted wanderers who
come to us to rest, their little and large miseries. But we shall do what we
have always done: whatever one casts into us, we take down into our
depth - for we are deep, we do not forget - and become bright again. '
A philosopher: a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects,

hopes, dreams extraordinary things.2
THE CHALLENGE OF NIETZSCHE'S THOUGHT

In a characteristic passage from Beyond Good and Evil,
Nietzsche writes that 'It seems to me more and more that
the philosopher, being necessarily a man of tomorrow and
the day after tomorrow, has always found himself and had
to find himself in contradiction to his today: his enemy has
always been the ideal of today.'3 Nietzsche is well known
for the provocative and confrontational style of his
writings. He sees his own time as a low point in human
culture, as a time of decadence, mediocrity and compla-
cency. In book after book he attacks the 'idols' of
modernity, unmasking the 'songs and ditties' of contem-
porary ideologists, attempting to awaken his readers from
the torpitude of modern self-congratulation. Very often,
when it seems to Nietzsche that his readers might warm to a
particular point or passage, he lashes out: I do not mean
you, he objects, if you are taking comfort from this, you
2 Truth and Redemption
do not understand me. Nietzsche is the opposite of the kind

of writer who seeks to ingratiate himself with his readers:
he warns them off, he puts them off, he recoils from
hearing his own statements uttered by others. Throughout
his career, he is convinced that his 'untimeliness' will
necessarily result in the miscomprehension of his thought.
He revels in his isolation, as if this is a continuing
confirmation of his philosophical position.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche has become one of the most
popular writers of the twentieth century: the philosopher
who regarded himself as the bad conscience of his age has
been embraced from every part of the cultural-ideological
spectrum. As an explanation for this one may naturally
point to Nietzsche's literary brilliance. Successive genera-
tions have been dazzled by his prose, which lends itself
almost irresistibly to quotation, exploitation, and identi-
fication. But the style of Nietzsche cannot be considered
independently of the content of his thought. For the
modern educated public, the name Nietzsche stands above
all for his leading philosophical motifs: 'nihilism', the
'death of God', the 'Overman', and 'will to power'. It
appears that, contrary to Nietzsche's expectations, his ideas
have not only come to be widely understood, but have
received widespread (albeit reserved on particular points)
assent. It seems that Nietzsche, as the saying goes, was
ahead of his time, that he was (as he maintained himself) a
prophet who saw further than his own contemporaries,
that the twentieth century has by now fully caught up with
Nietzsche's thought, that what was formerly so controver-
sial, so provocative and so difficult, has become com-
monplace. We are also in the position, so we like to think, to
correct Nietzsche where necessary, to avoid the excesses
and idiosyncracies of his thought, to obtain a balanced
picture of Nietzsche and his limitations. From its original
status as an enigma, Nietzsche's philosophy has become a
resource for many intellectual disciplines and cultural-
ideological tendencies. A certain appreciation of his
Introduction 3
thought has become a requirement of modern

sophistication.
The emergence of Nietzsche as a timely thinker has
become particularly pronounced over the last few decades.
After its misuse by the Nazis, his philosophy fell under a
cloud of suspicion in the immediate post-war period, but
since the early 1960s it has once again risen to prominence,
this time championed not by the fascist right but by the
quasi-anarchistic left. Among the 'politically correct',
Nietzsche now enjoys the reputation of a 'pluralist' and
'anti-dogmatic' thinker, of an exemplary practitioner of
that 'critique of authority' which identifies with the
marginalized and disenfranchised elements of culture.
Appropriately purged of his offensively 'subjective' atti-
tudes to politics and society, Nietzsche has been brought
within the fold of modern democratic egalitarianism. The
heart of his philosophy has been sought in an epistemologi-
cal doctrine which sanctions 'equal rights to all perspec-
tives', in a view of language which overcomes
'logocentrism' in favour of'metaphorical' discourse, in an
abandonment of 'closure' and 'system' for the 'free-play'
of thought and writing. In this way, so it seems, Nietzsche
has become relevant: he opens our eyes to the multi-
dimensionality of experience and life, he awakens us to the
'ruses' of anonymous authority structures, through his
'genealogical' method he puts us on guard against the
hidden interests of conventional thought and language.
This approach to Nietzsche, which is exemplified above
all by the contemporary postmodernist commentators
influenced by such writers as Gilles Deleuze, Michel
Foucault and Jacques Derrida, presents itself, and is widely
taken to be, radical in its implications. In politico-ideologi-
cal terms, this designation may indeed be justified, but
whether this is so in a philosophical context is another
question. Just what philosophical radicalism consists in is
seldom reflected upon, especially among those who most
loudly insist upon it. More often than not, a rather unclear
but supposedly obvious meaning is transposed from a

political to a philosophical level: to be radical is to demand
change, to want a lot and need a lot, to be daring and
shocking to the establishment, to flout convention, to
parade one's 'difference', to be avant-garde. Radicalism in
this sense frequently amounts to the same thing as fash-
ionability, however much it is presented as oppositional
and antagonistic to entrenched norms. The requirement of
solidarity produces a strong tendency to conformism, a
sense of mission justifies the anathematization of traitors to
the cause along with the idolization of its heroes, an in-
group consciousness cultivates an in-group jargon. All this
amounts to a familiar phenomenon, recognized and crit-
icized by philosophers as far back as Plato and Aristotle.
Nor is it anything new for such 'radicals' to inscribe the
names of the great philosophers on their banners.
The present study attempts to bring to light the genuine
radicalism of Nietzsche's thought as opposed to the
pseudo-radicalism of his contemporary postmodernist
commentators.4 What I hope will emerge is the 'challenge'
of Nietzsche's thought, in contrast to the tranquillizing and
domesticating character of the 'new Nietzsche' which they
present. Of course, the postmodernists would agree that all
genuine philosophy must challenge, but, as Nietzsche
knew, what is experienced as challenging varies greatly
between individuals. Just what the really challenging
questions are, just how philosophy in fact challenges, can
be decided only within philosophy itself. Nietzsche him-
self never tired of stressing that philosophy can never be
challenging, i.e. can never be genuine philosophy at all, if it
proceeds from an unproblematized moral standpoint. In
the case of the postmodernist commentators, however, it is
precisely such a standpoint which is all-determinative:
modern democratic pluralism is the constant and unex-
amined basis of the kind of'radicalism' which 'challenges'
through a 'critique of authority'. 5 As we shall see in
Chapter One, the celebration of Nietzsche's 'perspectiv-
ism' is only one instance of this: his 'rejection of truth' is
Introduction 5
comprehended as part and parcel of an 'anti-dogmatic'

outlook.
From the moral-political standpoint of the postmoder-
nist commentators, it seems challenging and radical to say
'there is no truth'. By contrast, it will be shown in the
following chapters that Nietzsche thinks of truth precisely
as the fundamental radical demand and challenge of all
genuine philosophy. Nietzsche continually comes back to
the problem of truth, not because he wants to expel this
concept from philosophy, not because he wants to 'liberate'
thought from the 'dogma' of truth, but because he seeks to
validate the idea of philosophical truth. In his view,
traditional metaphysics has taken the problem of truth too
lightly, it has been aver ready to take perspectives as truths,
it has been unwilling to enter into the radical kind of
existence which philosophical truthfulness demands. One
can acknowledge, along with the postmodernists, that
Nietzsche does not simply wish to present an alternative set
of truths: as we shall see, the assertions contained in his own
writings are not meant as such. Instead, he wants to exhibit
the attitude of truthfulness, the particular stance towards
reality which is definitive of truth. It is this attitude, and not
any new historical reality, which is behind Nietzsche's
confrontation with nihilism. The common view that
Nietzsche reacts to nihilism by saying 'there is no truth' is
superficial, for it is only Nietzsche's truthfulness which
allows the full force of nihilism to become visible for him.
Previous philosophers, in his opinion, had failed to come to
terms with nihilism. They had overlooked this phe-
nomenon, however, not because it is so new, but because
of their deficient philosophical resolve.6 To enter into this
phenomenon, to pose the problem of truth in this context,
is the challenge which Nietzsche's philosophy attempts to
meet. Only thus, in his view, can philosophy be what it
essentially is: a process of radical questioning.7
TRUTH AND REDEMPTION

One of the foremost concerns of the present study will be
to show that, contrary to popular current opinion,
Nietzsche holds to an absolutistic conception of philosophy
and of philosophical truth. In this connection, the
Nietzschean motif of redemption is singled out for special
treatment in Chapter Three. In its normal usage, the term
has religious connotations, which is probably why, despite
the frequency of its appearance in Nietzsche's texts, it has
been all but ignored by the postmodernist commentators.
Whether and to what extent Nietzsche is himself religious
are questions which will arise at the appropriate stage, and it
is advisable to resist any premature conclusions at the
outset. For Nietzsche, the interrogation of philosophy and
religion go hand in hand, and it may be expected that his
ambivalence on the former will be paralleled in the latter
case. In any event, the concept redemption runs through his
writings (with some interruption in the middle works) as an
indication of the existential value of philosophical truth.
Nietzsche's major objection to the metaphysical conception
of truth is that it lacks this existential dimension: it makes
little difference to life, failing to connect with the ultimate
reality of individual existence. Redemption is a concept
which signifies the radicality of the demands which phi-
losophy makes on the individual who enters into it, the
radical (absolute) difference between the philosophical life
and the normal life.
With the concept of redemption, Nietzsche makes the
problem of truth into a subjective problem. In its familiar
Christian context, the subjective need for redemption
consists in a condition of sinfulness, of having 'turned
away from God'. This is a condition which, from the point
of view of the individual, has both positive and negative
aspects. On the one hand it allows him to enjoy the things
of this world, but on the other hand the impoverishment of
his spiritual life is experienced as a burden and as conscious-
ness of guilt: alienation from God is also self-alienation,
Introduction 7
for it prevents human beings from attaining their own

godly nature. Despite Nietzsche's critical attitude to Chris-
tian doctrine, an analogous idea governs his understanding
of the relation between human beings and truth. In his
view, the natural or everyday condition of human existence
is one of untruth, such that the vast majority live out their
entire lives in this state. Human beings cling to untruth and
make this the foundation of their existence. Just as atheists,
who feel at home in ungodliness, tell themselves that 'there
is no God', so do those who feel at home in untruth
continually reassure themselves that 'there is no truth'. The
idea of truth appears useless, a diversion from practical
problems, anti-social, threatening, even wicked. For
Nietzsche, the fundamental perversity and corruption of
human beings is that they give their heart to untruth, that
their lives are therefore a constant slander of truth, of
something which is in fact the only proper object of
honour and reverence. Redemption is release from this
condition: it is 'a passing over into truth', understood,
however, not as a matter of beliefs, but as a comprehensive
existential reorienation.
In an analogous way to Christianity, Nietzsche sees the
path to redemption as a path of suffering. Truthfulness
goes against the grain, very much must be given up along
the way, particularly the 'good opinion of men' and the
cherished self-image of the ego. To go along this path
requires more than an ordinary degree of courage. There
are always many (Nietzsche calls them 'the herd') who are
anxious to pull one back, to pour scorn and ridicule on the
truth-seeker, to contrast the 'fantasies' of the philosopher
with the tangible benefits of the common life. More than
any other philosopher, Nietzsche stresses the psychological
difficulties of truthfulness. The philosophical life, as
distinct from the pseudo-philosophical intellectual life, is
'questionable': throwing away the props of existential
mendaciousness implies risks which are unknown to the
non-philosopher. However, in another parallel with the
Christian idea, Nietzsche sees redemption into truth as a

kind of bliss or joy. In the case of Zarathustra, this is
experienced in the 'tremendous moment of affirmation'
which comes through willing the 'eternal return of the
same'. Truth would not be truth unless it can be so
experienced: this is the ultimate 'subjective' motivation of
the philosopher, the answer to that enigmatic question with
which Nietzsche opens Beyond Good and Evil: 'why do we
want truth?'
SCHOPENHAUER AND HEIDEGGER

Nietzsche is well known for his view that philosophers
have hitherto lacked historical sense.8 From this it should
not be concluded that he is an historicist or in any sense an
historical relativist. He sees his own problems not as
peculiarly modern but as perennial problems, as the same
problems which have occupied philosophers since before
the time of Plato, as problems which assume a particular
historical guise but which are always at bottom the same
inevitable problems of human existence as such. Historical
situatedness gives a particular form to these problems,
setting limits to the possibilities of their expression, but it
does not create them. 9 Nor, as Nietzsche found in the case
of many of his philological colleagues, does any amount of
historical erudition and intellectuality guarantee a genuine
comprehension of these problems. Since they relate to the
phenomenon of existence itself, these problems must be
recognizable prior to and independently of any particular
(historically determinate) symbolical expression. They arc
the prior problems of existence, which make themselves
felt at all times and places, but there are also strong forces
which mitigate against their recognition. It is common to
confuse them with the lesser, more timely problems of the
vast majority, problems which seem more capable of
resolution and whose relevancy is easily attested to. Nor
does Nietzsche think, as we shall see, that philosophical
problems are created by texts: rather, he considers that the
Introduction 9
philosophy (and the philosopher) behind the text can under

certain circumstances become visible or audible. The major
factor determining this is the intuition of the reader.
Philosophy presupposes an intuitive sensitivity to its prob-
lems, and this is what Nietzsche looks for first of all in
those he reads himself. Nietzsche reads and studies other
philosophers not in order to become influenced by them,
but because they further open up the problems with which
he himself is occupied, because they allow these problems
to be further entered into and more genuinely
appropriated.
Such considerations are behind the particular contextual-
ization of Nietzsche attempted in the present study. I have
restricted my focus .to the primary philosophical meaning
of Nietzsche's writings. Although not ignoring the histor-
ical context of Nietzsche, I take it for granted that the latter
alone can never provide the kind of comprehension
Nietzsche demands of us. We must study carefully what
Nietzsche says about his problems, we must beware of
reading the problems of today back into Nietzsche, and of
reading back the problems of other philosophers. In the
case of Schopenhauer, however, we have a philosophical
context the relevance of which Nietzsche stressed himself.
There are more references to Schopenhauer in Nietzsche's
writings than to any other philosopher (and more than to
any other individual except Wagner). As is evident from
the third 'Untimely Meditation', Nietzsche found in
Schopenhauer his own problems, tackled in an appropri-
ately radical way and expressed through an appropriate
'pathos'. Nietzsche's early readers, prior to the First World
War, also found the same problems in both thinkers, and
were often (e.g. Thomas Mann) equally influenced by
both. By the early twenties, however, Schopenhauer's
direct influence, which had been strong through the years
1860-1900, was on the wane, partly because Nietzsche dealt
with his problems in a more modern context, and partly
because of what Nietzsche called the 'motley leopard skin'
of Schopenhauer's metaphysical system. Schopenhauer,

although himself a supremely lucid writer, presents his
readers with more technical difficulties than does
Nietzsche. In order to come to the heart of his philosophy,
which is contained in Book Three and especially Book Four
of The World as Will and Representation, one has to wade
through the quasi-Kantian epistemology of Book One, and
then the disturbingly speculative metaphysic of will in
Book Two. Nietzsche seemed to have distilled whatever
was of genuine value in Schopenhauer, but without
himself falling into the snares of a metaphysical system.
This perception was reinforced from the mid-thirties by
the influence of Heidegger, whose lectures on Nietzsche are
uniformly dismissive of and hostile to Schopenhauer.
After the Second World War, Schopenhauer became more
and more forgotten, his writings seldom read by those
interested in Nietzsche.
The attention given to Schopenhauer in the present study
is not because I wish to emphasize the influence of
Schopenhauer on Nietzsche, but because the relation
between the two philosophers is a context which allows
Nietzsche's problems to come into view. The early
Nietzsche felt such a profound affinity with Schopenhauer
that he rapidly fell into Schopenhauerian philosophical
terminology and schemata. The lasting significance this had
for the formulae of Nietzsche's thought is in no way
diminished by the fact that in his later period Nietzsche
took a more distant and critical attitude to Schopenhauer.
One example (to be examined in detail in Chapter Three) is
the Schopenhauerian polemical opposition between 'life
affirmation' and 'life denial'. This opposition has a defi-
ning role in both Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy of
life denial and Nietzsche's 'Dionysian' (in a certain sense
optimistic) philosophy of life affirmation. The fundamen-
tal opposition itself comes from Schopenhauer and is not
seriously questioned by Nietzsche at any time of his career.
All the major oppositions in Nietzsche's philosophy ('this-
Introduction 11
world' versus 'other world', 'Dionysus' versus 'the Cru-

cified' etc.) are indebted to this original Schopenhauerian
dichotomy. We shall see in Chapter Three that in some
ways Nietzsche's Schopenhauerianism inhibits him in his
basic aims, but this is not to chastise Nietzsche for being
'too Schopenhauerian'. What Schopenhauer provided for
Nietzsche is a way of formulating his own problems, thus
a way of working through them and making progress in his
own philosophical pilgrimage. Nietzsche never fettered
himself with Schopenhauerian doctrines, indeed he was
often too hasty in dismissing them, often too anxious to
refute Schopenhauer within the latter's own framework.
The present study, while not attempting any comprehen-
sive review of Nietzsche's relation to Schopenhauer, brings
in the Schopenhauerian context of Nietzsche's ideas where
this is most important for his basic problems. In this way
the difference between Nietzsche's problems and those of
his postmodernist commentators will also come to light.
Just as Nietzsche is bordered on the far side by
Schopenhauer, so is he bordered on the near side by
Heidegger. Of course, Heidegger is only one of many
twentieth-century thinkers to have been influenced by
Nietzsche. The question in each case, however, is whether a
thinker is first of all in a position to be genuinely influenced,
something which depends on whether Nietzsche's prob-
lems (including the way in which he works them through)
are genuinely in view. There are many who are interested in
Nietzsche, who interpret him, who write about his philoso-
phy, who utilize Nietzsche in various ways. All this, as
Nietzsche stressed himself, does not necessarily indicate a
profound comprehension of his thought. Heidegger once
said that 'there is much noise around Nietzsche', implying
(according to his well-known metaphor) that the
'audibility' of Being, as the true region of Nietzsche's
problems and philosophical questioning, is drowned out by
incessant 'chatter' about the 'death of God', 'nihilism', the
'Overman', the 'will to power' and of course (especially
these days) 'perspectivism'. Although I have devoted a

separate chapter to Heidegger's relation to Nietzsche, many
readers will recognize the pervasive influence of Heidegger
in the present study. This does not mean, however, that I
attempt a Heideggerian interpretation of Nietzsche, no
more than my attention to Schopenhauer signifies a
Schopenhauerian interpretation. My presupposition is that
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger represent three
successive stages in the progressive working through of the
same fundamental problems, and that, when seen in their
interrelation, each can be better understood on his own
account. This, as stated, is a presupposition, the plausibility
of which can only emerge in the course of the study. Since
my focus is on Nietzsche himself, no more than a
preliminary indication can be given of his relation to these
other thinkers.
METHOD AND PLAN OF THE PRESENT STUDY

A new conception of philosophical truth implies a new
conception of the unity of truth. Everyone knows that
many of Nietzsche's statements contradict one another,
that Nietzsche disavows the philosophical system and
repudiates the idea of a final interpretation. Amongst the
postmodernist commentators, this means that Nietzsche's
philosophy does not possess a 'centre', that his works
display a kind of undogmatic 'fragmentary writing' which
does not need to justify itself before the 'authoritarian'
tribunal of truth. In practice, this latter attitude provides a
licence to exploit Nietzsche for any convenient purpose,
while remaining immune from the (authoritarian) charge
of distortion. My own view, as already indicated, is that
behind Nietzsche's writings there is a unitary conception of
the problems of philosophy, as of philosophical truth
itself. To show that this is so requires examining
Nietzsche's works in their totality, including the Nachlaß,
taking full account of their chronological order and of
Nietzsche's self-interpretations. It is necessary, in order to
Introduction 13
avoid the dangers of generalization and abstraction, to let

Nietzsche speak for himself, but also to provide the
contexts which make his statements intelligible. I have not
regarded it as permissible to marginalize certain aspects of
his thought as subjective, or as belonging to a youthful
stage, but have tried to see his development as he saw it
himself, as an organic process of philosophical growth.
Nor am I attracted by the tendency to resolve Nietzsche's
philosophical problems by referring to his style, rhetoric,
parody or to the idea of philosophy as literature. Nietzsche
did not spend his whole life worrying about philosophical
problems because he thought that philosophy is literature.
He lived and wrote in the way he did because he thought
that philosophical problems were, in a sense we shall have
to determine, 'obligatory'. The meaning of the obligatory
character of philosophy is the basic question asked by
Nietzsche: he does not for a moment doubt this obligatori-
ness, he does not (as many do today) breathe a sigh of relief
and say 'there is nothing obligatory after all'. As we shall
see, Nietzsche tests, and finds wanting, the obligatoriness
of philosophy as hitherto conceived (within metaphysics)
only to affirm what he sees as a more radical and rigorous
obligatoriness.
In Chapter One I deal with some common misconcep-
tions of Nietzsche's 'perspectivism', particularly those
which associate it with pluralism and relativism, thus with a
rejection of'absolute truth'. We shall see that, as Nietzsche
understands it, perspectivism does not rule out, but rather
presupposes, an absolutistic conception of truth. Only
when this is understood can the authentically philosophical
radicalism of Nietzsche's thought emerge, as opposed to
the mere epistemological radicalism of postmodernist
pluralism and other forms of relativism. In this first
chapter some attempt is also made to locate Nietzsche with
respect to his contemporary philosophical situation,
especially to the critiques of metaphysics of Kant and
Schopenhauer. It will be shown that Nietzsche retains a
faith in philosophy to the extent that, with the aid of

Schopenhauer, he frees himself from the conceptualism
(intellectualisai) of Kantian scepticism. Nietzsche's reply
to Kant is to posit a form of truth which is neither
knowledge nor morality, but something prior to both, an
original 'orientation to reality' which can be expressed but
never represented (made present) in language or other
symbolism. Chapter Two explains this existential concep-
tion of truth in more detail, through Nietzsche's idea of the
'hierarchy of the spirit'. For Nietzsche, truthfulness does
not pertain in the first instance to discourse, statements, or
theories but to certain kinds of existence: it is the measure
of the 'rank-order' of human beings. By looking at the way
Nietzsche ranks various 'types' of human beings we can
discover what he regards as relevant to truthfulness and
indicative of it. Nietzsche's basic criterion, an affirmative
stance towards life, is further examined in Chapter Three,
and brought into relation with the redemptive character of
truthfulness. The question is raised as to whether 'redemp-
tion as life-affirmation' may not be rather more occluded
than clarified by some of Nietzsche's other ontological
formulae, particularly the opposition this-world/other
world, and the well-known doctrine of 'eternal return'.
Finally, Chapter Four sets Nietzsche's problems in the
context of Heidegger's idea of the Sache (subject matter,
substance, the 'what-ness') of philosophy. We shall see
that, for both thinkers, philosophy is less a matter of
producing philosophical theories (or of writing various
texts) than of awakening to certain phenomena, of staying
awake, of an appropriation of this wakefulness as the
essence of one's being.
l
Perspectivism and its Limits
Truth will have no other gods beside it. - Belief in truth begins with
doubt as to all 'truths' believed in hitherto. '
Nitimur in vetitum: in this sign my philosophy will triumph one day, for
what one has forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been -
truth alone.2
For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to isolated acts
of any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths.
Rather do our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the
necessity with which a tree bears fruit - related and each with an affinity
to each, and evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun. 3
PERSPECTIVISM AND TRUTH

The postmodernist commentators present perspectivism as
the basic idea behind Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics.
Against the supposition of a metaphysically privileged
viewpoint corresponding to a metaphysically privileged
ontology, perspectivism, in the words of Jean Granicr,
'defends an ontological pluralism: the essence of Being is to
show itself according to an infinity of viewpoints.'4 Whereas
metaphysical philosophy seeks a final authoritative theory
of reality, it is just this possibility, so the postmodernists
contend, which Nietzsche rejects by drawing attention to
the anthropocentricity and therefore perspectival character
of all interpretation. Since there are unlimited possibilities
for human subjectivity, there are also unlimited perspec-
tives on the world, perspectives which cannot be judged in
terms of an (epistemologically impossible) adequacy rela-
tion to independent reality. Thus Alan Schrift secs
Nietzschean pcrspectivism as 'demystifying the philosoph-

ical pretensions to truth and knowledge', and as an effec-
tive antidote to 'the philosopher's arrogant claims to
knowledge.'5 Debra B. Bergoffen depicts Nietzsche as
'inaugurating a higher history of humanity by constructing
a philosophy of perspectivism where the concept of the
interpretative center replaces the convention of absolute
centredness.'6 Babette Babich reports that 'Nietzsche's
multivalently heterogeneous perspectivalism anticipates
the inherent ambivalence of the postmodern challenge to
hierarchized discourse, specifically to the question of the
authorial or traditional authority and the presumption of a
final word.'7 Alexander Nehamas equates Nietzsche's
perspectivism with 'a refusal to grade people and views
along a single scale.'8 Gilles Deleuze, one of the founding
figures of Nietzschean postmodernism, plainly states that
'Nietzsche does not criticize false claims to truth but truth
itself and as an ideal.'9
This last claim of Deleuze provides a convenient oppor-
tunity for concisely specifying the thesis of the present
chapter. I shall be arguing, contra Delcuzc and the whole
tendency of postmodernist commentary, that Nietzsche
does criticize false claims to truth, but not truth itself as an
ideal. This means that Nietzsche's perspectivism is not, as it
is commonly taken to be, a perspectivalization of truth
itself. Of course, the view that all truth is perspectival is
faced with the paradox of self-reference. If the philoso-
phy of perspectivism is itself perspectival, then it would
seem to have no more validity than any other philosophy,
and if it is not, then pcrspectivism has at least one exception
and can no longer be seen as a fundamental philosophical
position. The advocates of a perspectivist Nietzsche have
never succeeded in resolving this paradox, attempting
instead to sidestep it in various ways. As I hope to show,
however, once the place of perspectivism within
Nietzsche's total philosophy is understood, the paradox
does not arise. In particular, I shall elucidate the meaning of
Perspectivism and its Limits 17
'perspectival truth' in such a way that its subordinate

position vis-à-vis 'absolute truth' can come to light. Only
on the basis of such clarification can Nietzsche's much-
publicized 'overcoming of metaphysics' be understood in
its authentic tendency.
The view of Nietzsche as a perspectivist originates,
despite the protestations of its advocates, in an epis-
temological conception of philosophy. By the latter I mean
a conception of philosophy which is oriented to knowledge
and which identifies truth with knowledge. Nietzsche's
relativization of all knowledge to perspectives is thus taken
to imply a relativization of truth itself. The perspectivist
commentators are well aware of Nietzsche's stated hostility
to epistemology, but they misinterpret his reasons for this
attitude: they think that rejecting epistemology is the same
thing as rejecting the quest for a final authoritative doc-
trine. I shall argue that, although Nietzsche does indeed
reject the possibility of such a final perspective this is not
the focus of his philosophy, and by itself does not at all
imply an overcoming of epistemology. As long as the
implicit identification of truth with knowledge remains
unquestioned, the perspectivalization of knowledge/truth
remains an epistemological proposition, albeit an unstable
one due to the above-indicated problem of self-reference.
It is no accident that perspectivist commentators on
Nietzsche play up his critique of dogmatism and ignore, or
attempt to explain away, his critique of relativism. They do
this because, according to the epistemological assumption
that truth is knowledge, dogmatism and relativism are the
basic alternatives in philosophy. Nietzsche takes an entirely
different attitude: what he seeks, and what he also assumes,
is a conception of truth which is beyond the opposition of
dogmatism and relativism. At times Nietzsche can seem
dogmatic, at other times he can seem more relativistic. The
way to resolve this difficulty is not to ignore one (or explain
it away, perhaps as a matter of Nietzsche's political views)
in favour of the other, but to understand the extra-
epistemological conception of truth underlying it. It will

then emerge that Nietzsche's apparent 'dogmatism' and
'relativism' (these terms are not really applicable outside of
epistemological problematics) belong to different 'levels
of truth' and are not at all in opposition.
Despite the 'radical' credentials of Nietzsche's perspecti-
vist commentators, it is precisely Nietzsche's radicalism
which they do not understand. For them, what is radical
about Nietzsche's thought is the supposed implication of
'equal rights to all perspectives', a maxim which is admira-
bly suited to the politico-ideological pluralism which they
expound. This kind of radicalism, however, has its origins
in the democratic egalitarianism which Nietzsche sees as the
sworn enemy of philosophy. By contrast, the present study
maintains that the radicalism of Nietzsche's thought con-
sists not in its pluralistic and therefore anti-dogmatic
implications, but in its transcending of the whole opposi-
tion between dogmatism and relativism through an extra-
epistemological conception of existential truth. What this
means will be elucidated in the course of the following
chapters, but as a preliminary indication it can be said that
existential truth relates to the 'stance' of the concrete
human being to that 'primordial reality' which Nietzsche
calls 'life'. This stance, which Nietzsche attempts to
illuminate through his idea of 'Dionysian affirmation' as
well as in other ways, is not 'primordially' cognitive and
therefore is not 'primordially' expressed in discourse. As
we shall see, it is the particular way of existence in which
the problem of existence itself is taken up, and in which,
just on account of this, the phenomenon of existence first
of all becomes visible. For Nietzsche, this is the stance of all
authentic philosophy and the original truthfulness of all
authentic philosophers: truth as pertaining to statements,
propositions, theories, points of view, perspectives, indeed
truth as pertaining to anything linguistic at all, is derivative.
The stance of existential 'truthfulness' (Nietzsche some-
times prefers this term to 'truth') opens up and holds open
what we may call, following Heidegger, the Sache of

philosophy.10 Strictly speaking, it is not his own concep-
tion of philosophy but the Sache of philosophy which
Nietzsche takes to be radical: one is radical, in other words,
simply by being a philosopher. Once Nietzsche's concep-
tion of the existential radicalism of philosophy is under-
stood, it will become plain that Nietzsche cannot be a
perspectivist at this level. The postmodernist commenta-
tors, on the other hand, put all the emphasis on the
distinction between discourses which recognize the per-
spectival character of all interpretation and those which do
not. In this way the dogmatism/relativism couplet is
maintained: metaphysical discourses which make a claim to
unconditional truth are counterposed to post-metaphysical
'playful' or 'metaphorical' discourses which acknowledge
their own relativity. Nietzsche's philosophy is then
regarded as itself a discourse of the latter kind.
THE ESSENCE OF PERSPECTIVISM
It is well known that Nietzsche's views in the 'theory of
knowledge' were much influenced by Friedrich Albert
Lange's History of Materialism (1866), which gives a psycho-
logical interpretation of Kant and defends a version of
phenomenalism. In his study of Nietzsche's relation to
Lange, George Stack goes so far as to state that Lange's
theory of the species-organization of consciousness 'is
clearly the model for Nietzsche's theory of perspectival-
ism.'11 This is an over-simplification, for what Nietzsche
found in Lange was confirmation of ideas which he had
already encountered, albeit in more metaphysical garb, in
Schopenhauer. In both cases, Lange and Schopenhauer, it is
essentially Kantian ideas which are determinative.
However, the genealogy of perspectivism will be consid-
ered in later sections of this chapter. In this section, I shall
attempt an initial clarification of Nietzsche's perspectivism
through a close examination of several key passages from
his later writings. The first comes from aphorism 354
(Book V: 1887) of The Gay Science:
This is the essence of phenomenalism and perspectiv-

ism as ƒ understand them: owing to the nature of
animal consciousness, the world of which we can
become conscious is only a surface-and-sign-world, a
world that is made common and meaner; whatever
becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow,
thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal; all
becoming conscious involves a great and thorough
corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities,
and generalization. Ultimately, the growth of con-
sciousness becomes a danger; and anyone who lives
among the most conscious Europeans knows that it is
a disease. You will guess that it is not the opposition of
subject and object that concerns me here: this distinc-
tion I leave to the epistemologists who have become
entangled in the snares of grammar (the metaphysics
of the people). It is even less the opposition of'thing-
in-itself and appearance; for we do not 'know' nearly
enough to be entitled to such a distinction. We simply
lack any organ for knowledge, for 'truth', we 'know'
(or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in
the interests of the human herd, the species.12
This passage is one of the most important philosophical
statements in Nietzsche's writings. The aphorism as a
whole, which runs over some three pages and is entitiled
'On the "Genius of the Species'", displays a dense
argumentation concerning such matters as the origin of
consciousness, the need for communication, the 'surfacc-
and-sign-world', the difference between the 'herd' nature
of man and individual existence, and finally, knowledge
and truth. In the last part of the aphorism (given above),
Nietzsche recapitulates more concisely his foregoing argu-
ment, beginning over again with the words 'This is the
essence of phenomenalism and perspectivism as I under-
stand them.'
The essence of perspectivism (the meaning of the
equation with phenomenalism will presently become clear)
is that 'the world of which we become conscious (bewußt] is

only a surface-and-sign-world (nur eine Oberßächen- und
Zeichenwelí)'. We must first ask what Nietzsche means by
consciousness and becoming conscious. A little earlier in
the same aphorism, he writes:
Man, like every living being, thinks continually

without knowing it; the thinking which rises to
consciousness is only the smallest part of all this - the
most superficial and worst part (der oberflächlichste, der
schlechteste Teil) - for only this conscious thinking
takes the form of words, which is to say signs of
communication.
For Nietzsche then, 'consciousness' and 'thinking' are not

the same: as he indicates, conscious thinking is only the
'most superficial and worst part' of thinking. 13 The reason
he gives, that conscious thinking 'takes the form of
words', is clarified a little further on in the aphorism where
he says that 'consciousness does not really belong to man's
individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature'.
No opposition has more valuational import for Nietzsche
than that between individual existence and the 'herd'. If
pre-conscious thoughts, as Nietzsche also goes on to say,
are 'translated back into the perspective of the herd', then a
great deal, in his view, must be lost in translation. This
translation, however, has a certain necessity: the social or
communicative nature of consciousness flattens thoughts
out to the level of practical utility. As determined by
consciousness, perspectives are significant biologically.
They are necessary for survival.
Nietzsche has taken the expression 'genius of the spe-
cies', which remains in quotation marks in the title of the
aphorism, from Schopenhauer's essay 'Metaphysics of
Sexual Love' (Chapter 44 of the second volume of The
World as Will and Representation). In that essay,
Schopenhauer speaks of the ongoing conflict between the
genius of the species and the genius of the individual,

arguing that the sexual organs of humans as of other living
beings are in the service of the species, more particularly
that their power over the individual is the expression of the
all-encompassing force of primal will. However,
Nietzsche's employment of the term 'genius of the species'
in connection with consciousness follows a more general
Schopenhauerian line of thought, i.e. his view that the
intellect, and the 'world as representation' constructed by
it, have nothing more than a biological function. For
Schopenhauer, the 'world as representation' as it appears to
the human animal determined by practical needs, is really,
when considered from the standpoint of philosophical
intuition, just the 'veil of Maya'. Nietzsche's position, in
the aphorism we arc considering, is not very different:
although it is not actually an illusion, the world of
perspectives (the so-called 'surfacc-and-sign-world') is
'shallow', 'thin', 'corrupt', 'false' etc. In both cases, the
contrast is between the world as revealed through the
practical needs of the species, and the world as revealed
through the 'metaphysical' needs of the individual.
Nietzsche's talk of translation implies a three-term
structure: something to be translated, something which
does the translation, and the translation itself, the end
product. Let us take these in reverse order. The translation
is the surfacc-and-sign-world. Nietzsche is allowing a
multiplicity of perspectives and is generalizing over them.
He is saying something about all perspectives as located
within an overarching surface-and-sign-world: that all
perspectives arc falsifications and corruptions. The second,
intermediate term, which does the translation, is the 'genius
of the species' itself. Following Schopenhauer's biological
Kantianism, Nietzsche is saying that consciousness is
structured according to the exigencies of survival.
Schopenhauer thinks that this structuration is determined
by a small number of invariant principles (the a priori of
consciousness), but Nietzsche's attitude on this matter is
not clear from the given aphorism. From other contexts it

may be concluded that, in Nietzsche's view, there is
considerably more flexibility in perspective creation than
Schopenhauer allows. However, it should be noted that,
neither in the passages quoted above nor in aphorism 354 as
a whole, is the diversity of perspectives emphasized, or
even mentioned. Instead, Nietzsche concentrates on the
distinction between pre-conscious and conscious thought,
together with the point that the latter is 'shallow', 'false'
etc.
The crucial question concerns the first term in the
structure, i.e. that which is translated, that which 'becomes
conscious'. What is this? One tempting misinterpretation
should be warded off straight away, namely that Nietzsche
is speaking of unconscious psychological processes. Such a
view is untenable because in this aphorism Nietzsche is
talking about the value of conscious versus unconscious
thought: his references to corruption and falsification
indicate that he is alluding to thoughts which are prior to
consciousness not at the level of mental events but at the
level of worth. The reason that 'the growth of conscious-
ness becomes a danger' and a 'disease' in modern European
culture is that the herd value of utility has become the
universal standard through which thoughts are assessed and
understood. This applies to philosophers as much as to
anyone else: by remaining at the level of conscious (i.e.
verbal) thought, philosophy (as epistemology) becomes
'entangled in the snares of grammar'. The laws of con-
scious thought are taken as the laws of truth itself, what
serves herd utility is taken as knowledge. At first sight it
may appear that, at the end of the passage initially quoted,
Nietzsche rejects the concepts of truth and knowledge
outright, as symptomatic of the overestimation of epis-
temology. However, in view of the fact that, in other
contexts to be examined later in this study, Nietzsche
employs just these concepts with respect to his own
thought, this would be an unwarranted assumption.
Although Nietzsche rejects epistemológica! conceptions of

truth and knowledge, the whole thrust of the given
aphorism, when seen in this broader context, is that these
must be redefined at the level of pre-conscious or pre-
verbal thought. If Nietzsche sometimes (by no means
always) hesitates to call the latter truth or knowledge, this is
because of the weight of epistcmological prejudice in
interpreting these terms. The distinction between the kind
of thinking which relates to individual existence and the
kind which relates to herd utility is decisive in this regard:
throughout Nietzsche's writings, this is a philosophical and
by no means a mere psychological distinction.
The greatest obstacle to understanding what Nietzsche
means by prc-conscious or pre-verbal thought, as well as
the kind of'truth' and 'knowledge' which is defined at this
level, is the implicit imposition of an epistemological
standard of reference: the question will constantly insinu-
ate itself as to how such thought could be 'correct' in a sense
which is philosophically relevant. In the ensuing chapters,
we shall see how Nietzsche transposes this correctness onto
an existential level where it means something prior to the
'adequacy' of discursive thought. The present section
concludes with sonic further preparatory indications, taken
from another aphorism in Book V of The Cay Science.
Again, these relate to the limits of perspectivism.
This aphorism (no. 373), entitled '"Science" as a Preju-
dice', is a critique of the materialist doctrine of 'a "world
of truth" that can be mastered completely and forever with
the aid of our square little reason'. Nietzsche counters the
materialists by saying that 'one should not wish to divest
existence of its rich ambiguity: that is a dictate of good
taste, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything
which goes over your horizon. ' ' 4 In the present context, the
relevant question is what 'over your horizon' (über euren
Horizon!) means. In particular, does it mean, as the
perspectivist commentators would have to say, 'beyond
your perspective'? Is it that, for Nietzsche, the materialists
lack 'the taste of reverence' (der Geschmack der Ehrfurcht) for

the variety of other possible perspectives? But Nietzsche
does not use the word perspective or its cognates at this
juncture, although earlier in the aphorism he had used these
(in attacking 'Spencerian perspectives'). At this later stage
of the aphorism, to make quite a different point, Nietzsche
uses the word 'horizon' instead of 'perspective'. He does
this because he wishes to contrast the perspectival world of
consciousness, otherwise the surface-and-sign-world,
with something else, something which, on coming to
consciousness, becomes corrupt and false. It is this some-
thing else which is over the horizon of the materialists.
Nietzsche does not mean that the materialists regrettably
lack reverence for the whole range of other perspectives or
for perspectivity as such. He is making the quite different
claim that they lack reverence for what is over the surface-
and-sign-world as such, for what is prior to all 'coming to
consciousness' as such. Nietzsche speaks, not of what is
'beyond' (jenseits), but of what is 'over' (über) the horizon
of the materialists: the word 'over' has valuational connota-
tions, it concerns distinctions of worth (e.g. 'Overman'). 15
This same aphorism opens with the statement that 'it
follows from the laws of the order of rank that scholars, in
so far as they belong to the spiritual middle class, can never
catch sight of the really great problems and question marks'.
The materialist scholars can never catch sight of the great
problems because these lie 'over the horizon' of the
intersubjective and linguistically determined surface-and-
sign-world.
There is another point to be noted about this aphorism. In
the title, the word 'science' appears in quotation marks. The
reason for this is that Nietzsche does not want to criticize
science as such, but certain prétentions to philosophy
among the 'materialist natural scientists'. He means that
when science ceases to be what it rightfully is and claims
some kind of absolute validity for itself, then it becomes a
prejudice. Towards the end of the aphorism, when
Nietzsche says that 'a "scientific" interpretation of the

world ... might be one of the most stupid of all possible
interpretations', the word science is again in quotation
marks. It is necessary to distinguish Nietzsche's views on
science from his views on 'science'. Scientists in the true
sense (who Nietzsche otherwise calls 'scholars') are simply
not concerned, qua scientists, with the 'great problems and
question marks', but when they make a pretence at this
concern, when they attempt to philosophize within the
'horizon' of scientific theory, they become 'scientists' and
therefore 'stupid'. Scientists in the proper sense are expo-
nents of the 'thinking which becomes conscious' and their
results have validity at this level. The 'square little reason'
of the scientists has its legitimate role in the service of
man's herd- or species-needs, but these latter are not what
move the philosopher in his 'taste of reverence'.
In conclusion, when we put together what we have
discovered from the two aphorisms examined, Nietzsche's
position can be summarized as follows. 1. A distinction is
to be made between verbal thoughts located within the
surface-and-sign-world of consciousness and pre-verbal
thoughts which in some sense are 'prior to consciousness'.
2. The former are governed by 'herd-utility', whereas the
latter pertain to 'individual existence'. 3. The former kind
of thinking is 'false', 'superficial' and 'corrupt' in com-
parison with the latter kind. 4. 'Perspectival' thinking is
located within the surface-and-sign-world and therefore is
'false' etc. in this sense. 5. What is 'over the horizon' of the
surface-and-sign-world (thus of perspectives) pertains to
'great problems and question marks'. 6. Access to this
extra-perspectival realm depends on a 'taste of reverence'.
Of course, these interim findings are still in need of
interpretation. In particular, we need to understand them in
the wider context of Nietzsche's relation to traditional
philosophical problematics.
KANT, SCHOPENHAUER, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE

ABSOLUTE
During his Basel years, when Nietzsche thinks about his
relation to philosophy and the philosophical tradition, it is
primarily in terms of Kant and Kantianism that he attempts
to situate himself. Like many thinkers of this period who
were breaking away from theology to embrace enlighten-
ment, Nietzsche sees Kant as the decisive philosopher for
modern times. The Nachlaß of 1872-1874, including such
well-known pieces as 'Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral
Sense', shows Nietzsche's attempt at philosophical self-
orientation in the sceptical, post-Kantian epoch.16 Kant had
discredited metaphysics and speculative theology. He had
shown that the Thing-in-itself is unknowable. More
controversially, however, Nietzsche takes the essential
Kantian lesson to be that, although scientific knowledge is
legitimated in relation to the world of physical phenomena,
it is devalued because it cannot attain the 'in-itself of
reality: metaphysical knowledge turns out to be impossible,
while scientific knowledge emerges as strictly subjective. In
this way the philosophical ideal of knowledge which has
determined the whole Western tradition since Plato is
undermined. The project of philosophical knowledge
founders on the alternatives of speculative pseudo-science
on the one hand, and subjectivism on the other.
Reacting to this new philosophical situation, Nietzsche
calls himself a 'philosopher of tragic knowledge' who
'finds the removed ground of metaphysics tragic but can
never satisfy himself with the colourful hurly-burly of the
sciences.'17 The common solution, which Nietzsche
repeatedly criticizes in the Nachlaß, is to throw oneself into
the special sciences, either without worrying about the
impossibility of absolute knowledge, or taking scientific
knowledge as an acceptable substitute. As Nietzsche puts it,
the positive sciences 'judge more and more according to the
degree of certainty and seek smaller and smaller objects.'18
They are not choosy about what they study, for the main
criterion is just that something be knowable. Nietzsche's

new kind of 'tragic philosopher', by contrast, has the task
of mastering the uncontrolled drive to knowledge which
has gained ascendancy in modern culture. Since this cannot
occur through old-style metaphysics, Nietzsche proposes a
new philosophical dignity for art.
Nietzsche's attitude to the Kantian critique of meta-
physics is frequently misunderstood in contemporary
commentary, particularly by those writers who see per-
spectivism as a radicalization of Kantian phenomenalism.
This puts Nietzsche, very misleadingly, on the trajectory
of that post-Kantian relativism which culminates in Der-
rida and other postmodernists. In fact, if Nietzsche is to be
judged by what the postmodernists would regard as
properly post-Kantian epistemological criteria (the per-
spectival character of truth), he would appear as pre-
Kantian or anti-Kantian. From his early period onwards,
and notwithstanding the influence of Lange, Nietzsche sees
Kant above all through Schopenhauerian lenses, i.e.
through lenses which still perceive a 'metaphysical need'. It
is already clear in The Birth of Tragedy that he has inherited
Schopenhauer's ambiguous attitude on the Thing-in-itself.
For Schopenhauer, the impossibility of representing the
Thing-in-itself implies on the one hand rejection of a priori
metaphysics, on the other hand rejection of positive science
as a vehicle of philosophical knowledge. On this latter
point, Schopenhauer docs not so much differ from Kant as
effect a shift of emphasis, picking up on an ambiguity
inherent in the Kantian philosophy itself. Because they
yield only representational knowledge, Schopenhauer
denies that the positive sciences can ever be a substitute for
metaphysics. For Kant himself, the only possible substitute
is his own transcendental philosophy which, rather than
providing knowledge of the Thing-in-itself, remains
reflection on the conditions of phenomenal knowledge.
There has been a tendency, beginning already before
Schopenhauer and lasting through to the present day, to
reduce Kant's philosophy to a theory of science, implicitly

assuming the cognitive supremacy of the exact sciences.
Schopenhauer sees the implications of Kant very dif-
ferently. If representational knowledge cannot gain access
to the Thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer contends, then there
must be some kind of non-representational knowledge
which can. The latter is what he calls intuition, i.e. inner
experience, as distinct from the outer experience of
empirical (Kantian) perception. '9
Schopenhauer believes in the possibility of an empirical
metaphysics, as long as 'experience' is not understood too
restrictively. This, he considers, was Kant's error. Kant had
assumed that because there could not be any objective
knowledge of the Thing-in-itself, it could not be known at
all. He had implicitly equated objective knowledge with
knowledge as such, he had made the standards of 'outer'
(scientific) experience govern all experience whatsoever. It
turns out, however, that even Schopenhauer's subjective
way to the Thing-in-itself cannot reveal the latter in all its
pristine nakedness. Whereas inner experience is free of the
spatial and causal determinations of outer experience, it is
still temporally structured, so that to this extent the Thing-
in-itself will always be veiled. Schopenhauer is actually
vacillating on this point. In the first volume of The World as
Will and Representation, we learn that the Thing-in-itself,
revealed through inner experience, is primal will, and
Schopenhauer has quite a lot to say about it. In the second
volume, however, we are told that will is only the way in
which the Thing-in-itself appears to our inner experience,
i.e. to beings whose subjectivity is constituted in such and
such a manner.20 If this is the case, no kind of metaphysic
can attain the Absolute, but inner experience will lead us as
close as humanly possible. Schopenhauer stresses,
however, that all the scientific (representational) knowl-
edge in the world will not bring us one step closer to
satisfying the innate 'metaphysical need' of human beings.
Nietzsche views the post-Kantian philosophical situation
against this Schopenhauerian background. This means that,
for Nietzsche «is for Schopenhauer, the Kantian critique of

metaphysics docs not abolish the Absolute as such, but only
precludes this from becoming an 'object of knowledge' in
the sense of'representation'. From the roles of the primal
One and the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy, it is clear
that the Absolute remains philosophically accessible. Like
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche derives relativistic consequences
from Kant only in respect of knowledge and not at all in
respect of truth. To be sure, Nietzsche describes himself as
a 'philosopher of tragic knowledge'. The difficulty he has
in dispensing with the word knowledge (Erkenntnis) shows
that some kind of insight is assumed, but this is an insight
of a different order to that provided by knowledge in the
usual sense. Kant had wanted to restrict knowledge in order
to make room for 'faith'. Nietzsche wants to do the same in
order to make room for tragic wisdom and 'the Dionysian'.
In both cases a realm of absolute value is intended: for Kant
the moral law, for Nietzsche the 'primal One' or 'life'
itself. Nietzsche repudiates the Kantian moral law not on
account of its absolute status but because of its moral
status, because he sees it as implying that the essence of
reality is 'good' and in some sense 'rational'. Kant will
always remain for Nietzsche an idealist, a rationalizer of
Christian moral prejudices, someone who projects his own
needs and wishes onto reality. By contrast, Schopenhauer's
'de-theologized' Kantianism, in which the world becomes
merely a blind, meaningless upsurge, appealed to Nietzsche
from the beginning. Notwithstanding his rejection of
Schopenhauer's attempt at a theory of will in Book Two of
The World as Will and Representation, it is at bottom this same
will which appears as the primal One of The Birth of
Tragedy.
For Nietzsche, tragic art serves a philosophical purpose,
and thus, in an essential sense, serves 'truth'. It is easy to fall
into confusions here because of Nietzsche's vacillating
terminology. Such concepts as knowledge, truth and the
Absolute are so laden with the weight of the Platonist-
intellectualist tradition that it is initially difficult to give

them new meanings, or to extricate a core meaning which
one wants to retain. Schopenhauer, who like Nietzsche also
seeks to break from intellectualism, refuses to use such
terms as 'Being' and 'the Absolute', because he sees them as
contaminated with Hegelianism. But in the end these are
not altogether inappropriate ways of referring to the
Schopenhauerian will. Once the systematic intentions of
Schopenhauer are understood, these terminological issues
become less important. One can see that will is not the same
as Being or the Absolute if these latter imply (as with
Hegel) something accessible to the rational intellect. But if
these terms are revised to mean a base level of reality,
'primordial' reality, so to speak, one can admit them.
Nietzsche often finds himself in terminological embarrass-
ment. It is a cliché that one can quote Nietzsche in selective
fashion to almost any effect. This does not mean that one
should ignore his terminology and avoid quotations. What
is needed is close attention to the systematic interconnec-
tions of his ideas.
Nietzsche sees art not as an alternative to truth, but as an
alternative way of expressing truth. However, what does
Nietzsche mean by art? It may seem that the dichotomy
between art and science is adequate to explain what
Nietzsche intends. A difficulty emerges when we remem-
ber that, for Nietzsche, science too is 'artistic' in the sense
that all concept formation is metaphorical. It will not do to
say that science deals with reality, while art is concerned
with appearance: this would imply the pre-Kantian idea
that scientific (or metaphysical) concepts can correspond to
Being-in-itself. The difference which Nietzsche has in
mind is that art strives for beauty, whereas the 'artistic'
activity of science serves utility. In The Birth of Tragedy,
Nietzsche says that 'only as an aesthetic phenomenon is
existence and the world eternally justified. >2t This is
sometimes taken as the purest kind of aestheticism: realiz-
ing that reality is unknowable, that the very idea of
correspondence between concept and object is non-sensi-

cal, the 'pathos of truth' is aestheticized, one saves oneself
from epistemological despair by giving oneself over to
beauty, or better, one becomes beautiful (a work of art)
oneself. But where does this leave the original insight that
reality is unknowable? Is it really aestheticism when a
certain kind of aesthetic experience (the Dionysian) is
asserted to possess the power of justification? I shall not
linger over terminological questions. What is important to
realize is that, for Nietzsche, 'beautiful appearance' is
beautiful only on account of its relation to the primordial
ground of reality. Different forms of art are adequate in
varying degrees as expressions of this primal One.22 As
such they are in varying degrees truthful or untruthful.
Nietzsche's writings as a whole attempt to forge a closer
link between philosophy and art than has been customary
within the philosophical tradition. To understand this
correctly, however, the notion of aestheticism is less
helpful than the distinction between verbal and pre-verbal
thought observed in the previous section. We must also
distinguish between the verbalization of pre-verbal
thought, and thought which is verbal in an originary sense.
The former still counts as 'intuitive' thought for
Nietzsche, while the latter is considered 'abstract', 'concep-
tual', and 'metaphysical'. In the first case the thought
always exceeds what is available in the verbal expression,
while in the second case it is identical with this. Because
verbal thought is actually constituted within intersubjectivc
relations, there is in principle no difficulty of comprehen-
sion at this level. Intuitive thought, however, is capable not
only of verbalization in the strict sense (words), but may be
symbolically expressed in a variety of ways, as both verbal
and non-verbal art. The essence of Nietzsche's aestheticism
is that the symbolic rendition of pre-verbàl thought
requires artistry. Whereas science requires analytical ability
and can be learned, philosophy involves an irreducibly
irrational dimension which he calls, following
Schopenhauer, the quality of'genius'.
In recent literature on Nietzsche, much attention has been

paid to the posthumously published essay 'On Truth and
Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense' (1873). This has proved a
favoured source for the perspectivist commentators, for
whom even the early Nietzsche is an incipient postmoder-
nist who abolishes truth with a capital T, sees metaphysics
as serving authoritarian structures of power, and equates
the denial of the Absolute with liberation. However, if the
essay is read against the background provided thus far, a
very different interpretation will result.23 There is no
denying that in 'Truth and Lies', as well as in many other
writings from the same period, Nietzsche takes a critical
attitude to 'truth'. Our difficulty is to determine which
concept of truth he rejects, and which, if any, he accepts. A
clue comes early in the essay where Nietzsche asserts that
'the intellect, as the means for the preservation of the
individual, unfolds its principle powers through dissimula-
tion.'24 This is a straightforward borrowing of
Schopenhauer's doctrine that the intellect knows only the
world as representation. Whether representation is deter-
mined by invariant structures of subjectivity (as with
Schopenhauer) or by the conventions and metaphors of
which Nietzsche speaks throughout the essay, makes no
essential difference. The point, for Nietzsche as for
Schopenhauer, is that the intellect has no access to the
Absolute, and does not need such access, because it serves
practical functions and nothing more. If no attention is
paid to what 'intellect' means within this specifically
Schopenhauerian framework, if the distinction between
intellect and intuition is simply overlooked, then the
ground is laid for a total miscomprehension of Nietzsche's
essay. This is what happens in the case of the postmodernist
authors: Nietzsche's critique of intellectual truth, a critique
which is also present in the writings on the Presocratics and
in The Birth of Tragedy, is mistaken for a critique of truth as
such. What Nietzsche wants to criticize in this essay is not
the kind of'dogmatism' which would deny 'perspective',
but, quite explicitly, the assumption that 'language is the

adequate expression of all realities.'25 Only by forgetting
the conventionality of language, Nietzsche wants to show,
can one imagine oneself to 'possess' the truth in the sense of
'adequate expression' or 'correspondence'.
The critique of abstract, conceptual and linguistic truth
which one finds in 'Truth and Lies' cannot be taken as a
critique of truth per se because it is inapplicable to precisely
that kind of intuition which Nietzsche (implicitly in this
essay and explicitly elsewhere, particularly in the lectures
on the Presocratics) connects with philosophical truthful-
ness. Only if the evidence for this connection is ignored
can the conflict between abstract thought and intuition be
taken as a conflict between different styles in the sense
maintained by the postmodernists.26 Nietzsche does say, in
'Truth and Lies', that the abstract thinker and the intuitive
thinker 'both desire to rule over life: the former, by
knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of
foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter by disregard-
ing these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero", counting as
real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and
beauty.' 27 If these are two styles, however, the choice
between them cannot avoid implicit reference to truth. As
Nietzsche explains, 'the man who is guided by concepts and
abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off
misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for him-
self from these abstractions', whereas the intuitive man
'reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing
illumination, cheer, and redemption (Erhellung,
Außteiterung, Erlösung)'. This is the kind of language which
Nietzsche uses of the philosopher. One Nachlaß fragment
from this period states that the philosopher wants 'his own
transfiguration and redemption (Verklärung und Erlösung).
The will strives after purity and enoblement (Reinheit und
Veredelung): from one level to another'.28 Another frag-
ment asserts that 'the will to existence (der Wille zum Dasein)
uses philosophy for the purpose of a higher form of
existence (höheren Daseins/arm)'.29 To say that the dif-

ference between the intuitive and the abstract man is one of
diverging styles (or perspectives) does not do justice to
Nietzsche's ranking of these two kinds of men, to his view
that the existential stance of the intuitive man is higher than
that of the abstract man. This stance is precisely what
Nietzsche understands by the 'truthfulness' of the philoso-
pher.
The particular stance of the philosopher continues to
occupy Nietzsche in the 1875 Nachlaß. Above all, it is a
certain kind of 'individualism' which concerns him: 'man
remains an individual only within three forms of existence:
as philosopher, as saint and as artist'.30 Even Christianity,
Nietzsche points out, demands that each individual seek his
own 'blessedness' (Seligkeit), but the vast majority of
people have so little sense of themselves that they live, in
what is euphemistically called a 'modest' attitude, for
anonymous 'others', for 'society' and 'public opinion'. In
contrast to this general situation, 'it is characteristic of the
free man to live for himself and not for others'.31 The
difference between the philosopher and the scientist is
explicable in these terms: 'the individual who wants to
stand for himself needs ultimate knowledge (letzte Erkenntnis),
philosophy. The others need slowly accumulating scientific
knowledge'.32 Nietzsche distinguishes existence/or the sake
of existence itself from existence which possesses merely
instrumental value for something else: it is this self-
oriented existence which Nietzsche understands as philo-
sophical existence. On the other hand, such postmodernist
motifs as pluralism and multiplicity are not to be found in
any of Nietzsche's works (or Nachlaß) from any period.
Nietzsche does not criticize dogmatism to establish plural-
ism, but to make way for intuition, for the kind of
'ultimate knowledge' through which the individual exists
for his own sake. When he criticizes the Absolute of
abstract thought, this is because it is a pseudo-Absolute.
One must exercise care in reading Nietzsche, for his
conception of the Absolute is peculiarly difficult to grasp:

as we shall see in due course, its elusiveness belongs to its
essence. Nietzsche's conception of truth can seem like
relativism, just as, in his later writings, the death of God
can seem like nihilism. This appearance, however, depends
on traditional ways of thinking about truth and value.
Having effected a radical shift of ground, Nietzsche's
artist-philosopher and Übermensch emerge on the other side
of both relativism and nihilism. 33
The perspectivist commentators call for interpretations
of Nietzsche which avoid the totalization or closure of his
thought. On this score they have been especially severe on
Heidegger's conception of Nietzsche as the 'last metaphysi-
cian' who thinks the Being of beings as will to power. Such
a view, they consider, is dogmatic, depriving Nietzsche's
thought of its multi-'facetedness'. Prescinding at this stage
from the specific question of Heidegger's Nietzsche, one
must ask whether all attempts to establish the unity of
Nietzsche's thought, to discover a centre from which all his
thinking flows, are necessarily dogmatic, or whether, on
the contrary, this latter charge evinces a basic mis-
comprehension of philosophy, perhaps even an hostility to
philosophy, an abandonment of thought and truth in
favour of the modern ideological value of pluralism.
Philosophy, as Nietzsche recognizes, is precisely totalizing
thinking, not in the sense of theoretical systems, but, as he
says in the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morals, as thinking
which proceeds from 'one will, one health, one soil, one
sun'. The idea that 'centering' Nietzsche's thought some-
how impugns the richness, complexity and ambiguity of
his writings, demonstrates only an inadequate understand-
ing of the One-many relation. If, as has been maintained in
this section, Nietzsche believes in a 'primal One' as the
essence of reality, this docs not mean that his attention is
diverted from the many expressions of this One, nor that
these expressions are dispensable. For Heraclitus, for Plato,
for Hegel, the One and the many form an indissoluble
Perspectivistn and its Limits 37
unity, and so it is also for Nietzsche. Of course, the specific

relation between the One and the many is different in each
of these thinkers. Nietzsche thinks of the One-many
relation in terms of the primal Dionysian upsurge objec-
tifying itself in the world of appearance. In this sense his
framework is essentially Schopenhauerian: for all his
reservations about philosophical pessimism, will remains
the most appealing metaphor, even into the late period.
Like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche believes that, notwithstand-
ing Kant, the Absolute is in a sense accessible for philoso-
phy, and in this sense is the sole 'object' (the Sache) of
philosophical thought.
BEING AND BECOMING

In the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes:
It seems that, in order to inscribe themselves in the

hearts of humanity with eternal demands, all great
things have first to wander the earth as monstrous and
fear-inspiring grotesques (Fratzen): dogmatic phi-
losophy, the doctrine of the Vedanta in Asia and
Platonism in Europe, was a grotesque of this kind. Let
us not be ungrateful to it.34
This typical Nietzschean statement, full of ambiguity as it

is, may help to clarify my findings in the previous section.
There would be no difficulty in pulling out of Nietzsche's
texts quotations to show that, in his view, the Absolute and
the Thing-in-itself are metaphysical 'grotesques'. The
interesting question is whether they nevertheless express
'eternal demands'. Enough evidence has already been
presented to indicate that this is indeed the case. Although
Nietzsche writes against the metaphysical tradition,
although he is convinced that this tradition harbours much
that is poisonous and destructive for the human spirit, he is
unwilling to pronounce upon it a final condemnation. This
is not only because he realizes the difficulty of breaking
free from a tradition which has determined the structure of

Western thought for over two millennia. Nor has it
anything to do with romantic 'nostalgia', a convenient
psychological explanation which can be used to justify
minimizing whatever one does not like in Nietzsche.
Fundamentally, Nietzsche's ambivalence about the meta-
physical tradition stems from his love for eternity, a love
perhaps most poignantly expressed in the 'Song of Yes and
Amen' at the end of Zarathustra III, but evident throughout
his writings. As a lover of eternity, Nietzsche will himself
always feel bound by eternal demands and will feel related
to whomsoever he takes to share this feeling. Such eternal
demands have their seat in conscience, as the voice of an
unfathomable but unavoidable 'thou shalt':
But there is no doubt that a 'thou shalt' still speaks to

us too, that we too still obey a stern law set over us -
and this is the last moral law which can make itself
audible even to us, which even we know how to live,
in this if in anything we too are still men of
conscience...it is only as men of this conscience that
we still feel ourselves related to the German integrity
and piety of millennia, even if as its most questionable
descendants, we immoralists, we godless men of
today, indeed in a certain sense as its heirs, as the
executors of its innermost will.35
As a man 'of this conscience' Nietzsche does not simply

turn away from the 'grotesques' of metaphysics, but
attempts to understand the eternal demands behind them.
This is Nietzsche's philosophical 'piety', something which
his postmodernist commentators cannot share insofar as
they reject the very notion of eternal demands as totalizing
and therefore dogmatic. No concept has been more central
in the metaphysical quest for eternity than that of Being.
Nietzsche's repudiation of this concept is well known, and
among the postmodernists is taken as one more indication
of his anti-dogmatic and perspectival approach to truth. In

the present section we shall see that the situation is
somewhat more complex. Although Nietzsche takes the
concept of Being as paradigmatic for what he wants to
overcome in philosophy, he also has difficulty in ridding
himself of it. The reason for this is that Being is not
necessarily a metaphysical concept (in Nietzsche's sense) at
all, but a way of indicating the ultimate 'object' of all
eternal demands.
Nietzsche's early lectures on the Presocratic philosophers
reveal him as a 'Heraclitean' who opposes the living flux of
Becoming (Werden) to the frozen pseudo-reality of Par-
menidean Being (Sein). It should be noted, however, that
while identifying very closely with Heraclitus' 'complete
repudiation of Being',36 Nietzsche has no reservations in
embracing the Heraclitean logos as 'the inner, unifying
lawfulness' of Becoming.37 Nietzsche equates a Heracli-
tean denial of Being with a denial of 'things', but he
reconciles this with the logos as the law behind the flux, as
'the One' (das Eine) of which all coming-into-bcing and
passing-away provide a 'continuous revelation' (fort-
währende Existenzoffenbarung).38 The One of Parmenides
and the One of Heraclitus are altogether different, because
'the multiplicity which according to Parmenides is a
deception of the senses is for Heraclitus the proper garb,
the form of appearance of the One, on no account a
deception: the One cannot appear in any other way.'39
Nietzsche criticizes Parmenides for the primacy he
accords to abstract thought and conceptualization: 'accord-
ing to Parmenides the content of our thinking is not at all
given in perception but comes from somewhere else, from
a supra-sensible world to which we have direct access
through thought.'40 The basic elements of Nietzsche's
critique of a Platonic-metaphysical 'higher-world' are
already visible in this statement. 'Thought' (das Denken), as
Nietzsche uses the word here, means the operations of
abstraction. Against the Parmenidean doctrine of Being,
Nietzsche appeals to the Kantian critique of knowledge, to

the point that thought is only capable of grasping reality
according to pre-determined forms: 'Through words and
concepts we can never penetrate behind the wall of
relations, for example into some fantastic primal ground
of things and even in the pure forms of sensibility and of
understanding, in space, time, and causality, we cannot
attain anything resembling a veritas aeterna'.41 Nietzsche
sees Parmenides as the first philosopher to declare the
sovereignty of the concept in the realm of truth, thereby
pronouncing the senses to be deceptive and setting up 'that
quite erroneous division between "spirit" and "body"
which, especially since Plato, has lain upon philosophy like
a curse.'42 Parmenides accuses the senses of the false
impression that 'non-existent things also exist (auch das
Nichtseiende sei), that Becoming also has a Being (auch das
Werden habe ein Sein)'.43 Anticipating Plato, Parmenides
retreats into a realm of 'the palest and most remote
generalizations' where he himself becomes 'bloodless like
an abstraction and enmeshed everywhere in formulae'. 44
This belief in the authority of abstraction, in the identity of
Being and the concept, is for Nietzsche the fundamental
faith of the whole metaphysical tradition. But now,
Nietzsche believes, this faith of two thousand years has
been undermined by Kant and Schopenhauer, so that with
fresh vision it is possible to get back behind Parmenides and
Plato, to the pre-conceptual or 'intuitive' thought of
Heraclitus.45
Nietzsche does not deny the possibility of a veritas aeterna
as such. What he denies is that this is attainable 'through
words and concepts'. To 'know' the Heraclitean logos is the
same thing as to participate in the veritas aeterna. Such
knowing is also called 'intuition' by Nietzsche, but he does
not intend this in a subjective or psychological sense. What
is intuited is intuition itself, just 'that all-observing intui-
tion (jener alles überschauenden Intuition)...which reigns over
all contradictions and overlooks the universal polemos'.46
Philosophical wisdom does not come through an external

intellectual relation to an independently given reality, but
consists in 'becoming One (Eins zu werden) with this
observing Intelligence (anschauenden Intelligenz)'.*7
Nietzsche finds much more in Heraclitus than a Kantian
critique of speculative metaphysics: he finds a sublime
image of the philosopher, and of the philosopher's relation
to the world. Heraclitean truth is participation in that which
is common to all existing things. Although the logos rules
over them, human beings typically believe only in their
own private opinions: they are, as Heraclitus says, 'asleep'
or 'drunk'. Unphilosophical human beings, unalert to the
logos, failing to understand it 'either before they have heard
it or after they have heard it', live in the untruth. 48
Nietzsche is thoroughly in sympathy with the Ephesian
philosopher's low opinion of the 'the many', praising
Heraclitus for his 'highest form of pride' and his 'involun-
tary identification of himself and the truth'. 49 This pride is
not personal arrogance, because Heraclitus' statement 'I
searched out myself, and his conviction that wisdom does
not come from listening to many opinions or from
learning many things, presuppose the logos as an all-
encompassing Intelligence in which any human being, if he
only be 'awake', can participate.50
This contraposition of Parmenidean Being and Heracli-
tean Becoming is not a contrast between absolute and
relative truth, but between different kinds of absoluteness.
Parmenides, as Nietzsche understands him, equates truth
with absolute knowledge in the sense of conceptualization
and abstraction. This kind of knowledge is governed by the
criterion of certainty: the concept is supposed to grasp
(begreifen = griefen) and fix the object of knowledge. The
intellect serves the species as well as the individual by
forming concepts, by allowing experience to be articulated
in words: 'Every word becomes immediately a concept in
so far as it stands precisely not for the unique and
absolutely individualized primordial experience (ganz und
gar individualisierte Urerlebnis) to which it owes its origin, as

a kind of remembering, but simultaneously for countless
more or less similar but strictly speaking never identical
cases.'51 What counts as truth in the realm of the intellect is
the assimilation of different cases under a single word.
This is dissimulation, however, because it is unfaithful to
what is given in the flux of Becoming. Words and concepts
are 'metaphors' because they do not stand for anything 'in-
itself but reflect conventions of social life. All conceptual-
izations are abstractions which remove Becoming from the
power of human comprehension. The greatest abstraction
of all is the concept of Being, to which Parmenides is
driven by his desire for absolute (non-conventional, non-
metaphorical, but still conceptual) certainty.
For Nietzsche, conceptualization can achieve nothing
more than the schematization of reality: it is not capable of
philosophical insight. The conceptual truth sought by
Parmenides presupposes an adequacy relation between
intellect and object which cannot obtain: 'the adequate
expression of the object in the subject appears to me a
contradictory un-thing: for between two absolutely dif-
ferent spheres there can exist...at best an aesthetic relation,
a gesturing rendering (andeutende Übertragung), a stammer-
ing translation (nachstammelnde Übersetzung) into a quite
foreign tongue'.52 Rather than attempting, after the man-
ner of Parmenides, to intellectualize truth, the Heraclitean
philosopher is lead by intuitions 'before which man is
struck dumb, or speaks solely in metaphors and unheard of
concept-combinations (unerhörten Begriffsfugungen).'53 The
philosopher speaks in this way because he realizes the
general inadequacy of all language, even his own 'unheard
of language, for expressing the logos. By so speaking, by
indicating that the nature of the instrument and the purpose
for which it is now employed are fundamentally at
variance, the philosopher hopes to gesture at a truth which
exceeds all linguistic comprehensibility. It is important to
realize that Nietzsche does not favour speaking in 'meta-
phors and unheard of concept-combinations' just for its
own sake. He does not mean that, because no form of

language can achieve an adequate expression of the logos,
every form of language is in general permissible, and that
the more daring, the more experimental this is, the better.
In Heraclitean terms, only those 'metaphors and concept-
combinations' which are founded on a genuine intuition of
the logos are of any value in philosophy. At the same time,
there can be no intersubjective procedure for distinguishing
between what is genuinely founded in the logos and what is
not: such procedures exist only within conceptual know-
ledge, where conventions and definitions provide a fixed
point of reference. For Nietzsche, the value of any piece of
philosophical discourse, in whatever kind of language, is
assessed by intuition and in no other way.
Eugen Fink writes that 'Nietzsche's encounter with
Greek philosophy is peculiar. The fundamental ontological
problematic of the Greeks appears not to touch him at
all.'54 Similarly, Heidegger remarks in several places that
Nietzsche uncritically takes over the hackneyed and
ontologically fallacious opposition between Being and
Becoming.55 A reading of the lectures Philosophy in the
Tragic Age of the Greeks will confirm that, by and large,
Nietzsche interprets the difference between Parmenides
and Heraclitus in terms of the Schopenhauerian distinction
between abstract thought and intuition. Heraclitean
Becoming is explained by reference to Schopenhauer's idea
of intuitively apprehended will,56 while Parmenidean
Being is rejected on Kantian grounds, as evincing the
'untutored naivety of the critique of the intellect' of
Presocratic times.57 In the present context, we are con-
cerned not with the historical-philological accuracy of
Nietzsche's interpretations but with what they show about
his own thought. On this score, it is noteworthy that,
unless Nietzsche has changed his mind in the one year
between The Birth of Tragedy and Philosophy in the Tragic
Age of the Greeks, his rejection of Being is not meant as
inconsistent with (Dionysian) affirmation of the primal
One. It is easy to fall into error on this point, because in the

former work, the Primal One seems to be the Thing-in-
itself, whereas in his lectures on the Greeks it seems that the
latter is associated with Parmenides and is no longer
admissible. But as we have already seen, Nietzsche equates
the primal One with the Thing-in-itself only in a loose
sense, i.e. only in the sense that it is the primal 'reality'. In
his view, the Thing-in-itself is strictly speaking a concep-
tual posit, the grounding posit of the abstract thinker. If
The Birth of Tragedy had assumed the Thing-in-itself in this
strict sense, its language would have been theoretical-
discursive, which it is not: it is 'aesthetic' in the ambiguous
sense earlier discussed. When considering The Birth of
Tragedy, one must not look for a nicely smoothed out
philosophical terminology but must attend to the all-
pervasive theme of primordiality. Despite vacillating ter-
minology, Nietzsche continually reinforces the point that
Dionysian truth acquaints us with something absolute.
Nietzsche does not want to be taken as a Parmenidean
metaphysician when he says that the Dionysian brings us
into contact with 'the truly existent primal One' (das
Wahrhaft/Seiende und Ur-Eine),5" or that the voice of the
Dionysian lyrist 'sounds from the depth of Being' (tönt aus
dem Abgründe des Seim),59 or that the Dionysian experience
provides 'true knowledge' (wahre Erkenntnis) of'the horror
or absurdity of Being' (das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des
Seins).™ Nietzsche docs not want to be a metaphysician of
the intellect, but he calls himself an 'artist-metaphysician'
because what he seeks to express is 'primordial reality' and
by no means an optional 'perspective' on the world.
Nietzsche's 'repudiation of Being' is further clarified by
the aphorisms collected under the heading 'Thing-in-itself
and Appearance' in Book Three of The Will to Power. Since
all these post-date Zarathustra, they cannot be intended as
inconsistent with the resurrected idea of the Dionysian and
other quasi-mystical motifs such as 'eternal return'.
Nietzsche objects to Kant's distinction between appearance
and Thing-in-itself because Kant himself 'rejected as

impermissible making inferences from phenomena to a
cause of phenomena - in accordance with his conception of
causality and its purely intra-phenomenal validity.'61 This
criticism is not original to Nietzsche: it had been widely
made in Kant's own lifetime and was commonly regarded
as one of the principle difficulties with the Critique of Pure
Reason. Nietzsche was no doubt aware of it at the time he
was using the expression 'primal One' in The Birth of
Tragedy. It is essentially the same criticism that he had made
of Schopenhauer in an early (1867) fragment, to which
John Sallis has recently drawn attention, where Nietzsche
complains that Schopenhauer gives the will/Thing-in-itself
'determinations' which would be legitimate only at the
level of phenomena.62 We can conclude that Nietzsche's
own 'primal One' (or 'life'), although intended in some
sense as 'primordial reality', is not to be confused with any
kind of causal ground. This is reinforced by Nietzsche's
comment that 'One would like to know how things-in-
themselves are constituted (wie die Dinge an sich beschaffen
sind); but behold, there are no things-in-themselves.'63 The
question of how something is constituted is a question
which asks for knowledge, for determinations, for
qualities, properties or predicates. However, all these have
meaning only at the level of phenomena. If the 'primal
One' is a philosophically acceptable idea, it cannot be
legitimate to ask 'what' it is (as Schopenhauer asks, and
gives a highly differentiated answer, in respect of will as
Thing-in-itself) nor, which comes to the same thing, to ask
for (conceptual) knowledge of it. As Nietzsche says: 'The
question "what is that?" is an imposition of meaning from
some other viewpoint. "Essence", the "essential nature" is
something perspectival and already presupposes a multi-
plicity. At the bottom of it there always lies a "what is that
for me?'"64 The great error is the assumption that 'things
possess a constitution in themselves (eine Beschaffenheit an
sich)' for this presupposes that 'interpretation and subjec-

tivity are not essential, that a thing freed from all relation-
ships would still be a thing.'65
If metaphysics aims at a theory of reality which is
somehow non-perspectival, then Nietzsche is from the
very beginning a declared opponent of metaphysics. But if
we take metaphysics as seeking a more fundamental truth
than theoretical truth, i.e. a truth quite different to that of
things and their properties, then Nietzsche is indeed a
metaphysician. What Nietzsche seeks as an 'artist-meta-
physician' is the supra-theoretical truth of Becoming rather
than the theoretical truth of Being. Conceptual knowledge
falsifies the truth of Becoming into doctrines about stable,
unchanging things. This occurs under the rule of logic, and
functions in the service of man's biological needs.
Nietzsche does not believe that human beings can get along
without the concept ofthing. He believes that the world of
thing-ification, a world conditioned by language and needs,
is the natural medium of human existence. This world is
false, however, in a different sense to the falsity of the
metaphysical Thing-in-itself or metaphysical Being. These
latter notions are false because they rest on the philosophi-
cal error of absolutizing what is merely an exigency of
survival. Human beings live within the falsity of the thing-
world to the extent that they are oriented to survival and
pragmatic ends, but the metaphysics of Being is a philo-
sophical error which attempts to absolutize that which can
only be relative (to survival). For Nietzsche's project to
make sense, the truth of Becoming must in some manner
be accessible. If the animal nature of man cannot be
altogether cancelled, it must still be possible to go beyond
this: 'We must be raised up - and who are they, who raise us
up? They are those true human beings, those who are no longer
animal, the philosophers, artists and saints.'™'
The tendency of postmodernist commentary is to reduce
Nietzschean Becoming to an anti-dogmatic (perspectivist)
motif. From my considerations thus far, it is clear that this
is an erroneous view. To be sure, it is not wrong to

emphasize that for Nietzsche all interpretations are per-
spectives. What is wrong is to take this as implying that all
truth is perspectival. Nietzsche intends exactly the
opposite. The fact that interpretation is perspectival means
that truth in the philosophical sense cannot be the truth of
interpretation, i.e. that it cannot be theoretical or discursive
truth of any kind. If, as Nietzsche insists, 'linguistic means
of expression are useless for expressing Becoming',67 this
does not mean that Becoming is altogether inaccessible and
inexpressible. It does not mean that philosophical truth is a
mistaken idea which must henceforth be recognized as
'arrogant' and 'dogmatic'. For how does Nietzsche see the
falsity of metaphysical-theoretical definitions of truth?
How does he 'know' that Becoming is not theoretically
knowable? These questions, if posed within perspectivism,
are unanswerable: Nietzsche's 'seeing' and 'knowing' can
be nothing more than a conflicting point of view. The way
out of this difficulty is the way out of perspectivism itself,
i.e. by reference to that supra-perspectival intuition which
Nietzsche presupposes from the very beginning, and out
of which all his writings flow, not as 'theoretical know-
ledge' but as philosophy.68 Nietzsche is convinced that
'each word of Heraclitus expresses the pride and majesty of
truth, but of truth grasped in intuitions rather than through
the rope ladder of logic.'69 While this intuitively
apprehended truth is absolute in the sense of primordiality,
because it is non-conceptual it remains inexpressible as
doctrine.
It might seem that Nietzschean Becoming, in the indi-
cated sense as the primordial object of philosophical
intuition, begins to resemble Being, in function if not in
content. This suspicion is supported by signs that
Nietzsche's metaphysical definition of Being is not the only
one he is prepared to entertain. In the third Untimely
Meditation, published only a year or so after his lectures on
the Presocratics, he writes:
This eternal Becoming (ewige Werden) is a deceitful

puppet-show.... That heroism of truthfulness
(Wahrhaftigkeit) consists in one day ceasing to be its
plaything. In Becoming everything is hollow, decep-
tive, flat and worthy of our contempt: the puzzle
which man has to solve can be solved only out of
Being (nur aus dem Sein), in So-being and not Other-
being, in the everlasting (im Unvergänglichen). Now he
begins to examine how deeply he has grown into
Becoming and how deeply into Being - a tremendous
task looms up before his soul: to destroy everything
which becomes and to bring to light everything which
is false.70
This passage, which appears to flatly contradict his more

well-known evaluation of Being and Becoming, should
warn us against any too hasty stereotyping of Nietzsche's
ontological views. Although Nietzsche here associates
Being with the 'heroism of truthfulness', whereas
elsewhere he accords this status to Becoming, this is not a
contradiction, but only indicates his basic hesitancy and
indecision in respect of ontological terminology. Whether
he calls it 'Being' on the one hand, or 'Becoming' on the
other, Nietzsche understands philosophical truthfulness as
oriented to a 'primordial reality' which in some sense is
'eternal' and capable of generating 'eternal demands'. A
much later passage from Book V (1887) of The Gay
Science, where Nietzsche is discussing aesthetic creativity,
points to the same conclusion. Nietzsche wants to dis-
tinguish creation which is prompted by 'desire for Being'
from creation prompted by 'desire for Becoming'. But he
notices the following difficulty:
But both of these kinds of desire are seen to be

ambiguous when one considers them more
closely...The desire for destruction, change and
Becoming can be an expression of an overflowing
energy that is pregnant with future (my term for this,

as is known, is 'Dionysian'); but it can also be the
hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and under-
privileged, who destroy, must destroy, because what
exists, indeed all existence, all Being, outrages and
provokes them. To understand this feeling, consider
our anarchists closely.71
The major failing of postmodernist commentary on

Nietzsche - that it is content to rest in perspectivism as a
standing refutation of all philosophical 'arrogance' - may
indicate that, in these circles, Being is indeed viewed as an
outrageous and provocative concept. On the other hand,
one may ask whether Nietzsche could grant those who are
not so outraged and provoked their own 'desire for Being',
and whether this would really be incompatible with his
rejection of the metaphysical Being which he associates
with Plato and Parmenides. Finally, the opposition of
Being and Becoming seems thoroughly questionable when
in The Will to Power, referring to two central themes of his
later writings, Nietzsche says that 'to impose upon Becom-
ing the character of Being (dem Werden den Character des
Seins aufzuprägen) - that is the supreme will-to-power', and
also 'that everything recurs is the closest approximation of
Becoming to a world of Being (extremste Annäherung einer
Welt des Werdens an die des Seins): - high point of the
meditation.'72 These statements, which are important for
Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche, will receive fur-
ther discussion in Chapter Four below. It is already evident,
however, that Nietzsche's 'repudiation of Being' is more
questionable than appears at first sight.
TRUTH AND THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

In the Metaphysics (1010al2), Aristotle refers to a radical
Heraclitean philosopher Cratylus 'who finally did not think
it right to say anything but only moved his finger'.
Nietzsche does not follow Cratylus' example, but despite
his large literary output, there is no thinker who is more

conscious than Nietzsche of the difficulty, if not the
outright impossibility, of philosophical communication.
As he puts it in Twilight of the Idols:
We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of

ourselves when we communicate. Our true experi-
ences are not garrulous. They could not communicate
themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We
have already grown beyond what we have words for.
In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it
seems, was devised only for the average, medium,
communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized
himself by speaking. 73
For Nietzsche, language and concept formation serve the

needs of the herd (or herd self) rather than the individual,
and hence cannot be the medium of philosophical truth.
Becoming, the peculiar 'object' of philosophical thought,
ceases to be what it is when it takes on determinate
conceptual form: strictly speaking one cannot even say 'it'
or 'is' of Becoming, hence Cratylus' quandary. Nietzsche
does not remain silent, but his writings (especially in the
later period) abound in warnings to distrust all words,
including his own. He refuses to be held to account for
what he has written, and becomes progressively more
convinced of its necessary miscomprehension:
He who has sat alone with his soul day and night, year
in and year out, in confidential discord and dis-
course... finds that his concepts themselves at last
acquire a characteristic twilight colour, a smell of the
depths and of must, something incommunicable and
reluctant which blows cold on every passer-by. The
hermit does not believe that a philosopher-supposing
that a philosopher has always been first of all a hermit
- has ever expressed his real and final opinions in
books: does not one write books precisely to conceal

what lies within us? - indeed, he will doubt whether a
philosopher cow W have 'final and real' opinions at all.74
The postmodernist commentators give much emphasis to

Nietzsche's disavowal of final opinions, but they mis-
construe this as equivalent to their own pluralistic anti-
dogmatism. If Nietzsche's texts do not contain final
opinions, this means, on their account, that different texts
with different opinions are always permissible. Schrift
calls this 'interpretative pluralism'.75 Derrida thinks of it as
the necessary plurality of styles.76 Nehamas takes it to
imply that 'there is no view of the world that is binding on
everyone'.77 These commentators see the impossibility of
any final perspective as following from the open space of
perspectivity, taking Nietzsche's statement that 'facts are
precisely what there is not, only interpretations'78 as an
invitation to the infinite task of'writing'. 79 All this misses
the essential point. Although Nietzsche rejects facts in the
sense of things or states of affairs which correspond to
concepts, he does not mean that the philosopher has no
access to that primordial reality which he calls 'Becoming'.
Such access, in Nietzsche's view, is not to be had through
interpretations if by this is meant the kind of conscious
thought which is linguistically determined, but rather
through pre-conscious or intuitive thought. His point is not
simply that purported facts must henceforth be recognized
as interpretations, but, more radically, that the truth of
philosophy cannot be linguistically expressed and therefore
cannot consist in interpretations at all. He refuses final
opinions not on the grounds that there are (or should be)
equal rights to all perspectives, but because any perspective
whatsoever is limited to the 'surface-and-sign-world'. Far
from supporting a pluralistic flowering of writing and
styles, Nietzsche disavows all writing and every style
which is not oriented to the Sache of philosophy and to
truth in the philosophical sense. Because 'true experiences
arc not garrulous', he calls for less writing in general and

for more intuition.s<)
The inability of writing to convey his philosophical
meaning often leads Nietzsche to consider whether he
should not have used another medium to express himself,
the medium of music. Nietzsche's youthful aspirations to a
musical career arc well known, as is his association with
Wagner from the late 1860s till the mid-1870s. As late as
1882 he can still remark, in a letter to the conductor
Hermann Levi, that 'perhaps there has never been a
philosopher who is in such a degree a musician as I am',
adding that he is fundamentally a 'frustrated musician'. 81
In his early period, Nietzsche shares with Wagner an
admiration for the philosophical justification of music
presented by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and
Representation: the idea that music is the 'unmediated
objcctivation of will' plays a central role (albeit under
certain modifications) in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche
then wonders, in the 'Attempt at Self-Criticism' attached
to the new (1886) edition of this book, whether he 'should
have sung and not spoken'.82 He attaches to The Gay Science
a 'Prelude in Rhymes' and an 'Appendix of Songs'. The
climax of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is 'The Song of Yes and
Amen'. In the last aphorism of The Gay science, we read:
I hear all around me the most malicious, cheerful and
koboldish laughter: the spirits of my book are attack-
ing me, pull my ears, and call me back to order. 'We
can no longer stand it', they shout at me; 'away, away
with this raven black music! Are we not surrounded
by bright morning? And by soft green grass and
grounds, the kingdom of the dance? Has there ever
been a better hour for gaiety? Who will sing a song for
us, a morning song...?83
In The Case of Wagner, he writes:
Has it been noticed that music liberates the spirit? gives
wings to thought? that one becomes more of a
philosopher the more one becomes a musician? — The

grey sky of abstraction rent as if by lightning; the
light strong enough for the filigree of things; the great
problems near enough to grasp; the world surveyed as
from a mountain. -1 have just described the pathos of
philosophy.84
It is this 'pathos of philosophy' which is incommunicable in

words. On the other hand, if this pathos is indeed
communicated in Nietzsche's writings, the latter must
themselves be understood extra-discursively, in a sense as
'music'. Nietzsche indicates as much. In Ecce Homo he calls
his Zarathustra 'eloquence become music' and a 'dithyramb
on solitude'.85 His 'style', so he tells us, tries to communi-
cate an 'inward tension of pathos', but whether this actually
occurs depends on whether there are 'ears capable and
worthy of the same pathos'.86 One does not understand
Zarathustra unless one sees (or 'hears') beyond the words
that are contained in it, one does not comprehend its 'truth'
if one searches for it in these words themselves indepen-
dently of their 'rhythmical' effect.
The 'Yes-saying pathos' of Nietzsche's philosophy is a
kind of'attunement' (Stimmung) in the sense that Heidegger
gives this term (sometimes translated as 'mood') in Being
and Time: not as a psychological accompaniment to philo-
sophical thought, not as an external and ethereal
'atmosphere' which surrounds it, but as originally disdosive,
as opening up (and holding open) the Sache with which the
philosopher is concerned.87 In Nietzsche's case, what
language and theory cannot reveal becomes accessible in
Dionysian 'intoxication' or 'gay' science. Since the essence
of reality is the terrible Dionysian abyss, the intellectual
optimism of Socratic rationalism is philosophically false. It
is false because it is a non-attunement to Dionysian reality,
because within the particular kind of existential stance
which it is, this reality cannot emerge. For Nietzsche in The
Birth of Tragedy, it is through the 'Dionysian dithyramb'
alone that the primal One can achieve expression: although

the lyric poet uses 'Apollinian' metaphors, the specifically
tragic effect depends on the ability of Dionysian melodies
to set the hearer 'into motion'. The Dionysian reveller does
not intellectualize tragic wisdom but 'dances' it. This
symbol of the dance, ubiquitous in Nietzsche's writings,
indicates not only that philosophical truthfulness is a kind
of activity (or 'stance', as I have been saying) but conveys
something of the celebratory nature of this activity. The
'object' of Dionysian celebration, whatever we may call it,
cannot be independently described or made available for
theory, for this would mean entering into a quite different
(non-celebratory) kind of stance. There can be no greater
barrier to communication than the different attunements
to reality which belong to different stances. This is a
familiar experience in everyday life, but so entrenched is
the theoretical conception of truth that its philosophical
import is overlooked.
It may be objected that, in the end, Nietzsche remains a
'writer', that his philosophy is passed on to us in the form
of written texts and should not be sought elsewhere.
However sensible and sound this observation may appear
to be, it begs the essential question, falling back into the
epistemological-theoretical framework which Nietzsche is
trying to overcome. Of course, Nietzsche's texts (together
with other written reports of his life and thought) are the
only testimony which we possess of his philosophical
activity, but when we reify these texts, when we think of
his philosophy as 'in' these texts themselves, their testi-
monial character, which Nietzsche himself never tires of
stressing, is lost sight of.88 Such reification appears a
perfectly natural and justifiable procedure because within
the mainstream metaphysical tradition, and particularly in
the modern scientific age, philosophy is considered as a
'theory' of the world, whose 'validity' is to be assessed
according to the intersubjective protocols of conceptual-
theoretical discourse. It is thus assumed that the 'meaning'
of Nietzsche's philosophy will emerge from a thorough

examination of the internal relations of all his central
concepts. But although meticulous and patient attention to
detail is necessary in reading his texts, Nietzsche is very
much aware that this alone will not lead to comprehension.
The kind of reading which Nietzsche wants is not just
'philological': it must also be 'philosophical'.89 As the
postmodernists emphasize, Nietzsche can be read in many
different ways and to many different purposes, but this
(ultimately rather boring point) is not the issue. Nietzsche
can only be read in the way he himself intended if he is read
as a philosopher, i.e. only if the reader has the Sache of
philosophy all the while in view. It is precisely this Sache
(the 'primal One' or 'life', to use Nietzschean expressions)
to which all words and concepts are inadequate: unlike the
situation in theoretical discourse, the 'object' of philosophy
is not 'constructed' but must be given from the outset,
'given', moreover, in a mode of self-evidence prior to all
cognition as normally understood. The limitation of
language is that it cannot bring the Sache originally or
primordially into view, it cannot be the medium or vehicle
through which one in the first place 'becomes a philoso-
pher'. Since the Sache of philosophy is, to recall our earlier
findings, 'over the horizon' of the 'surface-and-sign-
world', a reading of Nietzsche texts which remains at this
latter level will not recognize it, and Nietzsche himself, as
he always feared, will be mistaken for what he is not. On
the other hand, if this Sache is indeed in view (in the case of
the 'right reader', as Nietzsche says) then his writings can be
understood in their proper testimonial character. This has
nothing to do with romantic sentimentalism, or with any
kind of psychological reductionism. Nietzsche gives testi-
mony to himself only as philosopher, and thus to the Sache
of philosophy itself. His writings do not theorize but
exhibit the situation of the philosopher in multifarious
aspects, particularly in a world which is 'unphilosophical'.
Nietzsche's writings pose problems, but problems which
are (provided that the Sache is in view) recognizable rather

than originally opened up in the texts themselves.
Ultimately, and despite his sometimes excessive literary
pride, Nietzsche considers his own writings to be of
secondary value:
For what things do we write and paint, we mandarins

with Chinese brushes, we immortalizers of things
which let themselves be written, what alone are we
capable of painting? Alas, only that which is about to
wither and lose its fragrance!...And it is only your
afternoon, my written and painted thoughts, for which
alone I have the colours, many colours perhaps, many
many-coloured tendernesses and fifty yellows and
greens and reds: - but no one will divine from these
how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks
and wonders of my solitude, you my old beloved -
wicked thoughts!90
TRUTH AND INTEREST

One of the things upon which the postmodernist commen-
tators most uncompromisingly insist is the 'interested'
character of Nietzschean truth: in rejecting the age-old
metaphysical shibboleth of 'disinterested truth', so it is
claimed, Nietzsche exposes the 'dogmatism' which would
disguise specific interests as universal. Jean-Luc Nancy
writes that 'in order to be able to begin to recognize
Nietzschean truth, one must begin by acknowledging,
without dissimulation or deception, the hidden evaluation
and the secret interestedness of truth, of all our truths.' 91
Derrida evinces the same attitude with his thesis of 'the a
priori link between philosophy and politics.'92 The 'secret
interestedness of truth' plays a fundamental role in the
project known as deconstructionism, where authoritative
definitions in all areas of life are 'unmasked' in their
relation to specific structures of power/interest. Within this
politicization of perspectivism, 'equal rights to all perspec-

tives' translates into 'equal rights to all interest-constella-
tions', i.e. into politico-ideological pluralism. Just as there
is no metaphysically guaranteed theory of the world, so
there is no metaphysical or supra-perspectival source of
political authority. The struggle between perspectives is at
bottom a struggle between different political forces,
between the opposed interests of different categories of
social actors.93 If Nietzsche himself does not seem to be a
political pluralist, a distinction can be made between his
reactionary 'political ideology' on the one hand, and 'the
internal integrity of his critical, postmodern insights' on
the other.94
This politicization of Nietzsche stems from the same
miscomprehension of perspectivism already revealed.
Nietzsche does indeed see perspectival truth as inherently
interested: this is a matter of definition for him. When he
'unmasks' a particular perspective, he finds a utility-value
behind its claim to authority, he finds a specific 'herd-
interest' at work. But because the postmodernist commen-
tators do not appreciate the difference between perspec-
tival truth and philosophical truth in Nietzsche, they do not
grasp the critical meaning of Nietzschean unmasking. On
their view, the absence of any supra-perspectival vantage
point means that unmasking takes place as a 'strategical' act
between perspectival interests. In reality, however,
Nietzsche sets out to unmask the interested and therefore
unphilosophical nature of sundry perspectival authority
claims, including claims made by 'so-called' philosophers
who declare their service to truth. Nietzsche does not
criticize authority in order to promote pluralism within the
'surface-and-sign-world', but insofar as the authority of
philosophy is usurped by interests which are extra-philo-
sophical. Acceptance of ('obedience to' would not be
putting it too strongly) the authority of philosophy is what
Nietzsche understands as 'decency': 'It is my fate that I have
to be the first decent (anständige) human being; that I know
myself to stand in opposition to the mendaciousness

(Verlogenheit) of millennia -1 was the first to discover truth
(Ich erst habe die Wahrheit entdeckt) by being the first to
experience lies as lies.'95 This is a different kind of decency
to that commonly recognized: 'when mendaciousness at
any price monopolizes the word "truth" for its perspective,
the really truthful man is bound to be called the worst
names.'96 Whoever ('the really truthful man') does not
show solidarity to commonly accepted interests will be
branded as 'immoral', or alternatively, as happens to
Nietzsche in postmodernist commentary, will be domesti-
cated, castrated and sent out to pasture with the herd.
We have seen that, for Nietzsche, the philosopher looks
'over the horizon' of all perspectives to the 'great problems
and question marks' attaching to human existence as such.
In this realm, what the postmodernists call 'interest' (and
Nietzsche calls 'herd utility') no longer operates.
Nietzsche's position is again rather similar to that of
Schopenhauer, who distinguishes between the 'representa-
tional' thought governed by utility-values (survival of
individual and species), and the philosophical intuition of
the 'pure, will-less subject'. Although Nietzsche criticizes
the Schopenhauerian will-less subject, his intentions in this
regard can be easily misunderstood. What Nietzsche
objects to in Schopenhauer is the philosophical pessimism,
the idea of will-denial as world-denial. But the will which
is affirmed in the tragic (and ostensibly anti-
Schopenhauerian) wisdom of Dionysus is by no means
'interested' will in the sense which Schopenhauer wants to
'deny', it is by no means the will of a herd-self as expressed
through a herd perspective. Similarly, although Nietzsche
insists, against the 'Schopenhauerian' ideal of selflessness,
that philosophy concerns the self and serves the self, this is
anything but an egoistic self which seeks its personal or
herd advantage. Schopenhauer's philosophy is built on a
granite foundation of anti-egoism and anti-utilitarianism,
and on these issues Nietzsche does not differ from him in
Perspeclivism and its Limits 59
the least. Philosophers, as Nietzsche understands them, are

governed by what he calls the 'pathos of distance':
It was out of this pathos of distance that they first seized

the right to create values and to coin names for values:
what had that to do with utility! The viewpoint of
utility is as remote and inappropriate as it possibly
could be in face of such a burning eruption of the
highest rank-ordering, rank-defining value judge-
ments: for here feeling has attained the antithesis of
that low degree of warmth which any calculating
prudence, any calculus of utility, presupposes - and
not for once only, not for an exceptional hour, but
for good.97
As for the pursuit of egoistic or herd advantage, Nietzsche

has this to say:
Common natures consider all noble, magnamimous

feelings inexpedient and therefore first of all incred-
ible. They blink when they hear of such things and
feel like saying 'Surely, there must be some advantage
involved; one cannot see through everything'. They
are suspicious of the noble person, as if he surrep-
titiously sought his advantage....What distinguishes
the common type is that it never loses sight of its
advantage, and that this thought of purpose and
advantage is even stronger than the strongest instincts;
not to allow these instincts to lead one astray to
perform inexpedient acts - that is their wisdom and
pride.98
Nietzschean unmasking is directed not against the idea of

philosophical truth as such, but against its all too frequent
abuse. The real philosopher, he considers, is an exception,
while those whom the public take as philosophers are just
'advocates who do not want to be regarded as such, and for
the most part cunning pleaders for their prejudices.'99 It is

quite comprehensible that Nietzsche, for whom philoso-
phy is the highest value, should be so preoccupied with
exposing false claims to wisdom; the same attitude is taken
by all defenders of philosophy, e.g. by Plato in The
Republic and other dialogues, when exposing the 'inter-
ested' character of sophistry. Like Plato, Nietzsche believes
that while the authentic philosopher is often 'misun-
derstood, misjudged, misindcntified, slandered, misheard
and not heard',1"" there are always many who are anxious
to lay claim to this title. It is necessary to expose the interests
of these false pretenders. When Nietzsche says that the
philosopher 'has today the duty to be mistrustful, to squint
wickedly up out of every abyss of suspicion', he is
speaking not of the common mistrust which is anxious on
behalf of its own herd advantage, but of philosophical
mistrust, of the mistrust of the philosopher who is aware
that interest is adept at disguising itself as truth."" The
postmodernist commentators, on the other hand, in con-
nection with their campaigns of deconstruction, do not
observe a distinction between philosophical suspicion and
suspicion governed by interest; indeed, there is no room for
such a distinction if it is always one perspective which
unmasks another.
In defense of the postmodernists, it may be suggested
that the 'interestedness' of Nictzschean unmasking consists
in something other than perspectival herd or ego advan-
tage. Might it be possible, after the manner of Mark
Warren, to sec Nietzsche's guiding 'interest' as 'free
agency', or 'power as subjectivity'? 102 In this case the
individualism of Nietzsche's philosophy would indicate his
concern with 'autonomy' and the politico-ideological
forces which inhibit its realization. Nietzsche would pro-
vide, as Warren puts it, an 'implicit critique of domination',
with his method of unmasking telling 'a political story
about the relation between oppression, culture, and the
constitution of subjects.' 103 While Warren in this way
draws parallels between Nietzsche and the Marxist critique

of ideology, other postmodernist authors incline towards
quasi-anarchistic politics. For Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche
'announces the advent of a new kind of politics', the
politics of the 'nomad' who wants to 'evade the codes of
settled people', particularly the codes of 'the despotic and
bureaucratic organization of the party or state appa-
ratus.'104 Derrida, in a move which has been particularly
influential, has attempted to make Nietzsche relevant for
the feminist critique of 'phallocentric' discourses: on his
view, Nietzsche shows that woman, 'precisely because she
does not believe in truth itself, because she docs not believe
in what she is, in what she is believed to be' occupies a
privileged position within the politics of truth: she is the
site of the 'untruth of truth'. 1 " 5 In this way woman is
credited with a 'universal' mission somewhat reminiscent
ofthat of the proletariat within Marxism.
But the difficulties of equating the 'interest' of
Nietzsche's philosophy with a particular perspectival inter-
est are not overcome by resorting to mythologies of
privileged subjectivity, whether Marxist, feminist or anar-
chist (the mythology of the disenfranchised and mar-
ginalized elements). If autonomy is posited as the universal
interest behind Nietzsche's thought, we must ask precisely
what kind of autonomy is intended. The postmodernist
commentators founder at this point, for their fear of
dogmatism prevents them from giving any positive mean-
ing to autonomy: to specify a 'freedom-to' would be
dogmatic, so in the last resort they must be content with the
negative (quasi-anarchistic) ideal of 'freedom-from'. This
is the kind of freedom Nietzsche is referring to when he
says that:
the longing for freedom, the instinct for the happi-
ness and the refinements of the feeling of freedom,
belong just as necessarily to slave morality and morals
as the art of reverence and devotion and the enthusi-
asm for them are the regular symptoms of an
aristocratic mode of thinking and valuating. 1()f>
For Nietzsche, the negative ideal of freedom expresses

nothing more than 'their [the anarchist's] total and
instinctive hostility towards every form of society other
than that of the autonomous herd'. lu7 Such negative free-
dom is reactive, proceeding from experienced repression,
exclusion or wounded dignity, and turning on the sources
of these, wanting 'liberation'. 10K It is accompanied by the
characteristic mistrust of the slave, the mistrust which
always suspects ulterior motives where values are spoken
of or commands issued. If it wants anything in particular
(which it often does not) this will be something thoroughly
perspectival, variable, changing from one moment to the
next. On Nietzsche's reckoning, liberation into herd auto-
nomy does not amount to any kind of liberation worth
mentioning. This does not make him into a political
reactionary, as Warren concludes. It indicates that his
'seriousness lies elsewhere':
For a few must first of all be allowed, now more than
ever, to refrain from politics and step aside a little:
they too arc prompted to this by pleasure in self-
determination; and there may also be a degree of pride
attached to staying silent when too many, or even just
many, are speaking. Then these few must be forgiven
if they fail to take the happiness of the many, whether
by the many one understands nations or social classes,
so very seriously and are now and then guilty of an
ironic posture; for their seriousness lies elsewhere,
their happiness is something quite different. 109
In what kind of self-determination, then, does the

Nietzschean philosopher take pleasure? The answer is given
in one of the most well-known mottos of Nietzsche's
writings, the imperative to 'become who you are'. 110 Yet
this answer is itself an enigma, open to many interpreta-
tions, including the pluralist injunction to 'do your own
thing'. A detailed discussion of the problem of the self in

Nietzsche will be postponed until Chapter Three, but in the
present context it may be noted that the postmodernist
commentators, by insisting on the comprehensive social
determination (perspectival constitution) of the self, i.e. by
refusing the distinction between the herd self and the
philosophical self, pass over one of the most profound and
intriguing questions of Nietzsche's philosophy (and not
only Nietzsche's), namely the question of how the univer-
sal is attainable through a process of individualization.
Within the framework of perspectivism, the individual has
simply no right to the universal, because this would imply a
point of view which is a 'view from nowhere'. As already
indicated, the solution of this difficulty is that supra-
perspectival truth (the 'universal' which is sought by the
philosophical self) is not any kind of 'view'. By the same
token, the supra-perspectival self is not 'interested' in the
same sense as the perspectival self, and indeed may not even
seem like a self at all, as normally understood.
If the Nietzschean philosopher can be said to have an
'interest', it is in human existence as such. This is to be
distinguished from the local, limited, perspectivally con-
stituted interests which occupy the herd. The former is the
concern of the 'intellectual' conscience, the latter are the
concern of the 'moral' or 'herd' conscience. ' n In an
aphorism from The Gay Science entitled 'The Intellectual
Conscience', Nietzsche says the following:
The great majority of people does not consider it

contemptible to believe this or that and to live
accordingly, without first having given themselves an
account of the final and most certain reasons pro and
con, and without even troubling themselves about
such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the
noblest women still belong to this 'great majority'.
But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to
me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates
slack feelings in his faith and judgements and when he

does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost
craving and deepest distress - as that which separates
the higher human beings from the lower. ' ' 2
This passage is difficult to reconcile with Nehamas'

contention that Nietzsche refuses 'to grade people and
views along a single scale'. 113 The opposite is true:
Nietzsche takes the uncompromising attitude that the only
thing which counts is the degree to which an individual is
governed by the intellectual conscience. Of course, the
'desire for certainty' of which Nietzsche here speaks is not
the theoretical certainty of Cartcsianism, it is not indicative
of foundationalism in the sense of an epistemologically
guaranteed view of reality. Nietzsche's desire for certainty
is the desire for something very epistemologically uncer-
tain indeed, for something which cannot be encountered
within the 'grasping' and 'securing' (i.e. utilitarian) struc-
tures of theoretical cognition. This means that the interest
of the philosopher is 'incomprehensible and impractical' by
the standards of herd interest. ' ' 4 To the question of why
one must enter into philosophical regions, Nietzsche is
content to reply, without reservation or embarrassment:
'That one wants to go precisely out there, up there, may be
a minor madness, a peculiar and unreasonable "you
must'". 115
It is Nietzsche's claim of a higher interest for the
philosopher which is behind his ill-deserved reputation for
personal arrogance. In fact, Nietzsche loathes nothing
more than intellectual and spiritual complacency. Nothing
strikes him as more ridiculous than the delusion of already
'possessing' the truth, but by the same token nothing strikes
him as more worthy of contempt than the resentful revolt
against philosophy and truth so characteristic of his own
time. Nietzsche is aware that there are many who applaud
the failure of dogmatic metaphysics out of a feeling of
revenge, out ofthat 'revenge against the spirit' which finds
nothing so outrageous than the claim to higher insight. 116

These are people who 'honourably, wrathfully,
revengefully represent by word and deed the unbelief m the
lordly task and lordliness of philosophy', who themselves
preach 'a timid epochism and abstinence doctrine: a phi-
losophy that does not even get over the threshold and
painfully denies itself the right of entry.' 117 Having unbur-
dened themselves of any relation to truth, such people
retreat into their own sphere of 'interests' secure in the
thought that they are no longer required to account for
themselves. Somewhat surprisingly, however, they still
want to be listened to as 'philosophers', and, in what
amounts to a kind of'higher dogmatism', they attempt to
make their own pluralism morally prescriptive. The pas-
sion of a moral purpose stands in place of true philosophi-
cal resolve:
O you good natured and even noble enthusiasts, I

know you! You want to win your argument against
us, but also against yourself, and above all against
yourself! and a subtle and tender bad conscience so
often incites you against your enthusiasm! How
ingenious you then become in the outwitting and
deadening of this conscience!... You drive yourself to
the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You
have to falsify history so that it may bear witness to
you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not
cast into the shade those of your idols and
ideals!...How you thirst for those moments when
your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification
and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxica-
tion, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and
beyond all doubting; when you decree: 'he who is not
beside himself as we are can in no way know what and
where truth is!' How you thirst to discover people of
your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual
vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your
deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory

of the sanctified lie! 1 I H
The great currency of the perspectivist Nietzsche has much

to do with the sacrosanctity of democratic pluralism in the
countries of his contemporary interpreters. But its roots go
deeper than this. For, as Nietzsche recognizes, the modern
culture of egalitarianism provides a perfect outlet, a
perfect moral justification, for the anti-philosophical senti-
ment of the majority, for the inevitable suspicion of
philosophy and truth among those for whom 'reality' is
defined by their own shifting 'interests'. Perspectivism
effects a domestication of Nietzsche's thought by subvert-
ing the authoritative character of philosophical truth.
Where there is no authority, there is no challenge, and in the
end, no seriousness either, no pcrserverence and no resol-
uteness. It has never been difficult to do what Derrida's
translator Gayatri Spivak recommends, i.e. to 'reverse
perspectives as often as possible.' 119 This has always been
the way of the non-philosophical majority who are moved
by many things, including a taste for 'variety', which are
other than truth. What is difficult is not to move laterally
within the shallows, but vertically into the depths. While
those who feel comfortable in the shallows may reassure
themselves on 'epistemológica!' grounds that 'there are no
depths', this will not convince a philosopher like Nietzsche:
he has experience, he has been down there.
2
Hierarchy of the Spirit
It is the problem of the order of rank of which we may say it is our problem,
we free spirits.'
The order of castes, the supreme, the dominating law, is only the
sanctioning of a natural order, a natural law of the first rank over which no
arbitrary caprice, no 'modern idea' has any power. In every healthy
society, chere can be distinguished three types of man of divergent
physiological tendency which mutually condition one another and each
of which possesses its own hygiene, its own realm of work, its own sort
of mastery and feeling of perfection. Nature, not Manu, separates from
one another the predominantly spiritual type, the predominantly
muscular and temperamental type, and the third type distinguished
neither in the one nor the other, the mediocre type - the last as the great
majority, the first as the elite.2
RANK ORDER AND VALUE

We have seen that, for Nietzsche, the philosopher attains to
a 'higher' form of existence than that of other human
beings. The 'pathos of distance' not only limits the
possibilities of communication open to the philosopher, it
not only detaches him from mundane herd involvements,
but it elevates him, it distinguishes him, it honours him as a
more 'worthy' human being. Nietzsche takes 'nobility' and
its counterpole 'plebianism' as philosophical categories.
Unlike the postmodernist commentators, who distribute
truths along a horizontal axis of perspectives, Nietzsche
distributes human beings, in their concrete forms of
existence, along a vertical axis of philosophical truthful-
ness, and thus along a vertical axis of'worth'. It is common
to speak of Nietzsche's 'aristocratic temperament', but this
68 Truth and Rédemption
kind of talk all too often amounts to a psychological

reductionism which is anxious to delete 'subjective' ele-
ments from his thought. As we shall see, Nietzsche does
not believe in 'hierarchy of the spirit' because he is an
aristocrat, but more the other way around: because of the
'hierarchical' nature of truth, he is forced to become an
aristocrat, to continually renew and reacquire his aristocra-
tic values.
Let us begin with a statement from the Genealogy of
Morals: 'All the sciences have from now on to prepare the
way for the future task of the philosophers: this task
understood as the solution of the problem of value, the
determination of the order of rank among values.^ Two
questions arise. First, what arc values? Second, in respect of
what are values to be ranked? Values do not exist just as
abstract ideals but as concrete practices, as specific modes of
living and acting. Throughout his works, Nietzsche ranks
in the sense that he 'evaluates' values, e.g. the values of the
religious life, political activity, money making, family
life, honour seeking, the pursuit of sensual pleasure,
scholarship and science. On the measure of rank, Nietzsche
gives various criteria. In one late fragment he says simply
'First question concerning order of rank: how solitary or
herd-bound (hcrdenhaft) one is/ 4 A passage from Beyond
Good and Evil invokes another theme familiar from my
previous discussions:
There is an instinctfor rank which is more than anything
else already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in
the nuances of reverence, which reveals a noble origin
and noble habits....He whose task and practice is to
explore the soul will avail himself of precisely this art
in many forms in order to determine the ultimate
value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to
which it belongs: he will test it for its instinct of
reference.5
It was noticed earlier how Nietzsche connects lack of
Hierarchy of the Spirit 69
reverence with blindness for the 'great problems and

question marks'. In another passage from Beyond Good and
Evil, we find that it is precisely one's fitness for the
'supreme problems' which determines one's spiritual rank:
In the last resort there exists an order of rank of states

of soul with which the order of rank of problems
accords; and the supreme problems repel without
mercy everyone who ventures near them without
being, through the elevation and power of his spir-
ituality, predestined to their solution. Of what avail is
it if nimble commonplace minds or worthy clumsy
mechanicals and empiricists crowd up to them, as they
so often do today, and with their plebian ambition
approach as it were this 'court of courts'. But coarse
feet may never tread such carpets: that has been seen to
in the primal law of things.6
Further, because the 'supreme problems' are accessible only

through a certain kind of suffering, rank order can 'almost'
be determined through the capacity for suffering:
The spiritual haughtiness and disgust of every human

being who has suffered deeply - how deeply human
beings can suffer almost determines their order of
rank - the harrowing certainty, with which he is
wholly permeated and coloured, that by virtue of his
suffering he knows more than even the cleverest and
wisest can know, that he is familiar with, and was
once 'at home' in many distant, terrible worlds of
which 'you know nothing!' ... this spiritual, silent
haughtiness of the sufferer, the pride of the elect of
knowledge, of the 'initiated', of the almost sacrificed,
finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself
against contact with importunate and pitying hands
and in general against everything which is not its equal
in suffering.7
What do solitariness, reverence, fitness for the supreme

problems and capacity for suffering signify? The answer
has already been indicated: Nietzsche's measure of rank is
truth. To avoid falling into epistcmological ways of
thinking, the term truthfulness may be preferable.
Zarathustra, who is surely a figure of the highest rank, is
said to be 'more truthful (wahrhaftiger) than any other
thinker', indeed 'his doctrine, and his alone, has truthful-
ness (Wahrhaftigkeit) as the highest virtue.' 8 On the other
hand, Nietzsche is by no means averse to speaking simply
of'truth' (Wahrheit): 'How much truth does a spirit endure,
how much truth does it dare? More and more that became
for me the measure of value.' 9 It is not so much the
terminology which matters as whether truth is understood
in an existential sense, as a stance towards and within
existence. What 'stance' means here still needs elucidation,
but we may anticipate by saying that, for Nietzsche, the
stance of truth(fulness) is that of'justice' (Gerechtigkeit). It
is the will to justice, so Nietzsche maintains in his early
essay on history, which distinguishes the genuine from the
mendacious truth-seeker. 10 The genuine philosopher ranks
(i.e. values, judges) according to justice, giving everything
what is in truth due to it, while the apparent philosopher is
driven by one or more of a variety of motives: e.g.
'curiosity, escape from boredom, cnviousness, vanity, play
instinct, drives which have nothing whatsoever to do with
truth.' 11 It is this sense of justice which allows the
philosopher to distinguish the supreme problems from
regional or trivial problems, and in the final event to accord
supreme value to philosophy itself.
The postmodernist commentators are not unaware that
rank order is a prominent motif in Nietzsche's writings.
But because it does not sit well with their prime
desideratum of pluralism, they adopt one or other of two
strategies (or a combination thereof) to deal with it. Either,
like Mark Warren, they consign it to Nietzsche's regrettable
'political views' and deny any organic connection with his
basic philosophical standpoint. Or, like Alexander

Nehamas, they try to subordinate the principle of rank
order to perspectivism itself, thus arriving at the absurd
notion of 'noble' and 'plebian' perspectives. Nietzsche
obviously does not speak in a very pluralist spirit when
comparing his own philosophy to other outlooks, but this,
according to Nehamas, only reflects his right to a forthright
and creative defense of his own perspective.12 The strat-
egies of Warren and Nehamas only indicate the embarrass-
ment of the postmodernists when faced with Nietzsche's
actual texts. Their extravagent attempts to explain away the
texts make Nietzsche into an advocate or rhetorician rather
than a philosopher: he must always be taken as saying
something which, according to his own principles, is
highly exaggerated and unreasonable. Besides such explicit
references to rank order as those just quoted, it can hardly
escape the notice of even the most casual reader that
metaphors of height and depth frequently occur in
Nietzsche's writings, specifically in connection with philo-
sophical insight. If Nietzsche were really a pcrspectivist in
the sense maintained by the postmodernist commentators,
then his rhetoric far exceeds what he is entitled to philo-
sophically, and it must be concluded that he is a very
arrogant and impertinent man.
It may also be noted that, once rank order is written out
of Nietzsche's philosophy in the manner of the postmoder-
nists, his critique of morality likewise disappears from
view. What we find under this rubric in Nietzsche's actual
texts is a critique ofthat morality of equality and levelling
which he associates with Christianity. On the other hand,
because the perspectivist standpoint of the postmodernist
commentators precludes substantive criticism, because
perspectivism can recognize only the formal metacritique
which deconstructs dogmatic definitions of truth, the
content of Nietzsche's critique remains occluded. All
deconstructive criticisms come to the same predictable
conclusion that a closure has been effected, that some
72 Tmtli and Rédemption
specific and contextual definition has been totalized. Since

at this level of abstraction any closure whatsoever is equally
objectionable, Nietzsche's substantive critique of morality
can be ignored, or can be referred to his suspect 'political
views'.
Although the idea of rank order appears politically
suspect to the postmodernist commentators, in Nietzsche's
writings it has, at bottom, nothing to do with political or
socio-economic categories: it is a rank order of the spirit.
To be sure, on quite frequent occasions, Nietzsche makes a
correlation between 'master morality' and those who are
political masters, as between 'slave morality' and those who
are political slaves. But this is a contingent and entirely
defeasible correlation. His examples are almost always
taken from ancient society (Greece and Rome) and are used
to illustrate virtues and vices which are independent of
politics as normally understood. Political metaphors are
used to clarify spiritual attitudes. Nietzsche does not
believe that free spirits will ever be political overlords or are
likely to occupy positions of socio-economic influence. He
is simply not concerned with such matters: as a philosopher
his 'seriousness lies elsewhere'. Rank order pertains to
individuals as psychological types: the relevant opposition,
to simplify in a manner which Nietzsche docs himself, is
between the 'ill-constituted' (and therefore resentful) types
on the one hand, and 'the well-constituted' (and therefore
philosophical) types on the other. ' 3 While membership of a
lowly socio-economic category may accentuate the resent-
ment of the ill-constituted type, or bring it further out into
the open, resentment itself does not have political or socio-
economic roots. The same principle applies to those
'nobles' possessed of'the great health'. ' 4 Nietzsche is aware
that his own egalitarian age sees evil as fundamentally the
responsibility of 'society', but he is at pains to distinguish
himself from those who would distort the meaning of
'free spirit' along socio-political lines:
In all the countries of Europe and likewise in America

there exists at present something that misuses this
name, a very narrow, enclosed, chained up species of
spirits who desire practically the opposite of that
which informs our aims and instincts....They belong,
in short and regrettably, among the levellers, those
falsely named 'free spirits' - eloquent and tirelessly
scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its
'modern ideas', men without solitude one and all,
without their own solitude, good clumsy fellows
who, while they cannot be denied moral respec-
tability, are unfree and ludicrously superficial, above
all in their fundamental inclination to see in the forms
of existing society the cause of practically all human
failure and misery: which is to stand the truth happily
on its head....their two most oft-recited doctrines and
ditties are 'equality of rights' and 'sympathy with all
that suffers'. 15
So far I have spoken rather loosely of rank order as it

pertains to values and individuals. An individual's position
in the order of spiritual rank will be determined by the rank
of those values with which he most closely identifies.
However, the valuational activity of human beings is
complex. As Nietzsche recognizes, many different values
will struggle against each other for supremacy, so that the
overall valuational orientation of the individual may be
quite unstable.16 Values of different rank may be co-
present, and their claim upon the individual may vary at
different points of time. It may be possible to rank
individuals in terms of those values which are most
enduring and stable for them, but even if this, as Nietzsche
suggests, constitutes their 'innate, unalterable order of
rank', it is an outcome which must be continually
reaffirmed and reacquired. In this sense, and in this sense
alone, rank order is indeed a matter of 'politics' but, as
Leslie Thiele has put it, of 'the politics of the soul'. The
spiritual aristocrat is what he is not through resting on his

laurels, but through fighting those 'gravitational' forces
which would bring him down to the rank of spiritual
pleb. 17 In Thiele's words, 'the language that best facilitates
the description and analysis of the soul is political. The
world of politics serves as a conceptual and terminological
resource for the "reader of souls".'18 The 'political'
struggle takes place primarily within one's own self, and
only secondarily between oneself and others.
Because Nictzschean rank order defines 'levels' or
'degrees' of truthfulness, it is a pluralism of sorts, but it has
no resemblance to the relativistic pluralism of the
postmodernist commentators. Nietzsche could hardly be
more explicit on this:
Are they new friends of 'truth', these coming phi-
losophers? In all probability: for all philosophers have
hitherto loved their truths. But certainly they will not
be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, and also
their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for
cvcryman, which has hitherto been the secret desire
and hidden sense of all dogmatic endeavours In the
end it must be as it is and has always been: great things
for the great, abysses for the profound, shudders and
delicacies for the refined, and, in sum, all rare things
for the rare. 19
Nietzsche considers that philosophical truth is 'undogma-
tic' because it is not a 'truth for everyman'. All this means,
however, is that not everyone is capable of philosophical
truthfulness. This is about as undogmatic and pluralist as
saying that, since only a few are capable of power, the
powerlessness of the many should be recognized as right
for them. Truth, like power, is a normative, valuational,
concept: it signifies a greater good. There may be an equal
right to truths at all levels of the spiritual hierarchy, but,
for Nietzsche, some of these truths are more equal than
others.
In the following three sections I shall analyse Nietzsche's

hierarchy of the spirit in terms of the three categories
spiritual lower class, spiritual middle class, and spiritual
aristocracy. These are categories which Nietzsche employs
himself, but it should now be clear that no individual
belongs purely to one category or another. My method of
treatment is merely a convenient way of referring to forces
which are operative within every individual. Nietzsche is
not the first to have looked at human spiritual life in this
way. In The RepiMic, for example, Plato distinguishes
three parts of the soul (reason, spirit, and desire) corres-
ponding to three classes of the state (guardians, auxiliaries
and workers), while Aristotle, in the Nidwmachean Ethics,
talks of the conflict between the higher (rational) and lower
(desiring) parts of the soul.20 Thiele maintains that
Nietzsche returns to such ancient models of the 'soul as
plurality' in opposition to the Christian doctrine of 'soul
atomism', but this suggests an oversimplified conception
of Christian thinking on the soul, perhaps a confusion
between the soul as a whole (i.e. the whole of spiritual life)
and that part of the soul which is immortal (for Plato as
well as Christianity). Nietzsche is himself given to over-
simplified judgements on Christianity, perhaps more so
than on any other subject. Although he undoubtedly views
his own idea of spiritual rank order as anti-Christian, there
are many parallels within the Christian tradition. Notwith-
standing its 'levelling' morality, hierarchy of the spirit is
one of Christianity's most characteristic conceptions,
reflected in both its theology and ecclesiastical structure.
The idea of spiritual progress which one finds in such
Christian authors as Pseudo-Dionysius and John Climacus
is not dissimilar to Nietzsche's, especially in so far as, at the
summit of the 'ladder of divine ascent', truth (God) is
encountered as something unsayable and unknowable. 2 '
Whether Nietzsche can be rightfully associated with such
religious thought, however, is a matter reserved for later
discussion.
The final three sections of the chapter look at Nietzsche's

ranking of the historical epochs of the spirit: the Greek
spirit, the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of modernity.
In opposition to modern notions of progress, Nietzsche
sees the history of the spirit since the Greeks as a decline
into decadence, but I shall not attempt to assess this
sweeping claim as an historical hypothesis. My main
concern will be to draw out the implications of Nietzsche's
historical evaluations for the economy of the spirit. In
different epochs of history, different aspects of the spirit
come to the fore which do not show themselves with
comparable clarity at other times. 22 Nietzsche sees the
philosophical significance of historical knowledge as the
uncovering of spiritual possibilities which in our own times
have been lost from view or have withered away to pale
shadows of their former selves. Once Nietzsche's histor-
ical reflections are understood in this way, the essential
meaning of his critique of modernity will more clearly
come to light: not, as the postmodernists would have it, as a
critique of dogmatism, but as a critique of that very
pluralism and 'largeur of heart' which the postmodernists
celebrate as their own highest virtue.
THE SPIRITUAL LOWER CLASS

The spiritual lower class is made up of those who, by the
nature of their spiritual economy, are farthest removed
from truth and truthfulness. Such removedness is
expressed in various character traits and their associated
values. Again, Nietzsche's interest in the character of the
spiritual pleb has clear antecedents in Greek philosophy,
particularly Plato and Aristotle. The philosopher, as a lover
of wisdom, must always wonder at the motivations of
those who are cither indifferent to wisdom or positively
disdainful of it.23 Only through understanding the non-
philosopher can the philosopher also be comprehended:
these are just different sides of the single problem of
truth. 24 In many of his dialogues, Plato exposes the base
motives which fetter the vast majority of human beings to

pre-philosophical or even anti-philosophical forms of
existence. Aristotle does the same thing in the Nichomachean
Ethics. Contrary to what might be expected from such a
vigorous anti-Platonist, Nietzsche's view of the spiritual
lower class evinces a good deal of common ground with
these founders of the metaphysical tradition. There is a
similar emphasis on petty pride and ambition, on the
general inclination to take things easily, and on the corrupt-
ing power of the lower 'brown pleasures'.25 However, I
shall attempt to understand such familiar themes in terms
of a number of characteristic Nietzschean motifs, discern-
ible in his works from an early date.
The weakness of the spiritual pleb is an obvious starting
point. But it is all-important that weakness and strength be
understood in the frame of reference intended by
Nietzsche, and not, as so often happens, in terms of vague
appeals to the 'will to power'. This phrase explains nothing
unless we know what type of 'power' is relevant. I shall
come back to 'will to power' at a later stage, when
discussing Heidegger's view of Nietzsche. From the gen-
eral thesis adumbrated above, i.e. that rank order is for
Nietzsche an order of truthfulness, it can be said at this
point that it is the power to truthfulness which is intended.
The spiritual pleb possesses this power in a very limited
degree. This is not because he lacks what could be broadly
called 'intellectual accomplishments'. Nor does it neces-
sarily mean absence of cleverness, mental agility and
alertness. The characteristic weakness of the spiritual pleb
is quite consistent with a well-rounded education and an
acute intelligence. Nor is the power to truthfulness, in the
philosophical sense intended, identical with the power of
'theoretical' understanding. Nietzsche is consistently
scathing of modernity on all these points, claiming that
superficial and ornamental accomplishments of learning
are mistaken for genuine spirit.26 What really matters, as
far as Nietzsche is concerned, is one thing only: the power
to face, and actually enter into, the 'great problems and

question marks' of human existence. It is this power which
is lacking in the spiritual plcb. This is his defining
'weakness'.
What Nietzsche means by 'weakness' is inseparable from
his understanding of the 'great problems' (the Sadie) of
philosophy itself. This is already evident in The Birth of
Tragedy, where he laments the weakness of the Socratic
intellectual in recoiling from the 'terrible' Dionysian truth:
Socratism is the expression of the 'senile, unproductive
love of existence' of those who fear the sight of Dionysian
abysses.27 Nietzsche looks forward to a rebirth of tragedy
from those who 'turn their back on all the weaklings'
doctrines of optimism in order to "live resolutely" in
wholeness and fullness', 28 The connection between intel-
Icctualism and weakness is also maintained in Nietzsche's
early writings on the Prcsocratics, where Hcraclitcanism, as
the courageous embracing of the eternal 'strife' of exis-
tence, is contrasted with Parmenideanism, as the anxious
yearning for security. 20 Weakness is cowardice, the desire
for a prop in a sea of uncertainty, the need for a panacea
against the ambiguity of existence, the nervous anxiety
over one's own fragile self. Fundamentally, weakness of
the spirit is a flight from truth:
This ultimate, most joyous, most wantonly extrava-

gent Yes to life represents not only the highest insight
but also the deepest, that which is most strictly
confirmed and born out by truth and science To
comprehend this requires courage and, as a condition
of that, an excess of strength: for precisely as far as
courage may venture forward, precisely according to
that measure of strength one approaches the truth.
Knowledge, saying Yes to reality, is just as necessary
for the strong as cowardice and the flight from reality
- as the 'ideal' is for the weak, who are inspired by
weakness.30
Nietzsche presupposes that, at some level and however

obscurely, all human beings are acquainted with the
phenomenon of the Dionysian. But the cowardice
inscribed in the psychology of the average human being
means that, more often than not, this awareness occurs in a
'turning away'. In his later writings, Nietzsche tends to
assimilate this kind of cowardly avoidance of truth with
the psychology of ressentiment. Especially in the third essay
of The Genealogy of Morals, it seems that ressentiment
encompasses almost the whole range of human values and
activities. Conventional existence emerges as a tissue of
escape mechanisms for those who wish to revenge them-
selves on their underlying philosophical weakness. The
degree to which one turns away from life seems to depend
primarily on one's psychological-physiological constitu-
tion. Nietzsche reserves his special scorn for the 'worm-
eaten' types who insist on elevating their own weakness to
the status of a religion. The inability to stand up to life is
then promulgated as the highest virtue, while strength is
denigrated as wickedness and injustice:
They walk among us as embodied reproaches, as

warnings to us - as if health, well-constitutedness,
strength, pride, and the sense of power were in
themselves necessarily vicious things for which one
must pay some day, and pay bitterly: how ready they
themselves are at bottom to make one pay: how they
crave to be hangmen. There is among them an abund-
ance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who con-
stantly bear the word 'justice' in their mouths like
poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always
ready to spit upon all those who are not discontented
but go their way in good spirits. 31
The true spiritual plebs are those who seek a revenge against
the spirit, a revenge for their own weakness in spirit.
Moreover, and this is what particularly aggravates
Nietzsche, they have, in modern culture, largely succeeded

in their campaigns of vengcfulness. Paradoxically, the
weak have triumphed over the strong, at least at the level of
cultural institutions and public opinion. Especially since the
movements of democratic cgalitarianism came to the fore
in the nineteenth century, ressentiment has enjoyed a good
public conscience. This has had the effect of poisoning the
general stock of human beings, of stunting the strong in
their growth, of hampering and perhaps altogether crip-
pling those who might otherwise have taken their place
among the spiritual aristocracy. Again, Nietzsche's critique
of doctrines of equality is not directed at socio-economic
power structures, but at the levelling of the spirit which
has, as a matter of historical fact, accompanied the
development of social cgalitarianism. It is the levelling out
of values which occupies Nietzsche, the levelling down to
values which arc uniformly prc-philosophical, which arc
uniformly constituted in the flight from life (in the
Dionysian sense) rather than in its radical affirmation.
If weakness of the spirit is cowardice before the
primordial phenomenon of life, it is also and equally
cowardice before one's own self. The spiritual pleb flees
from life into the herd. This is a place of familiarity,
reassurance and security. Precisely because the 'terrors' of
the Dionysian phenomenon are incommunicable, precisely
because they arc only 'knowablc' to a radically individu-
alized self, the herd pronounces them unreal. The spiritual
pleb does not believe in 'himself, more accurately, he
believes only in a 'self which is conferred upon him by the
herd:
Whatever they may think and say about their 'ego-

ism', the great majority nonetheless do nothing for
their ego their whole life long: what they do is done
for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself
in the heads of those around them and has been
communicated to them; as a consequence they all of
them dwell in a fog of impersonal, semi-personal

opinions, and arbitrary, as it were poetical evalua-
tions, the one for ever in the head of someone else,
and the head of this someone else again in the heads of
others: a strange world of phantasms - which at the
same time knows how to put on so sober an
appearance!32
Since the spiritual pleb believes only in a herd self, he is

fearful of solitude, which for him can be nothing more
than a great and painful emptiness, a separation from his
own kind. He is at home only in the 'market-place', and is
constantly in need of its busyness and garrallousness. This
garrallousness often finds expression in reading and writ-
ing, as conduits for the constant flow of opinion. A critique
of the 'scribbling rabble', as they are called in Thus Spake
Zarathustra, runs through all Nietzsche's works. These arc
people who are possessed by language and constantly
entangled in language. In the end they come to believe that
language is the only reality. Since they are unable to see
beyond language and are therefore disconnected from that
which is truly worthy of thought, their discourse takes on,
especially when they 'philosophize', a tortuous self-refer-
ential character.
The postmodernist commentators, by insisting that
Nietzsche does not believe in anything but a socially
constituted (and therefore perspectival) self, overlook the
difference between the herd self and the supra-perspectival
philosophical self which, as Nietzsche says, wants to
'become what it is'.33 The spiritual pleb loses touch with his
genuine self and becomes an actor, waiting on the evalua-
tions of others, tossed this way and that way by their good
and bad opinions. By contrast, although the spiritual
aristocrat will also have his 'masks', although he will be
forced to act out comprehensible social roles when he
enters the 'marketplace' and interacts with others, he will
never confuse himself with his public face.34 The masks of
the spiritual aristocrat do not indicate, as the postmoder-

nists imagine, a new kind of 'undogmatic' subjectivity, but
are a means of self-protection from the spiritual plebs, a
way of avoiding their irritating misunderstandings. It is
indeed remarkable that anyone could believe that
Nietzsche's books were written for the 'socially constituted
self.35 But the dc-pcrsonalization of Nietzsche's thought
which occurs at the hands of the postmodernists is indica-
tive of what always happens with the politicization of
philosophy: the individual reduces to the thinnest of
abstractions, a mere bearer of social determinations.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, understands his books as
written for the self of the 'subterranean man', for the self
which tunnels and burrows beneath pcrspectival reality. 36
The postmodernists arc blind to this latter self, which
explains why they are also blind to the very prominent
motif of solitude in Nietzsche.
The spiritual pleb is concerned with problems which
have reality for the herd. These will reflect the pettiness of
herd ambitions, limited as they arc to self-preservation, to
power, money, and rivalry within the herd.37 It is not only
possible, but is actually the rule, that human beings pass
through life with no other problems than these. In this
sense the life of the spiritual pleb sinks to the level of the
animal, although in another sense it is even lower than the
animal, which at least has no higher possibilities to be
forfeited. It can seem at times that Nietzsche is himself
resentfully obsessed with the spiritual plebs, as if he cannot
quite reconcile himself to their existence. They are, in the
varying descriptions given to them ('men of the market-
place', the 'last men', the 'rabble'), a recurring object not
only of his contempt, but of an almost physiological
disgust or nausea. As Zarathustra III approaches its climax in
the section 'The Convalescent', the necessity of the 'little
man' emerges as the final obstacle to Zarathustra's affirma-
tion of eternal recurrence: 'And eternal recurrence even for
the smallest! that was my disgust at all existence.'38 The
same problem disturbs Nietzsche in The Gay Science, where

he looks forward to a time when he will no longer need to
'accuse', when 'looking away shall be my only negation.'39
This ambition is not fulfilled, for in the works of his last
productive year, particularly the Antichrist, Nietzsche's
vituperation of the spiritual plebs reaches the highest level
of intensity: 'It is a painful, a dreadful spectacle which has
opened up before me: I have drawn back the curtain on the
depravity of man.' 40
In essence, Nietzsche's critique of spiritual plebianism is
identical with his critique of the 'herd instinct' in man. It is
noticeable how little a role this plays in postmodernist
discussions of Nietzsche's 'critique of morality'. Instead,
the postmodernists focus on Nietzsche's alleged (but in
truth almost non-existent) exposure of the 'repressive'
power of custom and acculturation in 'normalizing' the
individual: once again, it is society which is at fault, not the
individual himself. What is in force here is the liberal
assumption that the individual wants autonomy in the first
place, and that only through the imposition of authority
does normalization take place. Nietzsche takes a more
realistic if less politically correct attitude: he posits the herd
instinct as a fundamental and in most cases overriding
instinct of human beings:
The reproaches of conscience are weak even in the

most conscientious people compared to the feeling:
'This or that is against the morals of your society.' A
cold look or a sneer on the face of those amongst
whom and for whom one has been educated is feared
even by the strongest. What is it that they are really
afraid of? Growing solitude! This is the argument that
rebuts even the best arguments for a person or cause. -
Thus the herd instinct speaks up in us.41
What the postmodernists overlook is the degree to which

individuals normalize themselves, i.e. positively want to be
normal, to be accepted and recognized, to belong, tobe part

of the herd. Of course, Nietzsche is not unaware of those
anonymous ideological forces which channel the herd
instinct along particular paths, often to the benefit of the
ruling stratum of society. Unlike the postmodernists,
however, he gives due consideration to the fact that
ideological normalization presupposes not only an inherent
susceptibility in those who are subjected to it, but an actual
need which makes them complicit in the entire process.
This is a rather unflattering portrayal of human beings, but
for Nietzsche it is not the business of philosophy to flatter:
We know well enough how offensive it sounds when

someone says plainly and without metaphor that man
is an animal; but it will be reckoned almost a crime in us
that precisely in regard to men of'modern ideas' we
constantly employ the terms 'herd', 'herd instinct',
and the like. But what ofthat! we can do no other: for
it is precisely here that our new insight lies Now it is
bound to make a harsh sound and one not easy for ears
to hear when we insist again and again: that which here
believes it knows, that which here glorifies itself with
its praising and blaming and calls itself good, is the
instinct of the herd animal man: the instinct which has
broken through and come to prevail over the other
instincts.42
It is not surprising that postmodernism, which seeks to

establish itself as the intellectual orthodoxy of our time, is
rather hard of hearing when it comes to such passages as
these. For the conformism which is so characteristic of this
movement is loathe to admit a herd instinct at all: instead,
what Nietzsche understands under this heading is obscured
through self-laudatory phraseology about 'solidarity',
'communication' and 'co-operation'. It is not that
Nietzsche accords no value to genuine human fellow-
feeling. On the contrary, he values it too highly to confuse
it with its semblance. All his life Nietzsche yearned for

nothing more than true philosophical companionship. The
reason he never found it is that, in the end, what he always
encountered in others was the herd self. This is not an
experience original and peculiar to Nietzsche. It was the
experience of Schopenhauer before him, and, at the very
beginning of philosophy, it was the experience of Plato:
'So only a very small remnant survives, Adeimantus, of all
those worthy to have dealings with philosophy.'43
Is the condition of the spiritual plebs their own respon-
sibility? Is their turning away from life and truth a matter
of free choice, or is it something like a physiological
necessity? If free choice were involved, there would be
some grounds to compare the spiritual plebs with the
'sinners' of Christianity; if there were no choice they could
be pitied or despised only in an amoral sense. Nietzsche
does not come to an unambiguous conclusion on this
matter. Immediately following the above-quoted state-
ment on the 'depravity' of man, he insists that 'in my
mouth this word is protected against at any rate one
suspicion: that it contains a moral accusation of man. It is -1
should like to underline the fact again - free of any moralic
acid.' This characteristic disclaimer is not altogether con-
vincing. The fact that Nietzsche finds depravity 'precisely
where hitherto one most consciously aspired to "virtue", to
"divinity"', does not show that some other (i.e. non-
Christian, as he understands it) kind of morality is
excluded.44 Nietzche often asserts that the concept of guilt
belongs inseparably to the morality of ressentiment, but in
practice he comes close to simply reversing the application
of the concept: the guilty are no longer the strong and
powerful, but the weak and powerless. It is difficult to
understand the intensity of Nietzsche's invective if the
weak and resentful are only 'sick' in a physiologically
determined manner. The spiritual pleb has forsaken his
existential responsibilities, and this makes him 'guilty' in
some sense. These responsibilities are taken up fully only
by the philosopher, i.e. by 'the man of the most com-

prehensive responsibility who has the conscience for the
collective evolution of mankind.' 45 It seems at times that,
in Nietzsche's view, the vast majority of human beings arc
altogether lacking in conscience. But he acknowledges an
inner resistance to this conclusion, remarking that, like all
noble types, he 'unjustly' persists in ascribing a conscience
to everyone. 46 There are problems here which Nietzsche
never satisfactorily resolves. Are there responsibilities
which are imposed on man qua man? If there are not, from
where do the responsibilities of the philosopher derive? I
shall come back to these problems in Chapter Three below.
THE SPIRITUAL MIDDLE CLASS

When Nietzsche speaks of the spiritual middle class, it is
invariably 'scholars' (die Gelehrten) and 'scientists' (die
Wissenschaftler) that he has in mind. He sees the difference
between the spiritual middle class and the spiritual plcbs as
of much less importance than the difference between both
these groups and the spiritual aristocracy. The middle class
possess a certain discipline and refinement of spirit which is
absent among the plebs. There is a flicker of reverence
among the middle-class spirits, the conscience insinuates
itself in their case somewhat more forcefully, but they still
do not possess the strength of will for the 'really great
problems and question marks' which occupy the spiritual
aristocrat. Nietzsche often expresses respect for the crafts-
manship of the genuine scholar, presupposing as it does a
certain control over the coarser emotions of ressentiment. He
approves of the 'probity' (Probitat) which is presupposed in
every genuine discipline, in contrast with the 'half-genuine'
and 'histrionic' essence of spiritual plcbianism. 47 By the
same token, Nietzsche experienced his greatest personal
disappointments with members of the spiritual middle
class. As professor of classical philology at Basel, he was
dismayed to discover that his university colleagues were
'only' scholars. The Birth of Tragedy already expresses a
distinct contempt for the proprieties of his academic

profession, a contempt which was repaid with hostility and
ostracism.48 More generally, Nietzsche suffered recurring
disappointments when childhood friends and youthful
associates gradually abandoned their former thirst for the
'great problems' and accommodated themselves to the staid
and comfortable life-style of the scholar. He felt that these
people had the requisite intellectual equipment, but inade-
quate spiritual strength, to accompany him into more
challenging waters. This feeling intensified with the
advancing years, as he became progressively more isolated
and convinced of his destiny as a solitary.49 In his later
works, a somewhat grudging acknowledgement of schol-
arly virtues is mixed with a more basic contempt:
Today there are plenty of modest and worthy laborers
among scholars, too, who are happy in their little
nooks...the last thing I want is to destroy the pleasure
these honest workers take in their craft: for I approve
of their work. But that one works rigorously in the
sciences and that there are contented workers certainly
does not prove that science as a whole possesses a goal,
a will, an ideal, or the passion of a great faith. The
opposite is the case... science today is a hiding place for
every kind of discontent, disbelief, gnawing worm,
despectio sui, bad conscience - it is the unrest of the lack
of ideals, the suffering from the lack of any great
love, the discontent in the face of involuntary
contentment.50
Nietzsche sees scholarship as a false solution to the problem
posed by the death of God: fundamentally it is resignation
and reconciliation to nihilism. The 'great faith' of meta-
physics and theology has been given up, but nothing has
been put in its place. If the middle-class spirits convince
themselves that nothing needs to be put in its place, this is
because they are in any case inadequate to the demands of a
great faith:
It follows from the laws of the order of rank that

scholars, insofar as they belong to the spiritual middle
class, can never catch sight of the really great prob-
lems and question marks; their courage and their eyes
simply do not reach that far - and above all, their
needs which led them to become scholars in the first
place, their inmost assumptions and desires that things
might be such and such, their fears and hopes all come
to rest and arc satisfied too soon. 51
The relative order of rank of scholars and philosophers is

discussed at length in Part Six ('We Scholars') of Beyond
Good and Evil. Nietzsche is particularly concerned to
criticize the 'self-glorification and presumption of the
scholar' who has declared his independence from philoso-
phy, or even worse, equates philosophy with scholarship.52
Such confusion, he explains, testifies to the spirit of
ressentiment which is endemic in modern times. The scholars
are 'industrious labourers' who arc useful to society and
feel honoured in this role. They are proud of their expertise
and craftsmanship. In many cases they have encountered
only charlatan philosophers and form premature judge-
ments about philosophy as a whole. Compared with the
tangible benefits, both private and public, of their scholarly
occupations, philosophy seems a queer thing, leading
nowhere. Since the 'great problems' have no relation to
utility values, the scholar docs not believe in their reality.
The 'impersonal' stance of the scholar, actually a euphem-
ism for his allegiance to herd values, cuts him off from his
own self and thus from all philosophy:
Whatever remains to him of his 'own person' seems to

him accidental, often capricious, more often disturb-
ing: so completely has he become a passage and
reflection of forms and events not his own. He finds it
an effort to think about 'himself, and not infre-
quently he thinks about himself mistakenly: he can
easily confuse himself with another, he fails to

understand his own needs and is in this respect alone
unsubtle and negligent.... He no longer knows how to
take himself seriously.53
Among scholars, the discipline of the herd is expressed

through conceptual thought and intersubjective rationality.
The de facto reduction of philosophy to scholarship is an
expression of Socratic intellectualism and its suspicion of
'intuition'. Already at the time of Socrates, Nietzsche
considers, it was the instinct of levelling, the resistance of
any claim to superior insight, which was at the basis of the
new 'theoretical' stance in philosophy. Socrates, he points
out in his early lectures on the Greeks, and repeats as late as
Twilight of the Idols, was a pleb.54 Dialectics and theoretical
knowledge were invented by a pleb in a democratic polis, so
that everyone could have the truth equally. When truth
becomes theoretical, all claims must be proven through
intersubjective criteria of validity: truth is levelled out to
that which is publically available and within the reach of the
natural intelligence of all human beings. The ascendency of
scholarship is a triumph of the democratic spirit which will
not tolerate anything 'higher' and which wants truth as
something calculable and checkable. The faith of the
scholar is that truth must be there for everyone, attainable
through clear and distinct ideas, or it cannot be there at all.
Nietzsche expects little more from the spiritual middle
class than from the spiritual plebs. At best they have an
instrumental value for the spiritual aristocrat, who can
profit from their labours to widen his knowledge in one
area or another. But even here it seems that their value is
limited. One does not gain the impression that Nietzsche
himself learned much from scholarly sources, apart from
information in the narrowest sense. The world of classical
antiquity did not open up for him in the works of his
scholarly colleagues, but only in the original texts them-
selves, which he read with a freedom shocking to the
philological establishment. Perhaps the discipline of lin-

guistic knowledge was his greatest debt to scholarship. But
this knowledge intrudes only very marginally in his
writings, and it does not seem that much depends upon it.
Nietzsche certainly recognizes that a training in methodical
thinking and 'rationality' are indispensable for the philoso-
pher, for these do possess their own domain of validity.
Above all, however, what he took away from his experi-
ence with scholars, and as a scholar himself, was a
demystified outlook. In his later period, he often regretted
his 'wasted years' at Basel.55 But that he came to see his
philological studies as 'wasted' is itself of positive signifi-
cance. Nietzsche attained proficiency in the intellectualism
of the spirit, and came away convinced that this was not the
same as philosophical truthfulness. 56 This was a lesson he
had to learn for himself. He could not have made this
judgement from a position of inexperience and ignorance,
he could not accept a 'romantic' critique of intellectualism
of the type all too common among the spiritual plebs.
Nietzsche's sojourn amongst the spiritual middle class was
a necessary stage in his development. It acquainted him
with that level of spirituality which enjoyed official status
within the Western tradition as the pathway to truth. The
fact that he had experienced, during his ten years at Basel,
the limits of intellectualism from the inside, goes a long
way to explaining the confident tone of his later
polemics.57
THE SPIRITUAL ARISTOCRACY

The problem of the spiritual aristocrat can be seen as the
focal issue of Nietzsche's entire thought, in essence
identical with the problem of truth. It may seem that, if the
spiritual aristocrat is the philosopher, this reduces to the
problem of the nature of philosophy, but the latter
formulation already obscures what is distinctive in
Nietzsche's approach. Although Nietzsche does indeed
identify the spiritual aristocrat with the philosopher, he
refuses to perform that abstractive operation which diverts

attention from the concrete human being who philoso-
phizes in favour of'philosophy' as a disembodied structure
of theory. The latter is the approach of the intellectualist
tradition with its depersonalization of thought. By con-
trast, Nietzsche insists that philosophy exists for the sake
of the philosopher, and that the value of philosophy can
only be estimated by the human specimens which partake
of it. It is this aspect of Nietzsche's thinking which justifies
the label 'existential', understanding by this term an
emphasis on the factidty of existence. For Nietzsche, exis-
tence has reality only in the concrete. This means that, in the
human realm, the only thing which can have value, the only
thing which can be genuinely admired, is the individual
person.58 When modern morality preaches the opposite,
when it declares that it is 'society' or 'mankind' or
'philosophy' which should be the supreme objects of
veneration, it turns away from realities to embrace abstrac-
tions. This is yet another confirmation of the hegemony of
the herd: what is individual is passed over for what is
common.
Nietzsche is interested first and foremost in the 'person-
alities' of the great philosophers. In the Foreword to his
early Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, he tells us:
I will relate the history of these philosophers in a

simplified manner: I want to highlight only that point
from every system which is a slice of personality
(Persönlichkeit) and which belongs to that irrefutable,
undiscussable, which history has preserved....The
task is to bring to light that which we must always love
and honour and which no subsequent knowledge can
rob us of: the great human being.59
Nietzsche goes on in this study to identify Heraclitus as the

paradigmatic philosophical type. While giving due consid-
eration to the doctrine of the Ephesian philosopher,
Nietzsche emphasizes that this is inseparable from the man

himself. Heraclitus' doctrine of Becoming is an expression
of those character traits which Nietzsche will always
associate with the spiritual aristocrat: solitude and indepen-
dence, reticence, strength and courage, the large vision
which sees a harmony and justice' behind the universal
strife of existence. Heraclitus 'has the truth', but not
because he 'has' the doctrine of Becoming.60 Rather,
Heraclitus' status as a philosopher, his philosophical truth-
fulness, depends on what he himself is. There is no other
way of understanding truth than by studying the truthful
type.
It goes without saying that, for Nietzsche, the spiritual
aristocrat is not the philosopher as traditionally conceived.
By the same token, it is no accident that the term
'philosopher' is his favoured designation for those who
occupy the highest spiritual rank. If we look at the names
of those to whom Nietzsche accords the status of aristo-
crat, we find (among others, and with some variation at
different periods of his writing) Heraclitus, Empcdocles,
Goethe, Heine, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Montaigne,
Emerson, Dostoyevsky and Stendhal. Missing from this
list arc the classical rationalists of the Western tradition such
as Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel.
Nietzsche cannot relate to 'abstract' thinkers: he has neither
the patience nor the inclination to become immersed in the
conceptual edifices of the metaphysicians. He will not
consent to the appropriation of the term 'philosopher' for
thinkers of just this type. Rather, the spiritual aristocrats
listed are for Nietzsche all 'philosophers' in the literal and
honoured sense of'lovers of wisdom'. Nietzsche also uses
other expressions to mean the same thing. The most
important of these is 'free spirits', a term he first adopts at
the time of Human, All Too Human. At other times he
speaks as if spiritual aristocrats, as creators and lawgivers,
can be regarded simply as 'artists'. Nietzsche has no fixed
idea of the spiritual aristocrat. He takes for granted that,
like truth itself, it is an elusive concept, indeed an elusive

'reality' which will defy all attempts at definition. But if
clear-cut conceptual elucidation is ruled out, this does not
imply the impossibility of intuitive understanding, based,
as always, on concrete cases. On the other hand, in looking
at particular cases it is necessary to focus on universal
characteristics. As earlier observed, Nietzsche does not
believe that anyone is purely of one spiritual rank or
another. He acknowledges that he himself bears traces of
the lower ranks. Heraclitus seems to be the only figure to
whom he consistently gives unqualified approval and this,
no doubt, is due to the scantiness of information about
him. Among modern philosophers he respects no one more
than Schopenhauer, among modern artists no one more
than Wagner, but in both cases an early wholehearted
reverence gives way in the later works to profound
ambivalence. The type of the spiritual aristocrat must be
unearthed from beneath the complexities and impurities of
the empirical individual.
The universal characteristics of the spiritual aristocrat do
not translate out into predclincated forms of life.
Zarathustra tells his followers 'I now go away alone, my
disciples! You too now go away and be alone! So I will have
it.'61 This does not mean, as the postmodernist commenta-
tors would have it, that Nietzsche is preaching a pluralism
of lifestyles. The exhortation 'go away and be alone' is not
an exhortation to 'difference'. Solitude is the medium in
which the universal values of philosophy, above all the
value of truth, become visible and meaningful. Although
there is indeed a plurality of lifestyles available to the
spiritual aristocrat, this plurality is not itself the point.
Solitude, in the sense intended by Nietzsche, is not a
determinate lifestyle, but a spiritual condition which
governs each and every spiritual aristocrat in whatever
lifestyle. Precisely because it cannot be identified with
empirical aloneness, much less with loneliness, precisely
because it is something concealed and masked from the
coarse misunderstandings of the spiritual plebs, solitude in

the Nietzschean sense is consistent with a variety of
'surface' lifestyles, including 'surface' grcgariousness.
The solitude of the spiritual aristocrat is the holding at a
distance of his socially constituted pseudo-self (the herd-
self) in favour of his own true self. Reverence for truth
and reverence for self amount to the same thing:
What is noble? What does the word 'noble' mean for

us today? What, beneath this heavy, overcast sky of
the beginning rule of the rabble which makes every-
thing leaden and opaque, betrays and makes evident
the noble human being?... It is the faith (Glaube) which
is decisive here, which determines the order of rank
here, to employ an old religious formula in a new and
deeper sense: some fundamental certainty which a
noble soul possesses in regard to itself, something
which may not be sought or found and perhaps may
not be lost either. - The noble soul has reverence for
itself.'*
The aristocrat of the spirit knows the value of the self as the
unique locus of truth: this is his 'faith'. 63 It is a faith which
deplores nothing more than the squandering and forfeiting
of the self which occurs among the lower orders of the
spirit, all for the sake of spurious benefits held out by the
herd. Moreover, it is a faith which (to extend the 'old
religious formula') demands steadfastness in the face of
the resentful howls of the rabble. The latter senses how
flimsy a thing the herd self at bottom is, and takes it as an
unpardonable conceit that anyone should take his own self
so very seriously. In reality, the self-reverence of the
spiritual aristocrat has nothing whatever to do with
arrogance or conceit as these are commonly understood.
Because it is unconcerned with petty gratifications, it
would even seem surprisingly 'impersonal' to the spiritual
pleb who could catch a glimpse of it.
This aristocratic reverence of self may even seem like a

kind of asceticism, so different is it from common self-
preoccupation and vanity. Despite the fact that, under the
rubric 'world renunciation', Nietzsche sees asceticism as his
main enemy, he is forced to concede that, in another sense,
it is the natural ideal of all genuine philosophers:
What, then, is the meaning of the ascetic ideal in the

case of a philosopher? My answer is - you will have
guessed it long ago: the philosopher sees in it an
optimum condition for the highest and boldest spir-
ituality and smiles - he does not deny 'existence', he
rather affirms his existence and only his exis-
tence They think of themselves- what is the saint to
them! They think of what they can least do without:
freedom from complusion, disturbance, noise, from
tasks, duties, worries; clear heads; the dance, leap and
flight of ideas; good air, thin, clear, open, dry, like the
air of the heights through which all animal being
becomes more spiritual and acquires wings.64
It is this detachment which decisively separates the

Nietzschean spiritual aristocrat from the 'great man of
action', a type with whom he is often confused. Although
Nietzsche frequently uses the vocabulary of politics to
illustrate what he means by the 'mastery' of the aristocrat,
at bottom he is always thinking of spiritual self-mastery.
This type of person will be unimpressed by those 'great
events' which attract so much attention in the public realm:
wars and revolutions, the rise and fall of generals and
statesmen, the mass movements of the people. While these
can obviously be matters of life and death, the aristocrat of
the spirit treats them as of secondary importance. In this
respect he resembles the 'holy man', the ascetic type who
has 'turned away from the world'. But as Zarathustra says,
'many a one who turned away from life, turned away only
from the rabble: he did not wish to share the well and the
flame and the fruit with the rabble.'65 The Nietzschean

aristocrat turns away from 'world' and 'life' as these arc
commonly understood, his 'will to power' is directed
towards realities of which the spiritual pleb has no experi-
ence: 'the "higher nature" of the great man lies in being
different, in incommunicability, in distance of rank, not in
an effect of any kind - even if he made the whole globe
tremble.'66
The reverence of self which Nietzsche ascribes to the
spiritual aristocrat does not imply that this self is already a
secure possession. On the contrary, as Nietzsche indicates
with the dictum 'become who you are' (the supreme
command of conscience), the true self always remains
something to be attained. This is no easy task, for the herd
self constantly attempts to take charge of the individual.
From the point of view of the herd, the true self is a fiction,
perhaps a romantic delusion or piece of sentimentality. To
progressively break free of the herd self (this can only
happen gradually, it is the 'path' of the philosopher, his
philosophical 'ascent') is a dangerous and questionable
undertaking, because it becomes more and more difficult to
live with the herd in the world. The true self is an enigma.67
Because it does not testify to itself with the obviousness of
the herd self, the spiritual aristocrat can be plagued by self-
doubt and anxiety. This is what Nietzsche means by the
philosopher 'living dangerously': philosophical existence is
a dangerous 'psychological' experiment. 68 It may even turn
out that the path of philosophy is a path to destruction. 69 If
this is so, the philosopher can be seen as one who sacrifices
himself to truth, and to life in the Dionysian sense. This
idea appeals to Nietzsche more and more in his later period,
as his illness intensifies and his final mental collapse draws
near: the philosopher must sacrifice his own health (both
physical and mental) to the demands of his task, but by way
of compensation rises to the 'great health' of Dionysian
affirmation.
Although the Nietzschean spiritual aristocrat bears some
resemblances to the Greek sage and the Christian holy man,
his existence in a 'sea of uncertainty' is a difference which

Nietzsche insists upon again and again. This uncertainty
relates to the peculiar object of reverence of the aristocratic
type, i.e. the transient realm of Becoming. But it some-
times seems that Nietzsche merely replaces one kind of
certainty by another, that he rejects metaphysical certainty
only to embrace a kind of intuitive certainty. While the
latter supposedly has nothing of the consoling and com-
forting qualities of metaphysical certainty, while it cannot
perform the function of a prop for those of weak spirit, it
still governs the 'faith' of the philosophical type, it still
commands the intellectual conscience. In a sense, it is a
'certainty of uncertainty'. Similarly, the 'incomprehen-
sibility' of Becoming sometimes appears transfigured in a
peculiar 'comprehensibility of the incomprehensible'.
Nietzsche resists any attempt to resolve these kinds of
paradoxes:
But you do not understand this? Indeed, people will

have trouble understanding us. We are looking for
words; perhaps we are also looking for ears. Who are
we anyway? If we simply called ourselves, using an
old expression, godless, or unbelievers, or perhaps
immoralists, we do not believe that this would even
come close to designating us: We are all three in such
an advanced stage that one — that you, my curious
friends - could never comprehend how we feel at this
point.70
Nietzsche suffers as much as he revels in this situation of

philosophical-existential isolation: it is both a torment for
him and a kind of liberating joy. Many critics of Nietzsche
would say that he illegitimately elevates his own subjective
condition to the status of a philosophical thesis, attempting
thereby to justify his emotional immaturity. This criticism
cannot be refuted, but it begs the question. Nietzsche's
view of the emotions of the spiritual aristocrat depends on
his understanding of primordial reality: the question is

whether reality is such that the emotional stance of those
whom Nietzsche admits to the spiritual upper class is fitting
and proper. For Nietzsche, Socratic intellectualism is
responsible for the prejudice that the sober emotional state
of the theoretician, conceived in fact as the exclusion of all
emotions other than scientific objectivity, is the natural and
obvious state of all those who seek truth. Overcoming this
prejudice is part of Nietzsche's redefinition of truth: he
needs to redefine the 'stance' of the truthful man,
THE GREEK SPIRIT
In Nietzsche's view, the Greeks of the tragic age represent
one of history's rare 'lucky hits', one of those 'chance
occurrences of great success' at a collective level.71 It is an
age which ends with the figure of Socrates; thereafter,
genuine Hellenism gives way to non-Greek or even anti-
Greek forces, to intimations of Christianity of which Plato
is the classic exemplar. Nietzsche credits himself with
rediscovering the tragic culture of Prcsocratic Greece,
more particularly the Dionysianism at the heart of Greek
tragic wisdom. He begins his career, in The Birth of Tragedy,
with a study of this phenomenon, and after ten years
during which it is no longer mentioned by name, he returns
to it with heightened enthusiasm in his final works:
1 was the first to take seriously that wonderful
phenomenon which bears the name Dionysus as a
means to understanding the older Hellenic instinct, an
instinct still exuberant and even overflowing: it is
explicable only as an exeas of energy.... For it is only
in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the
Dionysian condition, that the fundamental fact of the
Hellenic instinct expresses itself - its 'will to life'.
What did the Hellene guarantee to himself with these
mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal recurrence of life;
the future promised and consecrated in the past; the
triumphant Yes to life beyond death and change.72
With Socratism, a weakening of the instincts sets in. The

Greeks are already beginning to distrust life and are
therefore searching for its justification in a higher world.
This tendency is reinforced by Plato and comes to a head
with Christianity. Nietzsche gives no credence to the
distinction between Platonic philosophy and Christian
religion: in his view they are one unitary phenomenon.
Neither Plato nor Christianity are properly Greek, but are
both of Eastern origin.73 Together with Buddhism, they
are reflections of the underlying weakness of Eastern
culture, with its desperation to flee from life into a world
of tranquility and repose. They are expressions of that
ressentiment stance towards reality which in succeeding
centuries gained the upper hand in Western culture.
The tragic wisdom of the Presocratic Greeks is for the
most part inaccessible to modern men. Only in the case of
such physiological 'lucky hits' as he himself, where the
forces of ressentiment have been kept at bay through a
resilient health, is there any possibility of comprehension.
The 'cheerfulness' (Heiterkeit) of the Greek tragic age, with
which Nietzsche is much concerned in his early works, was
already transformed in later Hellenistic times into 'that
pink hue of cheerfulness' which is at bottom a 'womanish
flight from seriousness and terror' and a 'craven satisfac-
tion with easy enjoyment'.74 The latter is the cheerfulness
characteristic of modern men such as David StrauB, a kind
of simple-minded optimism and jollity which is unac-
quainted with the terrible visions of Dionysianism. 75
Authentically tragic cheerfulness, on the other hand, comes
with consciousness of victory, consciousness of the
strength which has overcome all trepidation and hestitation
in the face of life. Tragic cheerfulness is not a mere
emotion, but a truthful stance towards reality: it accepts the
nature of reality for what it is, and it accepts man's place
within reality. It is a stance of gratitude:
What astonishes one about the religiosity of the
ancient Greeks is the tremendous amount of gratitude
(Dankbarkeit) that emanates from it - the kind of man

who stands thus before nature and before life is a very
noble one! Later, when the rabble came to predomi-
nate in Greece, fear also overran religion; and Chris-
tianity was preparing itself,7i'
Where a great gift is received, the noble temperament

distinguishes itself not by judgement, not by putting it on
the scales and finding it, perhaps, too light, but by
unreserved gratitude. To be able to do this one must be free
of the ressentiment mentality of those who in their fear and
weakness always want something different. Lack of
gratitude for life is the closest thing to 'sin' which
Nietzsche acknowledges. The inability to be grateful for
the world as it is, more precisely, for the 'fact' of the world
as such, is what he sees as the essence of spiritual
plcbianism.
Along with gratitude goes reverence. When tragic
wisdom becomes displaced by Socratism, reverence gives
way to an importunate insistence on drawing back the veils.
Whereas Dionysian truth had been accessible only through
initiation and secret rituals, the democratic instinct of
intellectualism demanded that truth be public and accessible
to all. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche accuses the Socratic
dramatist Euripides of sacrilege for bringing the spectator
onto the stage to pass judgement on the drama. 77 The
dramas of Euripides already indicate a weakening of the
instincts, a self-doubt and uncertainty about life, a need for
the prop of intellectual confirmation. In the end, Dionysus
is 'scared from the tragic stage by a demonic power
speaking through Euripides.' 78 The demonic figure of
Socrates is the embodiment of irreverence. Insisting on
conscious reason, he attacks the instincts, the seat of all
reverence.7''1 Socrates asks for reasons why life should be
affirmed, and finds these lacking: he thus confuses an
object of reverence with an object of rational inquiry. In
Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche puts the matter as follows:
In every age the wisest have passed the identical

judgement on life: it is worthless.... Every where and
always their mouths have uttered the same sound - a
sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of
weariness with life, full of opposition to life. Even
Socrates said as he died: 'To live - that means to be a
long time sick: I owe a cock to the saviour Asclepius'.
Even Socrates had had enough of it.80
The deficiencies of life which so burden Socrates were not

unknown to the tragic Greeks. But they took an altogether
different attitude to them. As Nietzsche explains in The
Birth of Tragedy:
We are to recognize that all that comes into being must

be ready for a sorrowful end; we are forced to look
into the terrors of individual existence — yet we are not
to become rigid with fear: a metaphysical comfort
tears us momentarily from the bustle of the changing
figures. We are really for a brief moment primordial
Being itself (das Urwesen selbst), feeling its raging
desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle,
the pain, the destruction of phenomena, now appear
necessary to us.81
A similar description is given in Twilight of the Idols:
Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest

problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inex-
haustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types -
that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I recognized
as the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not
so as to get rid of pity and terror, not so as to purify
oneself of a dangerous emotion through its vehement
discharge - it was thus Aristotle understood it - : but,
beyond pity and terror, to realize in oneself the eternal
joy of becoming.82
Apart from the demonic influence of Socrates, Nietzsche

does not explain why the tragic age of Greece gives way to
the incipient Christianity of later Hellenism. Perhaps he
does not think that any special explanation is required. If
the tragic age is just a 'lucky hit' in the history of humanity,
the victory of Socratism might be simply a return to
spiritual normality (i.e. mediocrity) on an historical scale.
In general, Nietzsche gives little attention to the mecha-
nisms of cultural change. He tends to see the development
of Western civilization as the progressive domestication of
the spirit. The instinct to civilization is the instinct of
weakness, for its main objective is self-preservation on a
higher and higher level. Culture is built on the spiritual
needs of the middle and lower orders, and if, for a brief
period, the tragic age of Greece was an exception to this
law, Nietzsche does not expect to see its like again. Even in
The Birth of Tragedy, where he seems most optimistic about
a cultural rebirth, he docs not envisage this as a reform of
socio-cultural institutions. What he hopes for is that the
Dionysian type will once again become possible, but he
recognizes that this can occur only within the interstices of
contemporary culture. Unlike David Straufi, Nietzsche
never takes on the mantle of a cultural or social reformer: in
his view, what needs reforming will always be, first and
foremost, the individual himself.
Walter Kaufmann has rightly emphasized that
Nietzsche's relation to Socrates is by no means une-
quivocally hostile.83 It is true, as Kaufmann maintains, that
Socrates' disdain for public opinion, his independence and
uncompromising philosophical resolve, could not fail to
appeal to someone like Nietzsche. On the other hand,
Kaufmann understates Nietzsche's critical attitude to
Socrates. In The Birth of Tragedy, Socrates stands for the
cardinal sin of intellectual optimism, the prototype of the
theoretical man who holds 'the unshakeable faith that
thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the
deepest abysses of Being.'84 On these grounds, Socrates
represents the counter-force to tragic wisdom, and, by

implication, also to Heraclitean intuition. Nietzsche does
acknowledge that the honesty of Socrates ensures that
intellectualism itself will at some stage break down, i.e.
when logic finds itself at its impassable limit and finally
'gazes into what defies illumination (in das Unaujhellbare
starrf).'85 To the extent that Nietzsche does not embrace a
mysticism untutored in the ways of reason, but wants, like
Schopenhauer, to understand the limits of reason, the
project of Socratism possesses some partial legitimacy for
him. But he views it in predominantly negative terms, as
displacing philosophical intuition into the channels of
abstract thought.
Nietzsche has a similar attitude to Plato. While the
complexity of Plato's philosophy is attested by the great
diversity of interpretations both within the Platonic tradi-
tion itself (including Neoplatonism) and among its oppo-
nents, Nietzsche is not interested in such subtleties so much
as in the fundamental tendency of historical Platonism,
which he uses as a foil for developing his own ideas.
Starting with the opposition between intellect and intui-
tion, Nietzsche reads all the Greek philosophers within this
interpretative schema.86 The result is a historically flawed
and overly undifferentiated account: a model of intellec-
tualism largely based on modern scientific thought is read
back into Plato and Parmenides. Having stigmatized a
particular thinker as abstract, other aspects of his thought,
possibly more in line with Nietzsche's own outlook, are
glossed over or totally ignored. This is especially true in the
case of Plato.87 Nietzsche is over hasty in taking the
Platonic doctrine of Ideas as a retreat from the richness of
life, and in denying to Plato any vestige of mystical
sensitivity. As already observed, there are aspects of
Nietzsche's thought which have affinities with Platonism.
This is also so in respect of Neoplatonism. Schopenhauer
was an open admirer of Neoplatonism, and the
Schopenhauerian motifs which are most prominent in the
early Nietzsche, especially the 'Primal One' and the Diony-

sian overcoming of the principium individuationis, are highly
suggestive of Neoplatonism. Nietzsche is no more enam-
oured with the common world of everyday life than are
Platonists of every description. He too wants to attain a
'higher world', and he will constantly struggle with the
problem of distinguishing this from the 'ideal world' of
Platonism. Just as much as Plato does Nietzsche affirm a
radical discontinuity between philosophy (as he under-
stands it) and everything which is not philosophy, just as
much as the latter-day idealist-Platonist Hegel docs he
consider philosophy an 'inverted world' where values are
turned upside down. 88 In his own mind, however, this is all
'Dionysianism' and not 'Platonism'.
THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY
Nietzsche's summary verdict on Christianity is that it is a
'capital crime against lifc'.8<; Previously, Nietzsche con-
siders, Christianity had been arraigned on minor and
incidental charges, relating to its concept of God, the
historical accuracy of its assumptions, and its mythological
cosmology. Passing a severe judgement on all these counts,
modernity has not only overlooked the major offence, but
has sought to sanction it, even to sanctify it: Christian
morality has been left untouched, the 'world-denying'
morality of weakness, sickness and self-abasement. Chris-
tianity has waged 'a war to the death against the higher type of
man', it has taught man to be ashamed of himself, it has
taught an attitude of resentment rather than of gratitude
towards life. Nietzsche's critique is 'psychological': he
judges Christianity by the human types which it produces
and venerates. His first reaction to any given religious
doctrine is to ask 'Who espouses this?' or 'What kind of
character can say this?' Behind the doctrines, he looks for
the basic attitudes to life and manifestations of life which
are then judged for their worth.
The psychological type of the Christian is embodied
above all by Paul of Tarsus. It is in connection with Paul
that Nietzsche first develops, in Daybreak (1881), the idea of

a resentful attitude to life. Paul was a 'very tormented, very
pitiable, very unpleasant man who also found himself
unpleasant.'90 Paul was a fanatic, consumed by the desire to
distinguish himself through the highest honours of the
Jewish religion, and, possessed of the self-righteousness
common to all fanatics, he had a lust to condemn and to
punish. But Paul also became aware of his own inability to
obey the Jewish law which he championed, indeed of the
essential unfulfillability of the law. Overcome with tor-
mented pride, he sought a way out from this impasse and
characteristically found it in an act of revenge. Christianity
was this act. The death of Jesus on the cross made the law
unnecessary. 'At one stroke', Nietzsche writes, 'he feels
himself recovered, the moral despair is as if blown away,
destroyed - that is to say fulfilled, there on the cross.'91 On
Nietzsche's account, Pauline Christianity is an intensifica-
tion (a kind of 'squaring') of original Jewish ressentiment:
although Judaism was already a religion of weakness, Paul
found himself too weak even for this, and Christianity was
his solution. Paul distilled the ressentiment out of Judaism
and poured it into his new creation. Nietzsche fills out this
picture in The Antichrist of 1888, where Paul is presented as
a 'genius of hatred' and 'the greatest of all apostles of
revenge'.92 At all costs Paul sought to poison the sources of
human joy: hence guilt, sin, the last judgement and hell
became key items in his message. It is not Paul's 'beliefs'
which Nietzsche primarily finds objectionable: these are an
expression of the character type itself. Paul was cowardly,
timid, petty, mistrustful, self-abasing, untuthful, envious
etc., and therefore believed in his theology. At the same
time, Paul was a 'genius' in that through him ressentiment
became creative: he was able to mobilize the weak into a
movement of world-historic proportions. Through him
the weak were able to conquer.
It is only in his final period, mainly in The Antichrist and
The Will to Power, that Nietzsche has much to say about
Jesus himself.93 He treats Paul and Jesus as antithetical

personalities, absolving the latter of any responsibility for
the historical phenomenon of Christianity. Jesus was a
'free spirit', completely innocent of ressentiment.94 He
preached a this-wordly rather than an other-worldly phi-
losophy.95 Although the character-type of Jesus can still be
unearthed by a close reading of the Gospels, it has been
distorted beyond all recognition by Pauline theology and
the Church. The figure of Jesus poses certain difficulties
for Nietzsche's psychology. He is not a ressentiment type,
but nor does he seem to be an affirmative type like
Zarathustra. At one point Nietzsche calls him the 'most
interesting decadent', at another point he finds the term
'idiot' appropriate, used in its Dostoycvskyan meaning. 96 It
is not clear on what grounds Nietzsche is entitled to feel
admiration for the Jesus-type. But the fact that Nietzche
does find Jesus so attractive highlights certain aspects of
Zarathustra's personality. 97 The more Dionysian images of
Zarathustra - as dancer, reveller, buffoon - suggest a
contrast with Jesus. However, Zarathustra also values
silence, unobtrusiveness, stillness, detachment, all of
which suggest similarities. We shall come back to this
problem - Nietzsche calls it the problem of'the psycholog-
ical type of the redeemer' - in the next chapter. For the
moment it suffices to note that Jesus is completely outside
the 'spirit of Christianity' as Nietzsche understands it.
As with his treatment of Greek philosophy, what
Nietzsche says about Christianity, especially in polemical
contexts, is over-simplified and historically unacceptable.
He again draws out one tendency and portrays it as the
essence. On the other hand, his works are full of remarks
which indicate anything but an unqualified rejection of
everything Christian. There is a distinction to be made
between the ressentiment type of Christian and the homines
religiosi who may call himself a Christian:
The fight against the church is certainly among other

things - for it means many things - also the fight of
the more common, merrier, more familiar, inge-
nuous, and superficial type against the dominion of
the graver, deeper, more meditative, that it, more evil
and suspicious human beings who brood with an
enduring suspicion about the value of existence and
also about their own value.98
Nietzsche is at pains to distance himself from the critique

of religiosity to be found among 'men of modern ideas':
Every age has its own divine kind of naivety for the
invention of which other ages may envy it - and how
much naivety, venerable, childlike and boundlessly
stupid naivety there is in the scholar's belief in his
superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in
the simple unsuspecting certainty with which his
instinct treats the religious man as an inferior and
lower type which he himself has grown beyond and
above — he, the little presumptuous dwarf and pleb, the
brisk and busy head - and handyman of 'ideas', of
'modern ideas'! "
Nietzsche's religious temperament has recommended him

to many thinkers sympathetic to Christianity. I(K) Paul
Tillich, for example, comments that an 'awareness of
eternity' distinguishes Nietzsche from the common athe-
ism which is sometimes attributed to him. 101 An overt
polemical attitude often conceals what Nietzsche actually
assimilates from the Christian tradition. There are strong
strains of Protestantism in him, most notably his emphasis
on conscience and individual responsibility, together with
his repudiation of all institutions (whether university or
church) and office-holders (whether professors or priests)
of the spirit. Nietzsche acknowledges that Christianity can
mean different things to different ranks of the spirit. For
the plebian type it is the perfect prop for an exhausted life

force, an enchanting and intoxicating outlet for ressenti-
ment. But it has also been, for the best part of two
millennia, the only vehicle, the only spiritual medium, for
the genuine homines religiosi. While the latter kind of person
is distinguished by a resolute questioning of the value of
life, the spirit of Christianity, in the narrow ressentiment
sense, is to be criticized for the answer it gives: that this life
has no value whatever, or even a negative value, and that all
value pertains to the 'next world'.
THE SPIRIT OF MODERNITY

One of the unresolved problems of Nietzsche's philosophy
is the relation between his critique of Christianity on the
one hand, and his critique of modernity on the other. At
first sight it is paradoxical that Nietzsche, with his reputa-
tion as the nineteenth century's most virulent critic of
Christianity, should also be so scornful of modernity, i.e.
of the period when religious belief in general, and Chris-
tianity in particular, is on the wane. If the Christian God has
so long been the symbol of ressentiment ideals, should not
the 'death of God' bring in its train a liberation of the spirit?
Certainly this was the way it had seemed to many of
Nietzsche's anti-clerical predecessors, to such 'enlightened'
and 'scientific' critics as David Straufi, Ludwig Feuerbach
and Karl Marx. But far from sharing their optimism, far
from seeing modernity as an epoch of spiritual emancipa-
tion, Nietzsche speaks uniformly of decline. A typical
passage is the following:
And so as to leave no room for doubt as to what I

despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man
with whom I am fatefully contemporary. The man of
today - I suffocate of his impure breath. With regard
to the past I am, like all men of knowledge, of a large
tolerance, that is to say of a magnanimous self-control:
I traverse the madhouse-world of entire millennia, be
it called 'Christianity', 'Christian faith', 'Christian

church', with a gloomy circumspection - I take care
not to make mankind responsible for its insanities.
But my feelings suddenly alter, burst forth, imme-
diately I enter the modern age, our age.102
What is it precisely about modern man which is so

deserving of contempt? Nietzsche answers a little later in
the same aphorism:
All the concepts of the church are recognized for what

they are: the most malicious false coinage there is for
the purpose of disvaluing nature and natural values; the
priest himself is recognized for what he is.... E very-
one knows this: and everyone nonetheless remains
unchanged. Where have the last feelings of decency and
self-respect gone when even our statesmen, in other
ways a very unprejudiced kind of man and practical
anti-Christians through and through, still call them-
selves Christians and go to communion?
One might wonder how deep this critique goes if the

emphasis is just on the prevalence of hypocrisy and
humbug. Does Nietzsche really think that this kind of
thing did not happen in other historical periods? More
relevant is that Nietzsche, especially in his later writings,
portrays the values of modernity as secularized Christian
values. Whether or not statesmen go to church, they still
believe in such values as 'equal rights', i.e. in values which,
for Nietzsche, are impermissible outside of Christianity.
David StrauB does not attend communion, but, in
Nietzsche's view, his 'new faith' in modern morality and
rationality still depends on the 'old faith' of Christianity.
Nietzsche assimilates Christianity and modernity as a single
spiritual phenomenon: he sees modernity as without its
own principles of legitimation, as a weak duplicitous
continuation of Christianity, as Christianity in decline,
Christianity which no longer believes in itself but clings to

the old values for want of an alternative, Christianity
which cannot bring itself to confront its own lack of
foundations.
However, there is another dimension to Nietzsche's
critique of modernity which is rather different in
emphasis. This is the critique of nihilism. To be sure,
Nietzsche sees the phenomenon of nihilism - the devalua-
tion of all values - as an outgrowth of Christianity, as in a
certain sense the product of the latter's own logic.103 But
the question must be put as to whether, in the broader
context of Nietzsche's thought, nihilism has characteristics
which are independent of Christianity. Nietzsche depicts
nihilistic man as complacent, mediocre, without any 'great
faith', without ideals, possessed by petty ambition and
envy, believing in his own 'happiness': in a word, as a man
of ressentiment. If such a man chooses to beautify himself
with Christian phraseology, docs this make him into a
secret Christian? On the other hand, if he dispenses with
such phraseology, is he still in essence Christian just by
virtue of his ressentiment? Neither suggestion seems par-
ticularly plausible. It must be remembered that, for
Nietzsche, Christianity is not the cause oí ressentiment, but
merely the vehicle for its 'creative' deployment. If, for
various reasons, this vehicle becomes no longer available,
the man of ressentiment remains what he is. If he seeks
expression for his ressentiment through quasi-Christian
ideals which (by hypothesis) he knows to be without
foundation, this does not make him into a covert Christian
but into a false hypocritical Christian. His lack of Christian
faith is, on this way of looking at the matter, a mark against
him rather than for him.
The concept of nihilism as employed by Nietzsche is
notoriously difficult. Sometimes he distinguishes between
'passive' and 'active' nihilism, where the former is a
resigned and demoralized submission to the devaluation of
values, the latter a courageous affirmation of the 'abyss'
and the creation of new values.104 It seems that active

nihilism is the prerogative of a few free-spirits like
Nietzsche himself, the majority of modern men being
caught up in passive nihilism. Aware that the ideals of the
tradition are no longer worthy of belief, the passive
nihilists lower their horizons to whatever seems practically
attainable. If it is no longer permissible to believe in truth or
God, they can, for example, still believe in values like
'family life' or 'the nation'; they can believe (as do the 'last
men' in Zarathustra's Prologue) in 'happiness'. Such people
have long ago adjusted to the death of God, they have long
become hardened in their bemused and contemptuous
enlightenment concerning all 'higher' demands. In this
sense, the culture of passive nihilism is one of mediocrity:
What will the moral philosophers who come up in this

age now have to preach? They discover, these acute
observers and idlers, that the end is fast approaching,
that everything around them is corrupt and corrupt-
ing, that nothing can last beyond the day after
tomorrow, one species of man ejccepted, the incurably
mediocre. The mediocre alone have the prospect of
continuing on and propagating themselves - they are
the men of the future, the sole survivors; 'be like
them! become mediocre!' is henceforth the only
morality that has any meaning left, that still finds ears
to hear it.1()5
Is Nietzsche here depicting the surreptitious continuation

of Christian values, or simply the collapse of Christian
values? Any plausibility attaching to the first alternative
depends on Nietzsche's thesis of ressentiment as the founda-
tion of Christianity. But as we have seen, Nietzsche in
certain respects also harbours a grudging admiration for
Christianity, an admiration which can burst forth into open
praise when comparing Christian with modern culture. Is it
the case that, in modern times, ressentiment comes into full
bloom only because of so many centuries of Christian

preparation? Or is it rather that other factors are responsible
for the mediocrity and levelling which Nietzsche finds so
painful to behold? Granted that Nietzsche himself insists
on Christian morality as the ultimate villain, may it be that
this obfuscates his practical critique of modernity?
These questions are of particular importance given the
tendency of much contemporary commentary to domesti-
cate Nietzsche's critique of modernity. This occurs when
Christianity and modernity are assimilated with one
another and subjected to a unitary critique under the rubric
of 'the death of God'. Modernity is then understood in
terms of secularized Christian ideals like reason and
progress, and is distinguished from postmodernity as the
proper age of nihilism. The themes of mediocrity and
levelling fall out of sight altogether, or are hastily sub-
sumed under Christian morality, while the major focus of
Nietzsche's critique becomes the destruction of author-
itarian residues of Christianity, with an affirmation
(explicit or implicit) of a 'godless' postmodernity. In
reality, however, Nietzsche is much more scathing of the
nihilistic-rclativistic side of modernity than he is of its
residual Christian elements, including the dogmatism so
abhored by the postmodernists. 106 Above all he is scornful
of the vacuousness of modern ideals, oriented as they arc to
nothing more than the 'universal green pasture happiness
of the herd, with security, safety, comfort, and an easier
life for all.'107 Nietzsche sees the decadence of modernity
in the circumstance that it knows no great tasks. The typical
modern man is a philistinc because he lacks all sense of the
tragic implications of the death of God. This means that he
lacks an original orientation to truth: he does not need truth,
does not experience the destruction of Christian truth as a
loss, and therefore does not feel the necessity of a
'revaluation' of values. No distinction can be found in
Nietzsche between pre-nihilistic modernity and nihilistic
postmodernity: from the Straufi essay through to The
Antichrist, he sees modernity as nihilistic from the very

beginning. Nihilism is a slowly intensifying process: the
implications of the death of God become visible only
gradually over an extended period of time, as does the
untenability of the various substitute faiths. Although it is
only in late modernity that nihilism comes to the surface as
a mass psychological phenomenon, this is an outcome
which is already guaranteed by the original loss of faith
going back to the Enlightenment and earlier.
Nietzsche's critique of modernity is seen one-sidely by
many contemporary commentators because they assume
that 'perspectivism' is his fundamental philosophical posi-
tion. With this assumption in place, the critique of nihilism
gets subordinated to the critique of dogmatism, something
which seems perfectly justified in the light of Nietzsche's
thesis of modernity as secularized Christianity. Passive
nihilism, in its resignation and despair, is understood as still
beholden to the now discredited Christian dogmatic ideals,
while active 'postmodern' nihilism, enlightened as it is
about the perspectival character of truth, becomes the way
of the Übermensch. Once Nietzsche is released from the
straight]acket of perspectivism, his critique of modernity
appears in a very different light. To begin with, his
hostility to democratic egalitarianism no longer has to be
dismissed as 'subjective' and inconsistent with his 'epis-
temology', but can be seen as integral to his critique of the
'smallness' of modern values. Likewise, his ambivalence
with respect to Christianity no longer must be explained
away as 'nostalgia', but can be recognized for what it is, i.e.
as reflecting Nietzsche's respect for a 'great faith'. Here, as
elsewhere in Nietzsche's thought, it is necessary to resist
any hasty smoothing out of apparent contradictions.
Nietzsche sees the true test of philosophical resolve in one's
willingness and ability to hold oneself out within these.
Modernity is for him above all a time of trial. While there is
no going back to the Christian-metaphysical tradition and
the consolations of its dogmatic truths, a different kind of
philosophical truthfulness must be embraced if man is not

to capitulate before the emptiness of'modern ideas'.
Once one recognizes that the main focus of Nietzsche's
critique of modernity is its 'mediocrity' and 'weakness', his
historical-analytical thesis of modernity's roots in Chris-
tianity can be called into question. There is no denying that
residues of Christianity persist into modern times, some-
times as secularized versions of Christian values. But
Nietzsche gives insufficient recognition to the autonomy
of modernity. For example, the importance of the socio-
economic forces of capitalism, particularly in respect of
the phenomena of'levelling' (the world as 'market-place')
are almost entirely overlooked. The historical conflicts
between Christian and modern values (Galileo, Darwin et
ál.) are also left unaccounted for. Influential as Nietzsche's
descriptive-psychological depiction of nihilism has been,
his thesis of modernity as exhausted Christianity has not
proved useful for understanding the dynamics of modern
culture. Nietzsche is over-axious to establish the respon-
sibility of Christianity for everything he detests about
modernity, but the inadequacy of his explanatory hypoth-
esis should not lead us away from the phenomena them-
selves. Nietzsche wants to bring the spirit of modernity
into view as the 'spirit of mediocrity'. He wants to show
modernity up as an age without 'greatness':
And if it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time,

then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its
salvation in public opinion, that is to say private
laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean it
will be struck out of the true history of the liberation
of life. How reluctant later generations will be to have
anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by
living men, but by pseudo-men dominated by public
opinion; for which reason our age may be to some
distant posterity the darkest and least known, because
least human, portion of human history. 108
No doubt 'private laziness' can be found in every historical

age, no doubt mediocrity is not unique to modernity.
However, what is different about the modern period is that
mediocrity now parades itself with the best of consciences,
that a contemptuous dismissal of the 'great problems' is
socially sanctioned through the complacent maxim 'there is
no truth'. Modernity makes a virtue out of its own retreat
from the demands of philosophy: this, and not its inheri-
tance of Christian values, is what Nietzsche understands as
its essential ressentiment.109
3
Redemption and Life
Affirmation
But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting

present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and
contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let him
rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by
the people as if it were flight from reality - while it is only his absorption,
immersion, penetration into reality, so that when one day lie emerges
again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality: its
redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon
it. 1
The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that gods too therefore
philosophize, seems a by no means harmless novelty and one calculated
to excite suspicion precisely among philosophers - among you, my
friends, it will meet with a friendlier reception, unless it comes too late
and not at the right time: for, as 1 have discovered, you no longer like to
believe in God and gods now. Perhaps 1 shall have to go further in the
frankness of my story than may always be agreeable to the strict habits
of your ears?2
REDEMPTION AND THE ABSOLUTE

In the famous parable from The Gay Science, Nietzsche
depicts a 'madman' announcing the death of God to a
crowd of bemused bystanders. 3 The 'men of the market-
place' do not regard the madman's message as a piece of
astonishing news. They have heard it before, they
acknowledge it, they have adjusted to it long ago. What
perplexes them, and what leads them to consider the
stranger as indeed a madman, is the urgency with which the
message is delivered. To these bystanders, the death of God
Redemption and Life Affirmationnn 117
is no reason to be shaken to the bottom of one's being, there

is no need for such terrible forebodings. When the
madman forces his way into local churches and pronounces
these 'tombs and sepulchers of God' they become indig-
nant. Neither does the death of God justify interference
with religious observances.
The experience of the madman is the constantly repeated
experience of Nietzsche's own life.4 As his close confidante
Lou Salomé notes, the problems created by the loss of his
childhood faith remain the basic impetus for Nietzsche's
philosophical activity.5 Christianity had provided Euro-
pean man with an Absolute, with a centre for valuation and
a justification for human existence. Could all this really be
given up with the equanimity of modern man? Such
apparent composure would be explicable if a new Absolute
had been substituted for the old one. But this had not
occurred. Not only was a new Absolute lacking, but
modernity, to all appearances, seemed perfectly reconciled
to this situation. Henceforth, so the unanimous opinion
seemed to be, mankind would have to live with mere
relativities. Such a fate need not be onerous. If one could
not believe in an Absolute, belief in 'progress', in 'the
future', in 'reason', in 'equal rights', were adequate sub-
stitutes, and of course happiness was still attainable
through such traditional means as family life, money-
making or the pleasures of the senses. All these may
amount to something less than absolute value, but there
need be no despair on that account. The Absolute seemed
dispensable after all: as it turned out, human beings could
live meaningful and satisfying lives without it. Such at
least was the general opinion. But Nietzsche takes a
different attitude.
Nietzsche is convinced that the Christian Absolute
cannot be resuscitated. He thinks the same of the meta-
physical Absolute (the Good of Platonic philosophy) which
to all intents and purposes he assimilates to Christianity. He
further rejects the elevation of the relative values of
modernity to de facto absolute status, as occurs when

'education', 'progress', or 'equal rights' are pursued with
something resembling religious fervour. Contrary to pop-
ular assumption, however, not only does Nietzsche not
reject the Absolute as such, he sees it as the one eternal
demand of philosophy. His whole thought is governed by a
yearning for the Absolute, by the attempt, after the death
of the Christian God, to rediscover the genuine Absolute.
What he objects to in the Christian God is not that it is
absolute but that it is not genuine:
What sets us apart is not that we recognize no God,

either in history or in nature or behind nature - but that
we find that which has been reverenced as God not
'godlike' but pitiable, absurd, harmful, not merely an
error but a crime against life....In a formula: Dens,
qualem Paulns creavit, dei negatio/*
Nietzsche takes the same attitude to all those concepts

which, like God, have traditionally been linked with the
Absolute. He does not object to them as such, but to the
circumstance that 'little abortions of bigots and liars began
to lay claim to the concepts "God", "truth", "light",
"spirit", "love", "wisdom", "life" as if these were
synonyms of themselves.'7 All these are concepts which
Nietzsche uses in his own way, not in a rclativistic sense,
but in connection with his own kind of Absolute. When he
describes himself as the last disciple of the god Dionysus,
when he portrays Zarathustra as the most truthful of all
men, when he speaks of the free spirit, tragic wisdom and
the affirmation of life, he does not mean to imply a
reconciliation with anything less than the Absolute, he does
not have in mind a standpoint in any sense optional,
contingent or perspectival. What he intends is a new
conception of the Absolute, therefore new conceptions of
God, truth, spirit, life etc. Nietzsche is not an 'untimely'
thinker because he rejects the Christian God: this was in the
Redemption and Life Affirmation n 119
second half of the nineteenth century already an old story,

it had already attained the status of public opinion. What
makes him untimely is his refusal to accommodate himself
to the nihilistic relativism of modernity. In seeking a new
Absolute, in insisting that existence without such an
Absolute is impossible, he appeared (for example to such
Basel colleagues as Burckhardt and Overbeck, who
acknowledged his genius) as a romantic or sentimentalist,
as a kind of'madman'. Even in the present day, the pathos
of Nietzsche's philosophical resolve is often dismissed as
idiosyncratic, so that his thought can be forced into the
very categories which he so vehemently rejected. The
impossibility of the Absolute has in contemporary times
become such an article of faith that one 'knows' that
Nietzsche, as a 'modern' thinker, must have rejected it too.
One 'knows' this, despite the counter-evidence of the
texts.8
The great difficulty in talking about 'the Absolute' is that
so many different meanings may be attached to this term.
We have already seen the dubiousness of attributing to
Nietzsche an unequivocal rejection of 'Being'. Where he
condemns this notion, it means the supreme unchanging
object of metaphysical knowledge, a realm of eternal truth
which can be 'possessed' through intellectual reasoning. On
the other hand, he sometimes considers 'Being' a suitable
term for the conceptually ungraspable 'life' intuited by the
Dionysian philosopher. As for 'the Absolute', Nietzsche
has a distinct distaste for this particular term. He associates
it, as does Schopenhauer before him, with German ideal-
ism, especially Hegelianism. But terminology should not
be allowed to mislead. Just as Schopenhauer sought an
ultimate sphere of truth beyond 'representational' knowl-
edge, so does Nietzsche invest absolute value in Dionysian
truth, in the truth of 'life' itself. And, although this truth
does not possess epistemological significance, although it
does not translate out as an authoritative 'theory' of reality,
there is, for Nietzsche, no more decisive question for a
human being than his relation to just this truth.
Whether we are justified in calling Dionysian truth

'absolute' depends on what is achieved through it. Sim-
ilarly, whether we are justified in calling the 'object' of
Dionysian affirmation 'the Absolute' depends on the role
which Nietzsche attributes to it. It was remarked above that
the Christian Absolute provided a centre for valuation and
a justification for human existence. Does this also hold in
the case of Nietzsche's Dionysian? Despite differences in
the way Nietzsche conceives both valuation and justifica-
tion, the answer is undoubtedly yes. For Nietzsche, all
valuation must be measured on the scale of life affirmation
or life denial: this is the only measure which counts.
Moreover, existence can only be justified through an
affirmative stance towards life. Christianity had sought a
centre of valuation through the idea of 'the good', and
Nietzsche rejects this. Christianity had sought the justifica-
tion of human existence through the immortality of the
soul and the reward of eternal life, which Nietzsche also
rejects. But Nietzsche does not dismiss the problems of
Christianity: he gives different answers. Although he
reformulates these problems, he does not reject them as
pseudo-problems. The need for a new centre for valuation
('new law tables') and for a new principle of justification
stands at the very foundation of his thought.
Of these two functions of the Absolute, valuation and
justification, the latter has the primary role. The centre of
valuation is itself to be valued on account of its capacity to
justify. In the case of Christianity, 'the good' is valued
because of the promise of heavenly rewards. For
Nietzsche, the Dionysian phenomenon of 'life' is worthy
of affirmation because only thereby is the justification of
individual existence possible. The parallel with Christianity
is indicated by Nietzsche's taking over of the term
'redemption' (Erlost4ng) as a synonym for 'justification'. It
is through the Dionysian that man achieves redemption: all
authentic valuation, all genuine truth, all genuine wisdom,
all genuine spirit, are for Nietzsche oriented to this supreme
possibility. Redemption is Nietzsche's answer to the ques-

tion 'why do we want truth?' 9 At the same time, truth is his
answer to the question 'how is life to be redeemed?' Of
course, only a specific kind of truth comes into considera-
tion here. Scientific-theoretical truth, for example, is non-
redemptive. One does not want this kind of truth for the
purposes of redemption but for pragmatic reasons,
ultimately for self-preservation. Scientific truth is not
absolute truth, not philosophical truth, because it does not
cater for the absolute need for redemption. This is why
Nietzsche thinks it perverse to devote oneself to scientific
truth in the manner of the spiritual middle class, to pursue
science as a grand and all-consuming passion. Redemption
is the sole 'criterion of adequacy' for absolute truth: in this
respect Nietzsche does not think that Christianity was
wrong. Where he differs from Christianity is in his
conception of the nature of redemption, and the means of
its attainment. 10
This chapter attempts to clarify the role of redemption in
Nietzsche's philosophy, and thus to throw some further
light on the vexed question of what he means by 'truth'.
The mainly negative conclusion of Chapter One, namely
that Nietzsche is not a 'perspectivist' in the sense of
relativistic pluralism, will be supplemented by more posi-
tive considerations: we shall see more precisely how the
'absolutism' of Nietzsche's philosophy is to be understood.
Preliminary to this, some attention must be given in the
following section to Schopenhauer's philosophy of
redemption. An unfortunate consequence of the neglect of
Schopenhauer among contemporary commentators is that
the theme of redemption, so central for Nietzsche's
esteemed predecessor as for Nietzsche himself, fades
almost entirely from view. We shall see that Nietzsche's
thought is in many ways a response to Schopenhauer's
philosophy of redemption, which in Nietzsche's view
partakes too much of the Christian model. This
Schopenhauerian context is especially evident in The Birth
of Tragedy, which will be examined in the section 'Diony-

sian redemption': the concept of Dionysianism will emerge
as an attempt to understand redemption in a 'life-affirm-
ing' rather than in a Schopenhaucrian 'life-denying' ('pessi-
mistic') manner. However, Nietzsche's sceptical
temperament did not easily allow him to rest content with
such a 'religiously' coloured concept as redemption. In
subsequent works he is plagued by doubt, returning again
and again to the 'psychology' of redemption, concerned to
discover if a genuine meaning can be given to a concept
which seems to have its provenance in Christianity. These
psychological considerations will occupy us in the fourth
section, 'The psychological analysis of redemption'. Till
the end of his writings, Nietzsche remains conscious that
redemption is a questionable concept, very liable to be
invested with Christian assumptions. But he never aban-
dons it, he retains it as one of the basic 'enigmas' of his
philosophy. As we shall observe in the section headed
'Redemption and the eternal return', it plays a special role in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the supreme thought of the
'eternal return' signifies nothing less than redemption from
time. Having thus arrived at the core of Nietzsche's
thought, the following section 'This world and other
world', makes an interim assessment. I ask whether
Nietzsche's polemical opposition between 'this world' and
'other world' is in fact a satisfactory framework for
dealing with the problem of redemption, or whether, on
the contrary, this seductively simple opposition hinders
Nietzsche in his basic aims. The issues raised in this section
are further elaborated in Chapter Four. The next section,
'Redemption and the self, focuses on the 'self as the
'subject' of redemption, attempting to understand the
meaning of Nietzsche's dictum 'become who you are'. In
this connection, particular emphasis is given to the apparent
antagonism between the 'individualizing' and 'universaliz-
ing' dimensions of Nietzsche's thought. The final section
of the chapter explains why Nietzsche calls the radical
solitude of redemption a 'purification' and 'cleansing'.
SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY OF REDEMPTION

Schopenhauer considered himself an atheist. At one point
Nietzsche praises him for his 'unconditional and honest
atheism' and as 'the first admitted and inexorable atheist
among us Germans'.11 It is true that, for Schopenhauer,
because theism claims rational knowledge in an area beyond
the competence of reason, it is once and for all refuted by
the Kantian critique of speculation. He thus rejected all
'doctrines' of God, all 'theology' as he understood it, from
the belief systems of the common people to the refined
constructions of Hegelianism. On the other hand, this does
not prevent Schopenhauer's philosophy from possessing a
profoundly religious character. While rejecting doctrinal
theology, he embraced the experiential-moral dimension
of Christianity and the Eastern religions, particularly
Buddhism. The three sources of his own philosophy, he
used to say, were Plato, Kant and Eastern wisdom. From
Plato he learnt that the empirical world is a second-order
reality dependent on an eternal realm of Being, from Kant
he learnt that reason is limited to the 'world as representa-
tion' and could not know the Thing-in-itself, from
Buddhism (and also Christianity) he learnt that pity,
understood as the fellow-feeling of sufferers, is the
foundation of morality. His philosophy attempts a syn-
thesis of all these sources, governed by his own key idea of
the 'world as will'. The latter is likewise the key to his
understanding of'redemption'.
The basic character of human life as suffering can be
verified, in Schopenhauer's opinion, through unprejudiced
observation, but he considers it his own distinctive achieve-
ment to have shown why this is so, to have provided a
metaphysical explanation of this empirical fact. This he
attempts through his idea of the essence of reality - the
Thing in itself-as will, i.e. as a blind, eternal, directionless,
meaningless, impersonal surge. That he calls this essence
'will' does indeed pose a difficulty. We know what will is
through our own experiences of willing, and in this sense it
is a 'subjective' phenomenon. Schopenhauer never comes

to an adequate resolution of this problem. He maintains
that the inner intuition through which we are conscious of
will is, on account of its lack of spatial determinations, less
subjective than the external perception which, in combina-
tion with the intellect, yields the 'world as representation'.
Inadequate as this may be for establishing that will is the
Thing-in-itself (which must be free of all determinations,
not just spatial ones) it suffices for his basic argument on
redemption. Even if will is not the Thing-in-itself, the
latter manifests itself in the human sphere first and
foremost in the phenomena of desiring, striving, yearning
etc. But (and here the resemblance with Buddhism is
evident) all such willing is accompanied by suffering.
Willing is always directed to a lack which is experienced as
painful, and human beings, condemned as they are by the
nature of things to willing, arc condemned to repeated
cycles of pain (the 'wheel of Ixion'). Human willing
resembles a thirst whose anticipated satisfaction always
turns out to be illusory. The objects of will are like mirages
whose objective properties can never justify the despera-
tion with which they are sought. Happiness is never an
accomplished fact but always a promise, a hope for the
future whose deceptive character is repeatedly confirmed
through ever new rounds of willing directed towards ever
new objects. The sorry truth of human existence is that it is
no more than a phenomenal manifestation of this blind
primal striving. As one lost in the desert cannot help but
stagger on towards the next mirage, so all human beings are
driven by the will from one deception to another until they
finally expire, 'sword in hand'. In short, neediness-for-
redemption is grounded in will-bound suffering. There-
fore redemption consists in breaking free of will.
The moral meaning of redemption is grounded in the
circumstance that human willing is the willing of an ego.
This makes willing not only painful, but also unjust, for
the ego seeks its own benefit alone. Considered as Thing-
in-itself, will is an undifferentiated unity. But primal will

'objectifies itself at the level of phenomena through the
prindpium individuationis, which in the case of human beings
means discrete egos. Each ego considers itself the supreme
reality, and would more readily will the destruction of the
entire external world than its own destruction. Breaking
free of will (i.e. redemption) implies the overcoming of
egoism: it is the breaking through of the prindpium
individuationis and the re-establishment of the original unity
of all human beings, indeed of all beings whatsoever.
According to Schopenhauer, this is the true foundation of
the morality of compassion (or pity) to be found in
Christianity and Buddhism. All human beings are essen-
tially companions in suffering. But what prevents them
from acknowledging this, and from acting towards each
other out of fellow-feeling, is that they are also compa-
nions in guilt. The guilt of man does not reside in any
particular form of existence, nor in any particular 'wicked'
acts performed, but simply in his existence as an ego.12
Because man exists only as a suffering and guilty ego,
Schopenhauer draws his well-known 'pessimistic' conclu-
sion: 'it would be better not to be'.
This unenviable situation of man has yet another aspect.
As an ego he is condemned not only to suffering and guilt,
but also to error. The only reality an ego can know is the
'world as representation', i.e. the world as constructed by
the intellect for the purposes of self-preservation.
However much mastery the ego achieves in this realm of
scientific truth, however deeply it probes the world of
space, time and causality, it remains, precisely as ego, cut
off from the primal ground of its being. The ego
understands its individuation as absolute, it cannot see
beyond the 'veil of Maya' which is constituted through this
individuation. The intellect is the slave of individuated
egoistic will, and only possible objects of this will have any
meaning for it. Error is not morally neutral, but reflects the
fundamental guilt of ego-centred existence: man is in error
because he is 'sinfully' dominated by will. Redemption, as

the overcoming of will, is the simultaneous overcoming of
suffering, guilt and error: it is deliverance into bliss,
blessedness and truth.
In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer
distinguishes two kinds of redemptive experience: aesthetic
(Book Three) and ascetic (Book Four). The former is a
transitory and unstable freeing from the dictates of will,
while the latter is a more enduring and perfected freeing,
i.e. redemption in the full and proper sense. Aesthetic
redemption is explained in terms of the Platonic Ideas. 13
Through contemplation of a Platonic Idea 'a change takes
place in the subject' as a result of which it is 'no longer an
individual'. 14 The distinction between subject and object is
overcome: what was formerly a subject separated from its
object of will now becomes a 'pure, will-less subject of
knowledge' and 'loses itself in contemplation. ' 5 In con-
trast with theoretical cognition, which is always governed
by interest, the experience of beauty liberates one from
individual motivation: this is what makes aesthetic experi-
ence 'pure'. In being thus released from the dominion of
will, suffering is abolished, leading to that feeling of well-
being, sometimes of intoxication and ecstacy, which
attaches to aesthetic experience. This feeling of pleasure is
purely contemplative, disinterested and impersonal: it lifts
the burden of the world as will. However, Schopenhauer
maintains that aesthetic contemplation cannot be an endur-
ing condition. It is episodic and transitory, providing only a
foretaste of the more comprehensive redemption to be
attained through asceticism. The latter is a condition of
'voluntary renunciation, resignation, true releasement and
complete will-lcssness'.16 What is at work here is the
ascetic's repugnance at his own manifestation as an individ-
ual. Seeing through the principium individuationis, the ascetic
crushes his own individual will. Asceticism is the 'greatest,
most important and most meaningful phenomenon which
the world can exhibit.' 17 Achieving a deep tranquillity and
serenity, the ascetic no longer feels egoistic greed, fear,

envy, hate or anger, but 'looks back calmly and with a smile
on the phantasmagoria of this world which was once able
to move and agonize even his mind, but now stands before
him as indifferently as chess-men at the end of a game.'18
Although Schopenhauer has great respect for the more
severe exponents of asceticism (e.g. Francis of Assisi), he
does not insist on particularly strict ascetic practices. By
'asceticism' he understands the greatest possible indif-
ference to objects of will, whereas extreme practices such
as self-flagellation, fasting and the hair-shirt are always
caught up in the logic of that which they seek to combat.
What is essential is the virtue of pity, itself a state of
suffering. As the genuine hair-shirt, pity signifies an
overcoming of the principium individuationis so that one
'now identifies one's own lot with that of mankind in
general: but this is a hard lot of trouble, pain, and death.' 19
The ascetic suffers out of insight and empathy, the egoist
out of will. With the overcoming of will, suffering is
transfigured rather than abolished: a new kind of extra-
worldly suffering is embraced which results in 'a melan-
choly mood, the constant burden of one great pain and a
corresponding playing-down of all smaller joys and sor-
rows.'20 The ascetic has overcome his personal guilt, but
now experiences the primal guilt of mankind. His 'melan-
choly mood' is not a negative manifestation and as such
something he would like to get rid of, though it is
invariably confused with this by those living within
egoism. It is the destiny of those who live in the truth, an
aspect of truthfulness itself.
A serious logical problem in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
redemption arises from his claim that will, i.e. that which is
overcome in the ascetic condition, is the Thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer's treatment of this problem is dismissive: he
speaks simply of 'exceptions' to the domination of will.
The overcoming of will is not susceptible to 'rational'
explanation, with Schopenhauer speaking of a 'transcen-
dental alteration' which happens 'suddenly and as if coming
from outside', of'rebirth' and an 'act of grace'.21 But even

if we accept this kind of language, the difficulty remains
that, instead of achieving a unification with the primal
ground of reality, the redeemed individual appears to be
actually annihilated: as Schopenhauer puts it, redemption is
a 'crossing over into an empty nothingness' (Übergang in das
leeré Nichts)'.22 This paradoxical solution is made necessary
by Schopenhauer's insistence that human suffering and
misery are metaphysically guaranteed. If the essence of
reality is pure and purposeless will, then a return to this
from the second-order level of individuation does not hold
out the promise of release from suffering, nor of the other
sublime aspects of the redemptive experience.
Schopenhauer is therefore forced to postulate 'another
world', albeit a world of 'nothingness', as an escape from
the desperate situation of man. This negative characteriza-
tion of redemption is not only an expression of the limits
of rational understanding. What shuns nothingness is our
own individual will, our nature as will-to-life. As
Schopenhauer puts it in the closing sentences of his main
work: 'We freely acknowledge that what remains after the
complete abolition of the will is, for all who are still full of
will, assuredly nothing. But also conversely, to those in
whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real
world of ours, with all its suns and galaxies is, -nothing.' 23
It is Schopenhauer's idea of redemption as an 'affirma-
tion of nothingness' which arouses the indignation of
Nietzsche. As we shall sec, however, there is some doubt as
to whether Nietzsche shows sufficient recognition of
Schopenhauer's underlying intentions with this idea. In
many passages, particularly in his later writings, Nietzsche
reads Schopenhauer rather too much according to the
exigencies of the latter's formal metaphysical system. But
notwithstanding the radical difference which redemption
is supposed to make, Schopenhauer does not see it as the
literal negation of the world: he realizes perfectly well that
in some sense the ascetic remains 'in the world', subject to
Redemption and Life Affirmation 129
its temptations, and burdened with its guilt. In this

connection it may be noted that Schopenhauer's most
popular work in Germany (although almost unknown in
English-speaking circles) has always been his Aphorisms on
Life-Wisdom, a treatise which is supposed to suspend strict
metaphysical pessimism in an attempt to show how life can
be made 'least unbearable'.24 Yet the basic tendency of The
World as Will and Representation still determines this work:
the philosophy of 'practical living' which it presents is
governed by the same views on human value and corrupt-
ion. Implicitly at least, redemption emerges as a this-
worldly possibility, as a kind of ideal, attainable in degree.
Not a denial of life, not a 'crossing over into nothingness',
but an alteration of existential relations is the issue. It is this
aspect of Schopenhauer's thought, i.e. 'life denial' as a
'way of life', which makes it first of all relevant to
Nietzsche.
DIONYSIAN REDEMPTION
Although Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy, has
the outward appearance of an aesthetic theory, it is more
fundamentally a response to the Schopenhauerian philoso-
phy of redemption. The Dionysian aesthetic presented in
this work is an answer to the problem of redemption, to the
problem of how man can justify his own individual
existence in the face of the 'terrifying' and 'absurd' abyss
of life. The lack of any higher 'theological' purpose to life
is the point of departure for The Birth of Tragedy as it is for
Schopenhauer. It is simply asserted as the 'tragic' insight
which must be once again appropriated after the long
period of optimistic intellectualism beginning with
Socrates. But rather than, in the manner of Schopenhauer,
concluding that life must be 'denied', Nietzsche under-
stands redemption as the affirmation of life: not resigna-
tion and renunciation, but Dionysian 'life-intoxication'
becomes the solution.
In the ancient Greek world, the Dionysian cults belonged
to the so-called 'mystery religions'.25 Of probable oriental
origin, they offered an alternative to the polis-centred,

ritualistic and political religion of the Greeks, gaining
particularly widespread influence in late Hellenistic times
when the traditional gods were in decline and the spectre of
nihilism ever present. The Dionysian cults were redemp-
tive in their basic meaning for, unlike traditional religion,
they focused on the individual, inducing an alteration of
consciousness into a state of 'divine madness' or frenzy.
Although condemned by political authorities and
periodically suppressed, the cults proved remarkably
resilient, surviving well into the Christian period and
providing a source of recruitment into Christian commu-
nities. In choosing the god Dionysus as the symbol of life
affirmation, Nietzsche is well aware of this alternative
religiosity, a religiosity which worships 'life' itself, not in
its most proximate manifestations, but as the groundswell
of life, as the inexhaustible upsurge of life, as primal force
and origin. The Dionysian experience reveals that 'life is at
the bottom of things, despite all changes of appearances,
indestructibly powerful and pleasurable' (unzerstorbar
machtig und lustvolï).2(* This pleasurable quality, however, is
not inconsistent with a kind of'primal pain' (Ur-Schmerz)
which, like the pains of childbirth, is in the service of life.
Much later, in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche puts the
matter thus:
In the teachings of the mysteries, pain is sanctified: the

'pains of childbirth' sanctify pain in general - all
becoming and growing, all that guarantees the future,
postulates pain....I know of no more exalted symbol-
ism than this Greek symbolism, the symbolism of the
Dionysian. The profoundest instinct of life, the
instinct for the future of life, for the eternity of life,
is in this word experienced religiously.27
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche presents the Dionysian

orgies of the Greeks as 'festivals of world redemption and
days of transfiguration' (Welterlosungsfesten und Ver- Ver

klamngstagen) which 'destroy the individual and redeem
him by a mystic feeling of oneness' (durch eine mystischc
Einheitsempfindung zu erlösen).2* In combination with the
'Apollinian' principle of 'beautiful form', the Dionysian
experience finds expression in tragic art, more precisely in
the tragic artist himself, understood as 'the medium
through which the one truly existing subject celebrates his
redemption in appearance' (Erlösung im Scheme),,2y
Although Nietzsche asserts that 'it is only as an aesthetic
phenomenon that existence and the world arc eternally
justified', his concerns in the book as a whole are not
aesthetic in any narrow sense. Rather, a particular kind of
art is seen as an alternative to Schopenhauerian pessimism.
The Dionysian and Apollinian principles are joined to
produce 'the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of
everything existent, the conception of individuation as the
primal cause of evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the
spell of individuation may be broken in augury of restored
oneness.'30 Through the Apollinian principle, individua-
tion is not abolished, but as Nietzsche says, 'redeemed':
'Apollo, however, again appears to us as the apotheosis of
the principium individuationis, in which alone is consumated
the perpetually attained goal of the primal One, its
redemption through appearance (Erlösung durch den
Sf/iem).' 31 At the level of 'beautiful appearance', the
contradiction between the primal One and individuation is
overcome, and the whole phenomenal world redeemed
through being experienced in an aesthetic mode. This does
not mean that Apollo is victorious over Dionysus: the only
kind of art which serves redemption is Dionysian art,
though it is as art that the Dionysian principle finds
expression. In The Birth of Tragedy, art is no alternative to
religion, but a way of understanding the alternative
religion symbolized by Dionysus. This is confirmed by the
fact that, when Nietzsche returns to the Dionysian motif in
his late period, the specifically 'aesthetic' Apollinian princi-
ple drops almost out of sight.
Nietzsche rejects the Schopenhauerian conception of

neediness-for-redemption on two major counts. Firstly,
human suffering is narrowed down to specifically 'tragic'
suffering. Nietzsche's 'primal pain' is not the pain of
human willing with all its accompanying frustrations and
resistances, it is not the natural suffering of man as a
vulnerable creature in a hostile world. For Nietzsche, this
kind of suffering is simply part of the human lot, and is
universally accepted as long as human existence is seen as
meaningful. The only kind of pain which is 'meta-
physically' significant is that arising from the 'tragic
insight' of the meaninglessness of existence. Secondly,
Nietzsche rejects Schopenhauer's moral interpretation of
redemption. Whereas Schopenhauer regards human needi-
ness-for-redemption as equivalent to egoistic guilt, and
seeks a solution through the ascetic morality of pity,
Nietzsche insists that Dionysian redemption involves
'nothing reminiscent of asceticism, spirituality, or duty'.32
In the later 'Attempt at Self Criticism' attached to the new
edition of The Birth of Tragedy in 1886, Nietzsche refers to
'the careful and hostile silence with which Christianity is
treated throughout the whole book - Christianity as the
most prodigal moral theme to which humanity has ever
been subjected.'33 Nietzsche's later critique of Christian
morality is clearly presaged in this early work, as when he
speaks of the 'active sin' and 'justification of human evil'
which occur in the Dionysian state.34 In contrast with
asceticism, Dionysian redemption is 'sacrilegious' (fre-
velhaft}'. the intoxicated individual is carried away beyond
all conventional allegiances, beyond the 'femininity' of
Christian conceptions of good and evil.
Despite these differences from Schopenhauer, does The
Birth of Tragedy remain anchored in Schopenhauerian
metaphysics? The main ground for this suspicion is the
central role of the primal One, the return to which by the
individual is constitutive of Dionysian redemption.
Nietzsche's primal One is suspected of being metaphysical
because it seems, like Schopenhauer's primal will, to imply

a distinction between reality 'in-itself and 'appearance', a
distinction which, it is supposed, Nietzsche is not entitled
to in the post-Kantian epoch of philosophy, and which is
rejected in his later writings.35 But the primal One would
be a metaphysical posit in the speculative sense criticized by
Kant only if it were intended as an object of theoretical
knowledge, and this is not the case. Although Nietzsche
speaks of 'Dionysian wisdom' and 'Dionysian truth',
although he insists that the Dionysian man has 'looked truly
into the essence of things' and possesses 'true knowledge,
an insight into the horrible truth', 36 the kind of truth,
knowledge and insight here implied is very different to the
abstract and conceptual knowledge of traditional meta-
physics. Nietzsche's critique of Socratic intellectualism,
one of his major concerns in The Birth of Tragedy, is
intended to show that redemption is unattainable through
theory. Intuitive insight is something quite different. The
primal One is not an object distinct from the knower, who
can describe it or delineate its properties. It is much more an
'abyss' (Abgrund), not an empty space but an essentially
mysterious ground, a life-giving, productive, intoxicating
origin to which man returns in Dionysian ecstacy, so that
his own individual identity, his own egoistic suffering, his
own finite aspirations and goals are swallowed up in the
tremendous outflowing of life. Nietzsche himself is pre-
pared to use the term 'metaphysical' in this connection. He
speaks of the 'metaphysical comfort' (metaphysische Trost)
provided by Dionysian tragedy, and of tragic art as the
'truly metaphysical activity of man'.37 But 'metaphysical'
here has the meaning of 'redeeming'; through the Diony-
sian man restores his lost unity with the Absolute as primal
One. In this latter sense, Nietzsche's critique of Socratism
in The Birth of Tragedy, as well as his more general anti-
Platonism, are indeed 'metaphysical': the theoretical inac-
cessibility of the Absolute is denied only on the basis of its
intuitive accessibility.
In his early writings on the Presocratics, Nietzsche

distinguishes the intuitively accessible One of Heraclitus
from the conceptually accessible One of Parmenides and
Plato: the former is the unity of Becoming, the latter the
unity of Being. In The Birth of Tragedy, the primal One of
Dionysianism is similarly opposed to the theoretical unity
of Socratic thought. Nietzsche's Heracliteanism and
Dionysianism must be understood together, they are just
two expressions of the same fundamental conception. As
we read in Ecce Homo:
Before me this transposition of the Dionysian into a

philosophical pathos did not exist: tragic wisdom was
lacking; I have looked in vain for signs of it even
among the great Greeks in philosophy, those of the
two centuries before Socrates. I retained some doubt in
the case of Heraclitus, in whose proximity I feel
altogether better and warmer than anywhere else. The
affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is
the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying
Yes to opposition and war; Becoming, along with a
radical repudiation of Being - all this is clearly more
closely related to me than anything else thought to
date.38
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks presents the

Heraclitean philosophy as a justification of Becoming'
(Rechtfertigung des Werdens).y) Prior to Heraclitus the Mile-
sian philosopher Anaximander had anticipated the meta-
physical Being of Parmenides and Plato with his doctrine
of the apeiron, the Indefinite. According to this doctrine
(which is distinctly Schopenhauerian in Nietzsche's rendi-
tion) all individual existence, as a breach with the primor-
dial unity of the apeiron (the Thing-in-itself, in Nietzsche's
view) constitutes an 'injustice' for which 'penance' must be
payed through destruction.40 By contrast, Heraclitus
teaches that justification does not depend on the flight into
another world of metaphysical indefiniteness, but exists in

Becoming itself, through the workings of the logos.
Considered as Becoming, the world is a 'game', i.e.
something self-contained and innocent.41 The equivalence
of Heraclitean justification and Dionysian redemption is
also indicated by a passage towards the end of The Birth of
Tragedy:
For we now understand what it means to wish to see

tragedy and at the same time to long to get beyond all
seeing....That striving for the infinite, the wing-beat
of longing that accompanies the highest delight in
clearly perceived reality, reminds us that in both states
we must recognize a Dionysian phenomenon: again
and again it reveals to us the playful construction and
destruction of the individual world as the overflow of
a primordial delight. Thus the dark Heraclitus com-
pares the world-building force to a playing child that
places stones here and there and builds sand hills only
to overthrow them again.42
In a note from 1882-83, Nietzsche writes that 'I have

always striven to prove to myself the innocence of
Becoming (Unschuld des Werdens}: and probably what I
thereby wanted to achieve was the feeling of complete
unaccountability - to make myself independent of all
praise and blame. '43 Some five years later, in Twilight of the
Idols, we find a similar formulation: 'That no one is any
longer accountable, that the kind of Being can no longer be
traced back to a causa prima, that the world is a unity neither
as sensorium nor as "spirit", this alone is the great liberation,
thus alone is the innocence of Becoming restored.'44 The
motivation underlying these statements is no different to
that which determines the Dionysianism of The Birth of
Tragedy. What the 'innocence of Becoming' signifies is
simply that there is nothing beyond the primal phe-
nomenon of life, that as a living individual being man is not
guilty of having 'fallen' from another world.45 In each

case, however, this must be proved through an act of
affirmation. Dionysianism is a striving for the infinite, but
not for the infinity of a causa prima or transcendent
metaphysical Being. Nietzsche wants an experience of
eternity this side of a metaphysical other world, an
experience of eternity within Becoming itself which does
not, accordingly, deny the finitude of man. There is no
shift in this attitude after The Birth of Tragedy, no
abandonment of an early 'Schopenhauerian' metaphysic.
Dionysian redemption is achieved through the affirma-
tion of life. But what exactly does Nietzsche mean by
'life'? With this question we run up against the limits of
conceptual thinking, for 'life' is a primitive term for
Nietzsche: it stands for primal reality which as such eludes
all description.46 Nietzsche does attempt to indicate what
he means through a variety of metaphors, but when these
are taken literally, as they often are in contemporary
commentary, the result is a series of comprehensive
misunderstandings.47 For example, Nietzsche sometimes
falls into sensualist vocabulary when contrasting the this-
worldly character of his philosophy to the other-world-
liness of Platonism and Christianity. He repeatedly asserts
that the senses have been unjustly maligned by these latter
traditions. The slogan of 'inverted Platonism', as well as
occasional remarks about the primacy of 'the body', may
suggest a version of sensualism. But there are equally many
passages in his writings which testify to the inadequacy of
any simple opposition between sensuality and spir-
ituality.48 The famous section 'How the "Real World" at
last Became a Myth' from Twilight of the Idols ends by
saying 'We have abolished the real world: what world is
left? the apparent world perhaps? But no! with the real
world we have also abolished the apparent world!'. This is
Nietzsche's fundamental attitude. Life is neither disem-
bodied spirit nor brute spiritless sense, but is prior to both
spirit and sense. Nor can life be identified, in the manner of
the postmodernists, with 'multiplicity' and 'difference'.

Nietzsche does emphasize the diversity and richness of life,
but he insists no less on its unity. Dionysian redemption
involves a return to the 'centre' of life. This cannot be
positively specified: one can only say what it is not.
Certain clues can be obtained through the manner in
which life is affirmed. Dionysian affirmation is not the act
of an abstracted intellect set over against an independently
existing reality but a holistic state, 'the highest state which a
philosopher can attain'. 49 It is a state of intoxication,
rapture, forgetfulness of self, ecstacy, enchantment and
cheerfulness, of surging power and strength which trans-
ports man out of himself. At the same time it is a state of
great seriousness, reverence and gratitude. Dionysian affir-
mation is a kind of'worship' and 'piety', though of course
Nietzsche would insist that these words be understood
quite differently than in a Christian context.50 The Diony-
sian reveller feels himself in the presence of something
tremendous, overpowering and fascinating in the highest
degree. This presence is 'self-evident' and 'given', but in
the mode of existential rather than epistemological cer-
tainty. The Dionysian exemplifies the positivity of mys-
tery, i.e. not mystery as a gap in understanding but as the
most fundamental reality. 51 As such, it has a more primor-
dial claim on man than do all intellectually constructed
realities. The 'object' of Dionysian affirmation is, in an
unmistakable though enigmatic sense, 'godly', and this
affirmation is itself a 'participation' in the godly. There are
definite resemblances here to Neoplatonic conceptions of
divinity. Both the pagan and Christian Neoplatonic tradi-
tions speak of God as 'the One' beyond the intellectual
deity of Aristotelianism: in analogous manner to Nietzsche
they deny that the One can have anything positively
predicated of it, and claim that it can be known only
through a kind of participatory 'unknowing'. 52 Like the
theologians of Ncoplatonism, Nietzsche denies any separa-
tion between the 'godhead' and the world as such: the
divine principle is not situated in a remote other world but

manifests itself at every level of reality. Nietzsche does not
shrink from the word 'pantheism' in this connection:
The word 'Dionysian' means: an urge to unity, a

reaching out beyond personality, the everyday,
society, reality, across the abyss of transitoriness: a
passionate-painful overflowing into darker, fuller,
more floating states; an ecstatic affirmation of the
total character of life as that which remains the same,
just as powerful, just as blissful, through all change;
the great pantheistic sharing of joy and sorrow that
sanctifies and calls good even the most terrible and
questionable qualities of life; the eternal will to
procreation, to fruitfulness, to recurrence; the feeling
of the necessary unity of creation and destruction.53
The above passage, from Nietzsche's late period (1888),

again indicates how little his idea of the Dionysian changes
after The Birth of Tragedy. Looking back on this early work
in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche remarks that 'the cadaverous
perfume of Schopenhauer sticks only to a few formulas',
and identifies its understanding of the Dionysian phe-
nomenon as one of its two 'decisive innovations', the other
being the analysis of Socratism.54 Actually, the only
Schopenhauerian formula which regularly appears in The
Birth of Tragedyyyis 'principiumm individuationis', and although
this disappears in Nietzsche's later writings, the idea itself
does not. 'The primal One', which is not even a
Schopenhauerian term, also disappears, but once again the
idea behind it lives on in such expressions as 'total character
of life', and more particularly 'will to power'. Redemption
as Dionysian life affirmation does drop out of view in
Nietzsche's middle period (see next section), but from Thus
Spoke Zarathustra onwards (where it is present in fact if not
in name) it reappears as a dominant motif. In this later
period, Dionysianism remains as Nietzsche's reply to the
pessimism of Schopenhauer, i.e. to resignation and renun-
ciation as the road to redemption, to that will to nothing-
ness which turns its back on life. In the light of the
considerations at the end of the previous section, I shall
later question whether Nietzsche does not pose his opposi-
tion to Schopenhauer rather too starkly, and whether he
does not read him rather too literally. But it is first necessary
to examine the turn of Nietzsche's thought during his
'sceptical' middle period.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF REDEMPTION

After 1876, Nietzsche reacts against his former Wagnerian
'romanticism' and enters into what is commonly (and
rather misleadingly) called his 'positivist' phase. The first
book Nietzsche publishes during this period is Human, All
Too Human (1878), later described in Ecce Homo as a
'monument of rigorous self-discipline with which I put a
sudden end to all my infections with "higher swindle",
"idealism", "beautiful feelings" and other
effeminacies.'55 What lends the label 'positivist' a limited
applicability is that for Nietzsche a sobering up is now
called for, to be achieved by playing off scientific clear-
headedness against the allures of art, metaphysics and
religion. Nietzsche's new beginning is partly explicable
through his disillusionment with the 1876 Wagner festival
in Bayreuth (to which he had contributed much advance
publicity, including the essay 'Richard Wagner in Bay-
reuth'), where what he had originally envisaged as a rebirth
of tragedy turned out instead to be an exercise in bourgeois
self-intoxication: the 'uplifting' which occurred there had,
apparently, little to do with 'Dionysian truth'. 56 But this
experience underlined a problem of principle central to The
Birth of Tragedy, namely what can possibly count as a
criterion for the authenticity of Dionysian redemption?
The tragic insight had supposedly been given not as an
intellectualized content but as a kind of'intoxication'. What
could be said against the objection that this was merely
subjective and emotional, with no implications at all for

reality? Finding no clear answer to this question, Nietzsche
comes to suspect he had been duped by the pretensions of
romantic sensibility. Turning away with repugnance from
the 'play-acting people' and the 'higher horsemen of the
spirit', he writes Human, All Too Human as a course in 'anti-
romantic self-healing'.57
In this book Nietzsche adopts a 'psychological' mode of
argumentation, seeking to unmask art, metaphysics and
religion as rooted in particular kinds of emotions. He finds
that art, metaphysics and religion attempt the amelioration
of suffering through 'narcotization': suffering is justified
by being narcotically linked with a higher world and a
higher truth.58 In reality, Nietzsche counters, suffering has
its origins in mundane psycho-physiological circum-
stances. Advocating a 'chemistry of moral, religious,
aesthetic representations and sensations', he indicates the
intended finding, namely that 'in this domain the most
glorious colours are derived from base, even from despised
materials. '59 Aphorisms 132-144 apply this technique to the
Christian concept of redemption. Through careful consid-
eration, Nietzsche says, it should be possible to obtain an
explanation of 'that state of the soul of a Christian called
neediness-of-redemption', an explanation 'free of mythol-
ogy' and 'purely psychological'.60 Against current the-
ologizing on this matter, in which connection he mentions
Friedrich Schleiermacher and his influence, Nietzsche
offers an explanation, or the groundwork thereof, him-
self. Man discovers in himself a tendency to those kinds of
actions which stand low in the conventional moral order,
together with a longing to perform those actions which
stand higher. He feels, however, inadequate to these higher
actions, and develops a deep dissatisfaction with himself,
together with a yearning for some kind of doctor who
could cure this feeling. Now there come moments (perhaps
during a Wagner opera or religious ritual) when these
feelings of guilt and insufficiency are blown away, and
when, despite the persistence of the original deficiencies, a
new and elevating self-evaluation is won. The relief
thereby experienced is so great that it appears as a 'blessing
from above' or proof that 'God is merciful'. According to
Nietzsche, what has actually happened is that certain
psychological processes are misinterpreted: reacquired self-
love is mistaken for godly love. The guilt and sin which are
originally experienced are the product of'errors of reason',
from measuring oneself against a fantastic godly standard.
It is the idea of God which makes one feel so disturbed and
humiliated, and once this is identified as an error the
corresponding feelings vanish. The sensation which is
experienced as godly redemption has mundane psychologi-
cal origins, testifying not to 'divine mercy' but to an act of
'self-pardon, self-redemption'.61
At first sight, it seems as if Nietzsche in Human, All Too
Human has completely overturned his previous philosophi-
cal position. It also seems that the rough-hewn positivism
with which he treats his former romanticism might be
more deleterious than the original ailment. On closer
inspection, however, it emerges that Nietzsche's new
beginning is highly ambiguous. While emotionality and
intoxicated subjective states are rejected as possible avenues
of truth, other sober and tranquil states are accorded a
curiously 'higher' extra-psychological value. Science and
reason, it turns out, are not values in themselves, nor are
they valued primarily as vehicles of objective knowledge.
Instead, the question 'why science?' must find an answer at
the level of human subjectivity, an answer just as neces-
sitating as redemption is taken to be to the question 'why
religious faith?' In the final aphorism of Section One it is
said that the 'influence of cleansing knowledge' shows
itself in 'a secure, mild, and basically cheerful soul, which
does not need be on guard for tricks and sudden explo-
sions', but which is content 'with that free, fearless
hovering over men, customs, laws and the traditional
evaluations of things, which is for it the most desirable of
states.'62 Nietzsche quotes these same words in a later

Nachlaß fragment, as illustrating 'what I at that time
experienced and wanted as "health".'63 The closing aphor-
ism of Section Two states that, with the dawning of
scientific consciousness, 'the sun of a new gospel (eines
neuen Evangeliums) is casting its ray onto the highest
mountaintop of the soul.' This new gospel preaches the
'innocence' of human existence, which, when brought to
consciousness, amounts to the 'self-illumination'
(Selbsterleuchtung) and 'self-redemption' (Selbsterlösung) of
man.64 Again in the final aphorism of Part Three, imme-
diately after the psychological critique of religion,
Nietzsche softens his position to admit that there are
'certain exceptions' among the holy men who are 'attractive
in the highest degree'. Only the 'celebrated founder of
Christianity' is explicitly mentioned, with Nietzsche refer-
ring to Jesus' 'feeling of utter sinlessness, utter freedom
from responsibility', and adding that this is a feeling which
'everyone can now attain through science'.65 From such
passages one can wonder whether Nietzsche has really
abandoned the concept of redemption, or has only recon-
sidered its application. The idea that scientific conscious-
ness is to be valued on account of'feelings' of innocence or
freedom from responsibility has a doubtful claim to
positivism.66 In fact, because Nietzsche invokes no criteria
by which such existentially significant 'feelings' can be
distinguished from the merely psychological sensations
(the narcotic effect) allegedly produced by religion, art and
metaphysics, the overt critical intention of Human, All Too
Human is largely thwarted.67
Despite Nietzsche's new 'enlightened' attitude, it is
noteworthy that he does not explicitly criticize his earlier
works. On the tragic Greeks and 'the Dionysian' he remains
silent, prefering to direct his attack at Christianity or
simply at 'religion' in general. His many sweeping state-
ments would seem to indicate that The Birth of Tragedy
would fall within the scope of his critique, but he refrains
from drawing this conclusion.68 Rather than reversing his
earlier position, Nietzsche pushes it into the background,
into a state of suspension. Having seen the dangers of
romanticism, he wants temporarily to distance himself
from his former enthusiasms, genuinely to feel the
strength of that critical intellectualism which he had (as he
now suspects) too hastily dismissed in his earlier period.
Such taking sides against himself is typical of Nietzsche: it
is a method, a strategical device, and by no means a
philosophical position in itself. It is that necessary stage in
the development of the free spirit when it must turn upon
its original 'reverences' and embrace a daring experimental-
ism.69 When Nietzsche, through the composition of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, fully recovers from his romantic ail-
ment to reach the final 'affirmative' stage of his develop-
ment, he will reappropriate his early Dionysianism at a
higher level, he will understand his original insights to have
survived the 'trial' of intellectualism. His 'psychological'
suspicions are not cancelled but become more nuanced. The
concept of redemption, so 'naively' employed in The Birth
of Tragedy, and then so summarily 'unmasked' in Human,
All Too Human, becomes a problem.
Nietzsche continues to have difficulties with the psy-
chology of redemption as late as The Antichrist (1888),
where he dwells at length on the 'psychological type of the
redeemer'. 'The redeemer' is not Paul, who Nietzsche
subjects to the familiar ressentiment critique, but 'the
Nazarene' himself, who, as noted in the previous chapter,
is somewhat surprisingly accorded the status of free spirit.
In unmistakable tones of approval, Nietzsche describes the
'different Being' (anderes Sein) represented by Jesus as an
inward life directed against 'every kind of word, formula,
law, belief, dogma'.70 In the associated Nachlaß notes, we
read that 'Jesus stands for a real life (ein wirkliches Leben), a
life in the truth (in der Wahrheit) as opposed to the normal
life.'71 The kingdom of heaven promised by Jesus is 'a
condition of the heart' and a 'meaning change in the
individual' (Sinnes-Änderung im einzelnen).72 Rather than

turning away from life, Jesus displays 'the profound
instinct for how one would have to live in order to feel
oneself "in heaven", to feel oneself "eternal", while in
every other condition one by no means feels oneself "in
heaven": this alone is the psychological reality of
"redemption".'73
'Redemption', then, can mean different things. On the
one hand it can mean, as a symptom of ressentiment, the
hope and faith in 'another world' as relief from the burdens
of life. On the other hand it can mean the 'psychological
reality' attested to by both the Jesus-type and the Diony-
sian-type. The fact that Nietzsche continues to use the term
in his late period, despite its religious connotations and the
criticisms of Human, All Too Human, indicates that the
existential re-orientation which he seeks is something more
than a mere perspectival shift, something more than a
contingent choice of lifestyles. 'Redemption' continues to
belong to Nietzsche's vocabulary of philosophical
'absolutism'.
REDEMPTION AND THE ETERNAL RETURN

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche relates that the idea of eternal
recurrence, the 'fundamental conception' of Zarathustra,
came to him as a 'revelation' in 1881, '6000 feet beyond man
and time' in Upper Engadine.74 Its first public proclama-
tion occurs in the penultimate aphorism 341 of Book Four
of The Gay Science, under the heading 'the greatest weight'.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's immediately suc-
ceeding book, the idea is approached gradually and at first
with mere allusions, coming out into the open towards the
end of Part Two, and then dominating the dramatic
development of Part Three. There are many passages on
eternal return in Nietzsche's later manuscripts. During this
period he is preoccupied with the (never actualized) idea of
writing a 'philosophy' which would clarify the founda-
tions of his thought: the 'eternal return' frequently appears
as the title of such a work in Nietzsche's draft plans.75 A
similar idea can be found in Nietzsche's early writings. It is
briefly mentioned, in connection with the Pythagoreans, in
the second Untimely Meditation.™ Of particular interest is a
passage from Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks:
Eternal and exclusive Becoming, the impermanence

of everything actual, which constantly acts and
comes-to-be but never is, as Heraclitus teaches it, is a
terrible, paralyzing thought....It takes astonishing
strength to transform this reaction into its opposite,
into sublimity and the feeling of blessed
astonishment. 77
The relevant passage from The Gay Science no. 341 reads as
follows:
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your

teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? [who
announced the eternal return] Or have you once
experienced a tremendous moment when you would
have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I
heard anything more divine'. If this thought gained
possession of you, it would change you as you are or
perhaps crush you. The question in each and every
thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable
times more?' would lie upon your actions as the
greatest weight. Or how well you would have to be
disposed to life to crave nothing more fervently than this
ultimate eternal affirmation and seal?78
Taken together, these passages indicate that the eternal

return is at once a Heraclitean and a Dionysian motif, in a
sense as the synthesis of the two. While the Heraclitean side
gives the reality to be affirmed, the Dionysian side gives the
affirmation itself, the required 'attitude' or 'stance'
towards reality. The eternal return provides the ultimate
test of strength (and thus of truthfulness) in the face of

life: this can be seen in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where at the
beginning of Part Three Zarathustra prepares himself to
think this, his 'most abysmal thought', succeeding at the
end only after the most punishing experiences. However,
the difference between the two quoted passages should be
noted. In the first, Nietzsche speaks simply of eternal
Becoming, in the second of eternal return. Now Becoming
and eternal return are not equivalent: presumably there
could be endless Becoming without repetition. What does
this change signify? What does it have to do with the fact
that Nietzsche dates his 'revelation' at 1881 rather than
some ten years earlier?
We have observed that, in his early period, Nietzsche is
Heraclitean in his lectures on the Presocratic philosophers,
and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy. He continues to
associate the two in his later works.79 The conditions of this
co-allegiance are not immediately obvious. Heracliteanism
appears to be an anti-metaphysical motif, installing
Becoming in place of Parmenidean-Platonic Being, while
Dionysianism, at least in The Birth of Tragedy, is oriented to
the 'primal One', which in the view of many commenta-
tors is tainted by metaphysics (as noted, Nietzsche does call
it a 'metaphysical comfort'). I have previously suggested
that, on close examination, no conflict is to be found here:
Becoming simply is the primal One, where the latter's one-
ness is distinct from the logical self-identity of things, and
therefore does not involve metaphysics in the sense rejected
by Nietzsche. It is noticeable that, after The Birth of
Tragedy, Nietzsche no longer speaks of the 'primal One',
preferring terms like 'life', 'earth' and 'world' to indicate
the object of Dionysian-Zarathustrian affirmation. But
since in his later period Nietzsche remains faithful to the
Heraclitean thesis that 'Becoming is the only reality', all
these other terms must mean the same, i.e. life = Becom-
ing, earth = Becoming, world = Becoming. Dionysian
affirmation remains the affirmation of Becoming, of the
'impermanence of everything actual, which constantly acts

and comes-to-be but never is.'
The idea of eternal return arises in Nietzsche's later
philosophy when he comes to consider more closely how
Becoming is actually to be affirmed, i.e. how more
precisely Heracliteanism and Dionysianism are to be recon-
ciled. Can one really affirm something which never is? Can
one affirm the constantly fleeting flux? In particular, can
one affirm this in a supreme redeeming act if there is
nothing one can hold before oneself as some kind of
'object'? At the time of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche
could answer these questions by reference to the primal
One, which, although not a thing, possesses a quasi-
transcendental status behind the Apollinian world of
appearance. In his later period Nietzsche becomes uncertain
about this solution, and looks for another way out. The
flux, he now speculates, can be fixed as an 'object' of
affirmation through willing the eternal return of the same
things. In this way the unity (self-identity) of the flux is
guaranteed by its cyclical character, while no separate realm
of eternity, neither 'another world' nor even a 'primal
One', need be presupposed. Nietzsche does thereby vouch-
safe a kind of eternity, but an immanent this-worldly
eternity, both of life as such and of his own being as
constantly returning. 8 ' 1 Through affirming the eternal
return, through making this one's most fervent craving,
one overcomes the ressentiment longing for otherness and
nothingness: it is the supreme act of gratitude to life which
neither wants things otherwise, nor wishes to enter the
'deep sleep' of nothingness. The eternal return is a doctrine
of unbounded finitude, of 'infinite finitude' so to speak,
wherein man is fated to exist eternally (i.e. repetitively) in a
closed, this-worldly reality. There is no way out of life,
and to the extent that one celebrates this with all one's
strength, one has redeemed oneself for the gift of life.
What makes the eternal return such a difficult idea is its
Dionysian aspect, i.e. the mighty act of affirmation
through which it must be appropriated. Lou Salomé and

Franz Overbeck testify that, in personal communications
of the eternal return, Nietzsche spoke in an uncanny
whispering voice, as if in a state of sublime horror.81 As
mentioned, Zarathustra works himself up to his 'most
abysmal idea' only through extraordinary resolve, and in
the end it almost destroys him: to think this thought, he
enters into his 'last solitude' and 'deeper into pain than I
have ever descended'.82 When (in the section 'The Con-
valescent') the thought finally rises up from his depths, he
collapses 'like a dead man' and remains thus stricken for
seven days.83 Upon awakening, the eternal return is
proclaimed by his animals, but Zarathustra, 'still sick with
my own redemption', dismisses them as 'buffoons and
barrel-organs', complaining that they have 'already made a
hurdy-gurdy song of it'.84 At this point Zarathustra ceases
all external communication and, encircled by a 'great
stillness', converses with his own soul.85 In the last section
of Part Three, he involuntarily breaks into song. The
eternal return remains incommunicable as doctrine but is
expressed through the pathos of his closing hymn to
eternity, 'The Song of Yes and Amen'.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the eternal return first appears,
albeit without explicit enunciation, in the section 'On
Redemption' towards the end of Part Two.86 Zarathustra
proclaims 'To redeem the past and to transform every "it
was" into an "I wanted it thus!" - that alone do I call
redemption!' That from which man needs redemption is
'the spirit of revenge' (der Geist der Rache), understood as
'the will's most lonely affliction' that it cannot will
backwards, that it stands helpless before the brute facticity
of the past.87 Man is burdened by the past in a double sense:
firstly that he directly suffers from its effects in the
present, but more fundamentally, that the past is outside
his sphere of willing, that here and only here his will is
doomed to defeat.88 The irrevocability of the past is the last
great obstacle to affirmation of life: it is that upon which
one takes revenge when one wills differently for the

future, as Zarathustra still does (at this stage) when he sees
the smallness of modern man. However, Zarathustra does
not think of the past just as one dimension of time. The
past, as the 'whereto' of the unidirectional flow of time,
stands for time itself. To be redeemed from the spirit of
revenge is 'reconciliation with time' ( Versöhnung mit der
Zeit) as such, or rather, as Zarathustra says, something
'higher than any reconciliation'.89 Zarathustra refers to the
preaching of 'madness' (Schopenhauer) which yearns for
'redemption from the stream of things and from the
punishment "existence".'90 The reconciliation with time is
the annihilation of this yearning and its transformation
into the will to eternal Becoming, into that Dionysian will
which is a 'liberator and bringer of joy'. 91
Considered as a cosmological hypothesis, the eternal
return is (though perhaps implausible) relatively straight-
forward and intelligible. In its redemptive aspect,
however, it is ultimately a mystery, to be experienced only
in a 'tremendous moment' which Nietzsche calls 'the great
midday' (der große Mittag).1*2 Redemption occurs through
the concentration of all 'eternity' into this one moment:
If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not

only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self
sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if
our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like
a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to
produce this one event - and in this single moment of
affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed,
justified, and affirmed. 93
Becoming takes on the character of Being (it comes to

'abide' as Heidegger puts it)94 by the constant return of the
self-same, but can only be experienced as such (as 'eter-
nity') through a tremendous act of will. In the 'Song of Yes
and Amen', where this act of will has been (or is actually
being) accomplished, Zarathustra is in the presence of

'redeeming beams of light' and has himself become 'a grain
of that redeeming spice that makes everything mix well
together.'95 Like the Dionysian revellers of The Birth of
Tragedy, Zarathustra is becoming one with the world, he is
placing the 'wedding ring of rings' on the finger of
eternity.
The Dionysian aspect of the eternal return, the fulfilling
'moment' (Augenblick) of affirmation, has all the charac-
teristics of a mystical experience.96 It comes as a revelation,
at first as a paralysing shock, then immediately goes over to
the kinds of feelings of joy and liberation which are
traditionally associated with a mystical rebirth. As such, it
is not open to discursive examination, proof or disproof.97
On the other hand, the Heraclitean content of the thought,
the idea of time (and therefore reality) as an infinitely
recurring cycle of the same things, raises certain problems
in relation to Nietzsche's fundamental motivations. It
would certainly be perverse to take the eternal return in its
apparent cosmological meaning to be Nietzsche's central
thought. To understand what Nietzsche is getting at with
this idea we must depart from the problem which it is
meant to solve. This is the problem of redemption as life
affirmation: the eternal return is intended as the 'highest
formula of affirmation that is at all attainable'.98 Now we
possess independent knowledge of what Nietzsche means
by 'affirmation' from his other writings, and we can
therefore ask about the adequacy of this particular formula
in a broader context. To be borne in mind are all those
aspects of affirmation already encountered, i.e. unity with
the primal life force, joy, reverence, gratitude etc. If all
these coalesce into a relatively coherent conception, we can
ask whether the eternal return adds a further (and decisive)
explanatory dimension, or whether, on the contrary, it
introduces certain unwarranted difficulties. Such a pro-
cedure means that one must refrain from uncritically
accepting Nietzsche's own declarations on the supreme
Redemption and Life Affirmation9780567041333 151
importance of the eternal return, and thus from measuring
all his other thought against this idea. The hermenéutica!
principle to be followed is that the clear should be measured
against the unclear and not vice versa. And although as a
cosmológica! hypothesis the eternal return may indeed be
clear (let us allow this) its suitability as the 'highest formula
of affirmation' (thus as the formula for redemption) is
open to serious question.
Nietzsche sees the eternal return as the 'object' of a
strictly immanent life affirmation. By affirming the return
of the same 'things' ('even this spider and this moonlight
between the trees, and even this moment and I myself as
the demon in The Gay Science says)99 all recourse to another
world or transcendental ground can apparently be avoided.
The difficulty with this, however, is that according to
Nietzsche's own Heraclitean principles, all 'things' are
really 'fictions' which are unfaithful to Becoming. In his
lectures on the Presocratics, Nietzsche identifies the
supreme object of Heraclitean affirmation as the logos,
considered as the all-encompassing intelligence ('the One')
governing the perpetual flux. Similarly, in The Birth of
Tragedy, the Apollinian realm of individuation (i.e. of
thingliness) is subordinated to the primal One as Dionysian
upsurge. Does Nietzsche abandon these conceptions by the
time of Thus Spoke Zarathustra? But there is no evidence
that he moves away from his Heracliteanism: his later
manuscripts are full of Heraclitean scepticism concerning
the reality of 'things'. 1<>0 Although he no longer speaks
explicitly of the primal One, the Dionysianism of his later
period involves an affirmation of'life', 'earth', 'world' etc.
which does not easily translate out as an affirmation of
'things'. '01 Deferring for the present the question of
whether Nietzsche in fact and contrary to his own stated
position does retain a kind of transcendental ground, we
must ask how he can see the eternal return of the 'same
things' as the content of affirmation.
The answer is to be found in Nietzsche's conception of
time. What returns is not just things but things-in-time: this
is the whole point of a formula of affirmation which

would be strictly this-worldly. More particularly, it is
'moments' of time which recur as thingly events-in-time.
For time to 'abide' (i.e. for Becoming to be stamped with
the character of Being)102 it is necessary that all past
moments and all future moments not flow away from each
other in endless contradiction but link up in the 'ring' of
eternal recurrence.103 Since this ring of recurrence is closed
in every 'present moment', each moment of time will be a
candidate for the 'great midday' of affirmation, though in
each individual case (e.g. Zarathustra's) it will be a question
of whether there has been adequate preparation. Seen in
this light, the eternal recurrence is the ultimate doctrine of
'seizing the moment': one must live with such an intensity
of affirmation that one wills the infinite repetition of every
moment. Time as such is affirmed and all other-world-
liness banished, but only through the affirmation of every
event-in-time, of every 'thing' which comes into being and
passes away. Time is not 'detached' and affirmed 'in-itself
but remains inexorably fastened to the events which occur
within it. Time is itself 'thingly'. This means, however,
that time is defined in terms of what, from a Heraclitean
point of view, are nothing more than fictions. In one sense
it seems that Nietzsche overcomes the traditional (Aristo-
telian) sequential conception of time. The supreme act of
affirmation looks neither forward nor backward but 'loses
itself in the 'moment', the 'reality' of time is revealed only
in the mystical 'now' of Dionysian rapture. Time does not
disappear into the mere sequentiality of things but is the
original 'revelation' of life itself. On the other hand, by
insisting that it is 'things' and 'events' which are affirmed in
this mystical moment, Nietzsche reconnects with the
sequential conception of time. 104 He fears that, if the
'object' of affirmation were to be anything but such
'things' and 'events', then this would amount to a kind of
other-worldliness and transcendentalism. Nietzsche is
caught in a bind between his this-worldliness and his
Heracliteanism, and in the end, the idea of eternal return

implicitly sacrifices the latter.
It is a curious fact that many contemporary commenta-
tors regard the eternal return as a less 'metaphysical' idea
than that of the primal One. Of course, such a judgement
depends on what one understands as metaphysics. It seems
that, implicitly at least, the postmodernist conception of
metaphysics as 'closure' or 'centering' is often effective
here, and that the primal One is found guilty on this score.
Nietzsche's understanding of metaphysics, however, is
quite different: for him, metaphysics is the belief in the
ultimate reality of 'things'. Whether 'things' are under-
stood as Platonic 'ideas' or as empirically observable objects
makes no difference: what Nietzsche's Heracliteanism
denies is just the reality of logically self-identical entities.
Now the primal One, in The Birth of Tragedy, is not such an
entity, nor even is will in Schopenhauer's philosophy,
because in both cases the 'reality' referred to is not
conceptually (logically) determinable. Of metaphysical
entities, i.e. of'things' of every description, it is possible to
theorize: this is because their being is constituted through
the intersubjective (verbal-conceptual) 'surface-and-sign-
world'. The Dionysianism of The Birth of Tragedy is meant
as an expression, on no account as a theory (which would be
Socratism), of that ultimate reality which Nietzsche calls
the primal One. When Nietzsche in his later philosophy,
still searching for a 'formula of affirmation', embraces the
idea of eternal return, he undermines this early position,
becoming not less, but more 'metaphysical'. Just why the
eternal return exerts so much fascination for the later
Nietzsche remains unclear. As indicated, it appeals to him
as a principle of 'this-worldliness', but only at the cost of
throwing his whole ontology into confusion. Moreover, it
is of dubious consistency with his other late motif of'will
to power', which, in analogous manner to the primal One,
refers to a quasi-transcendental reality 'behind' those
entities which 'eternally recur'. It cannot be said that
Nietzsche attains clarity and consistency on ontological

matters in general. Dionysianism, the eternal return, will to
power, and Heracliteanism all run parallel with one another
in the later writings without Nietzsche properly working
out their inter-relations. The envisaged programme of
writing a 'philosophy' is never completed, nor even
seriously undertaken.
In an important passage from Beyond Good and Evil,
which Heidegger has called Nietzsche's 'third communica-
tion' of the doctrine of return, we read:
Whoever as a result of some enigmatic craving has, as

I have, long endeavored to think pessimism down to
its depths.. .such a one has perhaps, without explicitly
willing it, opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: to the
ideal of the boldest, most vital, and most world-
affirming human being who has not only made his
peace and learned to get along with whatever was and
is but who wills to have it again precisely as it was and is
into all eternity, calling insatiably da capo not only to
himself but to the entire play and spectacle, and not
only to the spectacle but at bottom to him who has
need of precisely this spectacle - who makes it
necessary because he forever has need of himself -
and makes himself necessary. - How's that? Would
this not be - circulus vitiosis (feus?105
Is the world, considered as eternal recurrence, a kind of

god? Whatever the answer (as Heidegger points out,
Nietzsche remains deliberately enigmatic on this) the call of
da capo signifies the redeeming stance of one who has 'made
his peace' with the world. But does such a 'pious' attitude
towards life (i.e. the Dionysian attitude) necessarily will, as
Nietzsche claims, the eternal return of the entire spectacle?
Does Nietzsche really show that it is the 'spirit of revenge'
to regret any event of the past? Does he show that it is
ressentiment to will that certain events should not recur, let
alone recur an infinite number of times? An affirmative
answer in each case depends on identifying time with
events-in-time, on giving thingly moments the highest
ontological status so that if one does not will them one wills
'nothingness'. Prior to all ontological definitions, this
alternative seems artificial. Is it not possible, contra
Nietzsche, to make one's 'peace with the world' without
willing the eternal recurrence of every event-in-time? Is it
not possible to look with displeasure and even horror at past
events, to wish they never happened and to will with all
one's might that they may never happen again, without
thereby becoming in the smallest degree less thankful for
life, less affirmative in relation to life? Must not ontologi-
cal definitions be brought into line with our prior intuitions
in this area, rather than vice versa? Is not the eternal return
in fact a reductio ad absurdum of Nietzsche's peculiar
synthesis of Dionysianism and the principle of this-
worldliness? To answer these questions requires that we
take a closer look at this latter principle.
THIS WORLD AND OTHER WORLD

Nietzsche understands himself as a philosopher of imma-
nence, of'life' rather than an imaginary 'after life', of'the
earth' rather than a fictitious 'beyond'. From The Birth of
Tragedy through to Ecce Homo, he presents himself as a
loyal defender of 'this world' against the alleged 'world
slander' of the Christian-metaphysical tradition generally,
and of Schopenhauerian pessimism in particular.
Zarathustra preaches 'I entreat you, my brothers, remain
true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you
of superterrestial hopes!'106 The crime of the 'afterworlds-
men' (Hinterweltler) is to have poisoned the springs of life
and to have invested all value in its negation:
If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life

into the 'Beyond' - into nothingness - one has deprived
life as such of its centre of gravity. The great lie of
personal immortality destroys all rationality, all natu-

ralness of instinct - all that is salutary, all that holds a
guarantee of the future in the instincts henceforth
excites mistrust. So to live that there is no longer any
meaning in living: that now becomes the 'meaning' of
life.107
Nietzschean redemption, whether expressed in terms of

Dionysianism or the eternal return, is the redemption of
life itself, its reinvestiture with value after a long history of
slander, its cleansing from the poison of ressentiment. The
great error has been to seek the justification of individual
existence from outside. To correct this error requires an
existential réorientation of unprecedented difficulty,
indeed one that is beyond the powers of the vast majority.
For the elite free spirits, however, who alone are capable of
reaching the great midday of affirmation, life appears
transfigured in the redeeming stillness of eternity.
Yet Nietzsche is aware that his this-worldly stance
harbours a paradox, to which he draws attention in
connection with the 'psychology' of Zarathustra:
The psychological problem in the type of Zarathustra

is how he that says No and does No to an unheard-of
degree, to everything to which one has so far said Yes,
can nevertheless be the opposite of a No-saying spirit;
how the spirit who bears the heaviest fate, a fatality of
a task, can nevertheless be the lightest and most
transcendent.108
Nietzsche continues with a reference to the Dionysian and

the 'eternal Yes to all things', which is only to restate the
paradox. Leaving the doctrine of recurrence aside,
Nietzsche's works do not seem to show an 'eternal Yes to all
things' at all, but rather a comprehensive and consistent
saying of No. He affirms 'life', but as previously
observed, this is a peculiarly elusive thing: it is not a
biological phenomenon, nor an 'other-worldly' spiritual
force, nor is it human existence in its socio-cultural
context. If we take 'world' or 'earth' instead of 'life', the
same difficulties arise. What 'world' does Nietzsche
affirm? What is the ontological meaning of 'world' in
Nietzsche's philosophy? It can hardly mean the 'objective
world' of empirical science (Nietzsche rejects this as
'materialism'), nor can it mean the 'sense world' (which is
abolished along with the 'higher world'), nor the world of
human customs and institutions (which Nietzsche sees as
sunk in decadence). But if, acknowledging all this, we say
that 'life', 'world' and 'earth' refer to some underlying and
hidden reality, are we not forced to question the pro-
claimed 'this-worldliness' of Nietzsche's fundamental
position?
Let us approach the problem the other way around and
ask what other-worldliness means for Nietzsche. What
does it mean to 'shift the centre of gravity of life' to a
'Beyond'? The first thing to be said is that other-worldliness
does not consist in some set of theoretical commitments or
beliefs. Nietzsche is quite clear on this: he regards it as his
great step forward in the critique of Christianity that he has
gone beyond the kind of scientific criticism of the
Enlightenment to uncover its moral roots.1<)9 Nietzsche's
rejection of intellectualism means that he sees theoretical
beliefs as the expression of existential attitudes rather than
vice versa. The content of otherworldly beliefs - whether
these relate to heaven, an ideal world, or even nothingness -
is a matter of secondary significance, the important point
being that they indicate a resentful turning away from life.
But this implies that other-worldliness is negatively defined
in terms of the elusive concept 'life' (or 'world'), which
itself can be explicated only through the existential stance
of this-worldliness (life affirmation).
The coherence of Nietzsche's distinction between this-
worldliness and other-worldliness depends on whether he
can exhibit these as distinct existential attitudes. General
formulas such as 'life affirmation' and 'life denial' are by

no means adequate for this purpose: one must know what
forms of life are thereby implied. However, precisely in
this area Nietzsche has difficulties: the difference between
this-worldly and other-worldly attitudes is nowhere near as
clear cut as it needs to be if Nietzsche's whole philosophy is
to be based upon it. To begin with, there is his ambivalence
on asceticism in The Genealogy of Morals and elsewhere,
where he wishes to distinguish a 'virtuous' (world-deny-
ing) version from a philosophical (world-affirming) ver-
sion. Although there may indeed be different kinds of
asceticism, it is unclear why these are not more accurately
seen as different species of other-worldliness: after all,
Nietzsche's philosophical asceticism in some ways involves
an even more radical withdrawal from what normally
counts as 'world' than is the case with conventional
religious asceticism. Nietzsche thinks that the philosophical
ascetic is not being weak, resentful and cowardly, that his
renunciation is on the contrary an act of strength and 'will
to power', but it is not obvious how this makes it any less
otherworldly. In Daybreak, for example, he is prepared to
say the following:
To forego the world without knowing it, like a nun -

that leads to a fruitless, perhaps melancholy solitude.
It has nothing in common with the solitude of the vita
contemplativa of the thinker: when he chooses that he is
renouncing nothing; on the contrary, it would be
renunciation, melancholy, destruction of himself if
he were obliged to persist in the vita practica: he
foregoes this because he knows it, because he knows
himself. Thus he leaps into his element, thus he gains
his cheerfulness. '10
The element into which the philosophical ascetic leaps is no

doubt 'life', but could not the religious ascetic (e.g. the nun)
say something similar? Like the religious ascetic, the
thinker has renounced the vita practica and is oriented to
something removed. One might add that, to judge by
Nietzsche's own example, the solitude of the thinker
likewise has a distinct 'melancholy' aspect.
We have noticed Nietzsche's problem with the figure of
the Nazarene. Nietzsche calls him a 'free spirit', but is he
this-worldly or other-worldly? It is difficult to decide, for
although Nietzsche emphasizes Jesus' inward life and
withdrawal from the world, he also distinguishes him
sharply from world-denying ressentiment.! ' ' Can it be that
Jesus too is a thinker, who similarly leaps into the element
of life? From which world does Jesus withdraw, and which
world does he fail to deny? If one presses these questions,
the whole this-worldly/other-wordly dichotomy begins to
look very shaky indeed: it does not seem adequate for the
psychological realities Nietzsche is dealing with. When one
considers the matter closely, it emerges that the ressentiment
type does not 'deny' the world at all, or if he does, it is a
confirming kind of denial, in which the world's power over
him is all too tellingly attested. Judged from the higher
asceticism of Zarathustra and Jesus, the ressentiment type is
locked in far too close a relationship with the world, with
this world concretely here and now, this world with all its
enticements, disappointments and pains. The detachment
or 'homelessness' of the philosopher is one of the most
constantly recurring themes in Nietzsche's writings. By
contrast, it is precisely the spiritual pleb who Nietzsche
portrays as clinging to the 'things of this world', who is so
very interested in the business of this world, who is so
utterly at home and secure within it.
Earlier in this chapter I indicated that the Nietzschean
formulas 'life affirmation' and 'this-worldliness' originate
as a response to Schopenhauer's doctrine of redemption
through 'life denial'. I also noted that this Schopenhauerian
formula is itself problematic. Although it is supposed to
refer to the denial of will as primal life force, it is hard to
think of the ascetic type (in which life denial is embodied)
as altogether without will: instead, asceticism is usually

associated with uncommon strength of will. If the
nothingness (Nirvana) willed by the ascetic is, as
Schopenhauer also admits, only a relative nothingness, can
we perhaps conclude that the life thereby denied is only a
relative life?112 The question now suggests itself: is the life
denied in Schopenhauerian asceticism really the same life
that is affirmed in Nietzschean Dionysianism?
Our doubts on this score are confirmed by a symbol
which both philosophers employ for apparently opposite
purposes: the symbol of the dance. In the second volume of
The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer refers to
the Protestant Shakers of North America - ascetic life
deniers on his own account - who celebrate their 'victory'
through communal quasi-erotic dancing (the practice con-
tinues to the present day and involves convulsive move-
ments of the entire body, especially the pelvis: hence the
name 'Shakers'). Schopenhauer comments: 'For whoever
has brought the hardest sacrifice may dance before the Lord:
he is the victor, he has overcome.' 113 For Nietzsche, on the
other hand, the dance (similarly erotic in overtones) is an
expression of Dionysian life affirmation: 'I would not
know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to
be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art,
and finally also his only piety, his "service of God".'114
Does the dancing of the Shakers deny what Dionysian
dancing affirms? Or is it much more that, in both cases, life
and world are affirmed in one sense and denied in another?
Do the Shakers and the Dionysian revellers evince opposite
existential attitudes, or would this conclusion rest on an
assimilation of quite different senses of 'life' and 'world'?
These difficulties originate in the fact that neither
Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche achieve ontological clarity as
to 'life' and 'world'. Although for the most part
Schopenhauer rests content with his idea of the world as
will, this leaves him with the unresolved problem of
accounting for the relative nothingness in which the ascetic
resides. For his part, Nietzsche takes the Schopcnhauerian
will to nothingness rather too literally, as the will to a 'deep
sleep' in which all life instincts are extinguished.
Schopenhauer does speak of the ascetic redemption as a
quietistic state, but the elevated detachment of the
Nietzschean philosopher can be similarly described. As we
have seen, the true object of Nietzsche's polemics is the
attitude of ressentiment, but in calling this 'world denial' he
obscures rather than clarifies the phenomenon he has in
mind. Nietzsche is no doubt repelled by the cowardice and
weakness which he sees in so much conventional Chris-
tianity, interpreting this as a retreat from the real questions
of life, as forfeiture of the intellectual conscience. If this is
to be criticized under the heading of 'world denial',
however, there must be some stable meaning attaching to
'world'. But this is not the case. Instead, within Nietzsche's
polemical discussions there are constant slippages of mean-
ing: not only are the ressentiment types world deniers but so
are the strong-willed ascetics with whom he has so much in
common.
If we look beyond the polemical formulas in Nietzsche's
writings to the actual content of his 'psychological' ana-
lyses, we can sec that he is a world denier in one sense and a
world affirmer in another. What he denies is the world of
human values, institutions, customs and conceptions: he
turns away from the world of politics, the church,
business, law, popular culture, education, science, leisure
and entertainment, and from the whole system of benefits
and honours associated therewith. In this sense Nietzsche is
no different from Plato. For too long, Nietzsche's com-
mentators have been prepared to take him at his word with
respect to Plato. In fact, Nietzsche's 'anti-Platonism' is
largely a self-deception, based on a misinterpretation of
Plato as a theoretician of objective-scientific truth.
Nietzsche fails to see (or sees but fails to acknowledge it)
that the world of Platonic ideas is not 'objective-scientific
reality' but a transfigured human world of truth and justice,
i.e. of essentially the same values which Nietzsche himself

affirms. Nietzsche's basic kinship with Plato can be con-
firmed by reading the middle books of The Republic, where
the non-philosophical type is criticized in essentially the
same terms as Nietzsche's spiritual plebs: in both cases the
emphasis is not on lack of theoretical knowledge but on an
attitude of clinging involvement with the things of this
world.115 This is not to say that there are no important
differences between Nietzsche and Plato; their differing
conceptions of the intellect and thus of the role of art in
philosophy is a case in point. But Nietzsche and Plato
cannot be contrasted in terms of the this-worldly/other-
worldly distinction. Both affirm another 'higher' world
than that which is proximally manifested in human exis-
tence. And in both cases this other world is, in some sense,
divine.
Yet what of the principle of immanence in Nietzsche's
philosophy? Does talk of a Nietzschean higher world
dismiss this too lightly? The answer is that, without an
ontological clarification of 'world' and 'life', we simply
cannot know what 'immanence' is supposed to be. To take
the example of'the Nazarene', it turns out that, contrary to
initial expectations, Nietzsche regards him as this-worldly
rather than other-worldly, as standing for a particular
practice of life. Could the same not be said of Plato, and
for that matter even of the much-maligned Paul? Nietzsche
calls certain kinds of existential attitudes (orientations to
life and truth) 'this-worldly' and others 'other-worldly',
but these latter designations, rather than adding any
explanatory dimension to his discussion, have a polemical
function which can be systematically misleading. This is
particularly so because Nietzsche takes this polemical
opposition seriously as a philosophical explanation of his
existential analyses (where his real philosophizing takes
place), and attempts to ground it through an ontology of
things which eternally recur. If he had remained faithful to
his original Heracliteanism he would not have opted for
this solution, i.e. he would not have confused 'world' with
'things' or 'time' with 'thingly events'. In sum, the doctrine
of eternal return is the clearest indication of Nietzsche's
failure to ontologically elucidate the meaning of Heracli-
tean Becoming, of his failure to articulate a real alternative
to metaphysical Being.
All too often, Nietzsche's philosophy continues to be
read through the distorting lens of the this-worldly/other-
worldly opposition, distorting because relying on vague
unexplicated conceptions of 'world'. In fact, the doctrine
of return, together with the this-worldly/other-worldly
opposition, are at a different level to the concrete existen-
tial analyses which form the real substance of Nietzsche's
thought. The concept 'redemption' has a crucial function at
this existential level, because it indicates that the life
affirmation intended by Nietzsche is a releasement, detach-
ment, distancing etc. from what is commonly taken as
'world'. Redemption in this sense is quite different to the
anti-dogmatic liberation from authority associated with
perspectivist interpretations of Nietzsche, a liberation
which, because grounded in 'interest', remains very
'worldly' indeed. Nietzschean redemption is rather the
liberation from everything 'worldly' at the same time as it
is liberation into the authority of the 'essential' (other-
worldly) self.
REDEMPTION AND THE SELF

The journey to redemption traced out in Part Three of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra is a 'homecoming'. In the first section,
'The Wanderer', Zarathustra reveals 'at last it is coming
home to me - my own Self (mein eigen Selbst) and those
parts of it that have long been scattered among all things
and accidents.' 116 Zarathustra then enters his 'last solitude',
which gradually intensifies during the course of Part Three,
until in the closing sections he is beyond all human contact
in a state of Dionysian rapture. 117 In 'The Homecoming'
from the middle of Part Three, a distinction is made
between 'solitude' (Einsamkeit) and 'loneliness' (Ver-

lassenheit). Zarathustra had hitherto, in his dealings with
men and animals, in his attempts to communicate and
teach, been lonely, but now he is coming home to himself:
'O Solitude! Solitude, my home! I have lived too long
wildly in wild strange lands to come home to you without
tears!'118 Solitude is the home of Zarathustra's own soul,
and when, in 'Of the Great Longing', Zarathustra at last
finds himself alone in intimate conversation with his soul,
he is again overcome with emotion: 'And truly, O my soul!
Who could behold your smile and not dissolve into tears?
The angels themselves dissolve into tears through the over-
kindness of your smile.'119
The meaning of'self and 'soul', although in many ways
the key to Nietzsche's philosophy, is also the site of the
most difficult problems. How are we to reconcile
Nietzsche's universalizing and individualizing motifs? On
the one hand, Dionysian redemption involves the breaking
down of barriers between all things in a 'mystical sensation
of unity': it is the becoming one with the primal One and as
such the overcoming of the principium individuationis. Here
it seems that the self is redeemed only by being annihilated.
How can it be, then, that in his later writings Nietzsche
speaks of selfishness or egoism as a noble virtue, and how
are we to understand Zarathustra's redemption as a 'home-
coming' to his own self?120 Why is it that 'the noble soul has
reverence for itself rather than wishing (as Schopenhauer
apparently urges) for its own extinction? 121 The easy way
out of this difficulty, which is to posit a radical shift in
Nietzsche's thinking after The Birth of Tragedy, cannot be
accepted: as noted, in Nietzsche's later period Dionysia-
nism remains an 'urge to unity'. 122 To put the same
problem in a slightly different way, how are we to explain
the fact that Zarathustra, and Nietzsche himself, insist on
the uniqueness of'one's own path' and 'one's own truths',
while at the same time the Dionysian phenomenon is
conceived as possessing supra-individual significance as the
'highest state that a philosopher can reach'?123 The resolu-
tion of these difficulties is of the utmost importance, for a
one-sided emphasis on uniqueness and individuality will
lead to the 'heterology' of the postmodernist commenta-
tors, while a one-sided emphasis on universalism will lose
touch with the true 'subject' of Nietzschean redemption
and the pervasive theme of solitude.
It is well known that Nietzsche rejects the concept of self
as metaphysical 'subject' or 'substance', i.e. as a simple
abiding 'thing'. A series of notes to this effect appears in
Book Three of The Will to Power, e.g:
The subject: this is the term for our belief in a unity

underlying all the different impluses of the highest
feeling of reality: we understand this belief as the effect
of one cause - we believe so firmly in our reality that
for its sake we imagine 'truth', 'reality', 'substan-
tiality' in general. 'The subject' is the fiction that many
similar states in us are the effect of one substratum:
but it is we who first created the 'similarity' of these
states; our adjusting them and making them similar is
the fact, not their similarity. 124
Before jumping to conclusions from such passages, it

should be asked who the 'we' is that creates the fictional
subject. Is Nietzsche saying, as the postmodernist com-
mentators maintain, that the self is a socio-ideological
construct, formed through various constellations of 'will
to power'? No doubt this is part of the story, but it cannot
be the whole. The socially-constructed self is the herd self,
and if this were the only kind of self there could be it would
be impossible to understand Nietzsche's critique of 'the
actor' and of herd life in general. The dictum 'become who
you are' does not mean 'become what the herd wants you to
be'. Nor is Nietzsche making the 'heterological' point that
one should become whatever arbitrary ('different') self
which the 'play' of will to power permits. Granted that
Nietzsche rejects the metaphysical 'subject self, he believes

nonetheless in some kind of 'essential self which it is
possible to 'become' or to return to in a 'homecoming'. The
radical individualism of Nietzsche's philosophy has got
nothing to do with 'heterology' as 'being different' for its
own sake, but is much more a matter of 'being oneself in
the sense of being faithful to one's own true self: the motif
of solitude (ignored by the postmodernist advocates of
'heterology') can be understood in no other way.
In this connection it is significant that Nietzche retains the
concept of'soul', albeit while rejecting 'soul atomism':
One must first of all finish off that other and more
fateful atomism .which Christianity has taught best
and longest, the soul atomism. Let this expression be
allowed to designate that belief which regards the soul
as being indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a
monad, as an atonion: this belief ought to be ejected
from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all
necessary by the same act to get rid of'the soul' itself
and thus forego one of the oldest and most venerable
of hypotheses: as is often the way with clumsy
naturalists, who can hardly touch 'the soul' without
losing it.125
Leaving aside the question of whether this is indeed a

Christian idea, what does Nietzsche have against 'soul
atomism'? The answer is suggested in another note from
The Will to Power, where Nietzsche says that 'all those who
are "in the process of becoming" must be furious when
they perceive some satisfaction in this area, an impertinent
"retiring on one's laurels" or "self-congratulation".'126
The immediate object of criticism in this passage is 'the
Germans', but Nietzsche's point has wider application.
Christianity (as Nietzsche understands it) teaches that the
immortal soul, as each individual's most precious posses-
sion, simply stays as it is one's whole life long: it journeys
through this world and then passes over unchanged into the
other world. As such, the soul is something which is merely
preserved and not at all a project which must be 'worked on'
in the process of becoming.127 The Christian can be
complacent and can congratulate himself on his possession
of a soul-monad which defines what he 'is' prior to all
creative effort. By contrast, Nietzsche sees the self (soul)
as a challenge to be either taken up in resolute 'becoming' or
forfeited for definition by the herd. Everything depends
on whether the self works on itself or whether, on the
contrary, it leaves this task to others, to public opinion and
the social roles constituted within it. This means that the
self is (to anticipate Kierkegaard) a relation of itself to
itself: the self does not exist except in the activity of
relating.128 As can be seen from the case of Zarathustra, by
thus relating to itself, the self 'comes home' not just to
itself, but to 'life' as the supreme object of affirmation.
This does not imply that the self is completed or finished
and can now rest on its laurels, because life itself is not like
this: it is constant movement and overcoming. The self
does not attain an end-state because it is not a thing which
has states, but it becomes what it essentially is (a never-
ending process of becoming and overcoming) through
immersion in the element of life.
The self shares with life the character of unknowability.
It cannot be pinned down in concepts, it cannot be revealed
without residue: '"Everyone is farthest away - from
himself'; all who try the reins know this to their chagrin,
and the maxim "know thyself!" addressed to human beings
by a god, is almost malicious.'129 Nietzsche makes the
delphic maxim his own, he sees himself as following the
same road as the solitary Heraclitus who summarized his
philosophy in the simple statement 'I searched out
myself.'130 In this sense Nietzsche resembles many reli-
gious-mystical thinkers of both the Western and Eastern
traditions who see the way to truth (the way to the
universal) as the 'inward' way (the way to the individual).
But on the other hand, the expression 'inward' is not strictly

applicable in Nietzsche's case, for he pursues neither self
nor life in a realm of spiritual interiority, he does not
operate with a dualism of inner and outer reality. '31 Instead
of inwardness, Nietzsche speaks of 'solitude': a condition
pertaining to the whole existing self and not just to the
abstracted 'conscious' self. The Nietzschean self has that
reflexive character which Heidegger calls 'mineness'
(Jemeinigkeit), but this is quite different from being closed
off from the external world in the manner of the Cartesian
ego. Like Heideggerian mineness, Nietzschean solitude
defines a sphere of ontological understanding, it is the
sphere in which 'Being' (or 'Becoming') discloses itself.
Nietzsche resembles traditional mysticism in seeing the
return to the true self as the abolition of the empirical self
of the principium individuationis: the self which remains at
the tremendous moment of Dionysian rapture is the greater
self which has an eye (or an ear) only for life. Dionysian
redemption involves the casting off of everything con-
tingent and socially constructed which still attaches to the
self. From the point of view of the herd self, what happens
to Zarathustra in 'The Song of Yes and Amen' would
amount to a total loss of self, it would seem that no
personality is left. From the point of view of Zarathustra,
however, it is only in this moment that he has truly become
a self, because only now docs he finally hold himself out
into life with unqualified gratitude.
It is now clear what Nietzsche means when he extolls the
value of selfishness. Whoever seeks redemption in
Nietzsche's way is indeed selfish, but it is a greater
selfishness which has nothing in common with the pursuit
of'interests'. The selfishness which Nietzsche has in mind
is simply the condition of philosophical activity, i.e. the
strength of self needed to transcend the interests of the
herd self (whether conceived heterologically or otherwise)
in favour of the 'great problems and question marks':
The lack of personality always takes its revenge: A
weakened, thin, extinguished personality that denies
itself is no longer fit for anything good - least of all
for philosophy. 'Selflessness' has no value either in
heaven or on earth. All great problems demand great
love, and of that only strong, round, secure spirits
who have a firm grip on themselves arc capable. It
makes the most telling difference whether a thinker
has a personal relationship to his problems and finds in
them his destiny, his distress, and his greatest happi-
ness, or an 'impersonal' one, meaning that he can do
no better than touch them and grasp them with the
antennae of cold, curious thought. 132
On this as on other points Nietzsche is not as far from

Schopenhauer as he imagines. Schopenhauerian selflessness
is likewise a greater selfishness which is rewarded with the
bliss of Nirvana, an actual 'psychological' state which can
be attained in the ascetic life. The nothingness embraced by
the Schopenhauerian ascetic self and the life embraced by
Zarathustra are not different: the apparent conflict only
indicates that, from the standpoint of the herd self, the
truth of redemption is the cancellation of the only reality it
knows. In both cases the homecoming to the self is a return
to that element of the complex self which partakes of
eternity, but which is covered up, suffocated, scorned and
mocked by the wisdom of this world. A similar conception
is to be found throughout the dialogues of Plato, e.g. in the
Phaedo, where Socrates says that 'the gods are our keepers,
and we men are one of their possessions'.133 For Nietzsche
as for Plato, the way to the universal is the way back to the
true individual: the ladder of divine ascent is not the
acquisition of many things but the casting off of many
things, a process of simplification and purification.
Nietzsche would not disagree with Plato when the latter
says that 'we men are put in a sort of guard post, from
which one must not release oneself or run away'. 134 The
self is the unique opening to the divine. It is here that all

eternal demands are felt, it is from here that the philoso-
pher experiences 'his destiny, his distress, and his greatest
happiness'.
CLEANLINESS AND PURITY

For Nietzsche, Christian redemption is anchored in the
poisonous notions of sin and guilt. What he here diagnoses
is a ressentiment stance towards life, with redemption as a
faint-hearted escape rather than a courageous embrace of
Dionysian life in all its unfathomability. The Christian
conceptions of sin and guilt represent a self-abasement and
self-belittling of man, practised by those (nowadays a
whole world civilization) who do not have the strength for
life, and who bitterly take revenge both on life itself and on
their own lives. When the Christians wash away their sins
in the ceremony of baptism, Nietzsche can see this only as a
washing away of the last vestiges of life, as the symbol of
an ultimate capitulation before life, as the expression of a
final desperate determination to degrade life and to declare
as sacrosanct the inability to live. What Christianity takes as
impure Nietzsche takes as the instinct of genuine life; what
Christianity takes as cleanliness Nietzsche takes as filth:
'one does well to put gloves on when reading the New
Testament' as he says in The Antichrist.I35 Like Christianity,
Nietzsche sees the 'fallen' state of the soul as one of
impurity and uncleanliness, while radically revising (so he
considers) what these latter mean:
That which divides two people most profoundly is a

differing sense and degree of cleanliness
(Reinlichkeit). Of what good is all uprightedness and
mutual usefulness, of what good is mutual good will:
the fact still remains - they 'cannot bear each other's
odour!' The highest instinct of cleanliness places him
who is affected with it in the stangest and most
perilous isolation, as a saint: for precisely this is
saintliness - the highest spiritualization of the said
instinct. To know an indescribable pleasure in
bathing, to feel an ardour and thirst which constantly
drives the soul out of night into morning, and out of
gloom and 'gloominess' into brightness...is a noble
inclination - but it also separates. The saint's pity is pity
for the dirt (Schmutz) of the human, all too human. 136
The Nietzschean spiritual aristocrat needs to protect him-

self against the filth of the spiritual lower orders, he has a
'physiological' reaction to ressentiment spirituality in all its
manifestations:
And therefore let is have fresh air! fresh air! and keep
clear of the madhouses and hospitals of culture! And
therefore let us have good company, our company!
Or solitude if it must be! But away from the sickening
fumes of inner corruption and the hidden rot of
disease!137
My instinct for cleanliness is characterized by a

perfectly uncanny sensitivity so that the proximity or
- what am 1 saying? - the inmost parts, the 'entrails' of
every soul are physiologically perceived by me,
smelled....Extreme cleanliness in relation to me is the
presupposition of my existence; I perish under
unclean conditions - I constantly swim and bathe and
splash, as it were, in some resplendent element.138
Such passages suggest that the threat of uncleanlincss

comes from 'outside', perhaps from mere physical prox-
imity of the spiritual lower orders. But Nietzsche must be
read carefully. As pointed out at the beginning of Chapter
Two, Nietzsche's different orders of the spirit ultimately
stand for different forces within the economy of every
spirit. Nietzsche does not think of spiritual cleanliness just
as quarantine from external sources of spiritual disease. He
does not 'bathe'just in order to remove the pollution arising

from his intercourse with those of lesser cleanliness. On
the contrary, the 'spiritualization' of the instinct for
cleanliness occurs primarily within the self, as self-over-
coming, as the overcoming of that instinct of ressentiment
which rules the herd self. To the extent that this implies a
potential uncleanliness even in the spiritual aristocrat, the
concepts of guilt and sin are not so foreign to Nietzsche as
first appears.139 The uncleanliness of man is the weakness
and cowardice which prevents him from living according
to his own higher nature (that of the spiritual aristocrat, the
Übermensch) and which makes him 'gravitate' towards
spiritual plebianism. While the guilt of the spiritual pleb
cannot be equated with that of the Christian sinner, there is
a structural analogy in that both turn away from the highest
reality and thereby forfeit their highest responsibilities.
The whole vocabulary of 'cleanliness', 'purity' and
spiritual 'health' is one more indication of the 'absolutism'
of Nietzsche's basic philosophical position, more par-
ticularly, of the 'absolute' significance of redemption in
relation to the self. From the earliest times this kind of
language has been associated with 'the sacred', which, as the
object of absolute valuation and absolute reverence, must
be separated off from everything 'profane'. Whoever (the
'saint') gives himself over to the sacred suffers a height-
ened sensitivity to any admixture of the profane, to any
compromise, discord or largeur de coeur, to any hypocrisy or
half-heartedness, to any 'relativism', to any weakness of
spirit.140 Precisely this is Nietzsche's attitude to that
'resplendent element' he calls 'life'. Notwithstanding
Nietzsche's hostility to the passivity oí ressentiment, Diony-
sianism involves an unmistakably 'submissive' dimension,
but of a kind which leads to celebration rather than
resignation: the overcoming of ressentiment submission is
made possible by submission to the 'godliness' of life. For
one ruled by this kind of submission and reverence, other
orientations to life will appear impure and unclean, lacking
in respect and self-respect, lacking in valuational propor-
tionality and therefore in a genuine sense perverse.
Whoever fails to grasp their own essential nature becomes
someone less than himself and thus 'sick' in an ontological
sense. However, even the 'highest instinct for cleanliness'
can never attain an absolute purity. Nietzsche himself is not
altogether untouched by the 'dirt of the human, all too
human'. The 'philosopher saint' is 'constantly bathing and
splashing' because only thus does he remain properly
'awake' to truth and life.141 The philosophical life is
constantly vigilant against the encroachments of 'the
world', it must wash itself clean of the worldly valuations
of the herd, it must purify itself of the 'all too human'
tendency to hastily resolve the problem of existence, it
must courageously hold this problem open and continually
refound itself upon it. 'My whole Zarathustra ', Nietzsche
tells us in Ecce Homo, 'is a dithyramb on solitude, or, if I
have been understood, on cleanliness.'™2 The instinct for
cleanliness drives the Nietzschean philosopher further and
further into solitude, but into the kind of solitude which is
also a 'mystical sensation of unity': solitude as purification
and cleansing, as obedience to the 'divine element' in man.
4
Nietzsche and Heidegger
Nietzsche's atheism must be liberated from the dubious society of those

supercilious atheists who deny God when they fail to find him in their
reagent glass, those who replace the renounced God with their 'God' of
'Progress'. We dare not confuse Nietzsche with such 'god-less' ones,
who cannot really even be 'god-less' because they have never struggled to
find a god, and never can. '
With all these pros and cons with respect to humanization, one believes
one knows ahead of time what human beings are, the human beings who
are responsible for this palpable humanization. One forgets to pose the
question that would have to be answered first of all if the suspicions
concerning humanization are to be viable or if refutation of these
suspicions is to make any sense. To talk of humanization before one has
decided - that is to say, before one has asked - who man is, is idle talk
indeed.2
NIETZSCHE, HEIDEGGER, AND 'POST-METAPHYSICAL'

PHILOSOPHY
The problem of 'Nietzsche and Heidegger' has in the last
two decades come to the forefront of philosophical
controversy, often under the rubric 'the end of meta-
physics'. Heidegger's two-volume Nietzsche, published in
1961 but based on lectures from the mid-1930s to the early
1940s, has had a major impact, and remains the focus for
many discussions.3 The influence of Heidegger's other
writings on the history of metaphysics also makes a
comparison with Nietzsche inevitable. Both thinkers seek
to break from the tradition of Western philosophy. Both
go back to the Presocratic Greeks for inspiration and both
seek a 'post-metaphysical' philosophy which would not be
Nietzsche and Heidegger 175
bound by the strictures of rational-conceptual knowledge.

Both are critical of the 'objectivism' of post-Cartesian
philosophy (thus of 'objective truth') and of the conse-
quent domination of epistemological problematics. On the
other hand, the projects of Nietzsche and Heidegger do not
altogether correspond. To mention just one difference,
Nietzsche rejects 'Being' as the 'last cloud of evaporating
reality', while Heidegger elevates the 'question of Being'
(Seinsfrage) to the status of the first and last question of his
own philosophy, indeed of philosophy in general.
The postmodernist commentators have an ambiguous
attitude to Heidegger.4 They acknowledge his importance
for the 'deconstruction' of the tradition, but consider that
his own Seinsfrage (which makes this deconstruction poss-
ible) is itself a metaphysical residue indicating Heidegger's
'nostalgia' for a superseded primum signatum. Derrida has
stated that 'Heideggerian thought would reinstate rather
than destroy the instance of the logos and of the truth of
Being as primum signatum.'5 By contrast, Derrida sees
Nietzsche as having 'contributed a great deal to the
liberation of the signifier from its dependence or derivation
with respect to the logos and the related concept of truth or
the primary signified, in whatever sense that is under-
stood.'6 Derrida and many other postmodernist writers arc
critical of Heidegger for reviving a kind of 'first philoso-
phy' and thus falling back into what is allegedly a pre-
Nietzschean position, while Nietzsche is celebrated as a
'liberating' thinker on account of his 'perspectivist' rejec-
tion of absolute truth (the primum signatum). The
postmodernists are also critical of Heidegger's thesis of
Nietzsche as the 'last metaphysician', which, they believe,
involves an imposition on Nietzsche of Heidegger's own
metaphysical nostalgia.
It is not the purpose of the present chapter to specifically
analyse the postmodernist discussion of the Nietzsche-
Heidegger nexus. Implicitly, the terms of this discussion
have already been criticized in the preceeding chapters: in
essence, the postmodernists contrast a perspectivist and

pluralist Nietzsche with an absolutist and dogmatic
Heidegger. If 'Nietzsche and Heidegger' is a context in
which 'truth' becomes problematic, perspectivist commen-
tary turns this into a complex of epistemological problems
about the rights and entitlements of varied discourses. Nor
is it just postmodernist authors who interrogate the 'end of
metaphysics' in epistemological terms: this is the unques-
tioned methodological presupposition of most writers on
the subject.7 The postmodernist literature should be under-
stood in this wider context: it is one of many epistemologi-
cal expressions of the basic quandary of post-metaphysical
philosophy: how can dogmatism be given up without
lapsing into an essentially arbitrary subjectivism?
In considering the relation between Heidegger and
Nietzsche, it is important to distinguish Heidegger's inter-
pretation of Nietzsche from Heidegger's philosophy more
generally. Heidegger interprets Nietzsche in terms of his
own conception of metaphysics and ultimately in terms of
his own Seinsfrage. But it would be wrong to conclude that
Heidegger's general philosophical position necessitates the
specific thesis of Nietzsche as the 'last metaphysician'. Nor
would it be correct to suppose that everything of interest
which Heidegger has to say on Nietzsche can be subsumed
under this latter thesis. Heidegger's attitude to Nietzsche is
complex and multi-dimensional, as well as constantly
changing, even within the various materials included in the
Nietzsche book. The fundamental problem is not Heideg-
ger's interpretation of Nietzsche, but the relation between
Heidegger's philosophy and that of Nietzsche. As I shall
argue, there are good reasons for thinking that Nietzsche is
far more closely related to Heidegger than Heidegger
himself acknowledges, and that as philosophers, i.e. as
occupied with the Sache of philosophy, they both stand in
irreconcilable opposition to every species of relativism.
The 'last metaphysician' thesis is only the most well known
aspect of Heidegger's considerations on Nietzsche, and
when superficially understood (i.e. without seriously

attending to Heidegger's wider philosophy) provides the
postmodernists with the contraposition which they are in
any case determined to find.
In the following section Heidegger's 'last metaphysician'
thesis will be examined. This has been widely misun-
derstood, because what Heidegger means by metaphysics is
misconstrued. As regards critical assessment, we shall find
that Heidegger's thesis is distinctly one-sided. Heidegger
seizes upon the weaknesses of Nietzsche's explicit
ontological conceptions, particularly eternal return and will
to power, and accentuates them, seemingly in order that his
own Seinsfrage may stand out more prominently. Although
Heidegger reveals the absolutism of Nietzsche's philosoph-
ical position, he is over hasty in assimilating Nietzsche to
the Aristotelian 'onto-theological' tradition of absolutism.
At the same time, Heidegger is not insensitive to the
complexities of Nietzsche's philosophy, and the limitations
of the 'last metaphysician' thesis are discernible within his
own wider discussions. The third section attempts to reveal
the fundamental affinity between Nietzsche and Heideg-
ger by means of the latter's idea of the 'Sache' of thought.
Considered in this context, Nietzsche and Heidegger are
concerned with the same 'phenomenon', but look at it from
different angles: Heidegger is more occupied with explicit
ontological articulation, with the way in which Being has
been 'forgotten' by the metaphysical tradition from Plato
and Aristotle onwards, while Nietzsche is occupied with
the situation of the individual, by the challenge of living in
the 'terrible' truth. Both thinkers, however, are perpetually
'on the way' to this Sache and within this Sache. Finally, in
the fourth section, I shall briefly canvass the enigmatic
character of this Sache as a sphere of'nothingness'.
NIETZSCHE AS THE 'LAST METAPHYSICIAN'

First of all, what does Heidegger mean by metaphysics? A
fundamental difference from Nietzsche is that Heidegger
proceeds not from the Platonic dichotomy between a real

and an apparent world, but by reference to Aristotle's
'onto-theological constitution of metaphysics'. It is well
known that Aristotle himself does not use the expression
'metaphysics'; a later editor gave this title to a series of
treatises on 'first philosophy' (prote philosophia), i.e. a
science of'first principles' relating not to any special region
of beings, but to beings in general, beings qua beings.8
Aristotelian 'ontology' (another word the Stagirite does not
use himself, but which means the science of ta onta, of
things qua things) gains its unity by reference to a theos,
which Heidegger translates as 'highest being' (höchste
Seiende).9 Departing from these Aristotelian definitions,
Heidegger understands metaphysics as the science of all
beings whatsoever, grounding the totality of beings in a
first being, e.g. in the case of Aristotle ousia (substance,
ultimately 'divine' substance). Metaphysics is concerned
with the 'way of Being of beings'.10 It asks about 'what
everything is' and in the course of its history has given
various answers: everything is 'substance', everything is
'mathematical', everything is 'spiritual', everything is
'physical' et al. As such - this is Heidegger's basic thesis -
metaphysics overlooks the more primordial question of
Being (Sein) itself, of the prior 'is-ness' of all beings,
regardless of their nature: the onto-theological constitution
of metaphysics is, as he puts it, an expression of the
'oblivion of Being' (Seinsvergessenheit).11
Heidegger finds Nietzsche's metaphysics primarily in the
doctrines of will to power and eternal return. Before
proceeding to systematic questions some preliminary com-
ments are needed on this choice. It is well known that
Heidegger attributes great importance to the posthumously
published fragments from Nietzsche's late period, par-
ticularly those appearing in The Will to Power, in Heideg-
ger's view these contain Nietzsche's 'philosophy proper',
while the published works are mere 'foreground'. 12 He
supports this by reference to Nietzsche's repeatedly stated
intention, in the years beginning with the composition of

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to write a 'philosophy' which
would bring order and unity to his earlier thought, and
provide it with proper foundations. Since will to power
and eternal return are frequently recurring motifs in the
notebooks of this period, appearing as headings and
subheadings of the projected philosophical work, Heideg-
ger feels justified in focusing on them. Now, while
attention to Nietzsche's Nachlaß is of course not objection-
able in itself, the priority Heidegger gives to this calls for
some misgivings. Nietzsche's practice was to write volu-
minously, but often only experimentally, in his notebooks,
then to sift this material and rework it for publication. In
his late published books (and in those prepared for publica-
tion), many of the ideas from the notebooks play a
comparatively minor role, e.g. will to power is mentioned
quite rarely, while the early Dionysian motif continues to
figure prominently. 13 The Will to Power, compiled and
published after Nietzsche's death by his sister Elizabeth and
Peter Gast, provides scenes from his literary workshop
over a period of years, with the individual fragments
(some of which were retrieved from waste-paper baskets
and from the bottom of cupboards in the hotel rooms
Nietzsche had occupied) ordered according to the editors'
own assumptions about what the author intended. Around
1886 Nietzsche did develop plans for writing a 'book' called
'The Will to Power', which would be his 'main work'. He
announces at the end of The Genealogy of Morals that he is
preparing such a work. But this 'preparation', when seen in
the context of Nietzsche entire Nachlaß of the period, is
confined to tentative jottings with no attempt at
systematization. 14
Nietzsche apparently had great hopes for both will to
power and eternal return which never materialized. Lou
Salomé reports that at one stage he intended to undertake
extensive research in the natural sciences to verify these
principles.15 Many fragments of The Will to Power show
that, at least for a time, Nietzsche was interested in the

possible 'explanatory' function of these principles for
natural physical phenomena. '6 Yet if will to power and
eternal return are meant as quasi-scientific hypotheses, or
even as metaphysical hypotheses about 'everything', they
remain at an extremely crude level of development,
incomparably inferior to Schopenhauer's metaphysic of
nature in Book Two of The World as Will and Representation.
In many of their formulations, will to power and eternal
return constitute more an embarrassment than anything
else: they cannot be ignored, but their prétentions are out of
all proportion to their ill-defined contours. Under such
circumstances, Heidegger's identification of just these ideas
as the 'essence' of Nietzsche's thought is puzzling: can it be
that Heidegger is over eager to fit Nietzsche into his
definition of metaphysics? In the 1937 lecture course on
Nietzsche, Heidegger, apparently responding to students'
queries about his neglect of Dionysus, says that:
What the words Dionysus and Dionysian mean to

Nietzsche will be heard and understood only if the
'eternal return of the same' is thought....The mythic
name Dionysus will become an epithet that has been
thought through in the sense intended by Nietzsche the
thinker only when we try to think the coherence of will
to power' and 'eternal return of the same'.17
The question is, however, whether will to power and

eternal return are really, as Heidegger supposes, clearer and
more satisfactory conceptions that Dionysian affirmation.
In respect of eternal return, I have already suggested
(Chapter Three) that this is not the case. I shall now pursue
this same question in respect of will to power. How does
Heidegger understand this Nietzschean idea?
Early on in the 1936/37 lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger
announces the thesis: 'The expression "will to power"
designates the basic character of beings; any being which is,
insofar as it is, is will to power. The expression stipulates

the character that beings have as beings.'18 This makes will
to power a metaphysical (onto-theological) doctrine in
Heidegger's terms, for it comprehends everything (all
'beings') under a single principle. As an ontological princi-
ple, will to power cannot be explained in terms of
psychological willing; rather, all psychological phenomena
must be explained through will to power.19 Although
Nietzsche does refer to will as an 'affect', a 'passion', a
'feeling' and a 'command', Heidegger insists that all these
terms must be understood ontologically.20 The same point
applies to power: will to power is not a psychological
willing which happens to be directed to power rather than
to happiness, pleasure or some other end, but power
belongs to the essence of will itself.21 Nietzsche's psycho-
logical examples are helpful only insofar as they indicate
the essential (ontological) structure of will, which Heideg-
ger specifies thus: 'Willing always brings the self to itself
(ein Sich-zu-sich-selbst bringen); it thereby finds itself out
beyond itself (Über-sich-hinweg). It maintains itself within
the thrust away from one thing toward something else.'22
This means that 'will is in itself simultaneously creative and
destructive. Being master out beyond oneself (das Über-
sich-hinaus-Herrsein) is always also annihilation. All the
designated moments of will - the out beyond itself,
enhancement, the character of command, creation, self-
assertion - speak clearly enough for us to know that will in
itself is already will to power.'23 Drawing from Book
Three, Part IV, of The Will to Power, Heidegger goes on to
consider 'the will to power as art'. Art is the highest
expression of will to power because it is creative-destruc-
tive in the indicated sense. Nietzsche's basic (though
inadequately articulated) idea is that:
Art, thought in the broadest sense as the creative,

constitutes the basic character of beings. Accordingly,
art in the narrower sense is that activity in which
creation emerges for itself and becomes most per-

spicuous; it is not merely one configuration of will to
power among others but the supreme configuration'.24
To this conception of art as the genuine metaphysical activity

of man, Nietzsche opposes the Platonic valuation of truth.
Nietzsche's statement that 'art is worth more than truth'
means, on Heidegger's reading, that:
Art, as "sensuous", is more in being (ist seiender) than

the supersensuous. Granted that supersensuous being
served heretofore as what is highest, if art is more in
being, then it proves to be the being most in being (das
Seiendste im Seienden), the basic occurrence within
beings as a whole. '25
Heidegger acknowledges that these ideas remain

'unthought' within Nietzsche's own texts. But in his
opinion they can be extracted from a close reading of the
Nachlaß fragments: the fundamental tendency of
Nietzsche's philosophy, only obscurely grasped by the
thinker himself, can be recognized. A crucial statement
which Heidegger relies on in this respect occurs in the well-
known section 617 of The Will to Power: 'To impose upon
Becoming the character of Being - that is the supreme will
to power (Dem Werden den Charakter des Seins aufzuprägen -
das ist der höchste Wille zur Macht).'26 In the 1937 lectures,
Heidegger comments as follows:
The sense is not that one must brush aside and replace
Becoming as the impermanent - for impermanence is
what Becoming implies - with beings (das Seiende) as
the permanent. The sense is that one must shape
Becoming as beings (zum Seienden) in such a way that
as something becoming (als Werdendes) it is preserved, has
subsistence, in a word, is. Such stamping, that is, the
recoining of Becoming as beings (zum Seienden), is the
supreme will to power. In such recoining the will to

power comes to prevail most purely in its essence.27
Nietzsche is revealed as a 'metaphysician' because he sees
will to power as the principle of all 'beings' whatsoever,
more precisely (in its 'supreme' expression) as giving
Becoming the character of'beings'. Heidegger makes the
same point in regard to Nietzsche's further statement (in
the same section of The Will to Power): 'that everything
(alles) recurs is the closest approximation of a world of
Becoming to a world of Being (extremste Annäherung einer
Welt des Werdens an die des Seins).'28 Now up to a point
Heidegger's interpretation here does indeed accord with
my own earlier findings in respect of the eternal return: as
will be recalled, I argued that with this latter doctrine
Nietzsche falls back into an ontology of 'things' (i.e.
'beings'). However, the difference is that Heidegger rushes
tojudgement on Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. While I
took the view that eternal return is an experimental (and
overestimated) solution to the problem of Dionysian
affirmation, Heidegger has no hestitation in elevating both
eternal return and will to power to the status of metaphysi-
cal principles, and in identifying them without further ado
as the essence of Nietzsche's thought.
Other passages from Nietzsche's Nachlaß could easily
bring Heidegger's general thesis into question. Even a close
scrutiny of the quoted statements from The Will to Power
no. 617 is sufficient to cast doubts. For Nietzsche does not
literally say what Heidegger paraphrases him as saying, i.e.
that will to power shapes Becoming as 'beings' (Seienden);
what he says is that will to power shapes Becoming as
'Being' (Sein). Since Heidegger's whole argument depends
on the 'ontological difference' between Being and beings,
it is somewhat surprising that he passes over Nietzsche's
terminology with such apparent indifference. He simply
assumes that Nietzsche never means anything by 'Being'
except 'beings'. But we have seen that Nietzsche equivo-
cates on 'Being' quite regularly, as if he thinks that a 'non-
metaphysical' (i.e. non-Platonic) concept of Being would

be equivalent to his own (Heraclitean) concept of Becom-
ing. With respect to 'beings', on the other hand, Nietzsche
is entirely consistent from his earliest writings to his last: it
is the thing-ification of Becoming which is the original sin
of abstract (metaphysical) thought. For example, we read
in another passage from The Will to Power that 'one must
admit nothing which is a being (man darf nichts Seiendes
überhaupt zulassen) - because then Becoming would lose its
value and actually appear meaningless and super-
fluous... one realizes that this hypothesis of beings (Hypoth-
ese des Seienden) is the source of all world-defamation'. This
seems to mean approximately the opposite of what
Heidegger, by equating 'Being' with 'beings', takes the
statement from no. 617 to mean, and makes it difficult to
maintain, as Heidegger does, that Nietzsche's philosophy is
all about 'beings as a whole' (das Seiende im Ganzen).29
But there is a further problem of principle for Heideg-
ger's account. For it is not at all clear why 'shaping
Becoming as beings' should be the 'supreme' will to power,
i.e. should be that which occurs in Dionysian affirmation
or 'artistic-metaphysical' activity. On the contrary, this is
what routinely happens in 'sub-Dionysian' life preserva-
tion, i.e. in scientific knowledge and every kind of
instrumental activity. Heidegger does say that 'supreme'
will to power does not 'brush aside and replace Becoming as
the impermanent' but rather 'preserves' Becoming 'as
something becoming'. But what can this mean except that-
contrary to Heidegger's thesis - Becoming gets preserved
as Being? On the other hand, if we drop Heidegger's
condition that will to power is the principle of'beings', and
take seriously the word which Nietzsche actually uses,
namely 'Being', the statement from no. 617 is readily
comprehensible: to 'impose upon Becoming the character
of Being' means that Becoming is affirmed as the Abso-
lute, i.e. as the supreme repository of value. What
Nietzsche is saying in this late fragment would then not be
essentially different from what he says of Heraclitus in

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks:
Eternal and exclusive Becoming, the impermanence

of everything actual, which constantly comes to be
and never is, as Heraclitus teaches it, is a terrible
paralyzing thought It takes astonishing strength to
transform this reaction into its opposite, into sub-
limity and the feeling of blessed astonishment.30
As earlier indicated, there is a tendency in Nietzsche

(particularly in the Nachlaft) to consider will to power and
eternal return as quasi-scientific hypotheses, thus as 'meta-
physics' in Heidegger's sense (a 'theory of beings'). But this
is only a tendency, a very tentative one at that, which is
offset by the more characteristic and anti-metaphysical
Dionysian motif. One does not take Nietzsche the thinker
seriously by taking every one of his proclaimed 'theses' as
of equal import, but one must look to the unity and organic
development of his thought. Heidegger's 'Nietzsche as
metaphysician' thesis does not observe this methodological
maxim. It is a dogmatic thesis because it takes will to power
and eternal return out of context, and appears to be
governed by Heidegger's prejudice that no one before
himself has risen to Seinsdenken. There is ample evidence
that Heidegger's renewed study of Nietzsche in the 1930s
(in connection with the project of a new edition of
Nietzsche's works, never completed) was a decisive event
for his own philosophical development. 31 Can it be that
Heidegger came to feel swamped by Nietzsche, as if
Nietzsche had 'already said' what Heidegger all along had
wanted to say? Such a fear would not be justified -
Heidegger is too original and resolute a thinker for that -
but it might explain the 'Nietzsche as metaphysician' thesis
as an artificial 'rearguard action', as an attempt by Heideg-
ger to gain some distance from Nietzsche, and thus to
secure the future direction of his own Denkweg.
From the beginning of the Second World War, Heideg-

ger links the history of metaphysics more and more closely
with the 'essence of technology'. In the 1940 lecture course
on 'European Nihilism', will to power emerges as the most
advanced formula of a subjectivism which would make
'man the measure of all things'. From the position of
Heidegger's 'reversal', wherein Being must be thought out
of itself rather than from the human being, will to power
becomes the supreme expression of that challenging and
commanding relation to the world which is the essence of
metaphysical subjectivity:
Nietzsche's doctrine, which makes everything that is,

and as it is, into ¿he 'property and product of man',
merely carries out the final development of Descartes'
doctrine, according to which truth is grounded on the
self-certainty of the human subject. If we recall here
that in Greek philosophy before Plato another
thinker, namely Protagoras, was teaching that man
was the measure of all things, it appears as if all
metaphysics - not just modern metaphysics - is in fact
built on the standard-giving role of man within beings
as a whole.32
Heidegger takes will to power as the concealed essence of

metaphysics from the beginning of its history. Coming to
a new level of self-consciousness in the Cartesian principle
of subjective certitude, it attains its final clarity only in
Nietzsche's philosophy, where subjectivity is stripped of
all inessential determinations to reveal itself as pure domi-
nation.33 As Heidegger now sees it, the metaphysics of will
to power proclaims that the being-ness of beings (i.e. what
counts as 'reality') is determined only through the projects
of human control, intervention and utilization.
This new turn to Heidegger's critique is influenced by the
Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche in the 1930s, while
reversing the Nazi's positive evaluation of the Übermensch.
But once again, although textual evidence for Heidegger's

interpretation is not entirely lacking (the Nazis too could
readily call upon it), when considered in the context of
Nietzsche's total corpus it appears as a one-sided reading,
determined above all by Heidegger's conception of the
history of metaphysics. Will to power as technological
overlordship does not dojustice to Nietzsche's original (and
continuing) Dionysian motif, and Heidegger's insistence
that the latter must itself be understood from will to power
cannot be justified from Nietzsche's texts. Nietzsche's
primitive phenomenon of 'life' cannot plausibly be inter-
preted as a field of technical domination. There are many
aspects of Nietzsche's thought, discussed by Heidegger in
other contexts, which would rather indicate a non-meta-
physical outlook, even within Heidegger's own terms. For
example, Heidegger sees metaphysics as 'fixing and grasp-
ing' reality, whereas Nietzsche sees philosophy as 'wooing'
an essentially ungraspablc and elusive reality (life is a
'woman', as Nietzsche sometimes says). The reverence and
thankfulness for life, upon which Nietzsche lays so much
stress, do not seem consistent with the stance of domina-
tion. Stillness, silence and solitude also seem at odds with a
metaphysics of subjectivity. The list of such anomalies
could be extended.
It is true that will to power, and Nietzschean 'affirma-
tion' more generally, often seem to involve an irreverent
kind of'self-assertion'. To assimilate this with technologi-
cal subjectivity, however, is no more justified than to treat
Heideggerian Seinsverständnis (which proceeds from
human Dasein) in like manner. The crucial question con-
cerns the 'object' of affirmation and, as already demon-
strated, this is quite unlike the sphere of'things' susceptible
to instrumental control. No doubt the 'power' and
'strength' so lauded by Nazi ideologists would have seemed
to Nietzsche as just one more example of the timidity of
herd consciousness, oriented as it always is to tangible
benefits, terrified as it always is by the unfathomable
'abyss' of 'life'. In respect of will to power as 'self-

assertion', our earlier differentiation between herd self and
essential self must be borne in mind. If will to power,
considered as Dionysian affirmation, is a kind of self-
deification, this applies to the self which is already divine
and which asserts itself ever more resolutely as divine (i.e.
progressively frees itself from the herd self). By contrast,
the self which is on no account divine asserts itself by
reference to non-divine reality (i.e. 'things') in a project
which, when taken to the ultimate limits (as the Nazis
attempted, but as our modern world continues to attempt,
in less violent ways) founders on the fact of finitude. The
difference between metaphysical subjectivity (as Heideg-
ger understands it) and Nietzschean affirmation is that the
former culminates in an act of self-destruction, the latter in
an act (e.g. Zarathustra's 'Song of Yes and Amen') of self-
redemption.
If Heidegger's thesis of Nietzsche as the 'last metaphysi-
cian' is thus revealed as untenable, this corroborates the
critique of the postmodernist commentators only in a
formal sense. What they object to is Heidegger's 'dogma-
tism' in attempting to 'centre' a body a thought which
supposedly repudiates all universal values, universal pro-
jects and especially a universal concept of truth. However,
if Nietzsche is not a 'metaphysician' in Heidegger's sense,
this by no means implies that he abjures all philosophical
'centering'. The preceding chapters have shown that the
question for Nietzsche is not whether there is an Absolute
(or 'centre', if this word is preferred) but what kind of
Absolute there is. Accordingly, Heidegger's 'last meta-
physician' thesis is unacceptable not because it 'centres'
Nietzsche's thought but because it does so in the wrong
way: it attributes to Nietzsche an onto-theological concep-
tion of the Absolute when it is precisely this that Nietzsche
attempts to overcome. Such is also Heidegger's project.
What makes Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche so puz-
zling is that Nietzsche's overcoming of metaphysics bears
such deep resemblances to Heidegger's own. The sprawl-

ing two-volume Nietzsche brings many of these
resemblances to light, but the 'Nietzsche as metaphysician'
thesis covers them over again. It is necessary, therefore, to
take a broader view of the two philosophers.
SACHE AND TRUTH IN NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER

For a long time it has been a cliché in discussions of
Nietzsche to say that he rejects the philosophical 'system'.
Just what 'system' means in philosophy is rarely reflected
upon. In the case of Nietzsche, the aphoristic and 'frag-
mentary' mode of presentation is frequently held up as the
decisive matter, as indicating the 'de-centred' and 'undog-
matic' nature of his thinking. Alexander Nehamas' view,
typical of the postmodernist authors, is that 'Nietzsche's
textual fragments are for him sentences that essentially lack
a context, a whole to which they belong, and to which
appeal is necessary if we are to interpret them.'34 The
traditional approach of ransacking Nietzsche's work for
assertions, and then attempting to identify the centre of his
philosophy, is rejected by the postmodernists in favour of
a conception of Nietzschean 'fragmentary writing',
explained by Ernst Behler as 'first of all, refusal of a
system, passion for incompletion, and voyage of
thought.'35 Nietzsche's rejection of system is taken as
tantamount to rejection of truth, in particular (under the
influence of Jacques Derrida) as displacement of truth by
'style'.36 The novelty of Nietzsche's method is understood
as the affirmation of a stylistic pluralism and experimental-
ism which liberates discourse from dogmatism.
The postmodernists were not the first to notice that
Nietzsche rejects the traditional academic treatise as a
suitable medium for presenting his thoughts. Major studies
by Karl Jaspers and Karl Löwith, both from the 1930s, pay
special attention to Nietzsche's style and investigate its
significance for his concept of philosophy. Löwith main-
tains that a 'system in aphorisms' can be found in
Nietzsche.37 Jaspers advocates searching out Nietzsche for

his contradictions, and never being satisfied with an X till
one has discovered the corresponding not-X, a technique
similarly oriented to a unitary understanding of his writ-
ings.38 What is specific to the postmodernist commentators
is not their concern with Nietzsche's style as such, but their
perspectivist rejection of any unitary Sache underlying this
style, their haste to equate Nietzsche's plurality of styles
with a plurality of truths. Thus Nehamas writes that:
We must thoroughly reject the view that Nietzsche's

many styles reflect his effort to find a single 'adequate
means of expression'....Far from being directed
toward getting to 'the things themselves', the very
idea of which Nietzsche radically repudiates, his many
modes of writing are directly connected with his view
that 'facts are precisely what there is not, only
interpretations'.39
Now it is correct that Nietzsche believes neither in 'facts'

(as basic states of affairs which can be accurately described)
nor in a final 'adequate means of expression', but this does
not at all imply disbelief in 'the things themselves' as the
Sache of thought, i.e. as the source of the 'great problems
and question marks' which occupy the philosopher.
Heidegger puts the matter in the following terms:
Those who posit the uppermost values, the creators,

the new philosophers at the forefront, must accord-
ing to Nietzsche be experimenters; they must tread
paths and break trails in the knowledge that they do
not have the truth. But from such knowledge it does
not at all follow that they have to view their concepts
as mere playing chips (Spielmarkeri) that can be
exchanged at any time for any currency. What does
follow is just the opposite: the solidity and binding
quality of thought must undergo a grounding in the
things themselves (die Harte und Verbindlichkeit des

Denkens mujj eine Gründung in den Sachen selbst erfahren)
in a way that prior philosophy does not know. 40
The difference between Nietzsche and Heidegger on the

one hand, and the postmodernists on the other, can be
clearly read from this statement: although there is agree-
ment on both sides that philosophy must be experimental
and can never 'have the truth', the postmodernists do not
believe in the 'solidity and binding quality of thought', nor
in die Sache selbst. In the end, this is the difference between
philosophy and sophistry: the ideas of 'fragmentary writ-
ing' and of 'stylistic pluralism' (however innocuous in
themselves) in fact function to discredit the rigour of truth:
what one writes becomes 'justified' when one 'gets away
with it', when one 'gets read'.
For Heidegger, 'because in philosophical thought there
rules the highest possible rigour, all great thinkers think the
Same. This Same, however, is so essential and so rich that a
single thinker never exhausts it.' 41 What is this Same?
Heidegger calls it 'Being'. Nietzsche's preferred expres-
sions are 'life', 'world', 'earth' etc. From this difference in
terminology, it cannot be assumed that Nietzsche and
Heidegger are talking about different things. 42 Neither
believes that the Sache of philosophical thought can be
'signified' to ensure the kind of intersubjective nego-
tiability required for theoretical discourse. Both consider
that the Sache must first of all be 'seen', and only then will
the thinker realize the essential inadequacy of all verbal
representations, indispensable as they are.43 This is what
Nietzsche is getting at with his emphasis on the 'intuitive'
nature of philosophical thought, and it is what Heidegger
intends with his 'phenomenological' method. In The Gen-
ealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes:
Whoever thinks in words thinks as an orator and not as

a thinker - it shows that fundamentally he does not
think facts, nor factually, but only in relation to facts

(daft er im Grunde nicht Sachen, nicht sachlich denkt,
sondern nur in Hinsicht auf Sachen), that he is really
thinking of himself and his listeners.44
Similarly, although Heidegger is well known for his

statement that 'language is the house of Being', he does not
mean language as written or spoken words, nor that Being
is in any sense a linguistic phenomenon. On the contrary,
he considers that the Sache of philosophy is 'genuinely
preserved' only in an 'active silence' (Erschweigen). As he
puts it at the end of his 1937 Nietzsche lectures:
Wherever that sphere is not incessantly called by

name, called aloud, wherever it is held silently in the
most interior questioning, it is thought most purely
and profoundly. For what is held in silence is gen-
uinely preserved; as preserved it is most intimate and
actual Supremely thoughtful utterance does not
consist simply in growing taciturn when it is a matter
of saying what is properly to be said; it consists in
saying the matter in such a way that it is named in non-
saying. The utterance of thinking is an active silence.
Such utterance corresponds to the most profound
essence of language, which has its origins in silence.45
It is true that, for both Nietzsche and Heidegger, the 'event'

of philosophical understanding can occur in language, but
only on condition that the Sache is already comprehended
prior to verbalization. This 'event' is not the original
acquisition of knowledge, nor is it the consolidation of
pre-theoretical knowledge in 'determinate conceptual
form', but is much more what Plato alludes to in the
Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter, the 'remembrance' of what
is already known, the 'bringing to mind' of that which
must always exceed and elude conceptual-linguistic deter-
minations.46 The objections brought by Derrida and other
postmodernists to Heidegger's alleged espousal of a 'mas-

ter name' ('Being', but for consistency Nietzsche should be
charged with the same thing in respect of 'life') are thus
misplaced, for they reduce language to its significatory or
naming function. In essence, Derrida's whole argument
against Heidegger begs the question on the 'ontological
difference' between Being and beings: since for Heidegger
it is only beings which can be signified, objections to the
'privilege' of Being (its 'master' status), based on consid-
erations about practices of signification in the realm of
beings, just miss the point.47
As for the mode of 'given-ness' of the Sache, there is a
close structural parallel between Nietzsche and Heidegger.
In Nietzsche's view, life can be appropriated only through a
process of radical individualizaron (the attainment of
philosophical solitude), while for Heidegger, especially in
Being and Time, Being can only be understood through the
'existence' (Existenz) of the human being (Dasein). Heideg-
ger's conception of the 'mineness' (Jemeinigkeit) of exis-
tence has the same meaning as Nietzschean solitude: the
most 'absolute' reality is also the most 'personal'.48 Even
after Heidegger's so-called 'reversal', this remains the case:
although Being is now to be thought out of Being itself,
human existence is still the privileged 'site' of Being's self-
revealing. The difference between this and perspectivism
is indicated in Heidegger's 1937 lectures, when he takes up
the problem of Nietzsche's 'standpoint'. Quoting from
aphorism 374 of The Gay Science (also much referred to in
postmodernist commentary) where Nietzsche says that 'we
cannot see around our own corner', Heidegger writes:
We are thinking of this fundamental relation in the

decisive disposition of human beings in general when
we say that the Being of human being - and, as far as
we know, of human being alone - is grounded in
Dasein: the Da is the sole possible site for the necessary
location of its Being at any time. From this essential
connection we also derive the insight that humaniza-

tion becomes less destructive of truth as human beings
relate themselves more originally to the location of
their essential corner, that is to say, as they recognize
and ground Da-sein as such. Yet the essentiality of the
corner is defined by the originality and the breadth in
which Being as a whole is experienced and grasped -
with a view to its sole decisive aspect, that of Being.49
The Da of Dasein, as the 'essential corner' from which

philosophical thinking takes place, is not what the
postmodernists would call a perspective.50 It is the unique
site of philosophical thought because only here do human
beings understand themselves as 'who' they are, only here
do they understand themselves out of Being (Heidegger) or
out of life (Nietzsche). This is possible only through
holding at a distance all definitions of self which are
determined by what Heidegger calls 'Das Man' (the anony-
mous 'One') and what Nietzsche calls 'the herd*.
Heidegger thinks of his own philosophy as a new kind of
(non-onto-theological) ontology. Can Nietzsche be seen in
the same way? In The Gay Science, we read:
As we thus reject the Christian interpretation and

condemn its 'meaning' like counterfeit, Schopenhauer's
question immediately comes to us in a terrifying way:
Has existence any meaning at all? It will require a few
centuries before this question can even be heard
completely and in its full depth. What Schopenhauer
himself said in answer to this question was - forgive
me - hasty, youthful, only a compromise....But he
posed the question.51
Nietzsche's question, the Sache of Nietzsche's philosophi-

cal thought, is 'the meaning of existence'. This is a question
which Schopenhauer asks before him and Heidegger asks
after him. It is an ontological question because it does not
ask about any particular form of existence, i.e. not about

any contingent social role or perspective on existence, but
about existence as such, the bare phenomenon of exis-
tence.52 The basic concepts of Nietzsche's philosophy - the
Dionysian, life, world, eternal return, and will to power -
are ontological concepts which attempt to think Being as
Becoming. As argued earlier, however, Nietzsche has
difficulties in this area: when he attempts to resolve his
particular existential analyses into ontological formulas, he
is unable to overcome the metaphysical conceptions
implicit in his favoured 'this-world/other-world' distinc-
tion. Being (as Becoming) gets interpreted as a sphere of
'beings' and states-of-affairs, so that philosophical 'life
affirmation' cannot be ontologically distinguished from
mundane, pre-philosophical activity, nor can the 'detach-
ment' of the philosopher be accounted for. Heidegger's
conception of the 'ontological difference', which defines
Being in a strictly transcendental manner, allows him to
break more radically from metaphysics: Being is transcen-
dent not because it is 'another world', but because it is not a
'being' of any kind. The great difficulty of Heidegger's
philosophy, and the stumbling block which it represents
for all traditional ontology, is that Being is irreducible to
'things', thus possessing no determinate 'content'. Being is
the original 'giving' ('es gibt Sein' as Heidegger says) of the
openness in which beings can be. It is an 'event' (Ereignis)
which is ontologically prior to all thingly manifestations
and occurrences.53 In Being and Time, Heidegger attempts
to show in detail how this elusive 'phenomenon' of Being is
the prime determinant for human self and world under-
standing. To be human is first of all to know that one exists,
to understand the difference, therefore, between existence
and non-existence. Such understanding can never be
obtained from 'things' themselves because, as Kant already
knew (though failing to draw the necessary conclusions),
existence is not a 'predicate' of any kind. 54 Only to the
extent that human beings transcend from the thing world
(the world of Vorhandensein, presence-at-hand) to Being are

they able to distinguish themselves from animals, only thus
do they understand their own existence as 'being-towards-
death' rather than as an enduring 'presence' which is
'terminated' by death.55
It was noted earlier that Nietzschean life affirmation is a
stance of 'thankfulness' (Dankbarkeit). The primordial
'giving' for which the Dionysian philosopher is thankful is
not some particular thing, nor even the totality of things,
but the 'event' of life itself. To be sure, not everything
which Nietzsche says about 'life' can in this way be
assimilated to Heidegger's Being. Particularly in connec-
tion with will to power, Nietzsche sometimes falls back
into what Heidegger would call an 'ontic' level of analysis,
wherein some kind of quasi-scientific theory of beings is
seemingly in question. But the main tendency of
Nietzsche's thought, which takes life as an essentially
unfathomable and indeterminable mystery, is not in this
direction. Thankfulness for life, understood as the 'piety'
of the Dionysian 'dancing' philosopher, is not directed
towards reality under such-and-such descriptions, but to a
phenomenon which is prior to any descriptive content.56
Rather than propounding a theory of this phenomenon, the
Dionysian philosopher testifies to it: this is his spontaneous
sense of gratitude, his fundamental 'taste' for a reverential
relation to life. Heidegger means the same thing when he
says that 'thinking is thanking', and that philosophical
questioning is 'the piety of thought' (die Frommigkeit des
Denkens).57 Philosophical thinking is directed to 'das Frag-
wiirdige' in a double sense, i.e. to that which is most 'worthy
of thought' but which at the same time is most 'doubtful'
and 'questionable'. It is this dual nature of das Frag-würdige
which constitutes the necessary risk of philosophical
activity.
The postmodernists seem to fear that too close an
association between Nietzsche and Heidegger would sub-
vert the 'literary' quality of Nietzsche's works. True
enough, the Heideggerian idea of Sache does indeed

relativize the importance of any particular literary style,
however brilliant it may be. Nietzsche himself has a fine
sense for detecting mere brilliance in a writer, and always
expresses profound contempt for the 'men of letters' who,
lacking all relation to the 'great problems and question
marks', stand for everything which is artificial and mere
semblance in the realm of the spirit. On the other hand, if
Nietzsche's thought is governed by the same Sache as that
of Heidegger, this does not mean that Nietzsche's style is
irrelevant, nor that he would have to be reproached for
speaking in his own language rather than in Heidegger's.
For both thinkers, philosophical discourse is the most
extreme possibility of language: it is the self-transcendence
of language wherein its ontic function is superseded by the
power of ontological recognition. There are no rules which
govern this and which could specify in advance what form
of language is adequate. Heidegger does not insist that the
Sache can only be articulated through the word 'Being' or
through any kind of limited technical vocabulary. He
stresses that the point of his writings is not to develop a
'Heideggerian philosophy' but just to think the Sache itself,
something which can also be done along other 'thought
paths' (Denkwege) within the same Sache. Nietzsche takes an
identical attitude. Acutely conscious of the questionability
of language, acutely aware of the dangers inherent in any
rigidification or standardization of philosophical discourse,
Nietzsche experiments with different styles. Always,
however, just 'one thing' is at stake.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that, for both
Nietzsche and Heidegger, the Sache of philosophy is a
phenomenon and not at all a 'theoretical posit'. That the
Sache thus 'shows itself, that man lives within the 'self-
revealing' of this Sache, is nothing else but its 'truth'. This
conception of truth is explicitly enunciated only by
Heidegger (the 'truth of Being'), but is implicit in
Nietzsche as well (Dionysian truth). It is a non-epis-
temological and non-linguistic conception which has
nothing to do with the adequacy or decidability of dis-

courses.58 Before any discourse arises, before any theoreti-
cal judgements can be made concerning beings of whatever
kind, these beings must first be brought into view, they
must first be brought out into the 'openness' (even if as
'theoretical posits') of the 'event' of Being's (or life's, in
Nietzsche's case) self-revealing. Nietzsche and Heidegger
both acknowledge that 'truth' also has a second-order
meaning, pertaining to propositions, assertions, conven-
tions and 'perspectives'. But truth in the fundamental
philosophical sense is, for both thinkers, the truth of the
Sache itself. The philosopher does not 'propound' the truth
but 'exists in the truth': this means that he is open to the
openness of the Sache.
Because this kind of truth is not bound by the rules of
discursive thought (particularly not by the structure of the
assertion) neither does it obey the law of non-contradic-
tion. The Sache's self-revealing is at the same time a self-
concealing, while openness to the Sache can take the
deficient form of a 'turning away'. In Being and Time,
Heidegger expresses this by saying that 'Dasein is equi-
primordially both in the truth and in the untruth', while
Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human, remarks that 'the
whole of human life is sunk deeply in untruth.' 59 It does
not follow, just because the Sache (Being, life) is a
phenomenon, that it is unproblematically available to every
'observer'. Precisely because this phenomenon is no kind of
'thing', precisely because it cannot be made present-to-
hand for theory or ready-to-hand for practical utilization,
it is by no means accessible through 'observation' but only
through existential reorientation (with all the difficulties
this implies). Nietzsche and Heidegger both consider that a
tendency to 'fall away' from truth is an ontological
structure of human existence, but also that this testifies to a
certain consciousness of the Sache rather than to the sheer
obliviousness of animals and other non-human entities.60
Nietzsche's spiritual plebs are weak not because they are
completely non-cognizant of the Sache but because they

seek to avoid it: they turn away from life out of cowardice
before this phenomenon, and because they do not enter
into it (i.e. do not take up the Dionysian stance) they do not
come to 'know' it more profoundly. In similar vein,
Heidegger speaks in Being and Time of the anxious falling
from Being into the familiar world of beings as a 'fleeing'
from the perceived 'uncanniness' (Unheimlichkeit) of
Being.61
The philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger will
always be found deficient on epistcmological criteria.
How, it will be asked, do they know what they claim to
know? What in any case do they claim to know? Is not their
'knowing' in the last resort mere 'speculation'? Are not their
writings in the last resort mere 'literature'? These questions
can only be asked by those who do not have the phe-
nomenon of Being/life in view. This phenomenon can be
encountered, and indeed must be encountered before any
theorization or practice takes place. The question is not
whether one cognitively 'admits' it, but what 'attitude' or
'stance' one takes towards it. It is a question of 'attitude'
because the phenomenon 'gives itself not as a theoretical
but as an existential challenge: it says 'know me' only in the
sense of 'enter into me'. Human existence is philosophi-
cally 'truthful' when it is sachgemàfî, i.e. fitting and proper
in respect of the Sache. By the same token, when one says
that, because this Sache cannot be captured within the
confines of rational cognition, its 'reality' cannot be
admitted, one is making an existential decision. The same
applies to those postmodernists who, wary of epis-
temological 'closures', might prefer to say that the pur-
ported Sache is 'uninteresting'. This would be like saying
that the existence of God is an 'uninteresting' hypothesis.
Judged by their actual lives, even many 'believers' find the
existence of God relatively 'uninteresting': does this say
more about God or about themselves and their 'interests'?
The bulk of Heidegger's writings consists of a detailed
examination of the ontological problematics of Western
philosophy. He attempts to trace the career of onto-

theology and to analyse the specific modes of metaphysical
Seinsvergessenheit since Plato and Aristotle. Nietzsche, on
the other hand, does not possess the historical erudition,
nor indeed the inclination, for such an analytical task. As
observed in connection with his treatment of the Presocra-
tics, Nietzsche is a very subjective thinker, who reads the
great philosophers (to the extent that he reads them at all)
only to confirm his own basic intuitions. It is significant
that Heidegger, with all his historical and analytical fastidi-
ousness, nevertheless takes Nietzsche as the most important
philosopher of modern times. The reason lies in
Nietzsche's phenomenological method: his very naivety is
what allows him to focus on the Sache itself and to
philosophize out of it. For Heidegger, this is exactly what is
called for at the end of metaphysics, where the ontological
preconceptions of more than two thousand years are no
longer capable of guiding philosophical thinking.
Although Nietzsche's grasp of the contours of traditional
ontology is faulty, although his own endeavours to articu-
late new ontological formulas are inadequate, his faithful-
ness to the Sache makes his thought ontological in a more
profound sense. Nietzsche's writings (as well as his life)
exhibit rather than analyse the situation of the truthful
individual in an age where the guarantees of metaphysics
are no longer available. In this sense Nietzsche's philosophy
is complementary, even a corrective, to Heidegger's
emphasis on more overarching ontological structures.
Nietzsche recognizes that the problem of truth is first and
foremost a problem for the individual and not for
'history', 'society' or 'the epoch'. Heidegger is also aware
of this, but his fear of'subjectivism' (especially in his later
writings) leads him in the direction of a 'history of Being'
in which the centrality of the individual often seems
compromised, i.e. wherein the problem of truth seems
more like a problem for Being itself than a problem for
man.
The common statement that Nietzsche and Heidegger

are 'post-metaphysical' philosophers harbours an ambigu-
ity which is often overlooked. It is true that both philoso-
phers have to come to terms with modern nihilism and the
exhaustion of the metaphysical tradition. They respond to
the spiritual situation of the present age and not, for
example, to the spiritual situation of medieval Christianity.
But this fact (a truism really, however much it is taken as a
revelation in some quarters) does not mean that the
underlying Sache of their thought is peculiarly modern.
The 'great problems and question marks' which occupy
Nietzsche and Heidegger do not have their origin in any
particular historical epoch, but in a phenomenon which
remains the same throughout all epochs.62 For both
thinkers, historical consciousness is necessary in order to
get back to the Sache, in order to recognize the same Sache
underneath its many historical guises and to avoid the
pitfalls of historically relative perspectives. In this sense
Nietzsche and Heidegger affirm philosophy as an eternal
possibility for man, indeed as an eternal necessity (a
command of conscience) if man is to be what he authen-
tically is.63 Both consider that philosophy as it has hitherto
been practised is no longer viable. But when one looks
closely, this 'as it has hitherto been practised' is not so
monolithic as it first appears. Despite their sweeping
critiques of the tradition, Nietzsche and Heidegger are
prepared to acknowledge isolated figures of what could be
called a counter-tradition. It is arguable that they could, and
should, have been more open on this score, and that the
impression of novelty hinders more than it aids in the
comprehension of their thought. Novelty is a time-bound
concept which pertains to the trends and fashions of
thought rather than to the Sache: only when the latter is
obscured do these trends become the main focus of
interest. Heidegger often points out that philosophy,
unlike the sciences, does not make 'progress'. This is
because philosophy can never be reduced to a reified body
of theory, but exists as an activity, as a particular individ-

ual's involvement with the Sache: progress is meaningful
only in respect of the individual philosopher, as the Sache is
entered into ever more profoundly and steadfastly.
Nietzsche would not disagree: for him, the philosopher's
progress is nothing else but his own solitary pilgrimage.
In an age obsessed by novelty, in a garrulous age in which
opinions, information, so-called communication, points
of view, theories and perspectives are accorded extraordin-
ary importance, it is difficult to understand the simplicity
of what Nietzsche and Heidegger want in their philoso-
phies. It is difficult to accept that all they want, as
philosophers, is to bring a certain phenomenon into view.
In this context, however, simplicity cannot be equated with
ease of access: the simple is also what is most 'hidden'. It is
hidden, not just because of the encrustations of metaphysi-
cal conceptuality, but because of its own very nature and
the nature of human beings. The writings of Nietzsche and
Heidegger are complex, but not because their Sache is
complex. Rather, the way to the Sache is complex, because
it is a way through the complexities of human world and
self understanding. Nietzsche says in his early lectures on
the Presocratics that the Heraclitean One 'cannot appear in
any other way' than through the flux of Becoming.64 It
similarly holds that Nietzschean life and Heideggerian
Being, simple as they are, 'cannot appear in any other way'
than through the complex phenomena of human existence.
The idea of Sache, therefore, is no kind of reductionism or
'closure'. On the contrary, it is precisely the Sache which
opens up the phenomena in their complexity, which is the
source of this complexity and its condition of existence.
REDEMPTION AND NOTHINGNESS

Nietzsche's post-metaphysical thinking aims not at the
dissolution of philosophy but at its reconstitution, through
new conceptions of the Absolute and of philosophical
truth. Fundamental to this project is a new way of thinking
of the subjective value of truth. Nietzsche finds the realities

defined by metaphysics subjectively unsatisfying because
they relate to the abstracted knowing subject rather than to
the existing human being. In his view, metaphysics has
determined the basic character of Western culture by
defining the nature of reality in terms of a truncated
intellectual (Socratic) subjectivity oriented to things and
objective states-of-affairs. Within this framework, the
question 'why do we want truth?' finds an answer only at
the intellectual level: we want truth simply because we want
to know, because we have come to think of ourselves as in
essence 'knowers'.65 As long as philosophy moves within
an unproblematized metaphysical self understanding, this
answer will seem entirely obvious and adequate, while
Nietzsche's queries, if they are not dismissed as idiosyncra-
tic, will be interpreted in epistemological terms. At the
same time, notwithstanding the deep-rootedness of meta-
physical presuppositions, despite the integration of these
within so-called 'common sense', the phenomena of life
and of the human self are never altogether obscured. As
absolute realities, life and self make absolute demands.
This is why philosophy comes into being.
For Nietzsche, the absolute truth sought by philosophy
must be absolutely satisfying at the subjective level. This
subjective satisfaction is that of redemption: through the
appropriate stance towards the phenomenon of life,
human beings become who and what they are. Heidegger,
with his Seins/rage, wants the same kind of truth. Like
Nietzsche, Heidegger considers that human beings are
proximally what they are not, that for the most part they
confuse their own 'is-ness' with the objective 'presence' of
things. Although Heidegger does not use the term redemp-
tion, the 'truth of Being' has the redemptive function of
liberating the human being into his own essence, into an
essence which, because it is no kind of thing, does not
suffer from the thingly preoccupations of the false self. In
fact, the Gelassenheit ('releasement') of which Heidegger
speaks in his later period has strong resemblances to

Schopenhauerian as well as to Nietzschean redemption: as
Hannah Arendt says, it is a kind of'will not to will', a will
which releases itself from beings so as to allow Being to
show itself.66 Like Nietzsche's Dionysian truth, the
Heideggerian truth of Being involves an unburdening
from that which normally counts as reality, but not as an
escape, not as a flight from the hardships and difficulties of
life. On the contrary, for both Nietzsche and Heidegger, it
is precisely the ordinary man, the non-philosopher, who
takes it easy in life by clinging to and remaining secure in
the thing-world, who refuses to risk his fragile pseudo-self
by opening up to an Absolute which reduces his egoistic
claims to nought.
Does this mean that Nietzsche and Heidegger are 'reli-
gious' thinkers? This question is overhasty as long as the
meaning of 'religion', 'God' and related concepts is not
subjected to the kind of radical reconsideration both
thinkers make of the metaphysical tradition. Nietzsche and
Heidegger employ religious vocabulary and draw inspira-
tion from religious sources, but hold all mainstream
religious movements at arm's length. They both consider
that the God of orthodox Christianity is a metaphysical
God, i.e. a supreme 'being', which as such is the very
antithesis of what is sought in Dionysian affirmation and
Seinsdenken. The same kind of interest in the mystical
dimension of religion which I have identified in Nietzsche
is also to be found in Heidegger, with the same kind of
ambivalence and unwillingness to make a decision. This
attitude does not point to a deficiency in their thinking, but
reflects the circumstance that, at the end of metaphysics,
the problem of religion is reopened.67 The common and
complacent dismissal of stereotypical conceptions of'reli-
gion' and 'God' is no more acceptable to Nietzsche and
Heidegger than is the vulgar Church conformism bereft of
an intellectual conscience. To call the thought of Nietzsche
and Heidegger either religious or non-religious reveals
nothing about their Sache. In respect of particular figures

and tendencies both within and without the traditions
conventionally called religious, the only question is
whether they think the same Sache as Nietzsche and
Heidegger, and this cannot be determined by the presence
or absence of a certain restricted vocabulary. As both
conceive it, the task of thought is no more to pass a
judgement on the 'theologies' of Aquinas, Eckhart and
Luther than it is to pass a judgement on the 'philosophies' of
Plato, Kant and Hegel. It may be expected that, just as
Heidegger is enabled to enter into the Sache through the
interpretation of metaphysical philosophers such as those
just mentioned, the same would be possible through the
interpretation of theologians. That Heidegger does not
pursue this possibility (at least not on anything like the same
scale as his interpretations of the metaphysical tradition)
does not justify the conclusion that he 'rejects theology'.68
The same can be said of Nietzsche who, while dismissing
the conceptually articulated theologies of Christianity,
relies heavily in his writings on a religious 'pathos'.69
It was previously noticed that Nietzsche's philosophy of
affirmation has a peculiarly negative character which,
when superficially understood, might justify the relativis-
tic interpretations of the postmodernist commentators.
Such relativism insinuates itself all the more to the degree
that Nietzsche's religious pathos is ignored or regarded as a
stylistic device, for it is precisely this pathos which is
attuned to an Absolute which cannot be encapsulated in
words and concepts. Notwithstanding his 'Nietzsche as
metaphysician' thesis, Heidegger recognizes this 'negative
absolutism' of Nietzsche's standpoint:
Thus the world as a whole becomes something we

fundamentally cannot address, something ineffable -
an arreton. What Nietzsche is practicing here with
regard to the world totality is a kind of 'negative
theology', which tries to grasp the Absolute as purely
as possible by holding at a distance all 'relative'

determinations, that is, all those that relate to human
beings. Except that Nietzsche's determination of the
world is a negative theology without the Christian
God.70
The label 'negative theology' has also been applied to

Heidegger's own thought, and as long as it is not too
narrowly understood, aptly conveys the common stance of
Nietzsche and Heidegger: it indicates that the 'negativity'
of both philosophers is oriented to, and has its rationale in,
an Absolute. Only because this Absolute is phe-
nomenologically evident, only because it and it alone
presents itself as the proper object of reverence and
gratitude, can the relativity of the thing-world, of know-
ledge and conceptuality, be maintained.
This enigma of the 'negative Absolute' is what the
postmodernists and relativists of every description fail to
see. For them, negativism in philosophy has the opposite
meaning to absolutism: it is the refusal of the 'pretentious-
ness' of truth, the escape from the discipline and obli-
gatoriness of truth. For Nietzsche and Heidegger,
however, real pretentiousness is to be found in that
enormous self-overestimation wherein one's own 'per-
spectival' interests are substituted for the claim of the
Absolute. At first sight relativism can seem, and is often
presented as, a modest attitude, but in fact it is the reverse.
Capitulation and retreat are not modesty, nor is the claim to
'know' that there is no Absolute particularly unpretentious.
What could be more arrogant than bringing the Absolute
before the tribunal of the 'interested' intellect, to ask what
can be done with it, what strategical significance it has for
contemporary writers and readers? Such an attitude
amounts to nothing but hubris, impiety and pitiable
blindness. In truth, as both Nietzsche and Heidegger
realize, the Absolute is testified to as much by fear and flight
as by the over-confident claims of metaphysics to have
determined its nature. 'Negative theology' does not believe

in such determinations, but is not so immodest as to make
determinability the criterion of reality.
Nietzsche hopes for future philosophers who become
adept at maintaining themselves 'on light ropes and pos-
sibilities, and even at dancing around abysses.'71 Similarly,
Heidegger wants a 'new beginning' of philosophy in which
the thinker experiences the 'nearness of the Nothing in the
Being of beings.'72 In a manner reminiscent of the negative
theologian Meister Eckhart, both thinkers consider that the
original philosophical act is one of emptying out from the
self everything which does not pertain to truth. If one does
this resolutely, rather than in the half-hearted and compro-
mising fashion of metaphysics (e.g. of Descartes) one is
left with that which common sense will not tolerate, with
what seems like a total void. Therefore, says common
sense, let us not do this, let us instead make presuppositions
and get on with securing our 'interests'. However, what if
our essential 'interests' are to be found precisely in this
apparent void? What if our essential selfhood can only be
discovered by entering into the unfathomable mystery
which is the 'event' of Being? Let those who dismiss this as
impractical look around the world today and congratulate
themselves on its progress, let them call for renewed
efforts in the creation of perspectives. Nietzsche and
Heidegger, on the other hand, do not consider that any
more perspectives are necessary. For both thinkers, what is
needed is simplicity: no easy nostalgia, no innocent return
to the past, but the difficult and rigorous simplicity which
lets go of so much which has filled up and puffed up
human beings for many centuries. Neither Nietzsche nor
Heidegger propound new philosophies, neither seeks to
light up the road ahead or to provide a vision of the future
(except by way of warning, of showing where the
progressive decline of man is heading). What they want us
to realize is that, before speaking of the 'way forward', we
must stop dead and abide for a very long while in the
problems of who and what we are, on what it means for

human beings 'to be'.
CONCLUSION
How to Read Nietzsche
From the considerations adduced in the present study it

might be thought that advice on how to read Nietzsche is
either superfluous or futile: superfluous for those who
already possess the requisite intuition and who will always
find their own way to Nietzsche's philosophical meaning,
futile for those whose 'interests' arc other than philosophi-
cal and who will always make of Nietzsche whatever they
please. With respect to these latter 'interested' readers, I
readily concede the futility of communication, but for
readers in the former category a 'reminder' of what they
already do will perhaps not be out of place. In fundamental
respects, of course, Nietzsche should be read in the same
manner as any other philosopher. What I attempt here,
briefly and by way of conclusion, is an integration of
universal principles of philosophical reading with princi-
ples pertaining to the specific characteristics of Nietzsche's
writings.
Firstly and most fundamentally, the Sache of Nietzsche's
thought must be brought into view. The purpose of
philosophical reading is not to ascertain the 'opinions' of
the author, but to think the Sadie through and with the
author, to think about those very same things which the
author thinks about. How often this seemingly obvious
principle is transgressed, and how ludicrous is the result: a
'philosophical education' which consists in the collected
summary reports of what various philosophers have said.
When the Sache recedes from view, or when (as with the
postmodernists) it is denied outright, the author's words

and concepts provide abundant material for castles in the
air. Among those who believe in nothing but words,
philosophy degenerates into an endless cycle of 'readings'
which, for lack of substance, resort to ever more artificial,
ever more convoluted and decorative techniques. The
Sache, on the other hand, has no need of make-up, which is
why sachliches Denken expresses itself plainly and without
contortions. To be sure, sachliches Denken is really an ideal,
which is only ever approximately achieved by fallible
writers and readers. One must strive to see behind the
author's language, to sense when the author's words and
phrases provide genuine guidance and when they might
lead one astray. This applies to Nietzsche as much as to
anyone else. We have seen in the present study that
Nietzsche has his pet phrases and pet formulas, which do
not always succeed in conveying his basic meaning. He has
an overly schematized conception of the history of West-
ern ontology, and he also has his prejudices, particularly on
the subject of Christianity. If one hangs on every phrase
and formula, one is certainly lost, but awareness of this is
also no licence for being overly 'creative' with Nietzsche's
texts: the control and discipline of philosophical reading is
always the Sache itself. As Schopenhauer once said, to
follow an author's words alone is like following footprints
in the sand: to see where the author has gone one must open
one's own eyes.
Secondly, the philosopher himself must be brought into
view. Some people are irritated by the fact that in his
writings Nietzsche speaks so much about himself, that he
pushes himself into the foreground and makes himself part
of his own subject matter. Does this indicate personal
arrogance and self-preoccupation on Nietzsche's part? Is he
unable to resist the constant insinuation of'autobiographi-
cal remarks'? Does it follow that Nietzsche's writings must
be understood as literature rather than as philosophy? Such
queries fail to appreciate the existential character of
How to Read Nietzsche 211
Nietzsche's philosophical activity: he speaks of 'himself

because, as I have attempted to show, this is inseparable
from the Sache itself. On the other hand, this 'himself is
not exactly 'Herr Nietzsche', the man born in Rocken in
1844 and who died in Weimar in 1900. What Nietzsche
pushes into the foreground is his 'philosophical' or 'essen-
tial' self: on contingent features of his life he is, with few
exceptions, properly reticent. It is this distinction which is
overlooked by the current slogan 'death of the author'.
While it is certainly true that texts have a value and meaning
independent of authorial idiosyncracies, philosophical
texts arc strictly valueless and meaningless except in
relation to the essential self-reflection that underlies them:
this statement applies to dry and turgid philosophers like
Aristotle as much as to 'artistic' philosophers like
Nietzsche. A philosophical reading of Nietzsche brings
one's 'very own self into view equiprimordially with that
of Nietzsche, for they arc the same self. This is impossible
for those who are estranged from themselves and for
whom self-reflection is thwarted by group identity. But
those in touch with themselves will know very well how to
read the autobiographical dimension of Nietzsche's writ-
ings, including the valuable materials contained in the
Nachlafl and letters. They will not always be fascinated by
his love affairs and quarrels with his family, but what they
will see reflected is his philosophical self-development.
Thirdly, and following on from these considerations on
self, Nietzsche's writings must be read in the context of his
philosophical 'pilgrimage'. It is standard practice to period-
ize an author's works: in Nietzsche's case one recognizes the
inevitable 'early', 'middle' and 'late' phases. One also
understands that, as for all important thinkers, changes in
Nietzsche's thought are prompted by internal philosophical
problems rather than being arbitrary shifts of opinion. On
the other hand, the character of these changes and develop-
ments is distorted when they are treated in an abstracted
intellectual fashion, entirely at the level of text. For
Nietzsche, since philosophy pertains to the stance of the

existing self, it is a path, a journey to be undertaken along
which, like life itself, there are necessary stages. It is not
necessary, though it is certainly useful, to read Nietzsche's
writings in chronological order. What is essential, in respect
of any particular text, is to locate it within Nietzsche's
philosophical journey', to grasp what existential decisions
and problems he has already endured, and what others still
await him. To do this, one must be 'on the way' oneself:
only then will one recognize the milestones and signposts
which Nietzsche encounters, which every philosopher, as
someone who by no means 'stays at home', must
encounter.
Fourthly, a philosophical reading of Nietzsche must be
'ruminative'. Nietzsche emphasized himself that the pace
of modern intellectual life mitigates against the proper
assimilation and 'digestion' of his ideas. It pertains to the
nature of the 'great problems and question marks' that they
cannot be hurried along, cannot be conquered by storm,
cannot be brought to submission by the kind of journalistic
Blitzkrieg one so often encounters today. How absurd an
impression it makes when one hears, from the postmoder-
nists and others, that the greatest advances in philosophy
have occurred very recently, in a few European and
American universities, and that, armed with such concepts
as 'logocentrism' and 'phallocentrism' one can
'deconstruct' the whole of philosophy from Plato to
Heidegger. There is, apparently, much to do in haste, there
are so many scores to settle, wrongs to be righted, lost time
to be recouped. By contrast, Nietzsche's thought can be
fruitfully approached only when one lets it firmly sink in
that all the essential problems of philosophy were already
well understood two and a half thousand years ago, which
is not to say that they were settled at that date or ever can be
settled. In reading Nietzsche one must take a long view,
which means one must settle down and quieten down: one
must want and expect must less from 'today' at the same
time as wanting and expecting much more from philoso-

phy itself.
Fifthly, Nietzsche's writings require a 'presupposition-
less' reading. Of course, the postmodernists would regard
this as a hermeneutically uninformed demand: do not
presuppositions first of all enable a reading to be under-
taken? Indeed they do, but in the case of philosophical
reading it is precisely presuppositionlessness which is the
presupposition. Among the postmodernists it has become
standard practice to make any presuppositions they like,
under the excuse that these are in any case 'unavoidable': the
result is not philosophy but advocacy. Philosophy, and
especially the philosophy of Nietzsche, is meth-
odologically prcsuppositionless in the sense that it
positively seeks to undermine its own presuppositions, it
continually attempts to deprive itself of its own founda-
tions. This has nothing whatever to do with the phony
enterprise of 'dcconstructionism', which, far from being
genuinely presuppositionless, is guided by the anti-philo-
sophical presupposition, to be found nowadays on every
street corner, that 'there is no truth'. Nietzsche, on the other
hand, does not need to 'presuppose truth', because he
realizes that truth is the condition of making any presup-
positions at all. He attempts in his writings to suspend all
presuppositions of what truth is so that its nature will be
forced upon him: this is the meaning of his search for
primordiality. Nietzsche's readers must follow the same
method if they are to avoid becoming entangled in
theoretical constructions and conflicting 'points of view'.
In this sense too one must be content with 'less' from
Nietzsche if one wants 'more': one must dispense with
handy 'tools' and 'views' if one wants truth.
What emerges from each of the above points is that
Nietzsche's philosophy must be freed from the domes-
ticating influence of postmodernism, an influence which in
recent years has become all pervasive in the academy. The
postmodernist processing of university undergraduates is a
painful spectacle to behold. The youthful soul has some-

how come to question itself, from somewhere it has gained
an inkling that the world is questionable, that there is a
depth dimension to existence to be explored and ventured.
But what does it hear from the postmodernist proponents
of 'correctness', what nourishment and encouragement is
provided for the journey it wants to undertake? As a matter
of principle, nothing but discouragement, nothing but the
constant assurance that the very idea of philosophical depth
is a piece of arrogance, that there is no journey 1 here at all.
An education in postmodernism is a coaxing out of
philosophy, a bringing back to something familiar,
unthreatening, unchallenging, tranquillizing. Of those
intuitions which are the original spark of all genuine
philosophy, it is explained that these are 'epistemologically'
untrustworthy, and that it is better to believe in words,
phrases and texts. What postmodernism teaches is little
more than what Nietzsche called the 'intellectual masquer-
ade': the means of ornamentation and self-flattery for an
outlook on life which is 'generally accepted'. It is an irony,
but one which Nietzsche himself foresaw, that this move-
ment should speak in his name, that it should make of the
greatest critic of anti-philosophical resentment a mere
conduit for the smooth flow of this self-same resentment
into today's academies.
What are the conditions for understanding the writings
of Nietzsche? He knew he would not be understood by the
'idling reader', who does not even seek understanding but is
content to pull out quotations for suitable occasions and
causes. Neither would he be understood by an ever so
thorough 'philological' reading unless accompanied and
guided by that philosophical intuition which provides
original access to his problems. Nietzsche does not put his
writings forward for academic discussion and debate, he
does not seek to lay the foundations for new programmes
of 'research'. He does not want to convert or liberate
anyone, nor even to inform anyone of anything essential
they do not already know. The printing press may have

created the 'reading public', but it has no power to create the
kind of readership Nietzsche wants. Like Plato's dialogues,
Nietzsche's writings are directed to his 'companions in
philosophy', to those lovers of wisdom and truth who
never tire of 'bringing to mind' the richness and depth of
the 'great problems'. This book has also been written for
such readers, as a 'reminder' of the Nietzsche they 'already
know'.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1 GS no. 378, pp. 340-41 [KGW V.2: p. 313].
2 BGE no. 292, p. 198 [KGW VI.2: p. 245].
3 BGE no. 212, p. 124 [KGW VI.2: p. 149].
4 Contributions to this literature can be found in the following
anthologies (among others): David Allison (éd.), The New
Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985; Clayton
Koelb (éd.), Nietzsche as Postmodernist, State University of New
York Press, Albany, 1990; Laurence Rickels (ed.) Looking After
Nietzsche, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990;
Volkcr Diirr ct ál. (cds), Nietzsche: Literature and yaitíes, University
of Wisconsin Press, Madison and London, 1988. Much of this
literature shows a general indebtedness tojacques Derrida, although
the degree to which Derrida approves of it remains unclear. There
are many short considerations of Nietzsche in Derrida's writings,
but his most sustained and influential discussion is Spurs. Nietzsche's
Styles, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1979. A
systematic and supportive discussion of Derrida's attitude to
Nietzsche is Ernst Behler, Derrida—Nietzsche: Nietzsche-Derrida,
Ferdinand Schöningh, Munich, 1988; of similar tendency is Alan
Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, Routledge,
London, 1990. An especially influential study has been Alexander
Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985. Nehamas is a 'soft' postmoder-
nist who attempts to build bridges between the Derrideans and
revisionist Anglo-American epistemologists. A book which brings
out the often unstated political dimension of postmodernism's
interest in Nietzsche is Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought,
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988. Gilles Deleuze's
Nietzsche and Philosophy, Athlone Press, London, 1983, although
predating the rise of postmodernism (the original French edition
was published in 1962) continues to exercise influence.
Anyone familiar with this literature (and countless contributions
Notes 217
of allied tendency) is aware that it is not a perfectly homogeneous

bloc. It is also true that some of these writers would be reluctant to
accept the label 'postmodernist'. Nevertheless, this study accepts the
risk of speaking of 'postmodernism' as an identifiable trend of
modern academic philosophy in general, and of Nietzsche com-
mentary in particular, a trend the significance of which exceeds that
of any individual author. As to the plane on which I criticize this
phenomenon, there will naturally be objections from those sympa-
thetic to postmodernism that I do not take into account this or that
subtlety, this or that turn of argumentation. I contend, however,
that this would be a very 'un-postmodern' response to what could be
seen (in the present text) as a 'deconstructive reading'. It is
characteristic of many of these writers that the interpretative liberty
with which they approach other ('metaphysical', 'logocentric',
'phalloccntric') authors is met with indignation when applied to
themselves. As a matter of fact I do not believe I am 'taking
liberties' on anything essential. The significance of postmodernism
as a cultural-ideological tendency does not consist in a few recondite
points buried somewhere in the texts of Derrida, but in its general
orientation to philosophy. It is only the latter which concerns me
here.
At this level, I believe, postmodernism is most appropriately
criticized under the heading of 'sophistry', not in the trivial sense
which this word is often given today, but in the original and
differentiated sense indicated by Plato and Aristotle. The words of
Plato in The Republic (493a) are highly pertinent: 'All those
individuals who make their living by teaching, and whom the public
call "sophists", and envy for their skill, in fact teach nothing but the
conventional views held and expressed by the mass of the people
they meet; and this they call a science.' Nietzsche is just as conscious
as Plato that public opinion is continually being dressed up and
refined as the semblance of philosophy: the sophists do this not only
because their incomes and reputations depend on the paying public,
but because they share in the non-philosophical life of the vast
majority. Referring in The Theactetiis to the teaching of the sophist
Protagoras (of whom echoes within contemporary postmodernism
are unmistakable) that each person is the measure of his own
wisdom, Socrates remarks (161c): 'Must we not think that Pro-
tagoras was "playing to the gallery" in saying this?' As sophistry,
postmodernism 'plays to the gallery': e.g. consider the fact that
university undergraduates become convinced postmodernists after
a few semesters of study, and that postmodernist authors have
become de rigueur within contemporary feminism. Plato stresses
that the success of sophistry depends on the ignorance and
gullibility of its audience, which becomes dazzled and befuddled by

an extravagent terminology, at the same time being confirmed in its
pre-philosophical opinions. In the nature of the case it is impossible
to 'engage' with sophists at a philosophical level: 'If you ask one of
them a question, he pulls out puzzling little phrases, like arrows
from a quiver, and shoots them off; and if you try to get hold of an
explanation of what he has said, you will be struck with another
phrase of novel and distorted wording, and you will never make
any progress whatsoever with any of them, nor do they themselves
with one another, for that matter, but they take very good care to
allow nothing to be settled cither in an argument or in their own
minds, thinking, I suppose, that this is being stationary' (Thcaetetus
180ab). Among modern philosophers, no one is more aware of the
ever-present danger of sophistry than Heidegger: 'Everything
essential, however, which has decisive meaning without being
conspicuous, is always attended by what looks like the genuine and
real thing, the semblance. This is why, in every period, philosophy
must bring in its wake something that looks like philosophy and
imitates it in manner and behaviour, and even outdoes it - and yet at
bottom poses an embarrassment. The semblance of the philosophas
is the sophistes [sophist]. The latter does not strive for genuine
understanding, has no persévérance, but only nibbles on every-
thing, always just the newest and usually on what is genuinely
worthwhile, but he only nibbles on it and is seduced into mere
curiosity and bluffing' (The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1984, p. 12). The diagnosis
of postmodernism as sophistry is not to deny that the major authors
of this tendency have some valuable things to offer (as Plato
recognized too, in respect of Protagoras and other leading sophists).
As stated, however, I consider the main significance of postmoder-
nism to be its cultivation of a certain attitude to philosophy rather
than its contributions in various areas of specialized research. In line
with Aristotle's remark 'A man is a "sophist" because he has a
certain kind of moral purpose' (Rhetoric 1355b20) I will restrict
myself to this level of discussion. Whether my ongoing remarks on
the 'postmodernist commentators' arc directed at a chimera, must
be left for the reader to decide. In the final analysis, however, the
present study seeks to stand under the dictum mentioned by Plato in
The Sophist (246d): 'it is not these men we care about; we merely seek
the truth.' My major argument concerns Nietzsche, not the
postmodernists.
As far as philosophical methodology is concerned, I dispense
with any lengthy preliminary statement. There may still be some
people who believe that philosophical positions can be 'proved'. In
Notes 219
rejecting this view, I am in the company of such philosophers as

Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Nothing
is 'proved' in the present book; however, something may be
'shown' for those who have eyes to see. Purported 'proving' in
philosophy always comes back to what is 'generally accepted', i.e. to
certain 'opinions'. For example, a philosophical position on moral-
ity will be taken as 'refuted' if it is shown to be in conflict with the
axiom of'equal rights' or to imply 'elitism' of any sort. This is the
manner of the postmodernists, and is why they cannot even enter
into the region of Nietzsche's philosophical questioning, which
dares to be 'immoral'. The present text is obviously not directed to
those members of the worldwide church of postmodernism of
whom it could be said that 'Lynceus himself could not make them
see.' Instead, it is directed to the very large number of Nietzsche
readers who, in my experience, have become averse to, and
suspicious of, this new intellectual orthodoxy, as well as to those
happy souls who have never encountered it.
5 This statement needs qualification. I shall be arguing that the
'pluralism' and 'anti-dogmatism' of the postmodernists fundamen-
tally reflect the anti-philosophical instinct. Strictly speaking it is
incorrect to represent this as a 'political view'. In the final analysis,
the postmodernists are not really 'pluralists' at all: the conformism
of their political correctness testifies to that. Instead, they have
given 'pluralism' a bad name by founding it on resentment. What I
mean will become clear in the course of the following chapters.
6 The common opinion that nihilism is a peculiarly modern phe-
nomenon is historically uninformed. The 'flight of the gods' was in
full force at the time of Socrates and Plato, and was an important
impetus for their philosophical activity. Historians are aware that
nihilism was endemic in Mediterranean culture in the centuries
preceding the establishment of the Christian Church. There were
also regular 'outbreaks' of nihilism during the long reign of
Christendom.
7 It is possible to see Nietzsche as effecting an 'existential radicaliza-
tion' of Cartesian doubt. Because Descartes limited his doubt to the
sphere of reason, Nietzsche regards him as 'superficial' (BGE no.
191, p. 96; KGW VI.2: p. 115).
8 See e.g. TI '"Reason" in Philosophy' no. 1, p. 35 [KGW VI.3: p. 68].
9 Sec e.g. BGE no. 20, pp. 31-32 [KGW VI.2: pp. 28-29].
CHAPTER ONE: PERSPECTIVISM AND ITS LIMITS

1 HAH II, no. 20, p. 218 [KGW IV.3: p. 23].
2 EH 'Preface' no. 3, p. 219 [KGW VI.3: p. 257].
3 GM 'Preface' no. 2, p. 16 [KGW VI.2: pp. 261-62].
4 Jean Granier, 'Perspectivism and Interpretation', in David B.

Allison (éd.), The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts, 1977, p. 191.
5 Alan Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, Routledge,
London, 1990, pp. 124 and 131.
6 Debra B. Bergoffen, 'Nietzsche's Madman: Perspectivism With-
out Nihilism', in Clayton Koelb (ed.) Nietzsche as Postmodernist:
Essays Pro and Contra, State University of New York Press, Albany,
1990, p. 68.
7 Babette E. Babich, 'Nietzsche and the Condition of Postmodern
Thought: Post-Nietzschean Postmodernism', in Koelb, Nietzsche as
Postmodernist (op. cit.) p. 259.
8 Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard Univer-
sity Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 68.
9 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, Athlone Press, London,
1983, p. 95.
10 The Heideggerian term 'Sache' will be employed throughout this
study. Its nearest English equivalent, for the sense here intended,
would be something like 'subject matter'. The maxim lzu den Sachen
selbst' (sometimes translated 'to the things themselves') is taken over
by Heidegger from Edmund Husserl, and in both thinkers indicates
a desire to get back from 'theoretical constructions' to the 'sub-
stance' of philosophy. I speak of the 'Sache' of philosophy to avoid
the misleading connotations of the term 'object', i.e. to avoid
'objectivistic' assumptions about the nature of philosophy.
11 George Stack, Lange and Nietzsche, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and
New York, 1983, p. 204.
12 GS no. 354, pp. 299-300 [KGW V.2: p. 275].
13 See also GS no. 357, pp. 305-306 [KGW V.2: pp. 280-81] where
Nietzsche says that 'what we call consciousness constitutes only one
state of our spiritual and psychic world (perhaps a pathological
state) and not by any means the whole of it.'
14 GS no. 373, p. 335 [KGW V.2: p. 307].
15 Walter Kaufmann's translation is inaccurate in rendering 'über' in
this passage as 'beyond' rather than as 'over'.
16 On Nietzsche's relation to the Kantian critique of metaphysics, see
Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Nietzsche's Overcoming of Kant and
Metaphysics: From Tragedy to Nihilism, Nietzsche-Studiën 16
(1987) pp. 310-339; and Josef Simon, 'Die Krise des
Wahrheitsbegriffs als Krise der Metaphysik', Nietzsche-Studien 18
(1989), pp. 242-259.
17 PT pp. 11-12 [KGW III.4: pp. 15-16]. In UM III no. 3, pp. 140-41
[KGW III. 1: pp. 351-52] Nietzsche quotes with sympathy Heinrich
Kleist's reaction to Kant: 'We cannot decide whether what we call
Notes 221
truth really is truth.... My one great goal has failed me, and I have no
other.'
18 PTp. 13[KGWIII.4:p. 17].
19 For Schopenhauer, the way beyond Kant is given by 'that other
truth that we are not merely the knowing subject, but that we ourselves
are also among those realities or entities we require to know, that we
ourselves are the Thing-in-itself. Consequently, a way from within
stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we
cannot penetrate from without' (The World as Will and Representation
Vol. II, The Falcon's Wing Press, Indian Hills, Colorado, p. 195).
Kant, allegedly blinded by an adherence to abstract-conceptual
thinking, cut himself off from this realm of inner-awareness and
thus from the true path of metaphysics. The Kantian critique
remains valid for Schopenhauer if this is understood as ruling out
the production of new knowledge (especially of 'absolute know-
ledge') through mere ratiocination. But metaphysics, as
Schopenhauer understands it, must open its eyes to the totality of
human experience. In no sense can abstraction/conceptualization
add any new content to the original knowledge derived from inner
and outer intuition. Although it is possible to catalogue and order
what is already given by intuition, these procedures can never lead to
a new dimension of truth. In one of Schopenhauer's favourite
analogies, concepts relate to intuition as cheques relate to hard cash:
although the former are in many ways convenient, an clement of
uncertainty always attaches to them, and the suspicion of fraud is
never entirely absent. A frenzied trading in words is possible
without there being any intuitions in the bank to cover them.
Nietzsche is in profound sympathy with these views. On
Schopenhauer's relation to the Kantian critique of metaphysics, sec
Martin Morgenstern, 'Schopenhauers Grundlegung der Meta-
physik', Schopenhauerjahrbuch 69 (1988), pp. 57-66. On Nietzsche's
relation to Schopenhauer, see Georges Goedert, 'Nietzsche und
Schopenhauer', Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978), pp. 1-26; and Jörg
Salaquarda, 'Zur gegcnseitigen Verdrángung von Schopenhauer
und Nietzsche', Schopenhauerjahrbuch 65 (1984), pp. 13-30.
20 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation II (op. cit.), Ch.
17.
21 BT no. 5, p. 52 [KGW III. 1: p. 43].
22 KGW III.3 (NachlaJ}): p. 207: 'The visions of the primal One can
only be adequate mirrorings of Being (Spiegelungen des Seins).'
23 Maudemarie Clark's book, Nietzsche: On Truth and Philosophy,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, also challenges
postmodernist readings of'Truth and lies'. However, in ascribing
to Nietzsche a 'metaphysical correspondence theory' of truth (see
esp. pp. 85-90), Clark remains within an epistemological frame of

reference which is inadequate to Nietzsche's intentions.
24 PT p. 80 [KGW III.2: p. 370].
25 PT p. 81 [KGW III.2: p. 372].
26 Among the postmodernist commentators, the idea of 'style' (as a
substitute for truth) has gained much currency. See e.g. Jacques
Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1978; and Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature
(op. cit.), Ch. 1.
27 PT p. 90 [KGW III.2: p. 383].
28 KGW III.4 (Nachlaji): p. 8.
29 KGW III.4 (Nachlaji): p. 22.
30 KGW IV. 1 (Nachlaji): p. 108.
31 I have been unable to locate this important statement in the KGW. It
appears in Karl Schlecta's edition of Nietzsche's Werke, Ullstein,
Frankfurt am Main, 1969, Vol. Ill, p. 1037.
32 PTp. 129 [KGW IV. 1: p. 175].
33 Other critics of relativistic interpretations include Katherine Hig-
gins, 'Nietzsche and Postmodern Subjectivity', and Robert C.
Solomon 'Nietzsche, Postmodernism, and Resentment: A Gen-
ealogical Hypothesis', both in Clayton Koclb, Nietzsche as
Postmodernist (op. cit.). The present study fully concurs with
Solomon's views that 'pcrspectivism was never itself the key to
Nietzsche's outlook or method' (p. 70) and that postmodernism has
its origins in resentment, as 'an expression of disappointment, a
retreat, a purely negative thesis' (p. 282). However, Solomon fails
to situate Nietzsche's pcrspectivism with respect to supra-pcrspcc-
tival truth, and thus does not provide a real alternative to the
postmodernist position. Correspondingly, he fails to give suffi-
cient attention to Nietzsche's crucial opposition between the
'individual' and the 'herd'. See also Berndt Magnus, 'Nietzsche and
Postmodern Criticism', Nietzsche-Studicn 18 (1989), pp. 301-316.
34 BGE Preface, pp. 13-14 [KGW VI.2: p. 4].
35 D Preface no. 4, p. 4 [KGW V.I: p. 8].
36 PTAG no. 5, p. 51 [KGW III.2: p. 316].
37 GAXIX:p. 173.
38 G A X I X : p . 177.
39 GA XIX: p. 177.
40 PTAG no. 11, p. 82 [KGW III.2: p. 339].
41 PTAG no. 11, p. 83 [KGW III.2: p. 340].
42 PTAG no. 10, p. 79 [KGW III.2: p. 337].
43 PTAG no. 10, p. 79 [KGW III.2: p. 337].
44 PTAG no. 10, p. 80 [KGW III.2: p. 338].
45 BTno. 18, p. 112 [KGW III.l: p. 114]: 'The extraordinary courage
and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer have succeeded in gaining the
Notes 223
most difficult victory, the victory over the optimism concealed in

the essence oflogic - an optimism that is the basis of our culture.'
46 GA XIX: p. 186.
47 GA XIX: p. 186.
48 Diels-Kranz Fragment 101, in G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M.
Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1983, p. 211.
49 GA XIX: p. 169.
50 On Nietzsche's relation to Heraclitus, see Tilman Borsche,
'Nietzsches Erfindung der Vorsokratiker', in Josef Simon (cd.)
Nietzsche una die philosophische Tradition I, Königshausen & Neu-
mann, 1985, pp. 62-87; Jackson P. Hersbell and Stephen A. Nimis,
'Nietzsche and Heraclitus', Nietzsche-Studiën 8 (1979), pp. 17-38;
and Sarah Kofman, 'Nietzsche und die Dunkelheit des Heraklit', in
Sigrid Bauschinger, Susan Cocalis and Sara Lennox (eds) Nietzsche
Heute: Die Rezeption seines Werks nach 1968, Francke Verlag, Bern
and Stuttgart, 1988, pp. 75-104.
51 PT p. 83 [KGW III.2: pp. 373-74].
52 PT p. 86 [KGW III.2: p. 378].
53 PT p. 90 [KGW III.2: p. 383].
54 Eugen Fink, Nietzsches Philosophie, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart,
1960, p. 38.
55 Heidegger's stronger claim that Nietzsche's whole philosophy is
determined by a misunderstanding of Parmenidcs is an exaggera-
tion. Nietzsche's polemical opposition between Being and Becom-
ing may well be grounded in such a misunderstanding, but as I hope
to show, this opposition is far from encapsulating Nietzsche's total
thought.
56 PTAG no. 5, p. 56 [KGW III.2: p. 320].
57 PTAG no. 11, p. 83 [KGW III.2: p. 340].
58 BT no. 4, p. 45 [KGW III. 1 : p. 34].
59 BTno. 5, p. 49 [KGW III. 1: p. 40].
60 BT no. 7, p. 60 [KGW III. 1 : p. 53].
61 WP no. 553, p. 300.
62 See John Sallis, Crossings, University of Chicago" Press, Chicago,
1991, pp. 61-68. Sallis (pp. 67-68) is troubled by the fact 'that
Nietzsche himself, despite the critique [of Schopenhauer's doctrine
of Will] invokes the metaphysical axis at several major junctures in
The Birth of Tragedy'. However, Sallis misunderstands the basic
tendency of Schopenhauer's critique of Kant. Nietzsche realizes
that the 'determinations' which Schopenhauer gives to Will run
counter to this basic tendency. On the other hand, Schopenhauer's
failings in this respect are not entirely avoided by Nietzsche
himself, especially in his later notes on 'will to power'.
63 WPno. 555, p. 301.

64 WPno. 556, p. 301.
65 WP no. 560, pp. 302-303.
66 UM III no. 5, p. 159 [KGW III. 1: p. 376].
67 WPno. 715, p. 380.
68 Eugen Fink puts the matter as follows (Nietzsches Philosophic, op.
cit., pp. 164-65): 'One misjudges the scope of Nietzsche's polemic
against the categories if one conceives it merely as a fictionalist
theory of knowledge. Nietzsche does not proceed from a critical
investigation of the faculty of knowledge to arrive at a rejection of
categorial forms of thought...but proceeds from the primordial
intuition (Ur-Intuition) of his Heraclitean philosophy, which takes
Becoming as the sole reality Nietzsche's fictionalist theory of
knowledge, which conceives the will to power as the falsifying,
distorting power of the intellect, is in its essential meaning a
negative ontology of the thing: there are no things. His critique is
not directed against all knowledge whatsoever, but only against
knowledge of things, the empirical, above all against the a priori
knowledge which gives a categorial interpretation of thing-hood as
such. His intuition, the philosophical awareness of Becoming, is not
affected by this critique of knowledge; it is much more the
presupposition which in the first place makes this critique possible
and valid.' The fact that Nietzsche's 'pcrspectivism' applies to
'things' rather than to Becoming as 'primordial reality', is what
allows connections to be drawn between Nietzsche and Heidegger,
who likewise distinguishes between 'ontic' and 'ontological'
knowledge.
69 PTAG no. 9, p. 69 [KGW III.2: p. 329].
70 UM III no. 4, p. 155 [KGW III.l: p. 370].
71 GS no. 370, p. 329 [KGW V.2: pp. 303-304].
72 WPno. 617, p. 330.
73 TI 'Expeditions of an Untimely Man' no. 26, pp. 82-83 [KGW
VI.3: p. 122]. The incommunicability of his philosophy is a
prominent theme of Nietzsche's later correspondence. See e.g. the
letter to Ovcrbeck of 2 July 1885, in which he plainly states that 'my
"philosophy" - if I have the right to call it by the name of
something which has maltreated me down to the very roots of my
being - is no longer communicable, at least not in print' (Briefwechsel
III.3: p. 62).
74 BGE no. 289, p. 197 [KGW VI.2: p. 244].
75 Alan Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation (op. cit.) pp.
181-94.
76 Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (op. cit.) p. 139.
77 Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (op. cit.) p. 67.
Notes 225
78 WP no. 481, p. 267.

79 Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (op. cit.) p. 29.
80 E.g. EH 'Why I am so clever' no. 3, p. 243 [KGW VI.3: pp. 282-83]:
'I almost always seek refuge with the same books - actually a small
number - books proved to me. Perhaps it is not my way to read
much, or diverse things: a reading room makes me sick. Nor is it my
way to love much, or diverse things. Caution, even hostility against
new books comes closer to my instincts than "tolerance", "largeur
du coeur" and other "neighbour love".'
81 Quoted by K. P. Janz, 'Nietzsche's Verhàltnis zur Musik seiner
Zcit', Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978), p. 309.
82 BT 'Attempt at Self-Criticism', no. 3, p. 20 [KGW 1II.1: p. 9|.
83 GS no. 383, pp. 347-48 [KGW V.2: p. 319].
84 CWno. l.p. 158 [KGW VI.3: p. 8]. Cf. UM IV, p. 15 [KGW IV. 1:
pp. 27-28]: 'As soon as men seek to come to an understanding with
one another, and to unite for a common work, they are seized by the
madness of universal concepts, indeed even by the mere sounds of
words, and, as a consequence of this incapacity to communicate,
everything they do together bears the mark of this lack of mutual
understanding Now when the music of our German masters
resounds in the ears of mankind injured to this extent, what is it
really that here becomes audible? Precisely this right feeling (richtige
Empftndung), the enemy of all convention, all artificial alienation
and incomprehension between man and man.' In his late period,
Nietzsche comes to consider that Wagner, with his concept of the
'music-drama', had compromised himself as musician. E.g. CW
no. 8, pp. 172-73 [KGW VI.3: p. 24]: 'Wagner was not a musician by
instinct. He showed this by abandoning all lawfulness and, more
precisely, all style in music in order to turn it into what he required,
theatrical rhetoric, a means of expression, of underscoring ges-
tures, of suggestion, of the psychologically picturesque. Here we
may consider Wagner an inventor and innovator of the first rank -
he has immeasurably increased music's capacity for language: he is the
Victor Hugo of music as language. Always presupposing that one
first allows that under certain circumstances music may not be music
but language, instrument, ancilla dramaturgica. '
85 EH 'Thus spoke Zarathustra' no. 6, p. 305 [KGW VI.3: p. 342] and
'Why I am so wise' no. 8, p. 234 [KGW VI.3: p. 274].
86 EH 'Why I Write Such Good Books' no. 4, p. 265 [KGW VI.3: p.
302].
87 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1962,
p. 175.
88 E.g. HAH 2nd 'Preface' no. 1, p. 209 [KGW IV.3: p. 3]: 'My
writings speak only of my ovcrcomings: "I" am in them, together
with everything which was inimical to me, ego ipsissimus [my very
own self], indeed, if a yet prouder expression be permitted, ego
ipsissimutn [my innermost self].'
89 In D 'Preface' no. 5, p. 5 [KGW V.I: p. 9] Nietzsche calls for the
kind of'slow reading' in which philologists are trained. It must be
remembered, however, that Nietzsche frequently admonishes
philologists for remaining entangled in language, and thus failing
to address the 'great problems and question marks'. Further to this,
see the third section of Chapter Two, below.
90 BGE no. 296, pp. 201-202 [KGW VI.2: pp. 249-50]. Nietzsche's
view of the philosophical inadequacy of writing has strong
resemblances to Plato's attitude in the Phaedrus (274-79) and the
Seventh Letter (342-44). In his early lectures on the Platonic
dialogues, Nietzsche opposes Friedrich Schlcicrmachcr's 'literary'
interpretation of Plato: 'The whole hypothesis [of Schleiermacher]
is in contradiction with the explanation which is found in the
Phaedrus.... In fact Plato says that writing has its meaning only for
those who already know, as a means for bringing it back to
mind Instead for Schleiermacher writing must be the means,
which is the best of a poor lot, to bring those who do not know to
knowledge. The whole of the writings therefore has the general
function of teaching and education. But according to Plato writing
in general does not have the function of teaching and educating, but
only the function of bringing to mind for those who are already
educated and possess knowledge.' This passage was brought to my
attention by Giovanni Realc, one of the foremost spokesmen for
the 'esoteric' Plato (Plato and Aristotle, State University of New
York Press, Albany, 1990, p. 10). It appears in GA XIX pp. 239-40
and is quoted here as per Realc. There are many passages from the
Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter which Nietzsche would subscribe to
without reservation. Just two examples: 'Once a thing is committed
to writing it circulates equally among those who understand the
subject and those who have no business with it; a writing cannot
distinguish between suitable and unsuitable readers. And if it is ill-
treated or unfairly abused it always needs its parent to come to its
rescue; it is quite incapable of defending or helping itself.' (Phaedrus
275, compare with the first quote from Nietzsche heading the
Introduction of this book); 'When one sees a written composition,
whether it be on law by a legislator or on any other subject, one can
be sure, if the writer is a serious man, that his book does not
represent his most serious thoughts; they remain stored up in the
noblest region of his personality.' (Seventh Letter 344, compare with
the second quote from Nietzsche in the present section).
Noies 227
91 Jean-Luc Nancy, '"Our Probity!": On Truth in the Moral Sense in

Nietzsche', in Laurence Rickels (ed.) Looking After Nietzsche, State
University of New York Press, Albany, 1990, p. 70.
92 Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, Harvester, Brighton, 1982,
p. 111.
93 One may see in the postmodernists' 'strategical' conception of
discourse yet another confirmation of the maxim that 'truth is the
first casualty of war'.
94 Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (op. cit.) p. 3.
95 EH 'Why 1 Am a Destiny' no. 1, p. 326C[KGW VI.3: p. 363-641-
96 EH 'Why I Am a Destiny' no. 5, p. 330 [KGW VI.3: p. 368].
97 GM I, no. 2, p. 26 [KGW VI.2: p. 273].
98 GS no. 3, p. 77 [KGW V.2: p. 48].
99 BGE no. 5, p. 18 [KGW VI.2: p. 13].
100 GS no. 371, p. 331 [KGW V.2: p. 304].
101 BGE no. 34, p. 47 [KGW VI.2: p. 49].
102 Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (op. cit.) p. 9.
103 Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (op. cit.) pp. 11 and 17.
104 Gilles Deleuze, 'Nomad Thought', in David Allison (ed.) The New
Nietzsche (op. cit.) p. 149.
105 Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (op. cit.) p. 53.
106 BGE no. 260, p. 178 [KGW VI.2: p. 222).
107 BGE no. 202, p. 107 [KGW VI.2: p. 127].
108 See also 'Of the Way of the Creator' in Z I, p. 89 [KGW VI. 1 : p. 77]:
'Do you call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling idea, and not
that you have escaped from a yoke.'
109 HAH I, no. 438, p. 161 [KGW IV.2: pp. 295-96].
110 GS no. 270, p. 219 [KGW V.2: p. 197].
111 For Nietzsche's distinction between the intellectual and the moral
conscience, sec GS no. 335, p. 263 [KGW V.2: pp. 240-44].
112 GS no. 2, p. 76 [KGW V.2: p. 47].
114 GS no. 3, p. 78 [KGW V.2: p. 49].
115 GS no. 380, p. 342 [KGW V.2: p. 315].
116 GS no. 359, p. 314 [KGW V.2: p. 287].
117 BGE no. 204, p. 112 [KGW VI.2: pp. 135-36].
118 D no. 543, pp. 216-17 [KGW V. 1: pp. 317-18].
119 Preface to Jacques Derrida, Of Gramtnatology, John Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, 1974, p. 19.
CHAPTER TWO: HIERARCHY OF THE SPIRIT

1 HAH 1st 'Preface' no. 7, p. 10 [KGW IV.2: p. 15].
2 AC no. 57, p. 177 [KGW VI.3: p. 240].
3 GM I, Concluding 'Note', p. 56 [KGW VI.2: p. 303].
4 WP no. 886, p. 472.

5 BGE no. 263, p. 183 [KGW VI.2: p. 227].
6 BGE no. 213, p. 126 [KGW VI.2: p. 152].
7 BGE no. 270, pp. 189-90 [KGW VI.2: p. 235].
8 EH 'Why I am a Destiny' no. 3, p. 328 [KGW VI.3: p. 365].
9 EH 'Preface' no. 3, p. 218 [KGW VI.3: p. 257].
10 UM II no. 6, p. 89 [KGW III. 1: p. 283]: 'The truth is that few serve
truth because few possess the pure will to justice, and of these few
only a few possess the strength actually to be just.'
11 UM II no. 6, p. 89 [KGW III.l: p. 283].
12 Nehamas makes no attempt to disguise the banality of his position:
'In order to be motivated to produce a new view, interpretation,
painting, theory, novel, or morality, one must not think that it is
simply one among many equally good alternatives; one must believe
that it is a very good, perhaps the best, view, interpretation,
painting, theory, novel, or morality' (Nietzsche: Life as Literature,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 59).
Bravo! This as a summary of Nietzsche's philosophy! Those
postmodernists with more 'literary talent' would express the same
shallow idea in more convoluted terminology.
13 See e.g. GM III no. 14, pp. 121-25 [KGW VI.2: pp. 385-90].
14 On 'the great health' see GS no. 382, pp. 346-47 [KGW V.2: pp.
317-319].
15 BGE no. 44, pp. 53-54 [KGW VI.2: pp. 56-57].
16 WP no. 864, p. 460: 'all men, especially the most healthy, arc sick at
certain periods of their lives.' BGE no. 260, pp. 175-76 [KGW VI.2:
p. 218]: 'There is master morality and slave morality. I add at once that
in all higher and mixed cultures attempts at mediation between the
two are apparent and more frequently confusion and mutual
misunderstanding between them, indeed sometimes their harsh
juxtaposition-even within the same man, within one soul.'
17 Zarathustra's main enemy is the 'spirit of gravity': see Z III 'Of the
Spirit of Gravity', pp. 210-13 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 237-41].
18 Leslie Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and The Politics of the Soul, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1990, p. 52.
19 BGE no. 43, p. 53 [KGW VI.2: p. 56].
20 Plato, The Republic 412b-449a; Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics,
1177a-1179a.
21 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Ecclestiaslical Hierarchy, \nPseudo-Dionysius:
The Complete Works, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey, 1987, pp.
193-259; John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Paulist Press,
Ramsey, New Jersey, 1982.
22 AC no. 4, p. 116 [KGW VI.3: p. 169]: 'There are cases of individual
success constantly appearing in the most various parts of the earth
Notes 229
and from the most various cultures in which a higher type does
manifest itself: something which in relation to collective mankind is
a sort of superman. Such chance occurrences of great success have
always been possible and perhaps always will be possible. And even
entire races, tribes, nations can under certain circumstances repres-
ent such a lucky hit.'
23 BGE no. 26, p. 39 [KGW VI.2: p. 40]: 'The study of the average
human being, protracted, serious, and with much dissembling,
self-overcoming, intimacy, bad company...this constitutes a neces-
sary part of the life-story of every philosopher, perhaps the most
unpleasant and malodorous part and the part most full of
disappointments.'
24 Plato indicates as much in his dialogue The Sophist (253c): 'Have we
unwittingly stumbled upon the science that belongs to free men and
perhaps found the philosopher while we were looking for the
sophist?'
25 GS 'Preface' no. 4, p. 37 |KGW V.2: p. 19]. Nietzsche is sometimes
regarded as an unreserved champion of the sexual pleasures. That
this is not the case can be seen from Z I, 'Of Chastity' and 'Of
Marriage and Children' (pp. 81-82 and 95-96; KGW VI. 1 : pp. 65-66
and 86-88).
26 The shallowness of modern educational institutions is a major
theme of UM I on David StrauB and of Nietzsche's Basel lectures
'Übcr die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten' [KGW III.2: pp. 133-
2441.
27 BTno. 17, p. 109 [KGW III. 1: p. 110].
28 BTno. 18, pp. 112-13 [KGW III. 1: p. 115].
29 PTAG no. 11, p. 81 [KGW HI.2: p. 339]: '"Grant me, ye gods, but
one certainty", runs Parmenides' prayer, "and if it be but a log's
breadth on which to lie, on which to ride on the sea of uncertainty". '
30 EH 'The Birth of Tragedy' no. 2, p. 272 [KGW VI.3: p. 3()9|.
31 GM III no. 14, p. 123 [KGW VI.2: p. 387].
32 Dno. 105, p. 61 [KGW V.I: pp. 90-91]. On the same point WP no.
873, p. 467: 'In ordinary "egoism" it is precisely the "non-ego", the
profoundly average creature, the species man, who desires to
preserve himself.'
33 GSno. 270, p. 219 [KGW V.2: p. 197] consists of the single question
and answer: 'What does your conscience say? "You shall become the
person you are".'
34 WP no. 962, p. 505: 'A great man...knows he is incommunicable: he
finds it tasteless to be familiar; and when one thinks he is, he usually
is not. When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask'; GS no. 365,
p. 321 [KGW V.2: p. 295]: 'We, too, associate with "people"; we,
too, modestly don the dress in which (as which) others know us,
respect us, look for us - and then we appear in company, meaning

among people who are disguised without wanting to admit it. We,
too, do what all prudent masks do, and in response to every
curiosity which does not concern our "dress" we politely place a
chair against the door.'
35 As Kathleen Higgins ('Nietzsche and postmodern subjectivity', in
Clayton Koelb (éd.) Nietzsche as Postmodernist, State University of
New York Press, Albany, 1990, p. 192) comments, Nietzsche 'aims
at direct and personal encounter', while 'the postmodernists, by
contrast, do not seem particularly concerned with personal
subjectivity.'
36 D 'Preface' no.l, p. 1 [KGW V.I: p. 3].
37 In his later period, Nietzsche, reversing his earlier opinion, comes to
think of Wagner as a spiritual pleb, e.g. CW no. 9, p. 176 [KGW
VI.3: p. 28]; 'Wagner docs not seem to have been interested in any
problems except those that now preoccupy the little decadents of
Paris. Always five steps from the hospital. All of them entirely
metropolitan problems.' It seems that, already at the Bayreuth
festival of 1876, Nietzsche was struck by the horrifying thought
that Wagner had come to believe in his own mask.
38 Z III 'The Convalescent', p. 236 (KGW VI. 1: p. 270].
39 GS no. 276, p. 223 [KGW V.2: p. 201].
40 AC no. 6, p. 117 [KGW VI.3: p. 170].
41 GS no. 50, pp. 114-115 [KGW V.2: p. 89].
42 BGE no. 202, p. 106 [KGW VI.2: p. 126].
43 Plato, The Republic 496ab.
44 AC no. 6, p. 117 [KGW VI.3: p. 170].
45 BGE no. 61, pp. 67-68 [KGW VI.2: p. 61].
46 GS no. 2, pp. 76-77 [KGW V.2: pp. 47-48].
47 GS no. 366, p. 323 [KGW V.2: p. 297]: 'No, my scholarly friends, I
bless you even for your hunched backs. And for despising, as I do,
the "men of letters" and culture parasites.... And because your sole
aim is to become masters of your craft, with reverence for every
kind of mastery and competence, and with uncompromising
opposition to everything that is semblance, half-genuine, dressed
up, virtuosolike, demagogical, or histrionic in litteris et artibus - to
everything which cannot prove to you its unconditional probity in
discipline and prior training.'
48 On the reception of The Birth of Tragedy, see Ronald Hayman,
Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Wcidenfcld and Nicolson, London, 1980,
pp. 156-57, and Werner Ross, Der àngstliche Adler: Friedrich
Nietzsches Leben, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 1980,
pp.298-307.
49 In his translator's notes to GS no. 381 (pp. 344-45), Walter
Kaufmann quotes a letter to Overbeck from 1886: 'In this
Notes 231
university atmosphere the best people degenerate: I continually feel

that the background and ultimate power even in such types as Rhode
is a damned general indifference and a total lack of faith in their
own stuff. That someone like I has been living among problems din
noctuque incubando and has his distress and happiness there alone -
who could have any empathy for that? R. Wagner, as I've
mentioned, did; and that is why Tribschcn was such a recreation for
me, while now I no longer have any place or people who are
recreation for me.' Nietzsche's difficult relationship with Jacob
Burckhardt, who much to Nietzsche's consternation (he admired
Burckhardt greatly) also remained doggedly 'middle class' in his
scholarly life, is treated in Karl Lowith's Jacob Burckhardt, Samtlichc
Schriften!,). B. Metzlcrschc Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1984,
pp. 44-90. See also the third essay 'Burckhardt and Nietzsche' in
Erich Heller's The Importance of Nietzsche: Ten Essays, The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1988.
50 CM III no. 23, p. 147 [KGW VI.2: p. 415]. Cf. BT 'Attempt at self
criticism' no. 1, p. 18 [KGW III. 1: pp. 6-7]: 'Is not the resolve to be
scientific about everything perhaps a kind of fear of, an escape
from, pessimism? A subtle last resort against - truth'? And, morally
speaking, a sort of cowardice and falseness?'
51 GS no. 373, p. 334 [KGW V.2: pp. 307-308J.
52 BGE no. 204, p. 110 [KGW VI.2: pp. 133-34]: 'I should like to
venture to combat a harmful and improper displacement of the
order of rank between science and philosophy which is today, quite
unnoticed and as if with a perfect good conscience, threatening to
become established....The Declaration of Independence of the man
of science, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the more
subtle after-effects of the democratic form and formlessness of
life...."Away with all masters" - that is what the plebian instinct
desires here too.'
53 BGE no. 207, p. 115 [KGW VI.2: p. 139].
54 GA XIX: p. 227; TI The Problem of Socrates' no. 3, p. 30 [KGW
VI.3: p. 62].
55 EH 'Why I am so Clever' no. 2, p. 241 [KGW VI.3: p. 281]: 'During
my Basel period my whole spiritual diet, including the way I divided
up my day, was a completely senseless abuse of extraordinary
resources, without any new supply to cover this consumption in any
way, without even any thought about consumption and replenish-
ment'; EH 'Human, all too Human' no. 3, p. 286 [KGW VI.3: p.
323]: 'Ten years lay behind me in which the nourishment of my
spirit had really come to a stop; I had not learned anything new
which was useful.' On Nietzsche's Basel years, see Werner Ross,
Derângstliche Adler: Friedrich Nietzsches Leben (op. cit.) pp. 188-383.
56 Z II 'Of Scholars', p. 147 [KGW VI. 1: p. 156]: 'Too long did my

soul sit hungry at their table. '
57 Nietzsche's attitude to the university is highly reminiscent of that of
Arthur Schopenhauer, also an academic outsider. No doubt he was
familiar with Schopenhauer's polemical essay 'Über die Univer-
sitàtsphilosophie' (in Parerga und Paralipomena, Sdmtliche Werke IV,
Suhrkamp, Stuttgart, 1986, pp. 171-242) and would have appro ved
of most of it.
58 At the same time, it is only the 'universal' in the individual which is
valued by Nietzsche. Further to this, see Chapter Three, 'Redemp-
tion and the self.'
59 PTAG 'Preface', p. 24 [KGW III.2: pp. 295-96].
60 PTAG no 8, p. 66 [KGW III.2: p. 328].
61 Z I 'Of the Bestowing Virtue' no. 3, p. 103 [KGW VI. 1: p. 97].
62 BGE no. 287, p. 196 [KGW VI.2: pp. 242-43].
63 WP no. 919, p. 486: 'I wish men would begin by respecting
themselves: everything else follows from that. To be sure, as soon
as one docs this one is finished for others: for this is what they
forgive last: "What? A man who respects himself?'"
64 GM III nos. 7-8, pp. 107-108 [KGW VI.2: pp. 369-70].
65 Z II 'Of the rabble', p. 120 [KGW VI. 1: p. 120].
66 WP no. 876, p. 468.
67 UM III no. 1, p. 129 [KGW III.l: p. 336]: 'But how can we find
ourselves again? How can man know himself? He is a thing dark and
veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy
times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no
longer outer shell.'"
68 GS no. 283, p. 228 [KGW V.2: p. 206]; 'For believe me: the secret
for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the
greatest enjoyment is - to live datigerously\ Build your cities on the
slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unchartcred seas!'
69 BGE no. 39, p. 50 [KGW VI.2: pp. 52-53]: 'It could pertain to the
fundamental nature of existence that a complete knowledge of it
would destroy one - so that the strength of a spirit could be
measured by how much "truth" it could take.'
70 GS no. 346, pp. 285-86 [KGW V.2: pp. 261-62].
71 See AC no. 4, p. 16 [KGW VI.3: p. 169].
72 TI 'What I Owe to the Ancients' no. 4, pp. 108-109 [KGW VI.3: p.
152].
73 TI 'What I Owe to the Ancients' no. 2, p. 106 [KGW VI.3: p. 150]: 'It
has cost us dearly that this Athenian [Plato] went to school with the
Egyptians.' Here Nietzsche accepts the view of Schopenhauer and
of the nineteenth century in general that all 'wisdom' has Eastern
origins.
Notes 233
74 BT no. 11, p. 78 [KGW III. 1: p. 74].

75 UM III no. 2, p. 135 [KGW III. 1 : p. 345J.
76 BGE no. 49, p. 60 [KGW VI.2: p. 68].
77 BT nos. 10-11, pp. 75-79 [KGW HÚ: pp. 70-75].
78 BT no. 12, p. 82 [KGW III. 1 : p. 79].
79 BT no. 13, p. 87 [KGW III. 1: p. 85]: '"Only by instinct": with this
phrase we touch upon the heart of the Socratic tendency. With it
Socratism condemns existing art as well as existing ethics. Wherever
Socratism turns its searching eyes it sees lack of insight and the
power of illusion; and from this it infers the essential perversity and
reprehensibility of what exists.'
80 TI 'The Problem of Socrates' no. 1, p. 29 [KGW VI.3: p. 61].
81 BTno. 17, p. 104 [KGW IIU: p. 105].
82 TI 'What I Owe to the Ancients' no. 5, p. 110 [KGW VI.3: p. 154].
83 Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1974, pp. 391-
411.
84 BT no. 15, p. 95 [KGW III. 1: p. 95).
85 BTno. 15, p. 98 ¡KGW IIU: p. 97].
86 Nietzsche's most sustained discussion of Plato's thought occurs in
the early Basel lectures 'Introduction to the study of the Platonic
Dialogues' (GA XIX, pp. 125-304). The interpretation developed
therein remains the foundation for all his subsequent polemics on
the topic. Crucial for Nietzsche's interpretation is the assumption
that the Platonic Ideas arc super-sensory objects known through
corresponding concepts (GA XIX: p. 263). On this view, the Ideas are
Plato's solution to the cpistcmological scepticism implied by
Heraclitus' doctrine of the eternal flux: since this flux pertains to the
whole realm of sensory experience, true knowledge must refer to
the super-sensory. Nietzsche is emphatic in opposing
Schopenhauer's aesthetic interpretation of the Ideas (GA XIX: pp.
273-74). Such a view is wrong, Nietzsche insists, because Plato
proceeds from abstract concepts such as justice, beauty, the good etc.
Affirming a general division between artistic and scientific-mathe-
matical temperaments, Nietzsche puts Plato unequivocally into the
latter category.
87 On Nietzsche's ambivalent attitude to Plato, see Dieter Bremer,
'Platonisches, Antiplatonisches', Nietzsche-Studien 8 (1979) pp. 39-
103, and Stanley Rosen, The Question of Being: A Reversal of
Heidegger, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1993,
Chapter Four. Rosen comments (p. 139) that 'by retaining the
Platonic conception of the synoptic vision of the philosopher with
respect to human nature, or historical possibility, Nietzsche pre-
serves the key feature of Platonism.'
88 In comparison with Plato, Nietzsche's writings contain little on

Aristotle. There is a brief consideration in the early lectures on the
'History of Greek Literature' (GA XVIII: pp. 77-88), but this
consists mainly of biographical and philological information.
Nietzsche is more interested in Aristotle's lost dialogues than in the
extant systematic works, because the former testify to the artistic
and literary side of the Stagirite. He claims that, in the systematic
works, Aristotle 'shrivels up to a thinker totally enclosed within
rigorous speculation' (GA XVIII: p. 85). In The Birth of Tragedy,
Nietzsche briefly engages with Aristotle's doctrine of catharsis,
developed in the Poetics to explain the effect of tragic art.
Counterposing his own idea of tragedy as a stimulant to life,
Nietzsche comments that the theory of catharsis reflects 'no experi-
ence of tragedy as a supreme art' (BT no. 22, p. 132, KGW III. 1: p.
138). The same point is made in later writings and in general seems
to exhaust Nietzsche's interest in Aristotle. This is not surprising,
for the severe analytical style of the Stagirite is perhaps the
antithesis not only of Nietzsche's youthful 'romanticism' but of all
'intuitive' philosophy. Nietzsche does not see Aristotle as adding
anything essentially new to Plato, who remains the primary seducer
to the cold world of abstractions.
89 WPno. 251, p. 145.
90 D no. 68, p. 40 (KGW V. 1 : p. 61 ].
91 D no. 68, p. 41 [KGW V.I: p. 63].
92 AC no. 42, p. 154 and no. 45, p. 161 (KGW VI.3: pp. 213 and 221).
93 But see the passing comments on 'the Hebrew' in Z I 'Of voluntary
death', p. 98 (KGW VI. 1: p. 90]. For a summary discussion of
Nietzsche's attitude to Jesus, see Uwe Kühneweg, 'Nietzsche und
Jesus-Jesus bei Nietzsche', Nietzschc-Stitdien 15 (1986), pp. 382-97.
A more ambitious treatment is Karl Jaspers' Nietzsche und das
ChristentHtn, Piper, Munich, 1952.
94 AC no. 32, p. 144 [KGW VI.3: p. 202J.
95 AC no. 34, p. 147 [KGW VI.3: p. 205].
96 AC nos. 31 and 28, pp. 143 and 141 (KGW VI.3: pp. 200 and 198].
97 The resemblances between Jesus and Zarathustra are also noticed by
Thomas Altizer, 'Eternal Recurrence and the Kingdom of God', in
David Allison (ed.) The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1977, pp. 232-46. Altizer comments (p. 239) that
'Nietzsche portrays Jesus as a kind of innocent forerunner of
Zarathustra.'
98 GS no. 350, p. 292 [KGW V.2: p. 268].
99 BGE no. 58, p. 66 [KGW VI.2: p. 75].
100 This begins already with Nietzsche's friend Franz Overbeck, a
professor of church history, whose Über die Christlichkeit unserer
Notes 235
heutigen Theologie appeared in 1873 bound together in one volume

(C. G. Naumann Verlag, Leipzig) with Nietzsche's first 'Untimely
Meditation' against Straufi. For a survey of the 'theological
reception' of Nietzsche in the twentieth century, see Peter Koster,
'Nietzsche-Kritik und Nietzsche-Rezeption in der Theologie des 20
Jahrhunderts', Nietzsche-Studien 10/11 (1981/82), pp. 615-685.
101 Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, Simon & Schuster, New
York, 1967, p. 503.
102 AC no. 38, p. 149 [KGW VI.3: pp. 207-208].
103 GS no. 357, p. 307 [KGW V.2: p. 282]: 'You sec what it was that
really triumphed over the Christian god: Christian morality itself,
the concept of truthfulness that was understood ever more
rigorously, the father confessor's refinement of the Christian
conscience, translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience,
into intellectual cleanliness at any price.' Despite this statement,
Nietzsche thinks that 'intellectual cleanliness' is the last thing to be
expected from 'modern men'.
104 E.g. WP no. 22, p. 17.
105 BGE no. 262, p. 182 [KGW VI.2: pp. 226-27].
106 BGE 'Preface' p. 13 [KGW VI.2: p. 3]: 'Today every kind of
dogmatism stands sad and discouraged, //"it continues to stand at all!
For there are scoffers who assert it has fallen down, that dogmatism
lies on the floor, more, that dogmatism is at its last gasp'; AC no. 1,
p. 115 [KGW VI.3: p. 167]: '"I know not which way to turn; I am
everything that knows not which way to turn" sighs modern man.
It was from this modernity that we were ill, from lazy peace, from
cowardly compromise, from the whole virtuous cleanliness of
modern Yes and No.'
107 BGE no. 44, p. 54 [KGW VI.2: p. 57].
108 U M I I I n o . l , p . 128 [KGW III. 1: p. 334].
109 The thesis that Nietzsche misidentifies Christianity as the source of
modern ressentiment is maintained by Max Scheler in his profound
study Das Ressentiment im Aujbau der Moralen, Klostermann, Frank-
furt am Main, 1978 (first published 1912). Scheler sees ressentiment
not in Christian values but in the autonomous values of modern
'bourgeois' man (sec pp. 68-69).
CHAPTER THREE: REDEMPTION AND LIFE AFFIRMATION

1 GM II, no. 24, p. 96 [KGW VI.2: p. 352].
2 BGE no. 295, p. 200 [KGW VI. 2: p. 248].
3 GS no. 125, pp. 181-82 [KGW V.2: pp. 158-60].
4 Cf. GS no. 2, pp. 76-77 [KGW V.2: pp. 47-48]: 'I keep having the
same experience and keep resisting it every time. 1 do not want to
believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an
intellectual conscience. '
5 Lou Salomé comments (Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, Carl

Konegan, Vienna, 1911, p. 147): 'Not until the beginnings of
Nietzsche's late philosophy does it become fully clear to what
degree it is the fundamental religious drive which governs
Nietzsche's nature and outlook....And just for this reason do we
encounter in these late works such a passionate struggle with
religion, with belief in God and the needincss-for-redemption, i.e.
because he was so dangerously drawn to them himself.' See also
Manfred Kaempfert, Sakularisation und nene Heiligkeit, Erich
Schmidt Verlag, Berlin, 1971, pp. 17-27, which documents a
variety of opinions on Nietzsche's 'religiosity'.
6 AC no. 47, pp. 162-63 [KGW VI.3: p. 223].
7 AC no. 44, p. 158 [KGW VI.3: p. 218].
8 Of course, it is a question of how Nietzsche's texts are to be read. In
this study, I have proceeded from the presupposition that the kind
of'slow reading' (D 'Preface' no. 5, p. 5; KGW V. 1: p. 9) Nietzsche
wants is above all a philosophical reading, in which every particular
passage is understood in the context of the unitary whole of
philosophical meaning.
9 BGE no. 1, p. 15 [KGW VI.2: p. 9j.
10 In a letter to his friend Carl von Gersdorff on 7 April, 1H66, the
twenty-one year old Nietzsche writes that 'if Christianity means
belief in an historical event or in an historical person then 1 have
nothing to do with it. But if it means neediness for redemption I can
value it very highly' (Briefwechsel II.3: p. 122). This remains
Nietzsche's basic attitude right through to The Antichrist.
11 GS no. 357, p. 307 [KGW V.2: pp. 281-82].
12 Schopenhauer considers this as the philosophical meaning of the
Christian doctrine of'original sin'; see e.g. The World as Will and
Representation I, The Falcon's Wing Press, Indian Hills, Colorado,
1958, p. 405f.
13 In a survey of the various spheres of art, Schopenhauer indicates the
Platonic Ideas which belong respectively to them. However,
Schopenhauer's idiosyncratic employment of the Platonic Ideas is a
secondary matter. The main point of his discussion (in The World as
Will and Representation I, Book Three) is to show the disinterested,
and therefore redemptive, character of aesthetic experience. For a
discussion of this aspect of his thought, see Georg Simmel,
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and
Chicago, 1986, Ch. 5; and Thomas Mann's essay 'Schopenhauer', in
Mann's Essays: Musik und Philosophie, Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am
Main, 1978, pp. 193-234.
14 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation I, p. 176.
15 The World as Will and Representation I, pp. 178-79.
Notes 237
16 The World as Will and Representation , p. 379.

19 The World as Will and Representation I, p. 606.
23 The World as Will and Representation , pp. 411-12.
24 Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, in Sànttliche Werke IV, Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt am Main, 1986, pp. 373-592.
25 Walter Burkert, in Greek Religion, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985,
pp. 161-62, describes the Dionysian phenomenon as follows:
'Dionysus can seemingly be defined quite simply as the god of wine
and of intoxicated ecstacy. Intoxication as change in consciousness
is interpreted as the irruption of something divine. But the
experience of Dionysus goes far beyond that of alcohol and may be
entirely independent of it; madness becomes an end in itself. Mania,
the Greek word, denotes frenzy, not as the ravings of delusion, but,
as its etymological connection with menos would suggest, as an
experience of intensified mental power. Nevertheless, Dionysian
ecstacy is not something achieved by an individual on his own; it is a
mass phenomenon and spreads almost infectiously. This is
expressed in mythological terms by the fact that the god is always
surrounded by the swarm of his frenzied male and female votaries.
Everyone who surrenders to this god must risk abandoning his
everyday identity and becoming mad; this is both divine and
wholesome. An outward symbol and instrument of the transfor-
mation brought by the god is the mask. The merging of god and
votary which occurs in this metamorphosis is without parallel in the
rest of Greek religion: both votary and god are called Bacchus.' See
also M. L. Bacumler, 'Das moderne Phànomen des Dionysischen
und seine "Entdeckung" durch Nietzsche', Nietzsche-Studien 6
(1977), pp. 123-53.
26 BT no. 7, p. 59 [KGW III. 1: p. 52].
27 TI 'What I Owe to the Ancients' no. 4, p. 110 [KGW VI.3: p. 153].
28 BT no. 2, pp. 40 and 38 [KGW III. 1: pp. 28 and 26].
29 BT no. 5, p. 52 [KGW III. 1 : p. 43].
30 BT no. 10, p. 74 [KGW III. 1 : p. 69].
31 BT no. 4, p. 45 [KGW III. 1: p. 35].
32 BTno. 3, p. 41 [KGW HI. 1: pp. 30-31].
33 BT 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism' no. 5, p. 23 [KGW III.l: p. 12].
34 BT no. 9, p. 71 [KGW III. 1: p. 65].
35 See e.g. John Sallis, Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1991, pp. 67-
68.
36 BT no. 7, p. 60 [KGW HI. 1 : p. 53].

37 BT no. 7, p. 59 [KGW III. 1 : p. 52] ; BT 'Attempt at a Self-Criticism'
no. 5, p. 22 [KGW III. 1: p. 15].
38 EH 'The Birth of Tragedy' no. 3, p. 273 [KGW VI.3: pp. 310-11].
39 PTAG no. 5, p. 51 [KGW III.2: p. 316].
40 PTAG no. 4, p. 46 [KGW III.2: p. 313].
41 PTAG no. 7, p. 62 [KGW III.2: p. 324].
42 BT no. 24, pp. 141-42 [KGW III. 1: p. 149].
43 KGW VII. 1 (Nachlaji): p. 246.
44 TI 'The Four Great Errors' no. 8, p. 54 [KGW VI.3: p. 62].
45 See the discussion by Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the
Understanding of his Philosophical Activity, Gateway, South Bend,
Indiana, 1965, pp. 149-151.
46 Before the First World War, Nietzsche was principally known as a
Lebensphilosoph (philosopher of life). See e.g. George Simmel,
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (op. cit.) Ch. 1. Simmel states (p. 6):
'Life in its primary sense, beyond the opposition of corporeal and
spiritual existence, is seen here as an immeasurable sum of powers
and potentials which, in themselves, are aimed at the augmentation,
intensification, and increased effectiveness of the life process. It is
impossible to describe this process through an analysis.' In Simmcl's
opinion, Nietzsche gives life a 'Darwinian' (self-overcoming)
dimension which is absent in the Schopcnhaucrian concept.
47 Jaspers (Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of his Philosoph-
ical Activity, op. cit., p. 294) comments: 'But "life" and "will to
power" are expressions that, whether taken in their direct and
customary sense or in their definite biological and psychological
sense, fail to hit upon what Nietzsche has in mind. Since they are
used to refer to being itself, what they really are remains
"unfathomable".' To distinguish them from concepts in the proper
cognitive sense, Jaspers calls Nietzsche's fundamental expressions
'ciphers'. To be noted, in connection with Nietzsche's 'Hcraclitca-
nism', is Heraclitus' saying 'The lord whose oracle is in Delphi
neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign' (Dicls-Kranz Fr.
93, in The Presocratic Philosophers, ed. G. S. Kirk,J. E. Raven and M.
Schofield, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 209).
Nietzsche thinks of his own utterances as similarly 'dclphic'.
48 E.g. BGE no. 10, p. 22 [KGW VI.2: p. 17]: 'In the case of stronger,
livelier thinkers who are still thirsty for life...when they take sides
against appearance and speak even of "perspective" with arrogant
disdain, when they rank the credibility of their own body about as
low as the ocular evidence which says "the earth stands still" and
thus with apparent good humour let slip their firmest possession
(for what is believed in more firmly today than the body?) - who
Notes 239
knows whether they are not at bottom trying to win back something
which was formerly an even firmer possession, some part or other of
the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul", perhaps "the old God", in short ideas by which one could live
better, that is to say more vigorously and joyfully, than by "modern
ideas"?'
49 WPno. 1041, p. 536.
50 Some commentators, however, see distinct Christian elements in
Nietzsche's Dionysianism: for documentation and discussion see
Kaempfert, Sakularisation und nene Heiligkeit (op. cit.) p. 154.
51 On the positivity of mystery (something altogether different to the
positive detcrminability of mystery, which is a contradiction in
terms), sec the classic study by Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy,
translated by J. W. Harvey, Oxford University Press, 1923.
52 See e.g. R. T. Wallis, Neoplatoiiisni, Duckworth, London, 1972; and
Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition,
Clarendon, Oxford, 1981.
53 WP no. 1050, p. 539.
54 EH The Birth of Tragedy' no. 1, p. 271 [KG W VI.3: p. 308).
55 EH 'Human, All Too Human' no. 5, p. 288 [KGW VI.3: p. 3251.
56 For a discussion of Nietzsche's Bayrcuth experience, see Werner
Ross, Der angstliche Adler: Friedrich Nietzsches Leben, Deutsche
Taschenbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, 1980, pp. 416-74.
57 HAH 2nd 'Preface' no. 2, p. 210 (KGW IV.3: p. 5j.
58 HAH no. 108, p. 60 |KGW IV.2: p. 107].
59 HAH no. 1, p. 12 [KGW IV.2: p. 20].
60 HAH no. 132, p. 70 [KGW IV.2: p. 124].
61 HAH no. 134, pp. 72-73 [KGW IV.2: pp. 128-29].
62 HAH no. 34, p. 30 [KGW IV.2: p. 51].
63 Die onschuld des Werdens (Selections from Nietzsche's NachlaJJ), ed.
Alfred Baeumler, Kroner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1978, Vol. I, p. 405.
64 HAH I no. 107, p. 58 [KGW IV.2: p. 103].
65 HAH I no. 144, p. 79 ¡KGW IV.2: p. 140].
66 Nietzsche's 'psychological' analysis of religion in HAH is in some
respects reminiscent of Ludwig Feuerbach's 'anthropological' cri-
tique, while the thesis of 'narcotization' has affinities with Karl
Marx's well-known diagnosis of religion as the 'opiate of the
people'. These latter authors, however, are far more resolute in
their 'positivism' than is Nietzsche, who wants the 'tragic pathos' to
survive the psychological 'demasking' of conventional religiosity.
For the broader context of Nietzsche's critique of Christianity, sec
Karl Löwith, 'Die philosophische Kritik dcr christlichen Religion
im 19. Jahrhundert', in Löwith's Samtliche Schriften 3, J. B.
Metzlcrsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1985, pp. 96-162.
67 Although in HAH I Nietzsche highlights the opposition between

intellect and emotions, his discussions continually indicate that these
are not adequate terms for the formulation of his problem. If art,
metaphysics and religion are reduced to emotionality, how should
we understand the stated 'tragic' implications of their loss in
scientifically enlightened culture? E.g. 'Won't our philosophy turn
into tragedy? Won't truth become inimical to life and to the best
among us? A question weighs upon our tongue and yet not wishes to
be voiced: if one can consciously remain in the untruth? or, if one
must, whether death is not to be preferred?' (HAH I no. 34, p. 29,
KGW IV.2: pp. 49-50). What is the force of this 'must'? Is it the
psychological circumstance that human beings need the 'untruth' of
the whole apparatus of consolation which has now been intellec-
tually discredited, and that in the last resort no adaptation to 'actual
truth' can be expected? But if this is so, why will truth be inimical
precisely to the 'best'? Further, why, as Nietzsche maintains (HAH I
no. 20, p. 23, KGW IV.2: p. 37), can metaphysics be overcome only
through a 'retrospective movement' in which one 'recognizes that
the greatest advance has come from here'?
68 E.g. HAH I no. 110, p. 62 (KGW IV.2: p. 11()|: 'A religion has never
yet, either directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as parable,
contained a truth.' This statement is directed against Schopenhauer's
thesis of the 'allegorical truth' of religion, but whereas Nietzsche in
this aphorism refers to Jewish, Christian and Indian religion, he is
curiously silent about the Greeks.
69 The stages passed through by the free spirit are indicated in a
formula from Nietzsche's Nachlaji as 1) the stage of'I should' (Icli
soil), 2) the stage of'I want' (Ich will), and 3) the stage of'I am' (Ich
bin). This schema is discussed by Karl Löwith, Nictzsches Philosophic
derewigeti Wiederkehrdes Glcichcti (in Löwith's Sdmtliche Schriften 6, J.
B. Mctzlersche Verlag, Stuttgart, 1987) pp. 123-30. It can also be
seen in BGE no. 31, p. 44 [KGW VI.2: pp. 45-46]: 'In our youthful
years we respect and despise without that art of nuance which
constitutes the best thing we gain from life, and, as is only fair, we
have to pay dearly for having assailed men and things with Yes and
No in such a fashion....The anger and reverence characteristic of
youth seem to allow themselves no peace until they have falsified
men and things in such a way that they can vent themselves on them
- youth as such is something which falisfies and deceives. Later
when the youthful soul, tormented by disappointments, finally
turns suspiciously upon itself, still hot and savage even in its
suspicion and pangs of conscience: how angry it is with itself now,
how it impatiently rends itself.... A decade later: and one grasps that
all this too - was still youth!' On the transition from 'I should' to 'I
Notes 241
want' ('the great liberation'), see HAH 1st 'Preface' no. 3, pp. 6-7
[KGWIV.2: pp. 9-11]. Nietzsche's middle period is more accurately
characterized as 'experimental' or 'demystificatory' than 'positivist'
or 'scientific' in the strict sense.' As Eugcn Fink comments
(Nietzsches Philosophie, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1960, p. 45): 'It is
remarkable in what a vague sense Nietzsche speaks here [HAH] of
"science"; strictly speaking it is none of the positive sciences; it is
much more a broad kind of critical questioning and procedure.'
70 AC no. 39, p. 151 and no. 32, p. 144 [KGW VI.3: pp. 209 and 202].
71 WP no. 166, p. 100.
72 WPno. 161, pp. 98-99.
73 AC no. 33, p. 146 [KGW VI.3: p. 204].
74 EH 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' no. 1, p. 295 [KGW VI.3: p. 333].
75 See the section 'Systementwurfe und Plane 1883-1887' in
Bacumler's Nachlajj collection Die Unschttld des Wcrdens (op. cit.)
Vol. 2, pp. 271-31*3.
76 UM II no. 2, p. 70 [KGW III. 1 : p. 257].
77 PTAG no. 5, p. 54 [KGW III.2: pp. 318-19].
78 GS no. 341, pp. 273-74 [KGW V.2: p. 250].
79 E.g. EH 'The Birth of Tragedy' no. 3, pp. 273-74 [KGW VI.3: pp.
310-11].
80 Z III 'The Convalescent' no 2, p. 237 [KGW VI. 1: p. 272].
81 Kaempfert, Saknlarisation und nene Heiligkeit (op. cit.) p. 166.
82 Z III 'The Wanderer' pp. 174-75 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 190-91 ].
83 Z HI 'The Convalescent' no. 1, pp. 232-33 [KGW VI. 1 : pp. 266-67].
84 Z III 'The Convalescent' no. 2, pp. 234-35 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 268-69].
Zarathustra had earlier reacted similarly to the dwarf in Z III 'Of the
Vision and the Riddle' no. 2, p. 178 [KGW VI. 1 : p. 195].
85 Z III 'Of the Great Longing' pp. 238-40 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 274-77].
86 Karl Löwith comments (Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigi-H Wiederkehr
des Gleichen, op. cit., p. 334) that 'the whole of Zarathnstra, from his
first appearance to the final ass-festival, is the prolonged history of
an ever-delayed redemption.'
87 Z II 'Of Redemption' p. 162 [KGW VI. 1: p. 176J.
88 Z II 'Of Redemption' p. 161 [KGW VI. 1: p. 175].
92 The coming of the great midday is presaged in Z III 'On the Virtue
Which Makes Small' no. 3, p. 192; 'Of Passing By', p. 198; 'Of the
Three Evil Things' no. 2, p. 209; 'Of Old and New Law-Tables' no.
3, p. 125 and no. 30, p. 231 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 213, 221, 236, 244, 265];
it finally arrives at the end of Book Three. See also the section 'At
Midday' from Z IV and aphorism 308 'At Midday' in HAH. On this
motif, see Otto Bollnow, Das Wesett der Stimmungeii, Vittorio

Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1956, Ch. XIII.
93 WP. no. 1032, pp. 532-33.
94 Heidegger, 'Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?', in David Allison
(éd.), The New Nietzsche, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, p.
74.
95 Z III 'The Seven Seals' pp. 244 and 246 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 283 and
285].
96 On Nietzsche as 'mystic', see Jörg Salaquarda, 'Dcr ungeheure
Augenblick', Nietzsche-Studien 18 (1989) pp. 317-37.
97 Heidegger, 'Who is Nietzsche's Zarathustra?' (op. cit., p. 75): 'The
Eternal Recurrence of the same remains a vision for him, but also an
enigma. It can be neither verified nor refuted logically or
empirically. At bottom, this is true of every thinker's essential
thought: envisioned, but enigma - worthy of questioning.'
99 GS no. 341, p. 273 [KGW V.2: p. 250].
100 See e.g. WP nos 553-69, pp. 300-307.
101 Eugen Fink comments that 'The concept of earth in Nietzsche's
thought is difficult to grasp. At this point we can only indicate that
Nietzsche docs not think of earth as something simply present at
hand (Bloj}= Vorhandcties) but as the breaking open (Aufyeliculassi'ti),
as the womb of all things, as the movement of bringing-forth'
(Nietzsches Philosophic, op. cit., p. 77). The same could be said of the
concepts 'world', 'life' and 'primal One'.
102 WPno. 617, p. 330.
103 See Z III 'On the Vision and the Riddle' no. 2, p. 178 [KGW VI. 1:
pp. 195-96].
104 The link between the sequentially and the 'thingliness' of time is
argued by Aristotle, Physics 219a-222a.
105 BGE no. 56, pp. 63-64 [KGW VI.2: pp. 72-73]. See Heidegger's
discussion in Nietzsche, Vol. II, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1984,
pp. 63-69.
106 Z 'Prologue' no. 3, p. 42 [KGW VI. 1: p. 9].
107 AC no. 43, pp. 155-56 [KGW VI.3: p. 215].
109 WP no. 251, pp. 144-45: 'Hitherto one has always attacked
Christianity not merely in a modest way but in the wrong way. As
long as one has not felt Christian morality to be a capital crime
against life its defenders have had it all their own way. The question
of the mere "truth" of Christianity - whether in regard to the
existence of its God or the historicity of the legend of its origin, not
to speak of Christian astronomy and natural science - is a matter of
secondary importance as long as the question of the value of
Christian morality is not considered.'
Notes 243
110 D no. 440, p. 187 [KGW V.I: p. 273].

111 Sec e.g. AC no. 32, pp. 144-45 [VI.3: pp. 201-203].
112 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation I, p. 409.
113 The World as Will and Representation II, p. 626.
114 GS no. 381, p. 346 [KGW V.2: p. 317].
115 Plato, The Republic 487b-497a.
116 Z HI 'The Wanderer', p. 173 [KGW VI. 1: p. 189].
117 That Zarathustra's experience at the end of Part Three is 'Diony-
sian' is confirmed by Nietzsche himself in EH 'Thus Spoke
Zarathustra' no. 6, p. 306 [KGW VI. 1: p. 343]: 'Zarathustra is a
dancer - how he that has the hardest, most terrible insight into
reality, that has thought the "most abysmal idea", nevertheless does
not consider it an objection to existence, not even to its eternal
recurrence - but rather one reason more for being himself the
eternal Yes to all things, "the tremendous, unbounded saying Yes
and Amen" - "Into all abysses I still carry the blessings of my saying
Yes" - But this is the concept of Dionysus again' (emphasis in original).
118 Z III The Homecoming', p". 202 [KGW VI. I: p. 227].
119 Z III 'Of the Great Longing', p. 239 [KGW VI. 1: pp. 275-76].
120 See e.g. BGE no. 265, p. 185 [KGW VI.2: pp. 229-30] and Z III 'Of
the Three Evil Things' no. 2, p. 208 [KGW VI. 1: p. 234|.
121 BGE no. 287, p. 196 [KGW VI.2: p. 243].
122 WPno. 1050, p. 539.
123 W P n o . 1041, p. 536.
124 WP no. 485, pp. 268-69.
125 BGE no. 12, p. 25 [KGW VI.2: p. 21 ].
126 WPno. 108, p. 68
127 This is the way Nietzsche understands the Christian 'immortal
soul'. Of course, it is not a fair representation. In Pauline theology,
salvation of the soul is much more than preservation of a 'soul
atom' through passive 'belief. By contrast, it is noticeable how
passive the human individual becomes in postmodernist
deconstructionism, where the self can be nothing more than the
outcome of anonymous structures of power/knowledge/
discourse.
128 See S0ren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, Penguin, Harm-
ondsworth, Middlesex, 1989, p. 43. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
have often been compared, e.g. Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existence,
Parrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1955, pp. 19-50.
129 GS no. 335, p. 263 [KGW V.2: p. 240].
130 Diels-Kranz Fragment 101, in G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M.
Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, op. cit., p. 211. Nietzsche
quotes this fragment with approval in PTAG no. 8, pp. 67-68
[KGW III.2: p. 329].
131 See e.g. WP no. 477, pp. 263-64.

132 GS no. 345, p. 283 [KGW V.2: p. 259].
133 PWo62a.
134 Phaedo6\d.
135 AC no. 46, p. 161 [KGW VI.3: p. 221].
136 BGE no. 271, pp. 190-91 [KGW VI.2: pp. 236-37].
137 GM III no. 14, p. 125 [KGW VI.2: p. 389].
138 EH 'Why I Am So Wise' no. 8, p. 233 [KGW VI.3: pp. 273-74].
139 See Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche ttnd das Christentnni, Piper, Munich, 1952,
pp. 45-47.
140 See William James, The Varieties of Religions Experience, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982, p. 290. On philosophy as
purification of the soul, see Plato's Sophist 227d-30e.
141 In BGE 'Preface', p. 14 [KGW VI.2: p. 4] Nietzsche describes his
philosophical task as 'wakefulness itself (Wachsein selbst).
'Wakefulness' is a frequently encountered motif not only in the
fragments of Hcraclitus, but in Platonic and Neoplatonic philoso-
phy, Gnosticism and the New Testament. It is a fundamental aspect
of Nietzsche's 'existential' conception of truth.
142 EH 'Why I Am So Wise' no. 8, p. 234 [KGW VI.3: p. 274].
CHAPTER FOUR: NIETZSCHE AND HEIDEGGER

1 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, p. 66 (sec note 3 below).
2 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, pp. 101-102.
3 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche Vols I and II, Neske Verlag,
Pfullingen, 1961. I shall refer to the English translation in four
volumes by David Krell et al., Nietzsche, Harper & Row, New
York, 1979-87.
4 A general idea of the postmodernist view on the Nietzsche-
Heidegger relation can be obtained from Ernst Behler's Derrida-
Nietzsche: Nietzsche-Derrida, Ferdinand Schöningh, Munich, 1988,
and Alan Schrift's Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation,
Routledgc, London, 1990. Valuable discussions from outside the
postmodernist orbit arc Stanley Rosen, The Question of Being: A
Reversal of Heidegger, Yale University Press, New Haven and
London, 1993, and Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of
Thinking, Humanities Press International, Atlantic Highlands,
1987, Ch. 6. Sec also Karl Löwith's review of Heidegger's Nietzsche
volumes 'Hcideggers Vorlesungen über Nietzsche' (1962), in
Löwith''s Samtliche Schriften 8, J. B. Metzlerschc, Stuttgart, 1984, pp.
242-57.
5 Jacques Derrida, OfGratntnatology, John Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore, 1974, p. 20.
6 Derrida, Of Grammatology (op. cit.) p. 19.
Notes 245
7 It is notable that, particularly in Anglo-American circles, the

postmodernists of today are the revisionist epistemologists of
yesterday (e.g. Richard Rorty). Apparently, perspectivism provides
epistemological 'land' within the 'open sea' of Nietzsche's philoso-
phy, a kind of'bridge' between Feyerabend et al. and Derrida.
8 See e.g. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1026a.
9 See e.g. Heidegger, Nietzsche IV, pp. 150-58.
10 For Heidegger, 'presence' (Anwesenheit) is the meaning of Aristo-
telian ousia (substance), itself the foundational concept of meta-
physical ontology. Heidegger's basic philosophical project can be
seen as an attempt to work out an alternative to 'ousiological'
ontology. Sec John Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas, Fordham
University Press, New York, 1982, and Werner Marx, Heidegger and
the Tradition, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1971.
11 Heidegger opens Being and Time, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1962, p.
21, with the claim that the question of Being has been 'forgotten'
(ist in Vergessenheit gekommen).
12 Heidegger, Nietzsche I, p. 9.
13 The comparative importance of 'will to power' and 'Dionysus'
cannot of course be determined by simply counting the number of
references to each. The particular contexts in which these motifs
appear must be taken into account. In Nietzsche's late writings, the
Dionysian appears at those points where he attempts to sum up his
philosophical position. This is why it is so prominent in Ecce Homo,
Nietzsche's intellectual autobiography.
14 Through a meticulous examination of the relevant portion of the
Nachlaji, Mazzino Montinari has shown that by late 1888 Nietzsche
abandons the idea of writing a work called 'The Will to Power'. See
the essay'Nietzsches NachlaB von 1885 bis 1888odcrTextkritik und
Wille Zur Macht', in Montinari's Nietzsche Lesen, Walter dc
Gruyter, Berlin, 1982.
15 Lou Andreas-Salome, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, Carl
Konegan, Vienna, 1911, p. 141.
16 WP Book Three, Section II ('The Will to Power in Nature') and
Book Four, Section III ('The Eternal Recurrence'), particularly nos
1062-64.
20 Heidegger, Nietzsche I, pp. 38-39.

26 WP no. 617, p. 330.
27 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, p. 202. I have modified Krell's translation,
which does not observe a consistent distinction between 'Sein' and
'das Seiende1, often rendering them both simply as 'being'.
Kaufmann's translation of The Will to Power suffers from the same
fault.
28 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, p. 203.
29 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, p. 6.
30 PTAG no. 5, p. 54 [KGW III.2: pp. 318-19].
31 See Poggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking, op. cit., pp. 82-
107.
32 Heidegger, Nietzsche IV, p. 86.
33 Heidegger, Nietzsche IV, p. 28: 'No matter how sharply Nietzsche
pits himself time and again against Descartes, whose philosophy
grounds modern metaphysics, he turns against Descartes only
because the latter still does not posit man as a subiectum in a way that is
complete and decisive enough. The representation of the subiectum
as ego, the I, thus the "egoistic" interpretation of the subiectum, is
still not subjectivistic enough for Nietzsche. Modern metaphysics
first comes to the full and final determination of its essence in the
doctrine of the Overman, the doctrine of man's absolute preemi-
nence among beings. In that doctrine, Descartes celebrates his
supreme triumph.'
34 Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard Univer-
sity Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 16.
35 Ernst Behler, 'Nietzsche and Dcconstruction', in Volker Diirr et al.
(eds) Nietzsche: Literature and Values, University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison and London, 1988, p. 16.
36 See e.g. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982, p. 135.
37 Karl Löwith, Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen WiederkehrdesGleichen
(1stedition 1934), in Löwith's Sàmtliche Schriftend,]. B. Mctzlcrschc
Verlag, Stuttgart, 1987, pp. 111-23.
38 Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of his
Philosophical Activity (op. cit., 1st German edition 1936) pp. 8-13.
40 Heidegger, Nietzsche I, p. 28. Heidegger discusses the general idea
of'system' in philosophy in his 1936 lectures Schelling's Treatise on
the Essence of Human Freedom, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio,
1985, pp. 22-33.
41 Heidegger, Nietzsche I, pp. 35-36. Cf. Nietzsche's claim in BGE no.
20, pp. 31-32 [KGW VI.2: p. 28] that 'the most diverse philosophers
unfailingly fill out again and again a certain basic scheme of possible
Notes 247
philosophies....Their thinking is in fact not so much a discovering

as a recognizing, a remembering, a return to a far off, primordial
household of the soul.' One of the most profound discussions of
the relation between the 'perennial' and 'historical' dimensions of
philosophy is Henri Bergson's 1911 lecture 'Philosophical Intui-
tion', in Bergson's The Creative Mind, Littlefield, Adams & Co.,
Totowa, New Jersey, 1965. Bergson's understanding of philosoph-
ical intuition has much in common with Nietzsche's.
42 The publication of Heidegger's early Freiburg lectures in the
Gesamtausgabe has revealed that the ideas of Being and Time have
their origin in a concept of 'factical life-experience'. See e.g.
Grundproblewe der Phánomenologie (1919/20), Vittorio Klostermann,
Frankfurt am Main, 1993, and Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitiit,
Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1988. It is only in the
mid-1920s that Heidegger begins to speak consistently of'Being'
and 'Existence' rather than of'factical life'.
43 It is hardly necessary to point out that this 'seeing' is not at all
'ocular'. The thinker does not form an 'image' of the Sache in his
'mind's eye'. In many works, Heidegger undertakes a critique of the
'ocularcentrism' of the metaphysical tradition, which equates the
'reality' of entities with their 'look' (the Platonic eidos).
44 CM III no. 8, p. 110 [KGW VI.2: p. 372|. Cf. Nietzsche's statement
in the 'Preface' to HAH II, no. 1, p. 209 [KGW IV.3: p. 3]: 'One
should speak only when one may not remain silent; and then only of
that which one has overcome — everything else is chatter (Cescli-
wdtz), "literature", lack of breeding.'
45 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, pp. 207-208. For further on 'Erschweigen'
and 'Erschweigung', see Heidegger's Beitra'ge ziir Philosophie, Vit-
torio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, p. 79f.
46 EH 'Why I Write Such Good Books' no. 1, p. 261 f KGW VI.3: p.
298]: 'Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including
books, than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from
experience one will have no ear.' Sec Chapter One above, 'Truth
and the limits of language', esp. note 90. Of course, this
'remembrance' is of a particular kind, which Heidegger tries to
convey in his later writings through the word 'Andenken' (com-
memoration) as distinct from mere 'Erinnerung' (recollection).
47 The credibility of Derrida's 'semiotic' objection to Heidegger
depends on the credibility of the former's metaphysical statement
that 'everything is text', i.e. that there simply is nothing outside the
total complex of significrs. It would be absurd to think that such a
statement is supported, nay even touched upon, by the linguistics of
Saussure (who, incidentally, compared language to the game of
chess, i.e. to something with no external referent) or anyone else.
The Saussurian considerations adduced by Derrida in his

'Différance' essay, to show that 'the signified concept is never
present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer
only to itself (Margins of Philosophy, op. cit., p. 11) at best bear on
what Heidegger calls the 'being of beings' (the 'nature of things')
and on no account on Being itself. Heidegger's 'Being' is not a mere
word, nor a 'thing', but a given 'phenomenon', a phenomenon,
moreover, which is in no sense a 'presence'. To be engaged in
semiotic and quasi-epistemological considerations about whether
Being can be 'admitted' (as if it were something which might be
'posited', like black holes) is to have already capitulated to verbal-
conceptual thought.
Ultimately, however, the point for Derrida and other
postmodernists is a moral one: they do not like 'authority' or
'hierarchy', they detest the 'obligatory' character of the Seinsfrage.
E.g. in 'Interpreting Signatures (Nietzsche-Heidegger): Two Ques-
tions' (in Laurence Rickcls, éd., Looking after Nietzsche, State
University of New York Press, Albany, 1990) Derrida writes (p. 9):
'When he [Heidegger] is pretending to rescue Nietzsche from this or
that distortion - that of the Nazis, for example - he docs so with
categories which can themselves serve to distort - namely with the
opposition between essential and inessential thinkers, authentic
thinkers and inauthentic ones, and with the definition of the
essential thinker as someone selected, chosen, marked out or, I
would even say "signed".' That such categories may distort is no
doubt true, but the implication that they must and do distort in
Heidegger's writings (the point which Derrida wants to make)
depends on the moral outrage which can be expected at such
'arrogant' distinctions. In the light of Chapter Two above, one
could ask Derrida whether Nietzsche himself does not believe in
'essential' and 'inessential' thinkers, but, of course, Derrida chooses
to notice only Nietzsche's 'pluralism'. Again, in the essay 'Ousia and
Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time' (in Margins of
Philosophy, op. cit. p. 63) Derrida writes: 'Now, is not the
opposition of the primordial to the derivative still metaphysical? Is
not the quest for an archia in general, no matter with what
precautions one surrounds the concept, still the "essential" opera-
tion of metaphysics? Supposing, despite powerful presumptions,
that one may eliminate it from any other provenance, is there at least
some Platonism in the Verfallen? Why determine as fall the passage
from one temporality to another? And why qualify temporality as
authentic - or proper (cigentlich) - and as inauthentic - or improper -
when any ethical preoccupation has been suspended?' What concept
of 'metaphysics' is Derrida referring to here? It is certainly not
Notes 249
Heidegger's, for Heidegger does not think of Being as an arche. The

suggestion that Heidegger embraces metaphysical archai with
certain 'precautions' simply begs the question. Derrida is clearly
relying on his own conception of metaphysics as discursive
'closure', together with the apparent 'ethical' reprehensibility of the
'elitist' distinction between 'primordial' and 'derivative' truth.
There is indeed, 1 would contend, 'some Platonism in the Verfallen\
but is Platonism a refutation? How is Platonism to be understood? Is
it, too, discursive closure? Is it necessarily 'metaphysical' in
Heidegger's sense? I cannot pursue these questions here, but they are
not pursued by Derrida either: instead 'Platonism' functions as yet
another bogey word for those who abhor all hierarchy and
authority.
48 On the 'mincness' of existence, see Heidegger, Being and Time (op.
cit.) pp. 67-68.
49 Heidegger, Nietzschett, p. 119.
50 Heidegger discusses Nietzsche's 'perspectivism' primarily in the
1939 lectures on 'will to power as knowledge'. Perspectivism is
understood by Heidegger in terms of the 'poetizing essence of
reason' (das dichtende Wesen der Verminff), which Nietzsche was not
the first to discover: 'The poetizing character of reason was first seen
and thought through by Kant in his doctrine of the transcendental
imagination. The German idealist conception of absolute reason (in
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) is thoroughly grounded in the Kantian
insight into the essence of reason as a "forming" poetizing force'
(Nietzsche HI, pp. 95-96). According to Heidegger, Nietzsche
misunderstands perspectivism when he sees it as fundamentally in
opposition to Plato's docrine of Ideas: the Ideas and Nietzsche's
perspectivism are just two alternatives within the problem of the
'schematization' of experience. For a critique of the idea of'world
picture' - which underlies much postmodernist perspectivism - see
Heidegger's essay 'The Age of the World Picture', in Heidegger,
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper &
Row, San Francisco, 1977. In the 1937 Nietzsche lectures, Heideg-
ger refers to the cultural impact, after the First World War, of
Spenglcr's 'discovery' of Weltanschaunngetr. 'What a revelation it
was for the mass of people who were unfamiliar with actual
thinking and its rich history when two decades ago, in 1917, Oswald
Spcnglcr announced that he was the first to discover that every age
and every civilization had its own world-view! Yet is was nothing
more than a very deft and clever popularization of thoughts and
questions on which others long before him had ruminated far more
profoundly' (Nietzsche II, p. 101). Heidegger would undoubtedly
see the postmodernists as lattcrday Spenglers.
51 GS no. 357, p. 308 [KGW V.2: p. 282].

52 In an article 'Geschlecht, Sexual Difference, Ontological Dif-
ference' (Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 13, 1983, p. 74), Derrida,
again playing to the gallery, holds it against Heidegger that he takes
'Dasein as sexually neutral: 'What if "sexuality" already marked the
most original Selbstheit? If it were an ontological structure of
ipseity? If the Da of Dasein were already "sexual"? What if sexual
difference were already marked in the opening up of the question
of the sense of Being and of the ontological difference? And what
if, though not self-evident, neutralization were already a violent
operation?' What postmodernist feminists believe on these 'what
ifs?' need not detain us. But if Derrida and others wish to 'unmask'
the 'ruse' of Heidegger's implicit 'phallocentrism', they should do
the same for Nietzsche, who likewise takes 'human existence' as
'sexually neutral'. As for how the substantive question may be
settled, erudite discussions are beside the point: at this level we have
only 'intuition' to guide us. For Nietzsche and Heidegger at any rate,
an unhestitating rejection of concepts like 'phallocentrism' is a sine
qua non of philosophical seriousness.
53 On 'Ereignis', see Heidegger, Beitrage zur Philosophie (op. cit.). This
concept goes back to the 1919/20 Freiburg lectures Z.ur Besttmmung
der Philosophie, Vittorio Klostcrmann, Frankfurt am Main, 1987, p.
75.
54 See the essay 'Kants These übcr das Sein', in Heidegger, Wegmarken,
Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1978.
55 Heidegger, Being and Time (op. cit.) p. 284.
56 GS no. 381, p. 346 [KGW V.2: p. 317).
57 On thinking as 'thanking' see Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?,
Harper & Row, New York, 1968, pp. 138-47. 'For questioning is
the piety of thought' is the last sentence of Heidegger's essay 'The
Question Concerning Technology', in Heidegger, The Question
Concerning Technology and Others Essays (op. cit.) p. 35.
58 The locus classicus of Heidegger's 'alethiological' conception of truth
is Being and Time (op. cit.) Section 44 (pp. 256-73).
59 Heidegger, Being and Time (op. cit.), p. 265; HAH I, no. 34, p. 30
[KGW IV.2: p. 50].
60 For Heidegger's conception of 'falling' ( Verfalletiheii') see Being and
Time (op. cit) pp. 219-24.
61 Heidegger, Being and Time (op. cit.) p. 233.
62 Robert Solomon concludes his article 'Nietzsche, Postmodernism,
and Ressentment: a Genealogical Hypothesis' (in Clayton Koclb,
ed. Nietzsche as Postmodernist, State University of New York Press,
Albany, 1990, pp. 267-93) with the apt remark 'what Nietzsche
wanted to say is not just "post" anything.'
Notes 251
63 In BGE no. 1, p. 15 [KGW VI.2: p. 9], speaking of the problem of

the value of truth, Nietzsche says 'it has eventually come to seem to
us as if this problem has never before been posed - that we have
been the first to see it, to fix our eye on it, to hazard it.' But this
statement is in the subjunctive: it 'seems as if, although of course
the situation is otherwise. (The awkward translation by Hollingdale
'it has finally almost come to seem to us that this problem has never
before been posed' does not adequately convey the subjunctive of
the German 'daft es nus schliejilich bedunken will, als sei das Problem noch
nie bisher gestellt'.) The 'seems as if refers to the impact of this
question on the individual who so questions: it is always 'as if the
individual were asking this question alone and for the first time in
history. For Nietzsche, what is 'revolutionary' is not his own
thought specifically, but philosophical thought (more accurately,
philosophical existence) as such: the impact, however, is confined to
the individual, to the human being who philosophizes.
64 G A X I X : p . 177.
65 See CM 'Preface' no. 1, p. 15 [KGW VI.2: p. 259].
66 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, two vols in one, Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1978, p. 178. On Schopenhauerian
aspects of the later Heidegger, see Hellmuth Hecker, 'Heideggger
und Schopenhauer', SchopenhauerJahrhncli 71 (1990), pp. 85-96.
67 Commenting on Nietzsche's dictum 'God is dead', Heidegger has
this to say: 'But which God? The God of "morality", the Christian
God is dead - the "Father" in whom we seek sanctuary, the
"Personality" with whom we negotiate and bare our hearts, the
"Judge" with whom we adjudicate, the "Paymaster" from whom
we receive our virtues' reward, that God with whom we "do
business"—The God who is viewed in terms of morality, this God
alone is meant when Nietzsche says "God is dead"' (Nietzsche II, p.
66). Elsewhere in these lectures (p. 123) Heidegger states that
Nietzsche's idea of eternal return attempts to show 'what kind of
religion can exist in the future. The thought itself is to define the
relationship to God - and to define God himself.' By contrast, the
postmodernists are the first generation of Nietzsche commentators
for whom the 'problem of God' is essentially irrelevant. Unlike
Salomé, Steincr, Bertram, Jaspers, Löwith and Heidegger, they
show little appreciation of the fact that Nietzsche wrote so much
about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Because of
their antipathy to 'authority' and the 'final word', they subsume the
problem of God under that of politico-ideological 'delivery from
oppression', while the 'death of God' is simplified into the collapse
of authoritative definitions of truth.
68 Heidegger has been more influential on contemporary theology
than any other philosopher. The literature on 'Heidegger and
theology' is therefore voluminous. From the philosophical side, the

books by John Caputo are especially valuable: Heidegger and Aquinas,
op. cit., and The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought, Fordham
University Press, New York, 1986. See also Caputo's article
'Heidegger and Theology', in Charles B. Guignon (éd.), The
Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1993, pp. 270-88.
69 As Heidegger puts it, Nietzsche 'does not want to instill perfect
comprehension by means of the few, cryptic things he says about
his doctrine of eternal return. Rather, he wants to pave the way for a
transformation of that fundamental attunement (Grundstimtnung)
by which alone his doctrine can be comprehensible and effective'
(Nietzsche II, p. 17). This and many other comments by Heidegger
are in conflict with his 'Nietzsche as metaphysician' thesis, for the
'object' of'fundamental attunement' is always 'Being' rather than
'beings'.
71 GS no. 34, p. 290 [KGW V.2: p. 265].
72 Nietzsche II, p. 195: 'Thus the most durable and unfailing touch-
stone of genuineness and forcefulness of thought in a philosopher
is the question of whether he experiences in a direct and fundamen-
tal manner the nearness of the Nothing in the being of beings.
Whoever fails to experience it remains forever outside the sphere of
philosophy, without hope of entry.'
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Index
absolutism, 6, 13, 27-37, 41, Derrida, J., 3, 28, 51, 56, 61,
116-122, 184, 188,203,205- 66, 175, 189, 192-193, 216-
206 217,247-50
anarchism, 61-62 Descartes, R., 92
Arcndt, H.,204 Dionysian, 43-44, 53-54, 78-
Aristotle, 4, 49, 75-77, 92, 137, 80, 98-101, 106, 118-120,
178, 217-219, 234 129-139, 145-147, 149-154,
art, 30-32, 126, 131, 181-182 156, 168, 172, 180, 184, 196,
asceticism, 126-129, 158, 160- 237
161 Dostoyevsky, F., 92, 106
Babich, B., 16 Eckhart, M., 207
Behler, E., 189 egalitarianism, 3, 18, 71-72,
Being and becoming, 37-49, 80,96, 113
135-136 Emerson, R., 92
Bergoffen, D., 16 Empedocles, 92
Buddhism, 123, 124, 125 epistemology, 17, 23-24, 64,
BurckhardtJ., 119 176
eternal return, 8, 144-155
capitalism, 114 Euripides, 100
Christianity, 6-7, 75, 85, 99,
104-115, 116-118, 120-122, Feuerbach, L, 108
132, 170 Fink, E., 43
Climacus, J., 75 Foucault, M., 3
conscience, 38, 63-64, 86 freedom, 61-62
Deleuze, G., 3, 16, 61 Goethe, J. W., 92
262 Itîdex
Granier, J., 15 Parmenides, 39-44, 49, 78, 134

Paul of Tarsus, 104-106
Heidegger, M., 11-12, 36, 43, Plato, 4, 39-40, 60, 75, 76, 85,
168,174-208 98-99, 103-104, 123, 126,
Hegel, G. W. F., 92, 104, 119 134, 136, 161-162, 169, 178,
Heine, H., 92 192, 217-219, 226, 233
Heraclitus, 39-43, 47, 78, 91- Protestantism, 107
92, 93, 134-135, 145-147, Pseudo-Dionysius, 75
150-154, 162-163, 167
radicalism, 3-5, 18-19
interest, 56-66 reverence, 24-26, 68, 94, 100,
intuition, 29, 33-35, 40, 42, 47 187
Jaspers, K., 189-190 Sallis,J.,45

Jesus, 106, 142-144, 159 Salomé, L., 117, 148, 179
Schleiermacher, F., 140
Kant, L, 13-14, 19, 27-30, 40, Schopenhauer, A., 9-11, 19,
43-45, 92, 123, 195 21-22, 28-33, 43, 45, 58, 85,
Kaufmann, W., 102 103, 119, 121-122, 123-129,
Kierkegaard, S., 167 131-132, 138-139, 159-161,
169, 180, 221
Lange, F. A., 19, 28 Schrift, A., 15, 51
Löwith, K., 189 self, 62-63, 80-82, 88-89, 94-
96, 163-170
Mann, T., 9 Socrates, 89, 98, 100-103, 138
Marx, K., 61, 108 solitude, 93-94, 163-165, 168,
materialism, 24—26 193
modernity, 108-115 sophistry, 217-18
Montaigne, M., 92 Spivak, G., 66
music, 52-54 Stendahl, 92
Straufi, D., 99, 102, 108, 109
Nancy, J-L., 56
Nehamas, A., 16, 51, 64, 71, Thiclc, F., 73-75
189-190 Thing-in-itself, 27-29, 37, 44-
Neoplatonism, 103-104, 137- 46, 123-124, 127
138 Tillich, P., 107
nihilism, 5, 110-115
nothingness, 128-129, 147, Wagner, R., 52, 92, 139, 141,
155, 157, 160, 169 225
Warren, M., 60, 62, 70-71
Overbeck, F., 119, 148 will to power, 180-188

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Nietzsche:

THE ATHLONE PRESS

©Ted Sadler, 1995

ISBN 0485 114712

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sadler, Ted, 1952-

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-

Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

The present study attempts an alternative to the subjectivist

Wherever possible, Nietzsche is cited according to the

Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin,

The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, New

Details of other literature can be found in the

A philosopher: a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects,

THE CHALLENGE OF NIETZSCHE'S THOUGHT

do not understand me. Nietzsche is the opposite of the kind

thought has become a requirement of modern

but supposedly obvious meaning is transposed from a

comprehended as part and parcel of an 'anti-dogmatic'

TRUTH AND REDEMPTION

for it prevents human beings from attaining their own

Christian idea, Nietzsche sees redemption into truth as a

SCHOPENHAUER AND HEIDEGGER

philosophy (and the philosopher) behind the text can under

of Schopenhauer's metaphysical system. Schopenhauer,

world' versus 'other world', 'Dionysus' versus 'the Cru-

these days) 'perspectivism'. Although I have devoted a

METHOD AND PLAN OF THE PRESENT STUDY

avoid the dangers of generalization and abstraction, to let

faith in philosophy to the extent that, with the aid of

PERSPECTIVISM AND TRUTH

Nietzschean pcrspectivism as 'demystifying the philosoph-

'perspectival truth' in such a way that its subordinate

epistemological conception of truth underlying it. It will

what we may call, following Heidegger, the Sache of

This is the essence of phenomenalism and perspectiv-

is that 'the world of which we become conscious (bewußt] is

Man, like every living being, thinks continually

For Nietzsche then, 'consciousness' and 'thinking' are not

genius of the species and the genius of the individual,

not clear from the given aphorism. From other contexts it

Although Nietzsche rejects epistemológica! conceptions of

lack 'the taste of reverence' (der Geschmack der Ehrfurcht) for

Nietzsche says that 'a "scientific" interpretation of the

KANT, SCHOPENHAUER, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE

criterion is just that something be knowable. Nietzsche's

reduce Kant's philosophy to a theory of science, implicitly

for Nietzsche «is for Schopenhauer, the Kantian critique of

intellectualist tradition that it is initially difficult to give

correspondence between concept and object is non-sensi-

In recent literature on Nietzsche, much attention has been

but, quite explicitly, the assumption that 'language is the

existence (höheren Daseins/arm)'.29 To say that the dif-

conception of the Absolute is peculiarly difficult to grasp:

unity, and so it is also for Nietzsche. Of course, the specific

尼采文集及研究专著尼采、真理与救赎：对后现代主义尼采的批判

尼采文集及研究专著尼采、真理与救赎：对后现代主义尼采的批判

尼采文集及研究专著尼采、真理与救赎：对后现代主义尼采的批判