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Nietzsche & the Nietzsche-icon
W.W. Sawyer in his Mathematicians' Delight remarks that every academic subject has its ghost or shadow, and that most of us learn the shadow; further that this is why most are repelled by mathematics - because they do not encounter it, they "learn" its shadow.
Many major philosophers (using that term in its broadest sense) have a shadow; some have several. By this I mean that their names function as a stand-in or a dummy for a parcel of notions or values which are not grounded in the texts of that writer. I call this shadow an 'icon'. I intend this word to convey two associations:
The religious sense of something which is venerated or despised. This sense is amplified by the fact that many such icons are those philosophers whose portrait is frequently found on the covers of their works or on commentaries,
The IT sense. Here an 'icon' stands in for a programme or application. What I wish to convey here is something about the quality of mechanical thinking (which it is the point of Sawyer's book to overcome) or, in Richard Dawkin's language, of 'viral' thinking.
A major example of the replacement of the real by the shadow is the 'Marx-icon' . This has Marx as the proponent of equality, of state ownership of the productive apparatus, of major redistribution of income; rather than as the theorist of a social order beyond wage-labour.
The Nietzsche-icon was present at a recent philosophy meeting I attended. The speaker at that meeting pronounced that 'Nietzsche was the philosopher of the 21st Century'. During the question period I argued that I greatly feared he might be correct and that I feared this because the real Nietzsche is not the cosy libertarian of the speaker's claim that 'Nietzsche says to have nothing above you', but was clearly and unambiguously a propagandist for a caste society, for slavery, for a social order based on rule by a ruthless aristocracy. I cited his short work 'The Greek State'.
The speaker's response was:
That this reading was the fault of his sister; that Nietzsche was opposed to German nationalism (though I did not claim that he was pro it).
That he was not anti-semitic (though I did not claim that he was).
That perhaps 'the Greek State' was a product of Nietzsche's last, insane, years.
That the tide of opinion was moving in the direction of the speaker's interpretation not of mine.
Some of this was predictable. Some was bizarre: 'The Greek State' was in fact written in late 1871 (not an insignificant year for anyone in Europe concerned with issues of power and class !). To use as an "argument" for an interpretation the fact that others are thinking in that way is a shameful substitution of fashion for reason - such would surely have been derided by Nietzsche himself as an expression of the "herd-mentality" !
The popularity of Nietzsche amongst the liberal intelligentsia is no trivial matter. We are not here talking about merely an issue of academic interpretation (e.g. was Burke being ironic or serious in his Vindication of Natural Society) What is at stake here is the claim that a philosopher who is regarded as an exponent of human freedom and as a major European thinker is actually a proponent of barbarism and of the renaissance of slavery. If the latter claim is correct then anyone who wishes for a better social order has some cause for concern. I believe that the claim of the speaker at this meeting that the core of Nietzsche's work is that 'one should have no-one above you' is as demonstrably false as a short summation of a philosopher can be.
I now set out some (there is more) textual evidence for the claim that the NSDAP's reception of Nietzsche has far more merit than the liberal one. I will let Nietzsche speak for himself in those words which are so conspicuously ignored by his liberal apologists.
'The Greek State' (1871) is conveniently available in the edition of On the Genealogy of Morality in the series Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (1994). This short essay clearly extols the virtue of slavery as a precondition for the development of culture.
'In order for there to be a broad, deep, fertile soil for the development of art, the overwhelming majority has to be slavishly subjected to life's necessities in the service of the minority, beyond the measure that is necessary for the individual. At their expense, through their extra work, that privileged class is to be removed from the struggle for existence, in order to produce and satisfy a new world of necessities. … slavery belongs to the essence of a culture … the misery of men living a life of toil has to be increased to make the production of the word of art possible for a small number of Olympian men.'
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
'Every elevation of the type "man" has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society - and so it will always be: a society which believes in a long scale of orders of rank and differences of worth between man and man and needs slavery in some sense or other' (sect 257) …
'The essential thing in a good and healthy aristocracy is, however that is does not feel itself to be a function (of the monarchy or of the commonwealth) but as their meaning and supreme justification - that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of innumerable men who for its sake have to be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental faith must be that society should not exist for the sake of society but only as a foundation and scaffolding upon which a select species of being is able to raise itself to its higher task and in general to a higher existence ' (sect 258)
The Genealogy of Morality (1887)
'The knightly-aristocratic value judgements presuppose a powerful physicality, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with that which serves to preserve it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games … All that has been done on earth against "the noble", "the powerful", "the masters", "the rulers", fades into nothing compared with what the Jews have done against them … with the Jews there begins the slave revolt in morality ' (1st essay, sect 7)
The Will to Power (1883 - 88) (Kaufmann & Hollingdale's edn., 1968)
'A Declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed ! Everywhere the mediocre are combining in order to make themselves master ! ' (p 458) …
'Finally: the social hodgepodge, consequence of the Revolution, the establishment of equal rights, of the superstition of "equal men" ... whoever still wants to retain power flatters the mob, works with the mob, must have the mob on its side' (p 461)
…'Once we posses that common economic management of the earth that will soon be inevitable, mankind will be able to find its best meaning as a machine in the service of this economy ... in opposition to this dwarfing and adaptation of man to a specialised utility, a reverse movement is needed .. this transformation of man into a machine is a precondition, as a base on which he can invent his higher form of being ... A dominating race can grow up only out of terrible and violent beginnings. Problem: where are the barbarians of the twentieth century ? Obviously they will come into being and consolidate themselves only after tremendous socialist crises' (pp 463 - 5)
It will, of course, be claimed that these quotes misrepresent Nietzsche. Well then, perhaps texts which contradict or modify them can be cited. It will also be said that I am premising the above on an "old fashioned" ideology of the text as containing its own meaning, rather than as being constructed in the act of reading ... and so … and so; fans of "genealogy" will recall that it is Herr Nietzsche himself who is kowtowed to as the font of this fashionable notion.
The standard response by liberals to reference to the above remarks and similar is to ignore them, and those works which take them seriously. It is noteworthy here that Hollingdale, in the 1999 postscript to his seminal Nietzsche, after praising Derrida continues: 'I have experienced nothing over the past thirty years that has led me to think that the account of Nietzsche's life and philosophy I give here is in need of correction except in a few small details.' There is no reference either to Lukacs' The Destruction of Reason, or to John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses. So it appears that both a marxist and a conservative Professor of English are alike beneath notice in these postmodern times.
Nietzsche rightly holds that no philosophical stance is disinterested, but expresses an attitude of power (how he would have sneered at his acolytes in the Culture Studies Industry). So what is my own interest? Were the choice between 'master-morality' and 'slave-morality' then I would unashamedly choose the former. But I do not believe that is the only choice. I am on the side of the (wage)slaves - not synonymous with being for 'slave-morality' - and for a social order which is not premised on forced labour. |
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