I

NIETZSCHE-STUDIEN

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III

NIETZSCHE-STUDIEN
Internationales Jahrbuch
fr die Nietzsche-Forschung

Begrndet von

Mazzino Montinari Wolfgang Mller-Lauter

Heinz Wenzel
Herausgegeben von

Gnter Abel (Berlin) Josef Simon (Bonn)

Werner Stegmaier (Greifswald)

Band 34 2005

Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York

IV

Anschriften der Herausgeber

Prof. Dr. Gnter Abel, Institut fr Philosophie, TU Berlin, Sekr. TEL 12/1,
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, D-10587 Berlin
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Josef Simon, Philosophisches Seminar A der Universitt Bonn, Am Hof 1,
D-53113 Bonn
Prof. Dr. Werner Stegmaier, Universitt Greifswald, Institut fr Philosophie,
Baderstrae 67, D-17487 Greifswald

Redaktion
Dr. Ulrich Dirks, Institut fr Philosophie, TU Berlin, Sekr. TEL 12/1,
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, D-10587 Berlin
PD Dr. Andreas Urs Sommer, Universitt Greifswald, Institut fr Philosophie,
Baderstrae 67, D17487 Greifswald

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat
Prof. Dr. Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick/UK) Prof. Dr. Eric Blondel (Paris)
Prof. Dr. Glenn W. Most (Pisa)
Prof. Dr. Richard Schacht (Urbana/Ill.) Prof. Dr. Ivan Soll (Madison/Wis.)
Prof. Dr. Aldo Venturelli (Urbino)

Online-Zugang fr Subskribenten/Online access for subscribers:

http://www.deGruyter.de/journals/nietz-stud

ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018262-0
ISBN-10: 3-11-018262-9
ISSN 1613-0790
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Inhaltsverzeichnis

INHALTSVERZEICHNIS

A BHANDLUNGEN
P ETER B ORNEDAL , A Silent World. Nietzsches Radical Realism: World,
Sensation, Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

M ICHAEL C OWAN , Nichts ist so sehr zeitgemss als Willensschwche.

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

48

J ACQUES G OETSCHEL , Nietzsche inimitable. Cration et imitation dorigine contrle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

R OBERT W ICKS , Nietzsches Yes to Life and the Apollonian Neutrality of

Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
I RIS D RMANN, Rausch als sthetischer Zustand. Nietzsches Deutung
der Aristotelischen Katharsis und ihre Platonisch-Kantische Umdeutung durch Heidegger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
P ETER S EDGWICK , Violence, Economy and Temporality. Plotting the
Political Terrain of On the Genealogy of Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
M ICHAEL V. U RE , Stoic Comedians. Nietzsche and Freud on the Art of
Arranging Ones Humours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

B ERICHT

, Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien. Eine

S IMION D ANILA
Retrospektive vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis heute . . . . . . . . 217

M ISZELLE
C HRISTOPH L ANDERER /M ARC -O LIVER S CHUSTER , Begehrlich schrie
der Geyer in das Thal. Zu einem Motiv frher Wagner-Entfremdung
in Nietzsches Nachla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

VI

Inhaltsverzeichnis

D ISKUSSION
T HOMAS H. B ROBJER , Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists . . . . 256
B EITRGE

ZUR

Q UELLENFORSCHUNG

Abhandlungen

T HOMAS H. B ROBJER , Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth

of Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
N IKOLAOS L OUKIDELIS, Quellen von Nietzsches Verstndnis und Kritik
des cartesischen cogito, ergo sum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
M ARIA C RISTINA F ORNARI , Die Spur Spencers in Nietzsches moralischem Bergwerke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
T HOMAS H. B ROBJER , Nietzsches Reading about China and Japan . . . . 329
Nachweise

T HOMAS H. B ROBJER , Nachweis aus Zeitstimmen aus der reformirten Kirche . 337
T HOMAS H. B ROBJER , Nachweise aus Mller, Lucian: Geschichte der Klassischen Philologie in den Niederlanden und Jahn, Otto: Aus der Alterthumswissenschaft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
N IKOLAOS L OUKIDELIS, Nachweis aus Teichmller, Gustav: Die wirkliche
und die scheinbare Welt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
N IKOLAOS L OUKIDELIS, Nachweis aus Drossbach, Maximilian: ber die
scheinbaren und die wirklichen Ursachen des Geschehens in der Welt . . . . . . 342
R EZENSIONEN
R ALF R OSMIAREK , Briefpartner und Zeitgenossen Nietzsches . . . . . . 343
Reich, Hauke: Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon: Verwandte und Vorfahren,
Freunde und Feinde, Verehrer und Kritiker von Friedrich Nietzsche. Basel
(Schwabe) 2004. (Beitrge zu Friedrich Nietzsche 7). 220 Seiten. ISBN
3-7965-1921-0.

W ERNER S TEGMAIER , Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst und seine Kunst

der Philosophie. Zur aktuellen Forschung und Forschungsmethodik . 348
1. Reckermann, Alfons: Lesarten der Philosophie Nietzsches. Ihre Rezeption
und Diskussion in Frankreich, Italien und der angelschsischen Welt
1960 2000. Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2003. (Monographien
und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung 45). 336 Seiten. ISBN 3-11-017452-9.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

2. Kemal, Salim / Gaskell, Ivan / Conway, Daniel W.: Nietzsche, Philosophy

and the Arts. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1998. XV + 351
Seiten. ISBN 0-521-59381-6.
3. Schweppenhuser, Gerhard / Gleiter, Jrg H.: Nietzsches Labyrinthe.
Perspektiven zur sthetik, Ethik und Kulturphilosophie. Weimar (Universitts-Verlag) 2001. (Philosophische Diskurse 4). 151 Seiten. ISBN
3-86068-149-4.
4. Seubold, Gnter (Hg.): Man ist viel mehr Knstler als man wei. Bilder
und Bildner: Werk- und Lebenskunst bei Friedrich Nietzsche. Mit Beitrgen von Martina Bretz u.a. Alfter, Bonn (DenkMal-Verlag) 2001.
(Nietzsche Denken 2). 220 Seiten. ISBN 3-935404-00-X.
5. Seubert, Harald (Hg.): Natur und Kunst in Nietzsches Denken. Kln u.a.
(Bhlau) 2002. (Collegium Hermeneuticum 8). XII + 207 Seiten. ISBN
3-412-09502-8.
6. Geisenhanslke, Achim: Le sublime chez Nietzsche. Paris (LHarmattan)
2000. 176 Seiten. ISBN 2-7384-8918-4.
7. Pothen, Philip: Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot (Ashgate) 2002.
X + 235 Seiten. ISBN 0-7546-0792-5 / 0-7546-0793-3.
8. Cherlonneix, Laurent: Nietzsche. Sant et maladie, lart. Paris (LHarmattan) 2003. (Collection Ouverture philosophique). 322 Seiten. ISBN
2-7475-3150-3.
9. Kang, Yong-Soo: Nietzsches Kulturphilosophie. Wrzburg (Knigshausen und Neumann) 2003. 192 Seiten. ISBN 3-8260-2357-9.
10. Grner, Rdiger: Nietzsches Kunst. Annherungen an einen Denkartisten. Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig (Insel Verlag) 2000. 363 Seiten. ISBN
3-458-34310-5.
11. Audi, Paul: LIvresse de lart. Nietzsche et lesthtique. Paris (Librairie
Gnrale Franaise) 2003. 221 Seiten. ISBN 2-253-94351-7.
12. Rampley, Matthew: Nietzsche, Aesthetics, and Modernity. Cambridge
(Cambridge University Press) 2000. XI + 286 Seiten. ISBN 0-521-65155-7.
13. Im Namen des Dionysos: Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophie als Kunst.
Beitrge von Heinz Friedrich u. a., Waakirchen (Oreos) 1995. (Bayerische
Akademie der Schnen Knste: Eine Veranstaltungsreihe zum 150. Geburtstag des Philosophen). S. 141 216.
14. Kostka, Alexandre / Wohlfarth, Irving (Hg.): Nietzsche and An Architecture of Our Minds. Los Angeles 1999 (= Issues and Debates, published
by the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities).
XI + 364 Seiten. ISBN 0-89236-485-8.
15. Buddensieg, Tilmann: Nietzsches Italien. Stdte, Grten und Palste. Berlin (Klaus Wagenbach) 2002. 252 Seiten. ISBN 3-8031-3609-1.

VII

VIII

Inhaltsverzeichnis

A RNE G RN, Jenseits? Nietzsches Religionskritik revisited.

Zum Stand der Forschung in Sachen Nietzsche und die christliche
Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
1. Biser, Eugen: Nietzsche Zerstrer oder Erneuerer des Christentums?
Darmstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) 2002. 178 Seiten. ISBN
3-534-16027-4.
2. Kster, Peter: Kontroversen um Nietzsche. Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption. Zrich (Theologischer Verlag Zrich) 2003. 383 Seiten.
ISBN 3-290-17277-5.
3. Hbner, Hans: Nietzsche und das Neue Testament. Tbingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2000. XI + 290 Seiten. ISBN 3-16-147489-9.
4. Sommer, Andreas Urs: Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist. Ein philosophisch-historischer Kommentar. Basel (Schwabe) 2000. (Beitrge zu
Friedrich Nietzsche. Bd. 2). 783 Seiten. ISBN 3-7965-1098-1.
5. Havemann, Daniel: Der Apostel der Rache. Nietzsches Paulusdeutung.
Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2002. X + 312 Seiten. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 46). ISBN 3-11-017523-1.
6. Mourkojannis, Daniel: Ethik der Lebenskunst. Zur Nietzsche-Rezeption
in der evangelischen Theologie. Mnster, Hamburg, London (LIT) 2000.
(Studien zur systematischen Theologie und Ethik. Bd. 23). 231 Seiten.
ISBN 3-8258-4674-1.
7. Broisson, Ivan: Nietzsche et la vie spirituelle. Paris (LHarmattan) 2003.
(Ouverture Philosophique). 200 Seiten. ISBN 2-7475-4449-4.
8. Vogel, Beatrix (Hg.): Von der Unmglichkeit oder Mglichkeit, ein Christ
zu sein. Symposion 1996 des Nietzsche-Kreises Mnchen. Vortrge aus
den Jahren 1996 2001. Mnchen (Allitera) 2001. (Mit Nietzsche Denken.
Publikationen des Nietzsche-Forums Mnchen e.V. Bd. 2). 347 Seiten.
ISBN 3-935284-47-0.
9. Willers, Ulrich (Hg.): Theodizee im Zeichen des Dionysos. Nietzsches Fragen jenseits Moral und Religion. Mnster, Hamburg, London (LIT) 2003.
239 Seiten. ISBN 3-8258-5561-9.
10. Striet, Magnus: Das Ich im Sturz der Realitt. Philosophisch-theologische
Studien zu einer Theorie des Subjekts in Auseinandersetzung mit der
Sptphilosophie Friedrich Nietzsches. Regensburg (Friedrich Pustet) 1998.
(ratio fidei. Beitrge zur philosophischen Rechenschaft der Theologie.
Bd. 1). 329 Seiten. ISBN 3-7917-1624-7.

H ARTWIG F RANK , Nietzsches System nach John Richardson . . . . . . . 409

1. Richardson, John: Nietzsches System. New York, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1996. IX + 316 Seiten. ISBN 0-19-509846-3.
2. Richardson, John: Nietzsches New Darwinism. Oxford, New York (Oxford University Press) 2004. XII + 288 Seiten. ISBN 0-19-517103-9.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

IX

A NDREA B ERTINO, Nietzsches Philosophie des Masses . . . . . . . . . . 420

1. Giovanola, Benedetta: Nietzsche e lAurora della misura. Roma (Carocci
editore) 2002. 243 Seiten. ISBN 88-430-2404-3.
2. Totaro, Francesco (Hg.): Nietzsche tra eccesso e misura. La volont di
potenza a confronto. Roma (Carocci editore) 2002. 348 Seiten. ISBN
88-430-2102-8.
3. Totaro, Francesco (Hg.): Nietzsche e la provocazione del superuomo.
Per unetica della misura. Roma (Carocci editore) 2004. 199 Seiten. ISBN
88-430-3229-1.

C ARSTEN P ALLESEN, Das ewige Wiederkuen des Gleichen . . . . . . . 424

Hffe, Otfried (Hg.): Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Berlin (Akademie Verlag) 2004. (Klassiker Auslegen 29). 187 Seiten. ISBN 3-05-003026-7.

E NRICO M LLER , Nietzsche und die Griechen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430

Bishop, Paul (Hg.): Nietzsche and Antiquity. His Reaction and Response to the
Classical Tradition. Rochester, NY (Camden House) 2004. (Studies in German
Literature, Linguistics, and Culture). XII + 504 Seiten. ISBN 1-57113-282-1.

D ANIEL M OURKOJANNIS , Nietzsches Europa-Philosophie . . . . . . . . 436

1. Elbe, Stefan: Europe. A Nietzschean Perspective. London, New York
(Routledge) 2003. (Routledge Advances in European Politics. Bd. 11). 168
Seiten. ISBN 0-415-36975-4.
2. Merlio, Gilbert / DIorio, Paolo (Hg.): Le rayonnement europen de Nietzsche. Paris (Klincksieck) 2004. (Germanistique. Collection dirige par
Jean-Marie Valentin). 264 Seiten. ISBN 2-252-03445-9.

K ONRAD O TT, On Taming Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics . . . . . 441

Del Caro, Adrian: Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth. Berlin, New
York (Walter de Gruyter) 2004. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung 48). X + 460 Seiten. ISBN 3-11-018038-3.

P ATRICK W OTLING, Nietzsche et Hegel. Quatre tentatives pour faire dialoguer deux frres ennemis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
1. Dudley, Will: Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy. Thinking Freedom.
Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2002. XVII et 326 pages. ISBN
0-521-81250-X.
2. Jurist, Elliot T.: Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche. Philosophy, Culture, Agency.
Cambridge, Mass., London (MIT Press) 2000. XII et 355 pages. ISBN
0-262-10087-8.
3. Houlgate, Stephen: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Criticism of Metaphysics.
Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) first published 1986, paperback
edition 2004. XVIII et 300 pages. ISBN 0-521-89279-1.
4. Lebrun, Grard: Lenvers de la dialectique. Hegel la lumire de Nietzsche.
Paris (ditions du Seuil) 2004. 376 pages. ISBN 2-02-07797-6.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

W ENCHE M ARIT Q UIST, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard Tracing Common

Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
1. Brandes, Georg: Nietzsche. Eine Abhandlung ber aristokratischen Radikalismus. Mit einer Einleitung von Klaus Bohnen. Berlin (Berenberg Verlag) 2004. 126 pages. ISBN 3-937834-03-6.
2. Brobjer, Thomas H.: Notes and Discussions. Nietzsches Knowledge of
Kierkegaard. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 41/2 (2003),
pp. 251 263. ISSN 00225053.
3. Guignon, Charles (ed.): The Existentialists. Critical Essays on Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Oxford (Rawman & Rittlefield) 2004.
VIII + 182 pages. ISBN 0-7425-1413-7.
4. Kellenberger, James: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Faith and Eternal Acceptance. Basingstoke, New York (Macmillan Press / St. Martin Press) 1997.
IX + 150 pages. ISBN 0-333-67656-4 / 0-312-17347-4.
5. Grau, Gerd-Gnther: Zwei Glaubensstreiter. Kierkegaard und Nietzsche.
Hamburg (Katholische Akademie) 2000. (Vortrge in der Katholischen
Akademie Hamburg). 38 Seiten. ISBN 3-928750-58-5.

G NTER G DDE /R ENATE M LLER -B UCK , Neue Beitrge zum FreudNietzsche-Diskurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
1. Assoun, Paul-Laurent: Freud and Nietzsche. Translated by Richard L. Collier. London (Athlone Press) 2000. 238 Seiten. ISBN 0-485-11483-6.
2. Haberkamp, Gnter: Triebgeschehen und Wille zur Macht. Nietzsche
zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie. Wrzburg (Knigshausen &
Neumann) 2000. (Nietzsche in der Diskussion). 214 Seiten. ISBN
3-8260-1869-9.
3. Yalom, Irvin D.: Und Nietzsche weinte. Roman. Aus dem Amerikanischen
von Uda Strtling. Mit einem neuen Nachwort des Autors. [bers. des
neuen Nachworts des Autors von Anja Urban]. Sonderausgabe. Mnchen,
Zrich (Piper) 2003. 463 Seiten. ISBN 3-492-04559-6. Taschenbuchausgabe Mnchen, Zrich (Piper) 2005. (Serie Piper 4328). 463 Seiten. ISBN
3-492-24328-2.
4. Mller-Buck, Renate: Ach dass doch alle Schranken zwischen uns fielen.
Siegfried Lipiner und der Nietzsche-Kult in Wien. In: Barbera, Sandro /
DIorio, Paolo / Ulbricht, Justus H. (Hg.): Friedrich Nietzsche. Rezeption
und Kultus. Pisa (Edizioni ETS) 2004. ISBN 88-467-0920-9. S. 33 75.
5. Bruder-Bezzel, Almuth / Bruder, Klaus-Jrgen: Kreativitt und Determination. Studien zu Nietzsche, Freud und Adler. Gttingen (Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht) 2004. 206 Seiten. ISBN 3-525-46207-7.
6. Le Rider, Jacques: Freud von der Akropolis zum Sinai. Die Rckwendung zur Antike in der Wiener Moderne. Wien (Passagen Verlag) 2004. 366
Seiten. ISBN 3-85165-636-9.

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XI

7. Golomb, Jacob / Santaniello, Weaver / Lehrer, Ronald: Nietzsche and

Depth Psychology. Albany, NY (State University of New York Press) 1999.
XIII + 364 Seiten. ISBN 0-7914-4140-7.
8. Lickint, Klaus Gerhard: Nietzsches Kunst des Psychoanalysierens. Eine
Schule fr kultur- und geschichtsbewute Analytiker der Zukunft. Wrzburg (Knigshausen & Neumann) 2000. 613 Seiten. ISBN 3-8260-1926-1.
9. Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor: Inside/Outside Nietzsche. Psychoanalytic
Explorations. Ithaca, NY (Cornell University Press) 2000. XI + 267 Seiten.
ISBN 0-8014-3703-2.

Siglen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

506

Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

508

Hinweise fr den Benutzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

508

Literatur-Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

509

Personen-Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

533

Hinweise zur Gestaltung von Manuskripten fr die Nietzsche-Studien .

545

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XIII

VERZEICHNIS DER MITARBEITERINNEN UND MITARBEITER

Andrea Bertino, Corso Ugo Bassi 32 4, I-16135 Genova, Italien, e-mail: andrebertin@
libero.it
Dr. phil., PhD., Peter Bornedal, American University of Beirut, Program for Civilisation
Studies, Bliss Street, Box II-0236 Beirut, Lebanon
Dr. Thomas H. Brobjer, Uppsala University, Dept. of the History of Ideas, Box 629,
S-75126 Uppsala, Schweden, e-mail: Thomas.Brobjer@idehist.uu.se
Michael Cowan, PhD., Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, German
Annex A, P.O. Box 400125, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA
Simion Danila, 307045 BELINT, Nr. 637, Jud TIMIS,, Rumnien
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Iris Drmann, Institut fr Kulturtheorie der Universitt Lneburg,
Scharnhorststr. 1, 21332 Lneburg, e-mail: daermann@uni-lueneburg.de
Dr. Maria Cristina Fornari, Universit degli Studi di Lecce, Dipartimento di Filosofia
e Scienze sociali, Palazzo Parlangeli via Stampacchia, 73100 Lecce, Italien, e-mail:
mariafor@tin.it
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Hartwig Frank, Institut fr Philosophie, Universitt Greifswald, Baderstr.
6 7, 17487 Greifswald, e-mail: frankha@uni-greifswald.de
Dr. Gnter Gdde, Kuno-Fischer-Str. 20, 14057 Berlin, e-mail: G.Goedde@t-online.de
Dr. Jacques Goetschel, 19a Avenue de la Paix, F-67000 Strasbourg, Frankreich, e-mail:
GoetschelJacques@aol.com
Prof. Dr. Arne Grn, Department of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Kbmagergade 44 46, 3. sal, DK-1150 Copenhagen K, Dnemark, e-mail: ag@teol.ku.dk
Dr. Christoph Landerer, Fachbereich fr Philosophie, Universitt Salzburg, Franziskanergasse 1, 5020 Salzburg, email: christophclemens.landerer@sbq.ac.at
Nikolaos Loukidelis, Doktorand am Institut fr Philosophie der HU Berlin, RichardWagner-Str. 31, 10585 Berlin, e-mail: nikolaos.loukidelis@student.hu-berlin.de

XIV

Verzeichnis der Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter

Dr. Daniel Mourkojannis, Jaegerallee 6, 24159 Kiel, e-mail: danmouro@web.de

Dr. Enrico Mller, Institut fr Philosophie, Universitt Greifswald, Baderstr. 6 7, 17487
Greifswald, e-mail: EnricoDietrich@gmx.de
Dr. Renate Mller-Buck, Nietzsche-Edition (Briefwechsel), Rappenberghalde 74, 72070
Tbingen, e-mail: rmueller-buck@web.de
Prof. Dr. Konrad Ott, Professur fr Umweltethik, Institut fr Botanik und Landschaftskologie, Universitt Greifswald, Grimmer Str. 88, 17487 Greifswald, e-mail:
ott@uni-greifswald.de
Carsten Pallesen, Abteilung fr Ethik und Religionsphilosophie an der Theologischen
Fakultt, Universitt Kopenhagen, Kobmagergade 44 46, 1150 Kobenhavn K,
Dnemark, e-mail: cp@teol.ku.dk
Wenche Marit Quist, Ph.d., Statholdervej 17, 1tv, 2400 Kbenhavn NV, Dnemark,
e-mail: wmq@cfs.ku.dk
Ralf Rosmiarek, Kartuser Str. 18A, 99084 Erfurt, e-mail:raros@t-online.de
Dr. Marc-Oliver Schuster, Arbeitsstelle fr Semiotik, Technische Universitt Berlin,
Franklinstr. 28/29, 10587 Berlin, email: marc.schuster@utoronto.ca
Dr. Peter Sedgwick, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, GB-Cardiff CF10 3EU, Grossbritanien,
e-mail: sedgwick@Cardiff.ac.uk
Prof. Dr. Werner Stegmaier, Institut fr Philosophie, Universitt Greifswald, Baderstr.
6 7, 17487 Greifswald, e-mail: stegmai@uni-greifswald.de
Dr. Michael V. Ure, Faculty of Arts, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australien, e-mail: Michael.Ure@arts.monash.edu.au
Dr. Robert Wicks, Department of Philosophy. The University Of Auckland, Fisher Building, 18 Waterloo Quadrant, Auckland, New Zealand, email: r.wicks@auckland.ac.nz
Prof. Dr. Patrick Wotling, Universit de Reims, Dpartement de philosophie, 57 rue
Pierre Taittinger, F-51096 Reims Cedex, Frankreich, e-mail: Patrick.Wotling@paris4.
sorbonne.fr

A Silent World

PETER BORNEDAL
A SILENT WORLD
NIETZSCHES RADICAL REALISM: WORLD, SENSATION, LANGUAGE

The world lies there complete a golden shell/

skin of benevolence [eine goldne Schale des Guten].
But the creative spirit wants to create also what is
complete: so it invented time and now the world
rolled away from itself, and rolled together again
in large rings.
Nietzsche: Nachla 1882 83; KSA 10, 5[1/266]
The sea lies there pale and glittering, it cannot
speak. The sky play its everlasting silent evening
game with red and yellow and green, it cannot
speak. The little cliffs and ribbons of rock that
run down into the sea as if to find the place where it
is most solitary, none of them can speak. [] Ah, it
is growing yet more still, my heart swells again: it is
startled by a new truth, it to o c a n n o t s p e a k, it
too mocks when the mouth calls something into
this beauty, it too enjoys its sweet silent malice.
I begin to hate speech, to hate even thinking; for do
I not hear behind every word the laughter of error?
Nietzsche: Daybreak 4231
The world does not speak. Only we do.
Richard Rorty2

I) Introduction
(i) Nietzsches Rejection of Idealism and Abstract Truth-Claims
According to a long epistemological tradition, culminating in Idealism, when
we perceive the world, we essentially perceive ourselves, or qualities and attributes of ourselves. Looking at the world becomes like looking in a mirror
1
2

Nietzsche, Friedrich: Daybreak. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge 2002.

Rorty, Richard: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge 1989, p. 6.

Peter Bornedal

mirroring ourselves. The world-human, other-self relationship is really according to lengthy treatises of ingenious argument a human-human, a self-self
relationship. The world as other, as resistance, as appearance is either (i) deceptive;
or (ii), it does not exist itself but only insofar as it is constituted by us; or (iii), if it
does exist in-itself, it has no bearings on us, because it is inaccessible, why the
knowable world is again uniquely constituted by-us and for-us.
Whichever of these popular epistemological positions one picks roughly representing Rationalism, Empiricism, and Kantianism one notices a hostility towards the outside, a hostility and aggression that is immediately turned into an attempt to appropriate the outside as a projection of the inside; that is, as a part of us.
In the new self-self relationship between world and human, it becomes the task of
the philosopher to explain how the first self in the relationship is identical to the
second, how the flesh of the world is our flesh. The overwhelming perceptive intuition that upon the philosopher and the layman alike impresses a sense of difference is discarded as mere appearance, or just as strangely insignificant and trivial.
According to the epistemological tradition before Nietzsche, reality is invariably the problem, and invariably the problem is solved by neutralizing
the outside, alien, in-human, and indifferent world, by replacing it with a world
humanized, a world for-us, a world interpreted. When the first terms in the
epistemological dichotomies, world versus human, other versus self, it versus us, are
canceled and reduced to the human, the self, the us, it is in part justified by
means of the truism that the world we perceive, is as perceived by us necessarily
reduced to our perceptive capabilities ( we admittedly dont perceive, for
example, heat-radiation, or electric and magnetic fields, as some animals). From
here it seems warranted to draw the conclusion that the world itself is unknown
and inaccessible (Kant and Schopenhauer), or simply non-existent (Berkeley).
It is from the entanglement in this epistemological narcissism (everything is in the
final analysis us) that Nietzsche increasingly, and especially in later writings, tries
to extricate himself as I shall try to demonstrate and argue.
It is clear that in his emerging epistemological program, Nietzsche is primarily reacting to Kant and Schopenhauer. Although he reveals his philosophical erudition by confidently referring to Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume,
Hegel, Feuerbach, Comte, and a variety of lesser known philosophers of his day,
it is the arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer that are repeatedly rehearsed, as
Nietzsche often as least in the Nachla brainstorms himself as to clarify the
fallacies inherent in their major presuppositions. Two such major presuppositions are, first, the Kantian doctrine of the thing-in-itself, and secondly, Schopenhauers interpretation of the thing-in-itself as will.3
3

When Nietzsche, in numerous places around in the work, reiterates that there is no will, it typically refers to Schopenhauers notion of will. If therefore Nietzsches rejection of the will as

A Silent World

To Nietzsche, there are only appearances and surfaces, and still, we are capable of producing knowledge of these appearances. It is now Nietzsches sustained epistemological project to explain (i) how is knowledge being produced,
and (ii) what is knowledge in a world that is entirely superficial that is, a world
that is not, as surface, the cover of some deeper located truth, and is not designed
according to, and does not abide by, any anthropomorphic principles like Schopenhauers will. Nietzsches project is then to explain how we conform an utterly
de-humanized world to our own needs, a world that is essentially indifferent
to us and our measurements. We stand in the midst of the world; we look into
a night full of stars; there is in truth nothing but a surface, but at an early point in
our civilizational development, we have started seeing constellations; we have
started recognizing star-patterns as something; we have begun to know. With
a sense of relief, we made the night familiar and human. The humanization
[Vermenschlichung] of nature a construal according to us. (Nachla 1885;
KSA 12, 1[29]).
the renowned philosopher of the will-to-power has had some commentators confused, it is
because they do not appreciate the fundamental difference between Schopenhauers and
Nietzsches notions of will. This discrepancy is often reiterated in Nietzsche. Philosophers are
given to speaking of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world; Schopenhauer,
indeed, would have us understand that the will alone is truly known to us, known completely,
known without deduction or addition. But it seems to me that in this case too Schopenhauer has
done only what philosophers in general are given to doing; that he has taken up a popular
prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something c omplic ate d,
something that is a unity only as a word. (BGE 19; KSA 5, pp. 31 32). This objection to
Schopenhauer is repeated in the late Nachla material: Is will-to-power a kind of will, or
is it identical to the notion will? Does it mean as much as desire? Or command? Is it a will as
Schopenhauer understood it, i. e., as an in-itself of things [An sich der Dinge]? [] My proposal is
that the will of psychology so far is only an unjustified generalization, that this will doe s not
exist at all. [] This is also in the highest degree the case in Schopenhauer: that which he calls
will, is merely an empty word. (Nachla 1888; KSA 13, 14[121]). Schopenhauers will is merely an
empty word. Nietzsches succinct sentence, We set up a word at the point where our ignorance
begins, where we cannot see any further (WP 482), is perfectly applicable to Schopenhauers
will. Schopenhauers will is a genuinely metaphysical principle: an indivisible singularity, unconditioned by anything but conditioning everything; the reason why it cannot be intelligibly explained. Nietzsches will by contrast as will-to-power is a result of a competition between forces
engaged in a perpetual struggle against one another. Nietzsches will is therefore not an unmoved mover of everything, it is not the first link in a causal chain of beings, but emerges as the
result of a struggle. Nietzsches will is never a singularity, it always implies several wills. As the
opportune constellation of forces, Nietzsches will materializes as just a local and temporary
order of rank. Wolfgang Mller-Lauter has aptly pointed out that Nietzsches will is always conceived as an organization of quanta of forces: The will to power is a manifold of forces that are
mutually engaged in a struggle. Also the force, in Nietzsches sense, can only be understood as
unity in the sense of organization. Accordingly, the world is a fixed, even expanse of power, it
forms a quantum of force. However, this quantum only exists in opposition to other quanta.
(Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang: ber Werden und Wille zur Macht. Nietzsche Interpretationen I. Berlin, New York 1999, p. 40.) Gnter Abel talks appropriately about Wille-zur-Macht-Komplexe
(Abel, Gnter: Nietzsche. Die Dynamik des Willen zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr. Berlin,
New York 1998).

Peter Bornedal

It is in itself puzzling why humans have a compulsion to familiarize and label.

As far as we know, it is a desire shared by no other animal, seemingly living just as
well without it. Hence, adding to the two epistemological questions above (how
and what), one might add as essential to Nietzsches project the anthropological-psychological question: why do humans want knowledge in the first place; why this insistence on truth?
As also Heidegger reminds us, it is therefore not the case that in Nietzsche,
there is no truth4 (although measured against the naked flesh of the world,
this is exactly the case), it is rather the case, that humans are basking in truths,
with an insatiable appetite lapping up every possible candidate. In one context
(and according to one definition), there is no truth; in another context, since
the dawn of civilization no notion has been pursued more persistently, no other
concept has been so over-produced and over-promoted.5 Nietzsches three
major questions, how, what, and why, are posed in order to come to an understanding of and to diagnose this situation. With these three questions, he wants to produce a knowledge of the production of knowledge, or, in other words, to pro-

Heidegger has asserted that Nietzsche must necessarily presuppose the concept of truth as correctness, since insofar as truth does not conform to the world of becoming, it is because it cannot
give a correct representation of this becoming world; consequently, presupposed is the notion of
truth as correctness. A non-conforming truth, a truth that cannot grasp the flow of becoming,
is now necessarily incorrectness, error, and illusion. Only if truth in its essence is correctness
can it be incorrectness and illusion according to Nietzsches interpretation. (Heidegger, Martin:
Nietzsche. Vol. III: The Will to Power as Knowledge. Edited and translated by D. F. Krell. San
Francisco 1987, p. 64.) According to this interpretation of Heideggers, Nietzsche misunderstands himself; as tacit presupposition, truth, seen as correspondence, is still controlling his writing. However, Heidegger also asserts that Nietzsche elsewhere criticizes exactly this concept. He
notices, for example, that the concept of truth as conformity is usually by Nietzsche placed in
quotation marks, implying, as he correctly sees, that Nietzsche as such quotes the notion from
somebody else i. e., he is commenting on a notion as it is handed down from the history of
Western Thinking. Nietzsche often expresses this thought pointedly and exaggeratedly in the
quite misleading form There is no truth (WM 616). Yet, here too he writes truth in quotation
marks. This truth, according to its essence, is an illusion, but, as illusion, a necessary condition
of life. So, is there truth after all? Certainly, and Nietzsche would be the last to want to deny
that. (Heidegger: Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 66.). How Heidegger reconciles these two positions,
I can not speculate about here, but in the last statement, he would seem to be right. Only if we
place too high a premium on the concept of truth is there no truth. I. e., if truth is understood as
correspondence between proposition and thing (adequatio intellectus et rei ), and given that the
thing is in constant change, then truth as being must be of a categorically different nature than
becoming, and it must necessarily represent falsely the flux ( like Van Gogh on his two-dimensional canvas represents falsely the cypresses waving in the wind). Stabilization of the flux must
have the character of production or creation, provisionally added to a world in flux, but not discovered in an unmovable and permanent world.
The position is not as inconsistent as it may sound. If there are many truths, there is no single
truth as the absolute notion of truth philosophy traditionally has been pursuing. Compare to
Gnter Abel: But when there are several truths (not several partial truths [Teilwahrheiten]), then
there is exactly none. Abel: Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 154.

A Silent World

duce a knowledge of truth. What inevitably happens in inquiries that take their
investigations such a step deeper is that the object they investigate can no longer
claim of itself to be the first and primary condition. Inevitably, the object under
investigation has been demoted and its significance reduced, also such sanctified
and revered objects as truth.
Therefore, it may be befitting to offer a brief remark on a recurrent criticism
of Nietzsche. Ever since the beginning of Nietzsche-reception, his interrogation
of knowledge and truth has by various commentators been regarded as self-defeating, and throughout the 20th century we have seen the following purportedly
devastating objection been leveled at Nietzsche: If Nietzsche says there is no
truth (and either one of two possible conclusions follows), (i) then this is also not
true, or (ii) then Nietzsche is contradicting himself since he asserts as true that
there is no truth. Today, the objection is usually introduced as the problem of
self-reference. (The often repeated objection has even filtered down as laymans
knowledge; when the conversation falls upon Nietzsche, one can be sure that
at some point somebody eventually delivers the fatal coup de grce: but if
Nietzsche says that there is no truth, then this is also not true! Checkmate!)
However, it is only when truth is regarded as unconditioned (and this is exactly the
premise in question) that Nietzsches research-strategy can be seen as absurd,
paradoxical, and self-defeating. Under that traditional perspective, the truth
Nietzsche produces on Truth, is also Truth, and he has done no more than
confirming the absolute hegemony of Truth (with a capital T). Under that traditional perspective, Truth is like an umbrella that encompasses all philosophical,
even all human, discourse; to think about this umbrella, one is preconditioned to
do under the umbrella; thus, the project is in the last analysis futile. On that traditional approach, Truth is like a protective shield protecting philosophy against
all kinds of ills, and it is therefore an assault against this metaphysical sanctuary
when Nietzsche has the audacity to, so to speak, climb up on top of the umbrella,
and begin describing it.
Nietzsche, the anti-idealist, wants to describe the means of production of
Truth. However, he acutely realizes that his project is fraught with difficulties,
because something as indispensable for his investigations as language has been
formed under the projective shield of the umbrella; elementary metaphysics is
repeated in our syntax and grammar. There is only one way out of this dilemma;
it is not perfect, but there is (a priori) no other: one is compelled to use the language one has inherited, ignoring provisionally in some act of deliberate forgetfulness that that language in itself is permeated with truth-claims. There is no
purely descriptive and value-free language in which to describe Truth; there is
no language from nowhere. Hence, Nietzsche as he engages in his attempts to
answer his how, what, and why must in his revolutionary project assert and confirm
and validate and substantiate and justify whatever he says about Truth as a human

Peter Bornedal

invention and construct.6 If Nietzsche wants to communicate to us that there is

no truth, he necessarily has to say it. More precisely, in order to make any philosophical claims, he has to engage the illocutionary component of language we
call assertion. Since we know of no language without illocutionary components,
the only truly consistent alternative to talk about non-existent, illusory Truth could
only be (absurdly) not to talk about non-existent, illusory Truth. In other words,
the purportedly devastating objection to Nietzsche has a single, distinct message
( its underlying and unspoken desire): Nietzsche! Shut up!7

(ii) Juxtaposition to an Analytic Philosophical Approach

The criticism of Kants thing (= X ) and Schopenhauers thing (= will ) is during
the eighties still better articulated by Nietzsche; but before he reaches this point,
he adopts in earlier writings as several commentators have noted positions
similar to Kant and Schopenhauers. These positions we find represented in
writings from the early seventies, especially in Nietzsches unpublished so-called
Philosophenbuch (explicitly in the essay On the Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense 8),
6

In his work on Nietzsches theory of knowledge, Ruediger Grimm has precisely described this
condition. Grimm reconstructs the traditional criticism of Nietzsches there is no truth in the
passage, Nietzsche tells us again and again that there is no truth. But by claiming that there is no
truth, is he not in fact offering us another truth? Is he not claiming, in effect, that the statement
there is no truth is a true statement? And, if so, is this not a flagrant self-contradiction?
(Grimm, Ruediger H.: Nietzsches Theory of Knowledge. Berlin, New York 1977, p. 26.) Heidegger refers in volume three of his Nietzsche to the same so-called self-referential problem,
rejecting in a mocking exposition the position: Herr Nietzsche says that truth is an illusion. And
if Nietzsche wants to be consistent for there is nothing like consistency his statement
about truth is an illusion, too, and so we need not bother with him any longer. Heidegger:
Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 25. The answer Grimm provides to his rhetorical question above is similar
to the view I am indicating: Nietzsche wishes to deny that there exists any absolute, unchanging
standard for truth, but the language in which he is forced to express such an idea is already based
upon the tacit metaphysical assumption that such a standard exists. [] Obviously, using language to deny something which that language one is using already presupposes is a proceeding
fraught with difficulties, and Nietzsche is very much aware of this. (Grimm: Nietzsches Theory,
loc. cit., pp. 28 29) Finally, essentially the same insight has been advanced by Jacques Derrida
in the essay Structure, Sign, and Play: We have no language no syntax and no lexicon
which is foreign to this history [of metaphysics]; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations
of precisely what it seeks to contest. (Derrida, Jacques: Writing and Difference. Chicago 1978,
p. 280.)
It is bitter irony that Nietzsche eventually did in fact shut up. Thus, granted the premise that
one could only consistently criticize truth if also annihilating the truth-claims suffusing language, Nietzsche ended up performing a life is greater consistency with the content of his thinking
than any philosopher before and after.
These notes have recently been translated into English by Daniel Breazeale as Philosophy and
Truth. See: Nietzsche, Friedrich: Philosophy and Truth. Selections from Nietzsches Notebooks
of the Early 1870s. Translated by Daniel Breazeale. New York 1999.

A Silent World

and in The Birth of Tragedy.9 Several commentators thus see a development in

Nietzsches thinking: from an early acceptance of the Kantian-Schopenhauerian
thing-in-itself, to a later rejection of this thing; from an early acceptance of the
dichotomy truth versus appearance, to a later rejection of this dichotomy.10 Some
commentators have now argued that Nietzsche in this late position also relinquishes the often reiterated conception that senses or concepts falsify reality a conception which has been labeled Nietzsches falsification-thesis (in Maudemarie
Clark11), or error-theory (in Martin Steven Green12).
In Clarks syllogistic reconstruction of Nietzsche, the problem of self-reference is summoned up again. It is again seen as the most damning charge one
can level against Nietzsche, and since Clark is a sympathetic reader, her reading
is meant to rescue Nietzsche from the supposed logical inconsistency it produces.13 The strategy is, in brief, to restore to Nietzsche a belief in Truth. Pursuing
this strategy, Clark argues that Nietzsche ends up rejecting his early so-called
falsification-thesis. Nietzsche rejects in later works as contradictory the very

10

11
12
13

Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Translated by R. Speirs. Cambridge 1999.
This so-called Kehre in Nietzsches thinking has been addressed by for example Alexander
Nehamas (see: Nehamas, Alexander: Nietzsche. Life as Literature. Cambridge, Mass. 1985,
p. 43); by Maudemarie Clark (see: Clark, Maudemarie: Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy.
Cambridge 1990, p. 95); by Michael Steven Green (see: Green, Michael Steven: Nietzsche and
the Transcendental Tradition. Urbana, Chicago 2002, p. 9); or from a De Manian perspective
by Wayne Klein (see: Klein, Wayne: Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy. New York
1997).
Clark: Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, loc. cit.
Green: Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, loc. cit.
Different stratagems are employed to argue that Nietzsche either cannot make inconsistent
claims on Truth, or if he actually does, he cannot mean it, because he then would end in hopeless self-contradiction. The problem with this influential view of truth is that it seems to lead
Nietzsche into hopeless self-contradiction. There is, first of all, the problem of self-reference.
If it is supposed to be true that there is no truth, then there is apparently a truth after all; and if it
is not supposed to be true, it seems that we have no reason to take it seriously, that is, accept it or
its alleged implications. (Clark: Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 3.) The argument is introduced in several
variations in Clarks work, for example in the discussion of Nietzsches Perspectivism. If it is true
that interpretations are only resulting from different perspectives, and therefore always relative
to beliefs, then Nietzsche again ends up in hopeless self-contradiction, because he must deny
the absolute truth of his own perspective. If all perspectives or beliefs are equally true, then
the belief we consider true is as true or false as the belief we consider false. Nietzsche criticism of
Christian morality, for example introduced as it is with such fervor and zeal is therefore no
truer than Christian morality. But of all perspectives are of equal cognitive value, perspectivism
then entails that every perspective falsifies since each perspective induces us to consider beliefs
false when they are actually as true as the ones we consider true. [] However, this interpretation of Nietzsches perspectivism trivializes his other claims. [] Unless perspectivism implies
its impossibility, there is every reason to assume that Nietzsche claims superiority for his own
perspective. [] Nietzsches commitment to the genealogical perspective makes it seem ridiculous to deny that he does consider it cognitively superior to the religio-moral perspective. (Ibd.,
pp. 139 40.)

Peter Bornedal

idea of a thing-in-itself.14 and this rejection of Kants thing implies to Clark that
Nietzsche confirms truth, and she draws the following conclusion: He thereby
lost all basis for denying truth, or for its equivalent, the thesis that human knowledge falsifies reality.15 Clarks argument runs approximately as follows: If Nietzsche rejects the thing-in-itself, truth (understood as residing in this inaccessible
thing) no longer hides itself if it is no longer hidden, then it must be in the
open if it is in the open, it must be there for us all to see thus, senses no longer
produce false knowledge; they produce true knowledge. Hence, Nietzsche ends up
rejecting his falsification-thesis, finally confirming truth!
Because he [Nietzsche] treats logic and mathematics as formal sciences that make no
claims about reality, Nietzsche must surely abandon his earlier claim that they falsify
reality. He also rejects as miscarriage doctrines which can get off the ground only
on the assumption that the senses deceive us, that they tell us only about appearance, and not reality. [Transcribed into plainer words: senses dont deceive; they dont
inform us on appearances, i. e., illusions, but on reality, i. e., true reality. P. B.]. [] These
passages from TI and A contain no hint of the view that human truths, science, logic
mathematics or causality falsify reality. Instead, they exhibit a uniform and unambiguous respect for facts, the senses, and science. [] Nietzsche does not claim that
knowledge falsifies in his last six works.16
Nietzsches last six books therefore provide no evidence of this commitment to the
falsification thesis, no reason to deny his commitment to the possibility of truth in
science, nor to the truth of his own theories. Given his earlier works, this seems remarkable and in need of explanation. [] My next section provides evidence that it
took Nietzsche some time to realize that his denial of truth depended on the assumption of a thing-in-itself [which entails: with his denial of the thing-in-itself, Nietzsche
ends up confirming truth. P. B.].17

To first clear up the negations: rejecting the falsification-thesis, i. e., asserting as false that senses or concepts falsify, implies that senses or concepts are
veridical accounts of reality. Since, during Nietzsches development, truth
moves from concealment to disclosure, and since, apparently, true knowledge
to Clark is something we acquire qua perception, Nietzsche can no longer mean
that senses falsify. So, in summa, after rejecting Kants thing, Clarks Nietzsche arrives to his final position, according to which senses dont falsify and truth is reconstituted or reestablished as the proper guarantor of philosophy.
Clarks reading is obviously conceived to rescue Nietzsche from the reception of his many recent neo-pragmatist and post-modernist commentators, and
to situate him within the ideological framework of Analytic Philosophy. How-

14
15
16
17

Ibd., p. 95.
Ibd.
Ibd., p. 105.
Ibd., p. 109.

A Silent World

ever, the rescuing reading is fraught with problems, some of them obvious,
others less so.
The implicit model for Clarks reading is in-itself questionable; Clark reads
Nietzsches development as a journey of truth. Nietzsche has three stadia in this
development: First, he believes in the thing-in-itself, and truth is consequently
inaccessible (in The Brith of Tragedy and On the Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral
Sense); second, he rejects the notion of the thing-in-itself, but continues inconsistently to believe that truth is inaccessible (in work up till and including Beyond
Good and Evil ); third, he rejects the notion of the thing-in-itself, and arrives to
his final consistent position, truth is accessible (from The Genealogy of Morals onwards; the last six works). In this narrative, truth is seen as an entity that has a
movement: first, it hides itself in the thing-in-itself, then gradually it moves out
of hiding and manifests itself in the open. Contemplating this narrative, one
wonders that insofar as truth is supposed to mean true or positive knowledge
of the world, how it could possibly be seen as residing in Kants thing-in-itself in
the first place. Kants Ding-an-Sich was never residence for true knowledge
an idea in itself utterly meaningless, since to Kant true knowledge could never
be generated by merely consulting the object-world under investigation, but only
by imposing on it principles formed by the transcendental subject: Reason
has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own plan. (Kant:
Critique of Pure Reason, Preface B xiii).18 However, the misinterpretation of
Kant is obviously crucial to Clark, since according to her master-argument, as
long as Nietzsche believes in the thing-in-itself, true knowledge is inaccessible;
but as soon as Nietzsche rejects the thing-in-itself, true knowledge is accessible
again. Everything hinges of the acceptance/non-acceptance of the Kantian thing.
On an explicit level of Clarks reading, the final position that is assigned to
Nietzsche is contradicted by so many explicit passages that one is tempted to say
that it is refuted by the entire textual corpus of Nietzsches.19 What does it mean
18

19

Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by W. Pluhan. Indianapolis, Cambridge

1996, p. 19.
In general, although also Analytic commentators come in shades and degrees of hermeneutic
sensitivity, often, when Analytic philosophers explain Nietzsches epistemological views, the resulting representations of Nietzsches texts appear lacking in detail and precision. We dont discern much commitment to philological exactitude. As a diagnosis of the situation, one may recall
a fragment from Nietzsches Nachla: T he lack of philolog y: one constantly confuses
the explanation and the t ext and what explanation! (Nachla 1888; KSA 13, 15[82]). My
suspicion is that the main methodological device of the Analytic commentator, the syllogism,
is incapable of representing complexity; the complexity, for example, of the context-dependent
floating meanings of Nietzschean concepts. Since the syllogism gives us only a linear and diachronic representation of propositions that remains self-identically the same, complexity within
such a linear logic is read as contradiction. Now depending on the commentators allegiances
it becomes the undertaking to resolve or underscore Nietzsches contradictions. In sympathetic
approaches, the project is to find a syllogistically satisfying fit for Nietzsche within the formal

10

Peter Bornedal

that Nietzsche in his last two years of writing, his last six works, purportedly ends
up rejecting his falsification-thesis in the sense indicated above? It can only
mean that Nietzsche completely reverses the direction of his essential thinking;
now, since the falsification-thesis is false, senses and concepts no longer falsify,
simplify, or interpret; now truth is no longer an illusion, since there is a oneto-one relationship between world and perception, as well as between perception and proposition. Ultimately, according to the final position, the proposition
communicates true knowledge as experienced in non-falsifying perception.20 Nietzsche purportedly makes this complete U-turn in this thinking, but without a word of explanation; this is truly, as Clark says, remarkable. Not only does Nietzsche not
address this radical change of mind, but in his Nachla (especially), he is even so
conceited as to continue his old theory; an old theory that oftentimes reads
like a critical comment on Clarks Nietzsche.
Man seeks truth! That is, a world that does not contradict itself, does not deceive,
does not change; a t r u e world a world in which man does not suffer: from contradiction, deception, change the origins of suffering! Man does not doubt that such
a world, as it should be, exists. [Consequently], he has to pursue the path that leads to
it. [] The conviction [Glaube] that the world, as it should be, is, really exists, is the
conviction of the unproductive, who does not want to create the world as it
should be. He assumes it is present [Vorhanden], and searches for the means and
manners by which to achieve it. T h e W i l l to Tr u th a s th e p owe r l e s s n e s s
[Ohnmacht] o f t he will t o crea t io n . (Nachla 1887; KSA 12, 9[60]).21

So says Clark: in his last six works, Nietzsche ends up confirming truth!
But in the notes from Spring, 1888, Nietzsche is preparing a chapter for the work

20

21

universe of Analytic philosophy. Nietzsches text is no longer a text, but a conglomerate of a few
well-known philosophical positions and set-problems; reading him becomes a question of navigating him in and between these positions as they stand in some conventional logical relationship to one another. This, indeed, is a perilous odyssey for the Analytic philosopher, committed
as she is to an inventory of concepts (Truth, Fact, Objectivity, Reason, Commonsense, etc.) that
only draws scorn from Nietzsche. Dangers lurk everywhere, and one asks oneself what possibly
motivated the Analytic philosopher to embark on this journey in the first place.
This view announces an epistemology, which seems to best conform to Francis Bacons epistemological optimism from The New Organon. Given careful observation of the world as it is,
and avoiding certain treacherous idols, i. e., illusions that lead us astray in our investigations
(language being one of them), we are potentially all capable of producing true knowledge of the
world. Applying this epistemology to Nietzsche has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated
before. One has typically compared Nietzsche to modern epistemologists like Feyerabend and
Kuhn. Habermas, Rorty, and (for obvious reasons) Foucault have all had an inclination to see
Nietzsche as foreshadowing certain aspects of their own epistemological programs. On a personal note, I might suggest that Nietzsche could also be seen as anticipating aspects of Niels
Bohr, Henri Poincar, or Karl Poppers theories of knowledge.
Also from the late Nachla material we read: It is of cardinal importance that we abandon the
tr ue world. She is the great unbeliever [Anzweiflerin] and value reducer [Wertverminderung] of
the world that we is: She is the so far most dangerous atte mpt [attentat] on life. (Nachla
1888; KSA 13, 14[103]).

A Silent World

11

that he in the Nachla entitles sometimes Der Wille zur Macht, sometimes Umwerthung aller Werthe. According to several outlines, the chapter was to be called
Der Wille zur Wahrheit. In these sketches, we encounter the repetition of positions
that he has been advancing during the eighties. We read for example:
The claim, that t r u t h ex ist s, and it is an end to ignorance and error, is one of the
greatest existing seductions.
[]
it is more comfortable to obey than to prove It is more flattering to think I have
the truth than to peek around in the dark
first and foremost: it appeases, it gives comfort, it alleviates life it improves the
charact er, insofar as it minimizes mistr ust
The peace of mind, the calm of consciousness, is all discoveries that are possible
only under the presupposition, that t r u t h exist. (Nachla 1888; KSA 13, 15[46]).
Chapter: the Will to Truth
[]
the methodology of truth cannot be found in truth as motive, but in p owe r a s mo tive, i n a want- t o- become- su p er ior [berlegen-sein-wollen].
how does truth proves itself ? In the feeling of increased power (in certainty-belief
[Gewiheit-Glaube]) in its usefulness in its indispensability i n b r i e f, i n j u d g ments
namely, presuppositions of a kind that truth mu st occupy itself with in order to be
recognized by us
but it is prejudice: a sign that shows that it is not at all about tr uth
[]
why knowledge? Why not rather deception?
what one wanted, was always belief, and not truth
(Nachla 1888; KSA 13, 15[58]).

Here, it does not help to argue, as Clark strongly indicates in her introductory
chapter, that the Nachla is inferior source material, and that only the published
work is entitled to consideration.22 It cannot be the case that Nietzsche in his
thinking soliloquies manifests himself as one philosopher, but as soon as he puts
the final touches on a manuscript for publication, transforms himself into an
entirely different philosopher. Nothing could account for such a radical transformation of a written corpus other than magic or divine intervention. (A radical
transformation of a philosophical position would require other thinking soliloquies, other unpublished sketches, which we do not find in Nietzsches Nachgelassene Aufzeichnungen.) And even if (hypothetically) a radical distinction existed

22

Brian Leiter in Leiter, Brian: Nietzsche on Morality. London, New York 2002, coming across as
a follower of Clark has made this claim with much more passion. Leiter for example reports
that Nietzsche should have expressed a wish to have his notebooks burned; readers of these
notebooks are consequently in violation of Nietzsches personal wishes. I dont know where
Nietzsche has expressed such a wish, but I understand that if the unpublished material is invalid,
then Nietzsches reported wishes would be utterly invalid.

12

Peter Bornedal

between published and unpublished material, still, we would have no sure criteria
of demarcation by which to decide whether Nietzsches published work is a
more authentic expression of Nietzsche than is his Nachla.23

(iii) An Outline of the Position

Although Clarks commentary is designed to appropriate Nietzsche for
(a particular branch of) Analytic Philosophy, and is as such ideologically motivated, still, within its web of innovative readings, it raises some pertinent questions regarding Nietzsches ontology and epistemology. Its thrust to understand
the status of reality, sensation, and knowledge in Nietzsche, in a reversionary
interpretation that qualifies some of the recent radical (neo-idealistic) accounts
of Nietzsche, is fundamentally interesting. The problem with this reading I shall
not repeat, but the reading gives me a polemic point of departure for outlining
an alternative reading (which I shall here summarize, and in the remainder of the
essay elaborate and substantiate).
There is no doubt that Nietzsche, relatively early, discards the notion of Kants
thing-in-itself. Already in Human, All too Human we read that the thing-in-itself is
worthy only of Homeric laughter (HAH I, 16; KSA 2, p. 38),24 and in statements
from Daybreak, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, The Will to
Power, and the Nachla from the Eighties,25 we encounter time and again the rejection of thing-in-itself and true vs. apparent. However, this rejection oftentimes comes
alongside the profession of falsifying and arbitrary sense-perceptions. Up through
the eighties till his last years of writing, Nietzsche continues to refer to deceptive
senses in a number of contexts, while we also, in other contexts, see him dismissing
the notion as philosophical nonsense. In the latter position senses do not deceive,
but apprehend the world in its self-manifestation this is by Clark seen as Nietzsches conclusive position, but as such, it appears to be only half the truth. The task
must be to understand, rather, in which sense senses deceive, and in which sense senses
dont deceive (however frustrating such an apparently open contradiction may be).26
23

24
25

26

I shall not at this point go deeper into the Nachla-problematics in Nietzsche, but shall for a balanced account restrict myself to refer to Mller-Lauter: ber Werden, loc. cit., pp. 28 30.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Human, All too Human. Translation R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge 1996.
The editions here referred to are the following: The Gay Science. Translated by J Nauckhoff.
Cambridge 2001; Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by J. Norman. Cambridge 2002; The Will
to Power. Edited by W. Kaufmann; translated by J. R. Hollingdale and W. Kaufmann. New York
1968; and Nietzsches Nachla from volumes 9 to 13 of KSA.
To find a deliberate and explicit solution to these problems in Nietzsches own texts appears to
be impossible. Rereading Nietzsches Nachla from the eighties, I have at no point come across a
definitive and conclusive explanation of these senses that apparently are sometimes deceptive,
sometimes not.

A Silent World

13

Furthermore, even when senses are redeemed as adequate instruments for apprehending the world, this still does not entail that Nietzsche has abandoned his falsification-thesis (as Clark has it), because concepts, in any circumstance, are guilty
of falsification.
When senses do deceive, they deceive us about what seems plain reality;
but the simplicity of this statement is deceptive. Clark believes that insofar as
senses deceive (in Nietzsches early position), then reality must be inaccessible,
and when they no longer deceive (in Nietzsches final position), then reality
must be immediately accessible for knowledge. This conception may seem
straightforward, but in my reading it misunderstands, at the least, Nietzsches notions of deception and reality.
One might say for a start that senses dont only deceive us about what we see;
more profoundly, they deceive us in how we see what we see. What we see is the terminal of a process, by which an apparatus distorts impressions arriving from the
exterior world. How we see has thus always-already falsified what we see; what we see
has had to pass through a simplification-apparatus, a filtration-device, before
properly seen (more about these two Nietzschean notions follows below). What
we therefore see in Clarks so-called non-deceptive perception, is already
stamped with the limitations of our perceptive apparatus; to put it differently,
non-deceptive perception is not an available option. This implies that whenever
we see something, this something has been through a structuring process (the
so-called how of seeing) that is indispensable, and, moreover, that access to
reality is necessarily access to a falsified reality. This may sound a high philosophical speculation, but it has been common knowledge in contemporary neuroscience for several years.27
We see reality as we best can! But what arrives to us as conscious perception
is, according to Nietzsche, simplified, thus falsified, thus interpreted. As such,
one must now assume that Reality, strictly speaking, must be different from
what announces itself as perceived reality. In Nietzsche, as well as in the tradition,
this Reality is usually described as chaos or becoming. Heidegger is inclined
27

It seems highly relevant to relate Nietzsche to the findings of a new generation of neuroscientists
such as Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett, and Mark Solms. If for example Damasio in his recent Looking for Spinoza has labeled Spinoza a proto-biologist since anticipating recent discoveries about mind and body one may well contend (without diminishing Spinozas evident
relevance) that an even more obvious candidate for that label might be Nietzsche. In this context, it is also worth mentioning that Gnter Abel, in a recent essay from Nietzsche Studien, has
made comparative analyses between neuroscience and Nietzsches positions on perception,
mind, and consciousness. To my knowledge, it is the first time anybody has highlighted this
relationship. It thus comes across as pioneering work that may well inaugurate a new direction
for current Nietzsche-reception, offering us the opportunity to appraise, with much more theoretical gravitas, Nietzsche as a precocious early philosopher of brain, mind, and consciousness.
(See: Abel, Gnter: Bewutsein Sprache Natur. Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes. In
Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001) pp. 1 43).

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Peter Bornedal

to talk about chaos; Eugen Fink, Ruediger Grimm, and Mller-Lauter speak
often of a world of becoming.28 In any case, we are addressing a relationship
between form-giving sensations and a form-less fleeting world of becoming.
(Masses in movement and nothing else, says Freud less than ten years after
Nietzsche writes, referring to an exterior world impinging itself on our senseorgans, but without yet having penetrated into our memory systems, thus without being recognized as so and so.29) These fleeting masses in movement is Reality in the strictest sense, but as such, reality does not by itself open itself up for
knowledge; it is not like a cornfield just waiting to be harvested. If some unfortunate fool had immediate access to reality in this sense, he would be suffering
from the severest psychopathological condition imaginable. This fleeting mass
of becoming is being opened by the sense-apparatus, for sensation; it does as such
nothing by itself. It is certainly there, but is it not an activity with us as its final purpose. It gives as such nothing. It is in the very opening of Reality that senses falsify.
In the strictest sense, senses are falsifying thanks to our specific perceptive
designs. When Nietzsche refers to these specific perceptive designs, he often
speaks of an Optik, and sometimes of a menschliche Optik a phrase that seems to
have been consistently, but misleadingly, translated into the English, human perspective. Optics and perspective are of course two different things. Human optics
refers to our faculty of sight, our visual perception; thus, we speak of the mechanics of our eyes, enabling us to perceive things in depth; three-dimensionally;
shades of lightness and darkness; colors; movement and rest, etc. To translate
28

29

Heidegger, Fink, Grimm, and Mller-Lauter usually talk about only one world of chaos or becoming, which is, given various will-to-power processes, stabilized into a world of being, or rather,
into several worlds of being (since the perspectival character of interpretations would seem
to grant us several interpreted worlds). However, the world of becoming is always discussed in the
singular. Fink, for example, speaks of the fluctuating flow of life [Lebensflut], [] the stream of
becoming, the ceaseless to-and-fro of its drift; there is nothing enduring, unchanging, permanent everything is in flux. (Fink, Eugen: Nietzsches Philosophie. Stuttgart, Berlin 1960. p. 163;
my italics.) At this point I modify the tradition, and suggest that much in Nietzsches texts is
easier to read, and simpler to understand, if the world of becoming is (abstractly) seen as two
(cf. below): an Ur-ground and a Human ground, as these grounds are subject to two fundamentally different simplification-processes. To express the view with complete simplicity: our eyes are
engaged in one kind of simplification; our language is engaged in another kind of simplification.
As we shall see also Nietzsche be claiming, Freud believes that originally we receive impressions
only as quantities, which are subsequently transformed, in his neurological apparatus, into
qualities. At this point, I cannot go into detail with Freuds neurological conception of the psyche,
but it is interesting to note that to Freud the external world beyond or before conscious perception
is explicitly conceived as a world of becoming; in Freuds words: Consciousness gives us what are
called quality-sensations, which are different in a great multiplicity of ways and whose difference
is distinguished according to the relations with the external world. Within this difference there
are series, similarities, and so on, but there are in fact no quantities in it. [] Where do qualities
originate? Not in the external world. For out there there are only masses in motion and nothing else.
(Freud, Sigmund: Project for a Scientific Psychology. Standard Edition. Vol. I. Translated and
edited by J. Strachey. London 1966, p. 308; my italics.)

A Silent World

15

menschliche Optik to human perspective waters down the notion; it might also suggest
a science-phobic translation, since the notion now refers to various points of
view, various ideological stances, that humans apply to intellectual, existential,
cultural, or religious issues. Optics designates the mechanical designs of our eyes;
perspective suggests individual idiosyncrasies underpinning opinions. Optics belongs in Biology and Anatomy; perspective belongs in the Humanities. We are free
to choose between perspectives, but no one has the freedom to choose between
optics. Discussions of whether Nietzsche means that everybody are entitled
to their own perspective, or there are as many of them as there are individuals;
or whether he can mean that all perspectives are equally good (without degrading his own perspective, etc.) are completely superfluous if, or rather when, perspective means optics. It is also immediately obvious that there can be no neutral perspective in the sense of a neutral optics (a notion that doesnt even begin to
make sense).
Therefore, if it is Nietzsches contention that we falsify reality thanks to our
human optics, it is hardly possible to disagree. As such, we see masses in movement and becoming on our terms, i. e., our human optics narrow down a ground
that we know is perceived differently by other animals having different perceptions of, for example, space and time, or perhaps none at all. We live as such on
what I will call an Ur-ground as the ground we share with all perceiving creatures, but which we form and shape according to our exclusive designs, our
human optics. The Ur-ground itself is being opened by an indefinite number of
creatures, seeing it according to their specific perceptive designs; we, however,
open reality according to our own perceptive designs. The Ur-ground is therefore
an infinite expanse of possibilities, but when we open this expanse according to
our human possibilities, we create a human horizon, which becomes the world
for us. In contrast to the Ur-ground, I shall label this human horizon, the Human
ground.
In order to express the distinction between Ur-ground and Human ground
more succinctly, we might say that the Ur-ground is the ground that is open
for all possible perception, while the human ground is open only for possible human
perception. Since it is clear that all possible perception includes humans only as a single
point (more about points is just a moment) within this ocean of possibilities,
humans must inevitably falsify the Ur-ground. Against the Ur-ground, falsification is a condition and an ontological given. The Human ground is now a
single horizon, a single point, on the Ur-ground; it designates the world as we
see and know it, the world according to, for example, our three-dimensional time
and space perception.
Now, if necessarily our senses falsify the Ur-ground, what do our senses
do to the Human ground? Senses falsify also this ground, but for somewhat
different reasons. We falsify the Ur-ground because our perceptive design is

16

Peter Bornedal

unique (we have three-dimensional vision, color-perception, etc.), but we falsify

the Human ground, because we cannot process the overload of information
made available within our perceptive horizon.30 Thus, to Nietzsche, the problem
is never that there is no reality (but only interpretations, as current academic
fashion often stipulates); the problem is that there is always too much reality. To
deal with this abundance, we have evolved a mental apparatus that reduces
and simplifies these overloads. We have evolved something we might call a reality-defense, i. e., certain defense-mechanisms that allow us to be selective when we
scan the exterior world according to our interests and survival-benefits.31 What
exactly these defense-mechanisms are and how they work, Nietzsche tries with
his formidable philosophical intuition to determine, but since he is well ahead
of advances that will later be made in linguistics, and in the theories of mind and
consciousness, his thinking on the issue remains a torso. His realizes, however,
that our memory-systems and closely related to memory, language must be
accountable for these necessary defenses. Our sensations are like tentacles
shooting out and being withdrawn in order to test snippets of a dangerous world.
In this reality-testing, sensation constantly consults memory in order to crosscheck a current sensation against the memory of an identical sensation.
The overflow of impressions that as exterior reality impinges and invade the
virgin, still unprepared, sensual system, I will below describe as hyper-reality. I suggest this neologism32 since the simpler reality has become so highly inflated,
therefore useless, that it is virtually impossible to guess what people are talking
about when they refer to reality. Reality refers to sometimes Kants, sometimes
30

31

32

Even if the Ur-ground has been considerably narrowed by human perception, the human
ground is still conceived as a world of becoming, and sensations falsify also this ground. We
notice in Nietzsche the promotion of an idea, which may at first seem counter-intuitive, but
which is in fact in good accordance with modern science: complexity never ends. If the Urground is unfathomable as an expanse of possibilities where we are, so to speak, only specks of
dust, our speck of dust is no less complex that the expanse itself. Complexity always remains an
unspecified constant, however much we narrow down a field. If, for example, we simplify our
speck of dust according to our mental apparatus, this apparatus is as complex as everything
above. Our utterly superficial world is also infinitely deep. It even occurs to me that the infinite
depth of the world is a function of its utter superficiality; but at this point I shall not try to explain why this must be the case!
Compare to Werner Stegmaier: In the ongoing dialogue between our mind and the surrounding world, it is not primarily about taking possession of as much information as possible, but
on the contrary to limit, as much as possible, the impinging overflow of information, and only allow actionrelevant information access to consciousness. The simplification- and abbreviation-apparatus,
as Nietzsche describes thinking, must therefore be organized as an inhibition-apparatus
[Hemmungsapparat ]. (Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral. Darmstadt
1994, p. 134; my italics.) See also: Stegmaier, Werner: Weltabkrzungskunst. Orientierung
durch Zeichen. In: Simon, Josef (ed.), Zeichen und Interpretation, Frankfurt am Main 1994,
pp. 119 141.
The notion I have originally seen in Babich, Babette E.: Nietzsches Philosophy of Science. New
York 1994.

A Silent World

17

Platos, reality; sometimes to the world of becoming; sometimes to perceived

reality, etc.
With this notion in hand, I shall address the interesting question that Clark
in her Analytic account is engaged in promoting as Nietzsches final position.
Does Nietzsche think, by any chance, that senses dont deceive? In my reformulation, is it possible to perceive hyper-reality? Is it possible to shut down consciousness, and just see? ( Within the vistas of current neo-pragmatic and post-modernist thinking: is access to a language-independent reality an available option?)
We can obviously not suspend our perceptive designs, and we have as such no
perceptive access to the so-called Ur-ground (to put it forcefully and in paradox:
we cant see without eyes!). The question is therefore: is it possible to suspend the
defenses we normally put up when we orient ourselves on our Human ground?
In a first provisional, and somewhat simplified, answer, I suggest, that insofar as the Human ground is falsified and interpreted thanks to language,
with this made conscious and communicable, we are in fact capable of suspending consciousness and short-circuiting certain components of our mental system. When we do, we see as in a blank or empty stare a muted reality lying
there in the presence of itself. In this mode of seeing, we reduce our humanity,
and deliberately approach animal stupidity which, in the first place, was always
our ontogenetic residual. Reading Nietzsche with the suspended attention of a
psychoanalyst, it escapes nobody that he often displays the temptation and desire to access an exterior world in non-conscious and pure perception, as what
would seem to be the fascinating entrance into the self-presence of the present.
However, this mode of perception since it presupposes ideal suspension of
consciousness could offer us no promise of access to positive knowledge of
the exterior world (as is Clarks contention and ideological concern). On the
contrary, it at best indicates the adoption of a purely aesthetic attitude in which the
subject indulges is the pleasures of seeing: with eyes wide open, absorbing, assimilating, affirming everything; with eyes wide open, sounding an emphatic Yes to
the eternity (or more precisely, the timelessness) of the self-present. Since everything in this mode returns to itself as self-identity, there is no assertion of difference, and hence no production of knowledge.

II) Substantiation and Elaboration of the Position

(i) Ur-Ground and Sensation
In the following quote from the Nachla, included also in The Will to Power,
the dichotomy true vs. apparent world is again rejected, and then follows a
speculation on what constitutes appearance after the true world is annihilated.

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Peter Bornedal

The result of the speculation is the proposal of two worlds: (1) one apparent world
that serves our practical needs; a world calculable; a world arranged and simplified, as such perfectly true for us; (2) another world beyond our practically arranged life-world; a world not reduced to our own being; a world extending itself
beyond us, but still not understood as identical to the world in-itself ; the world
I have been labeling the Ur-ground.
Will t o Power a s Kn owledg e
Critique of the concept true and apparent world.
of these, the first is a mere fiction, constructed of fictitious entities.
Appearance in itself belongs to reality; it is a form of its being; i. e.
a world where there is no being [Sein], must first be created from a p p e a r a n c e s as a
calculable world of identical cases: [in] a tempo at which observation and comparison are possible, etc.
Appearance is an arranged and simplified world, at which our practical instincts
have been at work: it is perfectly true for us; namely insofar as we live, are able to live
in it: proof of its truth for us
The world, apart from our condition of living in it, the world that we have not reduced
to our being, our logic, and psychological prejudices
does not exist as a world in-itself
it is essentially a world of relationships [Relations-Welt ]: it has, under certain conditions,
a d if f eren t look [Gesicht] from every point [Punkt]; its being [Sein] is essentially different from every point; it presses upon every point, every point resists it and the
sum of these is in every case quite incong r uent.
The measure of power [Ma von Macht] determines what creature [Wesen] possesses the other measure of power; in what form, force, constraint it acts or resists.
Our particular case is interesting enough: we have produced a conception in order to
be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to endure it. (WP 568;
Nachla 1888; KSA 13, 14[93]).

We are introduced to two cases, two aspects of the world described as respectively being and becoming (we are obviously not introduced to two distinct and separate worlds, but to two aspects under which we live in, or stand out
in, one single world). The world of being is the world stabilized by us in order to
satisfy our practical needs. It is reminiscent of the world that the late Husserl
would describe as life-world. It provides us with our historical, social, cultural
memory and identity. It is the world I shall describe referring to Structural Linguistics below as our linguistically mediated life-world. It is especially (but not exclusively) language that makes this world habitable to humans.
The world of becoming is much more difficult to describe, and in this quotation, Nietzsche offers us only a cosmology. We learn that it is a world of relationships of points; that its being is different from every point, with a different
look from every point; that it presses upon every point, while every point also
resists pressure; that the sum of these pressures are in every case incongruent.
How are we to understand and make sense of this theory? We are apparently

A Silent World

19

introduced to an extreme relativism, where each point in cosmos sees the rest
from its own perspective, or perhaps rather, optics. There is in this cosmos, as later
in Einstein, neither absolute space nor absolute time, but only relationships
of points warping time and space. Every point exerts a pressure on its environing universe, and is being pressurized by a counter-pressure that is not congruent
to the pressure the point exerts. If a point can be seen in the biological universe as an organism, the organism puts a pressure on the environment, and is
countered with a pressure of the environment. The incongruity between the
strengths of the forces in the action (of the organism) and the reaction (of the environment) would account for the organisms survival and ability to grow; its socalled will-to-power. If the force of the reaction is stronger than the force of the
action, we must assume that the organism dies. We must assume, moreover, that
in Nietzsches theory of relativity, space would be measured from the optics of the
organism according to its means of perception, and time according to its speed of
perception. Thus, both space and time is relative to the perceptive mechanisms
of the organism. Every organism (or point) thus sees being from its own perspective optics: being is essentially different from every point. The world as such
a relationship of points is thus the primordial Ur-ground for all living entities.
In its relation to this Ur-ground, the human being is now just one point,
and it sees being from the perspective of its own point. From within that perspective,
senses are no longer necessarily deceptive, although they necessarily falsify the Urground. That perforce, we see the world humanly not by the means of perception
of a bat (echolocation), nor with the speed of perception of a fly (perceiving the
world three times faster than the human eye; thus living in a world of slow-motion humans trying to catch it) does not imply that the world is an inaccessible
thing-in-itself. We perceive from within our perspective the Ur-ground, and as such,
simplify, i. e., falsify, the Ur-ground. However, if now our senses by perceiving
humanly deceive and falsify the world as this Ur-ground, the deception and
falsification would seem to be inconsequential; no more an error than if, during
the evolutionary process, we have been deceived into breathing a corrosive gas
like oxygen.33
33

In the last aphorism from The Will to Power, we encounter again a description of this in-human Urground, a description of an impersonal cosmos of forces played out against each other; a cosmos
essentially being will-to-power: This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end;
a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself
but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses,
but like wise without increase or income; enclosed by nothingness as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite
force, and not a space that might be empty here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a
play of forces and waves of forces [] a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally
changing, eternally flooding back. [] [A world] without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a
goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself do you want a name for this
world? [] T h is wor ld is t he will t o p ower an d nothing be side s! (WP 1067).

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Peter Bornedal

If Nietzsche is seeing the organism as a point in a cosmos of becoming,

perceiving cosmos from within its own point (from within its own means and
speed of perception), the human being would be such a point. However, as such,
the human being inevitably perceives qualities, never quantities, although quantities, minor gradations and differences in degree, are understood as the objective foundations for qualities. By perceiving qualities, we construct an object, i. e.,
solidify a flow or a sequence, create it as unity, as such making it appear (ob-jectum:
to throw something before someone; to make appear). We thereupon assign to
the objectified flow a value. From prehistoric days, we must assume that appraisal
and evaluation of an object was a biological necessity. From an evolutionary point
of view, it was requisite for the early hominid to know whether an object
was good or bad. In brief, an object is the sum of experienced oppositions
[Hemmungen] that have become conscious for us. A quality always expresses
something that is useful or harmful. (Nachla 1885 86; KSA 12, 2[77]). The
early hominid thus had to, first, apprehend something in the unity of an object,
and, secondly, judge whether this unity was good or bad. With this, the early
hominid made an in-itself fluid state a thing, endowing this thing with its specific
valuations. It created a quality; and this is, Nietzsche says, our insurmountable
limit.34
Qualities are our insurmountable limit; there is nothing to stop us from feeling
that differences in quantity [Quantitts-differenzen] are fundamentally unlike qualities,
which are no longer reducible to something else. However, everything, for which the
word knowledge [Erkenntnis] has any meaning is related to a realm that can be
counted, weighed, or measured i. e., according to quantity; while, on the contrary,
our sense of value exclusively depends on qualities, that is, on our perspectival
truths, exclusively belonging to us and which strictly cannot be known [erkannt].
It is now obvious that every creature, different from us, would sense other qualities,
and consequently would live in a world different from the one we live in. (Nachla
1886; KSA 12, 6[14]).

If we grant that creating and perceiving qualities is what humans do, do not
other creatures perceive other qualities; create other ob-jects; assign to them other
values? And if so, do they not live in another world than the one we live in; not
on another ground we are all assigned the same ground but in another lifeworld? A creature thus lives on an Ur-ground as an abundance of possibilities
that the creature from its own narrow perspective cannot fathom, since perforce it must perceive the ground through its distinctive optics.
Since this construal would apply to humans as well, the Ur-ground itself although it does not hide as the thing-in-itself does is therefore indifferent to the
34

Also Freud believes that originally we receive impressions only as quantities, which are subsequently transformed, in his neurological apparatus, into qualities; and also Freud maintains that in
conscious perception, we can only perceive qualities.

A Silent World

21

human perspective; it is the absolutely non-human and in-human, merely providing the ground for a play of forces between an indefinite numbers of points.
It is a ground that has nothing to do with us, except for the fact that we happen
to be one of its points. It is to this Ur-ground Nietzsche is referring in the
aphorism, Let Us Beware, from The Gay Science.
Let us beware! [Hten wir uns! ]. Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living
being. Where would it stretch? What would it feed on? How could it grow and procreate? [] The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos
in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form,
beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms [sthetischen Menschlichkeiten]. [] How could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites:
it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these
things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and
moral judgments apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any
other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that
there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there are no one who commands,
no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident, for only against a world of purposes
does a word accident have a meaning. (GS 109; KSA 3, pp. 468 69).

Since the Ur-ground has nothing to do with us, it is indifferent to the interpretations we apply to it. Thus, we necessarily falsify the Ur-ground when we
apply to it our interpretations, as such, projecting into this indifferent universe
our measurements and ourselves. Nietzsches prudent proposal is therefore: let
us beware of our human narcissism; our truths are not true in an absolute sense, that is,
measured against the proposed Ur-ground; they are after all only ours.
In Nietzsche, we are condemned to live in this cold and indifferent universe
(a universe one might notice in a symptomatic reading that characteristically
does not like us, ignoring for a second the obvious fact that it does not express
emotion). Nietzsches universe has been emptied of all anthropomorphic principles. God has surely disappeared, but so has everything else that could give the
universe identity, such as purpose (intention), design, causes, or scientific laws; let us
beware of saying that there are laws in nature, Nietzsche cautions.
Thanks to humanization, nature becomes like a living organism, having the
freedom to abide by laws or not. However, that from which we are deducing laws
in the first place, regularity of events, does not guarantee Law. In Nietzsche as in
Hume, the repeated occurrence of an event does not guarantee a priori knowledge of cause-effect relationships. There is no objective nexus between cause and
effect. Nietzsche, however, adds to Humes skepticism a psychological analysis
of the sciences. If the scientists display a propensity to see causes, it is because,
ultimately, they have an inclination to humanize, i. e., to discover intentions in nature: purposes, designs, causes, or Laws. In Nietzsche as in Hume, cause-effect

22

Peter Bornedal

relations are constituted merely as a result of experience, as a result of custom and

habit; but furthermore, to Nietzsche there is now an older habit behind our habit
of positing cause-effect relations, namely the habit of impressing upon the world
the belief in ourselves, i. e., the beliefs in intentions and subjects.
Hume was right; habit makes us expect that a certain often-observed occurrence will
follow another: nothing more! That which gives the extraordinary firmness to our belief in causality is not the great habit of seeing one occurrence following another but
our inability to interpret events otherwise than as events caused by intentions. It is belief in the living and thinking as the only effective force in will, in intention it is belief that every event is a deed, that every deed presupposes a doer, it is belief in the
subject. (WP 550).

The Ur-ground we cannot understand; it is beyond our sensational capacities,

not because it is hidden (on the contrary, it is absolutely present), but because we
cannot fathom its super-abundance. Thus, we do not know this self-manifesting
Ur-ground, because we have never evolved a need to perceive from more than
our own modest perspective.35 A perspective or more abstractly, a point is
therefore necessarily a narrowing of the universe. A fortiori, without this narrowing, (i. e., simplification, falsification) there would be no sensation and no
knowledge. A point is the absolutely necessary, and absolutely beneficial, narrowing
of the universe.
Our knowledge and sensation is like a point in a system: it is like an eye whose visual
strength and visual field [Sehkraft und Sehfeld ] slowly grows and includes still more.
With this the real world does not change, but this constant activity of the eyes
changes everything to a constantly growing streaming activity. [] We are l iv i n g
mir ro r- ima g es. What is consequently knowledge [Erkenntni ]? Its starting point is
an erroneous narrowing, as if measurement existed for sensations; everywhere the
mirror and the taste-organs come about a sphere is formed. If one thinks away this
narrowing, one also thinks away knowledge. (Nachla 1880; KSA 9, 6[441]).

The real world Nietzsche refers to in this quote, is his (not too fortunate)
term for what I am discussing as Ur-ground ( but we understand him!). This
real world is of course not affected by our perception; it remains what it is. With
the activity of our eyes, says Nietzsche, the real world does not change. So, it
is clear that there are no remnants of idealism in Nietzsches position. The real
world does not disappear if we close our eyes (Berkeley); it is not constituted in
subjectivity (Fichte); it is not our representation (Schopenhauer); nor is it con-

35

A hominid starting (ex hypothesi ) to evolve more than a single perception of the world if for
example its three-dimensional image of the world suddenly had to compete with a two-dimensional image would just be an aberration and would have had such an evolutionary disadvantage that it would become extinct before the new feature could evolve and become species-typical.

A Silent World

23

stituted in language (20th century neo-Idealism). It is also, in Nietzsches interpretation, different from Kants Thing-in-itself.36
It is this chaotic ground that stands in opposition to our apparent world: the world
as we see it. Nietzsches principal opposition is therefore not between an apparent
world and a true world, but between an apparent world and chaos. The opposition to
this phenomenal-world is not the true world, but rather the world as a formlessinexpressible chaos of sensations [die formlos-unformulirbare Welt des SensationenChaos] consequently an other phenomenal-world, for us incomprehensible
[unerkennbar ]. (Nachla 1887; KSA 12, 9[106]). As such, this sensation-chaos is
also an apparent world. It is not our apparent world, but it Nietzsches idea that it can
be appropriated, or raised into our world depending on the interest we invest in certain of its aspects. There is no being-in-itself [Sein an sich], no criteria or reality,
but only gradations of appearances measured according to the strength of the
interest that we apply to something appearing. (Nachla 188687; KSA 12, 7[49]).
Commentators frequently describe Nietzsches epistemology as fictionalism, subjectivism, and/or as aestheticism. Thus, Eugen Fink describes
Nietzsches epistemology as a fictional theory of knowledge,37 while Jrgen
Habermas, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,38 sees Nietzsche as over-emphasizing the playfulness of a purely aesthetic dimension over and above Habermas
cognitive, inter-subjective, and expressive dimensions of knowledge.39 Although
36

37
38
39

That I, following some of Kants 20th century exponents, was never convinced about Nietzsches understanding of Kants thing-in-itself, and should be only too happy (at another point in
time) to elaborate on the resemblance between Kants thing and Nietzsches Ur-ground, must here be
left as an entirely different issue that cannot concern us at this point.
Fink: Nietzsches Philosophie, loc. cit., p. 165.
See Habermas, Jrgen: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass. 1988.
Referring to the will-to-power, Habermas states: This is at the same time a will to illusion, a will
to simplification, to masks, to the superficial; art counts as mans genuine metaphysical activity,
because life itself is based on illusion, deception, optics, the necessity of the perspectival and
of error. Of course, Nietzsche can shape these ideas into a metaphysics for artists only if he
reduces everything that is and should be to the aesthetic dimension. [] The famous sketches
for a pragmatic theory of knowledge and for a natural history of morality that trace the distinction between true and alse, good and Evil, back to preferences for what serves life and for
the noble, are meant to demonstrate this. According to this analysis, behind apparently universal
normative claims lie hidden the subjective power claims of value appraisals. (Ibd., p. 95.) Behind
this appraisal of Nietzsche lies Habermas elaborate diagrams of different types of communicative action. In On the Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas outlines four such types; the socalled: (1) Teleological action producing knowledge of technologies; (2) Constative Speech acts
producing knowledge of theories; (3) Normatively Regulated Action, producing knowledge of
legal and moral representations; and finally (4) Dramaturgical Action producing knowledge as
works of art. According to Habermas, there is thus, in the production of knowledge, a division of
labor between types of communicative action, which Nietzsche ignores, since he promotes the
final dramaturgical action as the overarching type of action. That is, Nietzsche superimposes
the aesthetic dimension on all of the three preceding types of action: reduces everything that is
to the aesthetic dimension. For these diagrams, see for example: Habermas, Jrgen: On the
Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. I. Translated by T. McCarthy. Boston 1984, p. 334.

24

Peter Bornedal

such interpretations tally with certain of Nietzsches fragments (e. g., the famous
there are only interpretations.), the labels give the wrong impression that
Nietzsche means that scientists are working with the same freedom of spirit as
poets: they both invent. Accordingly, a poem by William Blake and the DNA
molecule supposedly have the same ontological status; are as such the results of
the same poetic-creative-inspirational processes.
However, following Nietzsche in his Nachla, there are reasons to believe
that this was never his intended position. It does not seem to be the claim that a
poem and a scientific discovery have the same status, but rather that something
like the DNA is not an exclusive human invention or fiction, not exclusively
constituted in and by language. It is surely an interpretation, but then an
interpretation of something. Following Nietzsche, DNA would be understood,
rather, as a single layer in an infinitely deep and proliferous nature; a nature which
consists of multiple layers and combinations that we do not care about (do not
yet care about, etc.), and consequently, do not see and do not know. We only see
and learn that which, under the pressure of our reductive observations, seem to
give us a perceived advantage in existence. We observe according to the promise of
a reward. Since our interpretations are interested, they are relative to the world
of becoming (the Ur-ground) false. Since scientific knowledge is a construct
resulting from our selective observations, it is in this sense false. The world
that concer ns us is false, i. e., it is no matter of fact, but rather an invention
[Ausdichtung] and something rounded up from a meager sum of observations.
It is in flow; as something becoming; as an ever-new forward thrusting falsity
that never reaches truth there is no truth. (Nachla 1885 86; KSA 12,
2[108]). However, our interpretations are still true for us. They are the constructs
by which we understand fragments of an abundant world, selected according to
what concerns our humanity.
In order to classify and understand single layers, or a particular combination,
in proliferous nature, in order to see and to bring it into knowledge, language is now
indispensable. Language as such does not create that which is, but it brings
something that is (i. e., the DNA) on formula. Thanks to language, we write up a
model for this existing something, but we realize (or we ought to realize) that this
something could have been represented in numerous alternative models (or it
could have been represented as another combination).40
40

In his important work on Nietzsches theory of knowledge, Ruediger Grimm is also addressing
this so-called fictionalism, but seems in various passages undecided as to whether knowledge is
pure invention, or knowledge of something. Nietzsche is cited for the following passage, corroborating my position as indicated above, Schaffen als Auswhlen und Fertig-machen des Gewhlten. (Nachla 1887, 9[106]), and Grimm comments: Creation here does not mean creation ex nihilo. For Nietzsche, a thing, object, quality, etc., is constituted within the sphere of
perspectival activity of a power-center. What or how anything is, is a function of this activity and,

A Silent World

25

I have been given to understand that the pioneers in the discovery of the
DNA were in fact experimenting with a number of different representations of
the DNA, before, eventually, they reached a consensus about a simple and elegant model that most efficiently solved the problems of representing this
string. (Thanks to powerful microscopes, we have today enhanced visibility of
the world; thus, we believe we see a string tightly wrapped up in the nucleus of
the cell; it is today part of our appearing universe.) The model of the string is currently our truth about the DNA; what DNA is beyond that truth, on the inexplicable Ur-ground, that we cannot imagine. We can of course always imagine
other models; and one must expect that some day our present model will be replaced with something else; maybe our old string will still be there, but merely
as a remnant, as an insignificant loop within something more complicated, more
sophisticated, solving other problems, etc. Maybe one day, advances in mathematics will give us completely different ways of representing inner nature; maybe
we will realize that inner nature is much more precisely represented in four, five,
or six dimensions. Maybe one day, computers will give us the means to perceive
the inner workings of the DNA according to another speed, different from the
cumbersome human timeframe that we always apply to observations.
But still, if DNA had been a mere fiction, a playful creation, a conceptional
invention, a construction in language, how could one explain the repeated success of DNA fingerprinting (a few rape victims have been vindicated thanks to
DNA analysis)? Nietzsches position is sufficiently pragmatic to save him from
the embarrassment of having to choke back such simple and straightforward
questions.41

41

as we have seen, there can be no thing apart from an interpretative act. Thus the interpretativecognitive act is entirely creative: not only is this act responsible for its contents it is also identical with them. (Grimm: Nietzsches Theory, loc. cit., p. 185.) Now, if a creative act is responsible for and identical to its content, then it is exactly creation ex nihilo. The Nietzsche-quote
Grimm comments upon is completely lucid in this matter: creation is selection. So, something
is selected, which as such must be independent of the creative act i. e., it does not spring from
the creative act itself. As Grimm continues, he sinks deeper and deeper into the trap of Idealism:
The external world is not something simply and univocally present, apart from any observer.
It is a function of that activity of perspectival interpretation and falsification through which each
power-center actively structures and creates its own world. (Ibd., p. 185.) I would reformulate:
the external world is absolute presence, existing apart from any observer; however, in our perspectival interpretations and falsifications, we structure and create our own world on top of
that external world.
This defense of reality in Nietzsche has been echoed by other commentators. Thus, Gnter
Abel asserts: There is no in-itself of things, but only interpreting and interpreted processes of
establishing [Fest-stellung]. This does not imply that reality does not exist, as if interpretation were
identical to fantasizing. But it implies that something, which appears as and is addressed as reality, is not something in an ontological sense given [Gegebenes] and cannot be fixated as an in-itselfalways-lasting permanence [sich-gleich-bleibender Bestand ] of that which is. Reality is always constructed
reality. It is all about production, not about re-production [Wiedergabe] and mirroring. (Abel:
Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 173.) From a pragmatic position, Nehamas repeats the necessity of selec-

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Peter Bornedal

(ii) Human Ground and Sensation

The distinction between Ur-ground and Human ground is not clear in
Nietzsche, and he never suggests it explicitly and deliberately. However, it is implied in several of his statements, for example: We can only understand intellectual processes; that is, the matter that becomes and c a n become visible,
a u d i ble, and t a n gi b l e. We understand the changes in our seeing, hearing, and
touch that hereby occur. That for which we have no sensation does n o t exist
for us but the world does not therefore have to come to an end. (Nachla
1881; KSA 9, 11[75]). Here, we are again introduced to my suggested two
worlds (i. e., as two aspects of one and the same ground): a world we can possibly
perceive (so-called Human), and a world we cannot possibly perceive (so-called
Ur-). In the latter case, the world for which we have no sensation does not
exist for us, but it does not therefore come to an end. In its totality, it is
beyond our perception, but it is not therefore non-existent, as Nietzsche cautions, against for example Berkeleys radical subjectivism.42
We said in the summary above that the Ur-ground could be determined as
the expanse that presents itself to all possible perception. All possible perception was
evoked as an abstract construction meant to signify the inclusion of not only
what humans perceive, and not only what animals (lower and higher) may perceive, but also, somewhat exotically, what any extra-terrestrial might perceive,
what a Cartesian demon might perceive, what God might perceive, etc. In a

42

tivity in our production of knowledge; we could not begin with all data: We must bring something into the foreground and distance others into the background. We must assign a greater
relative importance to something than we do to others, and still others we must completely ignore. We do not, and cannot, begin (or end) with all the data. This is an incoherent desire and an
impossible goal. To grasp everything would be to do away with all perspective relations, it
would mean to grasp nothing, to misapprehend the nature of knowledge. If we are ever to begin
a practice or an inquiry we must, and must want to, leave unasked indefinitely many question
about the world. (Nehamas: Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 49.) From an Analytic position, also Peter
Poellner appears to advocate the notion of a perception-independent reality that eventually
may or may not be correlated with possible variables in scientific equations: The theoretical
entities which are eventually observed by suitable procedures are phenomena [] whose intrinsic
qualities nature remains unknown. Nothing of what Nietzsche says in this connection requires
him to deny that there may be real, perception-independent items of some sort corresponding to
variables in scientific equations which have as yet not been correlated with observable phenomena, but which may in the future be successfully correlated with observables. What he does deny
is rather that such newly discovered correspondences usually enlighten us about the qualitative
nature of these entities. (Poellner, Peter: Causation and Force in Nietzsche. In: Babich, Babette
E. (ed.): Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht 1999, p. 295.)
This critical stance against Idealism is expressed explicitly and frequently in Nietzsche. We are
regarded as mirrors bringing a world in flux into the stabilizing parameters of our organizing
mental mirror. However, it is never the stance that without us (as these so-called mirrors) the
world would also cease to exist: There is no world where there is no mirror, is nonsense.
(Nachla 1880; KSA 9, 6[429]).

A Silent World

27

world open for all possible perception, every layer would be visible, every combination would reveal itself (we would no longer need scientists to make discoveries). If the Ur-ground indicates a ground open for all possible perception,
the Human ground, more modestly, indicates the ground open for possible human
perception. It is the expanse that presents itself to us; that which is or can be (or
could possibly be) seen from our perspective or point.
Whether we are talking about Ur-ground or Human ground, the grounds are
being falsified. The Ur-ground is absolute chaos, a world of becoming, a maelstrom of entropy and disorder we cannot fathom. However, the Human ground
is also chaos, but rather because this reality impresses itself upon us with all its
detail and multiplicity a level of detail we do not and cannot take in and process. In both cases, we simplify, thus falsify, these worlds. In the first case, we
falsify out of intrinsic ontological necessity; in the second case, we falsify out of
intrinsic psychological necessity.
The Human ground is the ground, on which we live and perceive; it is (mutatis
mutandis) the world we see. It appears as if outside us, next to us, and in front
of us; it appears in three dimensions, organized in up and down, near and far,
left and right, etc. (On the Ur-ground it has no meaning to talk about up and
down or left and right; for one thing, because it is not the organization of the
world according to every creature.43) Still, we never see everything next to or in
front of us. We do not travel through the world hyper-conscious of every minor
detail; we rather select, suppress, ignore, and forget. When we pull ourselves together, we are capable of focusing, but mostly, the mode and mindset in which
we see the world is distracted, distant, and absent. And even when we focus,
how focused are we in fact, how attentively do we see (it takes painters years to
learn to see with attention)?
Our sense-organs have evolved in order to respond to certain human needs,
as such they falsify. The sense-apparatus reduces, compresses, and abbreviates.
When we perceive, we are tirelessly gathering information, our eyes scans the
world in rapid saccades for information, but we are becoming conscious of and
using only a fraction of the information we gather. As such, we are only browsing
and skimming the world, but (almost) never seriously reading or studying it. This
analogy to reading is suggested by Nietzsche himself:

43

One may also note that on the scale of the infinitely large and the infinitesimal small it makes
no longer sense to talk about up and down, left and right. We dont admit into our repertoire
statements like The Andromeda Galaxy is located a bit to the left of, and slightly above, our
Milky Way. Near and far, large and small, also makes no sense in the universe; whether the
Andromeda Galaxy is near to or far from the Milky Way is completely relative to the frame of
reference we adopt.

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Peter Bornedal

Just as little as todays reader takes in all the individual words (or especially syllables)
on a page (he catches maybe five out of twenty words and guesses what these five
arbitrary words might possibly mean) just as little do we see a tree precisely and
completely, with respect to leaves, branches, colors, and shape. We find it so much easier to imagine an approximate tree instead. (BGE 192; KSA 5, p. 113).

When we read, which is also perception of an outside world (a point typically

ignored or repressed by Derrida and Derridians44), we are being exposed to an
information-overload that we necessarily reduce and simplify in order to understand. The page is here a world of becoming, a world in flux, but a world by no
means beyond our perceptive capacities, as little as the tree in its detailed manifold is. However, the text, as well as the tree, overwhelms us with information,
and this triggers our natural defense: to compress, truncate, and interpret. We
notice here that we, as already mentioned, defend ourselves against too much reality.
As such self-defensive readers, we create forms that are easier to conceive, but
are in fact mere approximations to the information that is available on the page,
information that our senses make available, but we reduce to what we call the
message or meaning of the text.45
Nietzsche explains himself in more detail in the Nachla:
We are not sufficiently refined to see what is projected in th e a b s o l u te f l ow o f
becoming [absoluten Flu des Geschehens]. Our crude organs only have a capacity for
the enduring [Bleibendes], and summarize and exhibit a surface that does not exist as
such. The tree is in every immediate now [Augenblick] something n e w; but we postulate a f or m, because we are incapable of perceiving the minute absolute movements
[die feinste absolute Bewegung]. We expertly add [legen hinein] a m a th e m a ti c a l ave r ag e-line [mathematische Durchschnittslinie] to the absolute movement. We indeed i n ve n t lines and surfaces, because our intellect takes for granted the e r r o r : the assumption of equality and stability; we can only s e e the stable and only r e m e m b e r
the equal. (Nachla 1881; KSA 9, 11[293]).
44

45

One of the more interesting problems in Derridas famous slogan, There is nothing outside the
text, as it during the seventies and eighties became the battle-cry for a new generation of textualists, is that the text itself is exactly outside us ( and since this is so, from the texts perspective, we as readers must consequently be outside the text.) It is precisely because we as outsiders have to perceive a text that we are inclined to reduce it to meaning; i. e., a meaning, which is,
as Derrida repeatedly demonstrates, often incongruent with the existence of the original information-overload present on the page. See also the following note.
Jacques Derrida has internalized this insight, as he has tried hard, almost uniformly in his earlier
writings, to defeat the human tendency to reduce a text to meaning. He is exercising Nietzsches
ideal philology, to read a text as text; as such, to be aware of all minor details and nuances as they
appear on the textual surface. But whether Derrida has succeeded in realizing this very Nietzschean program is another matter that is still hotly debated, and a discussion which I cannot
engage myself in here. I am inclined to think not; adding as extenuating explanation that it may
never be humanly possible to be absolutely successful in this ambitious program ( we reduce,
qua our so-called reality-defense, which apply also to the world of texts). In the final analysis,
we can only reduce the text to certain abstract forms, such as (in Derridas case) a certain logic
of writing (existing in a variety of descriptions in his philosophy); even somebody as self-conscious as Jacques Derrida.

A Silent World

29

Again, the tree is the favorite example. In a world of absolute becoming, the
tree would be something new from one moment to the next, like the clouds on
the sky, or the waves of the ocean. In a world of becoming, everything renews
itself again and again unendingly. This renewal, however, we cannot grasp.
Throughout a long evolutionary history, we have invented simplifying forms,
such as the line and the surface, on which to organize the flow in stable and equal
things. When we look at the tree, we no longer see a multitude of branches and
leaves waving in the wind, endlessly changing the shape of the crown of the tree,
we see a Gestalt and a shape literally, we see a ghost tree.
We realize now that there is no discrepancy between rejecting the notion of a
thing-in-itself and still maintain that senses falsify. On the contrary! In Nietzsches interpretation of Kant, rejecting the thing-in-itself implies denouncing the
notion of an abstract content beneath or beyond our apparent world. If we live in
a world of nothing but appearance, senses falsify because they reduce, simplify, and
compress the impressions we receive of these appearances, not because they
inform us incorrectly about a presumed thing-in-itself beyond the cover of the appearances. One might say that senses deceive because they are lazy, not because
they are inadequate. (In that case, they are of course phylogenetically lazy; biologically taught to be lazy; lazy as a part of acquired human constitution. To paint the
world with the broadest brush, that was always a biological advantage; it was
never advantageous to immerse oneself in detail and sophistication. But why
not? Because that would delay our response-time when we needed to quickly
identify and respond to a situation, e. g., danger!) It therefore comes as no surprise when in numerous places, we encounter the rejection of the thing-in-itself
along with the proposal of falsifying and arbitrary sense-perceptions.
In the published work, we find statements to that effect in Daybreak, The Gay
Science, and Beyond Good and Evil.
In prison. my eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that I live and move, the
line of this horizon constitutes my immediate fate, in great things and small, from
which I cannot escape. Around every being there is described a similar concentric
circle, which has a mid-point and is peculiar to him. Our ears enclose us within a comparable circle, and so does our sense of touch. Now, it is by these horizons, within
which each of us encloses his senses if behind prison walls, that we measure the world,
we say that this is near and that far, this is big and that small, this is hard and that soft:
this measuring we call sensation a n d it is a ll of it a n e r r o r ! [] The habits of our
senses have woven us into lies and deception of sensation [haben uns in Lug und Trug der
Empfindung eingesponnen; or better: have ensnared us in the lies and deceptions of sensation], these again are the basis of all our judgments and knowledge there is
absolutely no escape, no backway or bypath into the real world! [die wirkliche Welt! ]
We sit within our net, we spiders, and whatever we may catch in it, we can catch
nothing at all except that which allows itself to be caught in precisely o ur net. (D 117;
KSA 3, p. 110).

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Peter Bornedal

According to this passage, we are imprisoned by our senses, since they can
give us only the information that they are arbitrarily designed to give. (The following specification may be in order: granted that our sense-organs are the result
of evolution, and not of design, they must be a priori arbitrary; but they are of
course biologically necessary.) We are in the quotation seen as imprisoned, because
we exist as if surrounded by the world, with ourselves as center. Whether we perceive by sight, hearing, or touch, we perceive within a given periphery. The world
appears like a giant plate with a boundary that moves as we move, always equidistant to the point we happen to occupy; a boundary, therefore, impossible to
transgress. It is from this world that there is no escape into a real world (the real
world here implied may designate either Plato, Kant, or Christianitys real
world; a reality I would label in order to keep track on all these realities the
extra-real ). In his description of the world as a plate and a horizon, Nietzsche is
describing the apparent (the hyper-real ) world; the world we know, the world that
binds us, and the world from which there is no escape into anything more real
than what we already know is real. Expressing oneself less ambiguously, from the
hyper-real there is no escape into the extra-real. As explained in the concluding section, the world according to Nietzsche is always only one, never two; there is no
possibility of escaping one world.
Thus, in Daybreak, both the world as thing-in-itself and the distinction real vs.
apparent are under deconstruction. Still, our senses ensnare us in their deception,
they are errors. The nets, we as spiders sit in, are the nets of our sense-apparatuses. Given our limited sense-apparatus, we are prejudiced in our sensations of
the world. Our limited senses are selective, designed to catch only a certain portion of the world; as such, they generate erroneous knowledge of the world.
This conception is repeated in a passage from The Gay Science. Here explicitly,
the notion of the unknown Kantian X is again rejected, and it is once more
confirmed that there are only appearances. However, these appearances are
again deceptive (there is appearance and a will-o-the-wisp).
What is appearance to me now! Certainly not a dead mask that one could put on
an unknown X and probably also take of X! To me, appearance is the active and living
itself, which goes so far in its self-mockery that it makes me feel that here there is
appearance and a will-o-the-wisp and a dance of spirits and nothing else [dass hier
Schein und Irrlicht und Geistertanz und nichts Mehr ist]. (GS 54; KSA 3, p. 417).

Finally, in the following passage from Beyond Good and Evil, we produce
knowledge of the world by filtering an already existing manifold, thus simplifying a world of becoming and producing distinctions where originally there is
only continua. It is not clear which of our grounds that is object of simplification: the Ur- or the Human. It is also not clear, who is being singled out as the
primary culprit of deception, the senses or the concepts. On the one hand, it is
our senses that we have given a carte blanche for everything superficial; but on

A Silent World

31

the other, it is language that cannot get over its crassness as it keeps asserting
oppositions and distinctions where there is only a fluidity of gradations.
O sanct a si mp licit a s! What a strange simplification and falsification people live
in! the wonders never cease, for those who devote their eyes to such wondering. How
we have made everything around us so bright and easy and free and simple! How we
have given our sense a ca r t e blanche for everything superficial, given our thoughts
a divine craving for high-spirited leaps and false inferences! How we have known
from the start to hold on to our ignorance in order to enjoy a barely comprehensible
freedom, thoughtlessness, recklessness, bravery, and joy in life; to delight in life itself!
And, until now, science could arise only on this solidified, granite foundation of ignorance, the will to know rising up on the foundation of a much more powerful will,
the will to not know, to uncertainty, to untruth! Not as its opposite, but rather as
its refinement! Even when language, here as elsewhere, cannot get over its crassness
and keeps talking about opposites where there are only degrees and multiple, subtle
shades of gradation. (BGE 24; KSA 5, p. 41).

We notice that Nietzsche has three agencies responsible for falsification:

first senses, then (metonymically associated to senses) thoughts, and finally, language. He does not seem to recognize a distinction between these three agencies.
Whether senses, thoughts, or concepts deceive, they perform the same simplifying operation as this operation makes possible science. Thanks to our perceptive,
cognitive, and linguistic simplifications of the world, science raises itself on a solidified, granite foundation of ignorance ignorance, of course, of the original
ground, the world in perpetual flux and eternal becoming, i. e., the chaos as Urground and/or the sensation-chaos as Human ground that we do not access
and/or cannot process as such. We therefore simplify from necessity. As repeated
time and again, falsification is necessary for life. If our perceptive, cognitive,
linguistic simplications are errors, they are surely errors that need not alarm us;
errors that most emphatically we should not try to correct nor could we!46

(iii) Sensation and Word

Hyper-reality is what we encounter before we impose any interpretation on the
world (we ignore for now that relative to the so-called Ur-ground, our perceptive
designs always but in a general, almost metaphorical, sense interpret).
46

When we therefore read Nietzsches Analytic commentators excusing, amending, or mitigating

Nietzsches falsification or error-theory, they are committing a mistake so essential, that if by
any chance they were right about Nietzsche being wrong, they would have annihilated their own
cognitive and linguistic capabilities. Nietzsches error is the condition of the possibility for the
reasoning of Analytic commentators (all these innumerable I shall argue that are falsifications
of a text that is both much more than, and often much different from, the proposed argument).
They forget, that Nietzsches false is not identical to Tarskis false, his Truth not identical to
Tarskis true.

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Peter Bornedal

Nietzsche suggests in this context that it is possible, or it might be possible,

to see without thinking. Senses deceive relative to the degree of thinking by and
through which we apprehend the world. Hyper-reality is thus suggested as the
realm offering a possibility for non-deceiving sense-perception, but typically, we
pass up the possibility by perceiving the world through our cognitive and linguistic filters. Insofar as we see the world through this filter, senses deceive.
The model of the perfect [vollstndiger] fiction is logic. [] Something like that
does not happen in reality [Wirklichkeit ]: it is unutterably more complicated. Since we
impose every fiction as a schema, we also, in our thinking, filter the factual event
through a simplification-apparatus: we thus impress upon it the s i g n - l a n g u a g e
[Zeichenschrift], communicability and knowability [Merkbarkeit] of the logical procedures. [] That something remains unknown does not worry me; I a m d e l i g h te d
that still, there exists an art of knowledge [Erkenntni ] and admire the complexity of
this possibility. The method is: the introduction of absolute fictions as schemata, by
which we may conceive our intellectual processes [geistige Geschehen] as simpler than
they are. Experience [Erfahrung] is only possible by means of memory [Gedchtni ];
memory is only possible by truncating [Abkrzung] intellectual processes into s i g n s.
(Nachla 1885; KSA 11, 34[249]).

The interpreting linguistic expression is not an expression of nothing and

knowledge does not generate itself ex nihilo. Instead, as expressly stated, interpretation is to filter a factual event through a simplification-apparatus a factual event !
But in fact, already Nietzsches choice of words in describing the interpretive
activity simplification, schematization, filtering, etc. suggest a process
where there is a reality to be filtered, schematized, etc. It is because it is there
as the too much and the too chaotic that we filter it through our nets. It is our
human predicament to be exposed to these information-overloads, and our
response is to simplify according to the process, I have called reality-defense. We
thus truncate a phenomenal complex into simple forms that become the conceivable stand-in for (with this falsifying) the complex.47
Through our interpreting filter, we do not secure any a priori knowledge of
the world. Given the inherent arbitrariness and contingency of the filter, we as-

47

Werner Stegmaier offers an interpretation of the logic of the simplification-process that corresponds to my own: Abbreviation in itself does not follow logic in the traditional sense; it
is rather an art, an art of abbreviation [Abkrzungskunst]. It is the art to simplify, to prepare an
infinitely complex world for our ability to orient ourselves in it; a complex world, which is always
something else when we try to think it with our most subtle concepts; which is, as Nietzsche
often says, unutterably more complicated []. To speak of knowledge of things as if things
existed in the world and thinking is representing them as they are, is now to cater to a mythology that already has had its time. Logical thinking, as Nietzsche has learnt to see it, is the
model of a complete Fiction, and Logic, as the logical thinking of logical thinking, is consequently the fiction of a fiction. When thinking of things, we already simplify the reality according to Schemata; we filter it through a simplification apparatus. (Stegmaier: Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral, loc. cit., p. 81.)

A Silent World

33

pire in vain to conceptualize, schematize, and stabilize a perpetually changing

world in any absolute sense. There is as such no arche-interpretation, but there
are surely interpretations. These interpretations are applied to a ground, which
neither withdraws itself from, nor does it yield itself to, interpretation. It is
simply there. It is always in existence, but fleetingly as the evanescent flicker of a
world in incessant change. Interpretation is the attempt to hold on to snippets of
this fleeting world.
In the above passage, the simplification-apparatus is first and foremost a linguistic construct. Experience, says Nietzsche, is only possible by means of memory, memory is only possible by truncating intellectual processes into signs.
Nietzsche is here repeating a notion from Leibniz New Essays of Human
Understanding48; also in Leibniz we simplify our universe thanks to memory that
so to speak assists perception in becoming conscious of itself. In his New Essays,
Leibniz observed that as we go about our average daily lives, consciousness does
not seem to be as dominant a feature as we tend to think. Due to either the
habitualness or superabundance of impressions, we become conscious of only
fractions of our surrounding world. As we grow accustomed to a sight, we tend
to stop noticing it. This is how we become so accustomed to the motion of a
mill or a waterfall, after living beside it for a while, that we pay no heed to it.49
Also when impressions are too minute or too numerous they do not engage our
attention. At every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions, unaccompanied by awareness or reflection.50
If this is granted, according to what principle does our perception eventually
lighten up the world enfolding us? Leibniz shall say that attentive perception
requires memory. Memory is needed for attention: when we are not alerted, so to
speak, to pay heed to certain of our own present perceptions, we allow them to
slip by unconsidered and even unnoticed. But if someone alerts us to them
straight away, [] then we remember them and are aware of just having had some
sense of them.51
From the immediate past, memory informs present perception. This would
be the first mental mechanism for stabilizing and fixating a world of becoming:
I see, and become aware of, something as something. It is by engaging our memory
in our perceptive present that we become conscious. We are thus endowed with a
psychological capability that does not seem to be strictly necessary. Both Leibniz
and Nietzsche are certain that animals do not possess this capability, while we, in
the better part of our waken life, also do fine without it although eventually,
48

49
50
51

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: New Essays on Human Understanding. Translated and edited by
J. Bennett and P. Ramnant. Cambridge 1982.
Ibd., p. 54.
Ibd.
Ibd., my italics.

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Peter Bornedal

consciousness always seems to interfere in and disturb this original unconscious

celebration of the pure perceptive present.
In aphorism 354 from The Gay Science, Nietzsche elaborates on Leibnizs
observation. He explicitly refers to Leibnizs insight,52 and remarks: We could
think, feel, will, remember, and also act in every sense of the term, and yet
none of all this would have to enter our consciousness (as one says figuratively) [wie man im Bilde sagt]. (GS 354; KSA 3, p. 590). Enter consciousness is
here an image [Bilde], a metaphor; it indicates that something can either enter our
consciousness or stay outside. If it stays outside, it is in Nietzsches sense unconscious. It is obviously not repressed, as is Freuds unconscious; it is only not
noticed.
Nietzsche ends up taking Leibnizs insight a step further: we perceive thanks
to memory (so far Leibniz), but we remember thanks to language (Nietzsche). This
step is taken qua the notion of the simplification-apparatus. More precisely, a
simplification-apparatus is an apparatus by which we condense, and then identify.
But then we must ask, why is it that condensation and identification are interrelated
processes? A simplification-apparatus is a device by which to identify something
as; it allows us to recognize something as something. In identifying or recognizing
something as something, we cannot rely only on the masses or stuff in eternal becoming; because these masses, such stuff, cannot be compared to itself. Masses
or stuff cannot from itself be identified as something. In order to be understood as
itself, stuff must be compared to something radically different from itself paradoxically as this may sound. That which is radically different from stuff, and by
which stuff is identified, is the sign. Now stuff becomes a entity, while it also, in
its encounter with the sign, becomes an id-entity. In its natural habitat, in the
world of becoming, it is never an entity-identity, but a nameless complex or multiplex. However, Nietzsches simplification-apparatus, the sign, (i) condenses stuff
into a single indivisible entity, and simultaneously, (ii) identifies this entity as such
and such by labeling it qua the sign.53
52

53

In the present aphorism, it may not be clear which of Leibnizs insights Nietzsche alludes to
when writing that first now we able to catch up with Leibnizs precocious suspicion that there
is a problem of consciousness. In the following aphorism 357, however, he explicitly refers to
Leibnizs incomparable insight [] that consciousness is merely an accidens of the power of representation and not its necessary and essential attribute; so that what we call consciousness constitutes only one state of our spiritual and psychic world (perhaps a sick state) and by no means the
whole of it. (GS 357; KSA 3, p. 598). This would refer to Leibnizs discussions of perception and
memory from New Essays on Human Understanding.
In many respects, Heideggers analysis of how the thing is constituted from a fleeting world of
chaos is similar to the analysis above, except for the fact that Heidegger believes that he can account for these complex matters without recourse to linguistics. Heidegger discusses the thing
as the blackboard behind him in his lecture hall, and says, correctly, that to know this thing as a
blackboard, we must already have ascertained what we encounter as a thing as such, and not,
say, as a fleeing occurrence. (Heidegger: Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 78.) Right! And what does Hei-

A Silent World

35

Before the sign, there is for example no dog-entity/dog-identity. There are

these four-legged, growling, barking, friendly creatures roaming around, but
there are many of them that they are all different so far, they are only stuff.
The sign, (i) condenses them all into the same abstract entity, and (ii) identifies
these creatures as something. The word dog is doing this job. The word dog is
thus a simplification-apparatus that simultaneously condenses and identifies. This
does not mean that we are all of a sudden unable to see different dogs running
about. Language is not like a gray blanket we throw over the world of appearances; it doesnt make the world disappear by transforming it to signifiers; it
doesnt make our eyes fall out of their sockets. However, after the introduction
of the word, we are paradoxically capable of seeing individual dogs as if the selfsame thing. And more importantly, we are able to retrieve them from memory as
the abstract self-same thing: somebody says dog, and suddenly, but without
seeing any particular dog in my imagination, I remember some abstract form
corresponding to dog. So, somebody says dog, and the sound interacts with
old memory-traces, reaches deep back into unconscious memories (memory is
always unconscious, as Freud and Breuer would insist), and now it retrieves not
an exact picture of a dog, but merely some kind of rough outline, some vague silhouette, or some aggregate of dog-attributes. The word dog is thus a most
economical means by which to remember dogs. It is in fact so economical and abstract that the word sometimes make me remember dogs, without I have to take
a detour around an actual representation of dogs, that is, without I have to evoke a
corresponding picture.
As another example, the sign allows me to identify a leaf as a leaf not as an individual entity with its unique and matchless characteristics. By identifying a leaf
as leaf, I give abstract form to something, create an entity out of something,
which in unspoiled and pure perception I could only have apprehended in its

degger now think a fleeting occurrence (my stuff ) is before it is constituted as a thing: Kant
speaks of the mass of sensations, meaning by that the chaos, the jumble that crowds us, keeps us
occupied, concerns us, washes over than tunnels through us [] not only in the moment of perceiving this blackboard, but constantly and everywhere, [] what appears so harmlessly and
quietly and conclusively to us as an object, such as this blackboard or any other familiar thing,
we do meet up with the mass of sensation chaos. It is what is nearest. (Ibd., pp. 78 79.) Heidegger is talking about Nietzsches sensation-chaos, Freuds masses in movement, my hyperreality. In all cases, we are talking about the constant impingement of impressions on our mental
apparatus, before this apparatus has had a chance to remember these sensations as the same;
a memory partly (but not exclusively) constituted by means of the sign with which a certain
selection of impressions are associated, thus retrieved and remembered. However, since
Heidegger never consults linguistics, the constitution of things appears to be abstract and
medium-less. In Heidegger, it just happens thanks to a purely cognitive drive to schematize.
Undoubtedly, Heidegger would have been able to take his analysis more than a few steps further,
had he not been in the grip of a permeating science-phobia and technology-fear that also
seems to extend into the field of Linguistics.

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Peter Bornedal

enigmatic individuality. Hence, following Nietzsche, the thing is an abstraction,

and the thingness of a thing does not grow naturally out of the stuff itself, but
is formed by superimposing on stuff the label by which it becomes a thing, and
to which it will have to answer: its name, its sign. Nietzsche is precise in describing this identification-process as depending on memory and language both! I must
necessarily remember this multitude of glistering, rattling, greenish entities as
some-thing; more precisely, as some thing. We would be utterly incapable of remembering millions of glistering, rattling, greenish entities in their matchless
uniqueness.
Because of this linguistic intermeddling with our perceptions, the universe
has been logicized, as Nietzsche says in another passage from the late Nachla.
Our psychological optics is determined by the following:
1. That communication is necessary, and that through communication something is made stable, simple, and precise (above all, in the identical case). Before
something can be communicable, however, it must be experienced as c u s to m i ze d
[zurechtgemacht], as re- co gn iz a b le [wieder erkennbar]. The material of the senses
customized by the understanding, is reduced to rough outlines, it is made similar, and
subsumed under familiar matters. Thus, the haziness and chaos of the sense-impressions are, as it were, logicized [logisiert ].
2. The world of phenomena is the customized world, which we fe e l a s r e a l.
The reality lies in the continual recurrence of identical, familiar, related things in
their lo giciz ed ch a r a ct er, in the belief that there we are able to reckon and calculate;
3. The opposition to this phenomena-world is n o t the true world, but rather
the world as a formless-inexpressible chaos of sensations [die formlos-unformulirbare
Welt des Sensationen-Chaos] consequently, a n o th e r k i n d o f phenomena-world, for
us incomprehensible [unerkennbar].
4. Questions, what things in-themselves may be like, apart from our sensereceptivity and intellectual activity, must be rebutted with the question: how could we
know t ha t t hin gs ex ist? Thingness was first created by us. (WP 569; KSA 12,
9[106]).

In this passage, several of the problems introduced above have been solved.
It is clear that there is no conflict in, on the one hand, discarding the notion of
things-in-themselves, and on the other, maintain that senses deceive. It is also
clear that it is not inconsistent to claim, in one context, that senses deceive, and
in another that they dont. Senses deceive or not relative to how logicized they
have become. To the extent that we have customized our surrounding world,
made it simple and familiar as life-world, senses interpret, thus deceive. But to
the extent that we transgress this customized, logicized life-world, we rediscover
the haziness and chaos of sense-impressions. In the latter case, we stand out
in a relation to a world that is given in its self-presence, a world of which we may
not be entirely conscious (since consciousness depends of linguistic logicization), and a world therefore described as a formless inexpressible chaos of

A Silent World

37

sensations, but still a world self-given in its self-presence, and therefore within
the range of our perceptive possibilities (therefore also radically different from
Kants so-called true world in-itself ).
Before the emergence of Structural Linguistics, Nietzsche is articulating
insights that later Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobsen, and Louis Hjelmslev
would systematize and clarify. It is in Nietzsche the sign, as linguistic unit, that
is responsible for so-called deception (in this context: relative to the Human
ground). Before the emergence of the form-giving sign, perceptions and
thoughts are just chaotic, indistinct, and subconscious. In Saussures words, they
are vague and nebulous chaotic confused54; in Hjelmslevs words, they
are an unanalyzed, amorphous continuum.55 First in the application of the sign
amorphous thoughts and perceptions are made distinct by being segmented into
distinct parts, which, after segmentation, we conceive as ideas or concepts. The
segmentation occurs when the signifier, the sound-image, and the signified, the
idea, delimit and circumscribe a certain content. Repeating Saussures model of
the sign, there is thus a relationship between signifier and signified that is a priori
arbitrary, but a posteriori necessary. That is, it is a priori arbitrary that we describe glistering, fluttering, rattling, greenish entities as leaves, but as soon as the description has caught on, it forces our hand, or rather our perception. Now we cannot
but see these entities as leaves.
Thanks to the signifier, we have an abstract concept of leaf ; thanks to the
signified, the sound-image leaf circumscribes and defines an abstract content.
In isolation, the two layers are merely two amorphous masses, a mass of thought
(or impressions) and a mass of sound. In isolation, they both elude linguistic description. Thinking before the expression might constitute what we call a mood,
or vague feelings and sensations. Sounds without concepts might constitute noise
(or perhaps music). Separately, none of the entities constitutes a linguistic unit.
First in their attachment, the two masses of thought and sound are segmented into distinct units, representing meaningful and comprehensible signs.
The actual procedure for this reciprocal attachment is admittedly an enigma to
Saussure.
Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula [Prise en elle-mme, la pense est
comme une nbuleuse o rien nest ncessairement dlimit ]. There are no pre-existing ideas,
and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language. [] Phonic substance is
neither more fixed nor more rigid than thought; it is not a mold into which thought
54

55

Saussure, Ferdinand de: Course in General Linguistics. Translation by W. Baskin. New York
1966, p. 112. Baskins translation is in the following compared the Saussures French original:
Saussure, Ferdinand de: Cours de linguistique gnrale. Edited by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye.
Paris 1972.
Hjelmslev, Louis: Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Translation by F. J. Whitfield. Madison
1961, p. 52.

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Peter Bornedal

must of necessity fit but a plastic substance [a matire plastique] divided in turn into distinct parts to furnish the signifiers needed by thought. The linguistic fact can therefore be pictured in its totality i. e. language as a series on contiguous subdivisions
marked off on both the indefinite plane of jumbled ideas [des ides confuses] and the
equally vague [indtermin ] plane of sounds. [] Thought, chaotic by nature, has to become ordered in the process of its decomposition [est force de se prciser en se dcomposant;
better: is made precise in the process of segmentation]. Neither are thoughts given
material form nor are sounds transformed into mental entities [Il ny a donc ni matrialisation des pense, ni spiritualisation des sons]; the somewhat mysterious fact is rather that
thought-sound implies division, and that language works out its units while taking
shape between two shapeless masses [masses amorphes]. [] Linguistics then works in
the borderland where the elements of sound and though combine; their combination produces a form, not a substance.56

It is in the context of this quotation that Saussure suggests two models representing the interaction of the two layers. The first model underscores their mysterious interaction. The signified and the signifier interact as air-pressure acts in
the formation of waves in the ocean. Between the two layers of air and water,
there is an invisible interaction going on, represented, in a drawing by Saussure,
by vertical, fragile-looking, punctuated lines. The linguistic sign would similarly
be an entity represented not by any of the layers, but by the invisible strings between them holding them together. Saussures model below can be seen as a formalized version of the air-pressure/wave analogy; level-a represents the sequence of sounds, and level-b the sequence of concepts.57

Saussures second model underscores the inseparability of the layers. Signified and
signifier are like two sides of the same sheet of paper. Cutting the paper means cutting front and back, signified and signifier, simultaneously; changing one side
implies simultaneously changing the other. However, although there would be
infinite possibilities of configuring the paper, front and back would always stick
together. No pair of scissors could separate the two sides from each other.
In Saussures model, the vertical separation-lines form concept- and soundlevels into linguistic signs. According to these separation-lines a world is sliced
up into abstract entities, simplifying, thus distorting, a world of becoming, a
world originally and essentially language-independent. This is the world Saussure describes as a substance, and Hjelmslev describes as an amorphous con56

57

Saussure: Course in General Linguistics, loc. cit., pp. 112 113; Saussure: Cours, loc. cit.,
pp. 155 157.
Cf. Saussure: Course in General Linguistics, loc. cit., p. 103.

A Silent World

39

tinuum. In Hjelmslevs famous illustration of how this continuum is differently

formatted, he notices how the color-spectrum (which is, as far as we know, a
continuum) is differently described in disparate languages
In Welsh, green is gwyrdd or glas, blue is glas, gray is glas or llwyd, brown is llwyd. That
is to say the part of the spectrum that is covered by our word green is intersected
in Welsh by a line that assigns a part of it to the same area as our word blue while
the English boundary between green and blue is not found in Welsh. Moreover, Welsh
lacks the English boundary between blue and gray, and likewise the English boundary
between gray and brown. On the other hand, the area that is covered by English gray is
intersected in Welsh so that half of it is referred to the same area as our blue and half to
the same area as our brown.58

This implies that in Welsh there is, for example, no sharp distinction between
our green, blue, and gray, which is all glas; neither between gray and brown, which
is llwyd, etc. If thus we adhere to Saussures model above, there would exist a
c-level below the ab sign-level. This c-level would represent Saussures uncharted
nebula; Hjelmslevs amorphous continuum; Nietzsches sensation-chaos; or what above,
I called hyper-reality. If I illustrate this continuum simply by means of a number
line (which most appropriately is called a real line in mathematics), we can give a
formalized illustration on how two languages segment this continuum in two
different ways.

The c-level, the continuum, would now represent the amorphous world,
Nietzsches world of becoming. If the signifier-signified entities, BB, CC, and
HH are the signs for stem, leaf, and petal, then the two different languages in the
model would produce different definitions of how much of the continuum constitutes a stem, how much a leaf, and how much a petal. (Without having to go into
technical details, we notice that in language I, the sign C/C (say leaf ) determines a leaf as the continuum from approximately 5 to 7, while in language II,
a leaf is determined as the continuum from approximately 6 to 10. The continuum from 5 to 7, 6 to 10, etc., is here merely an algebraic metaphor for a particular segment of what above we called hyper-reality.) The c-level would now cor58

Hjelmslev: Prolegomena, loc. cit., pp. 52 53.

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Peter Bornedal

respond to the continuum of impressions received of the tree; the tree in its
amorphous and chaotic totality of detail; the original tree we seem to sacrifice
to the linguistic sign as soon as we start naming a few of its properties.
In conclusion, senses as such are not inadequate instruments of observing the
world, they have not evolved in order to deceive (not regarding what I have called
the Human Ground). Relative to the Human Ground, they are not in-and-ofthemselves deceptive, but they are bound up with a mental apparatus that does
deceive about (i. e., simplify and interpret) the world. As the mental apparatus
during upbringing deepens and expands, a pure and virgin perception of the
world also becomes increasingly impossible.
In his Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud explains how the psychic apparatus,
thanks to the intensity and the repetition of certain impressions, forms
certain facilitating passages [Bahnungen] that assist and adjust the reception of
future impressions. As such, the psychic system creates a shell that during
upbringing and adulthood hardens or coagulates, thus setting the threshold
for what in the future may and may not enter the system. Eventually, memory
(and thus language) comes to play an important role in conscious perception.
Nietzsche seems to be on a par with Freud. When Nietzsche asserts that senses
deceive, they do so relative to the degree of cognitive and linguistic generalization and simplification they have undergone (by mental processes that
Nietzsche elsewhere also tries to explain, but a discussion I must suspend at this
point). In an empty stare into the depth of a lingering, self-manifesting world,
there is possibly no deception (at least, it seems to be an option to bypass some,
if not all, of the defensive layers developed by a normal mental system). However,
there is also in this attitude no self-conscious perception. The world is seen like
Leibniz on his daily stroll sees the habitual sights of the windmill and the waterfall; i. e., in his mode of distracted, passive perception. Let us call this mode of
perception subconscious, unmediated, and non-falsifying. However, sensations deceive
when in full self-consciousness we see actively; i. e., we see and remember the
seen as being such and such. We now recall from memory the Gestalt that
uniquely corresponds to the seen, as this gestalt has been formed in and by language. I see and know I see a leaf only because a leaf-entity is defined in language
(if there were no language for leaf-entities, I would still see leaves, but I would
hardly notice, and possibly not remember. I would see this unnamed leave-stuff
like a mass of impressions rather than as a thing). We will call the mode of perception where I see and know what I see conscious, mediated, and falsifying.
It is thus not the case that senses shut down themselves as soon as language
with its form-giving power defines the seen; it is not the case that language makes
us see only signifiers; it does not disable access to language independent reality.
If it did, Nietzsche had simply recreated appearance as a new thing-in-itself, and language as a new appearance.

A Silent World

41

The diagram below may now summarize some of the relationships having
been discussed. As appears from the diagram, there are two relationships of solidarity between, first, the human ground and subconscious sensations, and, second, conscious sensations and language. Neither of these two relationships of solidarity is
negatively evaluated in Nietzsche. Although the first relationship exerts a special
attraction to Nietzsche (and to numerous other 19th century poets and thinkers),
since it seems like the fascinating entry-point to a world of becoming, the second
relationship as solidifying the world of becoming as a world of being is acknowledged as both necessary and indispensable. That language in this relationship
falsifies does not entail a negative evaluation of language, and it should definitely not prompt us to a search for a language that does not falsify. Language
falsifying in a negative sense is the language I have equated with metaphysics in
the diagram; this metaphysical language has no relationship of solidarity; it
exists in-and-for-itself, referring to nothing.
L ATE E PISTEMOLOGICAL P OSITION
Language (= Metaphysics; destruction of life)
Concepts (= Falsifying) {
Language (= Simplifying; necessary for life)
Sensations (= Conscious; mediated; falsifying)
Sensations (= Neutral) {
Sensations (= Subconscious; unmediated; non-falsifying)
Human ground (= pre-linguistic hyper-reality; continuum)
Thing-in-itself (= Non-existent). Instead: relativistic Ur-ground of forces and points.

The Ur-ground lives an isolated existence in my diagram. This is deliberate,

since, although we are compelled to think the existence of such a ground, its existence has hardly any consequences. As said, the Ur-ground has nothing to do with
us; it is cold and indifferent; it does not like us; therefore, we shrug it off as well.

III) Two Brief Control-Readings to Put the Position to Test

(i) Explaining Nietzsches Negative Ontologie des Dinges
As soon as we perceive a leaf, named and circumscribed as such in language,
we condenses a mass of impressions in form of the glister, the flutter, the rattling, or the green of the trees majestic crown of leaves. We now perceive the
original manifold as a new abstract entity, called leaf. And still, we must insist
with Nietzsche, that the real continuum is there to be perceived; it has not all
of a sudden sunk down behind the world of appearances as a thing-in-itself. It is
not an inaccessible X, but an expanse of impressions intruding upon our sense-

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Peter Bornedal

organs. If the majestic crown of the tree is hidden in and by the abstract entity
leaves, it is no more hidden than an entire color-spectrum is hidden in an object I for shorthand call white the shirt is surely white, but truly, it reflects
from its immediate environment a variety of color-nuances. I see the shirt as
white; I say the shirt is white; but I am also capable of going beyond my abstraction, my short-hand perception, and re-discover a world of colors hidden in the
white. As in Leibniz and as in Freud, also in Nietzsche there is always too much
reality; our ability to respond to this reality indeed our health depends on
how effectively we are able to fend off this reality; with this, reduce it.
We now understand how Nietzsche can call our belief in things a fiction; for
example, as this belief in The Will to Power is described as a fiction necessary for
logic: Supposing there were no self-identical A [Sich-selbst-identisches A] such as
is presupposed by every proposition of logic (and of mathematics), and the A
were already mere appearance, then logic would have a merely apparent world
as its condition . The thing that is the real substratum of A; our belief in
things is the precondition of our belief in logic. The A of logic is, like the atom, a
reconstruction of the thing [eine Nachkonstruktion des Dings]. (WP 516).
In Nietzsches Philosophie ( almost half a century after its publication still one
of the superior introductions to Nietzsche), Eugen Fink labels this lack of belief
in enduring things Nietzsches negative Ontologie des Dinges.
Nietzsches thesis is: there are [es gibt ] in truth [in Wahrheit ] no things, no substances,
there is no reality [Seiendes]; there is only the fluctuating flow of life [Lebensflut],
only the stream of becoming, the ceaseless to-and-fro of its drift; there is nothing enduring, unchanging, permanent everything is in flux. However, our knowledge falsifies reality; it misrepresents the flow as the being of enduring things, fluctuation as
cessation, and transformation of events as standstill. The thing, the substance, is a
fiction, is a power-image of Will to Power, which as Knowledge [Erkenntnis] of
reality subdues, arrests, misrepresents [umlgt], stabilizes becoming, by subordinating
it to the concept. Subsequently, it forgets its violation to the extent that it begins to
believe that it has comprehended reality in its self-produced concepts like substance,
causality, etc. The human being believes in things but there are none; it believes in
Reality [Seiende], but this Reality is its own creation, the conceptual net [Begriffsnetz ] that the human repeatedly casts into the tide of becoming. The world is not the
sum of different and separate things for Nietzsche, coexisting in relation with one another. It does not consists of things at all. [] At the beginning of Knowledge stands
the Original Fall, stands the lie of the conceptual interpretation. [] The Thing is a
human thought-object [Denkegebilde]. [] There is no Knowledge of the Being of
Reality [Seiendheit des Seienden], as Metaphysics has it, because there are no Things whatever, nothing final, no in their finality solidified Things. [] Nietzsches fictional theory of Knowledge is in a decisive sense a negative Ontology of Things: there are no
Things [eine negative Ontologie des Dinges: es gibt keine Dinge].59

59

Fink: Nietzsches Philosophie, loc. cit., pp. 163 165.

A Silent World

43

Reading Fink, we notice that he, in conformity with the general Nietzschereception, does not distinguish between a so-called Ur-ground and Human ground.
As Fink sees it, Becoming and Being is simply a complementary two-fold relationship: a single ground of becoming, complemented by the conceptual falsifications of this ground. In this falsification, the biggest lie of them all is the fabrication of things.60 Fink can therefore conclude es gibt keine Dinge. Although
this statement in itself reiterates statements by Nietzsche to the same effect (for
example: Die Dingheit ist erst von uns geschaffen. Nachla 1887; KSA 12,
9[106]61 Finks interpretation therefore remaining faithful to Nietzsche), standing alone, it is almost incomprehensible in what sense there are no things; and how
Nietzsche could arrive to such a thesis. Things are after all what surround us all
the time, whether asleep or awake. Why would not the massive rock protruding
from the surface of the ground in its undeniable self-presence be a thing? And
why would not the rock be exactly an enduring, permanent, solid thing, rather
than a thing in flux?62
It is here my argument that it is impossible to answer and make sense of
these elementary questions without rethinking Nietzsche within the framework
of Structural Linguistics. Accordingly, it is not the rock as substance that moves
itself around in a world of eternal becoming, it is our impressions of the rock
before the arrival of the sign that moves around in a world of eternal becoming. It is not the rock that needs to be solidified, it is our impressions of the
rock that need solidification. Nietzsches negative ontology of things does not
apply to things as matter and substance, but to things as constituted for a consciousness.

60

61

62

This view echoes Heidegger, who is also seeing the fundamental opposition as between becoming and being, where being, since erecting its truth on the more fundamental ground of becoming, necessarily becomes an illusion: If the world were constantly changing and perishing, if it
had its essence in the most perishable of what perishes and is inconstant, truth in the sense of
what is constant and stable would be a mere fiction and coagulation of what in itself is becoming;
measured against what is becoming such fixating would be inappropriate and merely a distortion. The true as the correct would precisely not conform to Becoming. Truth would then
be incorrectness, error an illusion, albeit a perhaps necessary one. (Heidegger: Nietzsche,
loc. cit., p. 64.)
One may also compare to this passage: The emergence of the thing is entirely the work of the
one representing, thinking, willing, discovering. (Nachla 1885 86; KSA 12, 2[152]).
Commentators lesser than Fink seem oftentimes clueless in regard to this question. One reads
long, and longwinded, accounts of Nietzsches becoming world and non-enduring things by
authors that obviously cannot get past their own pre-theoretical and commonsensical perception of the world. Accounts that have little or no theoretical approach to Nietzsche, applying to
Nietzsche only the impoverished comprehension of the average and ordinary: Yes, the world
changes, but is it not stable in-between the changes? Things dont change all the time; only
sometimes they do! And if nothing else, the commentator can always try to give the trivia an
appearance of logic: If A changes to B, A is still A and B is still B.

44

Peter Bornedal

As such, there are in truth no things. There is (es gibt) only Saussures uncharted nebula, or Hjelmslevs amorphous continuum. Before the sign, rocks
would be only large individual masses, hard to the touch, protruding from everywhere in nature on familiar places or on threatening unfamiliar places. Every
rock would be an individual by the early hominid only known (perhaps! in
truth nobody knows!) by its characteristic individual shape and form. First with
the emergence of the sign, these hard individual substances become one thing, a
universal rock-thing. The rock gains permanence and solidity thanks to something as flimsy and ethereal as the word.

(ii) How Come that Lightning Flashes only in Language?

Sometimes Nietzsche introduces the two relationships, cause-effect and subjectpredicate, as if synonymous. And sometimes the subject-predicate relationship is introduced now as an ontological theme (as what one would strictly call a substanceattribute relation), and now as a linguistic theme (as what one would strictly call a
noun-verb relation). One asks oneself, are these relationships supposed to express
the same thing: cause-effect, subject-predicate, substance-attribute, noun-verb?
It is clear that in all cases, the relationships falsify the world. They express
something, which in itself is one, as two. They double the world in first, an actor,
and then, an action. This implies that in these relationships we encounter the
unique method and logic by which humans humanize the world. A world seen as
only one is fundamentally in-human. To escape this in-humanity, humans invent a
world that is always two.
The world as one, is the world we perceive; the world as surface; the world that
opens itself up to us as hyper-reality; the human ground on which we stand. There is
truly nothing but this appearing world; but, on the other hand, this is intolerable; there must be a reason, a purpose, an intention; there must be something
that gives meaning and explains; there must be a hidden double. Consequently,
the world must be two. The above relationships all express the two.
Every judgment presupposes a deep belief in subject and predicate or in cause and
effect; and the latter belief (that is, the claim that every effect is an activity, and to an
activity one must presuppose an actor) is even only a special case of the former. So the
fundamental belief remains: there exist subjects. I observe something, and look for
a reason for it: this means originally, I am looking for an intention; first and foremost
for someone with an intention, i. e., for a subject, for an actor. (Nachla 1885 86;
KSA 12, 2[83]).

To look for a subject, an intention, in what we observe, is in the epistemological tradition to look for causes. As mentioned above, Nietzsche is taking
Hume a step further. The cause-effect relationship is not to be found as an in-

A Silent World

45

herent objectivity in nature as Hume correctly understood; but Humes epistemological skepticism is still only a special case of our fundamental beliefs in subjects and intentions; that is, our beliefs in life in what is dead. Humes cause-effect
relationship are formed because of habit, but to Nietzsche there is a habit for
that habit, namely our habitual belief in life. The world as one is dead; the world as
two is resurrected and alive. The resurrection is a falsification.
Language stabilizes this misconception. The subject-predicate, or strictly speaking noun-verb, relationship corroborates the idea that for an action there has to be
also an actor. Inherent in our grammatical structure we thus find elementary
metaphysics. Since from early on, we internalize this grammatical structure, we
are by language seduced into thinking the world according to an actor-action
model: I think, I sleep, he expresses, she does, it acts, etc.63
In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche explains this doubling of the world as
resulting from the seductions of language, and illustrates his idea by a favorite
example to which he returns several times in the Nachla: the lightning flashes
[der Blitz leuchten]. He is discussing how the strong cannot be separated from his
strength, and he adds the following general explanation.
A quantum of force is equal to an identical quantum of drive, will, and effect moreover, it is nothing but exactly this drive, willing, and effect itself; and only because of
the seduction of language [] which understands and misunderstands all action as
conditioned by an actor, by a subject, does this appear otherwise. Exactly like the
people separate the lightning from its flash, and makes the latter a deed, an effect of
a subject they call lightning, so people-morality also separates strength from the expressions of strength, as if behind the strong there were some indifferent substratum,
which had t he f reedom to express itself as strength or not. But there exist no such
substratum; there is no Being behind the deed, the effect, the becoming. The
doer is simply creatively added [hinzugedichtet] to the deed; the deed is everything.
People essentially double the deed when they make the lightning flash; it is a deeddeed; it posits the same occurrence first as cause and then again as its effect. The
scientists are no better, when they say the force moves, the force causes, etc. (GM I,
13; KSA 5, p. 279).

And in the Nachla material, the same idea is expressed.

The predicate expresses an effect, which is brought before us, not the effect in itself.
The sum of the effects is condensed [zusammengefat] into a word. It is a mistake that
the subject is made causa sui mythology of the notion of subject. The lightning
flashes a doubling the effect reifies [verdinglicht ]. [] When I say that the lightning flashes, then I have first taken the lightning as an activity, and then as a subject.
(Nachla 1885 86; KSA 12, 2[78] & 2[84]).

63

Since the noun-verb relation is near universal, elementary metaphysics would seem to be promoted in virtually all languages. (We will have to consult the linguists to know exactly how universal this structure is; and perhaps more interestingly, how people with a language where it does
not apply, perceive the world.)

46

Peter Bornedal

It is clear that the separation of lightning from its flash is seen as a falsification of a reality (here, a hyper-reality) where there is no such separation. When
people thus express themselves about the flashing lightning they invent the lightning first as cause, and then add the flashing as its effect; or more precisely, language as such establishes this cause-effect relation (humans can do no better than
using the language they have; they are as such seduced).
In hyper-reality, when lightning flashes, it only does a single thing ( since the
world is always only one): it makes this characteristic zigzag line on the background of the black sky. This zigzag line is only one. But this is not how we report our perception of the zigzag; language impels us into saying instead that the
lightning flashes, and introduces thus into the zigzag an actor-action relationship. Tacitly, language has introduced an intention into the flash. We ask, who/
what is doing the flashing? And answer, lightning is! And again, what is lightning doing? It is flashing! This linguistic seduction has an unconscious effect
upon the subject, since the lightning is now understood as an actor that does
something, namely lighting up the sky. The zigzag has intention. The world has
been humanized.64
This doubling of the world is, we notice, a formal requirement for the
foundation of science. Only on the condition of such a doubling, the physicist is
capable of asking: Why is lightning doing such a flashing? And first now
can he attempt an answer: This is because ; and then follows a scientific explanation of what kind of actor lightning is. The why could only be asked if there
is more to the zigzag than the zigzag; language postulates this additional layer.
We are now in a position to understand why the subject-predicate relationship
over-determines the cause-effect relationship; why there is an older habit behind
Humes habit.

64

Mller-Lauter too refers to this Nietzschean example on subject-predicate logic, and makes the
following comment: As qualities [the predicates, P. B.] attributed to a fictional entity [the subject, P. B.] wherein they are said to subsist, they are thereby transformed into something apart
from us. We posit this entity as the casual origin of these changes, because we are incapable
of thinking them otherwise. Whenever we say to cite one of Nietzsches favorite examples
lightning flashes, we have within ourselves the state of flashing. Yet we do not stop at this, but
rather invent an extra cause (the lightning) (KSA 12, 2[84]). Through this reification of the effect
we bring about a linguistic doubling (KSA 12, 2 [70]). (Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang: On Judging
in a World of Becoming. In: Babich (ed.): Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy, loc.
cit., p. 168.) One wonders what precisely is meant by we have within ourselves the state of
flashing? Mller-Lauter appears to repeat here Nietzsches leuchten ist ein Zustand an
uns (KSA 12, 2[84]), what however, does not make the phrase more lucid; lightning obvious
does not flash in our selves! The idea must be that we receive the impression of a flash, or, we see
a zigzag, this being our state! To this we add, invent, an extra cause, although the added
cause is the same as the effect as state that it aspires to explain. See also: Stegmaier: Weltabkrzungskunst, loc. cit.

A Silent World

47

In Nietzsches cold and indifferent world, there is only the zigzag; and this is
confirmed to us, when in pure and unspoiled perception, we gaze into this empty
world as it opens itself up to us as hyper-reality (as appearance and nothing but
appearance). However, we have created a world where this elementary truth
is rejected and denied; a false world where lightning flashes, forces move, and
I think. But in hyper-reality, there are only flashes, movement, and thinking, without something or someone doing the flashing, moving, and thinking.

48

Michael Cowan

MICHAEL COWAN
NICHTS IST SO SEHR ZEITGEMSS ALS WILLENSSCHWCHE
NIETZSCHE AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WILL

De la vaporisation et de la concentration du moi.

Tout est l.
(Charles Baudelaire: Mon cur mis nu)

Whereas the secondary literature on Nietzsche was once dominated by

poststructuralist philosophical approaches, some of the most innovative recent
research has been concerned with reassessing Nietzsches relation to his more
immediate cultural and discursive contexts. In particular, scholars such as Hans
Erich Lampl, Bettina Wahrig-Schmidt, Robin Small, Anette Horn and Ignace
Haaz have sought to reevaluate the importance, for Nietzsches philosophical
concerns, of his extensive readings in the 19th-century sciences.1 As Andreas Urs
Sommer has argued, in place of strictly theoretical or philosophical readings,
such investigations into Nietzsches more immediate contemporary sources
have sought to probe the historical and cultural stakes of the questions that
his philosophy sought to work through.2 Adopting the latter mode of enquiry,
the present essay seeks to show how an analysis of Nietzsches relation to late
1

See Lampl, Hans Erich: Ex Oblivione: Das Fr-Palimpseste: Noten zur Beziehung Friedrich
Nietzsche-Charles Fr (1857 1907). In: Nietzsche-Studien 15 (1987), pp. 225 264; Lampl,
Hans Erich: Flaire du livre. Friedrich Nietzsche und Thodule Ribot, eine Trouvaille
1887 1987: Hundert Jahre Genealogie der Moral. Zrich 1988; Wahrig-Schmidt, Bettina:
Irgendwie, jedenfalls physiologisch: Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Herzen (fils) und Charles
Fr 1888. in: Nietzsche-Studien 17 (1989), pp. 434 464. Small, Robin (ed.): Nietzsche in Context. Aldershot, UK 2001; Horn, Anette: Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence. Kritik und Analyse der
Moderne. Frankfurt am Main 2002; Haaz, Ignace: Les conceptions du corps chez Ribot et
Nietzsche. partrir des Fragments posthumes de Nietzsche, de la Revue philosophique de la France et de
ltranger et de la Recherche-Nietzsche. Paris 2002.
See Sommer, Andreas Urs: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil kritischer Quellenforschung. Einige
berlegungen zum Fall Nietzsches. In: Nietzsche-Studien 29 (2000), pp. 303 316. Quellenforschung [stellt] das scheinbar Zeitlose in seinen Entstehungszusammenhang und [raubt] ihm
damit seine erdrckende berzeitlichkeit, eben seine Monumentalitt. Kritische Quellenforschung rekonstruiert den Verstehenshorizont, innerhalb dessen bestimmte Fragen und bestimmte Antworten auftauchen. Diese Fragen bestehen ebensowenig wie ihre Antworten rein
fr sich; sie werden nicht direkt vom Ideenhimmel gepflckt. Nur wer das glaubt, kann Quellenforschung mit philosophischer Verachtung bergehen. Freilich wre ein solcher ahistorischer
Idealismus kaum mehr einer Richtung anschlussfhig (ibid., p. 314).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

49

19th-century psychology can help to illuminate one of the key concepts of his late
philosophy: that of the will. Hans Erich Lampl and Ignace Haaz have already
laid the groundwork for such an investigation with their research on Nietzsches
readings in French psychology and in particular, Nietzsches reception of the
writings of Thodule Ribot and the group surrounding Ribots journal La revue
philosophique de la France et de ltranger.3 Building on their work, I wish above all to
explore some of the broader cultural questions that Nietzsches turn toward the
psychology of the will sought to answer.4 While Nietzsches borrowings from
medical literature certainly functioned to bestow authority upon his philosophy
by recourse to one of the dominant explanatory paradigms of the late 19th century, he did not simply repeat or apply verbatim the model of the will he found
there. Rather, Nietzsche transformed this model into a tool for a much broader
sort of cultural critique; in particular, beginning with Jenseits von Gut und Bse
(1885/6), Nietzsche increasingly employed the model of the healthy and pathological will articulated in Ribots work as a master metaphor for describing
the process of social leveling characteristic of democratic societies and modern
mass culture.

I. From Wille zur Macht to Willensschwche

Any investigation into the role of the will in Nietzsches late philosophy must
begin with his concept of the will to power as outlined in part two of Jenseits
von Gut und Bse. There, Nietzsche sought specifically to oppose a dualistic and
mechanistic model of the will stemming from rationalist psychology and decidedly outdated by the late 19th century as a strictly spiritual agency, existing
separately from matter and acting causally upon the latter. The will, Nietzsche
insisted, does not act upon the bodys organic material from the outside, but
rather inhabits the latter through and through; moreover, the will always exists
within a relation of forces, acting not upon matter (since it is part of the latter),
but rather upon other wills:
Wille kann natrlich nur auf Wille wirken und nicht auf Stoffe (nicht auf
Nerven zum Beispiel ): genug, man muss die Hypothese wagen, ob nicht berall,
wo Wirkungen anerkannt werden, Wille auf Wille wirkt und ob nicht alles mechanische Geschehen, insofern eine Kraft darin thtig wird, eben Willenskraft, Willens3

See Lampl: Flaire du livre, loc. cit.; Haaz: Les conceptions du corps chez Ribot et Nietzsche,
loc. cit.
Quellenforschung ist [] der Versuch, jene Fragen zu rekonstruieren, auf die der Text antwortet Fragen, die unserer eigenen, verspteten und verschobenen Lektren wegen nicht mehr
(sozusagen von selbst) unsere eigenen Fragen sind (Sommer: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil kritischer Quellenforschung, loc. cit., p. 306).

50

Michael Cowan

Wirkung ist. Gesetzt endlich, dass es gelnge, unser gesamtes Triebleben als die
Ausgestaltung und Verzweigung einer Grundform des Willens zu erklren nmlich
des Willens zur Macht, wie es mein Satz ist ; gesetzt, dass man alle organischen
Funktionen auf diesen Willen zur Macht zurckfhren knnte [], so htte man
damit sich das Recht verschafft, alle wirkende Kraft eindeutig zu bestimmen als:
Wille z u r Ma cht. ( JGB 36, KSA 5, p. 55)

Nietzsches critique of causal models of the will in which a purely mental

agency would influence matter from the outside takes up a prominent strand
in the thought on the will at the time, which would find its culminating expression
in Hugo Mnsterbergs critique of causal models in his study Die Willenshandlung
(1888).5 More significantly, however, Nietzsches insistence on seeing the will not
as a separate intellectual category but rather as a force inhabiting all organic
activity (instincts, drives, passions, etc.) takes up a key component of the model
of the will laid out by Wilhelm Wundt in his Grundzge der physiologischen Psychologie
(1873/4). Among 19th-century psychologists, Wundts theory of the will was
famous precisely for seeing all organic and psychic functions as more or less
complex expressions of a basic form of will at the origin of all physiological
and psychic activity. As he later described it in his Grundriss der Psychologie (1896):
Die Annahme eines aus rein intellektuellen Erwgungen entspringenden
Wollens, einer Willensentscheidung im Gegensatz zu allen in Gefhlen zum
Ausdruck kommenden Neigungen, usw. schliet [] einen psychologischen Widerspruch in sich.6 For Wundt, as for Nietzsche, all of the bodys activity, from
the most basic instinctual reactions to processes of complex decision-making,

See Mnsterberg, Hugo: Die Willenshandlung. Freiburg im Breisgau 1888. Mnsterberg argued
that the conscious state which individuals tend to identify as the act of willing (in the belief
that the latter could cause material transformations) constituted nothing more than a belated byproduct of the bodys automatic organic processes. More specifically, the sensation of willing
(in the sense of thought acting upon matter) resulted from a metaleptic reversal; having experienced passive kinaesthetic sensations resulting from involuntary muscle reactions, the subject recalled these sensations at the moment at which similar stimuli were about to unleash similar reactions and mistakenly interpreted them as the cause of the movement: Psychisch ausgedrckt,
die Wahrnehmung des Reizes muss durch Association die Erinnerungsvorstellung der entsprechenden Bewegungsempfindung auslsen, noch ehe dieselbe von der vollzogenen Bewegung selbst erzeugt ist. [] In [dieser
Association], als dem konstanten Signal der Bewegung, das zugleich inhaltlich der Bewegung
entspricht, glauben wir nun unwillkrlich auch die Ursache derselben zu sehen: das ist der Typus
der Willenshandlung, aus dem sich alle anderen Formen entwickeln lassen (ibid., p. 145).
Readers of Nietzsche will recognize this notion of psychological reversal as a familiar theme
from Nietzsches own writings, which would occupy a central place in his analysis of the problem
of the agent the deed and responsibility in Zur Genealogie der Moral (see GM I, 13, KSA 5,
pp. 279 80).
Wundt, Wilhelm: Grundriss der Psychologie. 9th ed. Leipzig 1909, p. 223. See also p. 228:
Ein durch rein intellektuelle Motive bestimmtes, vllig affektloses Wollen ist daher, wie schon
oben [] bemerkt, ein psychologisch unmglicher Begriff. Wundt saw his doctrine of the will
specifically as a critique of the classical, rationalist model of Vermgenspsychologie, which saw the
will as a faculty external to the bodys physiological processes (ibid., p. 233).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

51

are modalities of a basic form of willing. What separates complex decisions

(what Wundt calles Wahlhandlungen) from simple instinctual reactions
(Triebhandlungen in Wundts vocabulary) is not any added faculty of causality,
but rather an increase in complexity; while instinctual reactions follow upon a
single motive (such as eating upon hunger), decision-making results from what
Wundt calls a struggle of motives, in which one motive must gain dominance
and impose its direction on all the others:
Sobald ein Kampf solcher widerstreitender Motive deutlich wahrnehmbar der Handlung vorausgeht, nennen wir die Willkrhandlung speziell eine Wahlhandlung und den
ihr vorangehenden Proze einen Wahlvorgang. Ein Herrschendwerden eines Motivs
ber andere gleichzeitig mit ihm gegebene ist berhaupt nur unter der Voraussetzung
eines Kampfes der Motive verstndlich.7

Chart illustrating progression from instinctual reactions to complex decision-making.

From Wundt, Grundriss der Psychologie.

If Wundts struggle of motives appears reminiscent of Nietzsches struggle

of wills, this is hardly by chance. Like Wundt, Nietzsches model of the will to
power sought, first and foremost, to identify a struggle taking place within the
individual.8 One sees this clearly in an early entry from part one of Jenseits
von Gut und Bse, where Nietzsche insisted against the rational psychologists
on seeing the will as a complex psycho-physiological phenomenon: Wollen
scheint mir vor Allem etwas C o mplici r t es, Etwas, das nur als Wort eine Einheit ist, und eben im Einen Worte steckt das Volks-Vorurtheil, das ber die allzeit nur geringe Vorsicht der Philosophen Herr geworden ist ( JGB 19, KSA 5,
p. 32). In particular, Nietzsche argued that any complex act of willing involves
an inner coordination, one in which the inner struggle of wills results in a clear
demarcation of commanding and obeying elements within one and the same
organism:

7
8

Ibid., p. 225.
This model was, in fact, widespread. As Haaz and others have shown, Nietzsches notion of
a struggle within the individual was also largely influenced by his reading of Paul Rouxs
Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Ein Beitrag zur Vervollstndigung der mechanischen Zwecksmigkeitslehre (1881). See Haaz: Les conceptions du corps chez Ribot et Nietzsche, loc. cit., pp. 41 44.

52

Michael Cowan

Ein Mensch, der will , befiehlt einem Etwas in sich, das gehorcht oder von dem
er glaubt, dass es gehorcht. [] Der Wollende nimmt dergestalt die Lustgefhle der
ausfhrenden, erfolgreichen Werkzeuge, der dienstbaren Unterwillen oder UnterSeelen unser Leib ist ja nur ein Gesellschaftsaufbau vieler Seelen zu einem Lustgefhle als Befehlender hinzu. Leffet cest moi: es begiebt sich hier, was sich in jedem
gut gebauten und glcklichen Gemeinwesen begiebt, dass die regierenden Klasse sich
mit den Erfolgen des Gemeinwesens identificirt. Bei allem Wollen handelt es sich
schlechterdings um Befehlen und Gehorchen, auf der Grundlage, wie gesagt, eines
Gesellschaftsbaus vieler Seelen: weshalb ein Philosoph sich das Recht nehmen
sollte, Wollen an sich schon unter den Gesichtskreis der Moral zu fassen: Moral nmlich als Lehre von den Herrschafts-Verhltnissen verstanden, unter denen das Phnomen Leben entsteht. ( JGB 19, KSA 5, pp. 32 33).

There are two central points of interest in this passage. First, recalling the
critiques of Wundt and Mnsterberg, Nietzsche sees any notion of a unitary subject as an illusion. Although the willing subject identifies himself with the commanding will to power within himself, that commanding will can only exist in a
structural relation with all of the other forces in the body that submit to its dictates (the Unterwillen in Nietzsches telling choice of terms); in actuality, the
individual is not synonymous with that commanding will, but rather comprises
the conglomerate sum of all of these struggling forces. That said, however,
one should not conclude that Nietzsche was promoting a pluralistic understanding of subjectivity in any poststructuralist sense. Despite the illusory nature
of the willing subjects identification only with the commanding part of himself,
Nietzsche still holds up this configuration as a model for the correct functioning
of a healthy will. If the individual houses a multiplicity, one might say, Nietzsche
is still thoroughly convinced of the need for gaining a unity of goal and direction
through the hierarchical coordination of organic and psychological forces.9
The second point which I will explore further below is that this model of
the good will always functions, in Nietzsches later writings, as both an individual
and a social model; as Nietzsches own description of the body as a society of
souls implies, his philosophy of the will is always already a philosophy of the
good social order (in jedem gut gebauten und glcklichen Gemeinwesen).
And the central characteristic of such a well ordered and successful social
formation, for Nietzsche, is precisely the clarity of roles between commanding
9

See for example the following notebook entry from 1885: Kampf der Atome, wie der Individuen, aber, bei gewisser Strkeverschiedenheit wird aus zwei Atomen Eins, und aus zwei Individuen Eins. Ebenso umgekehrt aus Eins werden zwei, wenn der innere Zustand eine Disgregation des Macht-Centrums bewerkstelligt. Also g eg en den absoluten Begriff Atom und
Individuum! Das Atom kmpft um seinen Zustand, aber andere Atome greifen es an, um ihre
Kraft zu vermehren. Beide Prozesse: den der Auflsung und den der Verdichtung als Wirkung en des Willens zur Macht zu begreifen. Bis in seine kleinsten Fragmente hinein hat er den
Willen, sich zu verdichten. Aber er wird g e z wung e n, um sich irgendwohin zu verdichten,
an anderer Stelle sich zu verdnnen usw. Weltkrper und Atome nur grenverschieden, aber
g lei ch e Geset ze (Nachla 1885, KSA 11, 43[2]).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

53

and obeying instances, which is the single criteria for what he here calls, in the
language of contemporary psychology, the state of pleasure (Lust-Zustand)
accompanying all acts of successful willing. That state of pleasure does not result
from any freedom of the will in the rational sense, but rather from the clear demarcation of commanding and obeying wills.
Indeed, despite Nietzsches attacks on conventional (Christian and bourgeois) morality in Jenseits von Gut und Bse, his call to examine the act of willing
under the lens of morality in the passage cited above contains not a trace of
irony. Rather, Nietzsche was suggesting an alternative version of morality as the
doctrine of correct relations of force under which the phenomenon of life
might thrive (die Lehre von den Herrschafts-Verhltnissen, [] unter denen
das Phnomen Leben entsteht); at stake, in Nietzsche model of the will, is
precisely an effort to articulate the conditions and power relations both within
individual subjects and within social formations propitious to the thriving of
life. In what follows, I would like to explore the stakes of Nietzsches normative
model of the will as a model both for individual and social relations of force.
One can better understand exactly what this normative model entailed by
examining the late Nietzsches increasing interest in the contemporary medical
discussion of the wills pathologies. Heute, Nietzsche wrote in a later passage
from Jenseits von Gut und Bse criticizing the moral ideals of sympathy and
altruistic self-sacrifice, schwcht und verdnnt der Zeitgeschmack und die
Zeittugend den Willen, Nichts ist so sehr zeitgemss als Willensschwche: also
muss, im Ideale des Philosophen, gerade Strke des Willens, Hrte und Fhigkeit
zu langen Entschliessungen in den Begriff Grsse hineingehren ( JGB 212,
KSA 5, p. 146). From the time of Jenseits von Gut und Bse on, Nietzsche made
the notion of the weak or impaired will (Willensschwche, Willensverlust,
Willenslhmung, etc.) into a centerpiece of his philosophy. As he would
explain in the opening section of his 1888 study Gtzendmmerung (once again
arguing for a realignment of morality and hygiene): Jeder Fehler in jedem Sinne
ist die Folge von Instikt-Entartung, von Disgregation des Willens: man definirt
beinahe damit das Schlech t e (GD VI 2, KSA 6, p. 90).
This concern with the pathological will took up one of the key concepts of
the latest psychological theories to emerge from the research into nervous disorders in the late 19th century. In particular, as Lampl and Haaz have both argued, Nietzsche largely adopted his model of the pathological will from the work
of the French physiologist and psychologist Thodule Ribot, whose seminal
study Les maladies de la volont (1883) had appeared only two years before Jenseits
von Gut und Bse. Like Wundt, Ribot subscribed to an evolutionary model of the
will stretching from automatic drives and reflexes to complex acts of decisionmaking. What distinguished the highest evolutionary stage from the lowest was
not any additional source of motor action which always derived, for Ribot,

54

Michael Cowan

from automatic drives and reflexes but rather the ability to coordinate various
bodily reactions toward the attainment of a single goal; acting as a kind of steering mechanism among possible reactions, the higher will functioned to impose
unity on the subjects actions by allowing certain reactions to take place and,
more crucially, inhibiting others: [La volition] est aussi une puissance darrt, ou,
pour parler la langue de physiologie, un pouvoir dinhibition.10 The will thus imposed what Ribot called a hierarchical coordination upon the bodys drives
and instincts, subordinating certain reactions to the favor of others: On peut
donc dire que [la volont] a pour condition fondamentale une coordination hirarchique, [] une coordination avec subordination, telle que tout converge vers
un point unique: le but atteindre.11 For Ribot, such a capacity for hierarchical
coordination on the psychic plane depended upon the preexistence of an inner
state of organic unity he called character; it was this organic unity, he argued,
that constituted the real secret of productive, resolute and strong-willed men
throughout history;
La coordination la plus parfaite est celle des plus hautes volonts, des grands actifs,
quel que soit lordre de leur activit: Csar, ou Michel-Ange, ou saint Vincent de Paul.
Elle se rsume en quelque mots: unit, stabilit, puissance. Lunit extrieure de leur
vie est dans lunit de leur but, toujours poursuivi. [] Mais cette unit extrieure
nest elle-mme que lexpression dune unit intrieure, celle de leur caractre. Cest
parce quils restent les mmes que leur but reste le mme. [] Ils offrent le type dune
vie toujours daccord avec elle-mme, parce que chez eux tout conspire, converge et
consent.12

The healthy will thus constituted the psychic expression of a healthy state of
hierarchical coordination within the subjects very physiological constitution.
Pathology of the will, on the other hand, occurred whenever this state of organic unity and its corresponding psychic coordination broke down. Building on
the work of the English psychiatrist John Hughling Jackson (Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous System, 1884), Ribot famously attributed will impairments to a
reversal of the evolutionary process, or a state of dissolution.13 Above all, what
10

11
12

13

Ribot, Thodule: Les maladies de la volont. 14th ed. Paris 1900, p. 13. See also p. 14: La doctrine courante admet que la volont est un fiat auquel les muscles obissent on ne sait comment.
Dans cette hypothse, il importe peu que le fiat commande un mouvement ou un arrt. Mais si
lon admet, avec tous le physiologistes contemporains, que le rflexe est le type et la base de toute
action, et si, par consquent, il ny a pas lieu de chercher pourquoi un tat de conscience se transforme en mouvement puisque cest la loi il faut expliquer pourquoi il ne se transforme pas.
Ibid., p. 153.
Ibid., pp. 173 174. See also p. 179: La coordination a pour facteur principal le caractre, qui
nest que lexpression psychique dun organisme individuel.
Ibid., p. 1. On the origins of the notion of evolution and dissolution of the nervous system, see
Lampl: Flaire du livre, loc. cit., p. 53. In fact, Ribot employed the figure of dissolution to explain
most psychic pathologies, as one can read in his earlier works Les maladies de la mmoire (1881) and
Les maladies de la personnalit (1885).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

55

this process entailed was the loss of a healthy faculty of inhibition,14 so that the
unity of character dissolved into a chaotic state of discordant bodily reactions
with no clear direction or tendency: toutes [les pathologies de la volont] se
rduisent cette formule: absence de coordination hirarchique, action indpendante, irrgulire, isole, anarchique.15 Although Ribot saw the rudiments
of this anarchic condition in what he called the irresolute character,16 it
found its ideal type and its ultimate pathological expression in the figure of the
hysteric. As the most extreme example of evolutionary regression, the hysteric,
in Ribots understanding, lacked even the most rudimentary capacity for selfcontrol through the power of inhibition.17 Unable to impose any hierarchical
order onto her competing reflexes, reactions and drives, hysterics thus represented the quintessential embodiment of psychic dissolution; and here, too,
Ribot saw this psychic state is the expression of a physiology in disarray:
Nous appelons une volont ferme celle dont le but, quelle quen soit la nature, est
fixe. [] Sa stabilit traduit la permanence du caractre de lindividu. Si le mme but
reste choisi, agr, cest quau fond lindividu reste le mme. Supposons au contraire
un organisme fonctions instables, dont lunit qui nest quun consensus est sans
cesse dfaite et refaite sur un nouveau plan, suivant la variation brusque des fonctions
qui la composent; il est clair quen pareil cas le choix peut peine natre, ne peut durer,
14

15
16

17

Although Ribot allowed for a form of will pathology involving a lack of drive (rather than a lack
of inhibition), he argued that the overwhelming majority of cases involved what he called les
impulsions irrsistibles qui, elles seules, reprsentent la pathologie de la volont presque entire
(Ribot: Les maladies de la volont, loc. cit., p. 153).
Ibid., pp. 153 154.
Lirrsolution, qui est un commencement dtat morbide, a des causes intrieures que la pathologie nous fera comprendre. [] La volition [] est un tat dfinitif: elle clt le dbat. [] Chez
les natures changeantes, ce dfinitif est toujours provisoire, cest--dire que le moi voulant est un
compos si instable que le plus insignifiant tat de conscience, en surgissant, le modifie, le fait
autre. Le compos form chaque instant na aucune force de rsistance linstant qui suit. Dans
cette somme dtats conscients et inconscients qui, chaque instant, reprsentent les causes de la
volition, la part du caractre individuel est un minimum, la part des circonstances extrieures un
maximum. Nous retombons dans cette forme infrieue de la volont tudie plus haut qui consiste en un laissez faire (ibid., pp. 35 36).
Recapitulating his entire evolutionary model of the will, Ribot explains the hysterics capricious and unpredictable nature as the result of an inability to inhibit the bodily reactions resulting from the drives and passions: Si nous prenons une personne adulte, doue dune volont
moyenne, nous remarquerons que son activit (cest--dire son pouvoir de produire des actes)
forme en gros trois tages: au plus bas, les actes automatiques, rflexes simples ou composs,
habitudes; au-dessus, les actes produits par les sentiments, les motions et les passions; plus haut,
les actes raisonnables. Ce dernier tage suppose les deux autres, repose sur eux et par consquent
en dpend, quoiquil leur donne la coordination et lunit. Les caractres capricieux, dont lhystrique est le type nont que les deux formes infrieures; la troisime est comme atrophie.
[] La tendance des sentiments et des passions se traduire en actes est doublement forte: par
elle-mme et parce quil ny a rien au-dessus delle qui lenraye et lui fasse contre-poids. [] [L]es
dsirs, ns promptement, immdiatement satisfaits, laissent la place libre dautres, analogues
ou opposs, au gr des variations perptuelles de lindividu. Il ny a plus que des caprices, tout au
plus des vellits, une bauche de la volition (ibid., p. 121).

56

Michael Cowan

et quil ny a plus que des vellits et des caprices. Cest ce qui advient chez lhystrique. Linstabilit est un fait. [] Lanesthsie des sens spciaux ou de la sensibilit
gnrale, les hyperesthsies, les dsordres de la motilit, contractures, convulsions,
paralysies, les troubles des fonctions organiques, vaso-motrices, scrtoires, etc., qui
se succdent ou coexistent, tiennent lorganisme en tat perptuel dquilibre instable,
et le caractre qui nest que lexpression psychique de lorganisme varie de mme. Un
caractre stable sur des bases chancelantes serait un miracle. Nous trouvons donc ici
la vraie cause de limpuissance de la volont tre, et cette impuissance est, comme
nous lavons dit, constitutionnelle.18

If the healthy will constituted the psychic expression of an inner organic

unity, then, the diseased will, as represented by the mental state of the hysteric,
was defined above all by the dissolution of hierarchical order.
It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Ribots study, which went
through some 36 editions between 1883 and 1931. Ribots theory of the will as a
hierarchical coordination of bodily reactions and drives provided the basis for
most subsequent discussions of will pathology, including those of such figures as
William James in the United States19 and Pierre Janet in France whose descriptions of hysteria as a dissociation of consciousness into multiple personalities
were most certainly inspired by Ribots model of psychic pathology as a process
of dissolution of the subjects hierarchical unity.20 For his part, Nietzsche might
have gained access to such models through his subscription to Ribots Revue philosophique de la France et de ltranger, one of the premiere forums for the latest research into hysteria, neurasthenia and other nervous disorders by French physiologists and psychologists, which published early printings of all of the passages
from Les maladies de la volont that I cited above, as well as Janets work on dissociation.21 As Lampl demonstrates, Nietzsches interest in Ribots Revue forms
18
19

20

21

Ibid., pp. 122 123.

See for example Jamess discussion of the explosive will in James, William: Principles of Psychology. Dover Publications 1950, vol. II, p. 539.
Janets model of dissociation can be found in his study Ltat mental des hystriques (Paris
1892 1894). See also Janets introduction to his 1893 study Lautomatisme psychologique. Essai de
psychologie exprimentale sur les formes infrieures de lactivit humaine (Paris 1893), where he lays out a
theory of the self similar to that of Ribot: Ce sont presque toujours les formes les plus leves
de lactivit humaine, la volont, la rsolution, le libre arbitre, qui ont t tudies par les philosophes. On sintressait naturellement aux manifestations de lactivit quil tait le plus utile de
connatre pour comprendre la conduite des hommes, leur responsabilit et la valeur morale de
leurs actions. [] Cest lactivit humaine dans ses formes les plus simples, les plus rudimentaires, qui fera
lobjet de cette tude. Cette activit lmentaire, soit quelle ait t constate chez les animaux,
soit quelle ait t tudie chez lhomme mme par les mdecins alinistes, a t dsigne par le
nom quil faut lui conserver, celui dactivit automatique (pp. 1 2).
See Ribot, Thodule: Lanantissement de la volont. In: Revue philosophique de la France et de
ltranger 15 ( January to June 1883), pp. 134 169; Janet, Pierre: Lanesthsie systmatise et la
dissociation des phnomnes psychologiques. In: Revue philosophique de la France et de
ltranger 23 ( January-June 1887), pp. 449 472. On the evidence of Nietzsches familiarity with
the journal, see Haaz: La conception du corps chez Ribot et Nietzsche, loc. cit., p. 81.

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

57

part of a turn, beginning in the mid-1880s, toward the contemporary French

medical discourse, a turn that marked the entry of certain key medical terms,
such as dcadence and Degenerescenz, into his philosophical vocabulary.22
Printing contributions by medical theorists such as Ribot and Janet alongside
those of philosophers such as Henri Guyau, Alfred Fouille and Henri Bergson,
moreover, Ribots Revue also provided a model for one of Nietzsches central
undertakings in his late work: that of incorporating into philosophy the latest
findings of pathological medicine; in this sense, Nietzsches readings in French
medicine were crucial, as both Lampl and Haaz have suggested, to his efforts
forge a philosophy of the body. In what follows, I would like to investigate
more thoroughly the precise role played by Ribots model of the pathological will
in Nietzsches late cultural critique.

II. Culture as Expression of the Will

In a passage from Nietzsches 1888 notebooks, one can read the following interpretation of moral phenomena:
Wir wissen heute, die moralische Degenerescenz nicht mehr abgetrennt von der
physiologischen zu denken: sie ist ein bloer Symptom-Complex der letzteren;
!man" ist nothwendig schlecht, wie man nothwendig krank ist Schlecht: das Wort
drckt hier gewisse U nve r m g en aus, die physiologisch mit dem Typus der Degenerescenz verbunden sind: z.B. die Schwche des Willens, die Unsicherheit und selbst
Mehrheit der Person, die Ohnmacht, auf irgend einen Reiz hin die Reaktion auszusetzen und sich zu beherrschen [] (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[113])

This passage is significant in this context for at least two reasons. First, like
Ribot, Nietzsche espoused the view that psychological and intellectual phenomena were largely dependent upon bodily states.23 More broadly, one can say that
the late Nietzsches turn toward medical theory coincided with a interpretive
schema in which culture appeared as the expression of physiology moral depravity, in the above example, appearing as a function of physiological degeneracy, and specifically of the dissolution of the will. Secondly, as it appears in the
above example, Nietzsches understanding of will pathology (die Schwche
des Willens) clearly derives from Ribots model and incorporates its two central
elements: on the one hand, the notion of the weak-willed subjects inability to
exert self-control through the inhibition of bodily reactions (the inability not to
22

23

Nietzsche himself consistently underscored the French provenance of these terms by including
the accent (dcadence) and avoiding German variants (such as Entartung for Degenerescenz).
See Lampl: Flaire du livre, loc. cit.
For more on Nietzsches understanding of the physiological basis of cultural and intellectual
phenomena, see Horn: Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence, loc. cit., pp. 111 169.

58

Michael Cowan

react to stimuli) and, on the other, the dissolution of the weak-willed subjects organic coordination and corresponding character (die Mehrheit der Person).
In his late writings, Nietzsche increasingly employed both of these figures of
will pathology as tools of his cultural critique. For example, he repeatedly interpreted the altruistic moral precepts of Christianity (along with their secular variants in post-Enlightenment bourgeois society) as the cultural expression of a
pathological physiological state defined by a lack of inhibition and corresponding
state of nervous excitability.24 As Nietzsche explained in one late notebook entry:
[] man verliert die Widerst a n ds-Kraft gegen die Reize, man wird bedingt durch
die Zuflle: man vergrbert und vergrert die Erlebnisse ins Ungeheure eine
Entpersnlichung, eine Disgregation des Willens dahin gehrt eine ganze Art
Moral, die altruistische, welche das Mitleiden im Munde fhrt: an der das Wesentliche
die Schwche der Persnlichkeit ist, so da sie mitklingt und wie eine berreizte
Saite bestndig zittert eine extreme Irritabilitt (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 17[6])25

Certainly, the notion of the hypersensitive (irritable) subject formed a

longstanding topos of modern pathological medicine, and was hardly unique to
Ribots theory;26 here, Nietzsches comparison of the sympathetic subject to an
excited musical string recalls the vocabulary of sensibility (Empfindsamkeit)
from the 18th century.27 But Nietzsches depiction of the subjects inability to resist the influence of stimuli as a symptom of Willensschwche does point to a specific late-19th century discourse on nervousness and the diseases of the will, and
in particular to Ribots model of a faulty faculty of inhibition.
If the morality of altruism found its explanation in a physiological disorder
of the mechanism of inhibition for the late Nietzsche, so too did the other great

24

25

26
27

On Nietzsches pathological reading of Christianity, see Horn: Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence,
loc. cit., pp. 229 273.
Nietzsche used the same physiological explanation to account for the rise of pessimism (and the
popularity of Schopenhauer) in fin-de-sicle Europe: Die Hauptarten des Pessimismus: der Pessimismus der Sen sibilitt (die berreizbarkeit mit einem bergewicht der Unlustgefhle). Der
Pessimismus des u nf r eien Willen s (anders gesagt: der Mangel an Hemmungskrften gegen
die Reize). Der Pessimismus des Z weifels (: die Scheu vor allem Festen, vor allem Fassen und
Anrhren) die dazugehrigen psychologischen Zustnde kann man allesammt im Irrenhause
beobachten, wenn auch in einer gewissen bertreibung. Insgleichen den Nihilismus (das
durchbohrende Gefhl des Nichts) (Nachla 1887/1888, KSA 13, 11[228]).
See Sarasin, Philip: Reizbare Maschinen. Frankfurt am Main 2001.
In his famous Abhandlung ber den Ursprung der Sprachen (1772), for example, Johann Gottfried
Herder took constant recourse to the metaphor of sympathetic instruments in harmony to describe human communication, as in the following passage: Je harmonischer das empfindsame
Saitenspiel selbst bei Tieren mit anderen Tieren gewebt ist, desto mehr fhlen selbst diese
miteinander: ihre Nerven kommen in eine gleichmssige Spannung, ihre Seele in einen gleichmssigen Ton, sie leiden wrkilich mechanisch mit. Und welche Sthlung seiner Fibern! Welche
Macht, alle ffnungen seiner Empfindsamkeit zu verstopfen, gehrt dazu, dass ein Mench hiergegen taub und hart werde! (Herder, Johann Gottfried: Abhandlung ber den Ursprung der
Sprachen. Ed. Hans D. Irmscher. Stuttgart 1996, pp. 14).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

59

Christian virtue: asceticism. On the surface, the latter reading might seem
counter-intuitive, insofar as the ascetic was often held up as a paragon of will
power because of his seeming ability to resist the urges of the body. But
Nietzsche increasingly interpreted the cultivation of ascetic practices in precisely
the opposite sense: i. e., as supplemental techniques of bodily discipline designed
to compensate for the subjects inherent incapacity to inhibit the bodys impulses;
for Nietzsche, the premium placed on ascetic behavior in Western culture since
late Antiquity functioned as a demonstration not of physiological strength (i. e.,
the ability to resist temptations), but rather as an effort to cover over physiological degeneracy. As he described it in his critique of Christianity in the section of
Gtzendmmerung entitled Moral als Widernatur:
Dasselbe Mittel, Verschneidung, Ausrottung, wird instinktiv im Kampfe mit einer
Begierde von Denen gewhlt, welche zu willensschwach, zu degenerirt sind, um sich
ein Maass in ihr auflegen zu knnen. [] Die radikalen Mittel sind nur den Degenerirten unentbehrlich; die Schwche des Willens, bestimmter geredet, die Unfhigkeit,
auf einen Reiz n i cht zu reagiren, ist selbst bloss eine andre Form der Degenerescenz.
Die radikale Feindschaft, die Todfeindschaft gegen die Sinnlichkeit bleibt ein nachdenkliches Symptom: man ist damit zu Vermuthungen ber den Gesammt-Zustand
eines dergestalt Excessiven berechtigt. (GD Moral als Widernatur 2, KSA 6, p. 83)

Techniques of asceticism, then, merely acted to cover over asceticisms opposite: the inability to control sensations and bodily reactions from within.
In his late works, Nietzsche repeatedly employed this model of a pathological
lack of inhibition in order to analyze cultural-historical phenomena. For instance, his critique of disinterested aesthetic contemplation specifically in its
Schopenhauerian variant turned on the same basic argument. Schopenhauers
attempt to escape the will into a realm free of the bodys drives, urges and desires
constituted a reaction to his own inability to impose order on his primary impulses. Indeed, if Schopenhauer took such a negative view of the will, this is because, lacking a healthy faculty of inhibition, he saw the will as synonymous with
the bodys instincts, drives and passions in their primary state. As Nietzsche described it in a notebook entry from 1887:
Schopenhauers Grundmiverstndni des Willens (wie als ob Begierde, Instinkt,
Trieb das Wesentliche am Willen sei) ist typisch: Wertherniedrigung des Willens
bis zur Verkmmerung. Insgleichen Ha gegen das Wollen; Versuch, in dem Nichtmehr-wollen, im Subjekt sein ohne Ziel und Absicht (im reinen willensfreien
Subjekt) etwas Hheres, ja da s Hhere, das Werthvolle zu sehen. Groes Symptom
der E r m dung, oder der Schw che des Willen s: denn dieser ist ganz eigentlich
das, was die Begierde als Herr behandelt, ihr Weg und Maa weist (Nachla 1887,
KSA 12, 9[169])

Where Schopenhauer identified the will with the bodys primary urges,
Nietzsche, as a student of Ribot, saw it as the commanding principle of unity that
should impose order on all of these chaotic impulses (ihr Weg und Maa weist).

60

Michael Cowan

Like the priests flight into ascetic religious practices, Schopenhauers flight from
the body into a neo-Kantian aesthetics of disinterested (i. e. will-less) contemplation reveals, symptomatically, precisely what it attempts to cover up: the inability to resist stimuli or control ones own bodily processes.28
But if Nietzsche took his concept of a failure in inhibition from the scientific
discourse on will pathologies, his interest in that discourse focused above all on
the model of psychic and organic dissolution of the personality described by
Ribot; indeed, like Ribot, Nietzsche saw the two symptoms as parts of one and
the same physiological condition. From the mid-1880s on, Nietzsche returned
again and again, in both his notebooks and publications, to a model of an organism in dissolution. Thus in one notebook entry from early 1888, he explained:
Die Vielheit und Disgregation der Antriebe, der Mangel an System unter ihnen
resultirt als schwacher Wille; die Coordination derselben unter der Vorherrschaft eines einzelnen resultirt als starker Wille; im ersteren Falle ist es das
Oscilliren und der Mangel an Schwergewicht; im letzteren die Prcision und
Klarheit der Richtung (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[219]). Here, too, one could
say that Ribot and the theorists of will pathology hardly had a monopoly on the
anxiety about psychic dissolution in the 19th century, but the very frequency with
which Nietzsche employs the vocabulary of Disgregation29 already suggests
28

29

Nietzsche offers a similar critique of Socrates in Gtzendmmerung. There, Socrates turn toward
the dialectic and rational thought no longer figures as a metaphysical reaction to Dionysian
pessimism (as it did in Die Geburt der Tragdie), but rather as a defense mechanism aimed specifically at suppressing Socratess own physiological degeneration: Die Vernnftigkeit wurde damals errathen als Retterin, es stand weder Sokrates, noch seinen Kranken frei, vernnftig zu
sein, es war de rigueur, es war ihr letztes Mittel. Der Fanatismus, mit dem sich das ganze griechische Nachdenken auf die Vernnftigkeit wirft, verrth eine Nothlage: man war in Gefahr,
man hatte nur eine Wahl: entweder zu Grunde zu gehn oder absurd-ve r nnftig zu sein
Der Moralismus der griechischen Philosophen von Plato ab ist pathologisch bedingt; ebenso
ihre Schtzung der Dialektik. [] Man muss klug, klar, hell um jeden Preis sein: jedes Nachgeben an die Instinkte, ans Unbewusste fhrt hinab (GD II, 10, KSA 6, p. 72). Socratess
turn to toward reason functioned not as a reaction to the instincts as such, but rather as a reaction to his instincts in their specific state of degeneration. If Nietzsche finishes by praising
Socrates in Gtzendmmerung, this is because Socrates finally saw that he was living a lie and,
in recognizing the evidence of his own decadent instincts, followed them into the grave to
make way for a more healthy form of life: Hat er das selbst noch begriffen, dieser Klgste
aller Selbst-berlister? Sagte er sich das zuletzt, in der Weisheit seines Muthes zum Tode?
Sokrates wollte sterben: nicht Athen, er gab sich den Giftbecher, er zwang Athen zum Giftbecher Sokrates ist kein Arzt, sprach er zu sich: der Tod allein ist hier Arzt Sokrates selbst
war nur lange krank (GD II 12, KSA 6, p. 73).
See, for example, Nietzsches critique of altruistic morality in Gtzendmmerung: Es fehlt am
Besten, wenn es an der Selbstsucht zu fehlen beginnt. Instinktiv das Sich-Schdliche whlen,
Gelockt-werden durch uninteressirte Motive giebt beinahe die Formel ab fr dcadence.
Nicht seinen Nutzen suchen, das ist bloss das moralische Feigenblatt fr eine ganz andere,
nmlich physiologische Thatschlichkeit: ich weiss meinen Nutzen nicht mehr zu finde n
Disgregation der Instinkte! Es ist zu Ende mit ihm, wenn der Mensch altruistisch wird (GD
IX 35, KSA 6, pp. 133 134). In a notebook entry from 1888, he makes a similar critique of

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

61

the extent to which he subscribed to the model of will pathology outlined by

Ribot and his colleagues. From the mid-1880s on, the opposition between the
hierarchical ordering and the dissolution of bodily forces assumes an explanatory importance in Nietzsches writing absent from his earlier works. As one can
read in another notebook entry from 1888, the very definition of health for
Nietzsche implies a clear hierarchical coordination of the subjects psychic elements through the domination of one passion over all others:
1) die dominirende Leidenschaft, welche sogar die supremste Form der Gesundheit berhaupt mit sich bringt: hier ist die Coordination der inneren Systeme und
ihr Arbeiten in Einem Dienste am besten erreicht aber das ist beinahe die Definition
der Gesundheit!
2) das Gegeneinander der Leidenschaften, die Zweiheit, Dreiheit, Vielheit der
Seelen in Einer Brust: sehr ungesund, innerer Ruin, auseinanderlsend, einen inneren Zwiespalt und Anarchismus verrathend und steigernd : es sei denn, da eine
Leidenschaft endlich Herr wird. Rckkeh r der G e s u n d h e i t (Nachla 1888,
KSA 13, 14[157])30

While Nietzsches ironic description of two souls in a single breast most

immediately invokes Fausts dilemma Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach!, in meiner
Brust it also recalls the famous cases of split personalities that fascinated psychiatrists such as Ribot and Janet in the late 19th century.31 Indeed, Nietzsche
might also have found a model for his description directly in the pages of Ribots
Maladies de la volont, where Ribot described the familiar literary motif of internal
conflict as the first step toward the dissociation of the will:
Il y a dans lindividu [en conflit avec lui-mme] deux centres de gravit alternatifs,
deux points de convergence pour des coordinations successivement prpondrantes,
mais partielles. A tout prendre, cest peut-tre le type [de maladie de la volont] le plus
commun, si lon [] consulte les potes et le moralistes de tous les temps, rptant
lenvi quil y a deux hommes en nous.32

30

31

32

scientific curiosity as a sign of inner splittering and aging of the organism: ob nicht ein D c ad en ce-S ym p to m schon in der Richtung auf solche Allg e me inhe it gegeben ist: Obje ktivit t als Willens-Disgregation (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[83]). In another notebook entry,
Nietzsche sees the milieu theory of the natural sciences with its definition of man as an essentially reactive being as itself symptomatic of such a dissolution of the will: Die Theorie vom
Milieu, heute die Pariser Theorie par excellence, ist selbst ein Beweis von einer verhngnivollen Disgregation der Persnlichkeit: wenn das Milieu anfngt zu formen und es dem Thatbestand entspricht, die Vordergrunds-Talente als bloe Concrescenzen ihrer Umgebung verstehen zu drfen, da ist die Zeit vorbei, wo noch gesammelt, gehuft, geerntet werden kann die
Zukunft ist vorbei Der Augenblick frit auf, was er hervorbringt und, wehe, er bleibt
dabei noch hungrig (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 15[106]).
Cf. an entry from the 1887 notebooks: alle Schwche ist Willensschwche; alle Schwche des
Willens rhrt daher, da keine Leidenschaft, kein kategorischer Imperativ kommandirt (Nachla 1887/1888, KSA 13, 11[48]).
See for example Ribot, Thodule: Diseases of the Personality. Chicago 1891, pp. 34 38,
pp. 62 66, pp. 117 135.
Ribot: Les maladies de la volont, loc. cit., p. 175.

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Michael Cowan

But Nietzsches reference to the subjects multiple souls also recalls the passages on the will to power from Jenseits von Gut und Bse with which I began: Der
Wollende nimmt dergestalt die Lustgefhle der ausfhrenden, erfolgreichen
Werkzeuge, der dienstbaren Unterwillen oder Unter-Seelen unser Leib ist ja
nur ein Gesellschaftsaufbau vieler Seelen zu einem Lustgefhle als Befehlender hinzu. If the body contains an irreducible plurality of souls (drives,
passions or wills), pathological and healthy states depended, for the late
Nietzsche, entirely on how this plurality was organized. Increasingly (as in the
above citation), the concept of anarchy (Anarchismus) which a classicist
such as Nietzsche would have understood in its etymological sense as a lack of
hierarchical order reappears in Nietzsches vocabulary to describe the chaotic
state of the weakened will, in which no force can gain any clear dominance of direction over others. As he described it in one notebook entry: Alle Einheit ist
nur als O rg anis at i o n un d Z us am m e nspie l. Einheit: nicht anders als wie
ein menschliches Gemeinwesen eine Einheit ist: also G e g ensatz der atomistischen An archie, somit ein H e r r s cha fts-G e bilde, das Eins bedeutet, aber
nicht eins i s t (Nachla 1885/6, KSA 12, 2[87]).

III. The Diseased Will and Mass Modernity

Like the medical trope of hypersensitivity, this figure of anarchic dissolution could also function in Nietzsches philosophy to account for any number
of cultural-historical phenomena such as Socrates decadence, which
Nietzsche constantly refers to in terms of an anarchic state of competing instincts and drives: Die Wildheit und Anarchie der Instinkte bei Sokrates ist ein
d c a den ce-Sympt o m. Die Superftation der Logik und der Vernunft-Helligkeit insgleichen. Beide sind Abnormitten, beide gehren zu einander (Nachla
1888, KSA 13, 14[92]). But more than anything else, Nietzsche invoked the trope
of dissolution and anarchy to ground a specific critique of mass modernity. What
Ribots theory of the anarchic organism offered, that is, was a model with which
to describe what Nietzsche saw as a thoroughly social and political pathology
and one synonymous with the rise of democratic society itself. An entry in
Nietzsches 1887 notebooks defines the problem that concerned him unmistakably: die immer grere Besiegung der Bevorrechteten und Strkeren und folglich Heraufkunft der Demokratie, endlich Anarchie der Elemente (Nachla
1887, KSA 12, 9[8]).
This association between the model of will dissolution (the anarchy of power
relations within the individual organism) and the rise of democratic society
(the anarchy of power relations in the social organism) already formed one of the
central argumentative strategies of Jenseits von Gut und Bse; in Part Six (Wir Ge-

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

63

lehrten), Nietzsche returns to the problem of the will outlined in Parts One and
Two to argue that modern Europe is characterized by a pathological weakness
of the will (Willensschwche) visible above all in the cultivation of doubt and
skepticism. In his diagnosis, Nietzsche attributes this condition to the breakdown of the hierarchical boundaries between various social estates and races in
modern European society:
Skepsis nmlich ist der geistigste Ausdruck einer gewissen vielfachen physiologischen
Beschaffenheit, welche man in gemeiner Sprache Nervenschwche und Krnklichkeit
nennt; sie entsteht jedes Mal, wenn sich in entscheidender und pltzlicher Weise lang
von einander abgetrennte Rassen oder Stnde kreuzen. In dem neuen Geschlechte,
das gleichsam verschiedene Maasse und Werthe ins Blut vererbt bekommt, ist Alles
Unruhe, Strung, Zweifel, Versuch. [] [I]n Leib und Seele fehlt Gleichgewicht,
Schwergewicht, perpendikulre Sicherheit. Was aber in solchen Mischlingen am
tiefsten krank wird und entartet, das ist der Wille: sie kennen das Unabhngige im
Entschlusse, das tapfere Lustgefhl im Wollen gar nicht mehr, sie zweifeln an der
Freiheit des Willens auch noch in ihren Trumen. Unser Europa von heute, der
Schauplatz eines unsinnig pltzlichen Versuchs von radikaler Stnde- und fo l g l i ch
Rassenmischung, ist deshalb skeptisch in allen Hhen und Teifen, [] und seines
Willens oft bis zum Sterben satt! Willenslhmung: wo findet man nicht heute diesen
Krppel sitzen! ( JGB 208, KSA 5, p. 138)

Here again, one can observe that, like the degeneration theorists of his day,
Nietzsche attributed cultural phenomena to thoroughly physiological and biological processes. That said, however, it would be a mistake to attribute Nietzsches observations on the mixing of races (Rassenmischung) and bloodlines to any overarching concern with the kind of racial science which growing
out of 19th-century historical linguistics would go onto inform the theories
of National Socialism. On the contrary, Nietzsches characterization of racial
mixing as the result of a more fundamental mixing of social estates (Stnde- und
folglich Rassenmischung) clearly underscores what bothered him most: the
leveling of social hierarchies. As the privileged disease of modern life, the disease of
the will was always a sign, for Nietzsche, of this movement of social leveling
anarchy33 accompanying the transition to a democratic, mass modernity. Perhaps no cultural process appeared more detrimental to Nietzsche than what
33

Indeed, there is good reason to believe that Nietzsches frequent use of the term anarchy
to describe the flattening out of the hierarchy of the will into a chaos of competing instincts was
motivated, at least in part, by his opposition to contemporary theories of anarchism. Nietzsche
saw anarchism along with nihilism and skepticism as part of a complex of symptoms of
physiological degeneration (see for example Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[74], p. 255). For
Nietzsche, anarchism belonged together with socialism and parlamentarism in one great movement of social leveling, as he explained in his an 1885 notebook entry: Ich bin abgeneigt 1) dem
Socialismus, weil er ganz naiv vom Heerden-Bldsinn des Guten Wahren Schnen und von
gleichen Rechten trumt: auch der Anarchismus will, nur auf brutalere Weise, das gleiche Ideal 2)
!dem" Parlamentarismus und Zeitungswesen, weil dies die Mittel sind, wodurch das Heerdenthier sich zum Herrn macht. (Nachla 1885, KSA 11, 34[177])

64

Michael Cowan

he later called the democratic reduction of social rank and races into a mass
(die demokratische Vermengung der Stnde und Rassen) ( JGB 224, KSA 5,
p. 158). What results is a motley chaos of competing social values and evaluative
criteria (verschiedene Maasse und Werthe). Without any clearly dominant
value system around which to coordinate all the others, the new European generation (Geschlecht) suffers from a permanent state of pathological doubting,
irresolution and the inability to decide (a condition diametrically opposed to the
state of pleasure [Lustgefhl] Nietzsche associated with successful configurations of the will to power).
If Nietzsche turned to French psychology, in particular, for a model with
which to interpret the process of social leveling accompanying the emergence of
mass modernity, this is surely not least of all because he associated the democratic project itself with modern France. In Nietzsches reading of European history, the French Revolution constituted the inaugural event of a modern project
to dissolve social hierarchies into what he described, in a notebook entry from
early 1888, as a new social mishmash:
[] der soz ia le Misch ma sch , Folge der Revolution, der Herstellung gleicher
Rechte, des Aberglaubens an gleiche Menschen. Dabei mischen sich die Trger der
Niedergangs-Instinkte (des ressentiment, der Unzufriedenheit, des Zerstrer-Triebs,
des Anarchismus und Nihilismus) [] der lang e unten gehaltenen Schichten in
alles Blut aller Stnde hinein: zwei, drei Geschlechter darauf ist die Rasse nicht mehr
zu erkennen. Alles ist ver p belt. Hieraus resultirt ein Gesammtinstinkt gegen die
Auswahl, gegen das Privilegium jeder Art. (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[182])34

It was precisely this association of French universalist culture with the dissolution of social hierarchies that allowed Nietzsche to perform an imaginary
mapping of the disease of the will afflicting modern Europe onto the geographical territory across the Rhine. As the analysis of Europes will pathology
from Jenseits von Gut und Bse continues, Nietzsche argues that the sickness affects
34

Of course, Nietzsche did not limit his critique of the demand for equal rights to post-Revolutionary politics. On the contrary, from his analysis of Platonic philosophy to his understanding
of the rise of Christianity, the late Nietzsche everywhere managed to find the same historical
process at work, in which the weak and degenerate demanded to obtain an equal status with their
traditional superiors. See for example Der Antichrist: Dass Jeder als unsterbliche Seele mit
Jedem gleichen Rang hat, dass in der Gesammtheit aller Wesen das Heil jedes Einzelnen eine
ewige Wichtigkeit in Anspruch nehmen darf, dass kleine Mucker und Dreiviertels-Verrckte
sich einbilden drfen, dass um ihretwillen die Gesetze der Natur gestndig durchbroche n
werden eine solche Steigerung jeder Art Selbstsucht ins Unendliche, ins Unverschmte kann man
nicht mit genug Verachtung brandmarken. Und doch verdankt das Christenthum dieser erbarmungswrdigen Schmeichelei vor der Personal-Eitelkeit seinen Sieg, gerade alles Missrathene, Aufstndhisch-Gesinnte, Schlechtweggekommene, den ganzen Auswurf und Abhub der
Menschheit hat es damit zu sich berredet. Das Heil der Seele auf deutsch: die Welt dreht
sich um mich (AC 43, KSA 6, p. 217). Still, even if Nietzsche saw Christian socialism as
a forerunner to the 19th-century political variant, one can no doubt assume that it was the latter
that most directly prompted his social critique.

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

65

different European countries in different measures, depending on the extent

to which democratic ideals and their central vehicle mass education have dismantled older social privileges and hierarchies: Die Krankheit des Willens ist
ungleichmssig ber Europa verbreitet: sie zeigt sich dort am grssten und vielfltigsten, wo die Cultur schon am lngsten heimisch ist, sie verschwindet im
dem Maasse, als der Barbar noch oder wieder unter dem schlotterichten Gewande von westlndischer Bildung sein Recht geltend macht ( JGB 208, KSA 5,
p. 139). As the disease of modernity par excellence, the disease of the will would
thus extend its hold on European societies in direct proportion to the extent
to which those societies had undergone the transition from strong-willed, hierarchical barbarian communities into the new leveled social formations of mass
modernity with its claim to universal education and cultivation.35 By far, Nietzsche argues, this process has attained its apogee in modern France, where the
ideal of cultivating and educating the masses has gained the most ground: Im
jetzigen Frankreich ist demnach, wie man es ebenso leicht erschliessen als mit
Hnden ergreifen kann, der Wille am schlimmsten erkrankt; und Frankreich []
zeigt heute recht eigentlich als Schule und Schaustellung aller Zauber der Skepsis
sein Cultur-bergewicht ber Europa ( JGB 208, KSA 5, p.139).
Where France displays the most advanced state of disintegration of the social
hierarchy, Nietzsche finds the older forms of hierarchy most intact in the feudalistic political climate of late-19th century Russia: Da [in Russland] ist die Kraft
zu wollen seit langem zurckgelegt und aufgespeichert, da wartet der Wille []
in bedrohlicher Weise darauf, ausgelst zu werden, um den Physikern von heute
ihr Leibwort abzuborgen ( JGB 208, KSA 5, p.139). If Europe wishes to reduce
the Russian threat, Nietzsche argues, the best way to weaken its rival is not by encouraging Russia in its imperialistic ambitions, but rather by dissolving Russias
political will through the introduction of democratic institutions from within:
35

Nietzsches use of the term barbarian here carries precisely the opposite sense from that used
by many of his contemporaries to describe the new urban masses. In his novel Sous loeil des barbares (Paris 1888), for example, Maurice Barrs used the term to describe the Parisian crowds
from which the protagonist Phillip attempts to differentiate himself. For Nietzsche, on the
contrary, the barbarian is not the member of the uncultivated masses, but rather the strongwilled personality and more importantly, the strong-willed, unified social formation in opposition to the mishmash of mass modernity; as he described it in his 1887 notebooks, Nietzsche
hoped that a new breed of barbarians would reassert an aristocratic and hierarchic social order
into the chaos of modern mass democracies: Gesammt-Anblick des zuknftigen Europers:
derselbe als das intelligenteste Sklaventhier, sehr arbeitsam, im Grunde sehr bescheiden, bis zum
Excess neugierig, vielfach, verzrtelt, willensschwach ein kosmopolitisches Affekt- und Intelligenzen-Chaos. Wie mchte sich aus ihm eine strkere Art herausheben? [] Eine herrschaftliche Rasse kann nur aus furchtbaren und gewaltsamen Anfngen emporwachsen. Problem:
wo sind die Ba rb a ren des 20. Jahrhunderts? Offenbar werden sie erst nach ungeheuren socialistischen Krisen sichtbar werden und sich consolidiren, es werden die Elemente sein, die
der g r t en H r te g eg en sich selber fhig sind und den lngste n Wille n garantiren
knnen (Nachla 1887/1888, KSA 13, 11[31]).

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Michael Cowan

Es drften nicht nur indische Kriege und Verwicklungen in Asien dazu nthig sein,
damit Europa von seiner grssten Gefahr entlastet werde, sondern innere Umstrze,
die Zersprengung des Reichs in kleine Krper und vor Allem die Einfhrung des
parlamentarischen Bldsinns, hinzugerechnet die Verpflichtung fr Jedermann, zum
Frhstck seine Zeitung zu lesen. Ich sage dies nicht als Wnschender: mir wrde das
Entgegengesetzte eher nach dem Herzen sein, ich meine eine solche Zunahme der
Bedrohlichkeit Russlands, dass Europa sich entschliessen msste, gleichermaassen
bedrohlich zu werden, nmlich E ine n W i l l e n z u b e ko m m e n, durch das Mittel einer neuen ber Europa herrschenden Kaste, einen langen furchtbaren eigenen
Willen, der sich ber Jahrtausende hin Ziele setzen knnte. ( JGB 208, KSA 5,
pp.139 140)

Longing for the reawakening of Europes political will through the authoritative imposition of a new ruling cast, Nietzsche here called to fight what he
saw as a general tendency toward the dissolution of the social and political will in
the post-1789 world: i. e., the tendency toward the reduction of social hierarchies
through the extension of culture, education and political representation to more
and more competing constituencies.36 Despite his desire for a new cast of ruling
barbarians to impose order on this social anarchy, however, Nietzsches very
use of the conditional tense in the above citation (mir wrde das Entgegengesetzte eher nach dem Herzen sein) reflects his own awareness of the unlikelihood of reversing the leveling process constitutive of mass modernity.

36

If socialism represented one such leveling tendency, Nietzsche found another in the womens
movement. From the time of Jenseits von Gut und Bse on, Nietzsche was extremely concerned
with the calls for womens emancipation, which for his contemporaries revolved precisely
around a question of access to education and which Nietzsche saw as part of a general social
evolution toward the dissolution of organic social hierarchies: Man will [die Frauen] berhaupt
noch mehr cultiviren und, wie man sagt, das schwache Geschlecht durch Cultur stark
machen: als ob nicht die Geschichte so eindringlich wie mglich lehrte, dass Cultivirung des
Menschen und Schwchung nmlich Schwchung, Zersplitterung, Ankrnkelung der Willenskraft, immer mit einander Schritt gegangen sind, und dass die mchtigsten und einflussreichsten Frauen der Welt (zuletzt noch die Mutter Napoleons) gerade ihrer Willenskraft und
nicht den Schulmeistern! ihre Macht und ihr bergewicht ber die Mnner verdankten ( JGB
239, KSA 5, pp. 177 178). Far from making women strong, Nietzsche argued, the exposure of
women to education, newspapers and all the other components of a mass-leveled social
formation only rendered them more like their modern, weak-willed male counterparts. Although
Nietzsches arguments here in many ways predict those of such anti-feminists as Otto Weininger,
the specificity of Nietzsches argument lies elsewhere i. e., in a disdain for social leveling as
such. Nietzsche was happy to recognize that select women such as Napoleons mother could
be strong-willed; what horrified him was rather the leveling of social personalities as a whole in
mass society.

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

67

IV. The Aesthetics of Will Impairment: Wagner as Embodiment of Mass Modernity

Wagner hat, sein halbes Leben lang, an die Re volution geglaubt, wie nur irgend ein Franzose
an sie geglaubt hat.
( WA 4)

From the time of Jenseits von Gut und Bse on, Nietzsche interprets the emergence of mass modernity through a veritable historical metanarrative of the
weakening of the will. Indeed, in Nietzsches late writings, the notion of Willensschwche becomes almost synonymous with the other key concept used by Nietzsche to describe modern culture: that of dcadence.37 One can see this by examining the most famous polemic of Nietzsches late writings: his critique of Richard
Wagner. Perhaps no single figure appears more directly associated, in Nietzsches
late texts, with the process of modern leveling than his former mentor. As
Nietzsche describes it in one notebook entry from 1888, Richard Wagner stands
alongside Victor Hugo as an ideal type of the modern artist creating for a leveled
mass culture:
[] Alles ist ve r pbelt. Hieraus resultirt ein Gesammtinstinkt gegen die Au swa h l,
gegen das Privilegium jeder Art, von einer Macht und Sicherheit, Hrte, Grausamkeit der Praxis, da in der That sich alsbald selbst die Privilegir ten unterwerfen:
was noch Macht festhalten will, schmeichelt dem Pbel, mu den Pbel auf seiner
Seite haben
die Genies voran: sie werden Herolde der Gefhle, mit denen man Massen begeistert die Note des Mitleids, der Ehrfurcht selbst vor Allem, was leidend, niedrig,
verachtet, verfolgt gelebt hat, klingt ber alle anderen Noten weg (Typen: V. Hugo
und R. Wagner). (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[182])

In placing Wagner and Hugo in the same category, Nietzsche not only
associated Wagner with the modern masses no writer had more mass appeal
in France than Hugo, whose legendary funeral in 1885 had drawn millions
mourners into the Parisian streets but also with France, and more specifically
with Paris, the epicenter of the culture of mass modernity in Nietzsches imaginary geography.
In an entry from his 1888 notebooks in which he formulated many of the arguments he would publish the same year in Der Fall Wagner, Nietzsche insisted
that the success of Wagners art responded more to a modern sensibility more
Parisian than German:
Ich habe mich gefragt, ob berhaupt schon Jemand dagewesen ist, modern, morbid,
vielfach und krumm genug, um als vorbereitet fr das Problem Wagner zu gelten?
Hchstens in Frankreich: Ch. Baudelaire z.B. Vielleicht auch die Gebrder Goncourt.
37

For a thorough discussion of Nietzsches use of the term dcadence, see Horn: Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence, loc. cit.

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Michael Cowan

Die Verfasser der Faustine wrden sicherlich Einiges an Wagner errathen. [] Die
Sensibilitt Wagners gehrt nicht nach Deutschland: man trifft sie wieder unter den
Nchstverwandten Wagners, den franzsischen Romantikern. [] [Wagners Helden
sind] ein armes Volk [] und ein Prparat zu allerlei neurotisch-hypnotisch-erotischen
Experimenten Pariser Psychologen! Hat man wohl schon bemerkt, da keine je ein
Kind gebar? Sie k n n ens nicht! [] Man will es heute noch am Wenigsten Wort
haben, wie viel Wagner Frankreich verdankt, wie sehr er selbst nach Paris gehrt. []
Zuletzt erwgen wir doch das Entscheidende: was charakterisirt die Wagnersche
Knstlerschaft? der Histrionismus, das in-Scene-Setzen, die Kunst der talage, der
Wille zur Wirkung um der Wirkung willen, das Genie des Vortragens, Vorstellens,
Nachmachens, Darstellens, Bedeutens, Scheinens: ist das in irgend einem Genre eine
deutsche Art Begabung? [] Wir haben an dieser Stelle wir wissen es zu gut! bisher
unsere Schwche gehabt und wir wollen uns keinen Stolz aus dieser Schwche zurechtmachen! [] A b er es ist da s Genie Fr a n k r e i ch s ! (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 15[6])

Any reader familiar with Der Fall Wagner will recognize, in this notebook
entry, many of the central motifs that would reappear in Nietzsches published
polemic against his former mentor the same year. There too, Nietzsche would
remark on the sterility, and by implication degeneration, of Wagners protagonists.38 There too, moreover, he would insist on the essentially French provenance of Wagners concern with such morbid subjects, associating Wagner, in
particular, with French romantic and decadent authors such as Baudelaire, the
Brothers Goncourt, and Hugo.39 [I]ns Grosse gerechnet, Nietzsche insisted in
Der Fall Wagner, scheint Wagner sich fr keine andern Probleme interessirt zu
haben, als die, welche heute die kleinen Pariser dcadents interessiren. Immer
fnf Schritte weit vom Hospital! (WA 9, KSA 6, p. 34).
Above all, however, the preparatory passage from Nietzsches notebooks
points to Der Fall Wagner in its stylistic argument, and specifically in its characterization of Wagners predilection for exciting, dramatic effects. What Nietzsche
here calls Wagners histrionism, and which he associates with a desire to produce
effects for the sake of effects (Wirkung um der Wirkung willen) will reappear,
in Der Fall Wagner, in an extended critique of the theatrical quality of Wagners
operas. War Wagner berhaupt Musiker?, Nietzsche writes in the published text:
38

39

Die Probleme, die er auf die Bhne bringt lauter Hysteriker-Probleme , das Convulsivische
seines Affekts, seine berreizte Sensibilitt, sein Geschmack, der nach immer schrfern Wrzen
verlangte, seine Instabilitt, die er zu Principien verkleidete, nicht am wenigsten die Wahl seiner
Helden und Heldinnen, diese als physiologische Typen betrachtet (eine Kranken-Galerie!): Alles
zusammen stellt ein Krankheitsbild dar, das keinen Zweifel lsst. Wagne r e st un n vrose
(WA 5, KSA 6, p. 22). Ja, ins Grosse gerechnet, scheint Wagner sich fr keine andern Probleme interessirt zu haben, als die, welche heute die kleinen Pariser dcadents interessiren. Immer fnf
Schritte weit vom Hospital! Lauter ganz moderne, lauter ganz g rossstdtische Probleme! zweifeln Sie nicht daran! Haben Sie bemerkt (es gehrt in diese Ideen-Association), dass die Wagnerischen Heldinnen keine Kinder bekommen? Sie k nne ns nicht (WA 9, KSA 6, p. 34).
Seine Manieren dabei erinnern an die auch sonst fr Wagners Stil heranziehbaren frres de
Goncourt: man hat eine Art Erbarmen mit soviel Nothstand (WA 7, KSA 6, p. 28). [Wagner]
ist der Victor Hugo der Musik als Sprache (WA 8, KSA 6, p. 30).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

69

Jedenfalls war er etwas Anderes mehr : nmlich ein unvergleichbarer Histrio, der
grsste Mime, das erstaunlichste Theater-Genie, das die Deutschen gehabt haben,
unser Sceniker par excellence. [] Wagner rechnet nie als Musiker, von irgend
einem Musiker-Gewissen aus: er will die Wirkung, er will Nichts als die Wirkung. Und
er kennt das, worauf er zu wirken hat! (WA 8, KSA 6, pp. 30 31)

If Nietzsche associates Wagners theatrical quality with a desire to cultivation exciting effects,40 he everywhere interprets this new gesture as a response to the process of modern leveling. Like Victor Hugo, Wagner composed
specifically for the masses:
Der grosse Erfolg, der Massen-Erfolg ist nicht mehr auf Seite der Echten , man
muss Schauspieler sein, ihn zu haben! Victor Hugo und Richard Wagner sie bedeuten Ein und Dasselbe: dass in Niedergangs-Culturen, dass berall, wo den Massen
die Entscheidung in die Hnde fllt, die Echtheit berflssig, nachtheilig zurcksetzend wird. Nur der Schauspieler weckt noch die g rosse Begeisterung. Damit
kommt fr den Schauspieler das g o lden e Z eit a lt e r herauf fr ihn und fr Alles,
was seiner Art verwandt ist. Wagner marschirt mit Trommeln und Pfeifen an der
Spitze aller Knstler des Vortrags, der Darstellung, des Virtuosenthums. (WA 11,
KSA 6, pp. 37 38)41

Like Hugo, Wagner transformed art to appeal to the new mass tastes, and he
did precisely by cultivating loud, exciting and stimulating effects a quality
that Nietzsche, writing as a contemporary of Sara Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse,
associated with the 19th-century theater.42
It was precisely in this sense, as a catalyst of the modern leveling process, that
Wagners art could be said to summarize modernity, as Nietzsche described
it in the preface to his 1888 text: Wagner r e s m ir t die Modernitt (WA
40

41

42

Wagner wrde ber das Eine, was noth thut ungefhr urtheilen, wie jeder andre Schauspieler
heute urtheilt: eine Reihe starker Scenen, eine strker als die andre und, dazwischen, viele
klug e Stupididt. Er sucht sich selbst zuerst die Wirkung seines Werkes zu garantiren, er beginnt mit dem dritten Akte, er b e we i s t sich sein Werk mit dessen letzter Wirkung (WA 9,
KSA 6, p. 32).
Compare the following passage: Wozu also Schnheit? Warum nicht lieber das Grosse, das Erhabne, das Gigantische, Das, was die Massen bewegt? (WA 6, KSA 6, p. 24).
Indeed, in order to understand the significance of Nietzsches critique of Wagners theatricality, one must understand Nietzsches view of the theater as the democratic form of entertainment par excellence. The prominence of theater and by extension the theatrical quality of
Wagners operas represented, for Nietzsche, nothing short of a revolt of the masses: Aber
man soll es den Wagnerianern hundert Mal ins Gesicht sagen, was das Theater ist: immer nur ein
U n terh a lb der Kunst, immer nur etwas Zweites, etwas Vergrbertes, etwas fr die Massen Zurechtgebogenes, Zurechtgelogenes! [] Das Theater ist eine Form der Demolatrie in Sachen
des Geschmacks, das Theater ist ein Massen-Aufstand, ein Plebiscit g eg en den guten Geschmack D ies eb en b eweist d er Fall Wagn er : er gewann die Menge, er verdarb den
Geschmack, er verdarb selbst fr die Oper unseren Geschmack! (WA 13, KSA 6, p. 42). On
the cultivation of effects and emotion in the 19th-century theater, see Vogel, Juliane: Die Furie
und das Gesetz. Zur Dramaturgie der groen Szene in der Tragdie des 19. Jahrhunderts. Freiburg im Breisgau 2003.

70

Michael Cowan

Vorwort, KSA 6, p. 12). And here, too, Nietzsche everywhere interpreted this
leveling process through the lens of 19th-century nervous pathology. Through
the cultivation of exciting effects, Nietzsche insisted, Wagner sought above all to
use music as a means of stimulating the modern masses already overexcited
nerves: Wagner ist ein grosser Verberb fr die Musik. Er hat in ihr das Mittel
errathen, mde Nerven zu reizen, er hat die Musik krank gemacht (WA 5,
KSA 6, p. 23).43 Indeed, if Wagner makes such a good case study, this is because his music corresponds to the disposition of an entire age dominated by the
nervous masses: Unsre Aerzte und Physiologen haben in Wagner ihren interessantesten Fall, zum Mindesten einen sehr vollstndigen. Gerade, weil Nichts
moderner ist als diese Gesammterkrankung, diese Sptheit und berreiztheit
der nervsen Machinerie, ist Wagner der m ode r ne K nstle r par excellence
(WA 5, KSA 6, p. 23).
But if Wagners appeal to the nerves of the masses already seems to encourage
the kind of social levelling Nietzsche sought to criticize with the model of will pathology, his stylistic innovations also offer a kind of mimesis of this very process
on the formal level. Throughout Der Fall Wagner, Nietzsche interprets the cultivation of effects as a sign of Wagners inability to impose any hierarchical organization on the artistic material, or what Nietzsche describes as his incapacity
for organic arrangements (seine Unfhigkeit zum organischen Gestalten)
(WA 7, KSA 6, p. 28). Wagner, Nietzsche argues, cultivated his theatrical aesthetic to the precise extent that he abandoned internal logic or musical structure.
Wagner war nicht Musiker von Instinkt. Dies bewies er damit, dass er alle Gesetzlichkeit und, bestimmter geredet, allen Stil in der Musik preisgab, um aus ihr zu
machen, was er nthig hatte, eine Theater-Rhetorik. [] Wagner hat beinahe entdeckt, welche Magie selbst noch mit einer aufgelsten und gleichsam e l e m e n ta risch gemachten Musik ausgebt werden kann. Sein Bewusstsein davon geht bis ins
Unheimliche, wie sein Instinkt, die hhere Gesetzlichkeit, den Stil gar nicht nthig
zu haben. Das Elementarische g eng t Klang, Bewegung, Farbe, kurz die Sinnlichkeit der Musik. (WA 8, KSA 6, pp. 30 31)44
43

44

Cf. the following: [I]ch mag alle Musik nicht, deren Ehrgeiz nicht weiter geht als die Nerven zu
berreden (WA 7, KSA 6, p. 29).
Nietzsches critique of Wagners lack of organic structure and internal logic overlaps with the
burgeoning critique of impressionist aesthetics in the late 19th century. Vor allem kein Gedanke!, Nietzsche writes ironically at one point. Nichts ist compromittirender als ein Gedanke!
Sondern der Zustand vor dem Gedanken, das Gedrng der noch nicht geborenen Gedanken,
das Versprechen zuknftiger Gedanken, die Welt, wie sie war, bevor Gott sie schuf, eine
Recrudescenz des Chaos Das Chaos macht ahnen In der Sprache des Meisters geredet:
Unendlichkeit, aber ohne Melodie (WA 6, KSA 6, p. 24). Three years after the publication of
Der Fall Wagner, in his collection Die berwindung des Naturalismus (Dresden 1891), the Austrian
critic Hermann Bahr would describe the new decadent literature from France in analogy to
impressionist painting as follows: Die alte Psychologie hat die Resultate der Gefhle, wie sie
sich am Ende im Bewutsein ausdrcken, aus dem Gedchtnis gezeichnet; die neue zeichnet die
Vorbereitungen der Gefhle, bevor sie sich noch ins Bewutsein hinein entschieden haben. Die

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

71

Even more than the question of Wagners mass appeal, it was this stylistic
transformation the flattening out of hierarchical structure into so many exciting, dramatic effects that seemed to embody, on the aesthetic level, the pathology of the age for Nietzsche. In a key passage from Der Fall Wagner,
Nietzsche reads Wagners theatricality as an aesthetic expression of modernitys hysteria:
Ich werde eine Gelegenheit haben (in einem Capitel meines Hauptwerks, das den
Titel fhrt Zur Physiologie der Kunst), des Nheren zu zeigen, wie diese Gesammtverwandlung der Kunst ins Schauspielerische eben so bestimmt ein Ausdruck
physiologischer Degenerescenz (genauer, eine Form des Hysterismus) ist, wie jede
einzelne Verderbniss und Gebrechlichkeit der durch Wagner inaugurirten Kunst: zum
Beispiel die Unruhe ihrer Optik, die dazu nthigt, in jedem Augenblick die Stellung
vor ihr zu wechseln. (WA 7, KSA 6, pp. 26 27)

Although Nietzsche never went on to write his masterwork of physiological

aesthetics, his polemic against Wagners opera allows us to discern the contours
of his model. Most centrally, as the very title Zur Physiologie der Kunst suggests, Nietzsche sought to interpret aesthetics, like morality, through the latest
findings of late 19th-century pathological medicine.45 No doubt, Nietzches
choice of hysteria as the signature pathology determining the theatrical
quality of Wagners music was motivated, in part, by the close association between hysteria and acting in the fin de sicle.46 More significantly, however,
Nietzsche, like Ribot, saw the hysteric as the principle representative of a widespread modern disease of the will. As Nietzsche understood it, the instability
(Unruhe) of Wagners optics corresponded to a constitutive physiological instability of the hysterics character. As he described it in a notebook entry from
1888, such a hysterical instability characterized above all the modern artist:

45

46

alte Psychologie hat die Gefhle nach ihrer Prgung in den idealen Zustand ergriffen, wie sie von
der Erinnerung aufbewahrt werden; die neue Psychologie wird die Gefhle in dem sensualen
Zustande vor jener Prgung aufsuchen (pp. 108 109). For critiques of the new impressionist
paradigm, see especially the first volume of Karl Lamprechts Zur jngsten deutschen Vergangenheit
(Berlin 1902), in which Lamprecht takes Wagners music as the paradigm for a late 19th-century
transformation from an intellectual to a sensual aesthetics in music, visual art and literature, and
Richard Hammans Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst (Kln 1907).
Aside from his efforts to discredit his former mentor, one of Nietzsches goals in Der Fall Wagner
was precisely to articulate this new model of physiological aesthetics, in which aesthetic productions would no longer be read as more or less in conformity with a timeless standard of
beauty, but as historical expressions of physiological states. As Nietzsche would describe it in the
epilogue to Der Fall Wagner: Die Aesthetik ist unablslich an diese biologischen Voraussetzungen [des auf- und niedersteigendem Lebens] gebunden: es giebt eine dcadence-Aesthetik,
es giebt eine klassische Aesthetik, ein Schnes an sich ist ein Hirngespinst (WA Epilog,
KSA 6, p. 50).
The metaphor of the hysteric as an actor was ubiquitous in turn-of-the-century culture. See also
my article: Cowan, Michael: Spectacle de masse et modernit hystrique dans Mario und der Zauberer de Thomas Mann. In: tudes Germaniques 59 (2004), pp. 87 107.

72

Michael Cowan

Der moder ne Knstler, in seiner Physiologie dem Hysterismus nchstverwandt, ist

auch als Charakter auf diese Krankhaftigkeit hin abgezeichnet. [] Die absurde Erregbarkeit seines Systems, die aus allen Erlebnisse Krisen macht und das Dramatische in die geringsten Zuflle des Lebens einschleppt, nimmt ihm alles Berechenbare: er ist keine Person mehr, hchstens ein Rendezvous von Personen, von denen
bald diese, bald jene mit unverschmter Sicherheit herausschiet. Eben darum ist er
gro als Schauspieler: alle diese armen Willenlosen, welche die rzte in der Nhe studieren, setzen in Erstaunen durch ihre Virtuositt der Mimik, der Transfiguration, des
Eintretens in fast jeden ver la ngt en Charakter. (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 16[89])47

Like Ribots capricious hysteric, Nietzsches hysterical modern artist a category embodied most perfectly for Nietzsche by the case of Wagner is characterized above all by his unpredictability and the dissolution of his personality
(eine Rendezvous von Personen) due to his extreme excitability (i. e. the inability to inhibit bodily reactions). As the expression of the hysteric condition,
Wagners art with its leveling of musical structure into a series of exciting,
dramatic effects would thus embody the abulic, hysterical state of an entire
age. The dissolution of form Nietzsche perceived in Wagners music offered an
aesthetic gage of an eminently physiological process of dissolution or what
Nietzsche would describe, in a later passage from Der Fall Wagner, as der Niedergang der organisirenden Kraft (WA Zweite Nachschrift, KSA 6, p. 47).
Indeed, this is precisely the sense in which Nietzsche understood Wagners
art as decadent. For Nietzsche, dcadence represented at once an aesthetic,
social and physiological category and one that centered around the same figure
of dissolution as will pathology. As he described it in the continuation of the
above passage on Wagners hysteria, the decadent style functions precisely as an
aesthetic symptom (or expression) of the dissolution of the will in modern life:
Ich halte mich dies Mal nur bei der Frage des Stils auf. Womit kennzeichnet sich
jede litterarische dcadence? Damit, dass das Leben nicht mehr im Ganzen wohnt.
Das Wort wird souverain und springt aus dem Satz hinaus, der Satz greift ber und
verdunkelt den Sinn der Seite, die Seite gewinng Leben auf Unkosten des Ganzen
das Ganze ist kein Ganzes mehr. Aber das ist das Gleichniss fr jeden Stil der dcadence: jedes Mal Anarchie der Atome, Disgregation des Willens, Freiheit des Indivi47

This notion of the hysteric as an actor comes straight from the research at the Salptrire (which
Nietzsche would have learned of in Ribots journal). In their famous leons du mardi, Charcot and
his colleagues fascinated their audiences with their demonstrations of the hysterics ability to
transform personalities on command. As Charcots assistant Paul Richer described it in one report: Un sujet, sous linfluence dune suggestion verbale, peut se croire M. X. ou Y. Il perd alors
la notion de tout ce qui concourt former sa propre personnalit, et cre laide de ses souvenirs
la personnalit nouvelle qui lui est impose. [] Ce nest plus seulement la faon de lhallucin
qui assiste en spectateur des images se droulant devant lui; cest comme un acteur qui, pris de
folie, simaginerait que le drame quil joue est une ralit, non une fiction, et quil a t transform, de corps et dme, dans le personnage quil est charg de jouer (Cited in Didi-Huberman, Georges: Linvention de lhystrie: Charcot et liconographie photographique de la Salptrire. Paris 1982, p. 286).

Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Will

73

duums, moralisch geredet zu einer politischen Theorie erweitert gleiche Rechte

fr Alle. Das Leben, die gleiche Lebendigkeit, die Vibration und Exuberanz des
Lebens in die kleinsten Gebilde zurckgedrngt, der Rest arm an Leben. berall Lhmung, Mhsal, Erstarrung oder Feindschaft und Chaos: beides immer mehr in die
Augen springend, in je hhere Formen der Organisation man aufsteigt. Das Ganze
lebt berhaupt nicht mehr: es ist zusammengesetzt, gerechnet, knstlich, ein Artefakt. (WA 7, KSA 6, p. 27)

Despite Nietzsches promise to limit himself to a question of style (Ich halte

mich dies Mal nur bei der Frage des Stils auf ), he is clearly interested in
questions going well beyond the sphere of aesthetics; the importance of
Wagners decadent style lies rather in its function as the formal aesthetic
mimesis of an eminently political process of social leveling (gleiche Rechte fr
Alle) the explanation for which the late Nietzsche found in Ribots model of
the will in dissolution (Disgregation des Willens). As this passage suggests,
Nietzsche saw decadence and the pathology of the will, with all of its sociopolitical implications, as more or less synonymous concepts; or rather, one might
say that decadence and democracy represented the aesthetic and political expressions respectively of the same underlying physiological process of the dissolution of the will. The anarchy of the atoms functioned, in Nietzsches late
work, a master-concept for describing mass modernity in its multiple manifestations.
Of course, Nietzsche was not the only observer to attribute cultural and historical phenomena to physiological causes. Readers familiar with the literary discourse of fin-de-sicle France will recognize Nietzsches description of literary
decadence the dissolution of stylistic unity into an anarchy of competing
details as a reference to Paul Bourgets famous definition of literary decadence
from his Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883).48 In his analysis of Baudelaires
poetry, Bourget also described decadent literature as symptomatic of a society
in decomposition:
Par le mot dcadence, on dsigne volontiers un tat de socit qui produit un trs
grand nombre dindividus impropres aux travaux de la vie commune. Une socit doit
tre assimile un organisme. Comme un organisme, en effet, elle se rsout en une fdration dorganismes moindres, qui se rsolvent eux-mmes en une fdration de
cellules. Lindividu est la cellule sociale. [] Si lnergie des cellules devient indpendante, les organismes qui composent lorganisme total cessent pareillement de subordonner leur nergie lnergie totale, et lanarchie qui stablit constitue la dcadence
de lensemble. Lorganisme social nchappe pas cette loi, et il entre en dcadence
aussitt que la vie individuelle sest exagre sous linfluence du bien-tre acquis et de
lhrdit. Une mme loi gouverne le dveloppement et la dcadence de cet autre or48

According to Horn (Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence, loc. cit., pp. 328 329), it was from his reading of Bourgets Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883) that Nietzsche gained most of his knowledge of modern French decadent authors.

74

Michael Cowan

ganisme qui est le langage Un style de dcadence est celui o lunit du livre se dcompose pour laisser la place lindpendance de la page, o la page se dcompose pour
laisser la place lindpendance de la phrase, et la phrase pour laisser la place lindpendance du mot. Les exemples foisonnent dans la littrature actuelle qui corroborent cette fconde hypothse.49

In invoking Bourgets concept of decadence during his discussion of Wagner,

Nietzsche was clearly following, in many ways, the logic of equivalence already
present in Bourgets model, whereby both aesthetics and society can be likened
to an organism in its healthy or pathological states.
However, in appropriating Bourget and the French concept of decadence,
Nietzsche also transforms it in one crucial respect. For Bourget and here Bourgets definition of decadence captured more clearly the symbolic stakes of the
fin-de-sicle decadent movement in the arts than did Nietzsches a decadent
society could be described as a society not democratic enough, one in which, to the
detriment of the greater good or the vie commune, individuals with decidedly aristocratic pretensions insist on hoarding their inherited property and wealth and
refuse to conform to the social imperative of productivity. Nietzsche, as we have
seen, drew precisely the opposite political implications from the model of decadence: the anarchy of decadent society no longer results from individuals insisting on aristocratic hoarding and waste, but rather from the very demand for
equal rights constitutive of modern mass democracy as such.
As I have attempted to demonstrate above, Nietzsche attributed that political
model, as well as its aesthetic expression, to an underlying physiological ground,
the explanation of which he found in contemporary writings on the will and its
pathologies. But here, too, he adopted this explanation from scientific discourse
in order to transform it. If Nietzsche took such great interest in Ribots model
of the dissolution of the will, he did so less in order to diagnose any individual
pathologies than to articulate a model one offering all the authority of 19thcentury science with which to describe what he saw as the pathology of an age,
its aesthetics and above all its politics. The modern disease of the will was, for
Nietzsche, synonymous with the emergence of democratic culture itself.

49

Bourget, Paul: Essais de psychologie contemporaine. Paris 1883, pp. 24 25.

Nietzsche inimitable

75

JACQUES GOETSCHEL
NIETZSCHE INIMITABLE
CRATION ET IMITATION DORIGINE CONTRLE

Dsir doriginalit
Nous prendrons le mot cration dans le sens descriptif de gense dune uvre. Celle-ci pourra tre, selon le cas, luvre dart littraire ou luvre thtrale.1
Disons demble, comme daucuns parmi les critiques, que le sens accord la
cration comme originalit ne convient pas ici. On voquera seulement Roger
Caillois lorsquil crit, propos de loriginalit, ces quelques phrases pleines de
bon sens et dans lesquelles tout (bon) crivain devrait se reconnatre quand il
prtend loriginalit;2 aprs avoir voqu une dlicieuse pense quon attribue
Nerval: Le premier qui compara la femme une rose tait un pote, le second
tait un imbcile, Caillois lui reconnat le mrite suprme quil est commun de
consentir loriginalit et daffirmer sans nuance que linvention fait le talent;
aussi ne voit-il que les talents mdiocres pour fuir tout modle et mettre leur effort chercher lindit. Cest pourquoi rien nchappe cette loi plus rigoureuse ququitable: limportant nest pas dinaugurer, cest dexceller. En ce sens,
laudace du gnie est infiniment suprieure, si la chance lui sourit, la virtuosit
du talentueux, car il peindra une millime Descente de Croix et choisira pour la
tragdie quil rve dcrire le sujet le plus souvent trait.

En ce sens, on dira que le texte dune pice de thtre ne devient proprement parler une uvre
thtrale que si elle sachve dans et par sa reprsentation sur une scne de thtre; et la reprsentation, cest--dire le spectacle, proprement parler, est une cration; on connat par ailleurs
le rle capital quont pris au XX sicle les metteurs en scne qui ont boulevers la pratique
thtrale: ils ont pour nen citer que quelques-uns, Stanislavki, Grotowski, Brecht, Meyerhold,
B. Dort, Chreau, etc. fortement contribu lapproche nouvelle de la thtralit.
Pour toutes les citations qui suivent cf.: Caillois, Roger: Originalit. Dans: Vocabulaire esthtique, publi dans Babel, Coll. Ides n399. Paris 1978, p. 49 51. A vouloir atteindre lorigine,
on peut et lon doit reconnatre quelle est seulement vise et, qu dfaut dtre le premier, au
commencement, savoir que lon est toujours le second. Aussi Flaubert aura-t-il voulu montrer,
parmi dautres sens possibles de son uvre, que Bouvard et Pcuchet poursuivent une chimre, celle
dun livre o rien ne serait dit pour la premire fois mme le pote qui le premier eut lide de
comparer la femme une rose: tout ce quil y a de beau a t bien dit dira Pcuchet et combien
de fois cela naura-t-il pas t dit avant et aprs Flaubert?

76

Jacques Goetschel

Exemplaire est Nietzsche qui, dans sa solitude solaire et silencieuse, solitude

aux sept peaux superposes que rien [] ne traverse3 se sent lu par tous ces
nous autres et parmi les plus clbres, ces hommes sans crainte qui ouvrent
(aussi au sens thtral du rideau) le cinquime livre du Gai Savoir: sans craindre la
banalit, il emprunte le meilleur ses modles dont il se sent complice et du plus
proche sans doute dont il dit: Je suis linventeur du dithyrambe.4
En sappropriant, si lon peut dire, linvention du dithyrambe, que la tradition
attribue Archiloque, il nest pas du tout question, dans lesprit de Nietzsche,
dune quelconque usurpation de ce quon appelle aujourdhui proprit littraire. Il sagit bien plutt de ce qui convient au gnie comme vient de le dire
Roger Caillois qui prcise qu il est plagiaire chaque fois quil en a besoin et na
pas scrupule ltre. Car cest bien dans lesprit du larcin discret et subtil que le
gnie peut construire son style et duquel il en tire son identit dcrivain original.
Aussi bien sera-t-il conforme la pense de Goethe: lcrivain original nest pas
celui qui nimite personne mais celui que personne ne peut imiter.5
En prenant apparemment le contre-pied de Goethe, cest bien sr sur le
mode parodique que Nietzsche inscrira au-dessus de la porte dissimule du Gai
Savoir: Jhabite ma propre maison, je nai jamais imit personne en rien et je me
ris de tout matre qui na su rire de lui-mme.
En ralit, Nietzsche sait bien quil emprunte, il le sait mme trop bien, mais
sans doute la manire de Montaigne: il ne compte pas ses emprunts, il les pse.6
Autrement dit, il les value; certains ont du poids et il sen moque pendant que
dautres, il sen dcharge htivement tant ils sont alourdis par lesprit de pesanteur. Et plus encore, sans les compter ni mme les peser, il veut connatre le vrai
bonheur de les voler; il est vrai quil sagit de son fils Zarathoustra, capable de
se rveiller en pleine nuit, avant le lever du soleil, pour chanter lamour et ainsi transformer la plus sombre mlancolie en dithyrambe,7 le soleil noir de la mlanco-

4
5

Ecce Homo (dsormais en abrg EH), Pourquoi jcris de si bons livres. Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, publi dans les uvres Philosophiques Compltes, T. VIII. Paris 1974, p. 312. Nous
crirons dsormais en abrg OC lorsque nous renverrons cette dition. Nous indiquerons
aussi par FP les fragments posthumes publis dans la mme dition.
EH Zarathoustra 5, OC VIII, p. 315.
Nous ne savons pas si Michel Schneider connaissait ou non cette pense de Goethe mais on en
trouve une trs grande proximit avec celle quil a crite dans son livre qui traite justement du
plagiat, tude en outre trs originale dans une perspective psychanalytique: Le texte original
nest pas le texte qui nimite pas mais celui qui est inimitable; cf.: Schneider, Michel: Voleurs
de mots. Essai sur le plagiat, la psychanalyse et la pense, Coll. Connaissance de linconscient.
Paris 1985, p. 110.
Montaigne, Michel de: Essais, liv. II, chap. X, p. 37, cit par Schneider Michel: Voleurs, op. cit.,
p. 104. Cest un livre superbe qui dit aussi bien notre mal aux mots que lenvol amoureux des signes et qui nous a appris bien des choses sur lart de voler.
EH, OC VIII, p. 315.

Nietzsche inimitable

77

lie8 en pome de louange en lhonneur de Dionysos. On peut remarquer au passage que, malgr son auto-critique concernant la juvnile mlancolie dont
aurait t entache La Naissance de la tragdie,9 la prgnance de la mlancolie, trangement proche subsiste mme voile et transforme sous le charme cruel de Dionysos et de son substitut gnrique Zarathoustra. Comment ne pas reconnatre,
dans cette subtile filiation, une proximit entre, dun ct, le souffle dionysiaque
qui sempare de tout ce qui est mort, pourri, cass, fltri qui donne un spectacle
comme surgi dun gouffre, tout baign dune lumire dor, et si plein et vert,
si dbordant de vie, si tendu dun incommensurable dsir quil fait entendre
le chant lointain et mlancolique celui qui raconte les Mres de ltre;10 et de
lautre, comme une sorte de rponse cette attente dune consolation pour lavenir,11 la plainte immortelle dun tre condamn, par surabondance de lumire et
de puissance, par sa nature solaire, ne pas aimer12 alors quil vit sous lemprise dun
dsir insatiable, un dsir damour qui parle le langage de lamour?13 Condamn
ne pas aimer: amour impossible, car il se nourrit du seul dsir de parler: Cest la
nuit: maintenant, comme une source jaillissante hors de moi, slance mon dsir
cest de parler que jai dsir.14 Seule Ariane serait capable de rpondre15 au chant
amoureux de son amant, inconsolable soleil tnbreux. Or qui sait mieux que
Nietzsche quAriane nest quun masque de Lou lautre amante marine?16 Ny
aurait-il chez lui quune comdie de lamour qui sest lentement labore travers
une savante et douloureuse alchimie du dsir laquelle vise purifier la jouissance
du plaisir? Peut-tre sagit il alors dune purification qui suppose une cruaut telle
quelle puisse se chanter travers la finamor, cest--dire aussi une fine mort, littralement pour celui qui, comme le troubadour, meurt damour, autrement dit, se
voit condamn, malgr ou cause de ses chants, ne pas aimer.17
8

10
11
12
13
14
15
16

17

Cest le contexte du paragraphe et du chant nocturne qui nous a fait penser au vers de Nerval
dans son trs clbre pome El Desdichado quon traduit habituellement par Le Dshrit dont
nous voulons ici mme voquer simplement le premier quatrain:
Je suis le tnbreux, le veuf, linconsol,
Le Prince dAquitaine la tour abolie;
Ma seule toile est morte, et mon luth constell
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mlancolie.
(Les Filles du feu, OC Collection La Pliade)
Essai dautocritique 2. Dans: La Naissance de la Tragdie (en abrg NT), OC I, 1977, p. 27; FP
1885/1886, 2[110], OC XII, p. 120 121.
NT 20, OC I, p. 134.
Ibid.
EH, OC VIII, p. 315.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 317.
Ibid.
Sur ce point, consulter Irigaray, Luce: Amante marine de Friedrich Nietzsche. Paris 1980; voir
notamment la premire partie intitule: Dire deaux immmoriales, p. 8 80.
Nous ne pouvons ici approfondir cet aspect qui pourra faire lobjet dune autre tude.

78

Jacques Goetschel

Ceci nous montre que le travail dcriture de Nietzsche, potique en loccurrence, est tel quil rend compte de cela mme qui fait de lui non pas un pur
original il ny en a jamais eu mais un crateur, dans le sens o, jamais avant lui,
mme Archiloque na pu composer quelque chose daussi approchant que de
dire et de parler la souffrance du dieu. Cest pourquoi on peut y voir deux choses:
Dabord le ddoublement, limage dun Zarathoustra bifrons (Dionysos/
Nietzsche), de l inconsol nervalien, puisquil na pas t consol de son attente dune consolation pour lavenir et de linconsolable, puisquil sait quaujourdhui cette consolation est impossible moins de conserver lavenir sa
part essentielle qui nest pas encore crite, autrement dit, sa part de hasard,
la seule qui soit rserve au rdempteur qui ne peut tre, si cest un homme,
quun pote et un dchiffreur dnigmes.18 Ensuite, quelles quaient t les influences varies et multiples autant physiques par les rencontres avec des personnes de son entourage (et elles furent nombreuses) que culturelles au sens
large ce qui inclut les lectures aussi bien que les spectacles de thtre, on doit
reconnatre avec Curt Paul Janz, que Nietzsche possdait une extraordinaire
facult dadaptation. Il pouvait emprunter penses, concepts et principes sans jamais faire uvre de plagiaire, car il avait lart de les repenser et de les dvelopper
tel point et avec une telle consquence, que l original ny retrouvait, tout au
plus, que ses innombrables potentialits.19
Nous nous retrouvons l au cur du problme qui nous proccupe. En effet,
sil ny a pas de plagiat au sens gnral du terme, cest quil ny a pas de vol, mais
qu travers des lectures par exemple (voire surtout), cest moins dun vol de
mots, de phrases, dides ou dobjets dont il sagit, que du dsir de devenir crivain; autrement dit, du dsir dcrire, cest--dire du dsir de voler la crativit, de
sapproprier la position de lauteur, cest--dire son lieu dorigine, lorigine
mme. Y aurait-il toujours dj, ds quon touche lorigine, une imposture, et,
partant, une imposture originaire dans lacte dcrire? Une imposture do, prcisment, surgissent dinnombrables potentialits? De sorte que lon puisse reconnatre non pas loriginal, puisquil est altr sinon voil et/ou cach/oubli
(lth, en grec) mais loriginalit, aprs-coup.
Ainsi, si lon accepte, juste titre, quil ny a pas de plagiat au sens dune imitation servile, cest--dire une contrefaon (Nachmachung), il faut bien admettre
une cration en tant quimitation (Nachahmung) dorigine contrle, cest--dire
parfaitement matrise, et, de surcrot, dont le matre peut et doit savoir rire: cest
l le plus que Nietzsche soffre dans sa capacit de se donner sa propre origine et
den rire. Michel Schneider a parfaitement raison lorsquil crit que loriginalit
nest pas le fait dtre sans origine, mais de fonder en quelque sorte sa propre ori18
19

EH, OC VIII, p. 317.

Janz, Curt Paul: Nietzsche. Biographie. T. 1. Paris 1985, p. 393.

Nietzsche inimitable

79

gine.20 Les mots ne vont-ils jamais que vers eux-mmes, vers leur origine peuttre toujours spare de celui qui crit? Peut-tre faut-il lavoir perdue pour pouvoir crire?
Afin de ne pas tout fait se prendre trop au srieux, comme laurait fait
Socrate, Nietzsche cherche videmment sinscrire dans loptique dune autoorigination Je nai jamais imit personne en rien mais sur le mode de la
parodie, de la plaisanterie, de la ruse et de la vengeance. Dans laprs-coup on rit. Il
aura fallu attendre vingt-cinq sicles avant que Nietzsche dise: Je suis linventeur
du dithyrambe.21 Inventeur, car il mle le souvenir et loubli.22 On dira, dune
autre faon, quinventer, cest le temps retrouv, et que linventeur est le rdempteur du hasard.23 Car cest l une tche que Nietzsche partage avec Zarathoustra:
racheter tout le pass, racheter tous ceux qui furent . Cest l une rdemption
qui signifie une prise en charge, qui assume son pass, indpendamment de toute
foi religieuse, une volont responsable capable de convertir tout il y avait en
ce que jai voulu. Racheter sans remords, et donc sans culpabilit, comme une
sorte de corps corps avec lui-mme, tel est le destin et la tche dionysienne de
Zarathoustra qui se parle lui-mme, en parlant des autres comme autant de
fragments didentits posthumes quil veut unifier et racheter. Offrir tous ceux
qui furent la certitude et lesprance davoir t ce quil a toujours voulu: quils
soient rachets, par lui lEcce homo, non pas au prix des clous, mais au prix des
coups de marteau dont la duret sadresse tant soi-mme qu tous les crateurs, les originaux. La condition pralable de la crativit inventive est, et ne
peut donc tre que la duret. Cest ce prix que se rachte loriginalit de tous
ceux qui lont prcd.
Faisons donc le point. Nous avons admis, avec Roger Caillois, que loriginalit devait tre dlimite et recevoir son statut moins par lacte de naissance ou
dinauguration que par le dfi quexige lexcellence. Si le plagiaire ne trouve sa raison dtre qu dpossder les autres de leurs biens et plus encore de leur identit
ou de leur propre en ce cas on parlera plutt dun imposteur il ne saurait prtendre loriginalit et lon sempresserait bien vite aujourdhui de le condamner,
au moins moralement. En revanche, de nombreux tmoignages dcrivains clbres, rapports pour un certain nombre dentre eux par Michel Schneider, voquent ici ou l des emprunts, souvent flagrants, mais, quau demeurant, ils ont
fini tout simplement par changer de place, de perspective, et, partant, de sens. En
ce sens, on parlera plutt dadaptation pour reprendre le mot, juste en loccurrence, de Curt Paul Janz, que de pure reproduction. Ce qui compte, ce nest pas

20
21
22
23

Schneider: Voleurs, op. cit., p. 110.

EH, OC VIII, p. 315
Scheider: Voleurs, op. cit., p. 111.
Zarathoustra II, De la rdemption, repris dans EH, OC VIII, p. 317.

80

Jacques Goetschel

la premire fois, mais de dceler en elle la vrit qui la fonde ou, pour le dire autrement, non pas dtre tout prix lauteur qui fait habilement (on y reconnat
l le talentueux) venir quelque chose au monde ou lexistence, mais de dire ou
seulement de mi-dire la vrit, de quoi en faire un vnement, cest--dire quelque
chose qui claire le pass sans quil puisse jamais tre dduit. Nous pourrions le
dire de la quasi-totalit des textes de Nietzsche dont nous savons quil les composait et les recomposait sans cesse, sans cesser de lire, sans cesser de marcher.
Lexemple du dithyrambe nest donc pas anodin.
Dire je suis linventeur du dithyrambe, na rien dune imposture. Cest dire,
dabord, que le dithyrambe aura t un commencement que Nietzsche a voulu
achever, quil a port en pleine lumire, ou ractualis, dans le sombre dsert de
notre civilisation extnue.24 Cette r-actualisation en fait un lment intempestif, inactuel; et de fait, toute invention, quelle quelle soit, est, par elle-mme,
in-actuelle. Cest dire ensuite, et en mme temps, que le dithyrambe et tous les
emprunts, dune part, rendent hommage ceux qui furent les auteurs dits originaux, ce qui leur assure aussi la perptuation, le souvenir, voire limmortalit;
dautre part, ces derniers, dans linterprtation que Nietzsche en fit, ont accd
leur pleine existence et leur pleine signification et peuvent dsormais durer
et demeurer comme part intgrante de la philosophie. Pour le dire un peu brivement, on dira que, du dithyrambe, il en vient (e-venire); je suis linventeur veut
dire: jen viens, jen suis venu. Cest donc moins une trouvaille quune retrouvaille; cest moins linvention dun objet que lacte par lequel cet objet, loin
dtre irrvocablement perdu comme le serait, par ailleurs, lobjet (petit) a ,
est retrouv. Du dithyrambe, Nietzsche a voulu le retour et, pour cela, il lui aura
fallu donner un nouveau tour: linvention est l.
Pour avoir crit des Dithyrambes de Dionysos,25 Nietzsche rejoue comme un
acteur qui rpte car, chaque rptition, il y a du jeu,26 de la diffrence, de
lcart, de la nouveaut, kanots, disaient les anciens Grecs, en parlant de loriginalit les mmes pices; mais celles-ci, force dtre rptes, comme les questions, changent de direction, de chemins, garent quelquefois.
Telle est sans doute la condition de lcriture dun livre venir: toujours crit
par un autre, un autre en voyage, dont le voyage ltranger est, comme lcrit
Heidegger, une condition essentielle pour que saccomplisse le retour au pays,
retour qui le fait entrer dans la loi propre du chant potique.27 Un chant qui,
24
25
26

27

NT 20, OC I, p. 134.
Dithyrambes de Dionysos. Pomes et fragments potiques posthumes, OC VIII, vol. 2, 1986.
Y compris au sens technique quand on parle dun espace amnag permettant le mouvement ais
entre deux pices mcaniques, cest--dire permettant leur articulation ou leur dfaut darticulation.
Heidegger, Martin: Approche de Hlderlin, Coll. Tel. Paris 1996, p. 105; il sagit du pome intitul: Souvenir .

Nietzsche inimitable

81

chez Nietzsche, unit un deuil impossible de lobjet aim et perdu, et la jubilation

de sa rsurrection, un chant qui fait jaillir les larmes de labme et resplendir le
sourire dans la douleur. Quoi quil en soit, un chant qui est un appel (Ariane, en
ce cas, pourra y rpondre) un texte qui en appelle un autre, un crit qui interpelle.
Tous ont en commun ladresse dun autre auquel Nietzsche, dans sa solitude rmitique et errante, aura consacr sa vie pour la faire advenir ce quil nommera
la vie posthume.
Le voil prt (se) produire sur toutes les scnes, y compris la scne philosophique, et bien au-del, puisque, pour y jouer et rejouer celui quil na cess de
rencontrer (Dionysos), comme ceux qui ds lenfance ont toujours t en
voyage et ltranger,28 il va se donner pour-mort, mme quand il est en vie.
Jouer la mort qui se donne pour la vie29 tel est lultime expdient de la confrrie
des hommes posthumes:
A quoi pensez-vous? disait lun de ceux-ci avec impatience, serions-nous
dhumeur supporter cette tranget, ce froid, ce silence spulcral, toute cette
solitude souterraine, cache, muette, ignore, qui chez nous se nomme vie et
pourrait tout aussi bien se nommer mort, si nous ne savions ce quil advient de
nous et que ce nest quaprs la mort que nous parvenons notre vie et devenons
vivants, trs vivants! Nous autres hommes posthumes.30
Nous ne serions pas tonns si Nietzsche tait ici, tout simplement avec la
subtile mtis qui le caractrise tout comme le fut Ulysse31 le crateur de sa propre lgende, comme ltait, en son temps, Empdocle,32 dans le sens o il sagirait de mettre fin la sparation vie/mort, comme pour retrouver la fois la
mmoire dune ou de plusieurs vies antrieures et, libr de toute pesanteur
(de lesprit comme du corps), demeurer en vie sans mourir ou mourir tout en restant en vie. Fantasme de limmortalit? Sa vie, son uvre et sa pense insparablement lies en tmoignent. Se librait-il de toutes les vieilles peaux et de tous
les oripeaux? Certains de ses proches (et parmi ses plus proches, sa sur) comme
dautres plus lointains, ne tardrent pas semparer de ses propres fragments de
pense et force de mal les tanner, les discrditrent pour longtemps. Na-t-il
pas voulu quon le prenne pour un bouffon et non pour un saint? Na-t-il pas refus ladoration et la canonisation, autrement dit, la mise mort? Rien ne lui sied
28
29
30

31

32

Par del bien et mal (PBM) 295, OC VII, p. 207.

Voir ce propos le personnage de Falstaff, dans Henri IV de Shakespeare.
Le Gai Savoir (GS) 365; voir aussi entre autres textes: avant-propos de lAntchrist et EH: Pourquoi jcris de si bons livres, 1.
Dtienne, Marcel / Vernant, Jean-Pierre: Les Ruses de lintelligence. La Mtis des Grecs, coll.
Champs n36. Paris 1978, p. 30.
Dodds, E. R: Les Chamans grecs et les origines du puritanisme. Dans: Les Grecs et lirrationnel.
Trad. M. Gibson. Paris 1965, p. 145 et notes 65 et 66; voir Bidez, Fernand: La biographie dEmpdocle, cit par Dodds, note 65. Fragments dEmpdocle, 111, 3, 9; 111, 4. Edition de DielsKranz.

82

Jacques Goetschel

mieux que le futur antrieur, ce temps merveilleux qui achve le destin en lui laissant encore ouverte la porte de lavenir. Cette porte ouverte/ferme, en tout cas
dissimule, bien que mentionne, nest autre que la porte du Gai Savoir, au-dessus
de laquelle se trouve linscription que nous avons cite. Cette porte est celle dun
livre, dun livre venir, o vivre, joint la gaiet, devient 500000 opinions de la
plus grande bouffonnerie, comme sil sagissait dune confession de soi.33

Y a-t-il quelque chose de nouveau sous le soi?

Voil une autre faon de montrer comment fonctionne, si lon peut dire,
limitation dorigine contrle chez Nietzsche. Car on noubliera pas, dune part,
que ce contrle a lieu selon la plaisanterie, la ruse et la vengeance runies et
que, dautre part, emprunter cest toujours dj interprter ne serait-ce que parce
que lemprunt implique un prt et que, suivant ltymologie, linterprte (inter =
entre, et pres, de pretium = prix) engage, moyennement un prix, un marchandage,
ce qui implique ici, lide de trafic de mots ou dides.
Aussi bien, compte tenu de ce pralable, nest-il pas impossible, au contraire,
de retrouver dans lcriture nietzschenne, lemprunt Rousseau quon pourrait
jusqu un certain point considrer parmi les hommes posthumes. En effet,
Rousseau ncrit-il pas dans ses Confessions: je ne commenai de vivre que quand
je me regardai comme un homme mort?34 Cest cette volont de se montrer tel
quen lui-mme lternit le change, dans une parfaite matrise de labsence que
signifie le travail de lcriture, dans lexacte mesure o, comme le dit J. Derrida:
lacte dcrire serait essentiellement et ici de manire exemplaire le plus
grand sacrifice visant la plus grande rappropriation symbolique de la prsence.35 Et Derrida ajoute, comme pour conjurer le destin qui lie, depuis Platon,
lcriture la mort: la mort par lcriture inaugure aussi la vie car, explique-t-il,
Rousseau savait que la mort nest pas le simple dehors de la vie.36
Quelles que soient les similitudes et les diffrences entre Nietzsche et Rousseau, ainsi que les vhmentes invectives du premier lgard du second, il reste
que lun et lautre sont passs matres dans la mise en scne de soi devant soimme avec la volont de refuser le thtral, en affichant une probit absolue,
mme si Nietzsche estime que le mot de confession est trop solennel et,
consquemment, ne croit ni la confession ni au soi. Il nempche que, du
33
34

35
36

FP 1884/1885, 34[1], OC XI, 1982, p. 151.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: Confessions, Livre VI, cit par Derrida, Jacques: Grammatologie. Paris
1974, p. 205. On peut mme suggrer que les Confessions pourraient tre lues comme une autobio-thanato-graphie.
Derrida: Grammatologie, op. cit., p. 205.
Ibid.

Nietzsche inimitable

83

point de vue do nous parlons, savoir le rapport entre imitation et cration, les
deux philosophes ont, juste titre, voulu prtendre non seulement loriginalit
en tant quelle introduit de la nouveaut, mais encore la cration, ce qui leur
confre, outre un droit dauteur et une reconnaissance publique, un primat
linimitabilit et lexemplarit.
Ainsi commence le clbre dbut des Confessions: Je forme une entreprise qui
neut jamais dexemple, et dont lexcution naura point dimitateur. Je veux
montrer nos semblables un homme dans toute la vrit de sa nature; et cet
homme ce sera moi. Moi seul. Ainsi commence lavant-propos de Ecce homo:
Prvoyant quil me faudra sous peu adresser lhumanit le plus grave dfi
quelle ait jamais reu, il me parat indispensable de dire qui je suis;37 un peu plus
loin, aprs avoir enterr [sa] quarante-quatrime anne, bon droit, et sauv ce
qui, en elle, est imprissable, Nietzsche estime ncessaire de conter sa vie:
cest pourquoi je conte ici ma vie. A lire la suite, on est assez loin, et par la
forme et par le contenu, des Confessions. Dans cette optique, la fameuse inscription au-dessus de la porte du Gai Savoir: habiter sa propre maison, cest--dire
chez soi tout en se moquant de (du) soi, cest la fois conter et interprter sa vie.
Or comment se conte-t-elle selon Nietzsche? Sans doute moins par le dire que
par lcrit ou par les crits, livres et fragments: cest par eux quelle est interprte. Lcriture de ses livres et de ses fragments ne prend de sens, si lon peut dire,
que parce que tous se rapportent sa vie, dans la mesure o celle-ci, comme
ceux-l, sont dits posthumes. Autrement dit, sauvs parce quimprissables, ou
inactuels et pas encore lordre du jour: il en est qui naissent posthumes.38 Or
cest dans lexprience de cette post-inhumation dont tmoignent ses livres on
ne peut mieux faire dans lart de la thtralisation de sa vie que rside son originalit. Car, prcise Nietzsche, ce quoi lon na pas accs par une exprience
vcue, on na pas doreilles pour lentendre. Or un livre qui ne parlerait que
dexpriences dont aucune ne serait susceptible dtre vcue frquemment, ni
mme exceptionnellement, serait un livre o l on nentend tout simplement
rien, avec en plus lillusion dacoustique que l o lon nentend rien, il ny a rien
non plus Telle est vrai dire mon exprience la plus banale, ou, si lon veut, loriginalit de mon exprience.39
Aussi bien pour accder soi-mme, cest--dire se donner soi-mme comme
exemple et, comme tel, inimitable, faut-il avoir beaucoup vcu. Moins en nombre dannes qu la rencontre de la solitude: en ermite errant, en bouffon des
ternits, en satyre servant de ce dieu tentateur, enjleur des consciences, dont
la voix sait descendre jusquaux enfers de chaque me [] qui enseigne couter
37
38
39

EH, OC VIII, p. 239.

ibid. p. 276.
ibid. p. 277.

84

Jacques Goetschel

[] la main brutale et presse [et au contact duquel] aprs son attachement

chacun repart enrichi, non combl [] mais plus riche de soi-mme, mais plus
neuf, plus ouvert lui-mme que jamais.40 Cest encore accder la vie, cette
chose ncessaire dont lexprience est celle du grand style qui doit montrer
que lon croit ses penses, quon ne fait pas que les penser, mais quon les
prouve.41 Ce qui tend donc prouver, si besoin en tait, que si lon peut parler de
Nietzsche comme dun acteur, cest parce quil se met en scne en tant que penseur.
Autrement dit, il ne veut pas, pas plus quil nprouve, la ncessit de jouer un
autre personnage que lui-mme. Mais ny a-t-il quun seul personnage? A force
de sentourer de masques, comme il le dit dans Par del bien et mal,42 on finirait par
en douter. Et pourtant, celui quil prtend donner voir, ne serait-ce qu travers
le miroir de ses livres, qu travers ses fragments de pense, est un seul et unique
personnage multiples facettes. On serait, en ce cas, tout proche de lhystrique,
et, partant, dun histrionisme mais dlest de sa charge ngative et hostile. Ce qui
suppose, outre le donner voir et la mise en scne, une relle demande de regarder et dtre regard, lie paradoxalement, celle de ne pas tre imit.
Or cest l aussi un des sens de loriginalit: se donner soi-mme en exemple,
comme lnonce cet aphorisme plein dhumour:
A: Quest-ce dire? Tu ne veux pas dimitateur?
B: Je ne veux point servir dexemple quon imite: je veux que chacun se
propose lui-mme quelque chose en exemple: tout comme je le fais.
A: Donc ?43
Cet aphorisme, si bien titr Imitateurs, nous importe au plus haut chef, car
il jette une lumire sur lensemble du travail dcriture et de production duvres
chez Nietzsche. Il permet de comprendre que, pour crer, il faut apprendre surmonter langoisse des influences: il en est ainsi tout particulirement, pour celle
que Nietzsche aura vcue dans sa relation Wagner comme attachement psychoaffectif et intellectuel la personnalit du musicien; un attachement dautant plus
fort quil y eut une rupture et qui se paie cher, selon une expression dont on
peut dire quelle forme la trame voire le leitmotiv du premier post-scriptum du
Cas Wagner.44
Lcrivain-pote-philosophe rcrit des imitations, originales et inimitables,
pour devenir son tour inimitable, comme sil sagissait, lintrieur de chaque
sance dcriture plutt en marchant quassis45 de se faire interprte de ce
quelque chose qui nest jamais proprement parler stable: soi-mme.
40
41
42
43
44
45

PBM 295 puis repris dans EH: Pourquoi jcris de si bons livres 6, p. 284.
FP 1882/1884, 23[32], OC IX, 1986, p. 341.
PBM 40.
GS 255, OC V, p. 182.
Le Cas Wagner (CW) Premier post-scriptum, OC VIII, p. 44 48.
GS 366 et Prlude en vers 52; voir FP 1884/1885, 36[53], OC XI, 1982, p. 304.

Nietzsche inimitable

85

Tout la fois insaisissable et imprsentable, si ce nest au travers de fictions,

de fantasmes, de simulacres, de souvenirs et surtout de livres rumins et dchanges pistolaires qui tentent de le figer, ce soi, auquel dailleurs il ne croit pas,
sans doute pour ne pas tre confisqu, ni idoltr, ni chosifi la manire de
Descartes, vise soriginer et soriginaliser sans sauto-fonder.
Cest pourquoi accder sa propre vie (sa maison, son labyrinthe, son chemin) cest comme assister sa propre origine, voire sa naissance, jusqu sinventer des origines polonaises pour refuser une ascendance germanique quil
honnit.46 Mais cest surtout porter son regard sur le monde antique, car il est ce
monde auquel [il a] cherch des voies daccs et auquel [il a] peut-tre trouv un
nouvel accs A quoi? A lui-mme, cest--dire cet autre quil nest pas, cet avenir qui nest pas encore et qui sest converti en pass qui doit faire retour. Si Nietzsche a une dette lgard des Anciens (des Romains plus que des Grecs quant au
style), dette quil honore dans Le Crpuscule des Idoles47 cest au regard dun pass
quil admire et des hommes dont lesprit coule dans ses artres crbrales, articulant les mcanismes de la facult de rumination ceux de loubli. Autant les
mcanismes de loubli et de leffacement des traces sont ncessaires la cration,
autant ceux de la mmoire et du ressentiment paraissent, au contraire, empcher
cette capacit de crer, limiter et confisquer lavenir.
Limitation est donc ici, non une pure et simple reproduction fidle dun modle, dun original ou dune origine, mais une production de ce qui dans et ds
lorigine veut du nouveau. Cela peut signifier vouloir sen retourner aux origines
pour les rcrire: en ce sens, ce serait dans et par cet acte de rcrire que constituerait loriginalit, et donc se demander, quand on croit dire quelque chose
de nouveau, de qui nous vient ce qui nous vient. La rponse, pour Nietzsche,
vient du dieu inconnu, Dionysos, dont il prtend tre son dernier initi pour
avoir appris beaucoup de choses [] de ces choses qui passent de bouche en
bouche [] mi-voix comme il convient car il sagit de choses secrtes, neuves,
trangres, bizarres, inquitantes.48 Telle est bien ce quon appelle couramment
la tradition orale. Tandis que les livres suggrent plus quils nenseignent, dont on
ne retiendrait que ce qui est crit voire fix une fois pour toutes, constituant un
hritage expos au double risque de la vnration et/ou de la confiscation, en revanche, la transmission orale de ces choses secrtes qui relveraient de lunheimlich, resteraient lapanage dun matre qui, tout en ouvrant un chemin vers le dis46

47
48

Voir: EH, Pourquoi je suis si sage, OC VIII, p. 248: Je suis un noble polonais pur sang; dans mes
veines, pas une goutte de sang allemand. Quand je cherche mon plus exact oppos, lincommensurable bassesse des instincts, je trouve toujours ma mre et ma sur []. Il est bien connu que
Nietzsche sest querell avec sa sur Elisabeth, tout particulirement cause de son mariage
avec Frster, un antismite notoire.
Crpuscule des Idoles, Ce que je dois aux Anciens, OC VIII, 1974, p. 144 147.
PBM 295, OC VII, p. 207 208.

86

Jacques Goetschel

ciple, fait effort de rnonciation et de crativit constante, offrant liniti un

savoir certes, mais bien plus encore: la capacit de transmettre son tour, indfectiblement lie celle de linterprtation, elle-mme condition pralable pour
que se renouvelle une tradition et consquemment un enseignement qui doit tre
lexacte mesure de la capacit dcoute du disciple. Celui-ci, enfin, deviendra le
lieu de la rencontre o se nouent parole et criture.
Ce qui signifie que, malgr le risque que contient lcriture de ses penses
dpouilles de leur nouveaut, quelques-unes sont prtes se changer en vrits49 Nietzsche estime que lcriture mdiatise deux paroles: lcriture donne
voir une premire parole dont lcrit porte la trace. Il y a toujours de la parole
qui dborde, qui excde lcrit comme si cette parole, jamais totalement dite, tait
en cours dcriture. Ce qui se donne voir nest pas ce qui se montre ou ce quon
a sous les yeux. Or le propre de loriginalit consiste, selon Nietzsche, : voir
quelque chose qui na pas encore de nom, qui ne peut tre nomm, bien que cela
soit sous les yeux de tous.50 Cest pourquoi, tre original ce nest pas dtre le
premier voir quelque chose de nouveau, mais cest de voir comme si elles taient
nouvelles, les vieilles choses et connues, vues et connues par tout le monde, qui
distingue les cerveaux vritablement originaux.51
Nous voici donc tout proches de loriginalit de Nietzsche et au seuil de la
porte du Gai Savoir. Son ambition, cest moins de se produire comme modle
imitable, ce qui pourrait provoquer des moqueries, que de revendiquer une inimitabilit suscitant dabord la facult de rire de soi-mme. Cest dire que, fondamentalement, si Nietzsche ne croit pas au moi, cest parce que celui-ci na pas
dexistence en soi et quil est faire et mme crer, puisquil sinscrit en toute
ncessit dans le devenir. Sil faut devenir ce que lon est, cest quon ne lest pas
encore. Le devenir nest pas l pour actualiser le virtuel ni pour dcouvrir le moi
ce serait en outre indcent. Le devenir du moi est l pour mettre en lumire
un moi qui sannonce, snonce, se dit (se ddit et se ddie), se crer la mesure
de ce quil produit, cest--dire finalement pour nexister qu travers ses uvres.
Cette auto-cration du moi au miroir des livres dont tmoigne Ecce Homo, est justement ce qui en fait loriginalit.
Cela ne veut pas dire que derrire lironique Je nai jamais imit personne en
rien, Nietzsche na jamais emprunt, mais que limitation, chez lui, nest pas du
mme type que celle des anciens Grecs dont il admire pourtant le caractre exceptionnel: En Grce, les esprits profonds et srieux taient les exceptions linstinct du peuple tendait, au contraire, considrer plutt ce qui est srieux et profond comme une espce de dformation. Emprunter les formes ltranger, non
49
50
51

Ibid. 296, p. 209.

GS 261 et Opinions et sentences mles (OSM) 200, Coll. Mdiations. Paris 1975, p. 118.
Humain trop humain (HTH) T. 1, 165, Coll. Mdiations. Paris 1973, p. 165.

Nietzsche inimitable

87

point les crer mais les transformer jusqu leur faire revtir la plus belle apparence cest cela qui est grec: imiter, non pour utiliser, mais pour crer lillusion
artistique, se rendre matre toujours nouveau du srieux impos, ordonner, embellir, aplanir.52 Cest l une imitation, finalement assez tolrante pour se concilier avec loriginalit. Ici, cest un peu comme si limitateur courait aprs un original qui ne serait lui-mme quune imitation dimitation, ce que certains grands
crivains nont pas hsit rappeler en remontant jusqu Lucien de Samosate,53
un crivain dont nous savons combien son uvre devait limitation et lemprunt sous toutes ses formes.
Comment donc comprendre cette exigence, cette volont dtre inimitable?
La seule approche que Nietzsche estime valable de cette inimitabilit est quelle
se veuille originaire, autrement dit cratrice, linstar de ces crateurs capables de

52
53

OSM 221, p. 129.

Il naura pas chapp Nietzsche que Diderot aura imit celui-ci [Laurence Sterne] dans son
Jacques le fataliste et mme admir, bafou, parodi (OSM 113) sans le savoir exactement
et peut-tre est-ce l prcisment ce qua voulu lauteur. Cest pourquoi ce doute rend les Franais injustes lgard de cette uvre [Tristam Shandy] de lun des matres de leur littrature (ibid.).
Un auteur quil dsigne comme le grand critain dans Son Histoire du roi de Bohme et de ses sept chteaux: Et vous voulez que moi, plagiaire des plagiaires de Sterne matre de lquivoque, le mot
pris, bien entendu, dans un sens beaucoup plus large que lon a coutume de faire, lorsque lon
songe des rapports sexuels. Il y a l, soit dit en passant, un terrain fort suggestif dfricher,
dautant que cette quivocit, Nietzsche la repre chez Wagner. Quoi quil en soit, nous devons
Michel Schneider davoir rappel qu un plagiat peut en cacher un autre et ainsi de Nodier
Nerval se poursuit une tradition du plagiat: Le premier
Qui fut plagiaire de Swift
Qui fut plagiaire de Wilkins
Qui fut plagiaire de Cyrano
Qui fut plagiaire de Reboul
Qui fut plagiaire de Guillaume des Autels
Qui fut plagiaire de Rabelais
Qui fut plagiaire de Morus
Qui fut plagiaire dErasme
Qui fut plagiaire de Lucien ou de Lucius de Patras ou dApule
car on ne sait lequel des trois a t vol par les deux autres, et je ne me suis jamais souci de le
savoir Vous voudriez, je le rpte que jinventasse la forme et le fond dun livre!
Le ciel me soit en aide! Condillac dit quelque part quil serait plus ais de crer le monde que de
crer une ide.
Quant au second, on dcouvre ce passage dans le dernier chapitre de son Anglique:
Et puis (Cest ainsi que Diderot commenait un conte, me dira-t-on)
Allez toujours!
Vous avez imit Diderot lui-mme
Qui avait imit Sterne
Lequel avait imit Swift
Qui avait imit Rabelais
Lequel avait imit Merlin Coccae.
Qui aurait imit Ptrone
Lequel avait imit Lucien. Et Lucien en avait imit bien dautres. Cits par M. Schneider:
Voleurs, op. cit., p. 75.

88

Jacques Goetschel

se crer eux-mmes: Quant nous autres, nous voulons devenir ceux que nous
sommes les nouveaux, les uniques, les incomparables, ceux qui se font eux-mmes la loi, ceux qui se crent!.54
Ce passage indique clairement que Nietzsche veut sinscrire, comme dailleurs la plupart des crivains (au sens large du terme, de ceux qui crivent) voire
des artistes, dans la ligne des gnies: non pas ceux qui, comme les anciens
Grecs, empruntent la forme ltranger et, par transformation ou mtamorphose, les recouvrent pour produire une nouvelle apparence, mais les gnies
crateurs de nouvelles formes, figures, valeurs, tables, etc. Autrement dit, lexigence de cration modifie le rapport au modle qui nest en fin de compte que
soi-mme. Il lui faut apprendre se dfaire de toutes ses corces jusqu ce quil
se dcouvre comme un noyau dur, cest--dire ce quil doit devenir: Devenez
durs dira Zarathoustra ses disciples.55 Cest limpratif ducatif de tous les
crateurs anims de la joyeuse envie de dtruire et le vritable signe dune nature
dionysiaque.56
Sil ne sagit pas tout fait ici de destruction mais plutt de construction, cest
dans la mesure o le modle est du ct de linventeur ou du dcouvreur; plus exactement, du ct du crateur de soi: faire de sa propre vie une uvre dart.57
De sorte que simposent des conditions de dure pour que lon devienne ce quon
est. Or ceci nadvient quaprs coup, cest--dire aprs que lon a dj vcu, crit,
et quand on peut donc se reconnatre soi-mme dans ses propres uvres, dans ses
crits. Ainsi, au moment de son autobiographie, Nietzsche pourra dire: Maintenant que je revois avec un certain recul toutes les circonstances dont [mes] crits
portent tmoignage, je ne nierai pas quau fond elles ne parlent que de moi.58
Nous avons volontairement remplac ces par mes car si Nietzsche parle
dans le contexte des troisime et quatrime Considrations inactuelles, il nest pas invraisemblable que cette remarque puisse sappliquer lensemble de ses uvres.
Nietzsche naura donc pas manqu de signifier son originalit, autrement dit sa
volont de devenir ce quil est (sans jamais donner l tre un autre sens que le
devenir, et donc en le marquant du signe irrvocable de linstabilit ce qui, par
ailleurs, se manifestait tant par ses tats physiologiques que par ses voyages
continus), et de saccomplir comme une promesse, quil dterminera lui-mme
dans Ecce Homo comme un destin, et, plus concrtement, travers ses crits. En
ce sens, Nietzsche crira: le texte Wagner Bayreuth est une vision prophtique
de mon avenir; par contre, dans Schopenhauer ducateur est inscrite mon histoire intime, celle de mon devenir. Et, avant tout, ma promesse! Ce que je suis
54
55
56
57
58

GS 335, OC V, p. 226.
Zarathoustra (APZ) III, Anciennes et nouvelles tables 29, OC VI, 1971, p. 235.
EH, p. 318.
NT 1, p. 45.
Voir propos des Inactuelles 3 dans: EH, p. 254.

Nietzsche inimitable

89

aujourdhui, o jen suis et o je suis aujourdhui, une altitude o je ne mexprime plus en mots mais en clairs! oh, comme jen tais encore loin en ce
temps l! Mais je voyais la Terre promise je ne me suis pas tromp un instant
sur le chemin, les mers traverser, les prils, ni, surtout, sur le succs! Cette assurance tranquille du serment, ce regard heureux jet vers un avenir qui ne doit
pas rester simple promesse!.59
Nietzsche est cet gard trs lucide quant au chemin qui doit le conduire vers
lui-mme. Bien quil ait crit sans quil connaisse le moment de sa rencontre avec
lui-mme, il savait intuitivement que le chemin tait le bon et navait pas de doute
quant sa propre attente. Comme le dit Zarathoustra: En vrit, moi aussi jai
appris attendre et fondamentalement, mais nattendre que moi-mme,60 dautant que si le chemin, en effet, nexiste pas, cest bien sur son propre chemin
quil faut apprendre se tenir debout, marcher, courir, sauter, grimper,
danser (ibid.) condition sine qua non pour apprendre voler un jour de ses
propres ailes.
Nous sommes l au cur de linimitabilit. Si Nietzsche se veut inimitable,
cest parce quil ne veut pas emprunter les mmes chemins que les autres, que ses
devanciers, ni demander son chemin; tout cela lui rpugne, car il prfre interroger les chemins eux-mmes et les essayer (ibid.) plutt que de marcher, sauter,
courir sur les traces de ceux qui ont dj parcouru leur propre chemin.
59

60

Ibid., p. 295. Il suffirait de substituer le nom de Schopenhauer par celui de Nietzsche et le tour
serait jou et nous aurions Nietzsche ducateur. Pour rester dans notre contexte nous voudrions, pour illustrer ce que Nietzsche dit de son Inactuelle, prendre, par exemple, le passage suivant: Celui qui laisse sinterposer entre lui et les choses des notions, des opinions des vnements du pass, des livres, celui donc qui, au sens le plus large, est n pour lhistoire, ne verra
jamais les choses pour la premire fois et ne sera jamais lui-mme une de ces choses que lon voit
pour la premire fois; mais les deux sappartiennent rciproquement chez le philosophe, parce
quil lui faut tirer de lui-mme le plus grand enseignement et parce quil se sert lui-mme
dimage et dabrg de lunivers. Lorsque quelquun se regarde par lintermdiaire dopinions
trangres, quoi dtonnant sil ne voit rien dautre que des opinions trangres! Et cest ainsi
que sont, vivent et voient les savants. Schopenhauer, par contre, a eu le bonheur indescriptible,
non seulement de voir en lui le gnie de prs, mais aussi en dehors de lui, chez Goethe: cette double rflexion la instruit et averti fond de tous les objectifs et de toutes les cultures drudits
[]. Il ny avait pour lui quune seule tche et cent mille moyens de la rsoudre: un seul sens et
dinnombrables hiroglyphes pour lexprimer, Considrations inactuelles III, OC, p. 80 81
Quant la promesse de la Terre, limage est assez forte dans lesprit de Nietzsche pour pouvoir
lemprunter et faire son chemin: celui du dsert, celui de Mose ce qui snonce dj en filigrane
comme refus du non moins clbre chemin de croix. Comme Mose, en effet, il voyait la Terre
promise peut-tre aussi en sachant quil ne pourrait y entrer. Aurait-il transgress linterdit quil
entra dans lenfer, le grand enfermement, la folie en devenant Autre. Son alliance fut celle de et
scelle avec Dionysos: pour y avoir voulu rentrer trop profondment, il en a perdu le sens du
vcu en mme temps que la raison, autrement dit, lensemble des conditions de lexistence humaine. A travers ses crits, Nietzsche tait-il en train de crer son moi, de refaire son me, de
faire revenir lui son propre futur? Sans doute ne savait-il pas encore que son destin irait quelque part dans linachev, dans linfondation des choses.
APZ III, Lesprit de pesanteur 2, OC VI, p. 216.

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Jacques Goetschel

En sachant o il en est aujourdhui, Nietzsche estime quil est enfin la hauteur

de son attente, cest--dire jamais autrement que dans la rencontre avec soimme, dans et travers sa littrature, son texte intime, son propre style. Ainsi,
dans une lettre son ami Peter Gast de dcembre 1888, Nietzsche crit: Depuis
quelques jours je feuillette ma littrature, pour la premire fois je me sens sa hauteur.
Comprenez-vous cela? Jai tout trs bien russi sans jamais men rendre compte
au contraire! Par exemple, les divers Avant-Propos, le cinquime livre de la Gaya
Scienza Diable, tout ce quil y a l-dedans! Au sujet de la troisime et de la quatrime
Inactuelle, vous ferez dans Ecce Homo une dcouverte qui vous fera dresser les
cheveux elle a fait dresser les miens aussi! Dans toutes deux, il nest question que
de moi anticipando Wagner, pas plus que Schopenhauer, ny interviennent psychologiquement Je nai compris ces deux crits que depuis une quinzaine!61
Que signifie se comprendre soi-mme? Satteindre et sattendre soi-mme.
Comment est-ce possible? Le temps est ncessaire: il faut du temps pour scrire
soi-mme, hors confessions, si lon ne croit ni la confession ni au soi. Cest possible encore lorsque, tout en crivant sur dautres, on ne sait pas encore que lon
crit sur soi-mme, un peu comme si le soi ntait quun palimpseste. En un sens,
Nietzsche ne savait pas encore, bien quil ft le sujet suppos savoir, quil sinventait un personnage, un seul personnage, le seul quil puisse crire et jouer: luimme mais quil dissimulait sous une multitude de masques: figures mythiques,
personnalits ayant rellement exist ou encore des personnages littraires.
Il est difficile de dcider ici ce qui se dessinait ou sesquissait dans lesprit de
Nietzsche: un mythe, une lgende ou un roman personnel? Quoi quil en soit,
avant quil ne frappe son dernier coup qui sera son coup de folie et que ne
tombe le rideau aprs que cet ultime coup de thtre le spare presque dfinitivement du monde des hommes et le fasse concider avec lui-mme pour ne plus
tre divis davec lui-mme, Nietzsche aura, sa vie durant, cherch inverser le
platonisme, en r-installant une mimsis lorigine. Quest-ce que cela veut dire?

Le chemin qui ne mne nulle part qu soi-mme ou la folie

Nous savons que Platon, plusieurs reprises, aura mis en uvre le rejet de
la mimsis, de la mimsis thtrale en particulier, de sorte quelle ne puisse nuire
la formation des futurs gardiens de la cit idale, les philosophes. Avec Nietzsche, cest non seulement tout ldifice platonicien qui scroule, mais encore
la volont de restituer lart sa dignit en le plaant au lieu mme do la vrit
stait rige, mais en faisant exploser le lieu mme de lrection. Ce faisant, il
61

Lettre de Nietzsche Peter Gast, dcembre 1888, n272. Dans: Lettres Peter Gast. Trad. L.
Servicen. Paris 1981, p. 563.

Nietzsche inimitable

91

se met et sinstalle lui-mme en lieu et place de cette vrit en srigeant une stle
la hauteur de son moi. Original, on ne peut ou plutt on na pu faire mieux
avant lui. Inimitable, car il est pour lui-mme le miroir quil installe et se tend
lui-mme, devant lequel il se voit, comme jadis lacteur qui, condition dtre
vraiment dou, voit flotter devant ses yeux, doue dune ralit presque tangible,
limage du personnage dont il doit incarner le rle.62 Dsormais, personnage
dionysien par excellence, il ne peut contempler que cette nouvelle image de
son moi: celui quil est enfin devenu puisquon devient ce quon est.
Ainsi, en sinvestissant exclusivement sur lui-mme Je nai jamais imit
personne en rien il ne peut que simiter, autrement dit, se donner comme origine la mimsis ou comme une mimsis originaire quil finirait par incarner, si lon
peut dire. En ce sens, il nest pas impossible que la mimsis regagne63 sa place,
retrouve un lieu voire un chez soi: le moi. Une mimsis, donc, qui, bien quoriginaire, na plus elle ne la dailleurs jamais eu de statut ontologique. En revanche, son dplacement, son transfert dans le moi, sera justement la condition
de possibilit de toute inimitabilit. On sait, par ailleurs, que, pour la psychanalyse, linconscient ne rvle que peu peu ses secrets. A cet gard, il ne semble
pas difficile de voir et de comprendre que le devenir inimitable ne serait que lune
des manifestations ou lune des facettes (non pathologiques) du narcissisme
dont Freud, reprenant le mythe de Narcisse, amoureux de lui-mme, a montr le
voisinage avec la mort.
Quel que soit le texte de Nietzsche, il y a toujours, dsign ou non, montr
ou pas, un miroir dans un texte (Tous les potes sont des Narcisse disait lun
des deux Schlegel), car cest le seul moyen qui puisse se concevoir de combler cet
invitable retard du sujet sur lui-mme [] jusquau jour o [] ce qui commence bouger alors, au fond du miroir, derrire sa surface clate [] cest
toute cette instabilit terrorisante que la glace avait t charge de figer [].
Lhistoire est connue: cest celle, par exemple, dun professeur de philosophie
grecque hant par le dmon dcrire et qui se fait faire un nom dans la philosophie. Il croit srieusement en lui-mme, il se prend srieusement pour un gnie, il
se constitue en rival des plus grandes figures de la pense et des lettres il entreprend mme, srieusement, dimiter Platon.64 Du moins, semble-t-il, le Platoncrivain, celui qui a, le premier, intgr le genre dramatique, destin rendre le
dialogue plus inventif65 et prsenter celui-ci comme une mthode qui se cherche, ses deux aspects pouvant, lun et lautre, relever de lart de plaire, sans que
cet art soit exclusif de la formation de lesprit et de linstruction.
62
63

64
65

NT 8, p. 72.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe: Typographies. Dans: Mimsis. Des articulations. Coll. La philosophie en effet. Paris 1975, p. 269.
Ibid.
Platon: Le Politique 285d.

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Jacques Goetschel

Or, quand la mimsis retrouve sa place (en tout cas une autre place que
Platon avait ddaign lui reconnatre) chez Nietzsche, cest au premier abord,
sous la forme de la parodie et de lauto-drision: Je nai jamais imit personne en
rien, renforce par et je me ris de tout matre qui na su rire de lui-mme. Se
prendre srieusement pour un gnie, oui, mais condition aussi et surtout den
rire. Ne pas cesser de dcliner ensemble cration et bouffonnerie ne serait-ce,
comme le dit Nietzsche, pour lui-mme, tout en sadressant aux autres, que pour
chapper la canonisation: Je suis un disciple du philosophe Dionysos, et jaimerais mieux tre satyre quun saint.66 Etrange position dun disciple qui se
croit gnie et se voit dj matre! Sans doute sagit-il plutt dun ddoublement,
et quau thtre de Dionysos se substitue dj un thtre du Je: du dieu qui rend
fou on passe mimtiquement au fou qui se donne pour fou. Je est un autre: ne
faut-il pas devenir ce que lon est? Dans son thtre priv o lon ne se prive de
rien, comment pourrait-on ne pas simiter? Simiter est aussi inimitable quoriginal: cela na rien de nouveau. Et pourtant, quand a arrive, a narrive qu soi.
Simiter na rien voir avec la singerie, la grimace, la contrefaon; et pourtant,
seule, peut-tre, la folie simite ou simite.67 Originalit par excellence: la folie car cest elle qui fraye la voie de la pense neuve, et, partant, du gnie. Si
lhomme est (un) comdien, peut-tre est-ce parce quil parat toujours fou dune
faon ou dune autre: comdien normal ou pathologique, il joue la folie et la djoue continuellement.
En rappelant avec Platon et toute lAntiquit que cest par la dmence [mania] que les plus grands biens sont advenus en Grce,68 et que sans une pointe
de dmence point de gnie ni de sagesse, Nietzsche, dans ce fameux aphorisme 14 dAurore, veut faire, dit-il un pas de plus, un pas de sens nouveau dans
lhistoire occidentale de la moralit; tous les hommes suprieurs qui se sentiront
irrsistiblement pousss briser le joug dune moralit quelconque et instaurer
de nouvelles lois neurent pas dautres solutions, sils ntaient pas rellement dments, que de se rendre dments ou de se donner pour tels et cela vaut pour les
novateurs dans tous les domaines, et non pas seulement pour celui des institutions sacerdotales et politiques []. Comment se rend-on dment lorsquon ne
lest pas et quon nose pas feindre de ltre? [] Qui donc se risque jeter un regard dans labme de dtresses spirituelles [] Ou prter loreille ces soupirs
des solitaires hagards: Ah! Donnez-moi au moins la dmence, puissances clestes! La dmence pour quenfin je croie en moi-mme! Donnez-moi le dlire et les
convulsions, les illuminations et les tnbres soudaines, terrifiez-moi par des
66
67
68

EH Avant-propos 2, p. 239.
Lacoue-Labarthe: Typographies, op. cit., p. 270.
Platon: Phdre, 244a, cit par Nietzsche: Aurore 14. On notera au passage que Lon Robin traduit mania par dlire. Voir aussi sur la Mania grecque: Dodds: Les Grecs, op. cit., et en particulier le chapitre III, p. 71 104.

Nietzsche inimitable

93

frissons et des ardeurs tels que jamais mortel nen prouve, des fracas et des formes errantes, faites-moi hurler et gmir et ramper comme une bte: mais que jai
foi en moi-mme! Le doute me dvore, jai tu la Loi, la Loi me hante comme un
cadavre un vivant; si je ne suis plus que la Loi, je suis le dernier des rprouvs.
Lesprit nouveau qui est en moi, do vient-il, sinon de vous? Prouvez-moi donc
que je suis vtre; seule la dmence me le prouve.69
La question ne se laisse pas attendre, dautant plus quelle se ddouble. Faudrait-il devenir rellement fou pour croire en soi-mme de la mme faon que les
Grecs, ayant cru au rle, devinrent rellement acteurs?70 Ny a-t-il pas lieu dtre reconnaissant aux artistes de thtre de nous avoir appris lart de nous considrer
en tant que hros et, pour ainsi dire transfigur lart de nous mettre en scne
nous-mmes nos propres yeux,71 comme sil sagissait, en mme temps, audel dune reconnaissance de dette, dune demande dtre regard inimitable?
Produire ce double jeu, cest sans doute l que rside le gnie, et, partant,
loriginalit de linimitable imitation de Nietzsche. Que la folie soit affaire
de mimsis, cest entendu, condition de ne jamais tout fait la simuler ou la
feindre, si lon veut croire en soi-mme et finalement devenir rellement ce que
lon est.
Au demeurant, si loriginalit est une manire quun acteur a de pouvoir simiter, cest, pour recentrer sur lune des plus belles mtaphores que Nietzsche
sadresse lui-mme, de renvoyer la forme pronominale non pas un sujet rflchi, mais un feu qui signifie, pour reprendre une expression de Bachelard.
Nest-ce pas ainsi que scrit en lettres de feu loriginal qui simite en signifiant,
dans le prlude en vers du Gai Savoir ?
Ecce Homo
Oui, je sais mon origine!
Insatiable, telle la flamme
Je me consume incandescent
Lumire tout ce que je prends,
Charbon tout ce que je laisse;
Flamme je suis assurment72
Tel est bien, nous semble-t-il, ce quil y a dinimitable dans ce corps incandescent, tout de lumire. On peut rappeler ce vers lumineux de Novalis que cite Bachelard dans sa Psychanalyse du Feu: La lumire est le gnie du phnomne ign.

69
70
71
72

Aurore 14, OC IV, 1970, p. 28.

GS 356, p. 257.
GS 78, p. 106.
GS Prlude en vers 62, p. 45.

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Jacques Goetschel

Bien comprise, limitation ne peut faire quune place essentielle loriginalit:

cest en ce sens que pourra tre dfinie la Nachahmung, quon traduit gnralement par imitation, mais qui dsigne avec plus de justesse par bonne imitation,
par opposition la Nachmachung: imitation en tant que contrefaon (dans Nachmachung il y a machen = faire, do faire daprs copier, fidlement, parfaitement). Cette distinction entre Nachahmung et Nachmachung a t releve par Derrida dans sa lecture de la thorie kantienne de la mimsis73 et plus prcisment
propos de la conception kantienne du gnie, dans les paragraphes 46 et 47 de la
Critique de la facult de juger esthtique.74 Rappelons-en quelques points essentiels et
dabord la dfinition qui est, il faut le souligner, une dfinition nominale: Le gnie
est la disposition inne de lesprit (ingenium) par laquelle la nature donne les rgles
lart.75 Dfinition nominale et donc arbitraire, car le gnie est accord autant aux
savants quaux artistes.76 Pour en dterminer sa spcificit, Kant va reconnatre
le gnie comme un don de la nature qui dispose harmonieusement des facults
de lesprit, et de fait le gnie crateur ne sait pas comment ses ides se trouvent
en lui, il nest pas en son pouvoir ni den concevoir les plans, ni de les communiquer autrui dans des prceptes quil suffirait dimiter. Cest pourquoi, dit Kant
(nous abrgeons), loriginalit doit tre sa premire proprit et il suffit que ses
productions soient exemplaires sans avoir t eux-mmes engendrs par limitation (Nachahmung).77

73

74

75
76

77

Derrida, Jacques: Economimsis. Dans: Mimsis. Des articulations. Coll. La philosophie en effet. Paris 1975, p. 57 93.
Kant, Immanuel: Critique de la facult de juger, 1re partie, 1re Section, livre II, 46: Les beauxarts sont les arts du gnie. Paris 1968, p. 138. Sans en faire le commentaire que daucuns parmi
les spcialistes de Kant ont dj effectu, nous pouvons cependant rappeler que la dfinition
quil propose nest pas le rsultat dune enqute portant sur des donnes dordre anthropologique empiriquement observables et qui aurait t, en ce cas, lobjet dune analyse psychologique;
en revanche, elle rsulte bien plutt de la recherche dun principe. La question laquelle la dfinition rpond serait celle-ci: que faut-il que soit le principe gnrateur (gniteur?) des uvres des
beaux-arts, sil est vrai que je ne puis les juger belles qu la condition quelles napparaissent
comme Nature, tout en me laissant conscient du fait quelles sont un produit de lArt? Autrement dit, il faut que le concept soit paradoxalement, tout la fois prsent et absent; or ceci ne
sexplique que parce quil est indterminable; or cest cette indtermination originaire, en tant
quelle permet le jeu libre des facults (limagination et lentendement) et au jugement rflchissant dapprcier la beaut, quil convient prcisment de situer le gnie.
Ibid.
Cette dfinition est claire certes, mais Kant y reconnat un risque darbitraire, car on pourrait lui
reprocher notamment de rserver exclusivement aux beaux-arts le principe producteur du gnie,
et lui objectant que le sens commun ou le commun des mortels a lhabitude de reconnatre le gnie aux savants aussi bien quaux artistes. Si nous voquons ici la dfinition kantienne du gnie
cest pour la situer par rapport la distinction opratoire de limitation. Il ne sagit pas pour nous,
du moins ici, dexposer la perpective nietzschenne. On peut dcouvrir une quantit de textes
dont certains sont mme anti-kantiens. cf.: par ex. HTH, T. 1, 162 et 163.
Kant, Immanuel: Critique de la facult de juger, op. cit.

Nietzsche inimitable

95

Cest en ce sens, bien videmment, quil y a incompatibilit du gnie, et partant, de loriginalit avec limitation; en effet, et se conformant lautorit dAristote, Kant estime que puisquapprendre nest autre chose quimiter, la meilleure
disposition, la plus grande facilit apprendre (capacit) ne peut, comme telle,
passer pour du gnie.78 Un matre peut bien se proposer denseigner ses lves
les techniques de lArt de la fugue en tant quelle comporte les rgles dtermines
de mise en forme, mais le gnie qui linventa, Johann Sebastian Bach, devait se
contenter de leur proposer en exemple luvre gniale produite par loriginalit
de son talent. Cest en ce sens, et en ce sens seulement, que peut se justifier la distinction entre la bonne imitation Nachahmung dfinie partir de loriginalit
et la contrefaon Nachmachung cest--dire une imitation servile.79 Puisque
cest le gnie, le don naturel, qui donne lart sa rgle et que celle-ci est proprement parler non-conceptuelle, il est clair que cest labsence de concept qui transforme limitation en copie: pour que les ides du matre veillent des ides
semblables chez les lves il faut que la nature ait dot ceux-ci dune proportion
comparable des facults de lesprit comme elle lest chez le matre, et cest en ce
sens quil faut que les lves aient eux aussi du gnie. Or une telle aptitude est incommunicable dans lexacte mesure o elle est un don de la nature et, en tant que
telle, elle obit la loi du tout ou rien. Ce qui veut dire que le gnie en a sa part
et que tous lont en entier. Do le paradoxe: inimitable parce quoriginal, exemplaire et incommunicable, le gnie, du fait de son exemplarit doit pourtant tre
imit; ce qui ne signifie nullement reproduit, copi servilement, contrefait.
Jacques Derrida fait trs justement remarquer, comme nous lavions indiqu
plus haut, que la nuance difficile qui rapporte la bonne la mauvaise imitation,
la bonne la mauvaise rptition, se fixe brivement dans lopposition entre
limitation et la contrefaon, entre Nachahmung et Nachmachung, linsaisissable de
lcart, qui va pourtant du tout au tout, se rpte, imite ou contrefait dans le signifiant: inversion anagrammatique parfaite, lexception dune seule lettre.80
La conception de la bonne imitation laisse donc place pour une appropriation du modle, cest--dire pour ce quon appelle une originalit lmentaire.
Cest pourquoi un modle ne sera un modle que sil peut tre imit, sil se donne
pour ou la mimsis; il nexiste pas comme modle en soi, mais modle parce
quimit, cest en quoi, paradoxalement, il reste inimitable. Autrement dit, un
modle qui runirait toutes les qualits nexiste quen esprit: ni lhistoire, ni la ralit empirique nattestent lexistence dun modle idal.81 Encore une fois, un
modle sera dfini comme modle moins parce quil aura t pens par lesprit

78
79
80
81

Ibid., II, 47.

Ibid.
Ibid. p. 70.
Cicron: De Oratore 7, 9; 18, 9; 100, 1; Quintillien: De Institutio Oratore X, 2; 5, 8; XI, 1, 92.

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Jacques Goetschel

ou projet hors des existants ou du monde de lexprience et de lexistence, que

parce quil aura t imit. A cette difficult qui tient au modle sen rajoute une
autre qui tient limitateur; en effet, certaines uvres dpassent tellement le modle quelles paratront inimitables. Linimitabilit ne tiendrait donc pas du modle mais de la perception de limitateur, cest--dire du regard quil porte sur une
uvre. Car si une uvre tait en soi inimitable, elle ne pourrait tre reprsente.
Or si elle se donne comme destine la reprsentation, une uvre devient un
modle ou reoit un statut de modle pour ceux-l mmes pour qui elle est reprsentable, et prsentement reprsentable.
Cest dire que la clef dune bonne imitation semble rsider dans une adaptation en profondeur au modle, en ayant conscience des efforts fournir pour
sen carter, et par consquent en prenant conscience de la distance qui len spare. Imiter, ce serait donc sassimiler au modle, de sorte que les emprunts subissent une transformation telle quils apparaissent mconnaissables, comme
fondus dans le milieu. Ainsi, lorsquil sagit dun crivain ou dun peintre par
exemple, un acte dappropriation du ou des modles suppose, en mme temps,
un effort dimagination et dinvention: linnovation est ce titre originalit,
comme le pensaient les Grecs, et limitation est alors, et alors seulement, re-cration dans tous les sens du mot et, partant, elle peut exister dans tous les domaines. Cest en ce sens que la parodie, bien que restant tributaire de la mimsis, laisse
lcrivain une latitude, une libert desprit sans laquelle, prcisment, la re-cration serait inconcevable. Ce qui signifie que, lorsquon qualifie quelquun d inimitable ce nest en aucune faon dsavouer ou dcourager la mimsis et donc
limitateur; cest une imitation qui joue et se dissimule sous les masques de lobsquiosit, du manirisme,82 de la servilit excessive, de lutilit pragmatique. Il
82

Ainsi Kant dira par exemple dune uvre dart quelle est manire, uniquement lorsque lexpos
de son Ide ne vise qu la singularit et nest pas construit de faon qui convient l Ide (Kant,
Immanuel: Critique de la facult de juger, op. cit., II, 49). En ce sens, le manir, cest--dire
le prcieux, le guind, et laffect qui ne cherchent (sans me) qu se distinguer du commun
ressemblent lattitude de celui dont on dit quil scoute parler, ou de celui qui se tient et qui
marche comme sil tait sur scne, afin dtre admir des badauds, chose qui rvle toujours un
sot (ibid.); cest la conduite dite thtrale au sens pjoratif: il en montre trop; ou encore: Etre
manir est une autre forme de singerie qui consiste ntre que personnel (originalit) pour tcher
de sloigner le plus possible des imitateurs, sans cependant possder le talent dtre en mme
temps un modle (ibid.). Cest celui quon appelle aujourdhui: un original, cest--dire celui
qui participe du culte de loriginalit prise comme fin en soi ce qui constitue un lieu commun
quon peut rfrer une interprtation individualiste o la recherche obsdante de la diffrence devient le critre essentiel de la conduite et ce, quelles que soit les consquences irrationnelles dune telle attitude. Ce qui pose videmment le problme suivant: le fait dtre diffrent
des autres et de vouloir tout prix cette diffrence contribue-t-il au fait dtre soi-mme? Et ce
qui met en lumire les implications suivantes: laffirmation de la diffrence et son affichage ostensible peut avoir des significations variables et mme relever de faux-semblants, dides illusoires ou de fantasmes. Cela peut tre un aveu de faiblesse qui rside dans lattitude qui consiste
se poser en sopposant comme le dit Sartre, ou se singulariser par raction contre quelquun

Nietzsche inimitable

97

en est une autre qui respecte les modles, ne les bouscule pas et qui pour cela est
vraiment originale, car elle va ou prtend aller au plus intime du modle.

Nietzsche: inimitable modle de thtralit

On pourrait donc considrer limitation non point comme un instinct servile,
ce qui pourrait lui donner lapparence ou le faux-semblant de la contrefaon,
mais bien plutt comme une capacit de sadapter tous les modles, supposant
souplesse et libert et peut-tre mme une lutte ouverte, une rivalit agonistique,
une rivalit mimtique do la servilit serait exclue. Il y aurait donc dans ce type
dimitation un vritable art subversif dans la mesure o il lui faudrait disposer
(don naturel?) dune puissance telle quelle puisse transgresser symboliquement les limites exhibes par les modles: sy conformer jusqu les subvertir,
y compris dans et par la contrefaon, mais entendue cette fois-ci autrement que
dans le sens kantien de singerie, ne serait-ce pas l une autre faon de percevoir
lart du comdien?
Au fond, sil peut rire de la comdie quil joue aux autres, et quil se joue luimme, en touffant un rire inaudible pour eux, comme il linscrivit sur la porte
dentre du Gai Savoir, Nietzsche nentre-t-il pas, par effraction, dguis en fantme, chez des travestis qui ne veulent pas quon les dise tels,83 par des portes
closes? Ou bien: lorsque toutes lumires sont teintes? Ou bien encore: alors que
nous sommes dj morts?84 Cest peut-tre cet expdient-l, comme tant le
plus beau rle et sans doute en mme temps le plus tragique que Nietzsche ait invent pour lavoir jou pendant toute sa vie: son premier et ultime masque natre posthume! Faire le mort: parfaite simulation! A-t-on jamais vu un tel rle sur
une scne?85
On peut se demander, en fin de compte, si le fait de mourir avant dtre n
jouer lhomme posthume nest pas au fond le lieu commun de tout crivain

83
84
85

ou quelque chose (une valeur) comme le pense Nietzsche. Quand on connat aujourdhui tout ce
tintamarre que dnonait dj Nietzsche par avance, concernant cette exacerbation de lexigence originalit tout prix et dont il vaut mieux se moquer en se riant dabord de la sienne
comme il le fait dans lauto-pigraphe du Gai Savoir, on ne peut stonner que tous ces modles
qui sont proposs avec toutes les ruses de la sduction et auxquels on invite les gens sidentifier
donnent naissance des strotypes qui dclenchent des mcanismes dont on ne mesure pas
quelquefois les effets pervers et dangereux. Mimtisme illusoire qui conduit des faux-semblants, une fausse originalit, une originalit servile. Cultiver la diffrence et loriginalit jusqu rompre toute possibilit de communication semble aussi nfaste que nier la diffrence pour
instaurer une communaut truque dans laquelle on peut se demander, pour reprendre linterrogation de Franoise Dolto, si au jeu du dsir les ds ne sont-ils pas pips?.
GS 365, p. 272.
Ibid.
Voir le personnage de Falstaff.

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Jacques Goetschel

dans la mesure o cest le prix payer du travail mme de lcriture86 qui, dans
son effort, vise loriginalit, cest--dire la nouveaut au sens grec: on touche ici
au mythe de lorigine. Chaque uvre quelle soit littraire, philosophique ou artistique quels que soient les emprunts et ils sont innombrables dans luvre
de Nietzsche, ne serait-ce que par ses lectures considrables et varies est souvent, sinon toujours, compose ou construite suivant un ou plusieurs modles,
considrs comme exemplaires, auxquels elle se conforme par une imitation dstabilisante pour les modles.
On ne peut nier que limitation dun modle sans tre copie ou contrefaon
ou si elle est contrefaon cela peut relever de la moquerie, du rire, de la ruse et
de la plaisanterie soit recherche dun sens nouveau, dun sens autre, et que
loriginalit reconnue aprs coup de ce sens nouveau donn lancien modle
au texte original consiste non pas tre sans origine mais fonder en quelque
sorte sa propre origine. Lenjeu est de taille chez Nietzsche puisquil tient
dune naissance double: celle de la Tragdie en tant que premire uvre, celle
de sa vie en tant que tragdie de la naissance;87 et cest l, au dire mme de
Nietzsche une nigme quil nonce sous cette forme: en tant que mon pre,
je suis dj mort, cest en tant que je suis ma mre que je vis encore et que je
vieillis.88
Toute son uvre est marque du sceau de cette nigme quil a, tout au long de
sa vie, dissimule (simule?) sous une infinit de masques parce quil est, simplement et sincrement pudique, car Lhomme dont la pudeur est profonde rencontre sa destine mme et ses dcisions les plus dlicates sur des chemins o
peu dhommes se sont jamais aventurs et dont ses proches et ses familiers ne
doivent pas connatre lexistence. Il dissimule leurs yeux les dangers mortels
quil court et aussi la scurit quil a reconquise. Cet homme secret, qui use de la
parole, instinctivement, pour ne rien dire, et pour taire certaines choses, est inpuisable en prtextes pour ne pas parler; ce quil veut et ce quil obtient, cest
quune forme masque de sa personne circule sa place dans les curs et les cerveaux de ses amis. Et mme sil ne la pas voulu, il dcouvrira un jour que cest
malgr tout un masque de lui qui se meurt l, et cest bien ainsi; suit une phrase
clbre et, comme telle, cite et plagie une infinit de fois exemplaire, originale, inimitable: Tout esprit profond a besoin dun masque (Jeder tiefe Geist
braucht eine Maske). Mais Nietzsche ajoute: bien plus, un masque se forme perptuellement autour de tout esprit profond, grce linterprtation continuelle-

86

87
88

Il est mme possible que dans ce travail dcriture il y ait un sacrifice ou seulement sa mimsis;
voir aussi Nancy, Jean-Luc: Lexcrit. Dans: La pense finie. Paris 1990, p. 55 64.
Pautrat, Bernard: Versions du soleil. Paris 1971, p. 144 et suivantes.
EH, Pourquoi je suis si sage 1, p. 245. Voir au sujet de cette nigme, la remarquable interprtation
quen a faite Kofman, Sarah: Explosion I, De l Ecce Homo de Nietzsche. Paris 1992.

Nietzsche inimitable

99

ment fausse, cest--dire plate, donne toutes ses paroles, toutes ses dmarches, toutes les manifestations de sa vie.89
Nietzsche savait plus que nimporte qui, dans la mesure o il la crit et rpt, que lhomme est un comdien emprunt littral, mais interprt, du
Psaume 116, 11 et parce que son savoir, comme nous lavions dit, est un savoir
vcu, une exprience, cest un savoir qui la travers de part en part, tragiquement, la croise ddipe et de Promthe, de la Sphinx et du Christ, du Grec et
du Juif, de lhomme et de la femme, du pre (mort) et de la mre (en vie et en
vieillesse) il savait donc que le fond de lhomme est thtralit. Et il sen est
tenu cela jusquau bout, ce nest pas pour se protger de vanits sduisantes ou
dplaisantes quil sest pudiquement entour de masques, comme autant didentifications multiples, comme le ferait un excellent comdien devenant acteur par
les rles des personnages quil incarne il ne sagit pas de cette fausset devenue chair; cest bien plutt pour faire advenir, dans un immense clat de rire
cosmique capable de faire trembler la terre, plus radicalement encore que ne le
fit Voltaire dans sa critique du christianisme, celui qui il veut sunir, avec qui il
veut communier comme le firent ces acteurs inconscients du drame satyrique,
tres mtamorphoss qui ont compltement oubli leur pass de citoyen et leur
position sociale.90 Il veut devenir, comme eux, un serviteur du dieu souffrant au
point de vouloir, dans une ultime crise paroxystique, sy identifier: quand le comdien-serviteur-mdiateur devient satyre, cest la folie qui, en fin de compte,
devient chair.
Nietzsche sait que Dionysos sera son dernier masque, son dernier nom demprunt avec lequel il signe un pacte dacquiescement la vie, la vie qui dit oui la
vie, qui dit oui son retour ternel, dans ce quelle a de sublime, deffrayant et de
cruel pour continuer daffirmer ce que lexistence possde comme force optimale (ce qui ne signifie pas optimisme mais optimiser, maximaliser les puissances vitales et psychiques, signe dune surabondance de forces affirmatives et
cratrices). Il sait dsormais quil appartient la ligne de ceux qui, comme
dipe, Promthe et dautres ont une me noble, une ascendance qui remonte
lenfance du dieu, lenfance de lart, au thtre de Dionysos, au morcellement
des quatre lments cosmiques (eau-terre-air-feu) de lUn-originel, au morcellement du corps de lenfant divin dchir par les Titans et dont la souffrance, due
lindividuation, associe paradoxalement une extase jubilatoire, signe (ou symptme) dune matrise de soi. L rside, en toute rigueur, loriginalit, le gnie de
Nietzsche: inimitable, en ceci quil a voulu rduire jusqu la supprimer, la marge
qui existe entre le thtral et le vcu. Cest dans cette marge que va natre et se
mtamorphoser le chur de la tragdie grecque.
89
90

PBM 40, p. 58.

NT 8, p. 74.

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Robert Wicks

ROBERT WICKS
NIETZSCHES YES TO LIFE
AND THE APOLLONIAN NEUTRALITY OF EXISTENCE

A few months before his collapse in January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche stated
proudly: I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus (EH, Preface 2, KGW
VI 3, p. 256). To what extent, however, was Nietzsche an incorrigible Dionysian?
Is his enthusiastic philosophy of life-affirmation, as he often suggested, mostly
guided by instinct and health as opposed to abstractive reason and objectifying reflection? Although there are many places within Nietzsches corpus where we can
pose this question, among the most obvious is in reference to the well-known
conclusion of his autobiographical work, EH (1888) which reads: Have I been
understood? Dionysus versus the Crucified (EH, KGW VI 3, p. 372). Nietzsche instructs us that to understand his writings properly, we must associate his
thought fundamentally with the resonant meaning of the Greek god, Dionysus.
The word Dionysus evokes a mythological and metaphorical image that
represents for Nietzsche a cluster of life and health related ideas. Within this
cluster are those of life cycles, savage instinctual energies, growth and ecstasy. In
Nietzsches later works, these stand opposed to the Crucified a contrasting
metaphorical image that recalls the universalistic moral law that one should always resist harming other people, along with the redemptive promise that regards the present world as imperfect and as not the only world, as it holds out the
hope for a better world beyond. As we will see in an elucidating excerpt below,
this contrast between Dionysus and the Crucified intends to invoke a lifeoriented and supremely enthusiastic interpretation of the meaning of suffering,
as opposed to a death-oriented and defeatist interpretation. At the center of
Nietzsches conception of Dionysus reside not only the facts and cycles of life,
but the question of lifes meaning, given that life cycles condemn all of us individuals to death.
Nietzsche often maintained that we must regard the presently existing world
as a perfect world, if we are to be as healthy as possible. To attain and appreciate
this optimal condition, the violence and suffering that are among the facts of life
must not merely be accepted Buddhistically as inevitable and souring necessities;
they must be positively and enthusiastically valued to the degree to which one
loves life itself.

Nietzsches Yes to Life and the Apollonian Neutrality of Existence

101

My present aim is to determine the extent to which Nietzsches love of life

expresses a fundamentally Dionysian, life-affirming outlook by considering the
theoretical origin of the cosmological hypothesis in relation to which Nietzsches
love of life is expressed. The inquiry is motivated by noting that a key prescription of Nietzsches philosophy, namely, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence,
has comforting and idealizing effects that are coupled with surprisingly rationalistic presuppositions, in the clinical sense of detached and objective rationality.1
To the extent that the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is comforting, one must
wonder whether it immediately draws attention away from lifes pains; to the extent that the affirmation presupposes processes of idealization and rational detachment, it makes sense to ask whether the cosmological doctrine of Eternal
Recurrence would itself be better classified as an Apollonian as opposed to
Dionysian doctrine.2 Since Nietzsche himself criticized views that rest on what
he called metaphysical comforts, (BT, Attempt at a Self-Criticism, 7) and since
he criticized philosophical outlooks grounded on reason, abstraction and excessive reflection as being life-negating (TI, Reason in Philosophy, 1), there is a
prima facie inconsistency between Nietzsches Dionysian, life-affirming aims and
the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence to the extent that the cosmological doctrine presupposes a strong measure of reflective detachment as a condition for
its formulation.
Nietzsche explicitly characterized the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence as
the highest formula of life-affirmation, and we can alternatively express the present inquiry as an investigation regarding the degree to which a condition of optimal health requires the positive acknowledgement of lifes most meaning-ne1

Nietzsches cosmological doctrine of Eternal Recurrence is characterizable as follows:

The eternal recurrence is most commonly interpreted as a cosmological hypothesis. As
such, it holds that everything that has already happened in the universe, and everything that
is happening right now, and everything that will happen in the future, has already happened,
and will happen again, preceded and followed by exactly the same events in exactly the same
order, infinitely many times. (Nehamas, Alexander: The Eternal Recurrence. In: Richardson,
John/Leiter, Brian (eds.): Nietzsche. Oxford 2001, p. 119. The article was originally published in Philosophical Review 89 (1980), pp. 331 356.

In what follows, the meaningless energetic substrate of the above-described series of personal
and cultural reiterations will be emphasized. This is in contrast to the more commonly addressed
thought-experiment that asks us to reflect upon our respective attitudes towards the lives we
have so far lived.
In WP 1050 (March-June 1888), Nietzsche defines the Apollonian as the urge to perfect selfsufficiency, to the typical individual, to all that simplifies, distinguishes, makes strong, clear,
unambiguous, typical: freedom under the law (WP 1050, KGW VIII 3, P. 16). In BT 1, Nietzsche further associates the Apollonian with the Principle of Sufficient Reason a principle that
ascribes an all-permeating intelligibility to the world. Parallel to this, Nietzsche characterizes an
aesthetic Socratism which maintains that to be beautiful, everything must be intelligible
(BT 12). In his narrow and intense focus upon exclusively logical and reflective modes of intelligibility, Socrates represents a constricted and excessive form of the Apollonian principle.

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Robert Wicks

gating qualities qualities that Nietzsche regarded as terrifying. By embarking

upon the project of estimating the variable degrees of terror that the affirmation
of Eternal Recurrence respectively admits within Nietzsches alternative formulations, we can gain a sense of the affirmations effectiveness in being an alleged
expression of life-affirmation.
We will thereafter be able to assess the health supporting value of the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence, not because we will arrive at a typically Nietzschean
proportion of terror and compensating tranquillity, and will rest there. Searching
for such a proportion will indeed uncover a canonical ratio, but this determination will stimulate a more revealing reflection about the very nature of the terror against which Nietzsche sometimes shields himself, and towards which he
sometimes embracingly turns. We will discover that Nietzsches terrifying truth
of Eternal Recurrence, namely, that the world is essentially meaningless, is itself
a product of reflection and detachment, or of what one could also call the clinical or medical gaze an objectifying and distancing gaze that contradicts Nietzsches alleged identification with strong Dionysian instincts at the level of basic
presuppositions.

I. The Capacity to Deify

Let us begin by considering Nietzsches 1888 elucidation of his final remark
from EH Dionysus versus the Crucified that was written about six
months earlier.3 In his notebooks, he explained the meaning of the opposition as
follows:
Dionysus versus the Crucified: there you have the antithesis. It is not a difference in
regard to their martyrdom it is a difference in the meaning of it. Life itself, its eternal
fruitfulness and recurrence, creates torment, destruction, the will to annihilation.4 In
the other case, suffering the Crucified as the innocent one counts as an objection to this life, as a formula for its condemnation. One will see that the problem is
that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning.
3

The notebook excerpt is from March-June 1888, and EH was written between October 15
(Nietzsches 44th birthday) and November 4, 1888.
One year earlier, Nietzsche explicitly referred to this expansive will to annihilation as Dionysian and contrasted it to another sort of destructive will based on resentment:
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, Dionysian); but it can
also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, and underprivileged, who destroy, must
destroy, because what exists, indeed all existence, all being, outrages and provokes them.
(GS 370, KGW V 2, P. 303 304)
One therefore needs wisdom, or taste, or an understanding of life itself, to distinguish between
the affirmative versus the resentful forms of the will to destruction.

Nietzsches Yes to Life and the Apollonian Neutrality of Existence

103

In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case,
being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The
tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and
capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he
is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets
it. The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life:
Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again
from destruction. (WP 1052, KGW VIII 3, pp. 58 59)5

Given that Nietzsche concluded his autobiographical EH with the summary

remark about Dionysus versus the Crucified, the above elucidation underscores
that one of the central themes in Nietzsches thought concerns the meaning of
suffering. The traditional problem of evil motivates much of Nietzsches philosophizing, and up to the point of his collapse he remained concerned about how
the presence of suffering in life can be managed in the most healthy way. As was
the case with Buddha, Nietzsche wanted to come to satisfactory terms with the
inevitable suffering that is a part of life, and he intended to give his solution a
philosophical and therapeutic expression. Both Nietzsche and Buddha used
medical models, and both conceived of themselves as cultural physicians.
In the above excerpt, Nietzsche opposes two solutions to the problem of suffering the Christian and the Dionysian. The first of these reflects a futureoriented solution where suffering is justified in relation to its role as a means to a
more highly valued and less painful end-state that is not yet a present-state. The
second maintains that suffering is justified to the extent that insofar as the world
includes suffering as a necessary aspect, and insofar as the present world is
highly valued, suffering itself is justified to that very extent. Stated more extremely, since suffering is a necessary part of the present world, and if the present world is perfect just as it is6, then suffering itself must be of a fundamentally
positive quality.
This is an offensive and confusing view on the face of things, for the world is
filled with injustice and morally outrageous happenings that typically, people reasonably hope will be rectified in the future. If suffering, injustice and moral outrage are ineradicable and continually re-emerging features of the world, however,
and if there is nothing more than this world, then it is futile to expect that justice
will ever prevail for long.7 The absurdity of this situation would seem to be suf5
6

Italicized words are in the original text; boldfaced words are my emphasis.
For the idea that the world can be regarded as perfect just as it is, see, for example, one of the
concluding segments of Z At Noon and the final section [10] of Why I am so Clever in EH, where
Nietzsche associates the perception of the world as perfect with his formula for greatness in a
human being, amor fati (love of fate).
Nietzsche claims that from the highest biological standpoint, legal [i. e., civilized] conditions are
only exceptional conditions, and that life operates essentially through injury, assault, exploitation
and destruction (GM II 11).

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Robert Wicks

ficient for moral despair, for in moral terms, the world is painfully imperfect and
incomplete.
In connection with the above exposition I would like to focus upon Nietzsches characterization of the sort of person who would advocate a Dionysian or
tragic as opposed to a Christian view of suffering. According to Nietzsche, to ascribe a positive and intrinsic value to suffering and to the world as a whole, not
only must a person be strong and spiritually rich, a person must also be capable
of deifying. This capacity to deify is an intriguing quality, for Nietzsche does not
refer to this capacity exclusively as a Dionysian one, as one might suspect.
Rather, he refers to it in his early writings as a feature of both the Dionysian and
Apollonian principles. Moreover, as we will see in a moment, the Apollonian version of the capacity to deify comes closer to the sense expressed in the autobiographical excerpt from EH that contrasts Dionysus with the Crucified.
With respect to the Dionysian sense of deification that we find in BT,
Nietzsche states:
Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates
once more her reconciliation with her lost son, man []
In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community;
he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying into the air,
dancing. His very gestures express enchantment. Just as the animals now talk, and
the earth yields milk and honey, supernatural sounds emanate from him too: he feels
himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like the gods he
saw walking in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art
[] (BT 1, KGW III 1, pp. 25 26)8

The complementary Apollonian sense of deification from the same work is

expressed in the following, only a couple of sections later:
To understand this, it becomes necessary to level the artistic structure of the Apollinian culture, as it were, stone by stone, till the foundations on which it rests become visible. First of all we see the glorious Olympian figures of the gods, standing on the
gables of this structure []
Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart [viz. Christianity], searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate
spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them,
discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that suggests asceticism,
spirituality or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant
8

This excerpt also illustrates that in BT, Nietzsche did not equate the Dionysian drive exclusively
with uncontrolled, frenzied, intoxicated passion only to change his conception in later years
to a more tempered one that embodied the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian energies
(see, e.g., BGE: Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York 1966, note 44,
p. 235). Nietzsche always associated the Dionysian with overflowing life-forces, and he recognized that Dionysian energies can be expressed in various degrees of intensity, the most healthy
level of which defines a less ferocious and less self-destructive type of person.

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life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. And so the spectator
may stand quite bewildered before this fantastic excess of life, asking himself by virtue
of what magic potion these high-spirited men could have found life so enjoyable that,
wherever they turned, their eyes beheld the smile of Helen, the ideal picture of their
own existence, floating in sweet sensuality. (BT 3, KGW III 1, pp. 30 31)

To deify is to idealize, to regard as an absolute, to glorify as of supreme

worth, or to take as an object of worship.9 Within the above two excerpts, Nietzsche characterizes the Dionysian mode of deification as one of self-deification or
self-glorification. One could call this a reflective, self-centered, self-determining
or self-assured mode of deification. We encounter this attitude importantly in
Nietzsches later thought when he identifies the features of the noble (or master)
morality in the segment of BGE entitled, What is Noble:
The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, what is harmful to me is harmful in itself ; it knows itself to be that
which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating. Everything it knows as part of
itself it honors: such a morality is self-glorification [Selbstverherrlichung]. In the foreground there is the feeling of fullness, of power that seeks to overflow, the happiness
of high tension, the consciousness of wealth that would give and bestow [] (BGE
260, KGW VI 2, p. 219)

Alternatively, Nietzsche characterizes the Apollonian mode of deification as

one either of life as a whole, or of existence. One could call this a less-reflective
or other-focussed mode of deification where one glorifies ones general environment rather than ones individual self. In one of its modes, this style of deification expresses a sentiment akin to nature-worship or life-worship.
If we compare the EH excerpt from 1888 with BT excerpt of 1872, it is surprising how consistent they are in their general denigration of the Christian view in
favour of the Greek view. A difference is that in 1888, Nietzsche refers to the deification of existence as expressively Dionysian, whereas in 1872, he refers to it as
expressively Apollonian. This difference notwithstanding, Nietzsches remarks on
the value of suffering in 1888 logically match his remarks about Greek health in
1872: just as in his later remarks, suffering acquires an intrinsic value as a consequence of having deified existence as a whole, in his earlier remarks, people acquire
a sense of intrinsic value and deify themselves as a consequence of having deified
existence as a whole. The logic in both cases is identical: when one unconditionally
glorifies the whole, the wholes constituent parts become glorified by implication.
If we admit that the above considerations establish that the capacity to
deify is central to Nietzsches reflections upon the meaning of suffering and
that the logic of Nietzsches reasoning within this context typically proceeds
9

As a capacity to create the highest values, the capacity to deify is thus diametrically opposed
to the nihilistic mentality wherein the highest values devaluate themselves (WP I 2 [SpringFall 1887]). Hence arises its centrality to the present discussion.

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from whole to part, then there is a logical priority of the Apollonian outlook over
the Dionysian outlook within this dimension of Nietzsches view. According to
this logic, a necessary condition for deifying ones own suffering and of redeeming ones life thereby, is that one first deifies the whole of existence or deifies life
in general.10 If one has a healthy attitude towards the world as a whole, the reflective effect is that one has a healthy attitude towards oneself and ones place in
the world. In what follows below, we will recall this priority of the Apollonian
over the Dionysian style of thinking, for the Apollonian priority will be reiterated
when we examine the nature of the terror that Nietzsche hypothesizes at the
core of the world. This terror is associated with the presence of an all-permeating meaninglessness and absurdity that he tries to interpret enthusiastically
rather than pessimistically.

II. Nihilism and Soothsayers in

The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
To explore this theme of Apollonian (i. e., other-focussed) versus Dionysian
(i. e., self-focussed) modes of deification in connection Nietzsches doctrine of
Eternal Recurrence, we can attend initially to the ambiguous figure of the soothsayer, or speaker of truth, as he appears in BT and in Z. If only owing to the figures literary memorability, one might suppose that the soothsayer would be a
consistent figure within Nietzsches texts, giving voice to roughly the same sort
of doctrines. In fact, we encounter two styles of soothsayer that represent different and conflicting kinds of messages, namely, a pessimistic, defeatist and deathoriented message and an exuberant, triumphant and life-affirming message.
Within Nietzsches writings, only one of the soothsayers is consistently
remembered, and this is the pessimistic personage in Z a character who
expresses a straightforwardly defeatist doctrine, and against whom Zarathustra
argues in advocacy of a healthier and more triumphant outlook. The following is
a typical remark by the pessimistic soothsayer in Z:
And I saw a great sadness descend upon mankind. The best grew weary of their
works. A doctrine appeared, accompanied by a faith: All is empty, all is the same, all
has been! And from the hills it echoed: All is empty, all is the same, all has been! Indeed we have harvested: but why did all our fruit turn rotten and brown? What fell
down from the evil moon last night? In vain was all our work: our wine has turned to
poison; an evil eye has seared our fields and hearts [] Verily, we have become too
weary even to die. We are still waking and living on in tombs. (Z II, The Soothsayer,
KGW VI 1, p. 168)
10

This is to say that the one-way directionality from whole to part issues from the logic of justification.

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In Z, the soothsayer expresses defeatism, and he embodies a sense of meaninglessness, debilitated life energies, loss of inspiration and futility, all of which
are produced by lamenting about how death permeates all endeavours and how
nothing lasts. We find the same view in Ecclesiastes when it is stated that what
has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is
nothing new under the sun (1:9) and How can the wise die just like fools? So
I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind (2:17).11
In BT there is a corresponding defeatist doctrine as well, except that it is not
expressed by the figure of a soothsayer per se, but by the oldest of satyrs, Silenus,
a mythical figure and tutor of Dionysus. Upon being asked by King Midas to
reveal what is the best and most desirable of all things for human beings, Silenus
gave a shrill laugh and stated a frightening truth:
Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me
to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all
is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second
best for you is to die soon. (BT 3, KGW III 1, p. 31)

Nietzsche refers to Silenuss message as an instance of ancient Greek folk

wisdom, and he accepts an aspect of this message as a fact, namely, that existence
is terrifying and horrible in its absurd brutality. One hard truth for Nietzsche
and our prevailing question is to ask, From where does this truth derive?
is that the world is without any permanent meaning that either is given from
without or is intrinsic to it. His preoccupying question is consequently how to
cope with this metaphysically senseless situation in a healthy manner, and it is
here where he turns to the image of Apollo for an answer.
Nietzsche has much to say about Apollo, but what is revealing in the present
context is an argument Nietzsche advances which implies that the pessimistic
view the view that accords a negative value to the meaninglessness of things
contradicts the conditions of human life. Pessimism is a death-oriented outlook
for Nietzsche, and he argues that as long as one is alive, it makes no sense to be a
pessimist or defeatist. The argument is given in the very first section of BT:
This joyous necessity of the dream experience has been embodied by the Greeks in
their Apollo: Apollo, the god of all plastic energies, is at the same time the soothsaying god. He, who (as the etymology of the name indicates) is the shining one,
the deity of light, is also ruler over the beautiful illusion of the inner world of fantasy.
The higher truth, the perfection of these states in contrast to the incompletely intel11

Nietzsche refers to the defeatist doctrine of Ecclesiastes explicitly in Z III On Old and New Tablets
13 (Why live? All is vanity!), calling it antiquarian babbling [altertmliches Geschwtz].
Although Nietzsches own doctrine of Eternal Recurrence states similarly that there is nothing
new under the sun and that all is the same, he disagrees with the defeatist evaluation of this
(alleged) fact.

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ligible everyday world, this deep consciousness of nature, healing and helping in sleep
and dream, is at the same time the symbolical analogue of the soothsaying faculty
and of the arts generally, which make life possible and worth living. (BT 1,
KGW III 1, p. 23)

If the soothsaying faculty and the arts generally make life (presumably, Nietzsche means civilized human life) possible and worth living, then no matter
how one defines these faculties, they are a priori conditions for life. If they make
life possible, then they must be present whenever there is life. More thought-provokingly, Nietzsche adds that these necessary conditions of life are also what
make life worth living, and this implies that civilized human life is by definition
perceived to be essentially worth living, because the necessary conditions for
such a life are themselves positively value-giving. There can be no civilized
human life without the condition that makes it worth living, so when people express defeatist views they stand unnaturally in conflict with their own living and
civilized nature. Existence in general might be metaphysically meaningless, but
there is a special configuration of existence that is the human cultural condition,
which itself issues in a subjective condition within whose perspective it is impossible not to value ones living existence to some positive extent.12 Such reflections are among the a priori grounds of Nietzsches philosophy of vitality.
By the soothsaying faculty and the arts generally, Nietzsche has in mind
more literally the human capacity to use ones imagination to be creative in an act
of idealization or beautification. Specifically, then, what makes human life worth
living is our Apollonian capacity to idealize and beautify both our surroundings
and ourselves, whatever their nature might be:
[] out of the original Titanic divine order of terror, the Olympian divine order of joy
gradually evolved through the Apollonian impulse toward beauty, just as roses burst
from thorny bushes. How else could this people, so sensitive, so vehement in its
desires, so singularly capable of suffering, have endured existence, if it had not been revealed to them in their gods, surrounded with such a higher glory?
The same impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consummation
of existence, seducing one to a continuation of life, was also the cause of the Olympian world which the Hellenic will made use of as a transfiguring mirror. Thus do
the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it the only satisfactory theodicy!
Existence under the bright sunshine of such gods is regarded as desirable
in itself, and the real pain of Homeric men is caused by parting from it, especially
by early parting: so that now, reversing the wisdom of Silenus, we might say of the
Greeks that to die soon is worst of all for them, the next worst to die at all! (BT 3,
KGW III 1, p. 32)

12

Nietzsches prescription to say yes to life is therefore a directive to intensify the strength of
ones already existing living condition.

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Life energies are thus artistic energies, and when life energies are strong,
there is a tendency to deify either existence or life itself, the result of which yields
a more reflective appreciation of ones taking a communal part in the grand and
glorious scheme of things.
We can now recognize two different figures of the soothsayer in Nietzsches
writings, namely, the imaginative and deifying Apollonian soothsayer in BT,
and the pessimistic, defeatist and death-oriented soothsayer in Z. Although
Nietzsche undoubtedly advocates the deifying soothsayer as opposed to the defeatist one, he is explicit about this by stating that Zarathustra himself is a kind of
soothsayer. Nietzsche does not advance this characterization merely in passing,
for it not only appears in Z, but is highlighted in his 1886 Attempt at Self-Criticism that he added to the second edition of BT. It is a representative remark:
This crown of him who laughs, this rose-wreath crown: I myself have put on this
crown, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy. Nobody else have I found
strong enough for this today.
Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light, waves with his wings, ready for flight,
waving at all birds, ready and heady, happily lightheaded; Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, not impatient, not unconditional, one who
loves leaps and side-leaps: I myself have put on this crown! (Z IV, On the Higher Man,
18, KGW VI 1, p. 363)

Zarathustra paradigmatically embodies the Apollonian forces that make life

possible and worth living a condition not far from Nietzsches own reiterated
remarks about having put his ear to the heart of life to tap into its essence13 and
his solution to the problem of suffering in BT that we have already seen: as we
more satisfyingly conceive of ourselves to be one with the large-scale cycles of
life and death, suffering becomes justified.
If we collect these various images, we can conclude that the conditions of
human life include an artistic and Apollonian dimension that involves the deification of ones environment, and that these stand in amalgamation with what we
have not yet explicitly emphasized, namely, strong instinctual energy the aggressive, expansive, reproductive and often destructive energy that Nietzsche
refers to as being intemperately Dionysian. In BT, Nietzsche maintains that
optimal health requires a strong sense of aggressive and expansive instinct, but
one that has been tempered and refined by imaginative and deifying energies to a
point where the instincts are not simply brutal and self-destructive.
How, then, do these assorted reflections on the opposition between Dionysus versus the Crucified along with the two opposing figures of the soothsayer
help us to appreciate the conceptual foundations of Nietzsches central doctrine
13

For example, see BT 21, and Z II On Self-Overcoming, where Nietzsche asks after expressing his
doctrine of the Will to Power, whether he has indeed crawled into the very heart of life and into
the very roots of its heart (KGW VI 1, P. 143).

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of life-affirmation, namely, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence? What are

these conceptual foundations, and do they issue mainly from a life-affirming or
from a life-negating mentality?
III. Life-Negation and Nietzsches Cosmological Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence
In his notebooks of 1885, Nietzsche offers a summary characterization of
the world that implicitly includes an expression of his cosmological doctrine of
Eternal Recurrence. In this particular instance, he emphasizes the idea of the
Will to Power, mentioning recurrence and the allegedly monstrous nature of the
scene. Nietzsche presents the scene reflected in a mirror, and refers to it as a
Dionysian world:
And do you know what the world is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This
world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude
of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only
transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or
losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by nothingness as by a
boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set
in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be empty here or
there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the
same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea
of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back,
with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the
simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid,
coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then
again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its
courses and its years, blessing itself as that which knows no satiety, no disgust,
no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally selfdestroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my beyond good
and evil, without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless
a ring feels good will toward itself do you want a name for this world? A solution for all
its riddles? A light for you, too, best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? This world is the will to power and nothing besides! And you yourselves are
also this will to power and nothing besides! (WP 1067, KGW VII 3, pp. 338 339)

Nietzsche shows us his vision in a mirror, and it is useful to consider what

sort of mirror this is. I submit that the mirror is fundamentally an Apollonian
transfiguring and glorifying mirror that reflects and softens the devastating impact of a terrifyingly meaningless reality.14 Nietzsches mirror is like the shield
14

J.G. Fichte in The Vocation of Man [1800] describes dramatically how nature appears to be a monstrously frightening, meaningless, ever-revolving circle that continually devours itself. His remarks closely foreshadow Nietzsches famous WP 1067 notebook excerpt cited here. See The
Vocation of Man, Book Three, Faith, Section II for some of Fichtes concerns about whether life
is worth living, if it is only an ever-repeated game that tends to nothing and signifies nothing.

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through which Perseus was able to perceive indirectly, and thereby withstand,
the mortifying gaze of Medusa.
If we imagine the reality that is being reflected as it is in itself, we can identify
the frightening aspects of Nietzsches hypothesis about the nature of the world.
For example, there is no escape from this world, and there is no developmentally-defined goal, end-state or satisfying conclusion involved in its process.
There is only a field of constantly recycling energy without any particular meaning or point. Neither is there any moral value within this world; it is completely
depersonalized. It is a violent, absurd and artless world where each and every
god is dead.
At the same time, we apprehend this meaningless flux in a tempering mirror,
and it is within the mirror itself that we can locate what is arguably Nietzsches
own addition of a factor of joy and self-blessing. Owing to the anthropomorphic
quality of the augmented characterization one where reality allegedly blesses
itself it is plausible to say that this self-blessing is actually Nietzsches own projected affirmative valuation. This is substantiated by his own programmatic remarks in The Gay Science about the need to remove all anthropomorphisms, or
shadows of God, in order to apprehend the true state of things:
Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being [] The total character of
the world [] is in all eternity chaos in the sense not of a lack of necessity but a lack
of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for
our aesthetic anthropomorphisms. (GS III, 109, KGW V 2, pp. 145 46)

What we thus have hypothesized before us within Nietzsches mirror is a depersonalised, objectified and uncaring metaphysical condition of the world in
itself that is subsequently amalgamated with a deifying and anthropomorphic
overlay of joy and blessing. This latter is Nietzsches chosen evaluation of the
neutral metaphysical foundation that the cosmological doctrine of Eternal
Recurrence expresses.15 The cold and lifeless facts of Eternal Recurrence are ascribed an enlivening value, not unlike how a mere squiggle of ink can be given a
semantic meaning, or how the starry skies above can be mythologically organized through the projection of pictorial images. To the extent that the will
15

Nietzsche refers to the value-neutral conception of Eternal Recurrence (i. e., the cosmological
version of Eternal Recurrence) as nihilism, but he does not infer that this is a necessarily lifenegating view (although it would be life-negating if one lacked the strength to glorify the situation); Nietzsche refers to the cosmological situation only as a terrifying view:
Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim,
yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: the eternal recurrence.
This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the meaningless), eternally!
The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief. It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. We deny end goals: if existence had one
it would have been reached. (WP 55, KGW VIII 1, p. 217)

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within the Will to Power is nothing more than an anthropomorphic projection

of this sort, the Will to Power as a cosmological doctrine is itself only an idealized reflection and interpretation of a fundamentally absurd world of recycling
and careless energy.16 The world as the Will to Power is an affirmative and enlivened interpretation of the neutral and nihilistic cosmological doctrine of Eternal Recurrence and it expresses the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence.17
The balance between terror and tranquillity within Nietzsches affirmative
mirror image closely accords with the model of health that he advanced in BT,
for there he prescribes that we face the terrifyingly meaningless reality as
squarely as possible, tempering the situation only slightly by either idealization or
rationality that prevents the apprehension of the disconcerting and destructive
truth from being spiritually fatal to ones sense of personal meaning. The
relatively brief references to joy and blessing in the above description are consistent with this minimization of idealization and rationalization. In this instance, strength is linked with the amount of crushing meaninglessness one can
endure, and health is associated with ones degree of strength.
16

17

The value-neutral (i. e., cosmological) version of Eternal Recurrence is thus more theoretically
foundational than the more evaluation-enhanced cosmological doctrine of the Will to Power.
Martin Heidegger also interprets Nietzsche with an emphasis upon Eternal Recurrence and Will
to Power, and he recognizes that the Will to Power is already in itself an estimating and valuing.
For Heidegger, however, the ontological status of Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence are on a
par, and he does not interpret Will to Power as a positively evaluated apprehension of a more
neutral and fundamental nihilistic condition where all values have been dissolved. In contrast to
the present interpretation which prioritizes the neutrally-conceived Eternal Recurrence over the
evaluation-steeped Will to Power, Heideggers interpretation of Nietzsche locates value-postulation in Being itself. (Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. Volume I. The Will to Power as Art. Translated by David Farrell l. New York 1979, p. 32.)
Given the cosmological priority of the neutral Eternal Recurrence doctrine over the more affirmative Will to Power doctrine, it would misrepresent Nietzsches views if one were to develop
an account of Nietzsches metaphysical interpretation of the world by focussing primarily upon
the Will to Power, while substantially neglecting the nihilistic doctrine of Eternal Recurrence of
which the Will to Power is arguably only a subsequent affirmation. We can see this approach in
John Richardsons Nietzsches System (Oxford, 1996). As one might expect, Richardson reiterates
Heideggers claim that Will to Power immediately involves the expression of value (p. 109) as he
similarly locates Will to Power (called power ontology) at the foundation of Nietzsches view.
The adjective nihilistic is ambiguous in Nietzsches texts. Sometimes Nietzsche uses the term
to refer neutrally to a potentially frightening condition where there are no values and where anthropomorphism is absent (e.g., WP 55 [June 1887]); sometimes (and frequently) he uses the
term to refer to a defeatist, or pessimistic, psychological reaction to a completely de-valued and
non-anthropomorphic interpretation of the world (e.g., WP 435 [March-June 1888]). Both the
Nietzschean life-affirmer and Nietzschean life-negator are nihilists in the former sense.
To avoid confusion, I am using the terms pessimistic and defeatist to refer to the life-negating attitude, and am using the term nihilistic to refer to the neutral, de-valued and non-anthropomorphic interpretation of the world. Nietzsches cosmological doctrine of Eternal Recurrence would be a nihilistic doctrine in this neutral sense of the term.
The same ambiguity attends Nietzsches use of the term Buddhistic, as in WP 55 (neutral
sense) as opposed to BT 7 (pessimistic sense).

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Some of Nietzsches other evaluatively affirmative interpretations of the facts

of Eternal Recurrence do not reflect the above model of health, and we do not
encounter the consistency of expression that would be desirable across his corpus. For example, we find a significantly intensified joyful attitude towards the
world in Z only a year earlier (1884), where Nietzsche more dreamily characterizes his identification with the worlds endless recycling as analogous to a wedding ring signifying his marriage to the world. In this instance, he conceives of
the unfeeling and careless world as analogous to a woman whom he loves. The
romantic feeling expressed is notably intense:
Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of
recurrence?
Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, unless it be this
woman whom I love: for I love you, O eternity.
For I love you, O eternity! (Z III, The Seven Seals, KGW VI 1, p. 283)18

Nietzsche recites this refrain seven times at the conclusion of the third part
to Z, which is entitled The Seven Seals: The Yes and Amen Song, in clear resonance to the Book of Revelations.19 I would like to draw particular attention to
the romantic, joyful, dreamlike and strongly idealizing and deifying mentality
that Nietzsche exhibits in this particular characterization of both the world as
a whole and his attitude towards it.20 Given how violence-filled and morally
upsetting the cycles of the world can be, and given how Nietzsche nihilistically
hypothesizes the world in itself as being valueless, his ecstatically deifying mentality diverts our attention from the exact sort of senselessly violent world we are
urged to love. The Book of Revelations overflows with images of merciless and
extensive destruction, and although Nietzsches characterization of the world in
18

19

20

In the first of these seven instances, Zarathustra describes himself as a soothsayer who is pregnant with lightning bolts that say Yes and laugh Yes, soothsaying lightning bolts.
The Biblical seven seals secure shut a scroll that contains the details of the future. With the opening of each seal appears a force of death and destruction: (1) a conquering rider on a white horse,
(2) a peace-stealing rider on a red horse, (3) a task-master rider on a black horse, (4) Death himself riding on a pale green horse, (5) the masses of people who had been slaughtered for the word
of God and for the testimony they had given, (6) terrible earthquakes, and (7) seven angels with
seven plagues.
This joyful and glorifying attitude towards the world compares almost exactly with Nietzsches
metaphysically comforting outlook expressed in BT (e.g., 17) one that Nietzsche himself later
criticized in 1886. In light of the 1886 criticism, encountering the same comforting attitude expressed in 1884 in a culminating section of Z at the end of Book III (1884) leads us to reflect
whether the year 1885 (Z IV) marks a notable hardening point in Nietzsches outlook.
Nietzsches consistency of hardened attitude is lacking, though, for in yet a different work of
1886, Nietzsche characterizes the affirmer of Eternal Recurrence as shouting insatiably da capo
not only to himself but to the whole play and spectacle (BGE 56, KGW VI 2, p. 73) thus reiterating the tone of the more ecstatic versions from 1882 and 1884. In 1888, Nietzsche even associates the term Dionysian eternalistically with the triumphant Yes to life beyond all death and
change (TI What I Owe to the Ancients 4, KGW VI 3, p. 153)

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this concluding section of Z has a mildly turbulent tone, the apocalyptic devastation that we encounter in the Bible is only alluded to by the subtitle of the section.
Although such an intensely joyful attitude counteracts the discouraging impact of the worlds painful aspect as it revalues these aspects from a negative to a
positive value, it nonetheless acts as a pain-reducing mechanism, just as the offensive behavior of a person one loves or highly values tends to be less disturbing than the same behavior done by a person whom one glorifies to a lesser extent. It takes more strength to forgive a despicable person, for instance, than it
takes to forgive a friend.21
This reveals a tension between glorifying the world as a whole on the one
hand, and being constitutionally strong in the sense of having the capacity to
face explicitly a great deal of meaningless pain and suffering, on the other.
Nietzsches philosophy asks us to befriend, and even to love, pain and danger,
but this friendly and loving effort yields ambiguous results: it can either sustain a
productive struggle against absurd suffering that is geared towards self-overcoming, or it can precipitate an accommodation to and subsequent reduction of
the offense to our sense of rationality and balance. The latter is easily imaginable,
for if one realistically and openly accepts absurd suffering as a fact of life, one
very well might suffer less, as the Stoic philosophy observed. If one takes a step
further and adopts a loving attitude towards meaningless suffering, then it becomes even more likely that ones love will temper the pain.
In contrast, a strong life energy also entails an intensely idealizing and deifying mentality. So a healthy state of mind has conflicting aspects, namely, as expressed in the strength to endure the pain of absurdity, as opposed to the
strength for projecting enthusiastic meanings. Both strengths can be used to
overcome illness, but an overriding disposition for projecting glorifying meanings is incompatible with the tough temperament for dwelling in the arid atmosphere of nihilistic truth.22
These reflections indicate some tensions between the pain relieving and
health supporting aspects of Nietzsches advocacy of the capacity to deify, and if
we consider these in conjunction with what he believed to be a frightening and
numbing interpretation of the world in itself as a meaningless and recycling flux,
we can easily conclude that Nietzsches fundamental outlook on the world is
21

22

In an analogous manner, Nietzsche himself experienced a tremendous difficulty in affirming

that human mediocrity will never be eliminated (see Z III, The Convalescent, 2: And the eternal recurrence even of the smallest that was my disgust with all existence. Alas! Nausea!
Nausea! Nausea!) (KGW VI 1, p. 270 271)
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus observed this sort of tension, and he aimed for consistency
by arguing that turning absurdity into a God and retaining a nostalgia for the absurd has the effect of undermining the disconcerting nature of absurdity.

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sublime: it involves a fusion of tranquillity and terror, or a fusion of deification

and nihilism. Determining the proportion of tranquillity to terror remains an
issue, for in the 1884 wedding ring of eternity excerpt, Nietzsches model of
life-affirmation suggests an Apollonian tranquillity tinged with a Dionysian terror, and in the 1885 monster of energy excerpt it suggests a Dionysian terror
tinged with an Apollonian tranquillity.
As noted above, Nietzsche claimed canonically in BT that the healthiest outlook involves a terror tinged with tranquillity, rather than the opposite. His complaints against Socrates and against the alleged dominance of the scientific
world-view since the time of the ancient Greeks stated that excessive rationality,
reflection and the quest for a disinterested objectivity have the effect of repressing and weakening natural, creative, expansive and aggressive instincts to the
detriment of cultural health. For this reason, he initially tried to reinvigorate the
culture of his times by celebrating the music of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner,
along with the more reason-limiting philosophical views of Kant and Schopenhauer.
This canonical Nietzschean position can be described further as follows:
Nietzsche typically advocated flying as close to the fire as one can without being
consumed, living as dangerously as one can without being killed as a result,
breaking as many rules as one can without being completely self-destructive, and
expanding ones horizons as much as one can without losing ones perspective altogether. He also advocated living ones life as if one were a work of art, and suggested that his view of life is theatrical in the sense that people are at their best
when they challenge themselves to play the most noble and dignified roles that
they can upon the worlds stage. These are all supposedly examples of Nietzsches preference for the enhancement and expression of Dionysian energies.
I mention the above set of examples, including especially those that have aesthetic content, to draw a parallel between Nietzsches canonical model of health
and a particular view of the ideal aesthetic attitude that was expressed influentially
during the early part of the 20th century. This is the account of psychical distance as a factor in art appreciation formulated by Edward Bullough in 1912.23
Bulloughs article usefully indicated that distance is a matter of degree: one can
disengage from ones personal and/or sympathetic interest in a situation or sub-

23

An association between Nietzsche and Bullough in connection with the Apollonian principle is
implicit in a passing phrase by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins: This sense of self as
part of a dynamic whole gave a different ground for experiencing life as meaningful than one
would recognize in the more typical Apollonian condition, which entails a certain psychic distance (Magnus, Bernd/Higgins, Kathleen M.: Nietzsches Works and Their Themes. In: Magnus, Bernd/Higgins, Kathleen M. (eds.): The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge
1996, p. 23. They mention neither Bullough nor his specific theory of psychical distance, however.

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ject matter to a variable extent, ranging from the closely engaged but not emotionally overwhelmed attitude, to that of the extraordinarily cool and distant observer. For example, being compassionate requires that distance be minimized;
performing as a surgeon or medical examiner requires a high degree of distance.
The above characterization of Nietzsche in connection with the sublimity of
his views in BT shows that he advocates as a matter of optimal health, the same
ideal that Bullough characterizes for optimal aesthetic appreciation, namely, the
utmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance.24 This association with
Bullough and the concept of aesthetic distance helps illuminate Nietzsches attempt to offer a fundamentally non-moral as opposed to moral justification of
suffering. By aesthetically distancing himself from the world, and by regarding
the world as an ideal work of art where each element contributes to the value of
the whole25, Nietzsche travelled along an aesthetic, rather than communallymoral, avenue to his glorification of the world. Nietzsche did not glorify the
world in the socially and morally traditional manner of Hegel or Marx, for he did
not envision a heaven on earth where justice and peaceful community would
prevail. Nietzsches aesthetic glorification involved taking what appears to be a
disappointingly imperfect, mediocre and mundane situation and reinterpreting it
as a sublime situation, often using the traditional aesthetic model of how disheartening situations can be portrayed artistically with a measure of idealization.
Nietzsche also used a trans-moral romantic model wherein the distasteful aspects of a person become less offensive, as ones love for the person intensifies.
This we have already seen in Nietzsches wedding ring of eternity excerpt and
attitude of amor fati.26

24

25

26

Bullough, Edward: Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle [1912]. In:
Bullough, Edward: Aesthetics: Lectures and Essays. Westport, Conn. 1977, p. 100.
Nietzsche expresses this artistic view in BT 1 when he claims that the beautiful Apollonian image
contains nothing unimportant or superfluous. The same artistic ideal is conveyed by Hegels
claim [c. 1820s] that art makes every one of its productions into a thousand-eyed Argus,
whereby the inner soul and spirit is seen at every point (Hegel, G.W.F.: Hegels Aesthetics Lectures on Fine Art. Volume I. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford 1975, pp. 153 154.)
The aesthetic model is exemplified well in traditional wedding portraiture, where one aims to
remove the blemishes in order to idealize the person portrayed (See GS 290, where Nietzsche
emphasizes the importance of giving style to ones character.) The contrasting romantic model
does not necessarily involve neglecting the loved ones (or ones own) blemishes, and it can
come closer to an aesthetic transfiguration of the commonplace view, where ordinary objects
(or persons) are given a special and positive value, even though their physical appearance might
not change as a result.
With respect to the romantic justification for senseless suffering, the psychologically perplexing
quality of this particular Nietzschean solution requires understanding what it would be like
to love unconditionally a thoroughly violent and unjust person, for such are the despicable characteristics of life itself according to Nietzsches definitions. Within a Nietzschean context, one
can ask pointedly what it would be like to love the murderer of God, or the ugliest man, as
Nietzsche describes this personage in Z IV.

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IV. Extreme Distancing and the Neutrality of Eternal Recurrence

With these considerations in hand, we can reflect further upon the manner in
which Nietzsches sublime affirmation of Eternal Recurrence expresses a synthesis of Dionysian and Apollonian attitudes, since we are still left with the
unresolved situation where the well-known, 1885 notebooks formulation of the
doctrine in connection with the Will to Power expresses a terror mildly tinged
with a tempering tranquillity, whereas the formulation from 1884 one that
some scholars have identified as the true climax of Z27 conveys a joyful and
comforting tranquillity that seems effectively to overshadow the monstrous
undercurrent of essentially meaningless violence that Nietzsche hypothesizes at
the core of the world. It is easy to expect that our next interpretive task will be to
decide which model prevails within Nietzsches corpus by considering the various proportions of terror to tranquillity that we encounter in his various discussions of life-affirmation. This would be to ask whether Nietzsches sublime
philosophy of life-affirmation is closer to being a consolingly beautiful outlook,
or closer to being a terrifying outlook.28
To examine this question at a more revealing level, though, we can consider
the very source of the terror and truth involved in this sliding scale of sublimity that brings us one step away from sheer terror at one end, and one step away
from angelic tranquillity at the other. By examining the nature of the allegedly
terrible truth itself, we will arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that the cosmological doctrine of Eternal Recurrence is a fundamentally Apollonian doctrine,
and that whatever is Dionysian within it is grounded upon an Apollonian foundation. The hypothesized truth of the world the Medusa-like terror that
Nietzsche believes requires an Apollonian tempering can be understood as
being located not in the fabric of the world itself, as Nietzsches texts tend to
suggest, but as being the manifestation of Apollonian thought processes themselves. Moreover, since Apollonian thought includes that of traditional rationalistic philosophizing, then there is reason to think that Nietzsches own outlook

27
28

On the other hand, by contemplating the negative mirror image of Nietzsches romantic justification for suffering, we can also see how unrealistic it is. Just as a persons imperfections become
less distracting with a more intense projection of love towards the person, a persons imperfections become more distracting and exaggerated with a more intense projection of dislike towards
the person. It is realistic, however, to neither idealize nor demonize a person.
Hollingdale, R. J.: Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Baton Rouge 1965, p. 190.
Some Nietzsche scholars have noticed how the concept of the sublime fits Nietzsches account
of tragedy. Two examples are Nietzsches Philosophy of Art, by Julian Young (Cambridge 1992)
and more recently, To our Tragedy: The Aesthetic Determination of Nietzsches Nihilism, by Paul Canis
(In: New Nietzsche Studies 5, 1&2 (2002), pp. 113 131). Sublimity in general is expressible in
degrees that range from a more tranquil sublimity to a more terrifying sublimity, however, and
the usefulness in reflecting upon the specific style of sublimity that Nietzsches account of the
world embodies has remained unrecognized.

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and style of philosophizing, assuming that the nihilistic doctrine of Eternal Recurrence is representative, is closer to figures such as Socrates, who Nietzsche
criticized as having been too monolithically rationalistic.
We have seen that with respect to matters of health, Nietzsches affirmative
doctrine of Eternal Recurrence has two main components. The first is a cosmological and nihilistic hypothesis that the world is a recycling, essentially meaningless and violent field of energy.29 The second is an affirmation or projection of
positive value upon this violently energetic field that takes the joyful form of
glorification, deification or love of existence, life or fate (amor fati).30 This second, evaluative component, wherein the assumedly value-neutral substrate of
the world is glorified, deified or affirmed, we have already identified as the introduction of an Apollonian overlay that precipitates the doctrine of the Will to
Power.31
By recalling Bulloughs concept of psychical distance, we can now discern a
dimension of Nietzsches view that has been up until now less obvious. If we consider the state of mind that would result from the most distanced attitude the
very opposite of what Bullough advocated as the ideal of aesthetic appreciation
and the very opposite of what Nietzsche advocated in BT as the optimal condition of health we will be able to identify the theoretical origin of Nietzsches terrifying truth. Such an extremely distanced attitude is one of complete emotional
disengagement, objectivity, looking down upon a subject, cool impartiality and
detachment. It is essentially a nausea-negating, clinical attitude that considers the
world independently of all personal concerns. When taken to the extreme, it is
an attitude that also renders the human condition absurd. Within Nietzsches

29

We can recall the earlier quote from Nietzsches notebooks:

Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim,
yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: the eternal recurrence.
(WP 55, KGW VIII 1, p. 217)

30

The initial expression of the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence (GS 341) in Nietzsches published
works is also formulated in a neutral fashion, and the reader is asked how he or she would react
to the fact of being fated to live ones life over again and again.
In EH, Nietzsche writes;
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still
less conceal it all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary but love it.
(EH Why I am so Clever 10, KGW VI 3, p. 295)

31

This implies conversely, that when an overlay of negative value upon this energetic field occurs
(most likely because the energetic field is observed to create senseless suffering and death), the
result is a disconfirming, defeatist, debilitating and unhealthy attitude towards the world. Both
Zarathustra and the pessimistic soothsayer utter the neutral and nihilistic truth that all is the
same, for both recognize the repetitious nature of things and the inevitable death of individuals,
but each soothsayer values this repetitiousness differently.

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thought, a memorable example of this disengaged attitude is his introduction to

the 1873 essay, Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, which reads:
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar
systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was
the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of world history yet only a minute.
After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to
die. (TL, KGW III 2, p. 369)

More constitutively, and echoing the idea of being beyond good and evil,
Nietzsche furthermore advocates for the purposes of growth, the idea of looking down upon others and upon oneself, and obtaining thereby a view of oneself from a distance:
Without that pathos of distance [italics in original] which grows out of the ingrained difference between [social] strata when the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks
down upon subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices obedience and
command, keeping down and keeping at a distance that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more remote,
further-stretching, more comprehensive states in brief, simply the enhancement of
the type man, the continual self-overcoming of man, to use a moral formula in a
supra-moral sense. (BGE 257, KGW VI 2, p. 215)32

Nietzsches cosmological interpretation of the world as being completely

neutral and valueless issues itself from a highly distanced and objectifying view of
the world. Moreover, this objectifying train of thought leads to a continual distancing and disengagement from ones involvement in the historical situation
and it consequently extrapolates speculatively towards the unrealistic ideal of an
absolutely detached, Gods-eye perspective. In the present case, the more local,
but still highly abstracted and generalized result is a neutral, scientific, clinical
and unemotional vision of how the world is before any value is ascribed to it.33
Nietzsche considered himself to be a cultural physician, but he might not have

32

33

In Z, Nietzsche also states that indeed, to look down upon myself and even upon my stars, that
alone I should call my peak; that has remained for me as my ultimate peak (Z III The Wanderer,
KGW VI 1, p. 190). Zarathustras ultimate effort to climb over himself in an act of metamorphosis echoes how the jester jumps over the tightrope walker in the well-known Prologue scene
in Z.
In this quotation from BGE we can observe yet another instance of Nietzsches tendency in
his non-Cartesian style of theorizing, initially to direct his attention away from himself, and subsequently to engage in an act of reflection that subjectivizes the principle derived from the
outwardly directed attention. In the present 1886 case, it is the act of keeping at a distance that
is first applied to others, and is then applied to oneself. This complements the above examples
from 1872 and 1888.
With respect to the present interpretation, it makes no difference whether this neutral substrate
is interpreted objectively as being a flux of mind-independent energy, or subjectively as being a
meaningless sensory manifold or flux of uninterpreted sense data.

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noticed that the physicians gaze he employed is a depersonalizing gaze that turns
a subjectively animated body into a mechanism. If one defines a situation as a
medical situation, then the personality of the patient is irrelevant and is set abstractively aside.34
The patients towards which Nietzsche attended philosophically and medically included the world, life itself, various cultural forms as particular expressions of life, and himself. He spoke often about adopting a perspective from
a distance, and this distanced approach can largely be understood in reference
to his having conceived of himself as the spiritual physician of the 19th century. If
we accept this, and if the distanced outlook can be described broadly as being
coincident with the reason-oriented, reflective, scientific outlook that Nietzsche
often criticized, then we arrive at a strikingly dissonant situation. The joyfully
dancing Nietzsche conflicts with the coolly scientific and aesthetically distanced
Nietzsche; the immediate and instinctual Nietzsche conflicts with the highly reflective Nietzsche; the deifying Nietzsche conflicts with the nihilistic and neutralizing Nietzsche; the sensitive, nausea-susceptible Nietzsche conflicts with
the depersonalising and clinically-minded Nietzsche.
If self-consciousness is an expression of rationality, and if self-conscious
reflection always objectifies that to which it attends, and if looking down upon
oneself is part of the process of reflection, then Nietzsches highly distanced and
distancing mode of thought the very mode of thought that generates his cosmological vision of the neutral flux of energy that underlies our experience can
be referred to as an essentially Apollonian mode of thought, since we can include
within its scope the sphere of intelligibility in general, which would include not
only the capacity to idealize, but the capacity to reason and to be reflective.
Idealization and rational reflection are both Apollonian principles, so the
process of generating the hypothesis of a neutral flux of energy and the process
of glorifying this neutral flux are the results of Apollonian principles. If this is
the case, then the elements of the nihilistic doctrine of Eternal Recurrence are
the products of Apollonian principles, and we can conclude that Eternal Recurrence is mainly an Apollonian doctrine.

34

The following is a contemporary characterization of the medically defined situation:

[An] implication of the medical definition is that the patient is a technical object to the staff.
It is as if the staff work on an assembly line for repairing bodies; similar body parts continually roll by and the staff have a particular job to do on them. The staff are concerned with
typical features of the body part and its pathology rather than with the unique features used
to define a persons identity. The staff disattend the connection between a part of the body
and some intangible self that is supposed to inhabit that body. (Emerson, Joan P.: Behavior
in Private Places: Sustaining Definitions of Reality in Gynecological Examinations. In:
Dreitzel, Hans Peter (ed.): Recent Sociology. No 2: Patterns of Communicative Behavior.
New York 1970, p. 78.

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Given Nietzsches claim that the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence expresses

the highest principle of life-affirmation, one might be tempted to resist this
grounding of Eternal Recurrence upon extreme distancing. The connection,
however, is substantiated in Nietzsches own autobiographical remarks about
how he came upon the doctrine in his reflective solitude, along with a remark
from CW concerning the attitude of Zarathustra:
Now I shall relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental conception of this
work, the idea of eternal recurrence, this highest formula of affirmation that is all attainable, belongs in August 1881: it was penned on a sheet with the notation underneath, 6000 feet beyond man and time. (EH, Z 1, KGW VI 3, p. 331)
[] the eye of Zarathustra, an eye that beholds the whole fact of man at a tremendous
distance below. (CW, Preface, KGW VI 3, p. 4)

We can now see that in two important Nietzschean contexts, the Apollonian
style of thought operates as a precondition for a Dionysian style. In the first case,
as discussed above, it is necessary first to glorify the world as a whole in an Apollonian way as a condition for justifying suffering and for glorifying oneself as a
creator of values. In the second case, we have seen that it is necessary for Apollonian thought processes to operate as a condition for the very formulation of
the neutral and terrifyingly absurd Dionysian world that needs to be glorified
with an overlay of rationality in order for one to be as healthy as one can. In the
first instance, the life-affirming Apollonian principle of idealization is the condition for the life-affirming Dionysian sense of self-glorification; in the second,
the life-negating Apollonian principle of reflection is the condition for apprehending the life-threatening Dionysian terror that is stimulated by the apprehension of a meaningless world.
Since Apollonian principles in general include principles of intelligibility (e.g.,
the principle of sufficient reason), one species of Apollonian principle may be
life-affirming, whereas other species may be life-negating. Beautifying and idealizing the human body in the manner of the ancient Greeks, for example, ascribes
a greater intelligibility to the body through the use of idealized proportions,
while it also glorifies and deifies the human body. Considering the human body
from a reflective and depersonalizing distance, as if it were merely an inanimate
mechanism, and as if one were a medical doctor, however, has contrary deadening and de-animating effects. Beautification involves value-attribution, illusioncreation and mythologizing in the broadest sense, whereas clinical distancing
and objectification involve value-neutralization, disillusionment and demythologizing. Apollonian principles of intelligibility are themselves in tension and can
yield sublime effects on their own accord, for they can construct and project
idealizations as much as they can dissolve them through disillusionment and demystification.

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What, then, would be consistently Dionysian? We can characterize such

drives as including what is prereflective, immediate, expansive and instinctual.
Any solution to the meaning of suffering that is based on excessive reflection
cannot consequently count as a fundamentally Dionysian solution. We have
seen, moreover, how Nietzsches affirmative doctrine of Eternal Recurrence can
resolve the problem of suffering only by assuming a nihilistic cosmological
hypothesis that is itself based on excessive reflection and clinical distancing.
Nietzsches characterization of Eternal Recurrence as expressive of an essentially Dionysian world-view must be regarded consequently as being hardly obvious, if it is not contradictory.
Either we must reject Nietzsches affirmation of Eternal Recurrence as a supreme expression of life-affirmation, or we must unravel the paradox of how
Nietzsche could be such a strong follower of Apollo and advocate of intelligibility and reflection in their life-negating modes, while still being a follower of
Dionysus and advocate of instinct, immediacy and direct involvement in the
world. For the very foundation of Nietzsches clinically cold and absurdist vision
of the world arises itself as a result of extreme Apollonian distancing.35 Silenus,
the tutor of Dionysus, along with the nay-saying soothsayer in Z were able to express their negative evaluation of neutral existence, only by having beforehand
adopted an Apollonian stance which itself looked down upon, objectified and
neutralized the daily world. They were both scientists and physicians at heart, as
Nietzsche seems to have been.
Further evidence for regarding Nietzsche as a fundamentally Apollonian
thinker in a wider sense resides in the very tone of his writings, for as a rule
he did not embody violence in his manuscripts. Unlike the Marquis de Sades
writings, for instance, which come closer to embodying Nietzsches Dionysian
35

Interpretations of the world can range from the psychologically comforting to the psychologically disturbing, and Nietzsche intends his nihilistic cosmological hypothesis of Eternal Recurrence to be among the most psychologically disturbing. If the cosmological hypothesis is regarded as true or as very likely, then it would be more disturbing than if it were regarded as
merely a hypothesis or sheer possibility, as disturbing as the sheer possibility itself might be. The
more disturbing the cosmological hypothesis happens to be, the greater the health in ones attitude one would require to overcome its spiritually discouraging effects.
Nietzsche employs Apollonian modes of thought to construct his cosmological hypothesis, so to
be a consistent Dionysian, this Apollonian hypothesis cannot be regarded as a final or true view.
However, for the cosmological hypothesis to be as psychologically disconcerting and as potentially health-generating as possible, one would need to intensify ones belief in the truth of the
hypothesis as much as possible. These two opposing demands generate a tension between needing to recognize the doctrines truth for the purpose of stimulating health, and needing to recognize the doctrines falsity as a matter of acknowledging that an Apollonian cosmological hypothesis cannot be an absolute view.
To resolve this tension, one can formulate Nietzsches yes to life as an emotional response that
arises within a fictional context, and appreciate his cosmological hypothesis of Eternal Recurrence as being on a par with the fictionally-grounded world of a novel, or work of art in general.

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witches brew of violence and excessive venereal appetites36, Nietzsches erudite texts do not stylistically have the immediate affect of violating our sense of
taste and decorum. Nietzsches remarks can be offensive, but these upsetting
moments are sprinkled throughout his texts like bits of fiery spice. His rhetorical
voice is usually elegant, aristocratic and aesthetically discriminating, as opposed
to feral and instinctive.
In sum, the chilling and neutralizing quality of Nietzsches nihilistic hypothesis of a meaningless world issues from thought processes that are more closely
linked to reason and reflection than they are to instinct, and Nietzsches outlook
is therefore far more Apollonian than Dionysian in terms of his cosmological
hypotheses and his associated affirmative deifications. This observation can help
us appreciate straightforwardly how Nietzsche could speak so enthusiastically of
a world filled with essentially meaningless suffering with such aristocratic sophistication, belittling condescension and aesthetic polish37, and why Nietzsches
writings are simultaneously steeped in the themes of alienation, distance and
hermetic solitude.

36
37

See BT 2.
Many images of Nietzsche have been put forth over the years, but among the more coincident
with the present interpretation is that suggested by Robert C. Solomon in his book, Living With
Nietzsche: What the Great Immoralist Has to Teach Us (Oxford 2003):
Nietzsche, as I read him, is a model for a very different sort of life than is celebrated as
success today. It is an outwardly simply and unglamorous life but a life of rich passion and
ecstatic enthusiasm, expressed first of all in the privacy of ones notes and writing, a life of
exquisite taste, cultivated through listening, looking, and the exercise of elegance in even the
simplest things in life. (p. 4)

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Iris Drmann

IRIS DRMANN
RAUSCH ALS STHETISCHER ZUSTAND1:
NIETZSCHES DEUTUNG DER ARISTOTELISCHEN KATHARSIS
UND IHRE PLATONISCH-KANTISCHE UMDEUTUNG
DURCH HEIDEGGER2

Das Verhltnis der europischen Philosophie zur Fremderfahrung des Rausches ist entschieden zwiespltig, wenn nicht allergisch geblieben. In einer fr die
Platonischen Dialoge insgesamt bezeichnenden Operation der berbietung, Aneignung und Beherrschung gestaltet sich die Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage
des Rausches bereits hier als auerordentlich ambivalent. So kann sich Sokrates
im Symposion seine Nchternheit selbst bei grtem Weingenuss noch bewahren
(233c), um stattdessen seine Mitunterredner durch bloe Worte in einen Zustand
orgiastischer Ekstase zu versetzen (215a 216b). Phaidros wird im gleichnamigen Dialog der Sophistik abspenstig gemacht und durch eine kontrollierte erotische mania rettungslos zur Philosophie verfhrt. Die Verwerfung der Tragdie in
der Politeia speist sich aus dem politisch brisanten Wissen, dass die Identifizierung mit der Mimesis3 falscher Gtter und von groem Unglck betroffener Personen (Politeia 603c) den Verlust des Sinnes fr das Wahre und tugendhaftes Verhalten bedeutet. Durch die tragische Katharsis der path mangelt es selbst einem
ansonsten vernnftigen Zuschauer sowohl innerhalb als auch auerhalb des
Theaters an der ntigen Kontrolle seiner Leidenschaften (Politeia 605ab). Doch
bekanntlich sieht sich Platon durch die Vertreibung der Tragdiendichter und
Musiker aus der idealen Polis4 nicht daran gehindert, seine eigene Staatsverfas1
2

Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[119], S. 296.

Bei diesem Text handelt es sich um meine am 8. 12. 2003 an der Universitt Lneburg im Rahmen des Habilitationsverfahrens gehaltene, um den Heidegger betreffenden Abschnitt erweiterte und fr den Druck berarbeitete Antrittsvorlesung. Mein Dank gilt David Farell Krell,
Christoph Jamme, Tobias Klass und Werner Stegmaier.
Zum uerst komplexen System des Mimisis-Begriffs bei Platon siehe die entscheidende Funote von Derrida, Jacques: La double sance. In: ders.: La dissmination. Paris 1972. S. 199 318,
hier S. 211 213.
Platons Einschtzung, dass die Tragdie ein verwerfliches Modell fr das tugendhafte Handeln
liefere, macht ex negativo seine sittlich-pdagogische Programmierung der Kunst deutlich, die,
wre sie nur rechtens und am Logos ausgerichtet, ebenso heilsam wie frderlich fr das gesamte menschliche Leben sein knnte, so dass sie einen festumrissenen Ort innerhalb der Polis
einzunehmen htte (Politeia 607c d): Die tragische Mimesis ist die Technik der Bildung in allen

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

125

sung, sofern sie nur eine Darstellung des schnsten und besten Lebens zu liefern vermag, als die einzig wahre Tragdie auszuzeichnen (Nomoi 817a). Whrend Platon den alkoholischen, erotischen und tragischen Rausch fr philosophische Zwecke dienstbar zu machen und so zu zhmen sucht, verurteilt Kant hingegen jeglichen Rauschzustand: Der durch Alkohol oder Opium Berauschte
tuscht sich in temporrer Sorgenfreiheit nicht nur ber den Ernst seiner wirklichen Lage hinweg,5 sondern berschreitet auch lallend die Grenzlinie des
Selbstbesitzes und wird solchermaen unvermgend, die Sinnesvorstellungen
nach Erfahrungsgesetzen zu ordnen. Kann Kant sich angesichts der Zeitweiligkeit des durch Geniemittel befrderten Rausches noch zu einer Milderung
seines Urteils herablassen,6 so erweisen sich jedoch die Schte und Leidenschaften und die erotischen zumal als unheilbare Krebsschden fr die reine
praktische Vernunft.7 Im System der Knste umreit das gereimte Trauerspiel schlielich jene Stelle, an der sich die Darstellung des Erhabenen, sofern
sie zur schnen Kunst gehrt, mit der Schnheit vereinig[t].8 Die Reinheit des
Geschmacksurteils fordert freilich auch in diesem Fall eine von Reiz und Rhrung, d.h. von jeder tragischen Katharsis gnzlich unabhngige Beschaffenheit.9
Sieht man einmal von einigen wenigen Ausnahmen ab (man knnte hier an
Benjamins Haschisch in Marseille denken), so ist die europische Philosophie anders als die europische Literatur offenkundig niemals eine Allianz mit der Erfahrung eines undomestizierten Rausches mindestens als zeitweiliger Quelle der
Inspiration oder aber einer ansonsten unzugnglichen Wahrheit eingegangen,
die ber Platons ambivalente Haltung hinausgegangen wre. Denn die Frage des
Rausches betrifft oder besser: bedroht all jene Instanzen mit Auflsung das Ich,
die Vernunft, das Bewusstsein oder Subjekt , deren wachsame, freie und kritische
Ttigkeit den Zugang zur wahren Realitt, normalen Ordnung und produktiven
Arbeit, zum Gesetz und zur kommunikativen Gemeinschaft sicherstellen sollen.10

7
8
9
10

Wortsinnen. So nimmt es auch nicht Wunder, dass Platon die Hymnen auf die wahren Gtter
und die Loblieder auf sittlich edle Menschen (Politeia 607a) von der Verurteilung und Verbannung der Mimesis ausnimmt.
Der an den Rausch gerichtete Vorwurf der Wirklichkeitstuschung und des Selbstbetrugs reicht
bis in Die Dialektik der Aufklrung (Frankfurt am Main 1980. S. 58) hinein.
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. In: Kants Werke. Akademie Textausgabe. Bd. VII.
Berlin 1968. S. 169 f.
Ebd., S. 266.
Kritik der Urteilskraft. Bd. V. S. 325.
Ebd., S. 223.
In seiner entsprechenden Analyse jener modernen Rhetoriken, die Rauschgifte und Drogen in
Europa seit 1900 unter Berufung auf ein ursprngliches Freihheitsrecht entweder zu liberalisieren oder aber im Rekurs auf eine rechtsmedizinische Definition unter Strafe zu stellen suchen,
stellt Derrida heraus, dass das Verbot in letzter Instanz immer im Namen dieser wahren Realitt
ausgesprochen und damit von einer Platonischen Logik bestimmt werde. Rhtorique de la drogue. Entretien avec Jacques Derrida. Autrement. Serie Mutations 106. LEsprit des Drogues? Dirig par Jean-Michel Hervieu. Paris 1989. S. 197 214, hier S. 202.

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Mit Nietzsches Denken des Tragischen stt man auf die erste und dem Anschein nach auch letzte Philosophie des Rausches. Dabei erweist sich vor allem
Nietzsches Auslegung der Aristotelischen Katharsis als der entscheidende
Schlssel fr die Konzeption des Rausches als eines sthetischen Zustandes
und damit fr die Genealogie der Tragdie selbst. In seiner Ende 1871 erschienenen Schrift Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geist der Musik, die er rckblickend,
in der Gtzen-Dmmerung, trotz philologischer Fremd-11 und antimetaphysischer
Selbstkritik,12 als seine erste Umwerthung aller Werthe13 auszeichnet,
scheint er dem Rtsel der tragischen Katharsis freilich wenig mehr als zwei Seiten gewidmet und dabei nur das Ungengen aller bisherigen Deutungsversuche
herausgestellt zu haben, weshalb es auch nicht verwundern kann, dass Nietzsches Denken der Katharsis in den beraus zahlreichen Untersuchungen zur
Tragdien-Schrift und zur spteren tragischen Philosophie14 bislang eine eher
marginale15 und erst in jngster Zeit etwa durch Barbara v. Reibnitz, David
Farell Krell und Enrico Mller16 verstrkte Beachtung gefunden hat. Vor dem
11

12
13

14

15

16

Vgl. dazu die von Karlfried Grnder zusammengestellte und eingeleitete Textsammlung: Grnder, Karlfried (Hrsg.): Der Streit um Nietzsches Geburt der Tragdie. Die Schriften von
E. Rohde, R. Wagner, U. v. Wilamowitz-Mllendorff. Hildesheim 1989. Siehe auerdem Howald,
Ernst: Friedrich Nietzsche und die klassische Philologie. Gotha 1920.
GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik, KSA 1, S. 11 20.
GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 5, KSA 6, S. 160. Damit ist nicht zuletzt eine immoralistische
Umwertung gemeint, die mit der Konzeption des Antichristen korreliert, den Nietzsche auch
durch die Namen Zarathustra oder Dionysos bezeichnet. Zur anti-moralischen Bewertung der
Geburt der Tragdie durch Nietzsche selbst siehe Salaquarda, Jrg: Der Antichrist. In: NietzscheStudien 2 (1973). S. 91 136, hier S. 105; S. 115; S. 127.
In EH (Die Geburt der Tragdie 3, KSA 6, S. 312) bezeichnet sich Nietzsche selbst als den ersten tragischen Philosophen. Mit Josef Simon muss man festhalten, dass Nietzsches Beschftigung mit dem Phnomen des Tragischen immer mehr zu einer Selbstidentifizierung als tragische
Philosophie hinfhrt. (Simon, Josef: Grammatik und Wahrheit. ber das Verhltnis Nietzsches zur spekulativen Satzgrammatik der metaphysischen Tradition. In: Salaquarda, Jrg [Hg.]:
Nietzsche. Darmstadt 1980. S. 183 218, hier S. 187). Nietzsche nimmt gar fr sich in Anspruch,
das Tragische erst entdeckt zu haben, und zwar auf eine Weise, zu der nicht einmal die Griechen
aufgrund ihrer moralistischen Oberflchlichkeit imstande gewesen seien (Nachlass Frhjahr
1884, KSA 11, 25[95], S. 33; vgl. auch 25[101], S. 37).
Vgl. jedoch schon den entsprechenden Hinweis von Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. Erster Band
(1961). 5. Aufl. Pfullingen 1961. S. 279 f. (im Folgenden als N I).
Hinweisen mchte ich auf den am 4. 12. 2000 in Tbingen und am 5. 12. 2000 in Lneburg gehaltenen Vortrag von David Farell Krell Das tragische Absolute: Nietzsche und Hlderlin zwischen Antike und Moderne, der Nietzsches und Hlderlins Deutung der Katharsis auf der Spur
ist. Siehe auch die instruktiven berlegungen von Mller, Enrico: sthetische Lust und Dionysische Weisheit. Nietzsches Deutung der griechischen Tragdie. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31
(2002). S. 134 153, hier S. 137 (mit Dank an Werner Stegmaier). Mller identifiziert zu Recht
Aristoteles als den eigentlichen Gegenspieler Nietzsches, der als omniprsenter Begleiter in
dessen Frhwerk und, wie ich meine, auch in dessen spterer tragischer Philosophie angesehen werden muss. Barabara von Reibnitz hat bereits 1994 darauf hingewiesen, dass sich Nietzsches frhe Kritik der Aristotelischen Tragdientheorie gegen dessen uerste Marginalisierung
der Inszenierung der Tragdie richte (Poetik 6, 1450b 15 ff.), die auf eine Sanctionierung des
Lesedramas hinauslaufe (Nachlass Winter 1869 70 Frhjahr 1870, KSA 7, 3[66], S. 78).

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Hintergrund der hufig an Aristoteles schematisch gebten Kritik in den nachgelassenen Fragmenten der Jahre 1869 1873 und 1888 wird in der Tat deutlich,
dass Nietzsche mit der Geburt der Tragdie unter der Direktive des dionysischen
Fragezeichens17 nicht nur ein zweites, nmlich mystisch-orgiastisches, von wilden Opferritualen und kultischen Tnzen berauschtes Griechenland erfindet,
das den klassizistischen Idealen der schnen Form18, der edlen Einfalt
(Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 24[1], S. 626) und griechischen Heiterkeit (Nachlass
1870/71, KSA 7, 7[174], S. 207) widerstreitet.19 Er nimmt damit zugleich auch
eine sehr spezifische Umwertung der Aristotelischen Katharsis vor, die es im
Folgenden unter dem Titel der Entladung im Text selbst zu entdecken und zu
konturieren gilt. Namentlich Karlfried Grnder hat darauf hingewiesen, dass
sich Nietzsche seinen besonderen Zugang zur tragischen Katharsis ber eine
Lektre von Jacob Bernays 1858 verffentlichter Schrift Grundzge der verlorenen
Abhandlung des Aristoteles ber Wirkung der Tragdie erobert hat,20 die wegen ihrer
pathologischen Lesart gehrig Staub aufgewirbelt und eine unberschaubare
Flut von Entgegnungen und Stellungnahmen ausgelst hat.21 Wenn Nietzsche
ohne Frage den fr die Katharsis eingesetzten Begriff der Entladung dieser
bahnbrechenden philologischen Untersuchung entlehnt, so weicht jedoch sein
Verstndnis flagrant von demjenigen Bernays ab und erhebt damit den implizit
gebliebenen Anspruch, das Problem der tragischen Katharsis auf radikal neue
Weise gelst und damit wie nebenbei den berhmten Meisterschler seines
eigenen Lehrers Friedrich Ritschl in einer genau zu bezeichnenden Geste berboten zu haben.

17
18

19

20

21

Diese Reduktion der Tragdie auf Leselitteratur bilde, so von Reibnitz, die implizite Negativfolie, von der Nietzsche sein Bild der Tragdie als eines sprachlich-musikalischen Gesamtkunstwerks abhebt. Reibnitz, Barbara von: Vom Sprachkunstwerk zur Leseliteratur. Nietzsches Blick auf die griechische Literaturgeschichte als Gegenentwurf zur aristotelischen Poetik.
In: Borsche, Tilman / Gerratana, Federico / Venturelli, Aldo (Hg.): Centauren-Geburten.
Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche. Berlin, New York 1994. S. 47 66,
hier S. 61.
GT Versuch einer Selbstkritik, KSA 1, S. 20.
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim: Gedanken ber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der
Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755). In: Winckelmanns Werke in einem Band. Hg. von Holzhauer, Helmut. 4. Aufl. Berlin, Weimar 1986. S. 1 36, hier S. 2.
Zu dieser Entdeckung eines doppelten Griechenlands in der Morgenrte des spekulativen
Idealismus und der romantischen Philologie siehe Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe / Nancy, JeanLuc: Le mythe nazi. La Tour dAigues 1991. S. 42 43.
Sowohl in einem Brief an Erwin Rohde vom 3. oder 4. 5. 1868 als auch in einem Brief an Friedrich Ritschl vom 12. 5. 1868 spricht Nietzsche von der strkende[en] und heilende[n] Magie,
eine[r] wirklich medizinische[n] bzw. quasi-rztlichen ktharsis ton pathemton. KSB 2, Nr. 569,
S. 272; Nr. 571, S. 279.
Grnder, Karlfried: Jacob Bernays und der Streit um die Katharsis. In: Epirrhosis. Festgabe fr
Carl Schmitt. Berlin 1968. S. 495 528, hier S. 515; S. 519ff. Zur Bedeutung der Bernaysschen
Untersuchung fr Nietzsches Tragdienkonzeption siehe auch Cancik, Hubert: Nietzsches Antike. Vorlesung. Stuttgart/Weimar 1995. S. 56 f.

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Fr Nietzsche bedeutet Katharsis nicht die Purgation von Furcht und Mitleid, sondern die aufeinander folgende Entladung22 des transfigurierenden
Rausches einerseits und der Vision andererseits, die als knstlerische Zustnde die Tragdie hervorbringen. Damit wird der Rausch zweifellos einem
schpferisch-visionren Programm unterstellt, wie Nietzsches Frontstellung gegenber dem dionysischen Barbaren (GT 2, S. 31) deutlich macht. Unter dem
Einfluss des narkotischen Getrnkes (GT 1, S. 28) ergehe sich dieser im besinnungslosen Taumel einer berschwnglichen geschlechtlichen Zuchtlosigkeit und Grausamkeit (GT 2, S. 32), ohne die Spur einer sthetischen Ttigkeit
zurckzulassen. Hat das orientalisch Dionysische bei Nietzsche jedoch den Charakter des verdrngten Eigenen, das abzuwehren der apollinischen Kultur nur
kurzfristig gelingt, um der Unheimlichkeit des Dionysischen23 nunmehr mit der
ganzen sublimierenden24 Kraft bildlicher Gestaltung zu begegnen,25 so wendet
sich Heideggers Auslegung von Nietzsches spter Philosophie in ihrer Rckbindung an die Tragdien-Schrift26 nicht nur ausdrcklich gegen einen sthetisch un22
23

24
25

26

Sokrates und die griechische Tragoedie, KSA 1, S. 610.

Im Unterschied zur Einschtzung Enrico Mllers, der Dionysos als das schlechthinnige Symbol fr Fremdheit und Indifferenz charakterisiert, welches in einer riskanten schpferischen
Einverleibung in das eigene Selbstverstndnis aufzunehmen der hellenischen Kultur erst zu
dem ihr eigentmlichen Geprge verhelfe, geht es in der Tragdien-Schrift jedoch darum zu
zeigen, dass die Konfrontation mit dem orientalischen Dionysischen der Wiederkehr des verdrngten eigenen Dionysischen Vorschub leistet und somit im Sinne Freuds das Unheimliche im
Sinne des eigenen Fremden darstellt. In Die dionysische Weltanschauung (KSA 1, S. 563) bzw. in Die
Geburt des tragischen Gedankens (KSA 1, S. 591) fasst Nietzsche die externe Invasion des Dionysischen in die hellenische Kultur hingegen noch ganz im Sinne Mllers weitaus radikaler: Man
hat nie mit eine Fremdling mehr Umstnde gemacht: dafr war er auch ein furchtbarer Fremdling (hostis in jedem Sinne), mchtig genug das gastliche Haus zu zertrmmern. Eine groe Revolution begann in allen Lebensformen: berall hin drang Dionysos, auch in die Kunst.
Vgl. Die dionysische Weltanschauung, KSA 1, S. 556.
Gegen die fieberhaften Regungen jener Feste, deren Kenntnis auf allen Land- und Seewegen zu
den Griechen drang, waren sie, wie es scheint, eine Zeit lang vllig gesichert und geschtzt durch
die hier in seinem ganzen Stolz sich aufrichtende Gestalt des Apollo, der das Medusenhaupt keiner gefhrlicheren Macht entgegenhalten konnte als dieser fratzenhaft ungeschlachten dionysischen. Es ist die dorische Kunst, in der sich eine majesttisch-ablehnende Haltung des Apollo
verewigt hat. Bedenklicher und sogar unmglich wurde dieser Widerstand, als endlich aus der
tiefsten Wurzel des Hellenischen heraus sich hnliche Triebe Bahn brachen; jetzt beschrnkte
sich das Wirken des delphischen Gottes darauf, dem gewaltigen Gegner durch eine zur rechten
Zeit abgeschlossene Vershnung die vernichtenden Waffen aus der Hand zu nehmen. Diese
Vershnung ist der wichtigste Moment in der Geschichte des griechischen Cultus (GT 2, S. 32).
Heideggers Einschtzung der Beziehung des jungen Nietzsche zu Wagner klingt wie eine verschobene Replik auf diese Passage: Dieser aus dem Rausch kommende Fortri ins Ganze war
es, wodurch der Mensch Richard Wagner und sein Werk den jungen Nietzsche in den Bann zogen; doch dieses war nur mglich, weil dem in Nietzsche selbst etwas entgegenkam, jenes, was
Nietzsche dann das Dionysische nannte. Aber weil Wagner die bloe Aufsteigerung des Dionysischen und die Verstrmung in ihm suchte, Nietzsche aber seine Bndigung und Gestaltung,
deshalb war auch der Ri zwischen beiden vorbestimmt. (N I, S. 29)
GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 5, KSA 6, S. 160. Zu dieser Rckbindung siehe auch Wohlfahrt,
Gnter: Artisten-Metaphysik. Ein Nietzsche-Brevier. Wrzburg 1991. S. 42; S. 74.

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produktiven und in diesem Sinne orientalischen Rauschzustand reiner Empfnglichkeit, sondern auch gegen den Rausch als sthetischen Zustand. Wo es
sich darum handelt, Nietzsches sthetik als uersten Gipfelpunkt der abendlndischen Geschichte der sthetik vor Augen zu fhren, gelangt er ber eine
angeblich schrfere Fassung [seines] Wesens (N I, S. 138) zu einer PlatonischKantischen Bestimmung des Rausches, der mit der schnen Form als hchste
Einfachheit der reichsten Gesetzlichkeit auf den ihn erst begrndenden
Mglichkeitsbereich verwiesen wird (N I, S. 140). Unter der gide der in seiner
fnfsemestrigen Nietzsche-Vorlesung erstmals ausfhrlich entworfenen Seinsgeschichte bringt Heidegger so das Kunststck fertig, den Vorrang des dionysischen Rausches27 zugunsten des Apollinischen zu demontieren und damit die
Originalitt der sthetik Nietzsches ihrer metaphysischen Einschreibung zu opfern. Bringt Heidegger, der in vielfacher Hinsicht problematische Denker des
Eigenen und Eigentlichen, in der Abtreibung des Rausches einerseits seinen unverhohlenen Abscheu gegenber dieser durch und durch leiblichen, selbstentussernden (GT 2, S. 34) und orientalischen Fremderfahrung zum Ausdruck,
so bleibt er damit seinerseits in einer repressiven, d. h. metaphysischen Grundstellung befangen, die Nietzsches Ausbruch aus der Metaphysik mindestens
in dieser Hinsicht um so deutlicher hervortreten lsst.28
Die folgenden berlegungen gliedern sich vor dem Hintergrund des eben
Skizzierten in drei Abschnitte: (1) Jacob Bernays Untersuchung zur Aristotelischen Katharsis; (2) Nietzsches Bestimmung der Katharsis als Entladung knstlerischer Rauschzustnde und seine Genealogie der Tragdie; (3) Heideggers
seinsgeschichtliche Umkehrung von Nietzsches sthetik des Rausches.

27

28

Zur offenkundigen Dominanz des Dionysischen siehe Heftrich, Eckhard: Die Geburt der
Tragdie. Eine Prfiguration von Nietzsches Philosophie? In: Nietzsche-Studien 18 (1989).
S. 103 126, hier S. 117 f.
Ein solches Vorgehen wrde Eckhard Heftrich wohl der Leichtfertigkeit zeihen, wenn er mit Bezug auf das Denken Heideggers und Nietzsches und einem (fr ihn unmglichen) Vergleich herausstellt: Naiv wre es, fr beides einfach den Sammelnamen Metaphysik zu whlen und dann
zu sagen: Heidegger habe Nietzsche als die Vollendung der Metaphysik gesehen, doch sei zu fragen, ob Nietzsche nicht schon die Metaphysik hinter sich lasse. Denn da wrde das Wort Metaphysik wie eine feste, verfgbare Gre behandelt, obwohl der so selbstverstndlich verwendete
und auf Nietzsche angewandte Begriff doch gerade Heideggers Auslegung der Philosophie und
Geschichte entstammt. In dem Mae, in dem freilich auch Nietzsche sich des Wortes und Begriffes der Metaphysik bedient, scheint es in Anlehnung an Wolfgang Mller-Lauter durchaus
aussichtsreich, Heideggers Frage nach dem Sein aus der Optik Nietzsches in den Blick zu nehmen und Heideggers Metaphysikverstndnis aus der Perspektive Nietzsches mit Fragezeichen
zu versehen. Heftrich, Eckhard: Nietzsche im Denken Heideggers. In: Klostermann, Vittorio
(Hg.): Durchblicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag. Frankfurt am Main 1970. S. 331 349,
hier S. 331. Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang: Heidegger und Nietzsche. Nietzsche-Interpretationen III.
Berlin, New York 2000. S. 74.

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1. Jacob Bernays Untersuchung zur Aristotelischen Katharsis

Jacob Bernays schickt seiner mit den Mitteln der methodischen Hermeneutik29 unternommenen Beweisfhrung um den strikt pathologischen Sinn der
Aristotelischen Katharsis eine kurze Errterung der einschlgigen Deutungsversuche von Lessing und Goethe voraus, die in seinen Augen die bisherige Verlegenheit hinsichtlich ihres richtigen historischen Gehaltes recht gut illustrieren.
Sieht man einmal von der Ungenauigkeit ab, mit der beide Dichter den Tragdiensatz im sechsten Abschnitt der Poetik zu bersetzen bzw. nicht zu bersetzen
pflegen, so macht sich Lessing in der Hamburgischen Dramaturgie der die pathische
Intensitt von leos und phbos mindernden Ersetzung durch Mitleid und
Furcht schuldig,30 wobei letztere nichts anderes als ein selbstbezogenes Mitleid darstellen soll.31 Hinter der weniger christlichen denn Rousseauistischen
Einfrbung dieser beiden Mitleidsaffekte32 steht bekanntermaen eine Konzeption des brgerlichen Trauerspiels, die die Aristotelische Zweckbestimmung der
Tragdie auf die Moralisierung des Zuschauers zu verpflichten sucht: Denn der
mitleidigste Mensch ist der beste Mensch, und das Trauerspiel soll unsre Fhigkeit, Mitleid zu fhlen, erweitern, heit es in einem Brief Lessings vom November 1756 an Friedrich Nicolai.33 Die von Lessing mit Reinigung wiedergegebene tragische Katharsis wird mit der eigentmlichen Aufgabe betraut,
die Verwandlung der Leidenschaften in tugendhafte Fertigkeiten zu bewirken,
indem sie sowohl von einem berfluss als auch von einem Mangel an Mitleid
in jenem doppelten Sinne reinige und so die Mitte zwischen zwei Extremen
angebe.34 Lessings Anliegen, die griechische Tragdie in ein, so Bernays, moralisches Correctionshaus35 und in eine Suberungsanstalt des Mitleids berfh-

29

30

31

32

33

34
35

Bernays, Jacob: Grundzge der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles ber Wirkung der Tragdie. Reprint der Ausgabe Breslau 1858. Hg. von Grnder, Karlfried. Hildesheim, New York
1970. S. 11.
Diesen Vorwurf erhebt zwar nicht Bernays gegenber Lessing, jedoch Wolfgang Schadewaldt
unter Rckgriff auf die griechischen Grundbedeutungen der beiden Begriffe phbos und
leos: Schadewaldt, Wolfgang: Furcht und Mitleid? Zur Deutung des Aristotelischen Tragdiensatzes. In: Hermes 83 (1955). S. 129 171, hier S. 129.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: Hamburgische Dramaturgie. 75. Stck. Den 19. Januar 1768. In:
Lessings Werke. Hg. von Wlfel, Kurt. Zweiter Band. Frankfurt am Main 1967. S. 420.
Zur Bedeutung des Rousseauistischen Mitleidsbegriffs, namentlich dem des 2. Discours, siehe
Schings, Hans-Jrgen: Der mitleidigste Mensch ist der beste Mensch. Poetik des Mitleids von
Lessing bis Bchner. Mnchen 1980. S. 36; S. 43.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim / Mendelssohn, Moses / Nicolai, Friedrich: Briefwechsel ber das
Trauerspiel. Hg. von Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. Mnchen 1972. S. 55.
Ebd., 78. Stck. Den 29. Januar 1768. S. 434.
Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 4. Dass Bernays diesen polemischen Begriff ohne Namensnennung dem Junghegelianer Alfred Stahr entlehnt hat, darauf macht Grnder aufmerksam: Grnder: Jacob Bernays, a. a. O., S. 510.

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ren zu wollen, gehe entschieden am eigentlichen Sinn der Katharsis vorbei, fr

deren sthetische Reichweite sich demgegenber Goethe wesentlich empfnglicher gezeigt habe, auch wenn er sie flschlicherweise ber die Zuschauer
hinweg in die personae dramatis versetzen wollte und unter Katharsis die die dramatische Handlung selbst betreffende ausshnende Abrundung36 verstand. In
strenger Verurteilung jedes sittlichen Endzweckes37 und einer entsprechend
entfernten Wirkung auf den Zuschauer, die die Vollkommenheit des tragischen Kunstwerkes in und an sich selbst ldierten, gibt Goethe den Aristotelischen Tragdiensatz folgendermaen wieder:
Die Tragdie ist die Nachahmung einer bedeutenden und abgeschlossenen
Handlung, die [] nach einem Verlauf [] von Mitleid und Furcht mit Ausgleichung solcher Leidenschaften ihr Geschft schliet.38
Angesichts der offenkundigen Verwegenheit dieser Auslegungs- und bersetzungsversuche sieht sich Bernays zu einem Rckgang auf die antiken Texte
selbst und in Sonderheit zu einer grndlichen Lektre des achten Buches von
Aristoteles Politik (1341b) gentigt. Hier findet sich nmlich nicht nur der Hinweis auf eine ausfhrlichere, aber verlorengegangene Behandlung der Katharsis
in der Poetik, sondern auch deren einzig berlieferte Erluterung durch Aristoteles selbst, die im Kontext unterschiedlicher Musikgattungen entwickelt wird.
Von diesen interessieren Bernays und spter Nietzsche vor allem die von
dem mythischen Snger Olympos hergeleiteten phrygischen Lieder39 und die
ebenfalls orgiastische bzw. enthusiastische Fltenmusik (vgl. GT 6, S. 49), denen Aristoteles eine sowohl berauschende als auch kathartische Wirkung zuspricht:
Nun sehen wir an den heiligen Liedern, da wenn dergleichen Verzckte
Lieder, die eben das Gemth berauschen, auf sich wirken lassen, sie sich beruhigen, gleichsam als htten sie rztliche Cur und Katharsis erfahren.40
Auch wenn Aristoteles in Frontstellung zur Platonischen Verwerfung der
orgiastisch-kathartisch wirksamen Aulosmusik (Nomoi 790ce) die unschdliche
Freude (Politik 1342a) unterstreicht, mit der die Katharsis durch heilige Lieder verbunden sei, so hebt Bernays weniger diesen hedonistischen41 Aspekt als
vielmehr den pathologischen Blickwinkel der ganzen Betrachtung hervor. Der
36

37

38
39
40
41

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Nachlese zu Aristoteles Poetik. In: Goethes Werke. Bd. XII.
Mnchen 1981. S. 342 345, hier S. 343.
Eckermann, Johann Peter: Gesprche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Hg. von
Bergemann, Fritz. Frankfurt am Main 1981. 28. Mrz 1827. S. 563.
Goethe: Nachlese, a. a. O., S. 342 f.
Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 9.
Aristoteles: Politik 1342a. In der bersetzung von Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 7.
Zur empirischen und hedonistischen, wenn nicht gar eudaimonistischen Bestimmung der Aristotelischen Katharsis siehe Neschke-Hentschke, Ada B.: Aristoteles und Aristotelismus oder der
Fall der Poetik. In: Neue Hefte fr Philosophie 15/16 (1979). S. 70 101, hier S. 91.

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sprachlich eindeutig metaphorische42 Gehalt jenes pathologischen Gesichtspunktes lsst ihn zu einer Erluterung greifen, die nebenbei bemerkt und nicht
von ungefhr an die sptere kathartische Methode43 Breuers und Freuds erinnert, dessen Ehefrau Martha bekanntlich Bernays Nichte war: Die sowohl tragische als auch musikalische Katharsis des Aristoteles, deren einheitliches Grundverstndnis nicht genug betont werden knne,44 msse als eine vom Krperlichen
auf Gemthliches bertragene Bezeichnung fr solche Behandlung eines Beklommenen verstanden werden, die das ihn beklemmende Element nicht zu verwandeln oder zurckzudrngen sucht, sondern es aufregen, hervortreiben und
dadurch Erleichterung des Beklommenen bewirken soll.45 Fr die Zurckversetzung der Katharsis in jenen therapeutischen Kontext,46 dem sie ursprnglich entstammen soll, findet Bernays auerdem Belege in zwei Texttorsi neuplatonischer
Literatur, in denen er im brigen auf Paraphrasen der verlorenen Fragmente der
Poetik gestoen zu sein glaubte. Bei Proklos, d.h. in seinem Rekurs auf die Poetik,
entdeckt er zwei der medizinischen Semantik affine Nachbarworte: aphosiosis,
Ableitung, sowie aprasis, Entladung.47 Bei Jamblich lasse die mit dem Wort ktharsis verbundene Prposition to 48 an nichts anderes als an medizinisches Fortschaffen [] denken.49 Wo immer Bernays nunmehr den Terminus Katharsis und
also den Tragdiensatz des Aristoteles ins Deutsche bersetzt, wird er, wie auch
nach ihm Nietzsche, nicht von Reinigung, sondern von Entladung sprechen:
Die Tragdie bewirkt durch [Erregung von] Mitleid und Furcht die Entladung solcher [mitleidigen und furchtsamen] Gemthsaffectionen.50
42

43

44
45
46

47

48
49
50

Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 16. In einem Brief an Leonhard Spengel vom 6. Mrz 1859 verteidigt Bernays erneut ausdrcklich die Metaphorizitt des Terminus katharsis bei Aristoteles
gegenber seinen Kritikern. Vgl. dazu Bernays, Jacob: Ein Brief an Leonhard Spengel ber die
tragische Katharsis bei Aristoteles. In: ders.: Zwei Abhandlungen ber die Aristotelische Theorie des Dramas. Berlin 1880. S. 119 132, hier S. 122.
Siehe dazu Breuer, Josef / Freud, Sigmund: ber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer
Phnomene (1893). In: Freud: Studien ber Hysterie. Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I. Hg. von Freud,
Anna u.a. London, Frankfurt am Main 1940ff. S. 75 98, hier S. 97.
Vgl. Grnder: Jacob Bernays, a. a. O., S. 513.
Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 12.
Hellmut Flashar weist die ursprnglich medizinische Bedeutung der Katharsis in den Hippokratischen Schriften ber die Behandlung der heiligen Krankheiten (Epilepsie, Melancholie) nach:
Flashar, Hellmut: Die medizinischen Grundlagen der Lehre von der Wirkung der Dichtung in
der griechischen Poetik. In: Hermes 84 (1956). S. 12 48, hier S. 26 ff.
Procl. in Remp. I.42.2 (Kroll). In: Aristoteles: Fragmenta Selecta. Ed. Ross, W. D. Oxford 1958.
S. 69 70.
Iambl. Myst. I.II (Parthey) bzw. 3.9. In: Aristoteles: Fragmenta Selecta, a.a. O., S. 70.
Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 36; S. 38.
Ebd., S. 16. Auf die den genitivus objectivus oder genitivus separativus betreffende Streitfrage,
ob nmlich der Zuschauer von besagten Affekten gereinigt werde oder aber diese Affekte selbst
eine Reinigung erfahren, gibt Bernays damit eine eindeutige Antwort. Siehe dazu auch Schadewaldt, Wolfgang: Die griechische Tragdie. Tbinger Vorlesungen (1966 1970). Bd. 4. Hg. von
Schudoma, Ingeborg. Frankfurt am Main 1991. S. 13.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

133

Der fr Aristoteles entscheidende Erfahrungshintergrund sei indes in dem in

der orientalischen und griechischen Antike weit verbreiteten Bereich der ekstatischen Erscheinungen51 zu finden. Das als heilig und gttlich aufgefasste Aussersichsein, das in ffentlichen Kulten unter priesterlicher Fhrung gleichermaen epidemisch erregt und kathartisch geheilt worden sei, erweist sich fr Bernays
namentlich in seinem objektlosen, die Fessel des Bewutseins sprengenden und
die soziale Ordnung auflsenden Modus als dasjenige Urpathos, das allen anderen Arten von Pathos seine wesentlich ekstatischen Zge leihe.52

2. Nietzsches Bestimmung der Katharsis

als Entladung knstlerischer Rauschzustnde und seine Genealogie der Tragdie
Dass Bernays seine eigenen Anschauungen in der Geburt der Tragdie in
stark bertriebener Form glaubte wiedergefunden zu haben, wie Nietzsche Erwin Rohde im Dezember 187253 voller Emprung mitteilt, ist ebenso zutreffend
wie falsch: Wie dieser lehnt Nietzsche jede moralische Deutung der Katharsis
als Antwort auf die Frage nach dem eigentlich Tragischen grundstzlich ab.
Wie Bernays unterstreicht auch er Goethes Ahnung, dass das hchste Pathetische der Tragdie nur als ein sthetisches Spiel umrissen werden knne. In
dem Mae, in dem Nietzsche jedoch die unbedingte Notwendigkeit eines sthetischen Verstndnisses der tragischen Katharsis unterschreibt, muss er mit um so
grerer Entschiedenheit deren medizinische Auslegung verwerfen. Diese Zurckweisung einer pharmazeutischen bzw. homopathischen Funktion rhrt
jedoch nicht etwa daher, dass Nietzsche die philologische Gltigkeit der Bernaysschen Untersuchung anzweifelt, die im 22. Kapitel der Tragdien-Schrift und anderswo, ohne eigens genannt zu werden, in Frage steht. Hinter der Verurteilung
der sowohl moralischen als auch pathologischen Deutung des Tragischen,
die im brigen auf die nmliche Stufe gestellt werden (GT 22, S. 142f.), steht vielmehr das Wissen um das groe Miverstndnis des Aristoteles selbst, der in
zwei deprimierenden Affekten, im Schrecken und im Mitleiden, die tragischen
Affekte zu erkennen glaubte. Htte er Recht, so wre die Tragdie eine lebensgefhrliche Kunst: man mte vor ihr wie etwas Gemeinschdlichem und Anrchi-

51

52
53

Vgl. auch die ber die griechischen Manifestationen hinausgehenden berlegungen von Burkhard Gladigow, der anhand einer Reihe von vergleichenden Kriterien transkulturell konstante
uerungs- und Zustandsformen der Ekstase in Betracht zieht: Gladigow, Burkhard: Ekstase
und Enthousiasmos. In: Cancik, Hubert (Hg.): Rausch Ekstase Mystik. Dsseldorf 1978.
S. 23 40, hier S. 33.
Bernays: Grundzge, a. a. O., S. 43 47.
Nietzsche an Erwin Rohde, 7. Dezember 1872, KSB 4, Nr. 487, S. 97. Siehe dazu Grnder: Jacob
Bernays, a. a. O., S. 520.

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gem warnen (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 15[10], S. 410), wie Nietzsche noch 1888
auf der durchgngigen argumentativen Linie seiner wiederholten Einsprche gegen die Poetik formuliert. Aristoteles ist es demnach nicht gelungen, dem Bann
der Platonischen Verurteilung der tragischen Kunst zu entkommen. Indem er
die Unschdlichkeit der Tragdie demonstrieren wollte und sie zu einem ntzlichen Purgativ zwei[er] unmig aufgestaute[r] krankhafte[r] Affekte erklrt
hat (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 15[10], S. 410), bleibt er in derselben, wenngleich
umgekehrten Logik Platons gefangen. Fr Nietzsche ist jedoch vor allem der mit
der Katharsis ineinsgesetzte Vorgang der Schwchung, Auflsung, ja des Verlustes einer pathischen Spannung (tonicum) oder Disposition hchst fragwrdig
(Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 15[10], S. 410), die ihrerseits als problematisch bewertet
und deshalb ausgetrieben werden sollen. Um dieser Kraft- und Pathosminderung willen msste die Aristotelische Einschtzung der Tragdie, trfe sie denn
zu, in der Tat als lebensgefhrlich angesehen werden: Das groe Miverstndnis des Aristoteles54 beruht auf der Sokratisch-wissenschaftlichen Stigmatisierung von Pathos und Leidenschaft und der daraus folgenden Einsicht in
die vermeintliche Notwendigkeit ihres Exorzismus, als dessen bloes Mittel die
tragische Kunst missbraucht wird. Damit ist bereits in nuce das Programm einer
radikalen Neubewertung der Tragdie skizziert, dem sich Nietzsche sptestens
seit 1870 verschrieben hat: Es gilt die tragische Katharsis als ein Geschehen zu
begreifen, bei dem eminent knstlerische Zustnde und Ttigkeiten (GT 22,
S. 142) auf dem Spiel stehen. Sie gehen aus dem exzessiv Pathischen selbst hervor, knnen es ihrerseits steigern und sthetisch transfigurieren und fhren
damit das zum Leben verfhren[de] (Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[125], S. 183)
Gewicht solcher Metamorphosen (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14 [127], S. 309)
vor Augen. So taucht der von Bernays eingefhrte und von Nietzsche unter usserster Sinnentstellung bernommene Terminus der Entladung nicht zuletzt
in jenen zwei prominenten Kapiteln der Tragdien-Schrift auf, die dem Ursprung
der Tragdie aus der orgiastischen Rauscherfahrung des Chores im Zeichen einer
musikalischen Theologie55 des Dionysos gewidmet sind.56 Dasjenige, was ge-

54

55

56

Zu diesem Aristotelischen Miverstndniss und seinen historischen Fortsetzungen vgl. auch:

GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 5, KSA 6, S. 160.
Bernays: Grundzge, a.a.O., S. 37. Bernays referiert hier die Nietzsche offenbar beeindruckende,
vom ungttlichen Musikverstndnis des Aristoteles abweichende Ansicht von Jamblich, die
dieser in seiner Mysterien-Schrift vertritt, dass nmlich die einzelnen Liederweisen eine specifische Verwandtschaft mit den einzelnen Gttern haben, welche nun im Klang des Liedes gegenwrtig geworden, als gegenwrtige, je nach der ihnen zukommenden Macht, auf die Menschen
unmittelbar wirken und diese in mannichfach sich ussernde, bald still brtende, bald tobend
taumelnde Zustnde einer wirklichen Vergottung, eines enthousiasms, versetzen.
Zur auerordentlichen Bedeutung des Dionysos-Mythos fr die Romantik und den deutschen
Idealismus siehe Frank, Manfred: Der kommende Gott. Vorlesungen ber die Neue Mythologie. Frankfurt am Main 1982.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

135

meinhin als historischer Vorlufer der Tragdie angesehen wird, der Chor, ist fr
Nietzsche bekanntlich der Inbegriff der Tragdie (GT 7, S. 52) und das Urphnomen des Tragischen (GT 22, S. 143) selbst: Das Pathos der Musik (GT 6,
S. 49), das gewaltsam in den Satyr-Chor einschlgt (Nachlass 1870, KSA 7,
7[127], S. 188), fhrt zu einer Gesammt-Erregung und Steigerung des AffektSystems []: so dass es alle seine Mittel des Ausdrucks mit einem Mal entladet
und die Kraft des Darstellens, Nachbildens, Transfigurierens, Verwandelns, alle
Art Mimik und Schauspielerei zugleich heraustreibt. Mit dem im Feld der dionysischen Musik verwendeten Begriff der Entladung stellt Nietzsche offenkundig keine Abschwchung oder gar Austreibung von Affekten in Aussicht; er
hebt vielmehr die mit der pathischen Intensivierung einhergehende Leichtigkeit
der Metamorphose als die Unfhigkeit, nicht zu reagieren (GD, Streifzge 10,
S. 117) hervor. Das eminent sthetische der so verstandenen Katharsis ist die
mit der musikalischen Rauscherfahrung einhergehende zwanghafte Entladung
von knstlerischen Krften der Verwandlung der Person, die den Besessenen
seine Identitt verlieren, ihn in jede Haut schlpfen und in jeden Affekt [eingehen] (GD, Streifzge 10, S. 118) lsst. Der von der orgiastischen Gewalt der
dionysischen Musik Ergriffene verwandelt sich solchermaen in einen Diener
seines Gottes. Seine Transfiguration in einen dionysischen Satyr beruht ohne
Frage auf einer doppelten Fremderfahrung und Entladung: Der pathischen
Fremderfahrung des objektlosen Rausches einerseits, die Nietzsche ganz ebenso
wie Bernays mittels jener bewutseinsentgrenzenden, depersonalisierenden und
affektiv steigernden Wirkungen beschreibt,57 deren unmittelbar alterierender
Entladungsgewalt sich keiner zu entziehen vermag; sowie andererseits der mit
der Preisgabe der eigenen und der Annahme einer neuen Identitt verbundenen
Fremderfahrung der kathartischen Verwandlung in einen Gefhrten des Dionysos. bernimmt der Besessene und Verwandelte des dionysischen Chores fr
Nietzsche zweifellos die Rolle eines unbewussten Schauspielers (GT 8, S. 61),
so bringt er ihn zugleich als Zuschauer einer szenischen Vision ins Spiel, die
sich mit der pathisch-sthetischen Kraft einer nunmehr bildlichen Katharsis
einstellt.58 Indem der dionysische Schwrmer auer sich gert und sich in einen
Satyr verwandelt, sieht er eine neue Vision ausser sich, die fr Nietzsche nichts
anderes als die Entladung der dionysischen Fremderfahrung in eine apollinische Bilderwelt (GT 8, S. 62) darstellt und die Leiden des Dionysos fr jeden
Einzelnen halluzinativ sichtbar macht. Dieses sich ekstatisch entladende monstrse Imaginre, das in aufeinanderfolgenden Szenen die Zerstckelung des
57

58

Siehe dazu Reibnitz, Barbara von: Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geist der Musik (Kapitel 1 12). Stuttgart, Weimar 1992. S. 202.
Vgl. dazu auch die in mancherlei Hinsicht deutlicheren Ausfhrungen zur Geburt der Tragdie:
Nachlass Ende 1870 April 1871, KSA 7, 7[127], S. 185 ff., zur Vision siehe Nachlass Ende
1870 April 1871, KSA 7, 7 [127], S. 191.

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Dionysos59 vor Augen fhrt und verherrlicht, wirkt wiederum seinerseits insofern
affektiv auf den Schauer der Vision zurck, als dieser vom Anblick des Leidens
seines Gottes getroffen und in Mitleidenschaft gezogen wird (GT 8, S. 58, S. 63).
Das eigentliche Urdrama (GT 7, S. 52), das Nietzsche im uersten Gegensatz
zum traditionellen Verstndnis von jeder dramatischen Handlungskomponente
befreit (GT 8, 12, S. 63, S. 85), fllt demnach mit der Entfesselung zweier knstlerischer Gewalten im Menschen, dem Zwang zur Vision und dem Zwang
zum Orgiasmus zusammen, die ber ihn verfgen, ob er will oder nicht
(Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[36], S. 235f.). Wenn es zutrifft, dass die antike Tragdie nichts anderes als die in die externe Sichtbarkeit der Bhne bersetzte
Fremderfahrung des dionysischen Satyrchores darstellt (GT 8, S. 63), dann muss
sich die spezifische Bedeutung, die Nietzsche der tragischen Katharsis verleiht,
nmlich die mit pathischer Unvermeidlichkeit auftretende Entladung der beiden kunstschaffenden Zustnde (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[47], S. 241; vgl.
GT 22, S. 142) von Metamorphose und Vision, auch dort wiederfinden lassen.
Von der Urtragdie (GT 8, S. 60) unterscheidet sich die Tragdie freilich nicht
nur durch ihre externe Bildlichkeit, sondern auch durch die Einfhrung eines
vom dithyrambischen Chor geschiedenen Schauspielers, so dass die zuvor personelle Einheit zwischen unbewusstem Mimen und Zuschauer zerbricht. Zur
berbrckung dieser Kluft zwischen innerer und uerer Bildlichkeit einerseits
und derjenigen zwischen Zuschauer und Schauspieler andererseits muss Nietzsche auf die nicht eigens thematisierten Mechanismen der Identifizierung60
(sich wiederfinden) und der Projektion (bertragen) zurckgreifen (GT 8,
S. 59; S. 64). Bei seiner kathartischen Deutung der Tragdie nimmt er nicht mehr
die Position des Chores, sondern die des Zuhrers bzw. Zuschauers ein. Dem
dithyrambischen Chor obliegt nun die Aufgabe, die Stimmung des Zuhrers
dionysisch so weit zu erregen, dass dieser den Chor der Orchestra imaginativ in
den dionysischen Satyrchor verwandelt und in der Identifizierung mit jenem
selbst verwandelt wird (GT 8, S. 59). Erst unter dieser Voraussetzung wird es
dem Zuschauer mglich, in der Erscheinung des tragischen Helden auf der
Bhne [] nicht etwa den unfrmlich maskierten Menschen [], sondern eine
gleichsam aus [seiner] eigenen Verzckung geborene Visionsgestalt [zu] sehen,
um kraft des ganzen magisch vor seiner Seele zitternden Bild[es] des Gottes
mit dessen Leiden eins zu werden (GT 8, S. 63f.). Es ist dieses sich gegenseitig
zur Entladung erregende Zusammenspiel von musikalisch-pathischer Verwand59

60

Zur Zerstckelung des Dionysos Zagreus durch die Titanen siehe Nachlass Ende 1870 April
1871, KSA 7, 7[123], S. 177. Zur Geschichte des Zagreus und seiner Bedeutung fr Nietzsche
vgl. auch Wohlfahrt, Gnter: Nachwort. In: Friedrich Nietzsche: Die Geburt der Tragdie. Oder:
Griechenthum und Pessimismus. Stuttgart 1993. S. 155 175, hier S. 160 ff.
Nur insofern jeder Zuschauer mit dem Chore sich identificirt, giebt es eine Zuschauerwelt in
dem griechischen Theater. Nachlass 1871, KSA 7, 9[9], S. 273.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

137

lung und szenischer Vision das transfigurierende Pathos treibt die innere Bildlichkeit hervor und die projizierte Vision wirkt wiederum ihrerseits pathischalterierend , das als genuin sthetisches Geschehen fr die Entstehung der griechischen Tragdie in ihren unterschiedlichen Ausgestaltungen und fr die Deutung der tragischen Katharsis verantwortlich gemacht wird. Es ermglicht und
skandiert die von Nietzsche mehr oder minder fingierte Entwicklungs- und Verfallsgeschichte der Tragdie vom dionysischen Satyrchor zum dithyrambischen
Chor bis hin zum Auftritt eines ersten, zweiten und schlielich dritten Schauspielers bei Aischylos, Sophokles und Euripides, der Einfhrung dialogischer Passagen sowie der Inszenierung einer dramatischen Handlung im Angesicht von
Zuschauern. Was die originre Bestimmung des tragischen Pathos angeht, so
nimmt Nietzsche nicht das alte Miverstndnis des Aristoteles wieder auf
(Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[33], S. 234), wie er ber sich selbst im Umkreis seiner
Notizen zur Autobiographie seiner Schriften in Ecce Homo zum wiederholten Mal
formuliert; es geht ihm vielmehr um die Betonung einer gesteigerten Fremdbestimmung und pathischen Kraft der alterierenden Metamorphose. Sie gelangt
im musikalischen Rausch ebenso zur Entladung wie jene halluzinativen Bilder,
die der identifizierenden Visualisierung fremden Leids gewidmet sind. In dem
Mae, in dem Nietzsche die Tragdie zur sthetischen Reproduktion der religisen Besessenheitserfahrung des Dionysoskultes erklrt61 und mit Aristoteles den
rituellen Entstehungsherd der orgiastischen Musik betont, entspricht der tragische Proze hier wie dort durchaus der Anordnung jener rites de passage, die
Arnold van Gennep Jahre spter in das begriffliche Schema von sparation,
marge und agrgation eingepat hat:62 Was die Trennung zwischen der Welt
der alltglichen und der dionysischen Wirklichkeit betrifft,63 so betont Nietzsche nicht nur den Verlust der sozialen Stellung und brgerlichen Vergangenheit. Das ekstatische Aufgeben des Individuums durch Einkehr in eine fremde
Natur (GT 8, S. 61) wird darber hinaus als ein auerordentliches Geschehen
beschrieben, das in seiner Unverfgbarkeit und im Hinausgreifen ber Person,
Alltag, Gesellschaft, Realitt (Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[14], S. 224) den
Abstand zwischen der Ordnung des Normalzustandes und seiner rituellen Desorganisation markiert. Auf der liminalen Schwelle, die der in einen Diener seines Gottes verwandelte und damit einen neuen Status erlangende dionysische
Schwrmer betritt, wird der solchermaen Initiierte von der visionren und
fremden Wahrheit der Zerreiung des Gottes (Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7,
7[62], S. 152) getroffen. Diese dionysische Wahrheit gilt es, bei der Rckkehr in
61

62
63

Nietzsche spricht auch von einer Identitt von Kunst und Religion im griechischen Sinne bzw.
von einem einzigen Quell, aus dem Kunst und Religion fliet. Nachlass 1871, KSA 7, 9[102],
S. 311; 9[94], S. 309.
Gennep, Arnold van: Les rites de passage (1906). Paris 1981.
Die dionysische Weltanschauung, KSA 1, S. 569.

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den Normalzustand und der Wiedereingliederung in das normale soziale Leben zu affirmieren und umzusetzen. Ganz ohne Frage ist Nietzsche im hohen
Mae an der Nachwirkung (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[119], S. 299) jener
sthetisch-pathischen rites de passage in den ausseraesthetischen Sphren des
Alltags (GT 22, S. 143) und damit an der Erbringung des Nachweises einer rigorosen Kunstbedrftigkeit64 des Lebens selbst interessiert. Insofern er in Anlehnung an den griechischen Pessimismus dem neuzeitlich-anthropologischen
Paradigma der Selbsterhaltung65 seine Anerkennung versagt und bestenfalls Prozesse der Selbstminderung bzw. Selbststeigerung in Geltung bringt, lsst sich
die Originalitt der Tragdien-Schrift nicht zuletzt an der Conception einer
allgemeinen Verfhrungstheorie66 bemessen (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[26],
S. 230). Sie bestimmt die tragische Kunst dazu, zum Leben [zu] verfhren
(Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[125], S. 183) und als das groe Stimulans des Lebens, zum Leben (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[26], S. 230) aufzutreten.67 Fr diesen griechischen Pessimismus, auf den das Tragische eine zum Weiterleben verfhrende Antwort zu geben versucht, steht die viel zitierte Weisheit des Silenen,
Begleiter des Dionysos, symptomatisch ein: das Beste ist nicht zu sein, das
Zweitbeste bald zu sterben.68 Die dezidiert metaphysische Auslegung, mit der
64
65

66

67

68

Sokrates und die griechische Tragdie, KSA 1, S. 640.

Vgl. dazu bereits die einschlgigen uerungen Nietzsches, die unter der Direktive der an dieser
Stelle psychologisch nachgerechneten Wille zur Macht-Hypothese stehen: Der Satz des
Spinoza von der Selbsterhaltung mte eigentlich der Vernderung einen Halt setzen: aber der
Satz ist falsch, das Gegentheil ist wahr. Gerade an allem Lebendigen ist am deutlichsten zu zeigen,
da es alles thut, um nicht sich zu erhalten, sondern um mehr zu werden Nachlass Frhjahr
1888, KSA 13, 14[121], S. 301; 14[81], S. 261; sowie JGB, Erstes Hauptstck 13, KSA 5, S. 27 f.;
siehe auch Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 6[123], S. 226 f.
Dieser Ausdruck stammt von Jean Laplanche, der auf Grund der Tatsache, dass in Freuds Drei
Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (1905ff.) die Mutter explizit als erste Verfhrerin auftaucht, die
der Erogenisisierung des kindlichen Krpers durch Gesten der Zrtlichkeit und der Krperpflege Vorschub leistet, eine intersubjektiv-traumatische Erweckungsgeschichte der infantilen
Sexualitt in ihrer polymorph-perversen Ausgestaltung geltend macht. Damit erscheint die
angeblich radikale Preisgabe der Verfhrungstheorie, die Freud im September 1897 vollzogen
haben soll, in einem neuen Licht und die mtterliche Verfhrung nimmt geradezu universelle
und unumgngliche Ausmae an, die die anthropologische Konzeption eines eingeborenen Sexualtriebes in Abrede stellt. Laplanche, Jean: De la thorie de la sduction restreinte la thorie
de la sduction gnralise. In: tudes Freudiennes 27 (1986). S. 7 25.
Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 17[3], S. 521: Die Kunst und nichts als die Kunst! Sie ist die
groe Ermglicherin des Lebens die groe Verfhrerin zum Leben, das groe Stimulans des
Lebens. [] Die Kunst als die Erlsu n g de s E rke nne nde n, dessen, der den furchtbaren
und fragwrdigen Charakter des Daseins nicht nur sieht, sehn will, des Tragisch-Erkennenden.
Man kann angesichts solcher Formulierungen mit Volker Gerhardt Zweifel daran anmelden, ob
die der Kunst 1888 zugesprochene Bedeutung eher dem Rckblick auf das Erstlingswerk gilt
oder aber auf das ungeschriebene neue [Buch] vorausblickt. Gerhardt, Volker: Von der sthetischen Metaphysik zur Physiologie der Kunst. In: Nietzsche-Studien 13 (1984). S. 374 393, hier
S. 387.
Die dionysische Weltanschauung, KSA 1, S. 560 f.; vgl. auch: Die Geburt des tragischen Gedankens, KSA 1, S. 588.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

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der frhe Nietzsche die tragische Kunst einrahmt und belastet, macht in der Urtragdie bekanntermaen nicht nur eine historisch einzigartige Konstellation
der beiden Kunstprinzipien, des Apollinischen und Dionysischen, ausfindig,
sondern sieht dort auch eine Mittelwelt69 installiert, die den Widerstreit zwischen der Schnheit des die Not des Lebens verhllenden Scheins und der dionysischen Wahrheit ber das Schreckensgesicht des Daseins (Nachlass
1870/71, KSA 7, 7[27], S. 145) sthetisch ausgestaltet. Stellt die bloe Negation
der Noth (Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[27], S. 144) durch den kalmierenden
Schein fr Nietzsche eine Minderung des Daseins dar, so treibt die grauenhafte dionysische Wahrheit einschlielich der Ekelgedanken ber das Entsetzliche oder Absurde des Daseins (GT 7, S. 57) hin zu dessen Vernichtung.
Demgegenber bewirkt die apollinische Darstellung der dionysischen Wahrheit
weder die Minimierung noch die Zerstrung, sondern eine Steigerung des Daseins und seiner Mglichkeiten: Die ekstatischen Erregungen und Entladungen,
durch die die Tragdie in der pathischen Hherspannung des Daseins zum Weiterleben reizt (Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[27], S. 145), werden inhaltlich durch
das metaphysische Versprechen der Unvergnglichkeit und Unzerstrbarkeit des
Lebens gesttzt (GT 18, S. 115). In der szenischen Vision der titanischen Zerstckelung und apollinischen Zusammenfgung des Dionysos hat es einen symbolischen Ausdruck gefunden:70 Die tragische Kunst ist das, was ewig zum Leben,
zum ewigen Leben drngt (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[23], S. 228). Denn
nur als aesthetisches Phnomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt.
(GT 5, S. 47). Diese Theodizee71 stellt demnach jenes trostspendende (GT 18,
S. 115) und lebensrettende Artisten-Evangelium (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13,
14[23], S. 228) bereit, dessen der dionysisch Initiierte bei der Eingliederung in
sein normales Leben bedarf, um dem Grauen des Todes (GT 19, S. 126), dem die
Besessenheit ein visionres Bild geliehen hat, nicht fortwhrend ins zerstrerische Antlitz schauen zu mssen.

69
70
71

Die dionysische Weltanschauung, KSA 1, S. 567.

Ebd., S. 559.
Freilich sollte man nicht vergessen, dass sich fr Nietzsche das Problem der sthetischen
Rechtfertigung der Welt vor dem metaphysischen Hintergrund des leidenden Ur-Einen
stellt, aus dem zwei weitere Formen des Leidens als Folge (das Individuum gem Schopenhauers principium individuationis sowie das individuelle Leid) abgeleitet werden, fr die das Kunstwerk Erlsung im Schein verspricht. Vgl. Decher, Friedhelm: Nietzsches Metaphysik in der
Geburt der Tragdie im Verhltnis zur Philosophie Schopenhauers. In: Nietzsche-Studien 14
(1985). S. 110 125, hier S. 119 f.; sowie Fleischer, Margot: Dionysos als Ding an sich. In: Nietzsche-Studien 17 (1988). S. 74 90, hier S. 83.

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Iris Drmann

3. Heideggers seinsgeschichtliche Umkehrung von Nietzsches sthetik des Rausches

Wenn die Tragdie, nach Nietzsches bestechender Interpretation, erklrtermaen nicht zur Handlung, sondern zum Pathos drngt (GT 12, S. 85),
dann fragt es sich, welche Rolle die Katharsis des Rausches in einem Denken
noch spielen kann, das mit der Hypothese vom Willen zur Macht das Gewicht unverfgbar pathischer Fremderfahrungen ausgelscht zu haben scheint,
indem es dem Werden und allem Geschehen insgesamt den Charakter der Aktion und der Aktivitt des Wollens (N I, S. 15) zuspricht, worauf zumindest
Heideggers Lektre im Rckgriff auf die berhmt-berchtigte Gast-FrsterKompilation (1901/06/11)72 des angeblichen Hauptprosawerkes Nietzsches
insistiert. Zieht man jedoch in Betracht, dass Nietzsche seit dem Euripideischen
Selbstmord der Tragdie, der mit dem Sokratischen Sieg des theoretischen
Optimismus (GT 15, S. 100) zusammenfllt, im wissenschaftlichen Erkennen
und logischen Schematismus (GT 14, S. 94) einen grenzenlose[n] Apollinismus (Nachlass 1870, KSA 7, 6[13], S. 134) am Werk sieht, der den notwendigen
Bezug zum Dionysischen preisgegeben hat und somit fremd- und grundlos
geworden ist, dann steht nicht nur eine doppelte Lesart der Willen zur
Macht-Hypothese, sondern auch der Katharsis selbst zu erwarten: nmlich
eine wissenschaftliche und eine dionysische Perspektive, die stets die Frage danach erforderlich macht, auf welchem Terrain sich Nietzsche jeweils aufhlt.73 In
dem Mae, in dem sich Nietzsche 1888 als Lehrer der ewigen Wiederkunft
ausdrcklich auf jenen Boden zurck[stellt], aus dem [s]ein Wollen, [s]ein Knnen wchst (GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 5, KSA 6, S. 160), unterschreibt er
aus dionysischer Perspektive nicht nur weiterhin den zweifach orgiastischen,
nmlich transfigurierend-visionren Ursprung der griechischen Kunst und da-

72

73

Die Vorbehalte Heideggers gegenber diesem verhngnisvollen Buch sind Legion. Siehe etwa:
1. Nietzsches Metaphysik. 2. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Denken und Dichten. GA. Bd. 50.
Hg. Jaeger, Petra. Frankfurt am Main 1990. S. 109. Als Mitglied des Wissenschaftlichen Ausschusses der historisch-kritischen Gesamtausgabe der Werke und Briefe Nietzsches im Nietzsche-Archiv Weimar in den Jahren 1935 1942 versuchte Heidegger die Edition der Werke und
die Auswahl der Nachlassfragmente um den Preis der Vollstndigkeit an seiner eigenen seinsgeschichtlichen Interpretation zu orientieren. Dabei galt sein Interesse namentlich, was die neue
Herausgabe des Willens zur Macht anbelangte der Konstruktion des eigentlichen Werkes.
Siehe dazu Heinz, Marion / Kiesiel, Theodore: Heideggers Beziehungen zum Nietzsche-Archiv
im Dritten Reich. In: Schfer, Herrmann (Hg.), Annherungen an Martin Heidegger. Festschrift
fr Hugo Ott zum 65. Geburtstag. Frankfurt am Main, New York 1996. S. 103 136.
Zu dieser zweifachen und gegenstzlich zu nennenden Perspektive (exoterisch, esoterisch) der
Hypothese vom Willen zur Macht, die sich einmal auf dem Boden der (physiologischen)
Wissenschaft bewegt und das andere Mal auf dem Terrain der Kunst entfaltet, vgl. die instruktiven berlegungen von Schmid, Holger: ber die Tragweite der Artisten-Metaphysik. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 13 (1984). S. 437 442, hier S. 440. Sowie ders.: Nietzsches Gedanke der tragischen Erkenntnis. Wrzburg 1984.

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mit seine frhe anti-Aristotelische Katharsisdeutung.74 berdies sieht er die fr

seine Erstlingsschrift im Rckblick reklamierte Originalitt namentlich in der
Entdeckung der lebensverfhrenden Kraft der Kunst und eines neuen Typus
des Pessimismus (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[26], S. 230) gegrndet. Kurzum:
Nietzsche bleibt auch in seinem Sptwerk den entscheidenden Einstzen seiner
Tragdien-Schrift treu, so dass Heidegger in seiner 1936/37 gehaltenen Vorlesung
Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst75 nicht umhin kann, sich mit eben diesen Konzeptionen aus-einander-zu-setzen76 (N I, S. 9 f., S. 86, S. 123, S. 251 f.). Seine Beschftigung mit Nietzsches Kunstphilosophie zielt bekanntlich nicht nur auf den
Nachweis ihrer Zugehrigkeit zu der mit Platon einsetzenden Geschichte der
sthetik (N I, S. 94), die ihre dramatische Zuspitzung in der Behauptung erfhrt,
dass sich Nietzsches Philosophie in dem Versuch, den Platonismus umzudrehen, umso mehr in diesen hereindreht und sich hier noch einmal und endgltig und am tiefsten in ihn verstrickt.77 Darber hinaus handelt es sich im
Rckgang auf Nietzsche zugleich darum, hinter ihn selbst zurck und ber ihn
hinaus78 zu denken, was nicht zuletzt hinsichtlich der Frage des Rausches zu
verqueren Sinnentstellungen fhrt, die mindestens in dieser Hinsicht Heideg74

75

76

77

78

Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[36], S. 235. Siehe auch GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 5,
KSA 6, S. 160. Ebenfalls EH, Die Geburt der Tragdie 3, KSA 6, S. 312.
Bei diesem Vorlesungstitel Heideggers handelt es sich bekanntlich um ein Zitat. Siehe etwa
Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[61], S. 246.
Auseinandersetzung bedeutet freilich nicht Kritik im Sinne des Aufsprens von Schwchen
und Fehler, sondern das im Denken Nietzsches geschichtlich Begegnende in das Freie einer
Entscheidung zu bringen, die durch die Begegnung unumgnglich wird. Heidegger, Martin:
Einleitung in die Philosophie. Dichten und Denken. In: ders.: Gesamtausgabe [fortan zitiert:
HGA]. II. Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1919 1944. Bd. 50. Frankfurt am Main 1990. S. 98.
An anderer Stelle gesteht Heidegger Nietzsche auf hchst zweischneidige Weise zu: In der Zeit,
als fr Nietzsche die Umdrehung des Platonismus zu einer Herausdrehung wurde, berfiel ihn
der Wahnsinn. Heidegger: Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst. HGA, Bd. 43. Frankfurt
am Main 1985. S. 251; S. 262 f. Dieter Bremer (Bremer, Dieter: Platonisches. Antiplatonisches.
Nietzsche-Studien 8 [1979]. S. 39 103, hier S. 65) macht zu Recht darauf aufmerksam, dass
Nietzsches Verstndnis seiner eigenen Philosophie als umgedrehter Platonismus bereits eine
konsequenzenreiche Umdrehung des Umgedrehten bedeuten muss, wenn es etwa Ende
1886 Frhjahr 1887 im Nachlass (KSA 12, 7[2], S. 253) in Bezug auf Platos Khnheit [] im
Umdrehen heit: er ma den Grad Realitt nach dem Wahrheitsgrade ab und sagte: je mehr
Idee desto mehr Sein. Er drehte den Begriff Wirklichkeit herum und sagte: was ihr fr
wirklich haltet, ist ein Irrthum, und wir kommen, je nher wir der Idee kommen, !um so nher"
der Wahrheit. Versteht man es? Das war die grte Umtaufung: und weil sie vom Christenthum aufgenommen ist, so sehen wir die erstaunliche Sache nicht. Plato hat im Grunde den
Schein, als Artist, der er war, dem Sein vo rg ezog en: also die Lge und Erdichtung der Wahrheit, das Unwirkliche dem Vorhandenen, er war aber so sehr vom Werthe des Scheins berzeugt, da er ihm die Attribute Sein, Urschlichlichkeit und Gutheit, Wahrheit, kurz alles
brige beilegte, dem man Werth beilegt.
HGA 43, S. 143. Wo Heidegger Niezsche als einen Denker ausweist, der ein Dichter ist, und
Hlderlin als einen Dichter charakterisiert, der ein Denker ist, gesteht er beiden zu, dass sie
uns deshalb unmittelbar angehen, weil sie vermutlich jeder in einer anderen Art ber uns
hinausgehen. HGA 50, S. 96.

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Iris Drmann

gers eigene metaphysische Grundstellung79 verraten und Nietzsches Ausbruch aus der Metaphysik demgegenber desto nachdrcklicher machen.
Die von Heidegger aufgestellten sechs Grundtatsachen aus der Geschichte
der sthetik sind dem erklrten Vorhaben gewidmet, Nietzsches Besinnung
auf die Kunst (N I, S. 91), sofern sie fr eine Wesensbestimmung des Willens
zur Macht (N I, S. 109) beansprucht werden kann, in die berlieferte Bahn
der Beherrschung der Kunst durch die sthetik zurckzustellen, um dessen
Auszeichnung des Rausches als des sthetischen Grundzustandes schlechthin
(N I, S. 116) am uersten Ende jener Bahn zu situieren, an dem sich schlielich
fr Heidegger die Aufgabe einer berwindung der sthetik80 abzeichnet. Unter dem Titel sthetik rubriziert er das abendlndische Denken der Kunst insgesamt, die die Kunst nicht vom groen Werk (schon gar nicht vom Ursprung des
Kunstwerkes) ausgehend, sondern lediglich hinsichtlich ihrer Wirkung auf den
Menschen81 und mit Blick auf den Gefhlszustand des Menschen in seinem
Verhltnis zum Schnen begriffen habe. Ist das erzeugte oder empfangene
Kunstwerk nichts anderes als der Trger und Erreger des Schnen mit Bezug
auf den Gefhlszustand, dann bleibt und nicht erst seit dem 18. Jahrhundert
die fhlende Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung fr die Betrachtung des Kunstwerks
die einzig magebliche. Dieses selbst wird zum Gegenstand in seiner dem Erleben zugekehrten Flche (N I, S. 93).
Whrend sich die groe griechische Kunst, mit der Heidegger befremdlicherweise den ersten (1.) Augenblick dieser Geschichte der sthetik erffnet,
noch ohne gleichzeitige sthetik ereignet und stattdessen von einer Leidenschaft zum Wissen getragen gewesen sei, htten Platon und Aristoteles (2.),
und zwar just in dem Augenblick, da die groe Kunst und das tragische Denken zu ihrem Ende gehen, jene Grundbegriffe aufgestellt, die fr die europi79

80

81

Wenn Heidegger ber Nietzsches metaphysischer Grundstellung spricht, dann besagt das soviel wie: wir sehen Nietzsches Philosophie aus derjenigen Stellung, die ihr durch die bisherige
abendlndische Philosophiegeschichte angewiesen ist. N I, S. 463. Dass Nietzsche sich selbst
ausdrcklich als Anti-Metaphysiker bezeichnet, ist demgegenber kein Einwand, wie Heidegger
sinnigerweise am Beispiel des Anti-Alkoholikers deutlich macht: Da er selbst sich als Metaphysiker bezeichnet, sagt nur, da er die Metaphysik braucht, und zwar in einer bestimmten Gestalt, um gegen sie zu sein und so das, was er selbst ist, als ihr Umkehrer und scheinbarer Gegner.
(In dem Augenblick, wo es keinen Alkohol und kaum Alkohol mehr gibt, verliert der Anti-Alkoholiker, derjenige, der aus diesem Anti- und fr dieses lebt, seine Substanz. Er mu sich, um
leben zu knnen, nach anderen Gegnern umsehen). Heidegger: Nietzsche. Der europische
Nihilismus. HGA, Bd. 48. Frankfurt am Main 1986. S. 85.
Heidegger: Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). HGA, Bd. 65. Frankfurt am Main 1989.
S. 503.
Die ungebrochene, von Platon bis Nietzsche reichende Herrschaft der sthetik, unter deren eingeschrnktem Blickwinkel das Kunstwerk lediglich in seiner Wirkung auf den Menschen
und dessen Erleben in Betracht komme, gehrt zu Heideggers Standartrepertoire metaphysischer Grundtatsachen. Siehe Heidegger: Parmenides. HGA, Bd. 54. 2. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main
1992. S. 171.

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sche sthetik fortan bestimmend bleiben sollten. Diese Geburt der sthetik vor
dem Auftritt der sthetik als philosophischer Disziplin im engeren Sinne errichtet mit dem Begriffspaar hyl morph eine unwiderstehliche Begriffsmechanik,
der nichts entgeht. Geleitet ber einen verengten Begriff von tchne, rckt die
Herstellung von schnen Kunstwerken genauso wie die Anfertigung von Gebrauchsdingen in deren Einzugsbereich (N I, S. 98). Es mutet seltsam an, dass
Heidegger, zumindest an dieser Stelle, die Auseinandersetzung mit der durch
Platon und Aristoteles erffneten sthetik nicht auf dem Terrain jener Texte
des dritten und zehnten Buches der Politeia oder der Poetik sucht, die explizit
der Frage der Kunst gewidmet sind. Unter der fr Heidegger blichen Ausblendung der rmischen und mittelalterlichen Kunst erhebt sich (3.) ferner mit dem
Beginn der Neuzeit und der Metaphysik des Subjekts der Geschmack zum exklusiven Richter ber das Seiende. (N I, S. 99) Dass Kant diesem Augenblick
der Geschichte der sthetik zugerechnet werden muss, ohne ihm jedoch ganz
und gar anzugehren, wird bei Gelegenheit von Heideggers Kantischer Deutung des Rausches und seiner Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches vermeintlicher Mideutung der Lehre vom Schnen von Belang sein (N I, S. 126 ff.).
Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, erreicht die Geschichte der sthetik mit (4.) Hegel
und dem seltsam genug zweiten Tod bzw. Verfall der geschichtlichen Aufgabe der Kunst, das Absolute darzustellen, ihre Vollendung. Die Gre
von Hegels Vorlesungen ber sthetik zeichne sich vor allem dadurch aus, dass sie
mit ihrer berhmten These vom Vergangenheits-Charakter der Kunst das Ende
der groen Kunst als solches erkenn[en] und ausspr[echen] (N I, S. 100).82
Schlielich stellt Heidegger (5.) das 19. Jahrhundert ganz unter die gide von
Wagners Wille zum Gesamtkunstwerkes,83 um in den Fustapfen von Nietzsches Kritik an Wagner die fr ihn zentralen Argumente fr seine allergische
Verurteilung des Rausches zu befestigen.84 Mit Wagners Projekt gert sowohl die
82

83
84

Die unter der gide von Hegels Spruch vom Ende der Kunst stehende Erfahrung der
Kunst-losigkeit (Heidegger: Beitrge, a. a. O., S. 505) wirft freilich eine noch unentschiedene
Frage auf: Ist die Kunst noch eine wesentliche und eine notwendige Weise, in der die fr unser
geschichtliches Dasein entscheidende Wahrheit geschieht, oder ist die Kunst dies nicht mehr?
Wenn sie es aber nicht mehr ist, dann bleibt die Frage, warum das so ist. (Heidegger, Martin:
Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. In: ders.: Holzwege. 6. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main 1980. S. 66)
Kunstlosigkeit ist damit keine bereits feststehende und festgestellte geschichtliche Tatsache,
die sich mit dem Ende der groen griechischen Kunst belegen lsst, sondern erfahrbar nur im
Modus eines noch ausstehenden und knftigen Ereignisses. (Siehe Beitrge, a. a. O., S. 506) und
ihre einschlgige Interpretation durch Buchheim, Iris: Wegbereitung in die Kunstlosigkeit. Zu
Heideggers Auseinandersetzung mit Hlderlin. Wrzburg 1994. S. 207 214.
HGA 43, S. 100 ff.
Dass Nietzsche die Musik Wagners bereits als 13- bzw. 22-jhriger kritisch beurteilt hat und sich
seine Haltung gegenber der Wagnerschen Musik nicht eindeutig in eine Zeit des Wagnerianismus und Anti-Wagnerianismus unterscheiden lsst, sondern vom Beginn seiner Bekanntschaft
an als durchaus ambivalent gelten muss, machen in vielschichtiger Weise die in folgenden Sammelbnden enthaltenen Beitrge deutlich: Borchmeyer, Dieter / Salaquarda (Hg.): Nietzsche

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Iris Drmann

Kunst als auch die sthetische Reflexion aus Sicht Heideggers unter die verhngnisvolle Direktive des wollstigen, sich ganz der Auflsung hingebenden, gar
brnstigen Gefhlsrausches oder, anders gesagt, des orientalisch Dionysischen
(N I, S. 103). Wo Nietzsche mit Wagner die Musik auf ein bloes Mittel zum
Zweck der Verdeutlichung des Dramas (NW, Wo ich Einwnde mache, KSA 6,
S. 419) reduziert und [d ]i e H erauf ku nft de s S cha u spie le r s in de r M u s i k (WA 11, KSA 6, S. 37) gekommen sieht, prangert Heidegger hingegen nicht
so sehr Wagners T heat rok rat i e an, d.h. die Her rschaft des Theaters
ber die Knste, ber die Kunst (WA, Nachschrift, KSA 6, S. 42). Die Inszenierungsvordergrndigkeit der Oper ist Heidegger allenfalls ein Symptom
des Verlustes der Grndung des echten Dramas in der gestalteten Wahrheit des
Sprachwerkes, das unter die prekre Fhrung der Musik geraten ist. Heidegger
macht die Herrschaft der Kunst als Musik fr die Herrschaft des reinen Gefhlszustandes (N I, S. 103) und die sthetische Grundstellung zur Kunst im
Ganzen fr das Scheitern Wagners verantwortlich. Der Vorrang der Musik ber
die Dichtung und aller brigen Knste bewirke eine zunehmende Barbarisierung des Gefhlszustandes selbst zum bloen Brodeln und Wallen des sich
selbst berlassenen Gefhls (N I, S. 104), ja zur malosen Nacht des reinen
Versinkens (N I, S. 105). Nietzsche indes wirft Wagner vor, wofr Heidegger
freilich blind zu sein vorgibt, in der Musik, alles Musikalische, die Musik geopfert (Nachlass 1887/88, KSA 13, 11[322], S. 136) zu haben, um an ihrer Stelle
eine Kunst der bloen Attitde und des Ausdrucks gesetzt zu haben, die nichts
ausdrckt. Er kreidet Wagner ohne Frage einen rigorosen Mangel an groem
Stil85 sowie die Unfhigkeit zur apollinischen Gestaltung an: Schwimmen,
Schweben nicht mehr Gehen, Tanzen .86 [D]ie wollstige Art Rausch, die
seine Musik aus diesem Grund hervorrufe, zeuge nicht von einer dionysischen
Kunst, sondern von einer Kunst der dcadence,87 die auf der Seite eines verarmten und leidenden Lebens zu stehen komme, dem es nach Rausch, Krampf
und Betubung (NW, Wir Antipoden, KSA 6, S. 425) verlange. Nietzsche verurteilt die umwerfende (WA 6; 9, KSA 6, S. 24 f.; S. 32), da gestalt- und gesetzlose Musik Wagners, weil es ihr nicht gelingt, die lebensstimulierende Entladung der beiden Rauschzustnde von Metamorphose und Vision hervorzurufen

85
86

87

und Wagner. Stationen einer epochalen Begegnung. Frankfurt M. 1994. Steiert, Thomas (Hg.):
Der Fall Wagner. Ursprnge und Folgen von Nietzsches Wagner-Kritik. Laaber 1991.
Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[61], S. 246 ff.; 16[49], S. 502. Vgl. auch WA 8, KSA 6, S. 30.
Wagner hat nie gehen gelernt. Er strzt, er stolpert, er mihandelt den armen Pegasus mit Peitschenschlgen. Lauter falsche Leidenschaft, lauter falscher Contrapunkt Wagner ist unfhig jedes Stils . Nachlass Frhjahr Sommer 1888, KSA 13, 16[79], S. 513. Siehe ebenfalls NW,
Wagner als Gefahr 1, KSA 6, S. 422.
Vgl. Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang: Artistische dcadence als physiologische dcadence. Zu Friedrich
Nietzsches Kritik am spten Richard Wagner. In: Brckle, Horst / Becker, Gerold (Hg.): Communicatio Fidei. Festschrift fr Eugen Biser zum 65. Geburtstag. Regensburg 1985. S. 285 294.

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und solchermaen einem tragischen Erkennen Vorschub zu leisten (Nachlass

1888, KSA 13, 15[10], S. 409), das es bekanntermaen nicht auf Wahrheit abgesehen hat. Heidegger verwirft das Wagnersche Gesamtkunstwerk hingegen
aufgrund eines ganz anderen Gestaltungsprinzips, das auf der Identifizierung
der Kunst schlechthin mit der sogenannten wesentlichen Dichtung beruht:88
Wie man wei, ist es ihm um die Ins-Werk-Setzung der Wahrheit durch den
Mythos bzw. die Sage zu tun, die unter Rekurs auf Hlderlin jenen Widerstreit
von Erde und Welt anzustiften hat, welcher geschichtlich einem Volk seine Welt
aufgehe[n] und die Erde als das Verschlossene aufbewahr[en]89 lsst. Die Musik
aber hat im Kontext dieser geschichtlichen Bestimmung der Kunst nichts zu sagen oder zu suchen.90 Wenn Heidegger mit Nietzsche den groen Stil,91 die
magebende Gestaltung (N I, S. 106) und Gesetzlichkeit der Kunst92 gegen
die Auflsung, Dekomposition ins Kleinste und das Untertauchen im wollstigen Gefhlsrausch ausspielt, dann dient ihm die von Nietzsche gegen die Wagnersche Musik aufgerichtete Klinik: das Hypnotische, Magnetisierende,93 Somnambule, Hysterische,94 Komatse (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 16[75], S. 511)
88

89
90

91

92
93

94

Heidegger: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, a. a. O., S. 58 61. Alle Kunst ist als Geschehenlassen der Wahrheit des Seienden als eines solchen im Wesen Dichtung. Das Wesen der Kunst, worin das Kunstwerk und der Knstler zumal beruhen, ist das Sich-ins-Werk-setzen der Wahrheit.
Aus dem dichtenden Wesen der Kunst geschieht es, da sie inmitten des Seienden eine Stelle aufschlgt, in deren Offenheit alles anders ist als sonst. [] Das Wesen der Kunst ist die Dichtung.
Das Wesen der Dichtung aber ist die Stiftung der Wahrheit. Daran soll sich im brigen nicht
nur die vergangene, sondern auch alle zuknftige Kunst messen lassen, wie es in der Vorlesung
des Wintersemesters 1937/38 resmierend heit. Heidegger, Martin: Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewhlte Probleme der Logik. HGA, Bd. 45. Frankfurt am Main 1984. S. 190. In
den Beitrgen stellt Heidegger um einiges vorsichtiger das Vorlufige und bergngliche seines
Versuches einer berwindung der Aesthetik und d.h. zugleich einer bestimmten Auffassung
des Seienden als gegenstndlich Vorstellbaren heraus, dem die Frage nach dem Ursprung des
Kunstwerks gewidmet sei. Jeder Interpretationszugriff, der in der Ins-Werk-Setzung der Wahrheit eine zeitlos gltige Feststellung des Wesens des Kunstwerks zu sehen gewillt ist, betreibt
damit eine fr Heidegger unzulssige Substantialisierung, die Diktion und Stil seines Denkens
jedoch zweifellos nahelegen. Heidegger: Beitrge, a. a. O., S. 503 f.
Heidegger: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, a. a. O., S. 60 f.
Ebd., S. 60. In Heideggers System der Knste wird die Musik noch nicht einmal genannt,
wenn es unter der Vorrangstellung der Dichtung heit: Bauen und Bilden dagegen geschehen
immer schon und immer nur im Offenen der Sage und des Nennens. Nennen aber im Sinne
der Erffnung des Seins des Seienden im Gefge seiner Gesammeltheit vermochte bisher nur
die groe griechische Dichtung (namentlich Sophokles Antigone und Hlderlins Dichtung), so
Heidegger in: Einfhrung in die Metaphysik, a. a. O., S. 131.
In diesem Zusammenhang sollte man nicht vergessen, dass Nietzsche der Ehrgeiz des groen
Stils der Wagnerschen Musik Stil-Unfhigkeit bedeutet. Nachlass November 1887 Mrz
1888, KSA 13, 11[321], S. 134.
Nietzsche denkt an das Gesetz der Plastik. NW, Wagner als Gefahr, KSA 6, S. 422.
Nachlass November 1887 Mrz 1888, KSA 13, 11[323], S. 136; Nachlass Frhjahr Sommer
1888, KSA 13, 16[89], S. 517.
Nachlass Frhjahr Sommer 1888, KSA 13, 16 [48], S. 502. Nachlass August 1885, KSA 11,
41[2], S. 673.

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nicht nur dazu, dessen wesentliche Abkehr von Wagner zu unterschreiben (N I,

S. 108), sondern auch dazu, dem Rausch insgesamt den Kredit zu entziehen.
Mit Nietzsche (6.) erreicht schlielich die von Heidegger entworfene Geschichte der sthetik ihren konsequenzenreichsten Hhepunkt. In dem Mae,
in dem mit und seit Nietzsche die absoluten Wahrheiten und obersten
Werte von Religion, Moral, Philosophie (N I, S. 108) irreparabel zu Schaden
kommen, sucht dieser in der Kunst eine Gegenbewegung (Nachlass 1888,
KSA 13, 14[117], S. 293). Doch steht fr Heidegger Nietzsches Versuch, mit der
Kunst gegen den Nihilismus anzutreten, in uerster Spannung zu der von ihm
betriebenen Auslieferung der sthetik an die Physiologie, die diese auf das Niveau von Leibzustnden und Verdauungsprozessen herabwrdige (N I, S. 109 f.),
auch wenn er sich zu betonen beeilt, dass Leib bei Nietzsche stets anticartesianisch: beseelter Leib bedeute (N I, S. 114). Nietzsches Frage nach der sthetik als angewandter Physiologie (NW, Wo ich Einwnde mache, KSA 6,
S. 418) bzw. nach der Physiologie der Kunst (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 17[9],
S. 529) bewegt sich in ihrer Verklammerung mit der Hypothese vom Willen
zur Macht (Nachlass 1883, KSA 10, 12 [30], S. 405), die Heidegger im brigen
in ihren wichtigsten Implikationen und als Hypothese zumal verkennt, zweifellos auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft. Sie hat sich von den mit der Causalitts-Interpretation verbundenen Zuthaten (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[98],
S. 275) und Glaubensstzen absichtlich noch nicht gelst, um nach der Herkunft
des Rausches und den Ursachen der Kunst zu fahnden (GM III 4, KSA 5, S. 343).
Unter Rekurs auf die Gtzen-Dmmerung stellt Heidegger verschiedene Momente
dieser physiologischen Perspektive heraus, ohne sie als wissenschaftliche zu
kennzeichnen: Zunchst (1) die von Nietzsche in Anschlag gebrachte Unumgnglichkeit des Rausches als physiologische Vorbedingung der Kunst, die
sich auf jede Art von rauschhafter Erregung erstreckt (GD, Streifzge 8, KSA 6,
S. 116). Ferner (2) die fr Heidegger berraschende, weil das Gegenstzliche der
beiden Kunstprinzipien verwischende Feststellung, dass Nietzsche sowohl von
einem apollinischen als auch von einem dionysischen Rausch spricht.95 Sodann
(3) das mit dem Rausch wesentlich verbundene Gefhl der Kraftsteigerung
und Flle, kraft dessen der Knstler an die Dinge ab[giebt] und sie ideali-

95

GD, Streifzge 10, KSA 6, S. 117 f. Heidegger spricht Nietzsche das zweischneidige Verdienst
zu, den Gegensatz von Apollinisch und Dionysisch erstmals ffentlich herausgestellt und gestaltet zu haben, freilich auf eine nicht an Hlderlin heranreichende Weise, der diesen Gegensatz bereits in einer noch tieferen und edleren Weise begriffen hatte, nmlich als nchterne
Darstellung bzw. abendlndische Junonische Nchternheit einerseits und als heilige Leidenschaft bzw. heiliges Pathos andererseits (N I, S. 123 f.). Auch HGA 43, S. 121. Wenn Heidegger feststellen muss, dass Nietzsche 1888 das Apollinische und Dionysische als zwei Arten des
Rausches begreift, dann werde damit gemessen an Hlderlin das Gegenstzliche dieser beiden Prinzipien physiologisch nunmehr ganz verunstaltet (N I, S. 117).

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

147

siert (GD, Streifzge 8, KSA 6, S. 116), indem er ihnen gewaltsam seine Form
aufprgt. Schlielich (4) die mit dem Rausch einhergehende wechselweise Steigerung aller Vermgen (N I, S. 120, S, 126), die Nietzsche in der Tat mehr als
einmal herausstellt. Die nunmehr ber den Umweg Kants gefhrte Passage wird
der Beantwortung einer doppelten Frage unterworfen: nmlich die nach dem
allgemeinen Wesen des Rausches und die seiner Unumgnglichkeit fr die
Kunst (N I, S. 117 f.) Auch wenn Heidegger darum wei, dass gelufige Titel
wie Affekt, Leidenschaft, Gefhl denkbar ungeeignet fr eine wesentliche
Bestimmung des Rausches sind, so insistiert er doch weiterhin darauf, den
Rausch als ein Gefhl zu kennzeichnen (N I, S. 121), um Nietzsches Denken
der Kunst seiner vermeintlichen Komplizenschaft mit der abendlndischen sthetik zu berfhren und, was gewiss nicht weniger zhlt, um dabei wie im
Vorbeigehen die alterierende Kraft des Rausches zu marginalisieren. Dabei
strt es ihn herzlich wenig, dass es Nietzsche 1888 nicht um eine Wesensbestimmung des Rausches und schon gar nicht um die Einkehr in eine Stimmung als
jener Grundart geht, wie wir auerhalb unserer selbst [] wesenhaft und
stets [sind]. Kurzum: von der Konzeption des Rausches als Einheit leibenden
Gestimmtseins im Sinne eines immerwhrenden echten Gefhls (N I, S. 119)
oder gar von einem wesenhaft-zeitlosen Selbstsein ist Nietzsche Lichtjahre entfernt.96 Das fr Heidegger mit dem Rausch verbundene und doch nirgendwo
eigens thematisierte Skandalon ist ersichtlich mit dem Umstand verknpft,
dass diese Fremderfahrung mit einer radikalen Enteignung und berwltigenden [] Obsession der Person einhergeht. Nietzsches drastischen Beschreibungen zufolge, entladet sich ihr in einem epileptisch anmutenden Zustand
der Besessenheit97 alle [ihre] Mittel des Ausdrucks und treibt die Kraft des
Darstellens, Nachbildens, Transfigurierens, Verwandelns, alle Art Mimik und
Schauspielerei zugleich heraus. So sieht sie sich (wie bei gewissen Hysterischen) auf unumgngliche Weise dazu gentigt, auf jeden Wink hin in jede
Rolle ein[zu]treten (GD, Streifzge 10, KSA 6, S. 117), um niemand und alle zu
sein, um in oder auer sich wer knnte das noch sagen von einem Rendezvous von Personen (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 16[89], S. 518) heimgesucht zu
werden. In dem Mae, in dem Heidegger der konvulsivischen Gewaltsamkeit
des Rausches in seiner sowohl transfigurierenden als auch visionren Macht systematisch aus dem Weg geht, muss ihm folglich auch die fr Nietzsche in dieser
Hinsicht entscheidende Umwertung der Aristotelischen Katharsis im Sinne der
Entladung aus dem Blick geraten. Obgleich Nietzsche in der Gtzen-Dmme96

97

Heideggers Denken der Stimmung betont im Unterschied zu Nietzsches Rausch, der sich nur
temporr ereignet und wegen seines aneidetischen Charakters unzugnglich und unbestimmbar
bleiben muss, das Zeitlose und Wesentliche: Die Stimmung ist gerade die Grundart, wie wir auerhalb unserer selbst sind, und das sind wir immer und wesentlich. HGA 43, S. 117.
Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[127], S. 309; 14[124], S. 305 f.; 14[120], S. 299.

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rung (Streifzge 10, KSA 6, S. 117 f.) und in Ecce Homo (Die Geburt der Tragdie 3, KSA 6, S. 112 f.) wiederholt darauf zurckkommt, weist Heidegger lediglich in seiner 1937 gehaltenen Vorlesung Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen ein
einziges Mal auf dessen Gegnerschaft zur Aristotelischen Zweckbestimmung
der Tragdie hin,98 ohne daraus die fr die Frage des Rausches flligen Konsequenzen zu ziehen. Wenn es in Nietzsches Denken der Kunst etwas gibt, das sich
der Direktive der abendlndischen sthetik entzieht, so ist dies zweifellos seine
zunehmend schrfer gefasste Skizze des dionysischen Rausches. Ist es Heidegger auf den ersten Blick um die Aufdeckung der Mideutung der Kantischen
Lehre vom Schnen durch Nietzsche zu tun, so dient ihm die ber Kant gelenkte Auseinandersetzung mit dem Rausch in Wirklichkeit dazu, dessen dionysische Dominanz zu entmachten99 und ihn in einem ansonsten Nietzsche zugeschriebenen, bis zur Geschmacklosigkeit reichenden Verfahren der
Umkehrung (N I, S. 39) auf den vermeintlich ursprnglicheren Bereich des
Apollinischen zurckzuverweisen.100
In seiner Mideutung von Kants Lehre des Schnen steht Nietzsche freilich in den Augen Heideggers nicht alleine. Mit Schopenhauer als seinem in dieser Sache am meisten befehdeten Gegner und Schiller als demjenigen, der immerhin Wesentliches begriffen habe, stellt er die Wirkungsgeschichte der Kritik
der Urteilskraft zwischen diesen beiden Polen insgesamt in den Zusammenhang
einer ununterbrochenen Serie von Fehldeutungen. Namentlich die Paragraphen
2 5, in denen Kant eine Unterscheidung der drei Arten des Wohlgefallens
des Vergngens, Gefallens und Schtzens bzw. der drei Triebfedern in Bezug
auf das Denken der Neigung, der Gunst und der Achtung vollzieht, um die
Besonderheit des Geschmacks als Beurteilungsvermgen durch ein freies
Wohl- oder Missfallen ohne alles Interesse hervorzuheben, seien bislang den
grbsten Entstellungen und Irrtmern ausgesetzt gewesen. Weder habe das freie
und interesselose Wohlgefallen etwas mit Gleichgltigkeit zu tun, noch auch mit
dem Aushngen des Willens und dem reinen Verschweben in der Teilnahmslosigkeit, wie Schopenhauer annahm. Nietzsche stellt freilich die Mglichkeit

98

99

100

Nietzsches Einsicht und Ahnung, dass die Kunst mehr wert sei als die Wahrheit, ordnet Heidegger in seiner Vorlesung Der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis aus dem Sommersemester 1939 unter
Missachtung aller Invektiven Nietzsches gegen die Poetik eben dieser zu, um einmal mehr Nietzsches Grundstellung als der letzte Metaphysiker zu zementieren (N I, S. 500). Nach Auskunft von Otto Pggeler ist Heidegger andernorts niemals mehr auf die Poetik zu sprechen gekommen.
Dieter Bremer (Platonisches, Antiplatonisches, a. a. O., S. 73, Anm. 137) sieht in Heideggers
Nietzschedeutung nicht den Versuch einer Entmachtung des Dionysischen, sondern eine Ignoranz gegenber dem Dionysischen als Inbegriff der vormetaphysischen Daseinsauffasssung
und leitender Gegenbegriff gegen die platonische Metaphysik am Werk.
Insofern ist die Schnheit das die Grundstimmung des Rausches Bestimmende. HGA 43,
S. 143.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

149

eines interesselosen Wohlgefallens berhaupt in Frage.101 Doch interessieren

Heidegger die von diesem im Einzelnen gegen Kant vorgebrachten Einwnde
nur wenig. Den Nachweis einer angeblichen Fehldeutung ohne jede ernsthafte
und systematische Auseinandersetzung mit den dafr einschlgigen Argumenten erbringen zu wollen, stellt allerdings eine grobe Verletzung jener Leidenschaft der Redlichkeit dar, die Nietzsche sich selbst im Unglauben an die Mglichkeit eines interesselosen Anschauens als Gerechtigkeit gegen sich, gegen
die Dinge und gegen Andere auf dem Weg einer Sublimierung der intellektuellen
Triebe bis hin zur zartesten Emotion zur Aufgabe gemacht hatte.102 Gilt es fr
ihn als ausgemacht, dass mit dem Schnen stets ein Interesse und ein erotisches zumal im Angesicht von gewandlosen weiblichen Statuen verbunden
ist (GM III 6, KSA 5, S. 347), so liegt es jedoch nicht unbedingt als ein unmittelbar nacktes Interesse vor: Auch wenn das (kulturell-historisch verschiedene)
Schne als in jedem Wortsinn verkleidete Sinnlichkeit103 jederzeit zu unsren
Trieben [redet], so geht es bei dem im Schnen jeweils Ansprechenden fr
Nietzsche um die Darstellung oder Verkrperung eines Ideals eben dieser
Triebe selbst wie Reichthum, Glanz, Frmmigkeit, Machtausstrmung, Ergebung (Nachlass 1886/87, KSA 10, 7[154], S. 293) und in den Fustapfen seiner Tragdien-Schrift durchaus weiterhin darum, sich den Anblick der Dinge
ertrglich zu machen, sie nicht zu frchten und ein scheinbares Glck in sie hineinzulegen. Das Schne als Umdeuten des Thatschlichen ins Glckliche
Gttliche oder als dcadence-Symptom der Selbst-Verschnerung des Menschen in der Moral (Nachlass 1884, KSA 11, 25[101], S. 35) ist auch unter der
historischen Voraussetzung seiner apollinischen Vereinseitigung, wie Nietzsche
mit Stendhal gegen Kant (Nachlass 1883, KSA 10, 7[154], S. 293) hervorhebt,
une promesse de bonheur (GM III 6, KSA 5, S. 347) und damit ein Versprechen auf das Leben. Heidegger ignoriert nicht nur vollstndig das fr Nietzsches
Verstndnis von Schnheit und Kunst entscheidende Gewicht der Sublimierung
der Sexualtriebe104 und deren Korrelat, nmlich eine immer e ntf le ischte r e
101

102

103

104

Heidegger zitiert vor allem den 1883 niedergeschriebenen Satz Nietzsches: Seit Kant ist alles Reden von Kunst, Schnheit, Erkenntnis, Weisheit vermanscht und beschmutzt durch den Begriff
ohne Interesse. Nachlass Frhjahr Sommer 1883, KSA 10, 7[18], S. 243. Siehe N I, S. 128.
Zur Interpretation dieses Nachlasstextes und zu den einzelnen Etappen der Genese der Leidenschaft der Redlichkeit siehe Brusotti, Marco: Die Leidenschaft der Erkenntnis. Philosophie
und sthetische Lebensgestaltung bei Nietzsche von Morgenrthe bis Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin, New York 1997. S. 112 f.
Nietzsche unterscheidet verschiedene Verkleidungen der Sinnlichkeit (als Idealismus, in der
Religion, der Liebe) und in der Kunst, als schmckende Gewalt: wie der Mann das Weib sieht,
indem er ihr gleichsam alles zum Prsent macht, was es von Vorzgen giebt, so legt die Sinnlichkeit des Knstlers in Ein Objekt, was er sonst noch ehrt und hochhlt dergestalt vollendet er
ein Objekt (idealisirt es). Nachlass Sommer 1887, KSA 12, 8[1], S. 324.
Was die Ignoranz gegenber dem fr Nietzsche beraus zentralen Begriff der Sublimierung
nicht nur im Feld der Kunst angeht, fr dessen Urheber Freud flschlicherweise Wilhelm Fliess

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Form des Schnen (Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[1], S. 137), sondern auch die
darin implizierte unaufhebbare105 Verknpfung von Sinnlichkeit und Schnheit,106 die Nietzsche mehr als einmal gegen die Mglichkeit eines interesselosen
Wohlgefallens ins Treffen fhrt. Was Heidegger in dieser Hinsicht lediglich zu
ertragen bereit zu sein scheint, ist die im Symposium und Phaidros erffnete desexualisierte Verbindung von Schnheit und gttlichem eros. Die interpretatorische
Strategie, der sich Heidegger in der Abwehr der fr ihn problematischen Konzeptionen Nietzsches (wie auch etwa des unvermeidbaren Anthropomorphismus des Schnen107) bedient, ist eine doppelte: Zum einen lsst er Nietzsches
vernichtendes Urteil ber das interesselose Wohlgefallen jederzeit als berechtigte Kritik an Schopenhauer durchgehen, die Kant jedoch niemals betreffen soll
(N I, S. 130, 132).108 Zum anderen gehen fr ihn sowohl die Missdeutung
Kants als auch die des des Schnen auf das verhngnisvolle Konto von Nietzsches physiologisch-biologischen Interpretation der Kunst109 (N I, S. 134 f.).

105

106

107

108

109

ausgab, so steht Heidegger freilich nicht alleine. Eine ausfhrliche Diskussion von Nietzsches
Triebtheorie, die der Freudschen nicht zuletzt hinsichtlich der Mglichkeit einer Sublimierung
der Destruktionstriebe durchaus berlegen ist, findet sich bei Gasser, Reinhard: Nietzsche und
Freud. Berlin, New York 1997. S. 313 ff.
JGB, Viertes Hauptstck 75, KSA 5, S. 87. Grad und Art der Geschlechtlichkeit eines Menschen reicht bis in den letzten Gipfel seines Geistes hinauf.
D as Ver lag en n ach Ku n st u nd Schnheit ist ein indirektes Verlangen nach den Entzckungen des Geschlechtstriebes, welche er dem Cerebrum mittheilt. Die vollkomme n g e wo rd en e Welt , durch Liebe . Nachlass Sommer 1887, KSA 12, 8[1], S. 325 f. Vgl. dazu
auch bereits die frhe Bemerkung: Der Schnhe itssinn zusammenhngend mit der Zeugung. Nachlass Sommer 1872 August 1873, KSA 7, 19[152], S. 467.
Fr Heidegger ist der Anthropomorphismus des Schnen, das Schpferische und Schaffende,
das Nietzsche angeblich zum Wesen des Menschen erklrt, Ausdruck und Kennzeichen einer
neuzeitlichen, in Wahrheit bereits rmischen Wesensbestimmung des Menschen als des sichauf-sich-selbst-stellenden Subjektes, durch das erst alle Objekte als solche in ihrer Objektivitt
bestimmt sind. Dass der neuzeitliche Mensch sich als den Schaffenden will, impliziert
zwei zusammengehrige Entfaltungen: der Schaffende im Sinne des schpferisch Ttigen und
der Schaffende im Sinne des Arbeiters. HGA 50, S. 110 f. Nietzsches Untersuchung der Bedeutung des asketischen Ideals fr den Knstler und Wissenschaftler im Sinne des Arbeiters in
der III. Abhandlung Zur Genealogie der Moral und der fr ihn zentralen Frage nach einem gegnerischen Ideal zeigen freilich, in welchem Mae er gerade diese neuzeitliche Interpretation des
Menschen problematisiert (GM III 23, KSA 5, S. 395 ff.)
Auf der Linie dieser Strategie Heideggers, die die sachliche Berechtigung der Einwnde Nietzsches gegen Kant verkennt, bewegt sich auch Heftrich, Ulrich: Nietzsches Auseinandersetzungen mit der Kritik der sthetischen Urteilskraft. In: Nietzsche-Studien 20 (1991). S. 238 266.
Nietzsches Ausflle gegen die angebliche Interesselosigkeit, Unpersnlichkeit, Allgemeingltigkeit und den Erkenntnischarakter des sthetischen Wohlgefallens bei Kant zielen durchweg
an Kant vorbei, treffen aber dafr mit umso grerer Przision Schopenhauer.
Zur Physiologie der Kunst 1. der Rausch als Voraussetzung: Ursachen des Rausches. 2. typische
Symptome des Rausches 3. das Kraft- und Flleg efhl im Rausche: seine ide alisire nde Wirkung 4. das thatschliche Mehr von Kraft: seine thatschliche Verschnerung. Erwgung: in
wiefern unser Werth schn vollkommen anthropocentrisch ist: auf biologischen Voraussetzungen ber Wachsthum und Fortschritt (Nachlass Mai Juni 1888, KSA 13, 17[9], S. 529).

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

151

In der Hast gewaltsamer Verkehrung ist es Heidegger ersichtlich darum zu

tun, die schrfste Gegnerschaft zu Kant in der Bestimmung des Verhaltens zum
Schnen, in die Nietzsches Ansetzung des Rausches als eines sthetischen Zustandes gestellt zu werden verlange (N I, S. 128), dadurch zu entkrften, wenn
nicht zu Fall zu bringen, dass der Rausch selbst auf den fr ihn mageblichen Bereich der schnen Form verwiesen und damit als ein wie immer auch geartetes
interesseloses Wohlgefallen zum Zuge zu kommen vermag. Die Fragwrdigkeit
dieses Unterfangens kann auch durch die von Heidegger eigens ausgesprochene
Warnung nicht ausgerumt werden, es sei grundverkehrt, Nietzsches Auffassung von der Schnheit und dem Schnen auf die Kantische zurckzufhren
(N I, S. 131). Beschreibt er damit doch recht przise sein eigenes Vorgehen. In
einer an Husserls Prinzip aller Prinzipien gemahnenden bersetzung spricht
Heidegger in der Kant durchaus fremden Sprache der Anforderung davon, dass
die freie Gunst eine Begegnungsweise mit dem Schnen gebiete, die es gerade
in seinem eigenen Rang und seiner Wrde vor uns kommen lasse, wie es wiederum mit Schillerschen Anklngen heit:
Wir mssen das Begegnende als solches freigeben in dem, was es ist, mssen ihm das lassen und gnnen, was ihm selbst zugehrt und was es uns zubringt. (N I, S. 129)
Aus dem Augenwinkel Heideggers erffnet das interesselose Wohlgefallen
jedoch nicht nur den wesenhaften Bezug zum Gegenstand, der als reiner
einzig im Schein des Vorscheins des Schnen zur Erscheinung gelange (N I,
S. 130). Ebenso schwer wiegt fr ihn der Umstand, dass Kants Auslegung der
Lust der Reflexion [] in einen Grundzustand des Menschen vor[dringt],
in dem der Mensch erst zur gegrndeten Flle seines Wesens kommt. (N I,
S. 133). Mag dieser Satz schon wenig mit Kants harmonischem Spiel von Einbildungskraft und Verstand zu tun haben, das anlsslich einer schnen Form
in Gang gesetzt wird und eine negative Lust des Denkens offenbart, so bleibt
er Nietzsches wundervollem Phnomen des Dionysischen, das dieser
noch 1888 als das Erste begriffen (EH, Die Geburt der Tragdie 2, KSA 6,
S. 311) wissen wollte, allerdings umso ferner vor allem dann, wenn es sich
im Interesse einer erhhten Deutlichkeit darum handeln soll, das Schne
selbst als dasjenige auszuweisen, was in das Rauschgefhl versetzt (N I,
S. 133):
Wenn das Schne jenes Magebende ist, was wir unserem Wesensvermgen
zutrauen, dann kann das Rauschgefhl als der Bezug zum Schnen kein bloes
Brodeln und Wallen sein. Die Stimmung des Rausches ist vielmehr eine Gestimmtheit im Sinne der hchsten und gemessensten Bestimmtheit. So sehr
Nietzsches Darstellungs- und Redeweise nach Wagners Gefhlstaumel und dem
bloen Versinken im bloen Erleben klingt, so gewi will er in der Sache das
Entgegengesetzte (N I, S. 134)

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Rechtfertigt Heidegger diese seine Austreibung des Dionysischen110 mit dem

Hinweis, dass namentlich Nietzsches Rckgriff auf die physiologisch-biologische Sprache des Willens zur Macht zu einer Verdunkelung seiner eigentlich
Kant nahen Auffassung des sthetischen Zustandes als Rausch beigetragen
habe, so irritiert es ihn jedoch kaum, dass Nietzsche, auch da, wo er in anderen
Sprachen spricht, durchaus niemals das gesagt hat, was er ihm hier in den Mund
legen will. Im Gegenteil: In gewagten Manvern sucht Heidegger nicht nur den
sthetischen Zustand des Rausches auf den fr ihn mageblichen Bezirk des
Schnen zurckzufhren, sondern auch das Schaffen des Kunstwerks selbst.111
Sofern es als seine unumgngliche Voraussetzung des Rausches bedarf, msse es
in den grndenden Wesensbereich der (schnen) Form und weitergehend in den
des Werkes eingeschrieben werden.112 So setzt die fr Heidegger signifikante
Operation der Verkehrung mit dem Rausch als formschaffende Kraft ein (N I,
S. 135), um mit der Grndung des Rausches durch die Form zu enden (N I,
S. 140).
Heideggers berlegungen gravitieren um die plastische Geste, kraft derer
der apollinische Knstler den Dingen im Rausch gewaltsam eine Form aufntigt. Mit oder in dieser von Nietzsche konturierten vergewaltigenden Geste
der Idealisierung, die ihm ein ungeheures H e r a u str e ibe n der Hauptzge
(GD, Streifzge 8, KSA 6, S. 116) bedeutet, erodiert die abendlndische sthetik
oder, was dasselbe ist, findet sie laut Heidegger ihre extremste Aufgipfelung
(N I, S. 135 137), die freilich auf einen bestimmten Platonismus der Gestalt und
Gestaltung zurckfllt (N I, S. 139).113 Insofern der Schaffensrausch auf
Hauptzge, d. h. auf ein Gezge und Gefge bezogen sei, knne das knstlerische Tun nicht nur auf leiblich-seelische Ablufe und schon gar nicht auf eine
110

111

112

113

Im Rckblick auf die Geburt der Tragdie notiert Nietzsche: in der Vernichtung auch des schnsten Scheins kommt das dionysische Glck auf seinen Gipfel um damit der in der Tragdie
geschehenden Vershnung des Dionysischen und Apollinischen eine anderes Dionysisches entgegenzusetzen, das in der pessimistischen Zerstrung der Illusion auf eine der Tragdie berlegene sthetische Rechtfertigung des Daseins stt (Nachlass Herbst 1885 Herbst 1886,
KSA 12, 2[11], S. 116).
GM III 6, KSA 5, S. 346. [W]as ich allein unterstreichen will, ist, dass Kant, gleich allen Philosophen, statt von den Erfahrungen des Knstlers) aus das sthetische Problem zu visiren, allein
vom Zuschauer aus ber die Kunst und das Schne nachgedacht [hat]. Wenn die Originalitt
der Konzeption Nietzsches nicht zuletzt darin besteht, die Kunst vom Schaffenden aus in der
Blick zu nehmen, dann sieht Heidegger darin nicht nur den geeigneten Anlass, die Kunst als diejenige Sphre zu begreifen, in der der Wille zur Macht am sichtbarsten wird, sondern auch in
Anlehnung an Nietzsches Vorrede zur Tragdien-Schrift von 1886 die Kunst im Sinne Nietzsches
als metaphysische Ttigkeit auszuweisen, und zwar ohne seinem Versuch einer Selbstkritik in
dieser Hinsicht Beachtung zu schenken. HGA 43, S. 84 f.
Das Schaffen schafft das Werk. Das Wesen des Werkes aber ist der Ursprung des Wesens des
Schaffens. HGA 43, S. 133.
Zum Platonischen Gestaltbegriff, der noch fr Jnger mageblich sei, siehe Heidegger: Zur
Seinsfrage. 4. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main. S. 15.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

153

blinde und ungebundene Rhrung [] schwimmendenden Behagens reduziert

werden. Der bloen Zustndlichkeit des Schaffenden msse vielmehr jenes
Einfachere und Strkere [] am Begegnenden selbst gegenbergestellt werden, welches der Knstler im Idealisieren herausshe (N I, S. 139). Whrend
fr Nietzsche der Vorgang des rauschhaften Schaffens eine verschwenderische
Entuerung der durch den Rausch bewirkten Kraftsteigerung und Flle an die
Dinge selbst darstellt, die durch die gewaltsame Aufntigung einer Form gleichermaen verwandelt und verschnt114 nichts anderes als die Macht
des Schaffenden wiederspiegeln (GD, Streifzge 8, KSA 6, S. 116), insistiert
Heidegger hingegen auf einer im Begegnenden selbst beschlossenen Form vor
ihrer rauschhaft-visionren Formierung (N I, S. 139). Wenn schlielich im gewundenen Gang dieser verkehrenden Auslegung die Form als dasjenige bezeichnet wird, was das Begegnende aufscheinen lt, ist zum wiederholten Mal der
Moment gekommen, in dem Heidegger wie unter Zwang die orgiastische Radikalitt des Rausches und seine visionre Kraft glaubt unwirksam machen zu
mssen, indem er die Form ausdrcklich als jenen Bereich ausweist, der den
Rausch erst begrndet. Der Rausch sei von jeder Trunkenboldigkeit des bloen Sichgehenlassens und Taumelns weit entfernt und heie fr Nietzsche
nichts anderes als hellster Sieg der Form. (N I, S. 140 f.)115 Auch wenn Heidegger schlielich aufgrund des in diesem Sinne przisierten oder besser: verflschten Rausches das Zugestndnis machen kann, da der Rausch als Gefhlszustand [] gerade die Subjektivitt des Subjektes [sprengt] und Nietzsches
Denken der Kunst, im Unterschied zu Kants sthetik, nicht in den Schranken
des neuzeitlichen Subjektsbegriffs gefangen bleibe (N I, S. 145)116, so ist unstrittig, dass Heidegger in seiner durchdringenderen Besinnung (N I, S. 168)
nicht nur hinter Nietzsche zurckdenken mchte, sondern ihn das Gegenteil
dessen sagen lsst, was er geschrieben hat. Die fr dieses Vorgehen der Nachgekommenen magebliche Rechtfertigung findet Heidegger bekanntlich in
dem Gedanken, dass jeder grosse Denker [] immer einen Sprung ursprnglicher [denkt ], als er unmittelbar spricht , so dass die ihn betreffende dankende
Auslegung sein Ungesagtes zu sagen versuchen msse (N I, S. 158),117 um ihn
von der nicht zureichenden Durchsichtigkeit seiner eigenen Bestimmungen
zu befreien (N I, S. 168).

114

115

116
117

Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[117], S. 293. Fr Nietzsche ist die Verschnerung und
Formung zweifellos eine Folge der er hhten Kraft, die der Rausch hervorbringt.
Heidegger steht hinsichtlich der Abtreibung des Rausches in der Tat unter Wiederholungszwang, vgl. auch N I, S. 148.
Vgl. auch HGA 43, S. 143.
In Was heit Denken? (a. a. O., S. 72; S. 94) bestimmt Heidegger vor allem mit Blick auf Nietzsche
das Ungedachte als das hchste Geschenk, das ein Denken zu vergeben hat. Diese hchste
Gabe zu denken, bedeutet dann nichts anderes als zu danken.

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Iris Drmann

Die Abwesenheit des groen Stils und knstlerischen Befehls, mit der
Nietzsche 1888 seine Gegnerschaft gegenber der Wagnerschen Musik erklrt,
wird fr Heidegger zum bestimmenden Anlass, um Nietzsches Verstndnis der
Kunst, sofern diese eine ausgezeichnete Gestalt des Willens zur Macht darstelle (N I, S. 164), auf Befehl, Gesetz und Ma zu verpflichten. Knne die
Kunst mit Nietzsche vor dem Hintergrund seiner anti-Wagnerianischen Invektiven in sich selbst als Gesetzgebung oder, genauer, als das Prinzip der geschichtebildenden, groen Politik bestimmt werden, dann, so Heidegger, habe
Nietzsche, indem er an die eigene uerste Grenze ging, die sthetische Frage
nach der Kunst selbst gesprengt, auch wenn die sthetik damit noch lange
nicht berwunden sei. Das Gesetzgeberische und Gestaltgrndende, das
Nietzsche in Wagners Musik vermisst, erhebt Heidegger zu einer wesentlichen
Bestimmung von Kunst berhaupt (N I, S. 154), die ihn die Einschtzung zu
treffen erlaubt, dass Nietzsches sthetik, in dem Moment, da sie zu ihrem Gipfel gelange und die Kunst an der hchsten Freiheit unter dem Gesetze (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 16[37], S. 497) bemesse, keine mehr ist (N I, S. 161). Die
lngere, aber nicht zitierte Aufzeichnung aus dem Nachlass (N I, S. 152), die
Heideggers Bemhung um eine Verwindung der sthetik Nietzsches und eine
Verwindung der sthetik durch Nietzsche orientiert, scheint die Entbindung der
Kunst vom Rausch als sthetischen Zustand und vom Paradigma der Darstellung in Aussicht zu stellen:
Die Gre eines Musikers mit sich nicht nach den schnen Gefhlen, die
!er" erregt: das glauben die Weiber sie mit sich nach der Spannkraft seines
Willens, nach der Sicherheit mit der das Chaos seinem knstl!erischen" Befehl
gehorcht und Form wird, nach !der" Notwendigkeit, welche seine Hand in eine
Abfolge von Formen legt. Die Gre eines Musikers mit einem Wort wird gemessen an seiner Fhigkeit zum groen Stil. (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 16[49],
S. 502)
Auf dem Weg der Identifizierung dieser von Nietzsche vielfach verspotteten
schnen Gefhlserregungen mit dem Rausch als Voraussetzung des Schaffens,
sieht sich Heidegger zu der Einschtzung berechtigt, dass das Leibzustndliche des Rausches, sobald es unter das aus ihm selbst erwachsene Gesetz des
groen Stils zu stehen komme, Nietzsche zufolge, im Geschaffenen gebndigt, berwunden und aufgehoben werden soll. (N I, S. 152)
Zeichnet sich die sthetische Fragestellung nicht zuletzt dadurch aus, dass sie
das Denken der Kunst auf das sinnliche Vernehmen des Menschen im Modus
seiner schaffenden und empfangenden Erlebnisse reduziert, dann scheint Heidegger mit diesem erneuten Kunstgriff seiner Auslegung die berwindung des
Rausches im Werk und in seiner Mageblichkeit hinsichtlich des Empfanges
des Werkes gelungen zu sein. Insofern Kunst bzw. Stimulans des Lebens mit
Nietzsche nichts anderes heit, als in den Befehlsbereich des groen Stils brin-

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

155

gen, vermag sein Mastbe setzendes philosophisches Denken gar zur Vorgestaltung des Zuknftigen aufzusteigen (N I, S. 152 f.). Dieser berwindung
des Rausches bzw. des sthetischen Erlebens stellt Heidegger bei aller Betonung des nur Entwurfhaften der berlegungen Nietzsches (N I, S. 155) mit
dem Gesetzesbegriff eine berwindung der Darstellung bzw. Mimesis an die
Seite, die fr ihn als zweites entscheidendes Moment der sthetischen Reduktion
der Kunst seit Platon in Frage steht (N I, S. 154). In dem Mae, indem sich das
Chaos jeglicher Darstellung und Nachahmung entzieht und allein dem knstlerischen Befehl gehorcht, sieht Heidegger im groen Stil, mit dem das
Wesen der Kunst wirklich werde (N I, S. 162), die Kunst von der Platonischen
Verpflichtung der homoiosis befreit. Oder, wie es in der ersten Ausarbeitung
der Kunstwerkabhandlung Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks, aus den Jahren 1931/32
heit:
Das Kunstwerk stellt nichts dar; und dies aus dem einzigen und einfachen
Grund, weil es nichts hat, was es darstellen soll.118
Da Heidegger dem Kunstwerk (und im gleichen Atemzug der staatsgrndenden Tat119) die Erffnung eines Geschichte stiftenden Wahrheitsgeschehens zutraut, das eine Welt auf- und die Erde herstellt, kann es weder an
einer bereits vorhandenen Wirklichkeit noch auch an einer vorhergehenden
Wahrheit (als Richtigkeit oder Gewiheit) gemessen werden. In diesem Sinne
wird auch in der ausdrcklich gegen Nietzsche und mit Hlderlin als Sprachwerk bezeichneten Tragdie nichts auf- und vorgefhrt, sondern der Kampf
der neuen gegen die alten Gtter wird gekmpft.120 Vor dem Hintergrund dieser auf die Sage zentrierten Bestimmung der Tragdie, die weder der ffentlichkeit noch auch der Inszenierung bedarf, um geschichtsgewaltig zu werden
(N I, S. 170), gestaltet sich nicht zuletzt Heideggers Auseinandersetzung mit
dem III. und X. Buch der Politeia, die er im Umkreis seiner berprfung des philosophischen Anspruchs Nietzsches auf eine Umdrehung des Platonismus anstrengt. Heideggers Auslegung der Geschichte eines Irrtums, die in der Gtzen-Dmmerung unter dem Titel Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde
skizziert ist, nimmt ihren Ausgang von einer auf die Tragdien-Schrift rckblickenden Notiz aus dem Nachlass (N I, S. 167):
ber das Verhltnis der Kunst zur Wahrheit bin ich am frhesten ernst geworden: und noch jetzt stehe ich mit einem heiligen Entsetzen vor diesem Zwiespalt. Mein erstes Buch !war" ihm geweiht; die Geburt der Tragdie glaubt an
die Kunst auf dem Hintergrund eines anderen Glaubens: da es nicht m g-

118

119
120

Heidegger, Martin: Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks (1931/1932). In: Heidegger-Studies 5

(1989). S. 5 22, hier S. 14.
Heidegger: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, a. a. O., S. 48.
Ebd., S. 28.

156

Iris Drmann

l i ch i s t , mit d er Wa h rhei t z u le be n. (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 16[40],

S. 500)
Das von Nietzsche zur Bestimmung des Verhltnisses von Wahrheit und
Kunst verwendete Wort des Zwiespalts orientiert Heideggers selektiven Gang
durch Platons Staat und der Ausmessung des Abstands der Kunst (Mimesis)
von der Wahrheit (Idee) (N I, S. 198 ff.). Sollte sich Nietzsches Anspruch auf
die Umdrehung Platonismus bewahrheiten, dann stnde auch eine Umdrehung
dieses Zwiespaltes selbst zu erwarten, wie Heidegger mehrfach betont (N I,
S. 218).
Wenn es um die Beantwortung der Frage geht, wie es berhaupt zu einer
Herabsetzung der Kunst in der Platonischen Philosophie kommen konnte
(und dies bei den Griechen, die doch wie kaum ein abendlndisches Volk die
Kunst bejahten und begrndeten! [N I, S. 191]), dann ist es erstaunlich, dass
sich Heidegger ganz und gar auf eine Errterung der ontologischen Rangfolge
von idea, eidos und eidolon in der Ordnung der Platonischen Mimesis konzentriert,
ohne dabei von dem Umstand Notiz zu nehmen, dass die Verurtheilung der
Tragoedie und der Kunst121 an eine Situation verschrfter Rivalitt zwischen
Philosophie und Kunst rhrt, der Nietzsche freilich um so grere Beachtung
schenkte, je deutlicher er sein Augenmerk auf die stilistische Gestaltung der Platonischen Dialoge und ihre nicht-philosophischen Elemente wie die selbsterfundenen Mythen oder sophistischen Reden richten musste.122 Insofern sich die
Platonischen Dialoge durch Mischung aller vorhandenen Stile unzweifelhaft
Erzhlung, Lyrik, Drama angeeignet haben,123 geht es aus Sicht Nietzsches fr
Platon im Moment der Etablierung der Philosophie nicht zuletzt darum, alle
Konkurrenten auszuschalten: Der Angriff auf die Dichtkunst in seiner ganzen
Strke bleibt unklar, wenn wir nicht [] die ungeheure Begierde als Wurzel
dieses Angriffs uns denken, selbst an die Stelle des gestrzten Dichters zu treten
und dessen Ruhm zu erben.124 Den Platonismus umzukehren, bedeutet demnach nicht nur, nach dem Begehren zu fragen, das Platon zum Terrorismus
(Nachlass 1870/71, KSA 7, 7[113], S. 164) gegen die Kunst ntigte,125 sondern
auch dasjenige Begehren ins Recht zu setzen, das zur Umkehrung des Verhltnisses von Wahrheit und Kunst zwingt. Heidegger ist weit davon entfernt, das
(instituierende) Begehren der Platonischen Philosophie ans Licht bringen und

121
122
123
124
125

Sokrates und die griechische Tragdie, KSA 1, S. 631.

Fnf Vorreden zu fnf ungeschriebenen Bchern, KSA 1, S. 753 792; S. 790.
Sokrates und die griechische Tragdie, KSA 1, S. 631.
Fnf Vorreden zu fnf ungeschriebenen Bchern, KSA 1, S. 788.
Von daher muss man Gilles Deleuze widersprechen, fr den Nietzsches Formel von der Umkehrung des Platonismus abstrakt bleibt, weil sie die Motivation des Platonismus im Dunkeln
[belsst]. Deleuze, Gilles: Simulacre et Philosophie Antique. In: ders.: Logique du sens. Paris
1969. S. 292 307, hier S. 292.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

157

sich an oder auf der Grenze der ontologischen Teilungs- und Differenzierungsoperationen aufhalten zu wollen. Hinter seiner Frage nach Platons Lehre von
der Wahrheit verblasst selbst noch der politisch-orthopdische Mastab (N I,
S. 194 f.), an dem Platon die Kunst misst, wenn er sie mit der bis dahin irrelevanten Wahrheitsfrage konfrontiert und den exklusiven Zugang der Philosophie zur
Ideenwahrheit sicherzustellen sucht. Heideggers Skizze der fr die Abstandsbestimmung von Wahrheit und Mimesis so gewichtigen Rangfolge der Ordnung
der drei Betten (Politeia 597 e) ermisst die Kluft, die zwischen der Idee als
dem eigentlich Seienden, dem Vor- und Urbild, und dem eigentlich Nichtseienden, dem Nach- und Abbild aufgerissen ist, vor allem unter der fr ihn problematischen Frage des reinen Aussehens der zum Paradigma und Ideal126
erhobenen Idea.127 Diese Entdeckung htte Heidegger freilich bereits bei Nietzsche machen knnen:
In Plato hchste Verherrlichung der Dinge als der Urbilder, d. h. die Welt
ganz vom Standpunkt des Auges (Apollos) angesehen. (Nachlass 1869/70,
KSA 7, 3[36], S. 70)
Ist die Entfernung vom Sein und seiner reinen Sichtbarkeit magebend
fr die Bestimmung des Wesens des mimets (N I, S. 215), dann gilt es zwar
einen Abstand, nicht aber einen Zwiespalt zwischen Kunst und Wahrheit
in Betracht zu ziehen dies vor allem dann nicht, wenn die Kunst wie
Platon es will unter die Leitung der Philosophie als des Wissens vom Wesen
des Seienden gestellt wird. Platons Gedanken in dieser Richtung, also auch
den weiteren Inhalt des X. Buches zu verfolgen, behrt nicht hierher. (N I,
S. 217)
Soll man aus dem pltzlichen Abbruch der Diskussion schlieen, dass Heidegger in der gewaltsamen Exklusion der Mimesis und der Austreibung der
(Tragdien-)Dichter kein Problem gesehen hat? Wenn Heidegger die Kunst
1935/36 unter dem Blickwinkel eines grndenden Wahrheitsgeschehens erfasst,
dann verschreibt er sich damit zugleich dem Programm einer konsequenten
Preisgabe der Mimesis und Darstellung, der Aus- und Auffhrung im Bereich
der Kunst und nicht nur dort. In diesem Sinne lsst sich sehr wohl mit LacoueLabarthe festhalten, dass Heidegger und im brigen auch Nietzsche,128 wenn126
127

128

Heidegger: Einfhrung in die Metaphysik, a.a. O., S. 140 f.

Seine sptere Interpretation des Hhlengleichnisses gipfelt bekanntermaen in dem Satz: Die
altheia kommt unter das Joch der ida. Heidegger, Martin: Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit.
Mit einem Brief ber den Humanismus. 3. Aufl. Bern 1975. S. 41. Im Nietzsche-Buch heit es
in diesem Sinne bereits: Die Auslegung des Seins als eidos, Anwesen im Aussehen, setzt die Auslegung der
Wahrheit als altheia, Unverstelltheit voraus. N I, S. 112.
So unterstreicht es einmal mehr Nietzsches Anti-Aristotelismus, wenn er Platos Consequenz in der Frage der Austreibung der Dichter rhmend wiederholt notiert: Plato hat Recht
mit der unmoralischen Wirkung der Tragdie. Nachlass Herbst 1869, KSA 7, 1[43], S. 21;
Nachlass Herbst 1877, KSA 8, 24[1], S. 475; siehe auch MA I, 212, KSA 2, S. 173.

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Iris Drmann

gleich aus einer anderen Warte Platons Vorurteil im Hinblick auf die mimsis
und das Theater teilt.129
Insofern in der Politeia aufgrund der hierarchischen Seinsordnung kein
Zwiespalt, sondern nur ein Abstand zwischen Kunst und Wahrheit ausfindig zu machen sei, wendet sich Heidegger der Platonischen Philosophie des
Schnen nicht zuletzt deshalb zu, weil er hier eine ihrem Rang nach formulierte
Gleichsetzung von Wahrheit und Schnheit anzutreffen vermutet, die die Rede
vom Zwiespalt zur Bedingung haben muss (N I, S. 220). Namentlich der Dialog Phaidros kann Heidegger den Zugang zum Schnen unter der Voraussetzung
der lthe, die er hier mit Seinsvergessenheit bersetzt (N I, S. 225), und in der
Wesensordnung des Aufleuchtens des Seins (N I, S. 227) als jene uns berckende Blickbahn ausweisen, kraft derer die Rckgewinnung und Bewahrung
des Seinsblickes aus dem nchsten Anschein von Platon als einzig mglich ausgegeben werde (N I, S. 229). Es wirft ein symptomatisches Licht auf Heideggers
Auslegung, dass er die den Dialog auszeichnende Situation des erbitterten Wettstreits zwischen Sophistik und Philosophie um die Gunst des Knaben Phaidros
unterschlgt und sich damit eine Analyse jener Verfhrungsstrategien erspart,
die Sokrates mit und in seinen beiden erotischen Reden der mit verhlltem
Haupt gesprochenen berbietungsrede der Rede des Lysias einerseits und ihrer
Palinodie andererseits zum Einsatz bringt, um Phaidros zur Philosophie zu
verfhren. Gilt es doch, ihn zu jener Ikone auszubilden, die erst die vergessene
Erinnerung an das vorgeburtlich geschaute Schne und jene Ideen wiederbringt,
welche im Diesseits nicht sinnlich wahrnehmbar sind. Ist man wie Heidegger daran interessiert, im Phaidros einen Zwiespalt zwischen dem Wahren und Schnen erffnet zu sehen, kann man freilich die im Namen der Anamnesis betriebene bildnerische Arbeit des Sokrates selbst nicht genug herausstellen: Denn als
Ebenbild des Gottes und des Schnen geniet Phaidros den adorierenden Blick
und die Gunstbezeugungen des Philosophen, der ihn ausdrcklich zu einem
heiligen Bilde ausschmckt, um ihm wie dem Gott selbst Opfer zu bringen
(Phaidros 251a, 252d e). Der Zugang zum Wahren muss den Umweg ber die
Anbetung und Bildung des Schnen in allen Wortsinnen nehmen. Der Zwiespalt aber bleibt fr Platon, so Heidegger, ein beglckender. In der Entzweiung berwiegt der Einklang, da das ber die Sinnlichkeit hinweghebende
und in das Wahre zurckversetzende Schne bereits im Voraus in der Wahrheit
des Seins als des bersinnlichen geborgen ist (N I, S. 230).
129

Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe: Heidegger. In: Musica Ficta. (Figures de Wagner). Paris 1991.
S. 161 214, hier S. 206. Heideggers Nietzsche-Interpretation steht fr Lacoue-Labarthe unter
dem Eindruck der Exklusion der Musik durch die abendlndische Philosophie und stellt hinsichtlich der ontologisch-politischen Verwerfung der Musik Wagners seitens Heidegger ein
symptomatisches Ereignis dar, das dem Platonischen Ausschlu der Musik in der Politeia entspricht.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

159

In dem Mae, in dem die zweite Rede des Sokrates gegen Lysias den Beweis
antreten will, dass die Liebe kein bel, sondern ein gttliches Geschick sei, fhrt
sie zur Anerkennung verschiedener Formen der Mania der prophetischen, kathartischen, musisch-poetischen und der besten, nmlich der erotischen , an denen die Rede selbst partizipiert: Indem sie das Schicksal der Seele voraussagt, von
den Verfehlungen der ersten Rede befreit, poetisch-mythologisch verfasst ist und
in Phaidros die Liebe zur Philosophie entfacht, beweist sie durch sich selbst die
wohltuende und schpferische Wirkung dessen, wovon sie spricht.130 Di mana
entstehen uns die grten Gter, der Wahnsinn ist die edelste Kunst (kallste
tchne) (Phaidros 244a c). Nun ist es bemerkenswert zu sehen, dass Nietzsche die
Anpreisung der musisch-poetischen Mania polemisch als passende Schlussworte fr Euripides (Plat. Phaedr. 245, Schleichermacher) (Nachlass 1869,
KSA 7, 1[64], S. 29) ansieht, durch den die Tragdie bekanntermaen ihr suizidales Ende findet. Weiterhin ist in Betracht zu ziehen, dass er die Vertreibung der
Knstler aus dem platonischen Staate mit der Anpreisung des Wahnsinns durch
Plato in einen Zusammenhang bringt, der ihn unzweideutig davon ausgehen lsst,
dass es sich dabei nur um eine ironisiert[e] Anerkennung der poetischen Mania
handeln kann.131 Schlielich bleibt zu beachten, dass die erotische Mania des Philosophen fr ihn lediglich im Abglanz einer entfernten Erinnerung etwas mit
Wahnsinn oder Rausch zu tun hat (Nachlass 1880, KSA 9, 7[242], S. 367). Wenn
sich die Liebe zur Erkenntni und Philosophie einem sublimierte[n] Geschlechtstrieb verdanken sollte, dann bleibt [daneben] seine alte direkte Wirkung dennoch stehen (Nachlass 1881, KSA 9, 11[124], S. 486). Und es ist diese
direkte Wirkung, der Nietzsche die Erregung eines Rauschzustandes zutraut.
Kurzum: Die von Platon bevorzugte Mania hat mit einem Rauschzustand in dem
von Nietzsche skizzierten transfigurierend-visionren Sinne nicht das Geringste
zu tun, so dass man sich ber Heideggers Einschtzung nurmehr wundern kann:
Das Erfassen der Ideen als Ideen ist hinsichtlich seiner Vollzugsmglichkeit,
nicht aber hinsichtlich der Zielsetzung, auf den eros gegrndet, auf jenes, was in
Nietzsches sthetik dem Rausch entspricht. (N I, S. 195)132
130

131

132

Siehe dazu die instruktive Interpretation des Phaidros von Niehues-Prbsting, Heinrich: berredung zur Einsicht. Der Zusammenhang von Philosophie und Rhetorik bei Platon und in der
Phnomenologie. Frankfurt am Main 1987. S. 152 202, hier S. 175.
Nachlass Herbst 1869, KSA 7, 1[7], S. 12. Sowie Sokrates und die griechische Tragdie, KSA 1,
S. 626.
In dem Mae, in dem es der erotischen und zur Philosophie disponierenden Mania Platons aus
Sicht Nietzsches zweifellos an ekstatischer Intensitt gebricht, scheint es anders als es etwa
Dieter Bremer nahe legt durchaus fragwrdig, zwischen einem affektiv verstandenen Willen
zur Macht einerseits und Platons Eros andererseits eine strukturelle Verwandtschaft und vergleichbare Funktion ausfindig machen zu wollen, die beiden Grundbegriffen zudem den Status eines transzendentalen Affekts zuweist. Bremer, Dieter: Nietzsches Dionysos und Platons Eros. In: Patzer, Andreas (Hg.): Apophoreta. Fr Uvo Hlscher zum 60. Geburtstag. Bonn
1975. S. 21 72, hier S. 36. Heidegger entwirft gar eine erotische Ontologie. Fr ihn ist es schlie-

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Wie bereits im Zusammenhang der Kritik der Urteilskraft und der Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Kritik an der Musik Wagners gesehen, so verkehrt
Heidegger dessen Aussagen auch mit Blick auf die Platonische Philosophie (der
Kunst und des Schnen) in einem bis an Flschung heranreichenden Grade.
Dieses Vorgehen aber trgt zwei ineinander verschlungenen Motiven Heideggers Rechnung: Mit der Zurckfhrung des Rausches auf den Kantisch abgesteckten Wesensbezirk der schnen Form und seiner Angleichung an den Platonischen Eros133 hat er keine Schwierigkeiten, Nietzsche in die abendlndische
Geschichte der sthetik einzugemeinden und ihm so die Mglichkeit zu verwehren, deren Geschlossenheit erschttert oder gar durchbrochen zu haben. Damit
aber wird zugleich die Entladung und Fremderfahrung des Rausches, die fr
Heidegger wegen ihrer entgrenzenden, depersonalisierenden und sexuellen Gewaltsamkeit im Geruch uerster Anstigkeit steht, eminent entschrft. Diese
Depotenzierung des Rausches zeigt indes den beharrlichen Aufenthalt eines
Heidegger selbst betreffenden Problems an: Insofern er niemals eine Philosophie am Leitfaden des Leibes entworfen hat,134 steht seine Purgation des Rau-

133

134

lich das Sein selbst, seine erotische Bindungsmacht bzw. Anziehungskraft, die eine berwindung
der Seinsvergessenheit versprechen: Sobald der Mensch sich in seinem Blick auf das Sein durch
dieses binden lt, wird er ber sich hinaus entrckt, so da er gleichsam sich zwischen sich und
dem Sein erstreckt und auer sich ist. Dieses ber-sich-hinweg-gehoben- und vom Sein selbst
angezogen worden ist der Eros. Nur soweit das Sein in bezug auf den Menschen die erotische
Macht zu entfalten vermag, nur soweit vermag der Mensch an das Sein selbst zu denken und die
Seinsvergessenheit zu berwinden. (N I, S. 226)
Heidegger war sich ber das Ausma der ebenso kritischen wie produktiven Auseinandersetzung, in die Nietzsche mit dem Platonischen Eros eingetreten ist, offensichtlich nicht im Klaren,
so die Einschtzung von Kaufmann, Walter: Philosoph, Psychologe, Antichrist. 2. Aufl. Darmstadt 1988. S. 286 298. In jngster Zeit hat James I. Porter in seinem Bemhen, den Gegensatz
Dionysisch-Apollinisch der Tragdien-Schrift zu dekonstruieren, Nachdruck darauf gelegt, dass
das von Alkibiades im Rausch skizzierte Portrt des Sokrates als eines Silenen im Symposion dem
von Nietzsche gezeichneten musiktreibenden Sokrates entspreche, dem es aus konstitutiven
Grnden nicht gelinge, das Dionysische endgltig zu verwinden. Porter, James, I.: The Invention
of Dionysus. An Essay on The Birth of Tragedy. Stanford 2000. S. 110 119. Siehe dazu die Rezension von Mller, Enrico: Neuerscheinungen zu Nietzsches Bild der Antike. Nietzsche-Studien 31
(2002). S. 350 362, hier S. 352. Mit Dank an Werner Stegmaier.
Im Rahmen der Zollikoner Seminare wird Heidegger von den Teilnehmern mit dem Vorwurf
Sartres konfrontiert, in Sein und Zeit nur sechs Zeilen ber den Leib geschrieben zu haben. Heidegger rumt daraufhin ein, da das Leibliche das Schwierigste ist und dass er damals eben
noch nicht mehr zu sagen wute. Bekanntlich ist Heidegger jedoch die Antwort auf die Frage
nach dem Leiblichen berhaupt schuldig geblieben, und auch an dieser Stelle lsst er es bei einer
hchst provisorischen Antwort bewenden: In bezug auf die gesamte Leiblichkeit ist deshalb
dasselbe zu sagen, was bereits in bezug auf das Sehen und die leiblichen Augen erwhnt wurde:
Wir knnen nicht sehen, weil wir Augen haben, vielmehr knnen wir nur Augen haben, weil
wir unser Grundnatur nach sehenden Wesens sind. So knnten wir auch nicht leiblich sein, wie
wir es sind, wenn unser In-der-Welt-sein nicht grundlegend aus einem immer schon vernehmenden Bezogen-sein auf solches bestnde, das sich uns aus dem Offenen unserer Welt, als welches
Offene wir existieren, zuspricht. Heidegger: Zollikoner Seminare 1959 1969. Hg. von Boss,
Medard. Frankfurt am Main 1987. S. 292 ff.

Rausch als sthetischer Zustand

161

sches seinerseits in dem Verdacht, der Metaphysik anzugehren, zumindest in

Nietzsches Verstndnis des Begriffs.135
Sind fr Heidegger die Frage der Wirkung sowie die fhlende Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung die mageblichen Kennzeichen der abendlndischen Geschichte
der sthetik, dann kann Nietzsches sthetik ihr zweifellos nicht mehr angehren. Dass der Rausch die Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung aus den Angeln hebt,
musste Heidegger bereits selbst einrumen. Wenn er die Kunst als durchsichtigste und bekannteste Weise des Willens zur Macht136 ausweist, dann sieht er
dabei durchaus von der wissenschaftlichen und dionysischen Perspektive ab,
die Nietzsches berlegungen orientieren. Beide Perspektiven kulminieren in
der Aushebelung der Hypothese des Willens-zur-Macht und in dem Satz:
es giebt keinen Willen137 weder im gewhnlichen Sinne als Seelenvermgen
und allgemeines Streben (NI, S. 48) noch auch, wie Heidegger annimmt, im
Sinne eines metaphysischen Prinzips, das den Grundcharakter alles Seienden
ausmacht. So erlangt die Willen-zur-Macht-Hypothese unter wissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten eine unerwartet dionysische Reichweite, wenn es 1888
heit: der Wille zur Macht nicht ein Sein, nicht ein Werden, sondern ein
Pathos ist die elementarste Thatsache, aus der sich erst ein Werden, ein Wirken
ergiebt. (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[79], S. 259)
Der irreduzible Ereignischarakter, den Nietzsche mit der pathischen Dimension des Machtwillens formuliert, trgt dem Gedanken Rechnung, dass e in
G esch e h e n [ ] weder bewirkt noch bewirkend [ist] (Nachlass 1888,
KSA 13, 14[98], S. 275). Die Frage nach der Wirkung, mit der Heidegger die
abendlndische sthetik insgesamt und damit auch Nietzsches sthetik identifiziert, ist fr diesen freilich mit der Sprach-Metaphysik (GD, Die Vernunft 5, KSA 6, S. 77) des Willens und der tuschenden Causalitts-Inte r pre t a t i o n (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[98], S. 275) belastet. Whrend die
sthetik als angewandte Physiologie aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive probeweise nach Herkunft und Wirkung des Kunstwerks fragt, hat ihre sthetische
Deutung mit der Mythologie von Ursache und Wirkung und der Wille-zur-

135

136

137

Nietzsches Skizze seines Verstndnisses von Metaphysik als M issve rst ndnis des Leibes
findet sich bekanntlich in der Vorrede zur zweiten Ausgabe von FW 2, KSA 3, S. 348. Karl Lwith hat bereits in seiner (zuerst in: Die neue Rundschau 64 [1953] erschienenen) Rezension der
Nietzsche-Vorlesungen Heideggers dessen Seinsgeschichte aus der Perspektive von Nietzsches
Metaphysik-Verstndnis kritisiert: Lwith, Karl: Heideggers Auslegung des Ungesagten in
Nietzsches Wort Gott ist tot. In: Ders.: Heidegger. Denker in drftiger Zeit. 2. Aufl. Frankfurt
am Main 1960, S. 72 105, hier S. 83.
Heidegger: Nietzsche. Seminare 1937 und 1944. Aufzeichnungen und Protokolle. HGA, Bd. 87.
Frankfurt am Main 2004. S. 11. Siehe dort auch die fnf aufgestellten Leitstze zur Kunst
und ihre Systematik.
Nachlass Sommer 1883, KSA 10, 13[1], S. 420; Nachlass November 1887 Mrz 1888, KSA 13,
11[73], S. 36.

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Iris Drmann

Macht-Hypothese gebrochen: Wo die Physiologen nach der existenzverleihenden Ursache der Kunst und ihrer Wirkung fragen, setzen sich hingegen die
Artisten dem Ereignis (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14 [34], S. 235) des Rausches in seiner unverminderbaren Fremdheit aus.138 Denn alles vollkommene
Thun ist gerade unbewusst und nicht mehr gewollt (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14
[128], S. 310). Und in diesem Sinne findet sich der aesthetische Zustand
(Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14 [119], S. 296) tatschlich nur da realisiert, wo es keinen Willen gibt und niemanden, der will.139 Als diejenige Sphre, in der der
Choc von Leiden und Leidenschaften (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 14[157],
S. 341), nicht aber ein kommandierender Wille herrscht, ist der Artist ganz
ebenso wie der Liebende140 ein Jasager ersten Ranges, der das, was ihm im
Rausch widerfhrt, vor jedem ausdrcklichen Ja oder Nein auf unumgngliche
Weise bejaht.141 Ein solcher Jasagende[r] Affect (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13,
14[11], S. 222) verpflichtet auf das Leben nicht zuletzt in dem, was es an Fragwrdigem und Fremdem zu bieten hat. In der tragischen Entladung entdeckt
Nietzsche unter dem Eindruck des Gedankens der ewigen Wiederkehr142 eine
aus der Flle, der berflle geborene Formel der hchsten Bejahung, ein Jasagen ohne Vorbehalt, zum Leiden selbst, zur Schuld selbst, zu allem Fragwrdigen und Fremden das Daseins selbst.143
Zu einem solchen Ja aber konnte Heidegger sich offenkundig noch nicht einmal entschlieen.

138

139

140

141

142

143

Die Einsicht in die Herkunft eines Werks geht die Physiologen und Vivisektoren des Geistes
an: nie und nimmer die sthetischen Menschen, die Artisten! GM III, 4, KSA 5, S. 343. Vgl.
dazu auch Schmid: ber die Tragweite der Artisten-Metaphysik, a.a. O., S. 440.
Vgl. bereits die unter der Voraussetzung des Ureinen formulierte Ablehnung des wollenden
Subjekts als Urheber und Verursacher des Kunstwerks in GT 5, S. 47. Auch Heidegger stolpert
ber Nietzsches Satz: Ich lache eures freien Willen und auch eures unfreien: Wahn ist mir das,
was ihr Willen heit, es gieb t kein en Wille n. Nachlass November 1887 Mrz 1888,
KSA 13, 11[73], S. 36. Aber er stolpert ber diesen und hnlich lautende Stze nicht in dem Mae
(siehe N I, S. 48), dass er in Zweifel ber seine eigene Bestimmung des Willes zur Macht als
eines metaphysischen Prinzips und Grundcharakters alles Seienden im Ganzen gert. Siehe
HGA 50. S. 97. Vgl. auch Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis. HGA, Bd. 47. Frankfurt am Main 1989. S. 268.
Nachlass Frhjahr 1888, KSA 13, 14[120], S. 299 f.; Nachlass September 1888, KSA 13, 17[5],
S. 536 f.
Fr Heidegger ist die Bejahung hingegen deshalb die hchste, weil sie noch das uerste
Nein, die Vernichtung und das Leid als zum Seienden gehrig bejaht. Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsches metaphysische Grundstellung im abendlndischen Denken. Die Ewige Wiederkehr des
Gleichen. HGA, Bd. 44. Frankfurt am Main 1986. S. 30.
Zu Heideggers unterschiedlichen Bestimmungen der ewigen Wiederkehr vgl. HGA 50,
S. 158 f.; N I S. 160; HGA 44, S. 172; S. 195; HGA 87, S. 88; HGA 47, S. 3; S. 277 ff.; S. 284 ff.
EH, Die Geburt der Tragdie 2, KSA 6, S. 311 f; GD, Was ich den Alten verdanke 4, KSA 6,
S. 159 f.

Violence, Economy and Temporality

163

PETER SEDGWICK
VIOLENCE, ECONOMY AND TEMPORALITY.
PLOTTING THE POLITICAL TERRAIN OF
ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY

all great ages must be paid for 1

Recent years have seen what Herman Siemens has called a surge of interest [] especially in the Anglo-American world in the political relevance of
Nietzsches thought.2 This increased interest has been accompanied by anxiety.
Daniel Conway, for example, has written insightfully of a Nietzsche who poses
political questions that leave us facing the stark, possibly despotic consequences
of his immoralism.3 Equally, interpretations that seek to figure Nietzsche
within a democratic agenda for instance, the work of Mark Warren, Laurence
Hatab and Alan D. Schrift have provoked troubled responses. On the one hand,
there are those who respond by refusing to acknowledge any political dimension
to Nietzsches philosophy. Such a view is propounded by commentators such as
Thomas H. Brobjer and Brian Leiter. According to Leiter, Nietzsche has no
political philosophy, in the conventional sense of a theory of the state and its
legitimacy []. He is more accurately read [] as a kind of esoteric immoralist, i. e.,
[as] someone who has views about human flourishing, views he wants to communicate to the select few.4 For Leiter, Nietzsches emphasis upon a transformation of the individual renders questionable the legitimacy of associating
any project of political change with him.5 Such an approach epitomises the
1

4
5

Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New
York 1968, section 864.
Siemens, Herman: Nietzsches Political Philosophy: A Review of Recent Literature. In: Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001), pp. 509 526, here p. 509.
Conway, Daniel W.: Nietzsche and the Political. London 1997. Nietzsche, Conway argues, dares
to raise a calamitous, and previously unapproachable, question of political legislation: what ought
humanity to become? (p. 3). Asking what we ought to become raises the founding question of
politics. Such a question, when combined with the fact that nothing Nietzsche says definitively
rules out the illiberal political regimes with which his name has been linked (p. 4) should make
us anxious, for the path we might thereby be tempted to follow may lead to tyranny.
Leiter, Brian: Nietzsche on Morality. London 2002, p. 296.
Ibid., p. 302. Of course, there are immediate objections to this kind of approach. It seems
strange, for example, to think that a project of individual transformation is devoid of political

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Peter Sedgwick

hardly defensible strand of Nietzsche studies that Don Dombowsky has

singled out for criticism (specifically in relation to Thomas Brobjer).6 But Dombowsky is also wary of overtly political approaches to Nietzsche that tend to read
him as being compatible with a radical democracy or radical democratic ethos.7
Such readings never proceed without notable exclusions, and thus, their arguments are seriously compromised.8 Pro-democratic readings of Nietzsche cause
Dombowsky unease because they conceal aspects of Nietzsches work that ought
to worry anyone with democratic sympathies. For example, his lack of sympathy
with egalitarianism, or his affirmation of the necessity of domination and exploitation. The question Dombowsky poses is simply: how is it possible to reconcile
democratic ideals with a thinker whose praise of agonistics is basically compatible with the commitment to perpetual war or permanent confrontation characteristic of fascist ideology?9 Although critical of aspects of Dombowskys interpretation of Nietzsche10 for Christa Davis Acampora, too, Nietzsches radical
questioning of authority poses a serious problem to any democratic rendering of
him, for it is a questioning which she doubts any political order (in so far as it remains an ordering) could sustain.11
From these briefly cited examples it should be clear that worries about
Nietzsche and politics take on a specific form. The political ramifications of
Nietzsches thought cast a questioning shadow over the terrain of political theory and above all its central concern with the legitimacy of political authority. In

8
9
10

11

implications. Equally, it is unconvincing to hold of someone, as Leiter in effect does of Nietzsche, that if they do not have an explicitly articulated theory of politics this necessarily means they
do not have a politics. One might add to this the fact that the assertion that Nietzsche lacks any
theory of the state is contradicted by the fact that the Genealogy offers an explicit account of the
origins of state and civil society (GM II, 17 see also the discussion below).
Dombowsky, Don: A Response to Alan D. Schrifts Nietzsche for Democracy?. In: NietzscheStudien 31 (2002), pp. 278 290. For a critical account of Brobjers approach see Dombowsky,
Don: A Response to Thomas H. Brobjers The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsches Writings. In: Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001), pp. 387 393.
Ibid. The people Dombowsky has in mind here include not only Alan Schrift, but also William
Connolly, Laurence Hatab and Mark Warren. See Connolly, William: Political Theory and
Modernity. Oxford 1989; Hatab, Lawrence J.: A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy. An
Experiment in Postmodern Politics. Chicago, Il. 1995; Warren, Mark: Nietzsche and Political
Thought. Cambridge, Mass. 1988.
Ibid., pp. 278 9.
Ibid., p. 287.
Acampora, Christa Davis: Demos Agonistes Redux. Reflections of the Streit of Political Antagonism. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 374 390. According to Acampora, Dombowsky
is guilty of the same selective attitude to textual exegesis that he criticises the likes of Schrift for,
namely stitching [texts] together in a rather haphazard manner (p. 377).
Ibid., p. 375. Acampora nevertheless remains open to being persuaded, in so far as it might,
following Hatab, be possible to situate this agonism at the margins of a democratic polity.
Such a view, of course, presupposes an agonism that somehow respects the notion of boundaries
and stays where it is supposed to

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this regard, the views expressed by Conway, Dombowsky and Acampora find
resonance in Jrgen Habermass contention that Nietzsche is to be counted
as one of [t]he black writers of the bourgeoisie.12 This is the Nietzsche who
unmasks the rationality of bourgeois liberalism in such a way as to question the
very basis of democratic societies. A Nietzsche who looks likes this is bound
to cause anxiety in a readership who understandably find much of value in his
books and yet whose liberal-democratic outlook is more or less presupposed.
The urge to recuperate Nietzsche for democracy may have more in common
with the desire to deny him any political significance at all than at first appears.
We should be sensitive to the possibility that both tendencies may be expressions
of the same anxiety. In both instances, what is significant concerns not Nietzsches thought (not the content of his books) so much as the fact that he is rendered acceptable as an object for intellectual consumption within a contemporary, democratic environment. A Nietzsche who can be enlisted in favour of
democracy stands out from that environment almost as little as a Nietzsche who
has nothing to say about politics. In either case, one has a Nietzsche who is, in
the narrowest of senses, environmentally friendly in so far as he cannot in a
serious manner pose dangerous, even unthinkable questions about the value of
the kind of politics we effectively endorse. Perhaps we need to discover and
face a Nietzsche who occupies a rather different plane: a Nietzsche who disturbs
us; a figure whose thinking we ought not feel the need to erase or sanitise, the
thinker akin to that hinted at by Conway, Dombowsky and Acampora. This
would be a Nietzsche who has an, at best, unsettling effect upon our political
presuppositions.
I should say at the outset that I endorse the view that there is an inexorably
political aspect to Nietzsches writings. Whatever Brobjer or Leiter may say,
Nietzsche, for one, seems to have been in little doubt concerning his own political destiny: Only after me will there be grand politics on earth.13 The problem is
how to approach the question of this political significance. In this regard, Derek
Hillard has offered valuable insights on Nietzsches conceptions of exchange,
power and history. According to Hillard, exchange is at the heart of Nietzsches
concept of historical transition.14 He shows how Nietzsche employs a concept
of economy that operates by way of the interaction between a formal exchange
12

13

14

Habermas, Jrgen: The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass. 1987, p. 106. Nietzsche is contrasted here with those dark bourgeois thinkers
(Machiavelli, Hobbes and Mandeville) who, unlike Nietzsche, were constructive rather than destructive critics of bourgeois thought.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Ecce Homo. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth 1986, Why I am a
Destiny, 1.
Hillard, Derek: History as Dual Process. Nietzsche on Exchange and Power. In Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002), pp. 40 56, here p. 40.

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Peter Sedgwick

principle that provides [] an interpretative framework for meaningful content and an indeterminate element of domination through which a current
interpretation replaces one previously in existence. The central point to grasp
about Nietzsches notion of economy, Hillard argues, is that it is taken by him
to be the more or less immutable15 structural precondition of all forms of discourse. Human society and history in all its diversity emerge from this condition.
In what follows I shall concentrate on just one of Nietzsches books, On the
Genealogy of Morality.16 I develop Hillards position, but seek also to supplement
and thereby go beyond it. Thus, where Hillards interest lies principally in history
and exchange, I focus on the importance Nietzsches notion of economy has for
his articulation of temporality in general (past, present and future possibility)
rather than history alone. This general temporal framework is developed out of
the notion of economy. The pattern this development takes is exemplified by
Nietzsches account of prehistory. Nietzsches conception of prehistory is one in
which a primordial economy of violence sows the seeds of humanitys future
potential. Consequently, violence is a key feature of Nietzsches conception of
economy and cannot be ignored. The linked themes of temporality, economy
and violence form the basis of Nietzsches account of human nature. They are
to be found at the root of his analyses of self-consciousness, value, reason,
and freedom. Taken together, temporality, economy and violence mark out the
political terrain of Nietzsches thought. Their conjunction gives rise to his conception of history, the domain of all human aspiration and hence of grand
politics. An awareness of the manner in which these elements are linked is
necessary for any critical discourse on the politics of Nietzsches philosophy. In
elucidating it I turn first to the question of history and temporality.

1. History and Temporality.

Nietzsche proposes we engage in thinking a real history of morality (GM preface, 7). This historical exposure of values is no mere tourist trip; one does not
pass by this newly revealed landscape like an Odysseus, immune from the effects
of the Sirens call. A history of this kind changes us or ought to. It presents us
with the new demand to evaluate the value of these values . The significance of the
real history Nietzsche extols thereby extends in two directions simultaneously:
backward into the past and forward into the future. From this it should be clear that
not merely the historical past but temporality in general is among the Genealogys
15
16

Ibid., p. 44.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morality (GM). Ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson. Trans.
Carol Diethe. Cambridge 1994.

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167

significant preoccupations. Past, present and future taken together are central to
Nietzsches treatment of morality, with the primary significance of history residing in its role as a prelude to thinking about the future. As Nietzsche notes, what
is at stake is not so much uncovering the origin of morality but the larger question of the value of the unegoistic, the instincts of pity, self-denial, self-sacrifice (GM preface, 5).17 The dominance of these instincts, for Nietzsche, characterises the Christian ideal of the good man. Nietzsches rebellion against
these instincts is well known and there is no need to rehearse it here. However,
the manner in which the Genealogy formulates this rebellion is worth considering
for it has important implications for understanding his treatment of temporality.
According to Nietzsche, the good man has been held to be the surest
means of ensuring the future of humanity. Selflessness and pity are thought of as
virtues: they are generally taken to define what is civilised and thereby ensure the
future progress of civilisation. As Nietzsche presents it, therefore, a mode of
temporality (i. e. the future) stands as the guarantor of Christian moral discourse.
Nietzsche can now invert the image he has proffered: what if the purportedly
good person were in actuality a regressive symptom, a danger, an enticement, a poison, a narcotic, so that the present lived at the expense of the future? []
So that precisely [Christian] morality itself were to blame if man, as species,
never reached his highest potential power and splendour (GM preface, 6). A question
mark is thereby placed over Christian morality by invoking the wider framework
of temporality in general (the historical past, the living present, and the possible
future). The future, not the past, invites us to formulate a judgement concerning
the value of Christian morality. What has been the case is important in so far as it
relates to what will be the case. Questions of morality concern questions of time
and possibility rather than timeless conceptions of right and wrong.

2. Time and Economy: Progression and Regression

In so far as the questioning of Christian morality that Nietzsche proposes
invokes time it is also invokes economy, for the framework he articulates here is
at the same time one that concerns questions of profit and loss. What is at stake
in morality, Nietzsche is asserting, needs to be grasped in terms of the limits that
must be placed upon a certain kind of expenditure in order to ensure the future
of humanity. This amounts to claiming that if we wish to attain a genuine under-

17

Nietzsches real history is written as a polemical exposure of the blindness that characterises
our faith in morality. See, Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral. Darmstadt
1994, p. 66. As such, it seeks to demythologise ethics. For further reflection on the question of
mythology see section 8, below.

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Peter Sedgwick

standing of the nature and significance of ethics we must use a standpoint that
conjoins temporal and economic concerns. Past, present and future need to be
thought of as economic articulations, of the saving up and profiting from human
potential or squandering and losing it.
Nietzsches use of the phrase symptom of regression (Rckgangssymptom)
to describe the good man demonstrates this connection in stark terms. Most
obviously, the good man is presented as symptomatic. He expresses the realised
power of the unegoistic instincts that become manifest as the morality of pity.
For Nietzsche, the key characteristic of the morality of pity is illusion. What presents itself as objective, naturalised morality is in actuality a concealed desire for
power. Privileging the kind of self-understanding epitomised by the good man
testifies to this desire. The interests the good man indicates by way of his presence in the world are what really matter to Nietzsche. It is because the good
man is indelibly associated with these interests that Nietzsche takes him to signify regression. It scarcely needs to be said that to call something regressive is
to imply that it is in some sense a throwback to an earlier state. Nietzsches use
of the phrase symptom of regression thus also invokes the temporal structure
already discussed. Now, however, this structure is one within which the envisioning of the regression or advancement of humanity becomes the central issue. What is
at stake in morality is nothing less than the future of humanity. From the standpoint of the future, what is regressive is living at its expense. To live according to
the morality of pity, Nietzsche claims, is to do just this: one lives in a smallerminded, meaner manner and, in so far as one lives on credit, one squanders what
has been saved up in the past rather than saving up for the future. A structure
of credit and debit is thereby articulated from the outset of the Genealogy wherein
human futurity springs from a temporality that is organised according to the
logic of profit and loss. In this way, Nietzsche seeks to subsume moral discourse
within a larger, amoral temporal structure that is itself unfolded out of economy.
In this sense, economy has the peculiar power of bestowing upon humanity its
temporal possibilities. How this bestowal occurs is a matter of prehistory and the
subject of the second essay of the Genealogy, to which I now turn.

3. Economy, Futurity and Prehistoric Violence

For Nietzsche, we have seen, the proper analysis of morality requires that it
be articulated within a temporal framework of past and current costs and future
benefits. As such, the value of any conception of the good concerns its effect
on human futurity. The future, however, is not something that is simply given to
humankind. Futurity does not flow inexorably from an objective temporal order
within which humans just happen to be situated. Futurity does not precede hu-

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169

manity. Rather, the future was something that first had to be attained by it. This
attainment is linked in important ways to the development of human nature
before history, to the realm of prehistory that precedes the ancient conflict
between noble and slave outlined in the first essay of the Genealogy. That is why
the real problem of humankind (GM II, 1) is, for Nietzsche, a prehistoric problem. It is the problem as to how humans ended up being able to make promises
an ability that distinguishes us from all other animals. For Nietzsche, the key to
this riddle lies in the insight that prehistory, as a mode of temporality, is tied into
economy. Nietzsches commitment to this view is shown by the fact that when it
comes to constructing a story explaining how we came to be the promising animal he once again deploys a language of costs and benefits.
Our ability to make promises is an endowment, i. e. the consequence of a
considerable, long-term prehistoric investment. A specific kind of memory is
presupposed by promising: a way of thinking that can draw distinctions between
past undertakings, present situations and future states. There must be a subject
that remembers in such a way that he or she feels obligated by the act of promising. A memory of this kind is not given by simply having a nature that is
human drop out of the sky fully formed. Rather, such a memory is made; it is
an achievement. The feeling of obligation presupposes a subject who has an active
desire not to let go of the moral imperatives taught them. The phrase prehistoric era therefore denotes the period of the actual labour [Arbeit ] of man
upon himself during the longest epoch of the human race, his whole labour before history (GM II, 2). One should note the economic references at work here.
Even prior to history man is already a labourer. To be human is always already to be
a creature whose identity is inextricably bound up with a world of work. Work
stands at the point of emergence of the human race and its original work consists
in the (unconscious) manufacturing of its own identity. What this labour involved is equally significant. Unrelenting pain and suffering were the tools used
to create in the individuated communal being (now a debtor) the memory
required to suppress actions detrimental to the survival of the communal body
(the creditor) (GM II, 3). This prehistoric economy is an economy of violence enacted in a primeval workplace. Members of the prehistoric social body learned to
observe imperatives on the basis of costs and benefits. The benefit of communal
life is security, its cost the unrestrained violence turned on the individual who
threatens that security. Such horror, Nietzsche holds, is explained and justified
on a grand scale, for out of autochthonous violence comes human futurity. This
is because the ability to promise means nothing less than having control over
the future since one who promises is answerable for his own future ! (GM II,
1). A prehistoric economy of violence thereby bestows futurity upon humanity.
Only because of this violent economy does man become a temporal being and
only through the invention of temporality is he made responsible for himself.

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The logic of exchange this bestowal implies is not hard to extrapolate: futurity is a form of credit that is gained on our behalf at the cost of past agonies. Although there was no altruistic motive at work within our prehistoric forbears,
their necessary economy of violence became the unconscious force which was to
forge the human soul, coining its dual nature, debased and yet gleaming with potential for future splendour:
[M]an must first have learnt to distinguish between what happens by accident and
what by design, to think causally, to view the future as the present and anticipate it,
to grasp with certainty what is end and what is means, in all, to be able to calculate
and compute and before he can do this, man himself will really have to become
reliable, regular, automatic [nothwendig: necessary], even in his own self-image, so that he,
as someone making a promise, is answerable for his own future! (GM II, 2)

According to this account, right from the start human development exhibits
futurity: any individual is an individual only in so far as their behaviour will conform to certain persistent characteristics (i. e. be reliable, regular and automatic).
Human nature consists in the ability to calculate a world of future possibilities
purchased at the cost of primeval violence.

4. Violent Economy and the Prehistoric Origins of the Self: Creditor and Debtor
Out of prehistoric economy concepts are crystallised, selves are manufactured. No surprise, therefore, that the contractual relationship between creditor
and debtor (GM II, 4) is the most primitive personal relationship there is
(GM II, 8). Selves initially encounter one another on the basis of calculation:
here person met person for the first time, and measured himself person against
person (GM II, 8). A person discovers whom he or she is by finding how he or
she stands with regard to someone else. Identities are based on assessments of
like and unlike cases, on judgements that spring from the notion of equivalence
(GM II, 4). The primeval belief that a damage suffered has its equivalent in the
form of a penalty is central to the concept of personhood. We cannot think of
what it means to be human (an I) without thinking according to the terms engendered by this notion. The I exists only in so far as it must always stand in
relation to its Other, a you.18 The relation between self and Other is, in turn,
only possible in so far as both arise from a social world that is thinkable in terms
18

See Nietzsche, Friedrich: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London 2003. I, Of
Love of Ones Neighbour: The You is older than the I; the You has been consecrated, but
not yet the I: so man crowds towards his neighbour. The You, in other words, is already
a piece of social currency to speak in mercantile language whereas the I still awaits transformation into legal tender. The culture of the masses thus remains the dominant social force in
modern times.

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of possessions secured through the economic practices of defining, measuring,

and the like. I, in short, am my possessions rather than my private thoughts;
I is a concept produced within a web of economic practices.
Nietzsche elaborates these economic practices by way of mercantile imagery
again permeated with a sense of violence. Buying and selling in the prehistoric
market place, it is contended, formed the basis for the later development of abstract notions of individual accountability (GM II, 5). The debtor had to guarantee the promise. Failure to repay the debt brought a forfeit. The I, understood
as its possessions (including its body) was subject to the demands of the creditor
or, alternatively, staked its claim over the Other as a creditor. From such a standpoint, I exist to the extent that I have power over the Other, or to the degree
that the Other has power over me a power traditionally expressed in the creditors right to make the debtor suffer. A dominant mode of interpretation is revealed in this way: one believes that one suffers because one has done something
wrong, because one is responsible to an individuated Other. This sense of responsibility is the basis of all relationships. Violent economy, in other words, is the
basic condition of civilisation,19 a condition that extends into the prehistoric origins of civil and political society and the modes of subjectivity associated with
them.
5. Self-Consciousness, Bad Conscience and Futurity
Nietzsches account of the origins of civil society is straightforward enough.
Constituted initially through communal violence, the subject is subsequently reconstituted as a specifically political being by the further violence of colonisation.
At some juncture in the shrouded world of prehistory primitive human populations living according to the dictates of the creditor-debtor relationship were
invaded by some pack of blond beasts, a conqueror and master race, and subordinated by them (GM II, 17). Out of the desire of these artists of violence and
organizers to extend their power the rudimentary form of the state was born.20
In this way, the oldest state that emerged was a colonial tyranny that worked
on the raw material of a communal humanity that was half-animal until it rendered it not just kneaded and compliant, but shaped . The creditor-debtor relationship, a relationship older even than the beginnings of any social form of organization or association (GM II, 8), was in this way reinterpreted through the
imposition of formalised (i. e. legal) social order.
19

20

Even our ability to think, the basis of all culture, is inextricably linked to the creditor-debtor
relationship (GM II, 8). As Hillard puts it, exchange is culture (Hillard: History, op. cit., p. 44).
Civil society and state hence began with an act of violent oppression. Contra Leiter, it is plain
that Nietzsche does here offer a theory of the origins of civil society and legality.

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From its communal beginnings to its formalisation in the civil realm,

Nietzsches self-avowedly speculative (GM II, 6) prehistoric narrative envisages society as being constituted through economies of pain. At every step in
this narrative we see a subjectivity emerging that is shaped by violent economic
procedures. This violent articulation of subjectivity creates the terrible consequence that self-understanding is essentially linked to suffering. A subjectivity
created in this way is not simply susceptible to enduring the imposition of social
regulation as if beset by something that is relentlessly external to it. Social regulation penetrates deeply into the subject, so much so that such regulation is in
part constitutive of subjectivity, since the demands of social life pattern the self s
relationship to its own bodily desires and inclinations. This would not be a problem if all these desires were themselves social, but they are not. Although subsequently restricted by communal mores, like any other animal the primitive
human was once used to acting on instinct. Under the yoke of subjugation, our
now socialised and formalised primitive forbears were obliged to curtail these instincts to a degree hitherto unknown, with the consequence that consciousness
replaced instinct as the basis of action and judgement (GM II, 16).
The new domination of consciousness forced the instincts to find new paths
to discharge themselves. These paths lead to the violent redistribution of drives
now channelled by political forces.21 Under such circumstances the economy
of violence is turned against the very subject who is enacted through it: obliged
to exist within a straightjacket of formalised conventions and customs, man
impatiently ripped himself apart, persecuted himself, gnawed at himself [].
Socialised, formalised and legalised man is, in other words, spontaneously
masochistic.22 Such violence is nevertheless productive. An inner world is thereby
created: man suffering from himself creates the bad conscience as a consequence of a forcible breach with his animal past, a simultaneous leap and
fall into new situations and conditions of existence, a declaration of war against
all the old instincts. This event is momentous, for with it humanity ceases to
be as one with the rest of the animal kingdom.23 Political subjugation, it follows,
21
22

23

This is what Nietzsche refers to as the internalization of man (GM II, 16).
Such masochistic violence is not merely a matter of thought; it is a matter of action: Moral selfknowledge [] is not simply contemplation. Man does not merely turn toward himself, he turns
against himself. Nietzsches genealogy of the conscience tries to make this clear. Mller-Lauter,
Wolfgang: Nietzsche. His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy. Trans. David J. Parent. Urbana, Chicago, Il. 1999, p. 37.
It is worth pointing out here that my reading differs from that offered by David Owen. See,
Owen, David: Is There a Doctrine of the Will to Power? In: International Studies in Philosophy,
32/3 (2000), p. 100. According to Owen, the blond beasts that initiate state-formation []
are already themselves subject to bad conscience. This is because the pack of invaders who
Nietzsche holds responsible for bad conscience must, in order to subjugate a community,
already be able to make promises. Owen cites Aaron Ridley to make his point: [T]he basic form
of imposing a custom, after all, must be Do this, or else (a threat, a promise). And this means

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was the key to prompting the development of a new and decisive importance
for consciousness. Political subjugation, in other words, is what gave rise to
subjectivity in the sense that we now understand it: as a consciousness capable
of dwelling on its own inner world, of reflecting, criticising, imagining, and creating.
With the invention of bad conscience humankind now suffered from itself
(GM II, 18). But the meaning of such suffering is, for Nietzsche, active24 and

24

that the imposer of customs must himself have a memory of the will and have become calculable,
which in turn means that he must have been subjected to custom and punishment (Ridley,
Aaron: Nietzsches Conscience. In: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 11 (Spring 1996), p. 3). However, one should note that for Nietzsche punishment and bad conscience are not intrinsically
linked. As he says in GM II, 14, one thing punishing does not do, as is often supposed, is to make
the wrongdoer feel guilty. On the contrary, the evolution of a feeling of guilt was most strongly
impeded through punishment. Hence, Bad conscience, the most uncanny and interesting plant
of our earthly vegetation, did not grow in this soil []. On the interpretation offered here, one
should add, the problem to which Owen, via Ridley, alludes does not arise. As GM II, 14 implies,
a subjectivity constituted through communal customs and punishments does not of itself engender bad conscience. Custom and punishment give rise to a subject capable of promising. But
promising in this sense does not presuppose the kind of self-reflexive guilt that characterises bad
conscience. Rather, bad conscience originates in the subsequent refashioning of subjectivity that
occurs through the formalisation of social relationships: it presupposes an imposition of power
subsequently codified in the form of the state and legality that one community of promisers
brings to bear on another. In this regard, one could draw a distinction between the effects of
internal and external modes of subjugation. As a member of a community one is a promiser
to the extent that the practices constitutive of personhood are intrinsic to ones community. The
customs one observes and the punishments one may be obliged to accept for wrongdoing do
not originate in something extrinsic to the communal field of social relations. The wrongdoer, in
this sense, is a victim of how things are in so far as how things are is how we do things here.
To be subordinated by those from another community, however, implies the emergence of a different relation between personhood and social order. In this case, social order takes on the appearance of something relentlessly external. The Self-Other relationship of creditor and debtor is
now restructured by the superior power of a third party, an other that does not do things the way
we do them, but impels us to do things the way they oblige us to for example, to petition
in their language rather than the one spoken in the community.
I use the occurrence of the word active here to raise a point concerning Gilles Deleuzes interpretation of Nietzsche. Deleuze makes much of the dichotomy between active and reactive primordial qualities of force. This dichotomy, he argues, is important for understanding the
nature of consciousness, abstract thought and habit: Consciousness [for Nietzsche] merely expresses the relation of certain reactive forces to the active forces which dominate them. Consciousness is essentially reactive []. And what is said of consciousness must also be said of
memory and habit []. What happens is that science follows the paths of consciousness, relying
entirely on other reactive forces; the organism is always seen from the petty side, from the side of
its reactions (Deleuze, Gilles: Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. London
1983, p. 41). If the reading I am offering here is convincing, then this observation is problematic
in at least two ways. First, Nietzsche, we have seen, argues that consciousness arises from a long
prehistory that begins with a moral memory first springing from a violent economy of habits
(i. e. practices: the morality of custom). In the primitive community, it is the reactive social demand for survival that gives rise to practices that in turn constitute the subject as a promiser.
This fashioning of the subject in its own turn implants the potential for the higher self-consciousness that is realised in the aftermath of (active) colonial intervention (GM II, 17). Speak-

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positive: it creates an inner realm of meaning, imagination and beauty as a means

of compensating for the inability of the drives to express themselves externally.
Likewise, selflessness, self-denial and self-sacrifice all belong to this realm and
emerge from this condition. In other words, the instincts, as Nietzsche calls
them in the preface to the Genealogy, associated most closely with Christian
morality are on his own account produced by social forces. Bad conscience is an
expression of humanity suffering from itself as a result of being compelled to inhabit a formalised and regulated world. Bad conscience is expressed in nausea,
the feeling of disgust at ones own embodied humanity. As such, it is a sickness
[] but a sickness rather like pregnancy (GM II, 19). As the metaphor of pregnancy implies this suffering is a prelude to the future. It, too, exemplifies economy since it represents a kind of investment: prehistoric suffering accrues credit
in the form of future potential. Out of the sickness of bad conscience the conscience that characterises the self-understanding of sovereign individuality is
born.25 At the same time, however, bad conscience is replete with another and
very different potentiality that is capable of blocking the workings of economy
and hence undermining futurity.

25

ing like Deleuze, we are thereby presented with a reactive series (survival-habit-promisingconsciousness) that operates without any reference to an active element. With regard to this
last point, one should note that even the active colonising forces that later gave rise to the internalisation of man must themselves have been produced by the same reactive series in order
to first be rendered a community of promisers. Deleuze might, of course, counter that the active
element is always already there in the shape of the body: The bodys active forces make it a self
and define the self as superior and astonishing (ibid, p. 42). However, this presupposes that it is
possible to summarise what a body is by speaking purely in terms of its active components.
Necessarily, bodies are also reactive. The second problem concerns the significance of consciousness for Nietzsche. What Deleuze refers to as the petty and reactive element of consciousness is something of great import for Nietzsche. The sovereign individual, after all, is characterised not so much by unconscious activity as by the confident consciousness engendered by
self-possession. For the sovereign individual promising is a second instinct, but it is the awareness that this engenders (the kind of consciousness) that Nietzsche values. The story the Genealogy tells, in other words, is one wherein consciousness is envisaged as passing through stages: to
start with it looks constituted (reactive), but subsequently, and especially with regard to the
sovereign individual, it is constitutive of identity (active). The text of the Genealogy thus charts
a transformation of forces: the passage from reactive to active. This transformation, one might
add, is sketched out on the template of economy.
To be a sovereign individual is to have a self-image that is rooted in a sense of responsibility toward oneself, to be ones own master. As such, the uniqueness of the sovereign individual amply
justifies the conditions that gave rise to it by escaping from them (GM II, 2). In this way, the prehistoric imposition of uniformity is interpreted as the necessary precondition of the individuality
that signals its negation, and does so with a seemingly organic inevitability, as is witnessed by
Nietzsches choice of metaphor when he discusses this: the tree of violent imposition bears
the fruit of emancipation from external compulsion. As Stegmaier notes (Stegmaier: Nietzsches Genealogie, op. cit., p. 149) the sovereign individual needs the social straightjacket in
order to become what he or she is.

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6. Economy Blocked: Christian Self-Consciousness as Self-Loathing

Bad conscience may be a kind of pregnancy, but pregnancies can go wrong.
The sickness of bad conscience is prone to become interminable. This, for
Nietzsche, occurred when the creditor-debtor relationship was for a second
time transformed through interpretation. This new interpretation concerns
the perceived relationship between present and past generations in a tribe. Here,
the living generation always acknowledged a legal obligation towards the earlier
generation, especially to the founders of the tribe. This is expressed in the belief
that the tribe exists only because of the sacrifices and deeds of the forefathers,
who continue to exist as mighty spirits. These sacrifices must be compensated
for by further sacrifice. Belief in the gods, it follows, originates in fear of indebtedness to the ancestor. One is successful because the gods are favourable
and one is thereby indebted to them; this is the basis of the feeling of guilt. The
maximal god yet achieved, Nietzsche tells us, is the Christian God (GM II, 20).
Unsurprisingly, therefore, the God of Christianity brought with it the greatest
feeling of guilt on earth. Guilt conjoined with religious presuppositions is a
deadly mixture. Feelings of duty and indebtedness are moralised, bad conscience
becomes permeated with religious feeling and the possibility of paying off
debts, a central feature of the development of bad conscience, is circumvented
(GM II, 21). The rendering of concepts of guilt and duty in moral terms represents a retroactive step in which the economy of meaning, of compensation
through equivalence, that flows from the creditor-debtor relationship is turned
back on itself.
With the conjoining of the concepts of bad conscience and God the possibility of paying off the debt is permanently forestalled. The individual is rendered
eternally in debt, eternally guilty, born into a state of sin that cannot be overcome
and condemned to eternal suffering. In the end, the creditor, too, becomes
enmeshed within this aporia. The progenitor of humanity, the ancestor, is now
the source of a curse: Adam commits the act of original sin. Alternatively,
the natural world or existence in general comes to be regarded as inherently
worthless or even evil. That it finds a means of relieving the suffering created by
the diabolization of creditor-ancestor or nature is Christianitys stroke of genius: God sacrifices himself for guilty humanity. A will to self-torture is revealed
(GM II, 22). Unable to allow the natural drives their fullest expression the person of bad conscience turns to religious presuppositions in order to torment
himself: Guilt towards God: this thought becomes an instrument of torture.
In this way, the animal instincts become interpreted as evidence of sin, as the
embodiment of rebellion against the order of things. In this manifestation of
religious belief Nietzsche thinks that he has unearthed a sort of madness
wherein humanity wants to feel guilty and condemned without hope of re-

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prieve. We are faced with a humanity that exists in a state of eternal guilt where
the punishment itself is never equal to the crime, where the debt can never be annulled. The Christian concept of God becomes in this way susceptible to being
interpreted as symptomatic of the dominance of a desire to feel worthless. This
desire engenders inactivity and the values that emanate from it reflect this by
placing the highest value on passivity and self-abnegation. Christian morality is
in this way rendered an expression of the human capacity to suffer from itself
transformed into its guiding purpose.
A humanity suffering in the manner just outlined suffers from the sickness
Nietzsche rails against at the outset of the Genealogy. Morality is the danger of
dangers because the desire that motivates it is no longer the desire for futurity
but for nothingness, for loss of self. Practices come to dominate that fashion a
self incapable of escaping from its animal nature yet simultaneously incapable of
being reconciled with it. Nietzsches account of prehistory thus ends up by identifying in Christian morality a moment wherein the economy of credit and debit
is retained but shorn of the essential notion of equivalence. Self-loathing now
becomes the prime virtue. Nothingness, in the shape of a purportedly better
afterlife, becomes the prime goal. In effect, this signals an interruption of the
prehistoric economy that endowed humanity with its futurity. For, the desire to
escape from our bodily nature is ultimately no more than the socially created desire to escape from what we are. Christian values and the practices that characterise it sanctify this desire. Their significance resides in their being an expression of this desires will to mastery in a naturalised and illusory form. The
good man is the goal of this form of desire. He represents the outcome of a
sustained attempt to interpret personhood in negative terms and, through interpreting it, to fashion it according to these terms.

7. The Political Terrain of Violent Economy

Leiter has commented that what Nietzsche values above all else is precisely
what the marketplace of politics violates [since] great things (and great people)
are to be found far from the realms of politics and economics.26 This is, at best,
a half-truth at worst misleading. It is certainly the case that Nietzsche is consistently critical of the politics of his time. This is the politics of a by now burgeoning liberalism that understands democracy in terms of the satisfactions the
marketplace can provide for a mass culture where individualism means conforming to a norm far removed from the I of sovereign individuality. In such
a world, what is consecrated as the I is the You presented in illusory form
26

Leiter: Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 296.

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a being akin to Heideggers concept of the they-self .27 This is where the halftruth mentioned lies. At the same time, Nietzsche in no way turns his back on the
realms of politics, economics, or the market. As we have seen, in the Genealogy the
conditions out of which individual sovereignty emerges are themselves possible
only in virtue of the violent economic practices that characterise the prehistoric
marketplace. Indeed, such practices taken together are, for Nietzsche, the essential precondition of temporality and hence of humanity having any future possible greatness whatsoever. Given the essential violence of economy, to write
as Leiter does of politics violating the purity of a noble Nietzschean vision of
greatness pertains to an unintentional irony. To call politics a violation of
Nietzsches highest hope is to condemn the very means whereby this hope itself
is made possible. To put it another way, the concept of violation is a central
one in Nietzsches methodological arsenal. The colonial violation that, for
Nietzsche, initiates politics (the realm of state and law) is the unconscious act
that leads to bad conscience. Without bad conscience there is no inner realm of
the self, and without that there is no possible future greatness for humankind.
Politics and economics, therefore, are essential features of Nietzsches account
of the development of the human race. There is, in other words, a contrast to be
drawn between the politics Nietzsche condemns and the political vocabulary
he employs and values. Evidence of Nietzsches objecting to the politics of the
liberal-democratic market does not license the further misleading inference that
he condemns politics as such, or is a-political. Two responses to Nietzsches
achievement in the Genealogy are outlined below as a means of constructively
grasping the political potential of his thought. Both seek to think in terms of the
notion I have already employed of the political terrain of Nietzsches thought.
The first response is critical, the second more positive.

8. First Response
Nietzsches view of human potential, we have seen, is linked inexorably to
futurity. Futurity has its origins in an economy of equivalence and exchange.
Through violence, economy articulates a humanity capable of individual autonomy. In turn, the good man of Christian virtue is judged as wanting not by a
history patterned by conflict between competing interests, but by prehistory,
which is where these interests find their temporal precondition. This is because
the good man represents an undermining of the futurity that defines our nature. He is the betrayal of our endowment from prehistory, the regressive turning
27

See Heidegger, Martin: Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford
1980, pp. 68, 163ff.

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away from the freedom of the sovereign individual. However, the notion of prehistory that the Genealogy deploys in order to criticise Christian morality should
give us pause. If morality stands judged by prehistory then it is called to account
on the basis of a narrative of human development that is, as we have already
noted, on Nietzsches own admission a matter of conjecture.28 The development
of an economy of violence is a thought experiment. It also has a persuasive
power because the prehistory it aims to account for is developed into a narrative.
Stories, however fictitious, always pertain to the possibility of such power.
Philosophers, of course, have always found themselves obliged to tell stories
of one kind or another. In Nietzsches there is an inextricable link between
how humans became what they are, coercive economic practices and the abstract
conceptions of equivalence, exchange, credit and debit, that flow from these
practices. In effect, this means that the concept of economy operates in the
Genealogy as an interpretative tool allowing an array of notions relating to
humanity (instinct, community, self , society, law, and state) to be
conjoined through the invocation of a pattern that is claimed to be common to
them all. In this way, the logic of equivalence and exchange is envisaged as
fashioning a personhood that is grasped in terms of obligations entailed by
material possessions. Subjectivity thereby emerges in the wake of economy as
the embodiment of a primitive and violent distribution of property. The notion
of economy thus serves to naturalise an inherent violence engendered by possession. Possession constitutes the terms in which human relations are formulated in the primitive community. It also underlies the development of society,
legality, state, and the further transformations and refinements of the individual
through colonisation. Such developments are, at the same time, situated by
Nietzsche within a narrative that is guided by the notion of the possibility of
human perfectibility understood as individual autonomy. The highest expression
of subjectivity, in other words, is self-possession. Violent economy, in this sense,
teeters on the verge of becoming a godless theodicy. It justifies the violent and
possessive prehistory of humanity through invoking the as yet unfulfilled potential of its futurity.
In Nietzsches account of prehistory the initial and violent distribution of
property which gives rise to humanity is the condition in virtue of which all
meaning is rendered possible. Economic practices are envisaged as the persistent
feature of all forms of human life: no level of civilisation, Nietzsche tells us, has
ever been discovered that does not exhibit the economic relationship (GM II, 8).
The becoming of community, self, society, ethics, politics, and state is governed
by the rule of economy. It is the transcendental precondition of historical and
28

What Nietzsche has spoken of must, he says, be a matter of thoughtful guesswork since it concerns what is concealed and such subterranean things are difficult to fathom out (GM II, 6).

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cultural diversity. However, in resorting to the notion of an economy whose

animal violence frames and thereby escapes the domain of history Nietzsche
naturalises historical conflict in all its possible forms. The violence engendered
by prehistory now stands as the timeless, but hitherto forgotten, condition of
human endeavour. It is a violence that frames those centuries before the history
of mankind (GM II, 14) as the genuine and decisive historical period which
determined mans character (GM II, 9). At the same time, however, it exists at
all times or could possibly re-occur (GM II, 9). Violence, in other words, is universal. Violence delivers humankind into temporality, but in doing so it creates
its own specific debit structure: the original violence that characterises human
becoming leaves us eternally susceptible to being returned to it. Violence abides
not only as the condition of the human past but of the future, too. Violent economy is therefore the prerequisite of a properly human existence. Becoming, animal nature and economy stand outside history, while the moralistic philosophies
of being that are formulated within that history now stand open to the charge of
forgetting and eliding the animal nature from which they emerged.
The economy of violence Nietzsche narrates falls prey to the threat of becoming pure mythology. Mythology, one should remember, means both the
exposition of myth and the construction of a fictional discourse in the form of a
parable or allegory. The Genealogy deals in mythology in both these senses. On
the one hand, it seeks to dispel what is asserted to be the specifically Christian
mythology. It seeks to achieve the disenchantment of Christian values by revealing them as a body of practices symptomatic of a specific and narrow conception
of interest intent on denying our violent animal origins. On the other hand, however, the very exposure of this mythology brings with it a demand that must
be satisfied. If the disenchantment of myth is to be successful one must offer
in its place something else to authorise it. It is here that the Genealogy threatens
to cease to be a text of disenchantment and become, instead, one of enchantment. In invoking the notion of future individual autonomy as the fulfilment of
our prehistoric beginnings, Nietzsche seeks to persuade us that a court of judgement fit to assess Christian morality is possible.29 The logic of costs and benefits
that gave rise to the human soul becomes the means of standing in judgement
over the products of that soul. The reader is, in effect, expected to suspend
judgement concerning the legitimacy of the economic notions themselves. Disenchantment with Christianity is achieved at the expense of enchantment with
violent economy.

29

Recall here that Nietzsches question is: in so far as we are moral do we live with a view to
the future or do we live at its expense? In other words, do we live according to the dictates that
established our nature or have we failed to do so?

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Such enchantment necessitates suspending a political question concerning

economy itself. The question is simply: is the notion of economy that Nietzsche
deploys susceptible to, and has it even perhaps been a symptom of, activities of
reinterpretation beyond his control. Nietzsche must suppress this question if the
Genealogys economic narrative is to be allowed to do its work. In order to generate concepts like temporality, human nature, the subject, and in turn history, the
meaning of economy must exist independently of these spheres. Nietzsche needs
to ignore the possibility that, rather than being a purely prehistoric precondition
of human development, the economy of violence deployed in the Genealogy
might be tainted by forces associated with a narrower historical and political
field. When, in the Genealogys third essay, Nietzsche characterises of our whole
modern existence (GM III, 9) as manifesting a contradiction between avowed
Christian piety and actual hubris he points, however vaguely, in direction of this
field. In whatever way we moderns might like to think of ourselves, Nietzsche
notes, life today is in reality nothing but hubris and godlessness, in so far as it
is strength and awareness of strength. Significantly, such strength is evident
in our attitude toward nature, which is assaulted with the help of machines and
the completely unscrupulous inventiveness of engineers and technicians. The
modern attitude to nature is, in short, one of economic exploitation. The violent
use of nature alluded to at this point in the text is not a matter of prehistoric import. The violence in question is a social phenomenon, something possible only
in virtue of the existence of a complex, technologically proficient society organised along economic lines. The logic of equivalence and exchange at work in the
background here need not be interpreted as a prehistoric phenomenon scarring the present. It is no less open to being read in political terms: as the contemporary manifestation of a specific form of social organisation. Here economy may point not so much toward the prehistoric past as to a current society
and culture that functions according to the dominance of economic practices
produced historically.
In simplest terms, the problem here is to be found in the absolute impossibility of extricating a primeval meaning from the concept of economy, i. e. a
meaning immune from recuperation according to the dictates of current social
demands. Any idea, including Nietzsches conception of economy, is socially and
hence politically mediated. In using the notion of economy as a means of elaborating the distant past of humanity and, in doing so, taking it to signify the conditions wherein humanity is bestowed with futurity, Nietzsche falls prey to assigning to an array of practices that dominate the present the status of timelessness.
The economy of violence presented in the form of a tale that concerns both the
origins of the human and its possibilities thereby projects modern practices into
past and future alike. As a projection of the present, any speculative narrative
of prehistory is prey to becoming a figural realm. The story of modern social

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conflict is retold as allegory. In Nietzsches case, the pasts noble and slave, creditor and debtor, are figural representations of todays possessors and possessed,
exploiters and exploited. To treat this allegory as if it concerns a primeval past is
to fall prey to thinking in mythical terms. It is to take a speculative narrative formulated in and out of the present as signifying something timeless and natural, to
find in the past the mirror image of the present and thereby legitimate it.
Someone intent on providing a defence of Nietzsche could reply to the
above criticisms by pointing out that the sovereign autonomy of the individual
he advocates in II, 10 of the Genealogy actually necessitates breaking from the
conditions that have endowed humanity with its future. The power of the sovereign individual is expressed though the self-sublimation of justice, i. e.
mercy. To show mercy is to be just in the most affirmative of senses in that
no compensation is demanded from the wrongdoer. Through sublimation the
most powerful man, like the society of great power, transforms the terms of
the economic relationship that served to make him or it possible by eschewing
revenge. A humanity of this kind is to be numbered amongst the highest
achievements. Paid for in advance, in prehistory, at the cost of suffering
beyond measure, mercy expresses Nietzsches conception of human perfectibility as the actual overcoming of the logic of equivalence, compensation and
revenge.
This vision of the overcoming of the logic of economy, however, points at
the same time to the limitations of that logic as an explanatory model. Economy
is overcome by the power of sublimation: justice ends like every good thing on
earth, by sublimating itself (GM II, 10). Sublimation, however, is not inherent in
economy and cannot be derived from it alone. The latter concerns only the practices of weighing and measuring that delimit the realms of society and subjectivity as spheres of possession. What sublimation represents is that within us which
resists economy, something that engenders the transformation of human
relations in new and unpredictable ways. If the credit-debit structure of justice
is sublimated this nevertheless occurs because of something other than itself.
Nietzsche understands this other in terms of power. To embody the greatest
possible power would be to transcend the bad feelings engendered by damage, to
show mercy through forgiveness because one is sufficiently strong to be forgiving. At that moment an essential characteristic and limitation of the economic relationship is thrown into relief by the Genealogy itself. The text argues that the supremely powerful society and individual alike overcome the logic of equivalence
and exchange through a refusal to understand value to be a matter of weighing
and measuring. Value, it turns out, is not simply a question of things as the economic relationship presupposes. In the economic relationship the polarity of Self
and Other, creditor-debtor, is secured in terms of things. The Others relation
to the I is that of a thing, of a body and its possessions whose thing-like nature

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signifies an instrumental value in so far as they are primarily grasped as a means

of satisfying the Is desire for domination. Mercy, however, is marked by the ability not to take the Other to signify a mere thing. Mercy shows us that we need not
be constrained by the economic relation. In so far as it does this, mercy also reveals that the economic relationship need not be the only one, that there are
modes of recognition and action that surpass it.
The question is does this other mode of relationship pertain to a status any
less primeval than that of the violent economy of prehistory that Nietzsche
privileges? Does the economic relationship itself perhaps presuppose another
form of relationship that, even if not prior to it, is coterminous with it? This
is not the place to go into this issue in any detail, but it is worth recalling that the
work of Emmanuel Levinas points in the direction of an economy of meaning
that finds in the Self-Other relation a mode of indebtedness that flows from
discourse rather than thing-hood.30 Transferring this to Nietzsches account,
we could say that the relationship between creditor and debtor presupposes
linguistic practices that do not merely involve weighing and measuring but,
amongst other things, moments of silence, pauses that establish all speech
as dialogue. Dialogue presupposes someone who speaks, who is like me: a
someone, not a something on the basis of which exchange is rendered possible. Such an approach does not eliminate questions of power and domination,
of conflicts of purpose, but it does tell us how practices inextricably linked
to domination might subvert themselves, how the mercy Nietzsche so values is
possible.
Is a politics of mercy perhaps the basis for a contemporary articulation of
Nietzsches political legacy? It is certainly the case that through mercy the limits
of economy are revealed in their starkest form. This of itself indicates the inevitable dimension of political economy that the Genealogy must inhabit, ruminate
upon and deploy in order to construct a critique of its own times. The political
terrain of Nietzsches thought, in other words, is the very domain he sometimes expresses the deepest wish to escape from, the domain of the everyday,
the apparently petty, small and mean things which he so often also reminds us
lie at the bottom of our highest ideals. A properly critical reading of the Genealogy is driven to reflect upon what the text shows as much as what it says. The
arguments already raised in this section are intended to demonstrate this last
point: the terrain of the politics of Nietzsches genealogical investigation is
necessarily staked out in terms of economically determined patterns derived
from the very social order he wishes to criticise. Although this indicates the
potential danger of prehistory recoiling into mythology in Nietzsches text, this

30

See Levinas, Emmanuel: Totality and Infinity. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh 1998.

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183

possibility does not of itself exhaust the question of the politics of Nietzsches
thought. It does, however, indicate that in Nietzsches philosophy political
categories, such as civil society, state and subjectivity, are tied to the notion of
violent economy. Thinking about Nietzsche and politics, in other words,
involves at some point thinking about economy and its limits. Bearing this in
mind, in what follows, I consider briefly a further argument concerning the
political value of Nietzsches philosophy.

9. Second Response
For the purposes of this paper I have, up to this point, confined myself to the
Genealogy alone. The reason for this was to bring the issues of economy, violence
and temporality to the fore, and to show how, taken together, they constitute
a politically charged space without which Nietzsches criticisms of Christian
morality and his account of human development would not be possible. An
awareness of the central role these notions play in Nietzsches critical discourse
is necessary for any consideration of the politics of his thought, especially
bearing in mind the, for some irresistible, temptation to derive a politics from
the concept of genealogy. The presence of these notions also indicates that
any thorough account of Nietzsches philosophy will at some point be obliged to
engage with its political register.
That said, when it comes to human futurity, at least, the Genealogy also points
beyond itself. Take, for example, Nietzsches discussion of the man of the future.
Such a being redeems humanity from the dominance of old ideals and the nihilism that arises from them. As opposed to the good man, the man of the
future [] gives the earth purpose and man his hope again [] he must come one
day (GM II, 24). Rhetorically, the text transforms a hope into a necessity: the
desire for purpose slips into a demand concerning what must be the case. If the
reference to earth were not enough to remind us, the next section of the Genealogy confirms where the satisfaction of such a demand might lie. Nietzsche
points us to another work of his own: the future belongs to another, younger
man, one with more future, one stronger than me something to which Zarathustra alone is entitled [] (GM II, 25). Reflecting the language of economy
that dominates the Genealogy, futurity itself is here rendered a possession, something that can be held like a piece of property. There is also the matter of entitlement to consider, of legitimacy, when it comes to who is the futures rightful possessor. But does Nietzsche therefore believe that giving purpose to the earth is a
matter resolvable purely in terms of mastery? Does entitlement here denote
nothing more than possession? Laurence Lampert has made the following interesting claim that is enlightening in this connection:

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Nietzsches politics lays claim to the past. It is the local politics of a good European
who affirms his European home as heir to Christianity and Greece, to hardness and
intellect. But that politics broadens out as this particular past makes possible the
recovery of the whole of the human and natural past; a local loyalty that expands into
loyalty to the earth. Nietzsches politics lays claim to the future. It is a global politics
that arose in Europe [] it spreads out as a future global politics of loyalty to the
earth, [an] ecological or green politics that has only begun to formulate its agenda
but that finds in Nietzsches thought a comprehensive means of affirming the earth.31

We come here to the question of grand politics. For Lampert, a Nietzschean

grand politics would be a global one that begins with an affirmation of the
environment, a politics that makes its progress through outlining an agenda
of value based upon love of the earth itself. The justification for this resides in
the fact that without such love futurity is impossible. In support of this, one can
note that if violent economy remains a constant within the narrative of the Genealogy so, too, do the notions of earth and embodiment. Economy would be
nothing without an environment in which development, conflict and violence
were enacted upon bodies. Affirmation of futurity, likewise, would be impossible
without the persistence of an environment that is worth affirming. That the
Genealogy itself invokes Zarathustra at the very least gives us leave to do the same
and recall, as Lampert does, that texts demand that we remain loyal to the
earth.32 Loyalty is not the same as possession. The earth, in the sense that we
might understand it here, cannot be possessed since it is the earth itself that is
presented as demanding our loyalty. This is not the place to pursue the task of
investigating the possibility of whether an alternative, and possibly complementary, economy might be at work in Thus Spoke Zarathustra;33 or whether a natural
economy can be found here capable of being synthesised with the Genealogys
violent economy in such a way as to deflect the criticisms I have raised in the previous section.34 It is, however, possible to follow Lampert and assert that in so
31

32

33

34

Lampert, Laurence: Nietzsche and Modern Times. A Study of Bacon, Descartes and Nietzsche.
New Haven, London 1993, p. 432.
Stay loyal to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! May your bestowing love and
your knowledge serve towards the meaning of the earth! [] Lead [] the flown away virtue
back to earth yes, back to body and life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning! [] Truly, the earth shall yet become a house of healing! (Z I, Of the Bestowing Virtue, 3).
The notion of self-possession that I have noted here is certainly detectable in Zarathustra.
As Volker Gerhardt has noted, Zarathustra wants new Law-Tables with new values that spring
from the self-legislation of free and self-possessing individuals. See Gerhardt, Volker: Selfgrounding: Nietzsches Morality of Individuality. Trans. Peter Poellner. In: The Future of the
New Nietzsche. Eds. Keith Ansell-Pearson and Howard Caygill. Aldershot 1993, p. 298.
Likewise, there is a question to address concerning the relationship between the economic terrain of the Genealogy and its relation to Nietzsches philosophical output as a whole. Stegmaier
(Nietzsches Genealogie, op. cit., chapter 2) has argued that the Genealogy illuminates aspects of
both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. Thus, for example, we can envisage the Gen-

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185

far as it is currently enacting possibly catastrophic damage on the environment,

global-capitalist economy increasingly takes on the form of a gross squandering
of human futurity. It certainly seems plausible to envisage a Nietzsche who
stands as a critic of this squandering. This would be a Nietzsche whose work
inspires us to question the hubris of modern economy by raising the question of
futurity. Although this approach may, like that of violent economy, have a role
in plotting the terrain of a Nietzschean politics, it does not follow that such a
politics would lead us back down the avenue of liberalism, or even to the affirmation of democracy. In the theory of violent economy Nietzsche formulates in
detail the kind of agonistic approach that, as we have seen Dombowski note,
does not sit comfortably with democratic practices and values. What Conway
has called the question of political legislation35 in Nietzsche cannot be addressed without reference to this economy.

35

ealogy as seeking to chart in persuasive terms the historical emergence of dominant morality
outlined only sketchily in parts of Beyond Good and Evil. The question as to how the concept of
economy operates in this latter text can thus further illuminate its role in the Genealogy. Likewise,
an understanding of the development of Nietzsches thought as a whole, exploring the notion of
economy as it is manifest at different levels, is probably essential for a more satisfying articulation of the concept in the Genealogy. Given that Nietzsches thought begins with Schopenhauer
and pessimism, subsequently embraces a positivistic engagement with the sciences, moves on to
emphasising concepts of practice, action, value, and will to power, and reaches its finale in the
unrestrained symptomatic period cut short by his mental collapse, it is likely that a highly complex articulation of economy would be unearthed in the pursuit of such a survey.
See footnote 3, above.

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Michael V. Ure

MICHAEL V. URE
STOIC COMEDIANS
NIETZSCHE AND FREUD ON THE ART OF ARRANGING
ONES HUMOURS1

Knowing ones individuality [Einzelheit ]. We forget too easily that in the eyes of people
who see us for the first time were something quite different from what we take ourselves to be usually nothing more than a single trait which strikes the eye and determines the whole impression. In this way, the gentlest and most reasonable person, if
he wears a big moustache, can sit in its shade and feel safe ordinary eyes will take
him to be the accessory of a big moustache, a military type, quick to fly off the handle,
sometimes even violent theyll behave themselves in his presence. (D 381)2

Friedrich Nietzsche here pokes fun at his own use of defensive masks, a joke
that turns not only on his willingness to tease himself, but on his characteristic
love of punning: his big moustache (Schnurrbart) becomes what it is: nothing
other than a funny tale (Schnurre). Nietzsche, then, makes light of his own defences in both senses of the phrase: he illuminates his defensive strategies and
reduces their weighty seriousness through comic relief. His gentle self-irony illustrates a positive, comic self-relation. This is not a Nietzsche we easily recognise. Nor is it a slant on becoming who one is that we readily identify as Nietzschean.
This paper presents Nietzsche, at least in his middle period, as a Stoic comedian. In order to explore Nietzsches comedy it first examines his account of the
psychological fuel of the raging fires that make us unjust and the analytic work
1

This research was undertaken with the generous financial assistance of the Landesstiftung BadenWrttemberg and the support of the Universitt Heidelberg. The inspiration for the title derives from
Montaignes brilliant distillation of Hellenistic and Stoic wisdom in his Essais. (I) learn
to arrange my humours, Montaigne writes, by reading the finest and most profitable parts
of Plutarch and Senecas work, especially the Epistulae Morales; see: Montaigne, Michel de:
Essays, II, 10, Of Books. In: The Complete Works of Montaigne. Transl. Donald Frame. London 1958.
Daybreak (D). Transl. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge 1985. Nietzsche perhaps recalls and illustrates here Schopenhauers observation that the comedy of life lies in the details: The life of
every individual [Einzelnen], viewed as a whole and in general [] is really a tragedy; but gone
through in detail [Einzelnen] it has the character of a comedy [] in the broad detail of life [we]
are inevitably the foolish characters of a comedy; see: Schopenhauer, Arthur: The World as Will
and Representation Volume 1. Transl. E. F. J. Payne. New York 1969, p. 322.

Stoic Comedians. Nietzsche and Freud on the Art of Arranging Ones Humours

187

on the self that might cool this spirit of vengeance (HAH 1, 637).3 It frames
Nietzsches analysis of the comedy of self by drawing on the psychoanalytic concept of narcissism.4 Section one explores Freuds analysis of one of the earliest
modulations of narcissism: viz., the incipient egos attempt to restore a phantasised condition of majestic plenitude. Freud suggests, as we shall see, that the
infantile ego accomplishes this phantasy through vengeful projection. For the
sake of explaining and clarifying Freuds psychology of revenge, the paper recalls
his famous vignette on the fort-da game, which he analyses as an infantile strategy
to establish an illusion of sovereignty. Freud shows that the rage for securing
this illusion is symptomatic of a fear which accompanies the discovery of the
independence of the other, the fear of annihilation.
The second section argues that Freuds analysis of the psychological connections between this first narcissistic wounding and vengeful projection illuminates Nietzsches critique of heroism. In this regard, it subverts the notion that
Nietzsche lionises pre-Platonic heroes and their manic, triumphant laughter in
the face of tragedy. Rather like Suetonius, the deadpan chronicler of the Emperors follies, and Seneca and Epictetus, Nietzsche satirises the overblown pathos
of heroism.5 In the middle period Nietzsche treats the hero as material fit only
3

Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits (HAH). Transl. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge
1986. Quotes from the two parts that Nietzsche added to the original version of Human, All
Too Human, Assorted Opinions and Maxims (HAH 2) and The Wanderer and His Shadow (WS), are also
taken from this source.
For the two most comprehensive treatments of the relationship between Nietzsche and Freud
see: Lehrer, Ronald: Nietzsches Presence in Freuds Life and Thought. On the Origins of a Psychology of Dynamic Unconscious Mental Functioning. Albany 1995; and Gasser, Reinhard:
Nietzsche und Freud. Berlin, New York 1997. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address all
of the salient philosophical and historical issues in this field; rather it attempts to enrich our
understanding of Nietzsches and Freuds conception of the art of the self and its therapeia, especially their shared understanding of dynamic psychological mechanisms. It also qualifies the
conventional view that, as Joel Whitebook expresses it, Freud tended to view narcissism in a
predominantly negative light as the opponent of object love and reality testing and as a source
of severe psychopathology. Rather it shows that Freud himself, like Nietzsche, gave us a more
differentiated picture of this thoroughly ambivalent phenomenon, a picture which, as we shall
see, stands out in relief in his theory of humour; see: Whitebook, Joel: Perversions and Utopia. A
Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. Cambridge 1995, p. 5.
By contrast, Mark Weeks argues that Nietzsche evinces an anxiety toward laughter because
it subverts his ethos of heroic vitalism and its grandly tragic Promethean striving. According
to Weeks, this anxiety leads Nietzsche to the rhetorical gambit of willing a new kind of
laughter, which Weeks rather loosely describes as mythical, transcendental, superhuman
and sacred. However, as we shall see below, it is erroneous to uncritically assume, as Weeks
appears to, that Nietzsche frames his account of laughter in terms of such heroic vitalism. Rather,
if the argument of this paper is correct, in the free-spirit trilogy Nietzsche develops his theory of
humour and its therapeutic function in the context of a very different ethical project: viz., the reclamation and renovation of Stoic moderation; see Weeks, Mark: Beyond a Joke. Nietzsche and the
Birth of Super-Laughter. In: The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 27 (2004), pp. 117, pp. 1, 56,
9, 11. Thomas H. Brobjer calls for a careful examination of Nietzsches whole relation to Stoicism
in his essay: Nietzsches Reading of Epictetus. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 429434.

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Michael V. Ure

for comedy. It demonstrates that he underpins this comic jesting through his
proto-psychoanalytic insights into the heros desperate attempt to use vengeance
as a means of securing a phantasy of omnipotence. In other words, Nietzsche
satirises the heros desire for the illusion of omnipotence as the exemplification
of an infantile method of salving the narcissistic wound.
In the final sections, the discussion of Nietzsches own use of satire opens
onto a broader consideration of his analysis of the psychological significance of
comedy and laughter. For Nietzsche laughter, jokes and humour are privileged
points of access for theorising the intrapsychic world. He maintains that conceptualising the self as a comic genre, or, more precisely, as a series of comic stratagems, can serve as a rich source of self-knowledge. Like other explosive pathos,
he uses laughter as a spy that can help to penetrate our psychic fortifications (see
HAH 2, 54).
This paper shows that Nietzsche analyses a series of comic stratagems as
sources from which we can learn more about the psychodynamics of narcissism.
In doing so, it suggests that he distinguishes between neurotic inflammations of
narcissism and a mature form of individualism that tempers and incorporates
the residues of narcissistic yearning into the work of self-composition and selfcomposure. In exploring the comedies of the soul, Nietzsche identifies three
comic stratagems which he conceptualises as expressions of different responses
to or treatments of narcissistic loss: manic laughter, melancholic humour, and
what he, along with Freud, considers the positive self-humouring of Stoicism.6
Finally, the paper examines what we might call, following Simon Critchley, comic
self-acknowledgement, and demonstrates that Nietzsche treats this as a sign of
mature individualism.7 In the middle period, therefore, Nietzsche understands
the wisdom of suffering to lie in comic, anti-heroic self-recognition of human
finitude.

Fort-Da: The First Revenge

A brief examination of the psychoanalytic account of projection can serve
as background for understanding Nietzsches critique of narcissistic object
relations. In his attempt to account for the genesis of the ego, Freud claims that
a primitive ego-form emerges once repeated experiences of a lack of immediate
6

For two more detailed attempts to place Nietzsches and Freuds notion of the work of the self in
the context of the Hellenistic traditions of therapy see: Gdde, Gnter: Die antike Therapeutik
als Gemeinsamer Bezugpunkt fr Nietzsche und Freud. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003),
pp. 206 225; and Ure, Michael: The Ethics of Self-Cultivation: Nietzsches Middle Works. PhD
dissertation. University of Melbourne, Australia 2004.
Critchley, Simon: Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity. London 1999, p. 235.

Stoic Comedians. Nietzsche and Freud on the Art of Arranging Ones Humours

189

gratification upset the infants state of primary narcissism or symbiotic fusion

with the mother.8 Only its enforced exile from symbiotic fusion, and with it the
loss of the feeling of narcissistic plenitude, compels the human creature to begin
differentiating between itself and the world, between inside and outside. Freud
calls the psychical agent that negotiates the transition from fusion to separation,
from oceanic plenitude to terra firma, the pleasure-ego.9 Even though the
pleasure-ego must negotiate this blow to infantile narcissism, he suggests, it
nevertheless remains enthralled by the promise of blissful submersion; it is still
seduced by the sirens music, so to speak. In its earliest incarnation, therefore, the
ego attempts to find substitutive means for satisfying the desire for the lost state
of primary narcissism. Its first strategy is to draw the boundaries between itself
and the outside in such a fashion that it retains a feeling of narcissistic plenitude.
It does so by projecting, or literally throwing out, all internal sources of unpleasure into the external world and incorporating or devouring the external sources
of pleasure. The original pleasure-ego Freud writes wants to introject into
itself everything that is good and to eject from itself everything that is bad.10
Projection is thus the egos primordial defence mechanism for restoring
something of the feeling of plenitude that its discovery of the independence of
the object world compels it to abandon. While Freud acknowledges that the
boundaries between inside and outside established by the pleasure egos projections and introjections cannot escape rectification through experience, he believes that the mechanism of projection continues to be active as a means through
which the ego seeks to relieve itself of intolerable internal anxieties.11 Projection
is not just a symptom of pathological paranoia, according to Freud, since it also
appears under other psychological conditions. When we refer the causes of certain sensations to the external world, instead of looking for them [] inside ourselves he writes this normal proceeding, too, deserves to be called projection.12 This mechanism, he suggests, allows the ego to defend itself against an
internal anxiety as though it came from the outside, or from the direction of a
perception. Projection is an attempt to transform an internal anxiety, which the
8

10

11
12

On the contemporary debate in psychoanalysis and social theory about the paradoxical nature of
the primal psychical situation as both monadic and symbiotic, or a dual unity to use Mahlers
formulation, see: Mahler, Margaret et. al.: The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation. New York 1975, p. 55; and Whitebook, Joel: Mutual Recognition and
the Work of the Negative. In: Rehg, William / Bohman, James (eds.): Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn. The Transformation of Critical Theory. Essays in Honor of James McCarthy. Cambrige, Mass. 2001, pp. 110 145.
Freud, Sigmund: Civilization and its Discontents. Transl. Joan Riviere. London 1975, p. 4. Hereafter cited CD followed by the relevant page number.
Freud, Sigmund: On Negation. In: On Metapsychology. The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Transl.
James Strachey. London 1991, p. 439.
CD, p. 4.
Freud, Sigmund: Schreber. In: Case Histories II. Transl. James Strachey. London 1990, p. 204.

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Michael V. Ure

ego is powerless to prevent or to shield itself from, into an external object

against which it can defend itself. [I]nternal excitations which produce too great
an increase in unpleasure, he contends, are treated as though they were acting
not from inside, but from outside, so that it may be possible to bring the shield
against stimuli into operation as a means of defence against them.13 In the case
of a phobia, for example, an external object takes the place of an internal anxiety,
and the ego can thus react against this external danger with attempts at flight by
phobic avoidances.14
Freud conceives projection as one of the means through which the ego can
repeat in relation to the phobic object what he see as its original relation to the
world: viz., the attempt to flee or annihilate the external world with its overwhelming emission of stimuli.15 However, by attempting to maintain itself as a site of
pure pleasure through projection, Freud observes, the ego ultimately only succeeds in creating for itself a strange and threatening outside.16 It is, in short, a
neurotic or pathological solution to the difficulties posed by internally driven
anxieties. The projective defence-mechanism not only fails to dissolve or cure
the anxieties it sought to fend off, it recreates them in new and insidious forms.
In this way, Freud argues, projection can be seen as the starting-point of important pathological disturbances.17
Freud addresses the psychological issue of regaining the pleasure of omnipotence through projection in his famous vignette on the fort-da game. His little allegory affords a compelling insight into the psychological structure that underpins Nietzsches critique of the vengefulness that springs from wounded
narcissism. A brief examination of Freuds analysis of the fort-da game can therefore serve to illuminate the structure of the childish vengeance which Nietzsche
identifies as the core of the heroic ethos.18
13

14

15

16
17
18

Freud, Sigmund: Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Transl. James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology.
The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 275 338, p. 301. Hereafter cited BPP followed
by the relevant page number.
Freud, Sigmund: The Unconscious. Transl. James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology: The Theory
of Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 167 222, p. 187.
Freud, Sigmund: Instincts and their Vicissitudes. Transl. James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology. The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 113 138, pp. 134 135.
CD, p. 4.
CD, p. 5; see also: BPP, p. 301.
Henry Staten rightly claims the idea of vengeance illustrated by the fort-da game stands at the
centre of (Nietzsches) world explication. However, contra Staten, this paper argues that far from
being complicit in the vengeful strategies of reclaiming the illusion of narcissistic omnipotence,
Nietzsches notion of the work of the self on itself entails acknowledging the immaturity of this
project of omnipotence. Nietzsches acute critique of infantile narcissism and its stratagems escapes Staten, as we shall see below, for two reasons: not only does he fail to adequately address
the middle works, he also misses the ironic tone in Nietzsches analysis of heroism. Indeed,
Staten makes the astonishing claim that despite what is constantly said about him, (Nietzsche) is
in some very deep sense incapable of irony; see: Staten, Henry: Nietzsches Voice. Ithaca 1990, p. 45,

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191

In the fort-da (gone-there) game, Freud speculates, the infant derives a yield of
pleasure from becoming active in relation to a situation in which he was formerly
passive: the situation of his dependence on his mother for his feeling of selfpresence. According to Freud, the fort-da game, which consists in throwing away
a spool and making it disappear (fort) and reeling it back into view (da), is the
infants imaginary act of vengeance on his mother for going away from him and
the painful feeling of impotence and annihilation that her departure arouses in
him. Through this game, he argues, the child reverses the balance of power between himself and his mother: in fantasy he becomes the active, powerful subject, capable of tossing away and annihilating the mother, and she becomes the
needy, dependent child suffering the pain of being cast into oblivion. On the
plane of phantasy, then, the child uses the fort-da game as a means of compensating himself for the pain of separation and the terrifying discovery of his impotence, and he does so by vengefully inflicting on a symbolic substitute the same
kind of suffering he experiences when his mothers absence threatens him with
annihilation.
Projection is thus central to the Spiel : the infant projects his own needy, dependent self and its painful feelings of loss and separation into an object, and
then vengefully assumes the role of the powerful master who causes the object
to suffer by making it disappear. Freud captures the essence of the vengeful
strategy for regaining the illusion of omnipotence in the infants use of projection to assuage its loss through the imaginary transfer of its pain and impotence
to another. He sees this vengeful artifice at work in many games where the child
creates a Spiel that re-enacts his sufferings, but in doing so makes himself the
master and the other the victim: As the child passes over from the passivity of
the experience to the activity of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experience to one
of his playmates and in this way revenges himself on a substitute.19 If Freud is right, it
is the infantile inability to bear separation and impotence that makes seeing or
arousing suffering in others so addictively pleasurable for human beings, for it is
this vengeance which enables us to assuage our profound fear of annihilation,
rooted in our earliest condition of infantile dependence. Vengeance soothes our
fear of annihilation by restoring to us an illusory feeling of magical omnipotence.

19

emphasis added. Ernst Behler, in stark contrast, and much more plausibly, suggests that because
of his theory of language and his concern for an artistry of living Nietzsche makes irony integral
to his philosophical discourse. Behler sums up the significance of irony in Nietzsches philosophic discourse thus: [I]ronic dissimulation, configurative thinking and writing, double-edged
communication and the artistry of living and philosophising were his response to the irony of
the world; Behler, Ernst: Nietzsches Conception of Irony. In: Kemal, Salim / Gaskell, Ivan /
Conway, Daniel W. (eds.): Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge 1998, p. 33.
BPP, pp. 286 87, emphasis added. In this passage I follow Freud in using the masculine pronoun.

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Infantile Heroes
The human thing in itself . The most vulnerable and yet the most unconquerable
is human vanity: indeed, its strength increases, and in the end can become gigantic,
through being wounded. (HAH 2, 46)

In his analysis of the hero, Nietzsche drawing a similar link between the
infantile inability to endure the loss of an imagined condition of omnipotence
and the pathology of revenge. In making this case, Nietzsche brings in to sharper
focus his concern with the dangers that narcissistically driven vengeance pose
for personal and social relations. In some respects, Nietzsche follows the Stoic
argument that anger and vengeance are symptomatic of a failure to properly treat
and cure the painful affects that spring from mortal losses and sufferings. But
Nietzsche establishes his therapeutic analysis of the psychology of revenge, a
therapy that partly works by satirising and lampooning the infantile stratagems
of the hero, on a more sophisticated psychology, one which lays the groundwork
for later psychoanalytic theories of narcissism and its discontents.
Nietzsches first step towards formulating his own philosophical therapy is
to identify and analyse the pathological stratagems for dealing with incompleteness and vulnerability. It is because the pain arising from their dependence on
uncontrollable goods proves intolerable, he argues, that human beings summon
to their aid various means of alleviation. Revenge, he maintains, is prominent
among these consolations. He distinguishes between taking revenge, which he
describes as an intense attack of fever, and the desire to take revenge without
the strength and courage to carry it out, which he claims means carrying around
with us a chronic suffering, a poisoning of the body and the soul (HAH 1, 60).
According to Nietzsche, neither the morality of intention, nor that of utility are
able to expose and analyse the psychological roots of revenge. Both estimations
Nietzsche roundly asserts are short-sighted (HAH 1, 60, emphasis added).
At first blush, it may seem that Nietzsche is therefore insinuating that it is
better to immediately discharge vengeful affects rather than allow them to grow
into a chronic ailment, but, as we shall shortly see, he seriously questions this
position because it is premised on a crude understanding of psycho-dynamic
processes. Nietzsches much more subtle psychology shows that vengeful discharge often only serves to exacerbate the original distemper. Moreover, the notion that Nietzsche elevates a simple revenge morality over subterranean ressentiment is sharply at odds with the fact that he identifies both as products of one and
the same fever or disease.20 His aim is not to defend the absurd position that one
20

Martha Nussbaum qualifies this point thus: In certain ways Nietzsche prefers this simple revenge morality to a morality based on the idea that the human being is, as such, worthless and
disgusting. But he is quick to point out, as does Seneca, that the interest in taking revenge is a

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form of a disease is better than another, but to understand the pathological root
that lies at the source of vengeance in all its various manifestations. In other
words, both moral perspectives are short-sighted in the sense that in their haste
to establish a fixed point of judgement they neglect to investigate how this fever
might be cured. Fixed moral judgements are of little use to the new physicians
of the soul who attempt to understand revenge as a disease that requires medical treatment (D 52). Nietzsche criticises such moral perspectives because they
merely judge such phenomena rather than understand its psycho-genesis, mutations and possible transformations. It is this latter task that Nietzsche tackles
by means of psychological observation. He addresses both the taking of revenge
and subterranean ressentiment as symptoms of a diseased soul for which the philosophical therapist seeks a cure. Nietzsches difficulty on this score, a point we
will examine further, lies in distinguishing between successful and unsuccessful
therapeia.
Nietzsche, then, seeks to understand vengeance as a symptom of wounded
narcissism, and in the first instance he chooses to illuminate this connection by
examining the pre-Platonic hero. Pace Charles Taylor and other critics, Nietzsche
does not see the pre-Platonic hero as emblematic of a transgressive splendour
against which we can measure and condemn the banality and pusillanimity of
modern humanism.21 On the contrary, he conceives heroic destinies as the hapless, human, all too human misadventures that befall those who, lacking the wit
to find other ways of soothing their wounded narcissism, bring disaster upon
themselves and others. Nietzsche satirises rather than lionises the epic heroes,

21

product of weakness and lack of power of that excessive dependence on others and on the
goods of the world that is the mark of the weak, and not of the strong and self sufficient, human
being or society; see Nussbaum, Martha C.: Pity and Mercy. Nietzsches Stoicism. In: Schacht,
Richard (ed.): Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality. Essays on Nietzsches Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley 1994, pp. 139 167, p. 155.
Charles Taylor makes this claim in the context of arguing that Nietzsche is the fountainhead of
a dangerous brand of counter-enlightenment thought that displaces the religious sources of the
self, to use his peculiar hermeneutic terms, onto finitude and death. Nietzsche he asserts
takes up the legacy of pre-Platonic and pre-Christian warrior ethics: their exaltation of courage,
greatness, elite excellence. And central to that, death has always been accorded a paradigm significance.
The willingness to face death, the ability to set life lower than honour and reputation, has always been the mark of
the warrior, his claims to superiority (emphasis added). Taylor suggests that Hegels depiction of
the heroic life and death struggle perfectly embodies what Nietzsche envisages as the paradigm
of an enhanced life. Nietzsches heroic paradigm, he contends, rehabilitates the traditional
honour ethics central to the dialectic of master and slave. In the original struggle for recognition
between warriors, each shows that he is worthy of recognition precisely by setting his life at hazard. The key to dignity is this Daransetzen; Taylor, Charles: The Immanent Counter-Enlightenment. In: Beiner, Ronald / Norman, Wayne (eds.): Canadian Political Philosophy. Ontario 2001,
pp. 386 400, p. 396 & p. 400, fn. 15. For a concise account of the heroic stage of Hegels dialectic of master and slave that Taylor draws on see: Shklar, Judith: Self-Sufficient Man. Dominion
and Bondage. In: ONeill, John (ed.): Hegels Dialectic of Desire and Recognition. Albany 1996,
pp. 289 303.

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lampooning Ajaxs mad vengefulness (or envy, as he later describes it) and his
choice of suicide as a means of assuaging his wounded vanity (GS 135).22 In his
discussion of Sophocles Ajax, Nietzsche makes the following observation:
[T]he tragic element in the lives of great men frequently lies not in their conflict with
their time and the baseness of their fellow human beings, but instead in their incapacity to defer their action for a year or two; they cannot wait (HAH 1, 61).23

One does well in this context to recall Epictetus deflationary jibe at tragic
heroism: Look how tragedy comes about: when chance events befall fools.24 It
is in this vein that Nietzsche sees Ajax not as a tragic hero, but as a tragi-comic
fool. Like Simon Critchley in his recent analysis of comedy and tragedy,
Nietzsche is satirically critical of, rather than overawed by the monstrous
magnitude of the tragic hero.25 Nietzsche treats the great Ajax as a victim of
incontinence: Ajax simply cannot wait.
Taking his lead from Sophocles dramatisation, Nietzsche in Human All
Too Human 61 lampoons Ajaxs enactment of the heroic ethos. For Nietzsche,
Ajaxs decision to fall on his own sword in order to salvage his honour is not a
resolute act of freedom in the face of fate, but merely a risible, childish failure to
contain his passions. He underlines this point by focussing our attention on a
seemingly minor implication of the speech the oracle Calchas makes shortly before Ajax commits suicide. According to Calchas prophecy, Ajax would no
longer have deemed suicide necessary if he had simply allowed his violent selfpity to cool off for one more day (HAH 1, 61).26 (We should recall that for
Nietzsche the single goal that governs the free spirit is to know at all times
which will make him cool and will calm all the savagery in his disposition
[HAH 1, 56]).
Ajax, then, lacks the wit to soothe and overcome the suffering he experiences
as a result of his double humiliation: his defeat at the hands of the wily Odysseus
in their dispute over Achilles armour and the shameful outcome of his attempt
to exact revenge: the mad slaughter of the sheep he hallucinates as his enemies.
22
23

24

25
26

The Gay Science (GS). Transl. Walter Kaufmann. New York 1974.
Nietzsche echoes Senecas therapy for anger: The greatest remedy for anger is delay: beg anger
to grant this at first, not in order that it may pardon the offence, but that it may form a right
judgement about it: if it delays, it will come to an end. Do not attempt to quell it at once, for its
first impulses are fierce; by plucking away its parts we shall remove the whole. Seneca, Lucius
Annaeus: De Ira. Transl. Aubrey Stewart. In: Minor Dialogues. London 1902. XXIX, ll. 1 7.
Epictetus: The Discourses. Transl. by P. E. Matheson. In: Oates, Whitney J. (ed.): The Stoic and
Epicurean Philosophers. New York 1940. 2, 16, l. 31.
Critchley: Ethics, Politics and Subjectivity, loc. cit., p. 230.
Nietzsche alludes to the scene where a messenger reports that the oracle Calchas has advised
Ajaxs half-brother Teucer not to let him out of his view for the whole day, For on this day,
no other, he was doomed / To meet Athenas wrath. Sophocles: Ajax. Transl. E. F. Watling. In:
Electra and Other Plays. Harmondsworth 1980, ll. 758 759, emphasis added.

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195

As Nietzsche sees it, Ajax is not sufficiently sharp-witted to outfox the fearful
insinuations of his wounded vanity by saying to himself who in my situation has
not taken a sheep for a hero? Is this then something so dreadful? On the
contrary, it is something typically human: Ajax might have spoken some such
words to comfort himself (HAH 1, 61). Instead, his passion takes on a life of
its own, a transformation Nietzsche registers by making this passion an active,
grammatical subject (Passion does not want to wait), and he is swept away by
a wave of self-pity: Aias! Aias! How fit a name to weep with! Who could have
known / How well those syllables would spell my story? / Aias, Aias! Over and
over again / I cry alas! How am I fallen!.27 Ajax loses himself to passion, just as
his name dissolves into the sound of lamentation. He succumbs to the acoustics
of loss.28 By exaggerating the extent of his losses, Ajax exacerbates his wounded
vanity to the point that he can neither staunch the flow of self-pity and self-lamentation, nor endure it for a single day. Overwhelmed by a torrent of self-pity,
Ajax seeks solace in the most radical anaesthetic: death.
In lightly mocking Ajaxs incontinence, Nietzsche suggests that even though
it is universally human (allgemein Menschliche, as Nietzsche stresses) to suffer from
wounded vanity, and to respond to it by splitting the world into sheep and
heroes, Ajaxs exaggerated self-pity betrays an infantile refusal to delay gratification, to wait and reflect, that profoundly damages his object relations. For in
attempting to maintain his self-image as omnipotent, Ajax cannot tolerate the
deprivations the world and others inflict on his mortal, human self, and instead
splits himself and his objects into debased and idealised parts, sheep and heroes.
Ajax not only splits his world in this fashion, he also expels these parts of himself
into others. His mad delusion simply literalises the mechanism of projection. It
also makes manifest the confusion that projective identification creates between
the intrapsychic and intersubjective world: Ajax is at war not with real others,

27

28

Sophocles: Ajax, loc. cit, ll. 460 65. According to Watling, this pun on Aias, the Greek form of
the name, as a cry of woe may also have had a superstitious significance for the Greeks, implying
the name had some kind of necessary connection to the fate of the owner; see: Watling, E. F.:
Notes to Ajax. In: Electra and Other Plays, loc. cit., p. 213.
In mounting his most serious charge against the tragedians, viz., that they corrupt the souls of
even the best characters, Plato specifically stresses that it is the acoustics of grief that awakens and
nourishes the greediest and most unruly lower parts of the soul. When we hear Homer or one
of the tragic poets representing the sufferings of a hero and making him bewail them at length,
perhaps with all the sounds and signs of tragic grief, you know how even the best of us enjoy it and let
ourselves be carried away by our feelings; and we are full of praises for the merits of the poet who
can most powerfully affect us in this way. In Daybreak 157 Nietzsche explicitly repeats Plato
in order to challenge what he calls a modern cult of natural sounds that encourages expressions
of pain, tears, complaints, reproaches, and gestures of rage and humiliation. In this Platonic
moment, Nietzsche interprets this cult as symptomatic of a lack of composure in the modern
soul, and a lack of desire for such composure; see: Plato: The Republic. Trans. Desmond Lee.
Harmondsworth 1974. Bk 10, 605d-e, emphasis added; and D 157.

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but with the objects into which he has projected his own anxieties. The tragic element in Ajaxs life, as Nietzsche puts it, lies not in any fateful conflict with his
time or the baseness of his fellow human beings, but in himself and his incapacity to defer his action. Like the infantile narcissist, Ajax seeks to immediately assuage the trauma of losing his sovereignty through vengefully annihilating the
gods and heroes that he imagines laughing at his impotence, and that he obsessively conjures up as he meditates suicide.29 However, because these sources lie
within him, he is destined to constantly mistake sheep for jeering heroes and
gods, and he can therefore never achieve what he seeks: the definitive restoration
of pure sovereignty. In his vain pursuit of complete sovereignty, therefore, he
must ultimately turn on himself and by destroying himself quell his narcissistic
rage and suffering once and for all.
The implication of Nietzsches satirical gloss is that by splitting and projecting himself in order to protect his sense of self-perfection, Ajax generates a
violent and endless cycle of vengeance that can be brought to a halt only with
his own death or suicide. (The blade so often steeped in Trojan blood will
now stream with its masters own, that none may conquer Ajax save himself!).30 The
heroic ethos thus generates an either / or: either the constant need to project
parts of the self onto others and take vengeance on them for the sake of restoring the phantasy of omnipotence, or when this mechanism finally, and inevitably,
fails to alleviate the feeling of narcissistic loss, to annihilate oneself.
Nietzsche thus conceives revenge, in whatever guise it appears, as a feverish
sickness of the soul that demands therapeutic analysis. His medical description
of revenge carries more than just the overtones of Hellenisms therapeutic conception of philosophy. It is a lexical index of the degree to which Nietzsche
brings to bear a medical or therapeutic gaze on psychological phenomena. His
therapeutic gaze identifies revenge as a pathology whose roots lie in the mortal
creatures anxious awareness of its own insecurity and the precariousness of its
most cherished projects and hopes. Unable to bear the painful defeat of their
longing for omnipotence, he suggests, human beings resort to stratagems for reestablishing for themselves the image or phantasy of their own self-sufficiency
and impermeability:
Discharging ill humour Any person who fails at something prefers to attribute this failure to the ill will of someone else, rather than to chance. His stimulated sensibility is
relieved by thinking of a person and not a thing as the reason for his failure; for we can
revenge ourselves on people, but we have to choke down the injuries of chance. Therefore,
when a prince [or sovereign Frsten] has failed at something, his circle tends to designate some individual as the ostensible cause and to sacrifice that person in the in-

29
30

Sophocles: Ajax, loc. cit., ll. 372, 389, 459

Ovid: Metamorphoses. Transl. Mary Innes. London 1968. XIII, p. 295, emphasis added.

Stoic Comedians. Nietzsche and Freud on the Art of Arranging Ones Humours

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terest of all courtiers; for otherwise, the ill humour of the prince would be vented on
all of them, since he cannot take revenge on the goddess of fate herself (HAH 1, 370,
emphasis added).31

Nietzsches tone here carries something of Suetonius deadpan humour, and

in composing this aphorism Nietzsche may well have recalled one of this Roman
chroniclers most dryly entertaining anecdotes about Nero. We can see a monstrously bloated expression of the narcissistic pathology that Nietzsche sets
about deflating in the following report from Suetonius:
Nero was no less cruel to strangers than to members of his family. A comet, popularly
supposed to herald the death of some person of outstanding importance, appeared
several nights running. His astrologer Babillus observed that monarchs usually avoided
portents of this kind by executing their most prominent subjects and thus directing the
wrath of heaven elsewhere; so Nero resolved on a wholesale massacre of the nobility.32

On the theoretical plane, Nietzsche implies that projection is a means of defending against and warding off the pain we experience in glimpsing the radical
limits on our sovereignty. In effect, he constructs this aphorism as a comic satire
of infantile narcissism. Nietzsche treats the vain project of sovereignty as material fit only for comedy. As we shall see later, he also conceives comic selfacknowledgement of ones finitude and powerlessness as integral to the therapeutic treatment of wounded narcissism.
In the aphorism noted (HAH 1, 370) Nietzsche argues that the failure to
comically acknowledge the limits of ones own sovereignty has troubling repercussions. The childish way the ego uses illusions to reclaim its feeling of narcissistic omnipotence may be risible, but the consequences are no joking matter. We
31

32

Interestingly, Nietzsche chooses the figure of the sovereign or prince to discuss narcissism and
vengeance rather than the slave, which is what one is led to expect by those who confine their
interpretation of Nietzsche to a few passages from the first book of the Genealogy of Morals and
the unpublished notes Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche gathered together under the title of The Will
to Power. For Nietzsche vengeance is evidently a psychological phenomenon that potentially afflicts all human beings qua humans, not a pathology that belongs to a physiological type. Even
the most cursory glance at the critique of narcissistic omnipotence that he undertakes here is sufficient to indicate the patent absurdity of the often repeated claim that the Masters or blond
beasts of the Genealogy of Morals represent Nietzsches conception of a healthy, cured soul; on this
point see: Nussbaum: Pity and Mercy, loc. cit., p. 166, fn. 44.
Suetonius: Twelve Caesars. Transl. Robert Graves. Harmondsworth 1957, p. 36. The choice of
the deadpan Suetonius to illustrate Nietzsches point is not an idle one, for reasons which we
shall consider below. Nietzsche certainly knew Twelve Caesars. Indeed in The Gay Science 36 he
quotes from the last words Suetonius attributes to Emperors Augustus, Nero and Tiberius. It is
also worth noting here that Nietzsches style and tone in the middle works distantly echo Suetonius. We need only consider Michael Grants description of Suetonius style in the foreword
to Graves translation: With him, we have moved away from the traditional eulogistic treatment
(of Roman rulers) and entered a much more astringent atmosphere, in which the men who he
is describing are looked at with a much cooler and disenchanted eye. [] He gathers together, and lavishly inserts, information both for and against them [] without introducing [] moralisations; see:
Grant, Michael: Foreword. In: Twelve Caesars, loc. cit., pp. 7 11, p. 8, emphasis added.

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Michael V. Ure

can see this in Nietzsches analysis of the sovereigns clownish attempts to regain
his majesty. Because the princely or sovereign ego wants to sustain its omnipotence, he observes, the accidents of fate arouse its intense ill humour and aggression. Hence the sovereign seeks to eject or repel all the painful stimuli that
register the limits of his power to command and regulate his dominion, but he
cannot achieve this aim by accepting the superior power of chance. For if he acknowledges the goddess of fate as a higher power, he merely reminds himself of
his own impotence and his powerlessness to prevent further loss and suffering.
His Majesty the Baby, as Freud might say, cannot abide fates lse-majest.33 The
prince therefore needs his courtiers to act as nurse-maids and find ways to appease the humiliation his narcissistic grandiosity has suffered. His courtiers must
reinstate the illusion of his omnipotence lest this humiliation vent itself in indiscriminate acts of infantile rage; his majesty the baby must be consoled. Their task
is to insure that the baby remains sufficiently illusioned, or confirmed in its experience of omnipotence, to borrow from Winnicott.34
Nietzsche identifies strategies of projection as the means which facilitate this
consolation. The sovereigns courtiers project his ill-humour into another, and
construct this other as the external cause of his inner suffering. Through this
projection they enable the sovereign to discharge his irritation with himself over
his own impotence by victimising another, and they thereby also spare him the
difficult task of confronting his sovereignty as a mere illusion. Nietzsche brilliantly captures the very essence of projection as a means of unburdening oneself
of painful affects:
There are not a few who understand the unclean art of self-duping by means of which
every unjust act they perform is re-minted into an injustice done to them by others
and the exceptional right of self-defence reserved to what they themselves have done:
the purpose being to greatly reduce their own burden (HAH 2, 52).

If we understand Nietzsches aphorism in this way as a satire of infantile narcissism, it becomes apparent that he underscores another point: that the sovereign ego is the dupe of its own courtiers or undersouls (BGE 19).35 While the
33

34

35

Freud, Sigmund: On Narcissism. Transl James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology. The Theory of
Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 65 97, p. 85. Hereafter cited ON followed by the relevant
page number.
Winnicott, Donald W.: Transitional Objects and Transitional Experience. In: Playing and Reality.
London 1971, pp. 1 30, esp. pp. 11 17.
Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Transl. Walter Kaufmann.
New York 1966. Nietzsches account of the dynamics of the internal world draws extensively on
Platos political metaphor of the psyche. Nietzsche often recycles Platos conception of the
psyche-as-polis as a means of thinking about the structure and dynamics of the intrapsychic
domain. For a brilliant and detailed analysis of these links between Plato and Nietzsche see:
Parkes, Graham: Composing the Soul. Reaches of Nietzsches Psychology. Chicago 1994,
pp. 320, 346 62, esp. pp. 355 59; see also: Thiele, Leslie Paul: Nietzsches Politics. In: Interpretation 17, 2 (Winter 1989 90), pp. 275 290.

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sovereign takes himself to be the master of his kingdom, Nietzsches analysis

suggests that he is in fact deluded by his undersouls into believing that his omnipotence remains inviolable. They dupe him for the sake of protecting the commonwealth from his indiscriminate wrath. For these undersouls the sovereign is
merely the channel through which they flush out the poisons of the body-politic.
The egos majesty is thus doubly compromised: it is governed by the forces of
the underworld and the goddess of fate. Nietzsches parable, one might say, construes the sovereign as a point of intersection between the unconscious and
necessity. On Nietzsches interpretation, therefore, if the ego fails to acknowledge unconquerable necessity and seeks instead to sustain the illusion of its omnipotence, it becomes little more than a sewer for the souls toxic affects:
Cloaca of the soul. The soul too has to have its definite cloaca into which it allows
its sewage to flow out: what can serve as these includes people, relationships, classes,
or the Fatherland or the world or finally for the truly fastidious (I mean our dear
modern pessimists) God (WS 46).

Only by ejecting from itself all of the bitter affects that spring from the painful and unavoidable violation of its omnipotence does the ego establish a fragile
simulacrum of sovereignty. It projects these affects into another and soothes the
souls wounded narcissism by taking revenge against its scapegoats. Revenge is
thus a feverish attack of infantile narcissism.
For Nietzsche, then, the narcissistic wound, or wounded vanity as he calls
it, gives rise to various forms of pathological vengeance (HAH 1, 61).36 Rather
than accepting that losses are inevitable, that the project of sovereignty is beyond
human capacities, the subject attempts to assuage its sufferings and restore its
sovereignty through revenge. The pathology of revenge consists in imagining a
persecutor against whom the subject can then discharge its painful feelings of
being persecuted and violated. Seen in light of the subjects inescapable submission to the greater power of fate, however, such revenge can only establish a
dreamlike illusion of omnipotence. Nietzsche recognises that without coming to
terms with the goddess of fate, without finding another way to master or temper
its own drive to omnipotence, the subject finds itself ensnared in a cycle of vengeance: faced with constant defeat by the mercurial powers of chance, it must
constantly pacify its wounded vanity by creating new scapegoats whose sacrifice
serve as momentary alleviations. As Nietzsche makes clear in his analysis of Ajax
and his comic satire of the duped sovereign, the real other who is the target
of his vengeance is a shadowy projection through whose sacrifice he restores a
phantasy of omnipotence.

36

Here Nietzsche uses the phrase der verletzten Eitelkeit in the context of his observations
about Ajaxs madness.

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Comedies of the Soul

Applause. In applause there is always a kind of noise even when we applaud ourselves (GS 201).37

In the theatre of the self, as Nietzsche imagines it here, the applause of selfcongratulation we summon up for our triumphant performances is always based
on a degree of unclarity regarding ourselves.38 In congratulating ourselves as
victors or heroes we deceive ourselves about ourselves by failing to hear the nonsense, the lack of discrimination, the sheer stupidity in the applause with which
we flatter ourselves. Remarking upon the fact that choices of vocation are often
made without sufficient self-knowledge, Nietzsche observes:
The problem is largely that of making good, of correcting as far as possible what was
bungled at the beginning. Many will recognise that their later life shows a sense of purpose which sprang from fundamental incompatibility: it makes living hard. But at the
end of life one has gotten used to it then he can deceive himself about his life and
applaud his own stupidity: bene navigavi naufragium feci [When I suffer shipwreck I have
navigated well]. And he may even sing a hymn of praise to providence.39

As we have seen, Nietzsche satirises the heros vanity, suggesting that he does
everything in his power to conceal from himself his own haplessness, not only
when he suffers misfortune, but perhaps even more so, as he quips, when he is
victorious:
The denial of chance. No victor believes in chance (GS 258).

Strangely, Nietzsches comic tickling of human vainglory is entirely lost on

almost of all of his critics.40 Even Nehamas, who makes a point of exploring
37

38

39

40

Nietzsches idea of applauding ourselves as we applaud actors on the stage is in line with his notion that we stage ourselves for ourselves. In Human, All Too Human 624, for example, Nietzsche
claims that in relation to their higher self human beings are often actors of themselves insofar as they later imitate over and over the self of their best moments. We need only think of
any aging satanic rock star to understand Nietzsches point.
This phrase is borrowed from Human, All Too Human 164 where Nietzsche describes the unclarity with regards to oneself and that semi-insanity super-added to it that is necessary to believe in oneself as a genius. Nietzsche devotes this aphorism to mocking Wagners and Napoleons insanely vain belief in themselves as bermenschliches.
We Philologists. Quoted in Arrowsmith, William: Nietzsche on Classics and Classicists (Part II).
In: Arion 2, 2 (Summer 1963), pp. 5 31, p. 14.
For recent treatments of Nietzsches use of comedy and satire see: Higgins, Kathleen: Comic
Relief. New York 2000; and the essays by Kathleen Higgins, Laurence Lampert, and John Lippitt
in Lippitt, John (ed.): Nietzsches Futures. London 1999. In his discussion of Ecce Homo, Daniel
Conway argues that Nietzsche engages in an ironic, self-parodying critique of heroic idolatry;
see: Conway, Daniel: Nietzsches Doppelgnger: Affirmation and Resentment in Ecce Homo. In:
Ansell-Pearson, Keith and Caygill, Howard (eds.): The Fate of the New Nietzsche. Aldershot
1993, pp. 55 78. In the same volume, see also Ansell-Pearson, Keith: Toward the Comedy of
Existence. On Nietzsches new justice, pp. 265 281.

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Nietzsches multifarious styles, remains largely oblivious to his penchant for

humorously deprecating vanity and its masks and self-deceptions; and Staten,
who, perhaps more than any other interpreter, attempts to listen carefully to the
tonality of Nietzsches texts remains deaf to his sardonic wit and self-parody.41
Nor should it be thought that Nietzsches comic turns are merely literary devices
of no particular philosophical consequence. Rather, Nietzsche uses black humour as an anti-depressant that enables us to laugh at ourselves rather than raging against ourselves and others.
However, not only does Nietzsche employ comedy, he also analyses it, and in
doing so reveals it as a strategy that human beings use to defend themselves and
assuage their narcissistic sufferings. We can distinguish, then, between Nietzsches use of jokes to demonstrate and participate in their tonic, anti-depressant
effects, on the one side, and his analysis of several types of comedy that human
beings use in their struggle to assuage their suffering: manic laughter as release,
Schadenfreude as pleasurable ridicule, and self-humouring as soothing consolation.
The objective of Nietzsches analysis of these types of comedy is to reveal how
we use them to counter, conceal or compensate for our human, all too human
haplessness and ineptitude. In pursuing this analysis, Nietzsche develops what
we might call a comic acknowledgement of the childish methods we employ to
sustain our narcissistic phantasy of grandiosity and omnipotence. His theorisation of these clownish ruses and self-deceptions brings with it a sorrowful
smile that acknowledges the suffering that drives human beings to employ desperately funny measures.

Manic Laughter
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche observes in passing that comedy is a therapeutic art which affords us the opportunity of discharging or releasing painful
affects of fear and terror. Comedy he writes is the artistic discharge (Entladung)
41

Nehamas, Alexander: Nietzsche. Life as Literature. Cambridge 1985, pp. 18 21; and Staten:
Nietzsches Voice, loc. cit., p. 5. Even though Staten often misses the comic, ironic and sometimes almost jocular tone of some of Nietzsches aphorisms, arguably his broader point about
the significance of tone has some validity: Tone is just as much a property of the written text as
are grammar and figuration [] and it is in the tone of a voice/text that the libidinal forces motivating utterance are most clearly revealed (p. 5). Based on his close reading Nietzsches 1886
prefaces, Keith Ansell-Pearson argues that Nehamas portrait of Nietzsche suffers from a fatal
deafness to Nietzsches tone. He astutely notes that Nietzsches self-mocking humour is charged
with anxiety: What is missing from the portrait of Nietzsche we find in Nehamas is any
appreciation of the anxiety informing Nietzsches authorship [] and above all, the mocking tones of
self-parody in Nietzsches presentation of his authorship; see: Ansell-Pearson, Keith: Towards the bermensch. Reflections on the Year of Nietzsches Daybreak. In: Nietzsche-Studien 23 (1994),
pp. 123 145, p. 145, emphasis added.

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of the nausea of absurdity (BT 7).42 He sees the art of comedy as soothing the
painful affects generated by a chaotic world that mocks our sovereignty (BT 7).
If a piercing gaze into this chaos triggers a nausea with existence, comedy
saves us from this illness by discharging our pain through manic laughter (BT 7).
Nietzsches clarifies this rudimentary observation about comic catharsis in
Human, All Too Human.43 Wherever there is laughter, he observes, there is nonsense. According to Nietzsche, manic laughter is a symptom of the relief that ensues from a temporary liberation from the painful constraints of necessity:
The overturning of experience into its opposite, of the purposive into the purposeless, of the necessary into the arbitrary, but in such a way that this event causes no
harm [] delights us, for it momentarily liberates us from the constraints of the
necessary, the purposive and that which corresponds to our experience, which we
usually see as our inexorable masters; we play and laugh when the expected (which
usually makes us fearful and tense) discharges itself harmlessly. It is the pleasure of the
slave at the Saturnalia (HAH 1, 213).44

Like the slave temporarily freed from bondage during the Saturnalia, he suggests, our laughter is merely symptomatic of a temporary release from the fear
and suffering that dominates our experience. We explode with manic laughter,
Nietzsche observes, when we unexpectedly find ourselves free from the tyranny
of pain or when an unexpected stroke of good fortune delivers us from constant
suffering.45 It is for this reason that we can barely distinguish it from the tearful
42
43

44

45

The Birth of Tragedy (BT). Transl. Walter Kaufmann. New York 1967.
George Duckworth discusses the theory that in his lost discussion of comedy, Aristotle developed a notion of comic catharsis. Duckworth also concisely sums up the two competing classical
theories of comedy: the Platonic superiority theory and the Aristotelian contrast theory and their
influence on all later theoretical developments; see Duckworth, George E.: The Nature of
Roman Comedy. A Study in Popular Entertainment. Princeton 1952, pp. 304 314.
See also Human, All Too Human, 160. During the Roman Saturnalia, which began on December
17th, the state sanctioned and funded a period of unrestricted license and festivities in which
slaves were given temporary freedom to do as they liked. Commenting on the Saturnalia, Seneca
derides the hollowness of this unrestricted license. Remaining dry and sober he writes takes
a good more strength and will when everyone about one is puking drunk; see: Seneca, Lucius
Annaeus: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium. Transl. Robin Campbell. Harmondsworth 1969.
XVIII, 4, ll. 18 20. For Seneca, that we seek to dull our pain through the manic dissoluteness of
the festival merely reflects the extent to which in ordinary life we have yet to conquer the pain
caused by necessity. It is precisely this manic laughter that Stoics must resist if they are to conquer pain and necessity, rather than merely seeking release from it through the illusion of its temporary cessation. In epistle XVIII Seneca fears that rather than fortifying us against misfortune,
Saturnalian laughter addicts us to finding relief in escapism and that in doing so it sows the seeds
of vengefulness and depression. It is in this context that Seneca famously introduces his analogy
between the Stoic work on the self and military maneuvers undertaken in peacetime.
Freud explains manic laughter or exultation in exactly the same manner. Such manic states,
he argues, depend on certain economic conditions: What has happened here is that, as a result
of some influence, a large expenditure of psychical energy, long maintained or habitually occurring, has at last become unnecessary, so that it is available for [] discharge when for instance
some poor wretch, by winning some large sums of money, is suddenly relieved from chronic

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203

sobs of relief that follow in the wake of a release from intolerable suffering. Pain
remains the groundbass of such laughter:
Upside down world of tears. The manifold discomforts imposed upon men by the
claims of higher culture at last distort nature so far that they usually bear themselves
stiffly and stoically and have only tears for the rare attacks of good fortune so that
many indeed, are constrained to weep merely because they have ceased to feel pain
only when they are fortunate do their hearts beat again (HAH 2, 217).

Melancholic Humour: Cruel Jokes

Laughter. Laughter means schadenfroh but with a good conscience (GS 200).

As Lampert notes, many of Nietzsches jokes seem wounding and cutting, but
his sharp wit is not in the service of Schadenfreude.46 In fact, Nietzsches psychological acuity illuminates how Schadenfreude, the malicious laughter at anothers
downfall, is something that we can turn back on ourselves in the form of selfridicule and self-mockery. And just as Schadenfreude is a comic anti-depressant that
works its magic cure through the illusion that we are elevated above our neighbour, self-ridicule performs precisely the same function in the intrapsychic space.
In order to theorise this melancholic discomfort, Nietzsche introduces concepts that Freud later systematised in his psychic topography, namely the conceptual distinction of opposed psychical agencies: the superego and the ego. It
is this self-splitting, Nietzsche shows, that makes it possible for human beings
to adopt the stance of Schadenfreude towards themselves and cruelly laugh at their
own misery. Etymologically, of course, melancholia literally means black bile,
which is to say, assuming its identity as one of the four humours, black humour.47
Now, black humour, as Nietzsche sees it, also shares the same psychological
structure as melancholic self-abasement, but experienced from the position
of the super-ego rather than the hapless ego. That is to say, in self-ridicule we establish an imaginary identification with the super-ego and through this identification we are able enjoy its mortification of the ego. Punning on the Nietzsche
epigraph, self-ridicule, we might say, means laughing with a good conscience.
By identifying with the ber-Ich, Nietzsche shows, we restore our illusion of sov-

46

47

worry about his daily bread, or when a long and arduous struggle is finally crowned with success ; see: Freud, Sigmund: Mourning and Melancholia. Transl. James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology. The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 251 268, p. 263. Hereafter cited
MM followed by the relevant page number.
See Lampert, Lawrence: Nietzsches Best Jokes. In: Lippitt (ed.): Nietzsches Futures, loc. cit.,
pp. 65 81.
See Klibansky, Raymond / Panofsky, Erwin / Saxl, Fritz: Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the
History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, Art. New York 1964.

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Michael V. Ure

ereignty; it is a perverse means of reclaiming our omnipotence through selfabasement. It follows that this kind of black humour becomes more pleasurable,
and its paroxysms of laughter more intense, the greater the degree to which the
ego is mortified and abased. Nietzsche sees this anti-depressant, self-ridicule at
work in the pleasures of the ascetic:
There is a defiance of oneself of which many forms of asceticism are among those most
sublimated expressions. For certain men feel so great a need to exercise their strength
and lust for power that in default of other objects or because their efforts in other directions have always miscarried, they at last hit upon the idea of tyrannising over certain parts of their own nature, over, as it were, segments and stages of themselves []
they behave like high-spirited riders who like their steed best only when it has grown
savage, is covered with sweat and is tamed This division of oneself, this mockery
(Spott) of ones own nature, spernere se sperni [] is actually a very high degree of vanity
man takes a real delight in oppressing himself with excessive claims and afterwards
idolising this tyrannically demanding something in his soul (HAH 1, 137, emphasis added).

On this point, Simon Critchley provides an illuminating preliminary understanding of the psychological structure and purpose of melancholic humour.
Drawing on Freuds Nietzschean inspired conception of self-splitting, he claims
that this splitting not only produces the self-laceration of depression (melancholia) and the self-forgetfulness of elation (mania), but a dark, sardonic, wicked
humour. Black humour, as he explains, has the same structure as melancholic depression, but it is an anti-depressant that works by the ego finding itself ridiculous.48
However, there is a slip in Critchleys analysis, and it is one that leads him
astray: for it is not the ego finding itself ridiculous, but the superego ridiculing
the weakness of the ego. If Nietzsche is right, this ridiculing by the superego
does not, as Critchley claims, recall us to the modesty and limitedness of the
human condition.49 On the contrary, through idolising this cruel superego the
ego surreptitiously restores to itself a degree of vanity. Freud himself is unambiguous on this point: he stresses that in melancholic self-abjection, which can
take the form of cruelly laughing at oneself, the yield of enjoyment derives from
satisfying the sadistic, annihilating impulse. When we take delight in lacerating
ourselves, so he believes, we repeat our original infantile reaction to our discovery of our powerlessness before the object world. In this case, however, as
Nietzsche already demonstrates in his analysis of the ascetic, the sadism which
relates to the object is turned back upon the ego. Importantly, then, for
Nietzsche and Freud what we discover in the phenomenon of melancholia is the
ego as object (or, better still, as abject object) rather than as a subject. Freud explains the abjection of the ego thus:
48
49

Critchley, Simon: On Humour. London, New York 2002, p. 101, emphasis added.
Ibid., p. 102.

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The self-tormenting in melancholia, which is without a doubt enjoyable, signifies [] a

satisfaction of trends of sadism and hate which relate to an object, and which have
been turned around on the subjects own self The analysis of melancholia []
shows [] that the ego can kill itself only if [] it can treat itself as an object if it is
able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents to objects in the external world.50

Taken to its logical extreme, the Spiel of melancholia generates fort! , but
no da! . It follows that Critchley is wrong to treat the pleasures of masochistic
identification with the superego as if it were a tempering of our narcissistic
grandiosity and a source of self-cognition.51 Nietzsches and Freuds point,
by contrast, is that this masochistic identification is a means of compensation
for the egos lack of power, a compensation that perversely takes the form of
50
51

MM, pp. 260 261, emphasis added.

Simon Critchley claims to deduce from Freuds metapsychology the idea that the melancholic
has deeper self-knowledge than other people. He cites Freuds passing comment in MM to defend the link he draws between melancholia and self-knowledge:
When in his heightened self-criticism he describes himself as petty, egoistic, dishonest, lacking in independence, one whose sole aim has been to hide his weaknesses of his own nature,
it may be, so far as we know, that he has come pretty near to understanding himself; we only
wonder why man has to be ill before he can be accessible to a truth of this kind (MM, p. 255).
But, Critchley confuses Freuds mordant joke which, like Nietzsches jokes in the middle works,
plays in the gap between our ideal self-image and the human, all too human, with a theoretical
statement to the effect that self-knowledge flows from self-laceration. This should be obvious
from the caveat Freud adds in the sentence following this joke:
For there can be no doubt that if anyone holds and expresses to others an opinion of himself
such as this [] he is ill, whether he speaks the truth or whether he is being more or less
unfair to himself. Nor is it difficult to see that there is no correspondence, so far as we can
judge, between the degree of self-abasement and its real justification. A good, capable, conscientious woman will speak no better of herself after she develops melancholia than one
who is in fact worthless; indeed, the former is more likely to fall ill of the disease than the
latter, of whom we too should have nothing good to say. (MM, p. 255)
Freuds point here is exactly the opposite of that which Critchley claims to find in his metapsychology: for what Freud suggests is that melancholic self-laceration is not driven by a desire
for self-cognition and that there is in fact no necessary connection between its judgements and
the truth of the matter. Freud, it should be noted, claims that it is good, conscientious individuals
who are more likely to fall ill of melancholia. It follows, therefore, that when we hear melancholics engage in extreme self-criticisms more often than not their statements will be false. But
the link between melancholia and self-misrecognition goes deeper than this since a certain kind
of self-misrecognition is in fact the cause of the disease. That is to say, if Freud is right melancholia is distinguished from mourning by the fact that in the former we remain unconscious
about the loss that has generated our condition. By definition, therefore, in melancholia we do
not know ourselves. Moreover, according to Freud, by directing their lacerating aspersions at
themselves, melancholics conceal from themselves and others that these are in fact disguised
reproaches of others. In sum, Freud claims that melancholics are doubly blind to themselves:
they do not know what the loss is from which they suffer, nor do they know that the plaints they
direct at themselves are disguised attacks on another. Martin Jay develops a balanced critique of
the contemporary exaltation of the abject in his paper: Abjection Overruled. In: Jay, Martin: Cultural Semantics. Amherst 1998, pp. 144 156.

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Michael V. Ure

participating in its own abasement. In other words, contra Critchley, this mocking
self-abasement is the means by which we restore, not temper, our vanity.52 As
Freud is at pains to demonstrate, the melancholics ill-temper proceeds from a
constellation of revolt which passes over into the crushed state of melancholia.53
In a characteristically pithy jest, Nietzsche sums up the covert self-inflation
of the melancholic: Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who
despises (BGE 78).54 Nietzsches analysis of the vain striving to restore omnipotence through the desperate measure of identifying with the inner tyrant, the
cruel superego and its mocking laughter, succeeds in revealing how we use selfridicule as a counterweight to the feeling or experience of haplessness and impotence. According to Nietzsche, the melancholic entertains and gives himself
pleasure, not enlightenment, through self-ridicule (HAH 1, 141).
Those paradoxical phenomena, like the sudden chill in the behaviour of an emotional
person, or the humour of the melancholic [] appear in people who harbour a powerful
centrifugal force [Schleuderkraft] and experience sudden satiety and sudden nausea.
Their satisfactions are so quick and so strong that they are followed by weariness and
aversion and flight into the opposite taste. In this opposite, the cramp of feeling is resolved by sudden chill, in another by laughter (GS 49, emphasis added).

Here Nietzsche analyses melancholic humour as a flight from the feeling of

nausea and weariness that ensues from a massive expenditure of force, or an
52

53
54

A measure of the extent to which Critchley has gone astray on this point is his use of Groucho
Marxs black humour as an illustration of the positive function of the superego in supplying us
with the anti-depressant of humour. In such humour, he argues, the superego does not lacerate
the ego, but speaks to it words of consolation. This is a positive superego that liberates and elevates
by allowing the ego to find itself ridiculous; Critchley: On Humour, loc. cit., p. 103, emphasis
added. As we shall see, however, for Freud humour works its anti-depressant magic not by
ridiculing the ego but by allowing it to tame a threatening reality by treating it as a matter of jest,
a mere childs game that cannot touch it. Moreover, although there can be no doubt that Grouchos humour is an anti-depressant, it seems somewhat odd to claim, as Critchley does, that his
black humour achieves this end by consoling the ego in the manner of a comforting parent, for parents
hardly console by enabling their child to laugh at its own abjection. It seems far more plausible to
suggest that Grouchos humour is an anti-depressant tonic because it discharges the superegos
cruelty through abasing the ego, not comforting it. It is instructive to compare Critchleys claim with
E. L. Doctorows reflections on his childhood reception of Grouchos comedy: Groucho we
acknowledged was the wit [] But there were moments when we felt menaced by Groucho, as if
there were some darkness in him, or some inadvertent revelation of the sadistic lineaments of adulthood that was perhaps premonitory of our own darkness of spirit as when we laughed guiltily
at his ritual abasement of the statuesque, maternal Margaret Dumont; see: Doctorow, E. L.:
Introduction. In: Marx, Harpo (with Rowland Barber): Harpo Speaks about New York. New
York 2000, pp. 7 13, pp. 8 9, emphasis added.
MM, p. 257, emphasis added.
Gilles Deleuze echoes Nietzsches point in his penetrating account of the masochists relation to
the law as essentially humourous and rebellious: The masochistic ego is only apparently
crushed by the superego. What insolence, what humour, what irrepressible defiance and ultimate
triumph lie hidden behind an ego that claims to be so weak; see: Deleuze, Gilles: Coldness and
Cruelty. In: Masochism. New York 1991, pp. 15 138, p. 124.

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orgy of feeling (GS 49). What Nietzsche depicts as a Schleuderkraft is analogous

to the superego: it is an instrument that is generated by and which also discharges psychical tensions, and in the case of the melancholic it does so by abasing the ego. But like any other orgy, according to Nietzsche, the melancholics
orgy of self-violation simply generates another pathology: nausea or weariness.
Melancholic humour is thus a sick laughter, or the laughter of sickness; an orgiastic, impatient yielding to the opposite impulse in a desperate attempt to escape self-revulsion.

Humoring Ourselves
Yet, as Nietzsche recognised, self-ridicule does not exhaust our comic potential. We can see in Nietzsches work the same distinction between cruel joking
and humour that Freud draws in his paper On Humour. This humour has quite
a different psychological structure to the sadistic ridiculing that merely inverts
the melancholic split. We can briefly unpack the psychology of humour by examining Freuds discussion. According to Freud, we soothe and console ourselves
for our powerlessness in the face of the traumas of the external world by denying
or wishing away its impact on us; this, he believes, is what it means to humour
ourselves. He illustrates this with an example of gallows humour: A criminal
who was being led out to the gallows on a Monday remarked: Well, the weeks
beginning nicely.55
Freud maintains that such humour has something of grandeur and elevation which, as he writes:
[] clearly lies in the triumph of narcissism, the victorious assertion of the egos
invulnerability. The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let
itself to be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of
the external world.56

Freud distinguishes between the cruel joke in which we ridicule ourselves and
this species of humour in which we make light of the threats, dangers and harshness of reality, and in doing so he conjures up something of the tranquil, untraumatised spirit of Stoicism. In the former we take pleasure in diminishing the ego, but
in the latter we preserve and protect the ego by deflecting reality. Freud, in short,
sees humour as a triumph of narcissism over the painful threats of reality. Nietzsche also pokes fun at the way we retain our good humour through denying the
power of reality over us, instead using such occasions as means of gaining pleasure:
55

56

Freud, Sigmund: On Humour. Transl. James Strachey. In: Art and Literature. London 1985,
pp. 425 433, p. 427. Hereafter cited OH followed by the relevant page number.
OH, p. 429.

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Michael V. Ure

We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of
its room, and then says I will that the sun shall rise; and at him who cannot stop a
wheel, and says: I will that it shall roll; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling
and says: Here I lie but I will lie here! But, all laughter aside are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression: I will? (D 124).

Nietzsche evokes laughter here in order to disclose the comical way in which
we triumphantly proclaim our mastery of reality in the face of our palpable impotence. Indeed, Nietzsche treats this risible reversal of the active and passive
poles that, as we have seen, he analyses in his satire of infantile narcissism, as a
blunder universally committed by human beings:
To reassure the sceptic. I have no idea how I am acting! I have no idea how I ought to
act! you are right, but be sure of this: you will be acted upon! at every moment! Mankind
has at all ages confused the active and the passive: it is their everlasting grammatical
blunder (D 120).57

Because such humorous self-deceit runs counter to an unmediated appraisal

of reality, Freud describes it as rebellious rather than resigned, a triumph of
the ego but also of the pleasure principle, which is able here to assert itself
against the unkindness of the real circumstances.58 Explaining this achievement
in terms of his psychodynamic theory, Freud suggests that such self-humouring
consolation is made possible by the superego which cocoons the ego from the
traumas of reality:
[] in bringing about the humorous attitude, the superego is actually repudiating reality
and serving an illusion []. It means: Look! Here is the world which seems so dangerous! It is nothing but a game for children just worth making a jest about!59

At first glance this explanation appears to generate a conundrum for Freud,

since, needless to say, the superego is normally not such an amiable figure. In
order to solve this conundrum Freud adds a comic twist to the tale of his account
of our capacity to humour ourselves:
If it is really the superego which, in humour, speaks such kindly words of comfort to
the intimidated ego, this will teach us that we have still a great deal to learn about the
nature of the superego. [] if the superego tries, by means of humour, to console the ego
and to protect it from suffering, this does not contradict its origin in the parental agency.60

In this closing remark of his paper on humour, Freud gives the clue to dissolving the mystery of how the superego can both mock the ego through lace57

58
59
60

Nietzsche constantly draws on our grammatical blunders as a rich source of insight into the
economy of the soul. These blunders are to Nietzsche what parapraxes are to Freud: viz., symptoms from which we can interpret the dynamics within the household of the soul.
OH, p. 429.
OH, pp. 432 433, emphasis added.
OH, p. 433, emphasis added.

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rating jokes, and console it through humorously cocooning it from those external realities which severely limit its narcissistic wishes. It is seldom noted
that when Freud introduces his famous jest about the narcissist as His Majesty
the Baby he is actually referring to the parents attitude towards their child, not to the
child himself. In fact, Freud derives his notion of primary narcissism not from
direct observation of children, but by inferring this condition from the parents
affectionate attitude towards their children. On the basis of the sheer intensity of
parental affection, he asserts, we can infer nothing other than that it is a reproduction of their own narcissism which they have long since abandoned. Parents,
Freud maintains, invest their abandoned narcissism in their children. He describes this narcissistic investment in the following way:
The child shall have a better time than his parents; he shall not be subject to the
necessities which they have recognised as paramount in life. Illness, death, renunciation of enjoyment, restrictions of his own will shall not touch him; the laws of nature
and of society shall be abrogated in his favour; he shall once more really be the centre
and core of creation His Majesty the Baby, as we once fancied ourselves []. Parental love, which is so moving and at bottom so childish, is nothing but the parents
narcissism born again, which, transformed into object love, unmistakably reveals its
former nature.61

Freuds argument, in other words, is that humour saves narcissism by warding

off the harshness of reality, and it does so by drawing on that aspect of the superego that is formed on the basis of the parents narcissistic investment in the
childs ego and their desire, as he puts it, to protect it from suffering. For
Freud, humour is the egos narcissistic rebellion against reality that it funds with
the resources of its parents narcissistic investments. In humour, then, the superego treats the ego as doting parents treat their child, it spoils and mollycoddles
the ego, pretending that it can suspend the harsh laws of necessity in favour of
His Majesty the Baby.
So Critchley is right when he jokes that the superego is our amigo, but we
must conclude that he is wrong to think that this superego simply replaces or, as
he puts it, takes the place of the ego ideal, the repository of our narcissistic
dreams.62 On the contrary, as Freud shows, the superego that humours the ego
with its words of consolation is built upon the parents narcissism and is thus a
continuation of their desire to ward off the unkindness of reality. Indeed, Critchleys claim that we can dispense with the ego ideal, the heir to our phantasies of
plenitude, is strikingly at odds with the foundations of precisely the Nietzschean
and Freudian meta-psychology that he deploys for the sake of theorising comedy
and humour. At the core of Freuds theory of narcissism, we might recall, is
the claim that we never forgo the desire to take pleasure in ourselves or for the
61
62

ON, p. 85.
Critchley: On Humour, loc. cit., p. 105, emphasis added.

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oceanic feeling, and that the development of the ego consists in a departure
from primary narcissism and gives rise to vigorous attempts to recover that
state.63 (In casting aside the ego ideal Critchley seems to be the unwitting victim
of his own self-humouring: he deceives himself that he can majestically dispatch
the ego ideal with the mere stroke of a pen).
We must, therefore, restate the significance of Freuds remarks on self-humouring: it is true that he unexpectedly finds a positive place for the superego,
but only for a superego onto which our own lost ideal has been projected, and
onto which presumably parents also project their narcissism. The real insight of
Freuds analysis of humour is that it implies that the cruel superego, the agency
formed through the infants introversion of its own wounded vengefulness, is
modified and tempered through the integration or incorporation of the residues
of the feeling of plenitude that precedes this wounding.
In other words, Freud broaches the idea that the turning back on ourselves
that begins with the formation of an ber-Ich agency can only take a healthy form
when this agency is informed by and draws upon the resources, images and
phantasies of our primary narcissism. Humour, we might say, is made possible by
an ber-Ich in which our phantasies of plenitude have tempered the vengefulness
which is ignited and stoked by our loss of plenitude. Humour is a healthy resuscitation of the residues of our narcissism that prevents the superego from becoming, as Freud puts it, a pure culture of the death instinct.64 In the art of humouring ourselves, then, Freud discovers a positive place and function for our
narcissism, as indeed he must insofar as he believes that we can only ever modulate and transform, never abandon our narcissistic wishes. To be their own ideal
once more, as they were in childhood he asserts without qualification this is
what people strive to attain as their own happiness.65
By elevating us above misfortune humour save[s] our narcissism from
disaster, as Ricur puts it, but it does so, Freud believes, in a way that he accords a certain dignity that is lacking in mere jokes, which he criticises for giving
us a pleasure that derives from satisfying our appetite for aggression, either
against others or ourselves.66 Freud stresses humours ability to protect the ego
63
64

65
66

ON, p. 95.
Freud, Sigmund: The Ego and the Id. Transl. James Strachey. In: On Metapsychology. The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London 1991, pp. 350 401, p. 394. Hereafter cited EI followed by the relevant page number.
ON, p. 95.
Ricur, Paul: Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation. Transl. Denis Savage. New
Haven, London 1970, p. 334. However, to qualify Ricur, it does not save our narcissism per se.
Rather, to state Freuds point more precisely: in humour, he suggests, the positive or healthy
superego, one in which the residues of our narcissism have been integrated, softens the blows of
a reality for the ego; without this humouring the ego would experience its finitude and impotence as profoundly traumatic. The amicable superego thereby enables it to come to terms with

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from being buffeted by reality as the key to understanding its positive therapeutic effects on the egos capacity to bear the ultimate sign of its impotence, or
the most touchy point in the narcissistic system, its mortality.67
In this regard, Freud implies that self-humouring saves us from defeat in a
manner that makes the ego more amenable to Stoic composure and moderation
in the face of an intractable reality.68 Like the Stoics, Freud argues that the value
of humouring oneself lies in the fact that it enables the ego to economise on its
expenditure of affects. There is no doubt he avers that the essence of humour
is that one spares oneself the affects to which the situation would naturally give
rise.69 In the case of gallows humour, for example, the ego spares itself the affects of anger, fear, horror or despair; an achievement made possible when the
ego airily dismisses the traumas of reality with a jest.70 The egos jesting dismissal
of the otherwise traumatic reality of its impending death, he maintains, prevents
the arousal of anger or vengeance, indeed it transforms the provocations of reality into occasions for it to gain pleasure. For Freud, as Kohut correctly states,
humour is a transformation of narcissism which enables us to tolerate the recognition of [our] finiteness in principle and even of [our] impending death.71
It is the Stoics who develop and illustrate the connection between self-humouring and self-composure that Freud merely hints at in his exploration of humour. Seneca, for example, in a letter recounting his growing awareness of his
own senescence and imminent death, gives a comical rendition of the Stoic
dogma that to fear death is irrational.72 He does so by recalling how a certain

67
68

69
70
71
72

its finitude and impotence without the violent denials of vengefulness or its inversion, self-mortification. In other words, Freud establishes a connection between self-humour and selfcomposure that the Stoics also acknowledge and affirm.
ON, p. 85.
Simon Critchleys neglect of this aspect of Freuds line of thought confirms Heinz Kohuts lament that (o)n the theoretical side [] the contribution of narcissism to health, adaptation and
achievement has not been treated extensively; see: Kohut, Heinz: Forms and Transformations
of Narcissism. In: Self Psychology and the Humanities. Reflections on a New Psychoanalytic
Approach. New York 1985, pp. 97 123, p. 98.
OH, p. 428.
Ibid.
Kohut: Forms and Transformations of Narcissism, loc. cit., p. 120, emphasis added.
This Stoic humour is lost on Hegel and those who uncritically adopt his account of their place in
the history of philosophy. Hegel interprets Stoicism as a distinctly humourless flight from actuality that passes over into a broken gibber of negation. According to Hegel, Stoicism and the
other Hellenistic philosophies, Epicureanism and Scepticism, knew nothing but the negativity of all
that assumed to be real, and was the counsel of despair to a world which no longer possessed anything stable; see:
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Phenomenology of Mind. Transl. J. B. Baillie. London 1949,
pp. 502 503; and Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: The History of Philosophy. Transl. J. Sibree.
London 1900, p. 329, emphasis added. For Hegel the gibber of negation refers to Pyrrhos radical scepticism, which, he argues, is the inevitable dnouement of the Stoic flight from actuality.
It would take us too far afield to consider the long and complex history of the reception of Stoicism since antiquity. For an excellent history of its reception in Christian and Renaissance

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Michael V. Ure

Pacuvius made light of his own death by gathering his admirers together each
night to perform with him his own funeral celebrations. Pacuvius uses this comic
ritual, we might say, to enable himself to confront his finitude without being terrorised by it:73
Pacuvius [] was in the habit of conducting a memorial ceremony for himself with
wine and funeral feasting of the kind we are familiar with, and then being carried on a
bier from the dinner table to his bed, while a chanting to music went on of the words
He has lived, he has lived in Greek, amid the applause of the young libertines present. Never a day passed but he celebrated his own funeral. What he did from discreditable motives we should do from honourable ones, saying in all joyfulness and cheerfulness as we retire to our beds: I have lived; I completed now the course / That
fortune long ago allotted to me.74

Strangely, or at least so it must seem to those who follow Hegel in deprecating Stoicism as an art of solitary mortification, Seneca suggests that Pacuvius
comically self-mocking defiance of the pathos of finitude should inform the
Stoics own acknowledgement of mortality.75 Seneca comes close here to embracing what we might call a comic anti-heroic paradigm that, as Michael Janover
puts it, acknowledges that to face finitude is to flee it, and that only in laughter
and comedy can we touch on the real but ungraspable matter of our mortality
without trumping or troping it in clichs or metaphysics.76
What Freud adds to this Stoic perspective is a psychodynamic account of the
genesis of such humour. As we have seen, for Freud the ego can only manage
this humorous feat of grandeur and elevation by drawing on the resources of

73

74

75

76

thought, see: Bouwsma, William J.: The Two Faces of Humanism. In: Oberman, Heiko A. /
Brady, Thomas A. (eds.): Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European Transformations. Leiden 1975, pp. 3 30.
I borrow this phrasing from Eagleton, Terry: Sweet Violence. The Idea of the Tragic. Oxford
2003, p. 73.
Seneca: Epistulae Morales, loc. cit., XXII, 8, ll. 10 16. The last line might also be translated as:
What he did through bad conscience (mala conscientia) let us do from a good (bona) one [].
This is C. D. N. Costas translation in: Seneca, Lucius Annaeus: 17 Letters. Warminster 1988.
Costa notes that the familiar memorial ceremony Seneca refers to here is the Parentalia, a Roman
festival in honour of the family dead conducted on February 13 21; the closing line is from
Didos speech in Virgils Aeneid, IV, l. 653. Geoffrey Sumi provides a fascinating and thorough
analysis of the theatrical, carnivalesque quality of aristocratic Roman funerals, and the use of humour in this ritual of mourning, a practice the Romans mediated through the performance of an
actor (or funerary mime) who sometimes mocked and parodied the deceased. Suetonius describes this theatricality and humour in his account of Vespasians funeral, reporting that as part
of the ritual the Emperors mime parodied and poked fun at his well-known penchant for frugality; see: Sumi, Geoffrey S.: Impersonating the Dead. Mimes at Roman Funerals. In: American
Journal of Philology 123 (2002), pp. 559 585.
Taylor, Charles: The Politics of Recognition. In: Gutman, Amy (ed.): Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition. Princeton 1994, pp. 25 73, p. 50.
Janover, Michael: Mythic Form and Political Reflection in Athenian Tragedy. In: parallax 9, 4
(2003), pp. 41 51, p. 48.

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213

the friendly superego, the psychical repository of the parents narcissistic investment in it, which enables the ego to dismiss a threatening reality as nothing more
than a game for children.77 Freud explains this achievement as one in which the
subject suddenly hypercathects his [friendly] superego and then, proceeding
from it, alters the reactions of the ego, which, without this protection from its
superego, would normally react with fear, anger, vengefulness.78 In other words,
Freud attributes a positive function to the amicable superegos comic method of
sustaining the ego. It serves a positive function, he maintains, insofar as it
soothes or diminishes the egos bitterness at discovering its own impotence before reality, thereby enabling it to economise in its production and expenditure
of ill-humoured affects and to derive a certain mild pleasure from the misfortunes it confronts. If, then, we can overcome the fear of impending death by putting ourselves, through humour, on a higher plane, we can do so only by drawing
upon our amicable superego, the psychical vestiges of our parents narcissistic
love. Paul Ricur nicely sums up the essential point that Freud drives at in his
analysis of humour:
[] humour [] enables us to endure the harshness of life, and, suspended between
illusion and reality, helps us to love our fate.79

Indeed, according to Freud, in the face of the fear of death the ego can only
sustain itself by being loved by the amicable superego; this transformation of
narcissism, in other words, is necessary for the very survival of the ego:
The fear of death [] only admits of one explanation: that the ego gives itself up because it feels hated and persecuted by the superego instead of loved. To the ego, therefore, living means the same as being loved being loved by the superego, which here is the
representative of the id.80

For Freud, therefore, we cannot survive without humour.

77
78

79
80

OH, p. 428.
Freuds explanation implies that this hypercathecting is undertaken by a psychical agency that is
neither the ego or the superego. It remains unclear what, if any, theoretical status Freud attributes to this subject that hypercathects the superego. On the theoretical level, he is forced
into this clumsy locution because with his discovery of narcissism he also discovers that the ego
is not an agent in charge of the drives, but an object of the drives. If the ego is an object, or abject
object, then the notion that it is the source of intrapsychic agency is displaced, and we begin to
open onto the idea that there the psyche does not harbour any one directing agency, but is a
series of dynamic relations without a fixed centre.
Ricur: Freud and Philosophy, loc. cit., p. 335, emphasis added.
EI, p. 400.

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Comic Self-Acknowledgement: Sorrowful Smiles

Of course, it is Nietzsche in his writings who suggests amor fati (love of fate)
as the mark of higher beings. Yet, in this recommendation is a jesting irony in
that for Nietzsche such beings are those who have come to treat the vain project
of sovereignty as material fit for comic satire. In this respect, Sartre is correct to
contrast Batailles manic, heroic laughter, which is meant to express a grandly
tragic affirmation of fate, with what Sartre aptly describes as Nietzsches lighter
laughter.81 (Batailles) is the heroic laughter as Critchley puts it that rails in the
face of the firing squad Go ahead shoot me, I dont care.82 Laughter blesses
as Bataille remarks where God curses.83 According to Sartre, Nietzsches
laughter is lighter than Batailles, which, he writes, is bitter and strained [] He
tells us that he laughs, he doesnt make us laugh.84
If Nietzsche makes us laugh, however, it is, as we have seen, because his analyses disclose the clownish ruses and stratagems through which we attempt to
reclaim the illusion of power or worth so that we can attain or sustain a sense of
dignity. Nietzsche analyses show how the subject attempts to create for itself the
illusion of its potency through infantile strategies of vengeance or mocking selflaceration. By contrast with Batailles heroic laughter, which expresses a denial of
our haplessness, Nietzsches lighter laughter derives from exactly the opposite
achievement. That is to say, Nietzsche utilises his analyses of the comic means
we use to deny our haplessness and impotence to elicit from us a smile of selfacknowledgement at our reliance on these childish stratagems. Nietzsches
satire yields what Critchley calls a weaker laughter which insists that life is not
something to be affirmed ecstatically, but acknowledged comically and which
arises out of a palpable sense of inability, impotence and inauthenticity.85 It
not only evokes a smile at Ajaxs bloated dreams of infantile omnipotence, it also
exposes the minor key versions of this malady. Nietzsche jests, for example, that
we have even discovered how to transform our deepest abjection into a mark of
distinction:
Tried and tested advice. For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so
effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so
great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again (D 380).

81

82
83
84
85

Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Lotringer, Sylvre: Furiously Nietzschean. In: Bataille, Georges: On
Nietzsche. Transl. Bruce Boone. New York 1992, pp. vii-xv, p. xiv.
Critchley: On Humour, loc. cit., p. 105.
Bataille, Georges: On Nietzsche. Transl. Bruce Boone. New York 1992, p. 59.
Lotringer: Furiously Nietzschean, loc. cit., p. xiv.
Critchley: On Humour, loc. cit., p. 106.

Stoic Comedians. Nietzsche and Freud on the Art of Arranging Ones Humours

215

The culmination of Nietzsches analysis is not, then, as is often thought, the

heroic laughter of total affirmation, but a smiling, anti-heroic acknowledgement
of the ruses we use to conceal or flee from our finitude and powerlessness. In
this regard, Nietzsche goes further than Freud who, as we have seen, tentatively
suggests that beyond cruel joking there is a healthy form of self-humouring that
enables the ego to bear its vulnerability to the realm of necessity. Nietzsche
utilises comic means and analyses of comic means manic laughter, cruel jokes, and
humouring ourselves as ways of laying bare the range of stratagems we deploy
to conceal our weakness. It is in Nietzsches middle works that we discover what
Critchley describes as a humour that recalls us to the modesty and limitedness
of the human condition, a limitedness that calls not for tragic-heroic affirmation
but comic acknowledgement, not Promethean authenticity but a laughable inauthenticity.86
Nietzsche brings this comic self-acknowledgement to the foreground in
meditating on the classical themes of tragedy. Reflecting on the notion of the
knowledge or wisdom acquired through suffering, Nietzsche subverts the idea
that it leads to Promethean authenticity or grandiose affirmation. The wisdom
of suffering, he implies, lies not in tragic affirmation, but in the opportunity it
gives us of exposing the ruses we deploy to fend it off, and the subject who
emerges from it is not a grandiose, imperious hero, but one capable of an ironic
acknowledgement of its desperate fabrication of illusions. One who suffers,
Nietzsche writes:
[] takes pleasure in conjuring up his contempt as though out of the deepest Hell and
thus subjecting his soul to the bitterest pain With dreadful clearsightedness as to
the nature of his being, he cries to himself: for once be your own accuser and executioner, for once take your suffering as the punishment inflicted by yourself upon yourself! Enjoy your superiority as judge; more, enjoy your wilful pleasure, your tyrannical
arbitrariness! Raise yourself above your life as above your suffering. [] Our pride
towers up as never before: it discovers incomparable stimulus in opposing such a tyrant as pain is []. In this condition one defends oneself desperately against all pessimism, that it may not appear to be a consequence of our condition and humiliate us in
defeat. [] We experience downright convulsions of arrogance (D 114).

We can see here already Nietzsche building a critique of the sadistic pleasures
of tyrannising oneself, and of heroic affirmation as a pathological and desperate
effort, a critique that leads him to a bitter-sweet smiling at ourselves and at the
pathological measures we use to soothe our wounded vanity:
And then there comes the first glimmering of relief, of convalescence and almost
the first effect is that we fend off the dominance of this arrogance: we call ourselves
vain and foolish to have felt it as though we had experienced something out of the

86

Ibid., p. 102.

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Michael V. Ure

ordinary. [] Away, away with this pride! we cry, it was only one more sickness
and convulsion! We gaze again at man and nature now with a more desiring eye;
we recall with a sorrowful smile that we now know something new and different about
them []. We are not annoyed when the charms of health resume their game we
look on as if transformed, gentle and still wearied. In this condition one cannot hear
music without weeping (D 114, emphasis added).

The wisdom of suffering, Nietzsche implies, lies not in tragic-heroic affirmation, but in comic anti-heroic acknowledgement.

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

217

BERICHT

SIMION DANILA
DIE REZEPTION FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHES IN RUMNIEN
EINE RETROSPEKTIVE
VOM ENDE DES 19. JAHRHUNDERTS BIS HEUTE*

Rumnien, ein unter geographischen Gesichtspunkten der europischen

Peripherie zugeordnetes Land, wird auch vom kulturellen Standpunkt her als
eine insignifikante Provinz betrachtet. Unabhngig jedoch von der Perzeption
des Okzidents hinsichtlich der Stellung Rumniens im europischen Kulturkomplex, hat die Bildung in diesem Land in den letzten beiden Jahrhunderten
einen Proze der Modernisierung und Synchronisierung mit den groen geistigen Werten unseres Kontinents durchlaufen, der dank diverser politischkonomischer Faktoren die Anbindung der rumnischen Intellektualitt an
die kulturellen Zentren Europas (Paris, Wien, Berlin, Rom, London usw.) ermglichte. 0
Eine besondere Beziehung zur deutschsprachigen Kultur konnten die Rumnen aus Siebenbrgen, dem Banat und der Bukowina (bis 1918 Provinzen des
Habsburgerreiches) knpfen, aber auch die aus der Walachei und der Moldau
(den beiden 1859 unter dem Namen Rumnien vereinigten Frstentmern),
vor allem nach der Errichtung der konstitutionellen Monarchie (1866) unter
dem Frsten und spteren Knig Carol I. von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. In
engem Kontakt mit der deutschen Spiritualitt, insbesondere mit der Philosophie stehen mindestens zwei Hauptmomente der rumnischen Kultur: einerseits
die Epoche der groen Klassiker (in der zweiten Hlfte des 19. Jahrhunderts),
mit dem Dichter Mihai Eminescu (1850 1889) an der Spitze, der in Wien und
Berlin studiert hatte, und dessen schpferische Authentizitt durch die Schopenhauersche Philosophie geweckt wurde; andererseits der Moment der Zwischen-

*0 Die Abhandlung geht auf einen Vortrag zurck, der im Arbeitskreis Nietzsches Europa und
Nietzsche in Europa der Internationalen Tagung Kulturelle Vielfalt in einem Europa ohne
Grenzen (Kulturbrcke Fratres/sterreich und Slavonice/Tschechien, 28.30. 05. 2004) gehalten wurde.

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Simion Danila

kriegszeit (1919 1944), der von groen Denkern und Schriftstellern beherrscht
wird, aus deren Reihen der Dichter-Philosoph oder der Philosoph-Dichter
Lucian Blaga (1895 1961), der ebenfalls in Wien studiert hatte, herausragt. Dessen literarische und philosophische Schriften sind zutiefst von Nietzsche beeinflusst.
ber die Rezeption Nietzsches in Rumnien knnte man ganze Bnde
schreiben. Im Folgenden soll eine Synthese versucht werden. Hinsichtlich dieser
Rezeption knnen eindeutig vier Etappen unterschieden werden:

1. 1885 1918
Der erste und gleichzeitig einzige rumnische Schriftsteller, der behauptet
Nietzsche persnlich gekannt zu haben, ist die Dichterin Hlne Vacaresco
(1864 1947), Nachfahrin einer berhmten Bojarenfamilie, mit der die moderne
rumnische Poesie ihren Anfang nimmt. Diese Persnlichkeit von europischem
Rang, die zweimal von der Franzsischen Akademie ausgezeichnet wurde, Mitglied der Rumnischen Akademie und Grndungsmitglied des Internationalen
Instituts fr Intellektuelle Zusammenarbeit in Paris (1924) war und einige Monate (1891) mit Prinz Ferdinand, dem spteren rumnischen Knig, verlobt war,
zhlt zu den Grndungsmitgliedern des Vlkerbundes (Genf, 1920), wo sie bis
zu dessen faktischer Auflsung 1939 stndige Delegierte Rumniens war. Aristide Briand bezeichnete sie als die Gromutter des Vlkerbundes. In ihren
1946 in Paris verffentlichten Memoiren1 gesteht sie voller Genugtuung und Bewunderung, in ihrer Jugend Friedrich Nietzsche im italienischen Vallombrosa
kennengelernt zu haben, einen bizarren Typen, mit dem sie sich anfreundete und
ber dessen Also sprach Zarathustra, das sie gerade im Original las, mit ihm diskutierte. Die Dichterin macht keine nheren zeitlichen Angaben zu dieser Begegnung. Ihr Biograph, Ion Stavarus,, nimmt an, da das Ereignis im Frhjahr 1893
stattgefunden hat2, also nach der Auflsung der Verlobung mit Prinz Ferdinand.
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt jedoch reiste Nietzsche, nach seinem Zusammenbruch
im Januar 1889, nur mehr in Begleitung, und er war auch nicht mehr imstande,
lange, kohrente Konversationen zu fhren. In der Zeitspanne Mai 1890 Juli
1897 hat er die Stadt Naumburg niemals verlassen. Auerdem war Nietzsche,
einer Einladung von Paul Lanzky folgend, nur ein einziges Mal in Vallombrosa,
im November 1885. Und auerdem nur fr einen, hchstens zwei Tage, als sein
Versuch, lngere Zeit in dessen Hotel in Vallombrosa bei Florenz zu verweilen,
1

Vacaresco, Hlne: Mmorial sur le mode mineur. Paris 1946. Kap. Pourquoi jcris Niezsche
sans t. S. 135 143.
Stavarus,, Ion: Elena Vacarescu. Bukarest 1974. S. 54 55.

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

219

an dem regnerischen Wetter scheiterte3. Leider verfgen wir nicht ber genaue
Angaben zum Aufenthalt von H. Vacaresco im November 1885, dem einzigen
Zeitpunkt, zudem sie Nietzsche in Vallombrosa htte kennenlernen knnen.
Was wir wissen ist, da sie sich zwischen 1879 und 1888 in Paris aufhlt, wo sie
an der Sorbonne die Vorlesungen von Gaston Paris, Ernest Renan, Paul Janet,
Gaston Boissier hrt (ihre Salons werden zu diesem oder zu einem spteren
Zeitpunkt von Maurice Barrs, Anna Brncoveanu de Noailles, Jean Cocteau,
Gabriele DAnnunzio, Jos-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Marcel Proust,
Sully Prudhomme, Jean Richepin, Paul Valry u. a. frequentiert). Die Sommermonate verbringt sie in Rumnien. Bis April 1885 waren alle vier Teile des
Zarathustra separat erschienen. Es ist eher unwahrscheinlich, da H. Vacaresco in
Vallombrosa den vierten Teil bei sich hatte, der in nur 40 Exemplaren herausgebracht worden war. Demnach hielt sie einen der drei ersten Teile in den Hnden,
die zusammen erst 1886 erschienen sind. Von Vallombrosa aus reiste Nietzsche
nach Genua, erinnert sich die Dichterin, was vollkommen der Wahrheit entspricht. Bis es uns gelingen wird, die Episode der Begegnung der beiden endgltig zu klren, scheint uns der Zeitpunkt, zu dem dieses Gestndnis ffentlich
gemacht wurde, sehr aufschlussreich: nmlich 1946, whrend des Nrnberger
Prozesses, was bedeutet, da in den franzsischen und rumnischen intellektuellen Kreisen, zu denen die Schriftstellerin Kontakte hatte, Nietzsche in keiner
Weise fr die faschistischen Morde als schuldig perzipiert wurde!
Ein anderer Rumne, der sptere Psychologe und Philosoph Constantin
Radulescu-Motru (1868 1957), htte jedoch Nietzsche in Naumburg kennen
lernen knnen. Whrend seines Psychologiestudiums an der Universitt Leipzig
bei Professor Wilhelm Wundt in den Jahren 1891 1893, hrte der rumnische
Student zum ersten Mal (1893) von Nietzsche von seinem Kommilitonen Paul
Mentz, einer der schweigsamsten Kollegen, aber ein purer Vertreter des germanischen Typus, welcher es spter, in seinem kurzen Leben, nur bis zum Privatdozenten an der Universitt Leipzig gebracht hat. Als er von Nietzsche sprach,
schien es, als ob er mich in ein Geheimnis seiner Seele initiieren wollte4. In der
Liebischen Buchhandlung erwirbt er dann Nietzsches Schriften. Liebisch rt
ihm, den ber der Buchhandlung wohnenden Dr. Lauterbach zu besuchen, um
von diesem Anleitungen bezglich der Reihenfolge, in der er die Werke Nietz-

KSB 7, S. 106 108; Friedrich Nietzsche. Chronik in Bildern und Texten. Im Auftrag der Stiftung Weimarer Klassik zusammengestellt von Raymond J. Benders und Stephan Oettermann unter Mitarbeit von Hauke Reich und Sibylle Spiegel. Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser, Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag, Mnchen 2000. S. 620 621.
Radulescu-Motru, C.: Filosofia lui Friedrich Nietzsche n Romnia [Die Philosophie Friedrich
Nietzsches in Rumnien]. In: Noua Revista Romna 17 (1916), 24 [im Bd. Marturisiri (Gestndnisse), hrsg. von Valeriu Rpeanu und Sanda Rpeanu, Vorwort, Anmerkungen und Kommentare von Valeriu Rpeanu. Bukarest 1990. S. 121].

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Simion Danila

sches lesen sollte, zu erhalten. Dr. Lauterbach, ein etwa vierzig Jahre alter, kleiner und hagerer Mann, mit der intelligenten Figur des beruflich als Zeitungsschreiber wirkenden Juden, erzhlte ihm etwa zwei Stunden voller Begeisterung
von Nietzsche und empfahl ihm, die Lektre mit Jenseits von Gut und Bse und Zur
Genealogie der Moral zu beginnen5. Von all diesen Menschen htte der Rumne erfahren knnen, da der von Krankheit gezeichnete Philosoph in Naumburg,
nicht allzu weit von Leipzig, wohnt. Er htte sich dorthin begeben und dem
Philosophen in der Umgebung seines Hauses im Weingarten 18 auflauern
knnen, um den Augenblick einzufangen, wenn dieser in Begleitung seiner Mutter einen Spaziergang antrat. Er htte sich ihnen sogar nhern und, den Hut ziehend, sagen knnen, da er ein Bewunderer des Philosophen sei. Dieser htte
ihm vielleicht geantwortet, wie er es auch anderen gegenber pflegte: Ich habe
viele schne Sachen geschrieben. Es htte mir gefallen, so etwas nicht in der
Biographie von Curt Paul Janz6, sondern in den Memoiren von C. RadulescuMotru zu lesen. Leider hat letzterer, der in der rumnischen Kultur Nietzsches
Namen durchsetzen wird, so wie es Georg Brandes fr die europische Kultur
getan hat, die Gelegenheit zu einer historischen Begegnung verpat.
Ins Land zurckgekehrt, wird Motru von dem Schriftsteller Ion Luea Carargiale eingeladen, an der Sonntagsausgabe der Zeitung Epoca, d. h. an der Epoca
literara mitzuarbeiten, aber nicht mit solcher transzendentaler Philosophie, wie
ihr sie in Deutschland lernt und fr die sich das rumnische Publikum auch in
hundert Jahren kaum interessieren wird [], sondern [mit] etwas Gepfeffertem,
das unsere Schlafmtzen zum Niesen bringen soll7. Und in neun aufeinander
folgenden Nummern vom 15. April bis zum 10. Juni 1896, erscheint, unter Motrus Signatur, eine Fortsetzungsreihe, die spter als Broschre noch zu seinen
Lebzeiten drei Auflagen erfahren sollte8: F. W. Nietzsche. Viat,a ,si filosofia sa
[F. W. Nietzsche. Sein Leben und seine Philosophie], eine objektive Darlegung der
Philosophie Nietzsches, die nicht nur von I. L. Caragiale, sondern auch von dem
Historiker Nicolae Iorga und der Knigin Elisabeth geschtzt wurde, nicht aber
von Knig Carol I., der Nietzsches Ideen als eine Gefahr betrachtete9. Motrus
5
6

7
8

Ebd., S. 123 124.

Janz, Curt Paul: Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. 2. revidierte Auflage. Bd. 3. Mnchen 1993.
S. 213.
Radulescu-Motru, C.: Marturisiri, a.a. O., S. 124.
Bukarest 11897, 21916, 31921. Von den beiden posthumen Ausgaben (Cluj 41990, 51997) ragt die
von Marta Petreu herausgegebene hervor (51997).
Auf die gefhrlichen Ideen Nietzsches macht Motru selbst im Vorwort zur ersten Auflage aufmerksam: Indem ich Nietzsches Philosophie im Resmee der ffentlichkeit vorstelle, bin ich
keineswegs von der Absicht geleitet, sie als eine gesunde Richtung der zeitgenssischen Philosophie zu empfehlen. Ich bin weit davon entfernt, sie zu befrworten, geschweige denn ihr
Anhnger zu wnschen. Aber unter Bercksichtigung der Bedingungen, unter denen sich bei
uns die Ideen verbreiten [d.h. durch Entstellungen und bertreibungen, Zusatz. S.D.], erachte
ich gerade deren vollstndige und sofortige Verffentlichung als den besten Schutz. [Ausgabe

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

221

Professor fr Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universitt Bukarest, Titu Maiorescu, wird ebenfalls von Nietzsche vor seinen Studenten sprechen, und zwar in
der letzten Vorlesung des Hochschuljahres 1896 189710. Durch die Verffentlichung seines Buches ber Nietzsche im Jahr 1897, hat sich Radulescu-Motru
als einer der ersten wichtigen Kommentatoren des deutschen Philosophen in
Europa erwiesen. Durch seine Vorarbeit synchronisiert sich die rumnische
Philosophie mit der Entwicklung der europischen Philosophie und Kultur11.
Nietzsches Ideen kehren in den Schriften Motrus hufig wieder: in seinen in
Bukarest erschienenen Bchern Cultura romna ,si politicianismul [Die rumnische
Kultur und die Politik] (1904), Puterea sufleteasca [Die seelische Kraft] (1907), Elemente
de metafizica [Elemente der Metaphysik] (1912), Personalismul energetic [Der energetische
Personalismus] (1927) usw.; in seiner Publizistik, entweder in seinen eigenen Zeitschriften Noua Revista Romna (19001916) und Ideea europeana (19191928)
eine demokratische Zeitschrift zur Information des rumnischen Publikums ber
die Geistesstrmungen und ber den sozialen Wandel in Europa und in Rumnien oder in der Zeitschrift Revista Fundat,iilor Regale; in ffentlichen Vortrgen.
Angemerkt sei noch, da von den Mitarbeitern der Zeitschrift Noua Revista
Romna auch Virgile J. Barbat ein Buch ber den deutschen Philosophen verffentlicht hat: Friedrich Nietzsche. Tendances et problmes. Zrich, Leipzig 1911.
Das dritte Nietzsche in dieser Epoche gewidmete Buch stammt von Mihail
Negru: Omul superior vazut de doi singuratici: Friedrich Nietzsche ,si Thomas Carlyle.
ncercare de popularizare, n romnes,te, a Supraomului ,si a Eroului [Der hhere
Mensch aus der Sicht zweier Einsamer: Friedrich Nietzsche und Thomas Carlyle. Versuch der Popularisierung im Rumnischen des bermenschen und
des Helden]. Bukarest 1916. Der Autor ist sich dessen bewusst, da das einfache Aneinanderfgen der Namen der beiden vollkommen gegenstzlichen
Persnlichkeiten gewagt erscheint, wenn sich nicht beide, obwohl mit unterschiedlichen Verfahren, auf einen gemeinsamen Punkt zubewegen wrden der

10

11

M. Petreu, S. 14 15]. Und im Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage schreibt Motru: Der Name Friedrich
Nietzsches wurde in letzter Zeit sehr hufig in dem von der Erforschung der Ursachen des
jetzigen Krieges ausgelsten Meinungsstreit erwhnt. [] nichts kann falscher sein als die
Annahme, da die auf dem Kriegsfeld begangenen Barbareien auf Nietzsches Ideal zwingend
zurckzufhren sind. Der jetzige Krieg ist ein Krieg der Waffen und der diplomatischen List und
Tcke; ein Krieg, der eher von Begehrlichkeiten als von den edlen Instinkten des bermenschen
geleitet wird. [] War Nietzsche bis zum Kriege ein von Amateuren und Dilettanten gelesener
Philosoph, so erfreut er sich jetzt in Deutschland der Gunst der gesamten ffentlichen Meinung.
Sein Name schreckt niemanden mehr auf; seine Ideen passen in die Atmosphre der Zeit und
begreifen sich als eine Rechtfertigung der Ereignisse. Mit einer solchen Interpretation Nietzsches, warnt Motru, knnten wir morgen mit den Deutschen auf dem Balkan erwachen (Ausgabe M. Petreu, S. 20), so wie wir leider auch erwacht sind.
Petreu, Marta: O carte pentru domnul Caragiale [Ein Buch fr Herrn Caragiale]. Nachwort bei
Radulescu-Motru, C.: F. W. Nietzsche. Viat,a s,i filosofia sa (siehe Anm. 8), S. 111.
Ebd., S. 110 111.

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hhere Mensch (S. 12). Sie empfinden fr das Volk die gleiche Missachtung,
die ihnen die Souvernitt des vollkommen hheren Ichs auferlegt; fr den einen
ist es eine Sklavenherde, fr den anderen das unbewusste Mittel wodurch Gott
seinen wunderbaren Willen uert. (S. 13) Negru stellt die Auffassungen der
beiden der Reihe nach dar, wobei er auf eine zeitgeme franzsische und rumnische Bibliographie zurckgreift, aus der einige Titel erwhnt seien: de Roberty,
Eugne: Frderic Nietzsche (Paris 1902), Faguet, mile: En lisant Nietzsche (Paris
1904); Fouill, A[lfred]: Nietzsche et limmoralisme (Paris 1902); Gaultier, Jules de:
De Kant Nietzsche (Paris 1900); Lichtenberger, H[enri]: La philisophie de Nietzsche
(Paris 1899); Radulescu-Motru, C.: F. W. Nietzsche (Bukarest 11897).
Motrus Essay setzt Impulse fr die Verffentlichung von Artikeln zur Popularisierung von Nietzsches Leben und Werk in der zeitgenssischen, teils jdischen Presse (z.B. der Nachruf von Caion [Constantin A. Ionescu]: Friedrich
Nietzsche Viat,a ,si filozofia sa [Friedrich Nietzsche Sein Leben und seine Philosophie].
In: Adevarul 3983 (1900). S. 1; Nietzsche ,si Mallarm [Nietzsche und Mallarm], von
Al[exandra] Antemireanu, in Epoca 86 (1901). S. 1 2; Nietzsche ca literat [Nietzsche
als Literat], von Notker in Vieat,a noua 5 (1906). S. 108 112; 6 (1906). S. 126 129;
Filozofia ,si sociologia romantismului german. Schopenhauer, Wagner ,si Nietzsche [Die Philosophie und Soziologie der deutschen Romantik. Schopenhauer, Wagner und Nietzsche], von
Dr. I. Duscianu (Dus,an Isailovici), eine Besprechung des Buches von Samuel
Lublinski: Der Ausgang des Moderne (Dresden 1909). In: Noua Revista Romna 2 3
(1910); Influent,a culturii germane n Frant,a [Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heine, Wagner] dupa razboiul din 1870 1871 [Der Einfluss der deutschen Kultur in Frankreich nach
dem Krieg von 1870 1871], von G. O[cas,anu], in Scena 368 (1911). S. 1; 371 (1911).
S. 1; Nietzsche [ber dessen Lyrik], von Emil Isac, in Revista Democrat,iei Romne
19 20 (1911). S. 596 597; F. W. Nietzsche. Viat,a ,si filozofia sa, de C. R.-Motru
[F. W. Nietzsche. Sein Leben und seine Philosophie, von C. R.-Motru], [Rezension] von
Andrei Branis,te, in Rampa Noua Ilustrata 161 (1916). S. 1 usw.), als auch von rumnischen bersetzungen aus Nietzsches Dichtung und Philosophie (darunter
das von Liviu Rebreanu, einem der grten rumnischen Romanciers, bersetzte Kapitel Der europische Nihilismus aus Wille zur Macht, in Falanga Literara ,si
Artistica 16 (1910). S. 17; 18 (1910). S. 2 3).
Ebenfalls jetzt erscheinen die ersten Broschren mit bersetzungen aus
Nietzsche: As,a vorbit-a Zarathustra [Also sprach Zarathustra] (Fragment). bers.
Achille Dumitriu. Bukarest 1901; Antecristul [Der Antichrist]. Mit einem Vorwort
von Tudor Arghezi. Bukarest 1911; Omul superior. Supraomul [Der hhere Mensch.
Der bermensch]. bers. A. Luca. Bukarest 1911; As,a vorbit-a Zarathustra. Despre
razboi ,si luptatori [Also sprach Zarathustra. Vom Krieg und Kriegsvolke]. bers. Eugen
D. Relgis (Eugen Sigler). Bukarest 1914. Den Hhepunkt erreichen die bersetzungen nun mit der ersten integralen rumnischen Version des Buches Also
sprach Zarathustra von George Emil Botez, Bukarest 1916.

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223

Gleichzeitig erhielten rumnische Intellektuelle aus Siebenbrgen damals

noch Provinz der sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie auch ber die
deutsch- und ungarischsprachige Presse Kenntnis von Nietzsches Werk. Ihnen
drfte auch die 1903 in Growardein ausgelste Kontroverse um Bdog Somls
Auffassung von der relativen moralisch-sittlichen Wertung bekannt gewesen
sein, worber uns Endre Kiss informiert12.
Wenn wir schlielich noch erwhnen, da in dem 1910 gegrndeten SimuMuseum in Bukarest eine von Max Klingler 1904 geschaffene und von dem
Sammler Anastasie Simu erworbene Bste Nietzsches zu sehen war, da der
Komponist Mihail Jora, der Kompositionslehre bei Max Reger in Leipzig grndlich studiert hat, mit Fnf Lieder fr eine Mittelstimme op. 1 nach Texten von
deutschsprachigen Dichtern in Bukarest 1914 debtierte und da das vierte Lied
von Nietzsches Nachtlied aus Za II inspiriert wurde13, ist das Bild von Nietzsches
Prsenz im rumnischen kulturellen Leben der Zeit vor und whrend des Ersten
Weltkrieges fast vollstndig.

2. 1919 1944
Es ist die Zeit in der, obwohl in Rumnien kein einziges Buch ber Nietzsche
geschrieben wird, die Popularitt seines Werkes zunehmend steigt, sowohl durch
die Ttigkeit des Professors C. Radulescu-Motru, als auch der seines Studenten
und spteren Assistenten Nae Ionescu, ein wahrhaftiger Meinungsfhrer, der in
Gttingen studiert hatte (1913 1919) und somit in direkten Kontakt mit Nietzsches Philosophie kam, und der richtig verlockend auf seine Studenten, auf die
junge Generation, wirkte, zu der sich Mircea Eliade (der auch sein Assistent
an der Universitt Bukarest werden sollte), Emil Cioran, Mihail Sebastian ( Josef
Hechter), Constantin Noica, Mircea Vulcanescu zhlten, alles groe Gestalten
der rumnischen Kultur. Sie hatten die Mglichkeit, sich mittels der Zeitung
Cuvntul, deren Direktor und Eigentmer Nae Ionescu in den Jahren 1929 1933
war, durch Vortrge im Rahmen der Gesellschaft CRITERION, in den Spalten
der Zeitschrift Criterion (1934 1935) und anderer Publikationen zu uern.
Die erste und zugleich faszinierendste Etappe des Einflusses, den Nae Ionescu auf die Studentenschaft ausgebt hat, war wie M. Eliade schreibt14 die
Technik der Beunruhigung. Er forderte von den Studenten, aus den Formeln,
12

13

14

Kiss, Endre: Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Ungarn bis 1918/19. In: Nietzsche-Studien 9
(1980). S. 278.
Cosma, Octavian Lazar: Hronicul muzicii romnes,ti [Chronik der rumnischen Musik] 1898
1920. Bd. 7. Bukarest 1986. S. 466 470.
Eliade, Mircea: Un cuvnt al editorului [Ein Wort des Herausgebers] in Ionescu, Nae: Roza vnturilor [Die Windrose]. Editura Cultura Nationala. Bukarest 1937. S. 430 431.

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Simion Danila

den Bchern, dem Erlernten hinauszugehen und erluterte ihnen, da eine einzige Sache wichtig sei: du selbst zu bleiben, authentisch zu sein, dein spirituelles
Wesen nicht zu verraten. Und das ist absolut eine nietzscheanische Forderung!
Nietzscheanisch ist auch die Verweigerung des Systems, das Ionescu als den Gedenkstein des Philosophen betrachtet. Er greift auf Konversationen, Fragmente,
kurze Artikel, auf das lebendige und funkelnde Wort zurck. So erklrt sich
warum seine ehemaligen Schler so persnlich, so seelisch ausgeglichen, auch
so unterschiedlich untereinander sind15. Besser als andere haben sie erkannt,
da der Nietzscheanismus nicht unbedingt als eine Ideologie, sondern, in erster
Reihe, als ein Geistes-, als ein Temperamentszustand aufgefasst werden muss.
Im Rahmen dieser Schule und bei ihrem Mentor existieren selbstverstndlich gengend doktrinre Affinitten mit Nietzsche, doch darber hat Lucia
Gorgoi in einem Buch ausfhrlich geschrieben16. Wesentlich interessanter scheinen uns einige Abweichungen von Nietzsches Denken, die aber mit soviel Subtilitt, Spekulation und Mut erfolgten, da seine Anhnger nicht ihres Status als
Nietzscheaner verlustig wurden. Und genau das verlangte auch Nietzsche von
seinen Schlern:
Vademecu m Vadetecum.
Es lockt dich meine Art und Sprach,
Du folgest mir, du gehst mir nach?
Geh nur dir selber treulich nach:
So folgst du mir gemach! gemach!
(FW Scherz, List und Rache 7)

Als Beispiel soll das folgende Fragment aus dem von Nae Ionescu in der
Zeitschrift Gndirea 4 (1927). S. 121 124, S. 124 verffentlichten Text Juxta
Crucem dienen:
Nietzsche dachte das Christentum mit der hchstmglichen Beleidigung belegen
zu knnen, indem er es als eine Sklaven-Moral betrachtete. Es ist ein Irrtum, auch
wenn dieser von einem Menschen kommt, dessen Genius unbestritten ist. Erstens, ist
das Christentum keine Moral; es geht weit ber die Grenzen solcher Beschftigungen
hinaus. Auch seines tief religisen Wesens entkleidet, bersteigt es sie. Indem er die
gesamte Existenz in eine metaphysische Interpretation einrahmte, konnte Nietzsche
dies nicht wissen: In einer Familie protestantischer Pastoren musste die metaphysische Tradition des Christentums seit langem verschollen sein.

Zweitens, konnte von Sklaven gar keine Rede sein damals, als die intime
Struktur des Evangeliums durchdacht wurde; denn die Anerkennung des Rechts
auf Existenz des Schmerzes fhrt richtigerweise nicht zum Kampf gegen ihn;
aber sie fhrt auch nicht zur Resignation.
15
16

Ebd., S. 434.
Gorgoi, Lucia: Friedrich Nietzsche s,i cultura romna interbelica [Friedrich Nietzsche und die rumnische Kultur der Zwischenkriegszeit]. Cluj 2000.

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225

Wir wissen, woher diese falsche Einschtzung kommt. Nietzsche war zu sehr
in die Ideale der antiken Welt und in das Bild einer sich in Daueraktion befindlichen Kraft verliebt, als da er sich die neue Perspektive htte aneignen knnen,
die allein das Verstndnis des Christentums ermglicht. Ein genialer Mensch,
gewiss aber ein klassischer Philologe, und deswegen umso mehr in der griechischen Antike verankert und an deren Ideale gebunden, desto genialer er war.
[] Seit der Kreuzigung wei die Menschheit, da nicht der Schmerz oder
die Freude an sich fr unser Erleiden oder unser Glck entscheidend sind, sondern die Einstellung, die unsere geistige Persnlichkeit diesen gegenber bewahrt. So kann der Schmerz selbst zu einer Quelle unendlicher Freude werden,
wenn er einen Zweck erfllt und nach einem Sinn in unserem Streben nach Erlsung sucht.
Das Christentum hat diese hohe moralische Bedeutung des Schmerzes entdeckt; sie liegt in der reinigenden Wirkung auf die Seele.17
Nicht anders steht es um E. M. Cioran (1911 1995), einer der drei groen
Rumnen aus Paris und Nietzscheaner par excellence, so da Susan Sontag, in
ihrem aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche bertragene Buch Im Zeichen des Saturn
(Hanser 1981), im Kapitel Wider sich denken. Reflexionen ber Cioran (S. 17 39),
den rumnisch-franzsischen Schriftsteller als einen Nietzsche unserer Tage
betrachtet. Und Gabriel Liiceanu fgt dem hinzu: ein zeitgenssischer, durch
die Schule der franzsischen Moralisten gegangener Nietzsche18. In der Tat,
Cioran, einer der terribelsten Leser des Jahrhunderts19, hat mit seinen philosophischen Lektren als 15jhriger Gymnasialschler im siebenbrgischen Hermannstadt begonnen, wo er Zugang zur deutschen Bcherei hatte20 und sich
fr Nietzsches Werk begeisterte. Als Student der Philologisch-Philosophischen
Fakultt der Universitt Bukarest (1928 1932) widmet er seine Lektren mit
Vorliebe den deutschen Philosophen: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Simmel, Worringer, Wlfflin, aber auch Kant, Fichte, Hegel, den Neokantianern, Husserl21.
Whrend seines anschlieenden Studiums in Deutschland (1933 1935) mit
Ludwig Klages vertieft er sich weiter in Nietzsches Werk. Alle von ihm in seiner
Jugendzeit in rumnischer Sprache verffentlichten Bcher sind von Nietzsches
Geist, von nietzscheanischen Begriffen wie Individuation, Mitleiden in Pe culmile
disperarii [= CD; Auf dem Gipfel der Verzweiflung] (Bukarest 11934, 21990, 31993)
oder Mitleid, die Einsamsten in Cartea amagirilor [= CA; Das Buch der Tuschungen]
17
18

19
20
21

Vgl. auch Ionescu: Roza vnturilor, a. a. O., S. 400 401.

Liiceanu, Gabriel: Itinerariile unei viet,i: E. M. Cioran. Apocalipsa dupa Cioran (Ultimul interviu)
[Routen eines Lebens: E. M. Cioran. Die Apokalypse nach Cioran (Sein letztes Interview) ]. Bukarest 2001. S. 9.
Ebd., S. 71.
Ebd., S. 17 18; Convorbiri cu Cioran [Unterredungen mit Cioran]. Bukarest 1993. S. 100.
Liiceanu: Itinerariile unei viet,i: E. M. Cioran. Apocalipsa dupa Cioran, a.a. O., S. 17 18.

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Simion Danila

(Bukarest 11936, 21991) usw., von nietzscheanischen Ideen durchdrungen (in

CD, 21990. S. 177: Es ist dies kein Subjektivismus, wenn er dich nicht zum Gott
oder zum Satan macht; oder in CA, 21991. S. 60: Nachdem man wohl so lange
Zeit das Bewusstsein der Nichtigkeit hatte, kann man sich noch als etwas anderes als Gott betrachten? in Anlehnung an Nietzsches wenn es Gtter gbe,
wie hielte ichs aus, kein Gott zu sein!, aus Za II Auf den glckseligen Inseln; in CA,
21991. S. 11: das Glck nicht heilig zu sein usw.). In einer Rezension des Buches Pe culmile disperarii behauptete jemand, da Cioran Nietzsche gelesen und
sich ihn in Blut und Fleisch einverleibt hat22.
Obwohl er spter behauptet, sich von Nietzsche entfernt zu haben, den er
zu naiv23 findet, bleibt Cioran auch in seiner franzsischen Periode ein Nietzscheaner durch seinen Nihilismus, durch sein Philosophieren in Aphorismen,
durch sein Nietzsche hnliches Temperament. Nur indem er sich temperamentmig, viszeral mit Nietzsche und Kierkegaard identifizierte, konnte Cioran in
Prcis de dcomposition, Paris 1949, folgende Gedanken formulieren: Auch wenn
sie in der geistlosesten Zeit zum Vorschein gekommen wren, htten ein Kierkegaard, ein Nietzsche unter dem Zeichen einer ebensolchen aufregenden und
zndenden Inspiration gestanden. Sie sind ihren eigenen Flammen zum Opfer
gefallen; einige Jahrhunderte zuvor, wren sie auf dem Scheiterhaufen verbrannt
worden; den allgemeinen Wahrheiten Auge in Auge gegenberstehend, waren
sie als Hretiker prdestiniert. Was zhlt es, ob du von deinem eigenen Feuer
oder von dem, das dir andere vorbereiten, verschlungen wirst: Fr die Wahrheiten der Wesensart muss so oder so bezahlt werden.24 Cioran sagte einmal:
Wenn es jemanden auf dieser Welt gibt, der alles Bach zu verdanken hat, so ist
es Gott.25 Ihn paraphrasierend, knnten wir sagen: Wenn es jemanden auf dieser Welt gibt, der alles Nietzsche zu verdanken hat, so ist es Cioran.
Den Philosophen Lucian Blaga hat der sich in die Pariser Jahre verlngernde
Nietzscheanismus Ciorans zur Verzweiflung getrieben. 1959 sah er in dem rumnischen Essayisten einen imitierenden Hofnarr und fgt hinzu: Wrde
Nietzsche Ciorans Seiten im Grabe lesen, dann wrde er sich von so viel mi22
23

24
25

Bucur, Septimiu: In: Viat,a literara 160 (1934). S. 2.

Cioran: Caiete [Hefte] III: 1969 1972. bers. (aus dem Franzsischen): Emanoil Mareu und
Vlad Russo. Bukarest 2000. S. 5; Lceanu, G.: a. a. O., S. 23. Vgl. auch Cioran: Silogismele amaraciunii [Die Syllogismen der Bitternis]. bers. Nicolae Brna. Bukarest 1996. S. 32 33: In jungen Jahren gehst du an die Philosophie heran nicht so sehr um durch sie eine Vision zu entdecken, sondern eher um einen Anreiz zu finden [] Die Adoleszenz begngt sich damit, mit
Haltungen zu jonglieren, und was ihr an den Philosophen behagt, ist deren gauklerhafte Seite:
Bei Nietzsche behagte uns Zarathustra, dessen Pose, die von diesem mystischen Narr ausgelste
Erheiterung [] Die Idee des bermenschen erscheint uns heute als eine Elukubration, aber
damals schien sie uns przise wie eine experimentelle Tatsache. So kommt es, da der, der uns in
unserer Jugend bezauberte, nun untergeht (Hervorhebung, S.D.).
Cioran: Tratat de descompunere. bers. Irina Mavrodin. Bukarest 1992. S. 258 259.
Cioran: Silogismele amaraciunii, a.a. O., S. 94.

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227

metischem Enthusiasmus, welchen ihn ber den Tod hinaus begleitet, bermdet im Grabe umdrehen. Vielleicht wrde Nietzsche heute, fnfzig und mehr
Jahre nach seinem Tod, seine letzten Worte aushauchen: Nimmt ihn weg von
hier. Er ist kein Drache, er ist ein Affe!26
Wir hingegen glauben, da Nietzsche sich ber einen Freund einen neuen
Freund wie Cioran gefreut htte. Er htte ihn mit Honig in seinem Reich, auf
hohen Bergen, zwischen fernstem Eis- und Felsenreich erwartet, um das Fest
der Feste zu feiern. Oder er htte ihn in seiner auf der Halbinsel Saint-Jean-CapFerrat an der Cte dAzur geplanten Schule athenischen Typs erwartet und ihm
erffnet, da nur der, der sich wandelt, mit ihm verwandt bleibt. Schler und
Meister htten sich wunderbar verstanden. Wir knnen uns eine solche Begegnung vorstellen, so wie sich Irvin D. Yalom die Begegnung zwischen Nietzsche
und Josef Breuer in seinem ergreifenden Roman When Nietzsche Wept vorgestellt
hat. Auf hohen Bergen htten sich die beiden das Leben Liebenden an dieses gewandt, jeder in seiner Art, in seiner Sprache, und, ganz gleich wie viele Vorwrfe
sie ihm gemacht htten, wre ihr Diskurs letzten Endes nichts anderes als ein
Liebes- und Treueid gewesen.
Nietzsche htte dem Leben gesagt:
In dein Auge schaute ich jngst, oh Leben: Gold sah ich in deinem Nacht-Auge blinken, mein Herz stand still vor dieser Wollust:
einen goldenen Kahn sah ich blinken auf nchtigen Gewssern, einen sinkenden,
trinkenden, wieder winkenden goldenen Schaukel-Kahn!
Nach meinem Fusse, dem tanzwthigen, warfst du einen Blick, einen lachenden fragenden schmelzenden Schaukel-Blick []
Zu dir hin sprang ich: da flohst du zurck vor meinem Sprunge; und gegen mich zngelte deines fliehenden fliegenden Haars Zunge!
Von dir weg sprang ich und von deinen Schlangen: da standst du schon, halbgewandt,
das Auge voll Verlangen.
Mit krummen Blicken lehrst du mich krumme Bahnen; auf krummen Bahnen lernt
mein Fuss Tcken!
Ich frchte dich Nahe, ich liebe dich Ferne; deine Flucht lockt mich, dein Suchen
stockt mich: ich leide, aber was litt ich um dich nicht gerne!
(Za III Das andere Tanzlied 1)

Und Cioran htte das Leben so angeredet:

Niemals werde ich dich ganz verraten; obwohl ich dich verraten habe und dich auf
Schritt und Tritt verraten werde;
Als ich dich hasste, konnte ich dich nicht vergessen;
Ich habe dich verflucht, um dich ertragen zu knnen;
Ich habe dich abgelehnt, damit du dich nderst;

26

Blaga, Lucian: Farsa originalitat,ii [Die Farce der Originalitt]. In: Isvoade [Aufzeichnungen]. Bukarest 1972. S. 100.

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Simion Danila

Ich habe dich gerufen, und du bist nicht gekommen; ich habe geschrieen, und du
hast mir nicht zugelchelt; ich war traurig, und du hast mich nicht getrstet. Ich habe
geweint, und du hast meine Trnen nicht verst. Du warst meiner Bitten Wste, meiner Stimme Grab. Du warst meiner Qualen Stillschweigen, meiner Einsamkeiten
de. Gettet habe ich in Gedanken den ersten Augenblick des Lebens und deine
Anfnge. Begehrt habe ich deiner Wurzeln Gift, und meine Seele begehrte die Drre
im Obst, die Trockenheit in den Blumen und das Versiegen der Quellen. []
Ich schwre dir: Meinen groen Verrat wirst du nie kennen.
Ich schwre auf das Allerheiligste auf dein Lcheln: Ich werde mich nicht von dir
trennen.
( Juramnt viet,ii [Eid dem Leben] aus CA, 21991. S. 101 102)

Sie htten vielleicht darber diskutiert, wie notwendig die Umwertung aller
Werte in dieser Welt der Greisen ist, um eine neue Welt, mit neuen, willensstarken, kmpferischen und opferbereiten Menschen aufbauen zu knnen. Nietzsche htte den Krppel-Greisen zugerufen: Fort aus unsrem Paradeis! Und
Cioran htte ihnen zugerufen: Nieder mit der Diktatur des Rheumatismus!
Ihre peripatetischen Diskussionen wren mglicherweise auch mit schrofferen Wortwechseln durchsetzt gewesen: Nietzsche htte Cioran seinen offensichtlichen Antisemitismus vorgehalten27, whrend Cioran seinem Gesprchspartner
27

Zu Ciorans Antisemitismus dieser hat ihn spter als eine Stupiditt der Jugend desavouiert
(vgl. Schimbarea la fat,a a Romniei [Rumniens Transfiguration]. Bukarest 1990. S. 5) siehe LaignelLavastine, Alexandra: Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco: Loubli du fascisme. Trois intellectuels roumains dans la tourmente du sicle. Paris 2002. S. 155 164. Es ist eine Abhandlung, die sicherlich nicht bei allen auf
Zustimmung stt. So z.B. schreibt Ricardo Paseyro im Le Figaro Magazine vom 13. Sept. 2003,
S. 68 69 in der unter dem Titel Linconfort intellectuel im erschienenen Rezension des Buches
Le Dieu paradoxal de Cioran von Simona Modreanu (Monaco 2003) folgendes: Einem mchtigen
und antikonformistischen Werk versuchen seine Gegner eine konfuse Jugend entgegenzusetzen.
Vergebens [] Man hat das Recht, ihn zu verabscheuen, ihn anzugreifen oder ihn abzulehnen, wenn man Talent hat. Aber der Cioran seitens seiner hartnckigen Feinde entgegengebrachte knstliche Hass ist, so wie sie es praktizieren, alles andere als intelligent, begrndet oder
akzeptabel. Einige seiner als Justitiare verkleideten Verfolger haben, in Nachahmung Wyschinskis, 1997 in Paris ein Gericht sowjetischen Typs eingerichtet und den zweiten Tod Ciorans verkndet. [] Das Cioran zur Last gelegte Meinungsdelikt geht bis November 1934 zurck: Der
23jhrige Student befindet sich in Deutschland und schickt von hier aus seine Artikel der rumnischen Presse. Der Ton seiner Korrespondenzen lsst eine Sympathie fr den Nationalsozialismus erkennen. Aus dem Kontext herausgerissen, scheint die Nachricht entsetzlich; wenn man
sie jedoch vor dem Hintergrund der damaligen Lage in Mitteleuropa betrachtet, ladet sie zum
Nachdenken ein. Eine hnliche Meinung uerte G. Calinescu 1941 in seinem monumentalen
Werk Istoria literaturii romne [Geschichte der rumnischen Literatur], S. 869, als er ber Ciorans Werk
Schimbarea la fat,a a Romniei spricht. Er betrachtet es als eine Art Rede an die rumnische Nation und findet Cioran einen begeisterten Sympathietrger, der fr die Mentalitt der Jugend
im neuen Rumnien steht. Sie befindet sich in einem seelischen Zustand, der im romantischen
Deutschland zur idealistischen und messianischen Philosophie fhrte. Erwhnt sein noch, da
Cioran 1956, in seinem Buch La tentation dexister (es ist im Rumnischen 1992 im Bukarester Humanitas-Verlag in der bersetzung von Emanoil Marcu unter dem Titel Ispita de a exista erschienen; daraus das nachfolgende Zitat, S. 57), im Kapitel Un popor de singuratici [Ein Volk von Einsamen], in einer objektiven Art auf die Juden zurckkommt und behauptet, da auf dieses Volk
keine einzige Definition zutrifft. Um es treffender zu beschreiben, msste man auf eine beson-

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den Vorwurf gemacht htte, da alle europischen Nationalismen sich aus seinen Werken speisen. Sein Streben nach einem purifizierten Europer, nach einer
vor Dekadenz bewahrter Kultur, nach Werten, die einer vitalen Ekstase entspringen, wre auer Stande einen Weltkulturstil zu schaffen, weil Weltkultur
nicht auf die Idee von Gewalt aufgebaut wird. Gewalt kann nur partikularistisch
ausgebt werden; sie ist die Quelle des Pluralismus. Die universalistischen Kulturen fuen auf der Idee von Humanitt; Vitalitt, mit ihrem impliziten Gewaltkult, isoliert die Nationen monadisch. Welch Monadologie liee sich auf
Grund von Nietzsches Vision entwerfen!, htte Cioran fr sich gesagt28. An
diesem Punkt wre eine peinliche Stille zwischen den beiden eingetreten. Auch
bezglich des bermenschen wren sie sich nicht immer einig gewesen, denn
Cioran behauptet, da der Mensch nicht berwunden, nur abgelehnt werden
kann; da die zuknftige Existenz des bermenschen nicht mglich ist, da der
Mensch nicht imstande sein wird, sich ber seine eigene Begrenztheit zu erheben; da alles dem Menschen innewohnende Bse, was ihn zu einem Verdammten macht, in seinem stndigen Wunsch begrndet liegt, seine Grenzen zu
sprengen, jenseits des Menschlichen zu treten; da der Mensch zum Untergang
vorbestimmt ist, weil er seine eigenen Grenzen berschritten hat und weil jedes geniale Schicksal den Fall implizit voraussetzt.29
Auch der an der Spitze der Bewegung Tnara Generat, ie [Die junge Generation] stehende Mircea Eliade (1907 1986), der sptere weltberhmte Religionswissenschaftler, lehnt die Gerontokratie ab. Er vertraut der Jugend, die als
einzige fhig sei, das rumnische Volk aus seinem Schlaf zu wecken, in einer Zeit
und in einem Europa, in dem die Jugend die alten Werte ber Bord werfen und
das Primat der Kultur durchsetzen wollte. In diesem Generationenkonflikt

28

29

dere Kategorie zurckgreifen, denn bei diesem Volk ist alles auergewhnlich: Ist es nicht das
erste Volk, das den Himmel bevlkert und dort seine Gottheit installiert hat? Bestrebt, mit der
gleichen Schnelligkeit Mythen zu erfinden und sie auch zu zerstren, schaffte es sich eine Religion, auf die es stolz ist, deretwegen es errtet Trotz seiner Nchternheit lsst es nicht selten
tuschen: Es hofft stndig, es hofft zuviel Eine merkwrdige Verflechtung von Kraft und
Analyse, von Fieberhaftigkeit und Sarkasmus Von so vielen Feinden umgeben, htte jedes andere Volk kapituliert; das jdische Volk aber, zur sen Verzweiflung unfhig, seiner jahrtausende alten Erschpfung trotzend und die vom Schicksal ihm auferlegten Schlussfolgerungen
ignorierend, lebt im Delirium der Erwartung, fest entschlossen, keinerlei Lehren aus seinen Demtigungen zu ziehen und auch nicht, als Normen fr seine Existenz, daraus die Bescheidenheit
oder die Anonymitt abzuleiten. Es zeichnet die universelle Diaspora vor: Seine Vergangenheit
resmiert unsere Zukunft. Je klarer wir das Morgen vor uns sehen, desto mehr nhern wir uns
ihm und desto mehr weichen wir ihm aus: Wir frchten alle, ihm nicht auf die Spuren zu treten
Whrend es unsere Gewissheiten mit einem Fragezeichen versieht, scheint es zu sagen: Ihr werdet mir bald hnlich sein
Cioran: ntre cons,tiint,a europeana s,i cea nat,ionala [Zwischen dem europischen und dem Nationalbewusstsein]. In: Vremea 518 (1937). S. 4 (In: Revelat,iile durerii [Die Offenbarungen des
Schmerzes]. Clu 1990. S. 179.
Gorgoi, Lucia: Friedrich Nietzsche s,i cultura romna interbelica, a. a. O., S. 212.

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spielte Nietzsches Gedankengut eine wirksame Rolle bei der Stimulierung der
Bestrebungen der jungen rumnischen Idealisten. Eliade hat Nietzsche zunchst
ber die Schriften von Papini kennengelernt und war vom heldenhaften Aspekt
des Lebens regelrecht gefangen genommen; in dem 1924 1925 geschriebenen
Buch Romanul adolescentului miop [Der Roman des kurzsichtigen Jnglings], das also
ein Jugendwerk des Autors ist, lsst er eine Figur auftreten, fr die hnlich wie
bei Nietzsche die heroische Haltung Kampf gegen die Mittelmigkeit, Behauptung des Vorrangs des Geistes und Selbstaufopferung bedeutet. Die Frage
des Glaubens, des Gottestodes beschftigt den kurzsichtigen Jngling ebenso
intensiv. Es scheint mir lcherlich, nach so viel wissenschaftlicher Mhe, biblische Absurditten, katholische Gruel zu akzeptieren.30 Diese Behauptung
trifft auf Eliade selbst zu, sowohl auf den jungen als auch auf den alten, so wie
sein Freund Cioran in seinem letzten Interview (1990) richtig einschtzt: Meiner Meinung nach war er kein religises Wesen. Wenn er es gewesen wre, htte
er sich nicht mit allen mglichen Gttern beschftigt. Wer religise Sensibilitt
besitzt, wird nicht die Zeit damit verbringen, Gtter zu zhlen oder deren Inventar zu machen. Man kann sich keinen betenden Gelehrten vorstellen. Die Geschichte der Religionen bedeutete fr mich immer die Verneinung der Religion.31
Das volle dionysische Dasein in einem Ur-Jenseits von Gut und Bse oder
die Authentizitt des Ichs, die Forderung, du selbst zu leben, durch dich selbst
zu Erkenntnissen zu kommen, dich selbst auszudrcken das sind weitere nietzscheanische Themen in den Romanen Eliades aus dieser Zeit: Isabel ,si apele diavolului [Isabel und die Wsser des Teufels] (Bukarest 1930), ntoarcerea din rai [Die Rckkehr aus dem Paradies] (Bukarest 1934), Huliganii [Die Hooligans] (Bukarest 1935;
Hooligan will hier heien freier Mensch, mit realen schpferischen Potenzen
ausgestattet, der, sich nach den eigenen Normen richtend, imstande ist, die Welt
zu verndern32), Nunta n cer [Hochzeit im Himmel] (Bukarest 1938).
Eliade setzte die Vertiefung Nietzsches auch spter in seiner Pariser und
seiner amerikanischen Zeit fort. So zum Beispiel unterzieht er in seinem Buch
Le Mythe de lEternel Retour (Paris 1949) es stellt das Ergebnis eines langen und
komplexen Prozesses der Exegese dar die Idee der ewigen Wiederkehr einer
historischen Betrachtung, wobei er auch die Anschauungen von archaischen
Vlkern aus einer breiten geographischen Flche, von Asien bis Australien, bercksichtigt. Eliade stellt fest, da eine Wiederkehr der Menschheit zu einer zyklischen Auffassung der Zeit erst gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts erfolgt ist
und hebt die Bemhungen Nietzsches hervor, diese Auffassung wieder zu bele30
31
32

Eliade, Mircea: Romanul adolescentului miop. Hg.: Handoca, Mircea. Bukarest 1989. S. 203.
Liiceanu, Gabriel: Itinerariile unei viet,i: E. M. Cioran. Apocalipsa dupa Cioran, a.a. O., S. 108.
Gorgoi, Lucia: Friedrich Nietzsche s,i cultura romna interbelica, a. a. O., S. 179.

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

231

ben.33 Whrend er Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte der Religionen an der Universitt von Chicago hielt, vermerkt Eliade in seinen Memoiren, da er gegen
Ende des Winters 1960 Nietzsche mit Entzckung [wiedergelesen hat]. []
Die Studenten der Vorlesung ber den geschichtlichen Menschen schienen
fasziniert, vor allem weil ich immer wieder auf die griechischen Beispiele zurckkam34 1969 wird er in seinem Buch History and Meaning in Religion ber die Verkndung des Gottestodes durch Nietzsche sprechen, die einzige religise von
der modernen abendlndischen Welt produzierte Idee: Sie gab das radikale
Ende des Christentums der Religion bekannt und prophezeite, da der
moderne Mensch zuknftig in einer ausschlielich immanenten Welt, ohne
Gott, leben muss. [] Doch diese immanente und radikal entheiligte Welt ist die
Welt der Geschichte. Als geschichtliches Wesen hat der Mensch Gott gettet,
und nach diesem Mord diesem deicid ist er gentigt, ausschlielich in der
Geschichte zu leben.35
Viele andere Ideen, die Eliade mit Nietzsche teilt, sind in seiner Publizistik
der Zwischenkriegszeit anzutreffen: die Rolle des Staates, die Einstellung gegenber dem eigenen Volk, der Kult der Aristokratie, der Antirassismus usw. Was
Eliades Antisemitismus betrifft, handelt es sich um eine reine Erfindung, wie
dies die von seinen Gegnern inkriminierten und in der letzten Zeit von Mircea
Handoca wieder verffentlichten Artikel36 beweisen. Unter anderem beklagt
Eliade die noch vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg erfolgte Ausweisung von drei groen
jdischen Gelehrten aus Rumnien: Moses Gaster, Lazar S,a ineanu und Hariton
Tiktin37. Anlsslich des Todes von Dr. Gaster (1939), einem der grten Gelehrten des Jahrhunderts, Romanist, Volkskundler, Semitologe, widmet ihm
Eliade einen beschwingten Nachruf, in dem er unterstreicht, da der Name von
Dr. Gaster nicht nur als Gelehrter berhmt ist, sondern vor allem als Erheller
des israelitischen Glaubens und als Mentor des judaischen Nationalismus und
da Gaster, neben Herzl, die wichtigste Rolle im Zionismus spielte. Eliade erinnert, da seine Rede auf dem 2. Kongress, als er auf Schultern durch den ganzen Saal getragen wurde, in der Geschichte des jdischen Nationalismus denkwrdig bleibt. Und zum Schluss merkt er an: hnlich wie jeder andere groe
Patriot liebte auch dieser Gelehrte sehr viele Vlker. Er war kein Kosmopolit,
obwohl er ein universaler Mensch war.38
33
34

35

36

37
38

Ebd., S. 189 190.

Eliade, Mircea: Memorii [Memoiren] (1907 1960). 2. Auflage. Hg.: Handoca, Mircea. Bukarest
1997. S. 501.
Eliade, Mircea: Nostalgia originilor [Die Nostalgie der Wurzeln]. bers. Cezar Baltag. Bukarest
1994. S. 81 82.
Eliade, Mircea: Textele legionare s,i despre romnism [Die legionren Texte und die Texte
ber den Rumnismus]. Hg.: Handoca, Mircea. Cluj-Napoca 2001.
Ebd., S. 145.
Ebd., S. 150 155.

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Eine Sonderrolle in der Zwischenkriegszeit nimmt Lucian Blaga (18951961)

ein, der einzige rumnische Philosoph, der ein System entwickelt hat. Der Dichter, Dramatiker und Romancier ist gleichzeitig der einzige rumnische Schriftsteller, der jemals fr den Literatur-Nobelpreis im Gesprch war (1956). Den
begehrten Preis erhielt jedoch letzten Endes der Spanier Juan Ramn Jimnez.
Schon als Gymnasialschler in Bras,ov/ Kronstadt liest er Nietzsche, den er dann
als Philosophiestudent in Wien (1917 1920) vertieft. In Blagas Werk nimmt
Nietzsche eine wichtige Stellung sowohl auf reflexiver Ebene als auch auf der
Ebene des knstlerischen Schaffens ein. In seinen ersten Bchern widmet er
dem deutschen Philosoph drei Essays: 1. in Nietzsche (in Fenomenul originar
[Das Urphnomen]. Bukarest 1925. S. 46 60) befasst er sich mit der uerung
des Phnomens, von dem Goethe sprach, in den nietzscheanischen Kategorien
apollinisch / dionysisch sowie anderen Gestalten, auf die Schelling, Strindberg, Weininger, Spengler, Keyserling in verschiedenen Bereichen aufmerksam
gemacht hatten; 2. in Nietzsche (in Fet,ele unui veac [Die Gesichter eines Jahrhunderts].
Arad 1925. S. 105 110) liefert er eine Interpretation der Hauptideen aus Also
sprach Zarathustra: die bejahende Einstellung zum Schicksal, der Wunsch nach
Selbstberwindung, der bermensch, der Amoralismus; 3. in Nietzsche ,si Strindberg [Nietzsche und Strindberg] (in Ferestre colorate [Farbfenster]. Arad 1926. S. 53 59)
stellt er die Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Denkern
heraus.
Blaga kommentiert Nietzsche auch in seinen groen philosophischen Werken, so im dritten Cenzura transcendenta [Die transzendente Zensur] (Bukarest 1934)
betitelten Band der Trilogia cunoas,terii [Trilogie der Erkenntnis] (Bukarest 1943.
S. 364 386: von der Subjektivitt der Erkenntnis; S. 375: ber tragische Flle
von Psychologen, wie Nietzsche und Weininger, seelisch zerstrt von der metaphysischen Enttuschung und dem Schreck vor den in sich selbst und bei anderen durch diese Art von Erkenntnis entdeckten Dingen usw.)
Im Bereich der literarischen Schpfung stehen die ersten Gedichtbnde Blagas, Poemele luminii [Poeme des Lichts] (Sibiu/Hermannstadt 1919) und Pas,ii profetului [Schritte des Propheten] (Cluj/Klausenburg 1921), unter dem Vorzeichen des
von Nietzsche gefrderten Lebenskults und der dionysischen Ekstase. Beispielsweise widerspiegelt das im erstgenannten Band erschienene Gedicht Vreau sa joc
[Ich will tanzen], hnlich wie in Nietzsches Tanz, den Wunsch des Menschen, sich
von der Materie, vom Geist der Schwere loszulsen und sich in schwindelnde
Hhen zu begeben39. Eine hnliche Idee, jene von der Befreiung der Seele aus
dem krperlichen Leben durch einen orgiastischen Tanz und von deren Transfiguration, wodurch die Seele mit der Natur eins wird, taucht auch in dem Stck

39

Gorgoi, Lucia: Friedrich Nietzsche s,i cultura romna interbelica, a. a. O., S. 253.

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

233

Zamolxe, mister pagn [Zamolxes, heidnisches Mysterium] (Cluj 1921)40, aber auch in anderen Stcken, wie Tulburarea apelor [Trbung der Wsser] (Cluj 1923) und Fapta
[Die Tat] (Bukarest 1925) auf41.
Die Gedichte eines anderen groen rumnischen Poeten, Ion Barbu, der
in der gleichen Zeit wie Lucian Blaga gelebt hat (1895 1961), schpfen viel aus
Nietzsches Hellas, einem Griechenland der eleusinischen Mysterien und des
Dionysos gewidmeten orgiastischen Kults, durch die die Griechen sich aus dem
Lebensschmerz zu befreien suchten. Genannt seien die Poeme Panteism [Pantheismus], Dionisica [Dionysisch], Pentru Marile Eleusinii [Fr die Groen Eleusinien], Copacul [Der Baum], Cucerire [Eroberung], Cnd va veni declinul [Wenn der Niedergang kommen wird] und, nicht zu vergessen, das von der ungeheuren Wiederkehr des
Lebens in der Ewigkeit handelnde Gedicht Nietzsche 42.
Tudor Vianu (1897 1964), Literaturkritiker- und historiker, sthet und Kulturphilosoph jdischer Herkunft, der auf den Nietzscheanismus in Ion Barbus
Poesie hingewiesen hat, war selbst von Nietzsches Denken angezogen. Damit ist
er an der Universitt Bukarest (1915 1919) durch die Vermittlung von C. Radulescu-Motru und dann spter an der Universitt Tbingen (1921 1923) in Kontakt getreten. Bezugnahmen auf Nietzsche sind in seinen Arbeiten hufig anzutreffen, angefangen mit seinem Debt in der Bukarester Zeitschrift Flacara : (37
(1916). S. 446 447): Pareri libere despre Alexandra Macedonski ca poet [Freie Meinungen ber Alexandra Macedonski als Dichter], spter fortgesetzt in den Arbeiten Ideile
estetice ale lui Titu Maiorescu [Titu Maiorescus sthetische Ideen] (Viat,a romneasca 1
(1925). S. 61 73), Teatrul lui Lucian Blaga [Lucian Blagas Theater] (Cuvntul 11
(1925). S. 1 2 und 18 (1925).), Dualismul artei [Der Dualismus der Kunst] (Bukarest
1925), Fr. Nietzsche ,si filozofia ca forma de viat,a [Fr. Nietzsche und die Philosophie als Lebensform] (Libertatea 2 (1934). S. 19 22; 3 (1934). S. 35 38), Estetica [sthetik]
(2 Bnde; Bukarest 1934, 1936), Ion Barbu (Bukarest 1935), Filozofie ,si poezie [Philosophie und Poesie] (Oradea 1937), Filozofia culturii [Kulturphilosophie] (Bukarest
1944), Idei traite [Gelebte Ideen] (Bukarest 1958) usw.43 Zusammengefasst wrden
T. Vianus Beitrge zur besseren Kenntnis des nietzscheanischen Denkens einen
ganzen Band ergeben. ber seinen Bezug zu Nietzsches Philosophie zieht er gegen Ende des Lebens folgendes Resmee: Ich gestehe die Anziehungskraft, die
dieser Philosoph auf mich ausgebt hat. Die Schrfe seiner Aphorismen, seine
Fhigkeit, den in allen Formen der Kultur verborgenen Lebens- und Willensakt
einzufangen, sein romantischer Hang, den entferntesten Ursprngen der Zivili40

41
42
43

Todoran, Eugen: Lucian Blaga. Mitul dramatic [Lucian Blaga. Der dramatische Mythos]. Timisoara 1985. S. 76 77.
Vianu, Tudor: Scriitori romni [Rumnische Schriftsteller]. Bd. 3. Bukarest 1971. S. 334.
Vianu, T.: Ion Barbu. Bukarest 1970. S. 17 27.
Gana, George: Tudor Vianu s,i Nietzsche [Tudor Vianu und Nietzsche]. In: Revista de filozofie 6
(1997). S. 645 658.

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sation nachzuspren, all das erzeugte bei mir eine Art von intellektueller Trunkenheit 44
Weitere genaue Informationen ber Nietzsche konnten die rumnischen Leser damals dem von Edgar Papu verfassten Kapitel Nietzsche im 3. Band des kollektiven Werks Istoria filozofiei moderne [Geschichte der modernen Philosophie]. Bukarest
1938. S. 486 496 entnehmen.
Einer der bedeutendsten rumnischen Schriftsteller, Liviu Rebreanu
(1885 1944), der, wie bereits erwhnt, auch einiges aus Nietzsches Werk bersetzt hat und in einem Brief aus dem Jahr 1910 an den Literaturkritiker Mihail
Dragomirescu behauptet, da Nietzsche meine Seele ist45, war mit dessen
Denken gut vertraut und verfolgte mit Interesse die verschiedenen Auslegungen
seiner Philosophie. So zum Beispiel hlt er in seinem Tagebuch am 23. Mai 1940
fest: [] ich war beim Deutschen Institut [in Bukarest, Zusatz. S. D.], wo ich
dem uerst interessanten Vortrag des Professors Herbert Gysarz [= Cysarz: aus
Berlin, Zusatz. S. D.] ber Nietzsche und unsere Zeit lauschte.46 Sein Interesse
an dem deutschen Philosophen hinterlie Spuren auch in Rebreanus Schaffen;
diese sind in der Erzhlung Fiara [Raubtier] (in: Lamura 12 (1920). S. 1030 1036),
in den Romanen Ion (Bukarest 1920), Adam ,si Eva [Adam und Eva] (Bukarest
1925), Ciuleandra (Bukarest 1927), Gorila [Gorilla] (Bukarest 1938) usw. ausfindig
zu machen. Ion aus dem gleichnamigen Roman (dessen von Konrad Richter besorgte deutsche bersetzung ist 1941 in Wien unter dem Titel Die Erde, die Funken macht erschienen) ist ein chtonisches Wesen, das dem Boden im eigensten
Sinne treu bleibt. Adam und Eva ist die Umsetzung allerdings in einer eigenen
Auslegung der Idee der ewigen Wiederkehr in sieben Hypostasen des ein und
desselben Paares. Ciuleandra ist ein Volkstanz, der in seinem dionysischen Ausdruck Liebe, Wahnsinn und Tod erzeugt. Gorilla ist mit einem Motto aus Za Vorrede 4 versehen: Was gro ist am Menschen, das ist, dass er eine Brcke und kein
Zweck ist: was geliebt werden kann am Menschen, das ist, dass er ein be r g ang und ein Unterg ang ist.47 Die Romanfigur Toma Pahont, u wird zu einem
wahren Monster, wenn es um sein politisches Emporkommen geht. Seine Ziele
will er um jeden Preis erreichen. Als Brcke, in den archaischen Mythen ein Ausdruck fr den gefahrenvollen bergang von einer Existenzform zur anderen,
dient ihm die Liebe zu einer Bojarentochter, von der er sich eine erfolgreiche Politikerkarriere verspricht. Pahont, u wird jedoch auf Befehl des Anfhrers einer
44
45
46

47

Vianu, T.: Idei traite [Gelebte Ideen], In: Opere [Werke]. Bd. 1. Bukarest 1971. S. 112.
Gheran, Niculae: Gnarul Rebreanu [Der junge Rebreanu]. Bukarest 1986. S. 296.
Rebreanu, Liviu: Opere 17. Editie critica de Niculae Gheran. Jurnal (1927 1944). Bukarest
1998. S. 330.
Die Angaben zu Rebreanu wurden groteils dem Artikel von Lasconi, Elisabeta: Rebreanu s,i
Efectul Nietzsche [Rebreanu und der Nietzsche-Effekt]. In: Adevarul literar ,si artistic 601
(2002). S. 6.

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winzigen faschistischen Gruppierung ermordet, da er nicht bereit ist, dessen

Spiel bis zum Ende mit zu machen48.
Mit Nietzsches Philosophie befate sich auch der Dichter und Essayist B[enjamin] Fundoianu bzw. Fondane (nach seiner Emigration nach Frankreich), das
Pseudonym von Benjamin Wexler (1898 1944). In seiner Jugend hat er Nietzsche verteidigt, als dessen Ideen umgedeutet wurden. Beispielsweise schreibt
er, ausgehend von einer Notiz in der Pariser Zeitschrift Litterature 1 von 1919,
in einem in der Jassyer Zeitschrift nsemnari literare (42 (1919). S. 8 9) unter dem
Titel Cuvinte despre Nietzsche [Worte ber Nietzsche] verffentlichten Artikel: Das
Rtsel, ob Nietzsche ein Apologet des Krieges und ein Germanophile ist, ist
durchaus von Interesse. Von der Antwort ist der Stellenwert abhngig, den wir
Zarathustra in unseren Bibliotheken einrumen werden. Die Person, die die
Frage so gestellt hat, ist ein Dummkopf. Auerdem ist sie des Lesens nicht kundig. Mehr noch: Sie ist nicht imstande Nietzsche zu lesen. [] Ich glaube nicht,
da es einen schlechter gelesenen Philosophen als Nietzsche gibt. [] Die meisten seiner Leser sind Nietzsches Feinde. Nietzsche ist kein Apologet der
Gewalt. Er ist ein begeisterter Apologet des Lebens. Und das Leben bedeutet
Bewegung, Ungleichgewicht, Machtwille, das Werden, die Kraft. [] Sie knnen
ihn aus ihren Bibliotheken entfernen. Nietzsche duldet keine Leser und auch
keine Schler. Was der Schpfer Nietzsche sucht, sind Schpfer von Werten.
Und zwar solche, die neue Werte auf neue Tafeln schreiben. Und in dem Artikel
Scuze lui Nietzsche [Entschuldigung bei Nietzsche], der in der Zeitschrift Sburatorul
Literar [Bukarest] 25 (1922). S. 598 599, erschienen ist, fhrt er eine Polemik mit
Andr Suars, der Nietzsche beschuldigt hatte, der moralische Urheber des deutschen Militarismus gewesen zu sein. Auf diese Polemik werden wir noch zurckkommen.
1936 verffentlicht B[enjamin] Fundane in Paris La Conscience malheureuse,
eine Essaysammlung, aus der uns hier die rumnische Fassung des Essays Nietzsche ,si suprema cruzime [Nietzsche und die oberste Roheit] interessiert. Das zu Papier Gebrachte konnte nur der spitzen Feder eines Autors entspringen, der mit
Nietzsche bis hin zur Identifizierung mit ihm vertraut war. Zitiert seien einige
Aussagen aus dem genannten Essay: Wenn Chesterton von Nietzsches intellektueller Schwche spricht, so ist dies ein Beleg fr die tiefgehende Unkenntnis eines der grten intellektuellen Ereignisse des 19. Jahrhunderts. [] Stellen sie sich vor: Von allen Menschen verabscheut er nur einen zutiefst, den
Menschen religisen Typs. Und, paradoxerweise, ist dies der Mensch, den er am
meisten respektiert. [] Er liebt sich innig und findet so lange keine Ruhe, bis
er nicht dazu kommt, sich zu verwischen und einen bermenschen zu fabrizie48

Gheran, Niculae: Studiu introductiv [Einfhrung]. In: Rebreanu, Liviu: Opere [Werke]. Bd. 10.
Gorila [Gorilla]. Bukarest 1981. S. XXI XXXVIII.

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ren, der ihm gar nicht hnlich ist. Er hat Christus und liebt Dionysos. Wie sehr
er doch die Griechen liebt! Jedoch knnte er sich mit einem Griechen nicht lnger als fnf Minuten unterhalten. Welch irritierende Konversation htte ihm ein
Epikur, ein Sophist, geboten! Hingegen htte er sich an einem Gesprch mit
einem Calvin, einem Luther, einem Pascal ergtzt, aber mglicherweise htte er
sie sogleich vor ein Erschieungskommando geschickt. [] Am besten lesen
wir ihn gar nicht mehr ehe wir ihn verkehrt lesen, so wie er fast immer gelesen
wurde. [] Wir haben uns daran gewhnt, Nietzsche auf allen mglichen Arten
benutzt zu sehen und wir haben ehrlich zugegeben, da seine Texte fr alles
eine Antwort haben, alles rechtfertigen, alles abdecken. Jedoch handelt es sich
um magische Texte, an denen wir unsere Finger verbrennen. [] fr Nietzsche
ist das Menschliche trotz seiner zu menschlichen Menschlichkeit uninteressant;
seit dunkelsten Zeiten hat der Mensch sein Ziel verfehlt und erst jetzt beginnt er
sich dessen bewut zu werden. Das Ziel des Menschlichen ist die Abschaffung
des Menschlichen mit dem Zweck, sich dem Gttlichen zu substituieren. Das
Ziel des Menschen ist die Abschaffung des Menschen um ein Gott zu werden.
[] wenn er dem Menschen trotzdem ein gewisses Vertrauen schenkt, dann
geschieht dies aus dem einzigen Grund, da dieser Mensch eine einmalige
schreckliche und tragische Tat vollbracht hat: Er hat Gott gettet. In Nietzsches Ruf, der das Gewlbe der Zeit zum Erschallen bringt, in diesem Ruf
Gott ist tot mssen wir den Schlssel zu seiner Philosophie, zu seinem
Leben, zu seinen Gegenstzen, zu seiner Hilflosigkeit und seinem Wahnsinn
suchen. [] der Mensch hatte Gott gettet, [] dem Menschen war endlich
gestattet, selbst Gott zu werden und er war sich dessen gar nicht bewut []
Gott dem Nichts zu opfern, von diesem paradoxen Mysterium der obersten
Roheit [] wuten wir bis Nietzsche nichts []49
uerst lebendig erscheint uns Nietzsches Bild wie es sich in der rumnischen Presse der Zwischenkriegszeit widerspiegelt. Statistisch betrachtet50 stellen sich die Tatsachen folgendermaen dar: In dieser Zeit wurden 126 Nietzsche
gewidmete Artikel und Notizen verffentlicht und 42 bersetzungen von Fragmenten, Aphorismen und Gedichten aus seinem Werk sowie von Briefen realisiert. Die Artikel und Notizen prsentieren Nietzsches geistiges Profil, sein Leben und Werk, seine Grundsatzideen, Nietzsche-Editionen, Artikel und Bcher
nietzscheanischer Exegese von auslndischen Autoren, Stellungnahmen pro und
kontra Nietzsche, Filiationen im Hinblick auf das nietzscheanische Phnomen,
49

50

Fundoianu, B[enjamin]: Cons,tiint,a nefericita [Das unglckliche Bewusstsein]. bers. Andreea

Vladescu. Bukarest 1993. S. 74 81, S. 74 79.
Nach Brezuleanu, Maria/ Mihaila, Ileana/ Nis,cov, Viorica/ S,chiopu, Michaela/ S,tefanescu,
Cornelia: Bibliografia relat,iilor literaturii romne cu literaturile straine n periodice (1919 1944)
[Die Beziehungen der rumnischen Literatur zu den auslndischen Literaturen, widerspiegelt in
Periodika. Eine Bibliographie (1919 1944)]. Bukarest 2000.

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Nietzsches Rolle in der deutschen und europischen Kultur usw. Im Folgenden

seien einige Meinungen zitiert:
Ionel Jianu, Actualitatea lui Nietzsche [Nietzsches Aktualitt], in Rampa noua
ilustrata [Bukarest], 3051 (1928). S. 1: Von allen Philosophen des vergangenen
Jahrhunderts ist Nietzsche sicherlich derjenige, dessen Einflu auf die jetzige
Zeit strker ist. Vor einigen Jahren herrschte in den Fluren der Sorbonne
der Bergsonismus. [] Bergson aber steht in der direkten Nachfolge Nietzsches.
Er hat der Verallgemeinerung der leidenschaftlichen Ideen dieses Fanatikers
Bedeutung verliehen. [] Wodurch beherrscht der geniale Verrckte unsere
Zeit? [] unsere Epoche ist durch die berschwenglichkeit der Kraft, durch intellektuellen Fanatismus gekennzeichnet. Nietzsche aber war der sentimentale
Mensch, der auf eine brutale Art und Weise dieses absorbierende Recht der Leidenschaft in voller Bltezeit der Vernunft durchgesetzt hat. Er hat das Banner
des Fanatismus hochgehalten, das heute ber unseren Kpfen weht. [] Nietzsche ist heute lebendiger und mchtiger denn je. Weil dies die Gabe des Genius
ist: dem Tod die Stirn zu bieten, ihn zu besiegen.
S,eicaru, Pamfil: Pe marginea Operelor postume ale lui Frederic Nietzsche [Am
Rande der Posthumen Werke Friedrich Nietzsches]. In: Curental [Bukarest] 2478
(1934). S. 1 (der Autor bezieht sich auf einen nach GA in franzsischer Sprache im Verlag Mercure de France erschienenen Band): Unsere unruhige und
unsichere Zeit mit ihren tosenden Zusammenbrchen und den angriffslustigen
Schreien frischer Krfte, diese strmische Zeit mit Katastrophen und dem Anbruch anderer Zivilisationsformen scheint die dynamische Projektion von
Nietzsches Visionen zu sein. [] Die stillen Zeiten knnen nur beschwichtigte
Wesen, sanfte Atemzge, Diminutive des Machtwillens frdern; allein die Zeiten
strmischer Zusammenbrche und Gegenstzlichkeiten [] erzeugen die Energien einzigartigen Ausmaes, so als ob sich das Schicksal der Menschheit in die
Kraft- und Willensmonster einfleischen will um sich in der Flut dieser feindlichen Zeiten einen Weg zu bahnen. Er zitiert aus Nietzsche: Der Zustand
Europas im nchsten Jahrhundert wird die mnnlichen Tugenden wieder heranzchten: weil man in der bestndigen Gefahr lebt. (Nachla 1885, KSA 11,
34[203]) Es sei hier noch vermerkt, da der betreffende Band auch von Erasm,
alias Petru Manoliu, in Credint,a [Bukarest] 1110 (1937). S. 2 prsentiert wurde.
Auf eine gute Resonanz in der rumnischen Presse stie Stefan Zweigs Buch
ber Nietzsche, sowohl dessen franzsische Ausgabe von 1931 (Paris) darber
haben M[ihai] Ralea (in Viat,a romneasca [ Jassy] 5 (1931). S. 209 210), D. I. Suchianu (in Adevarul literar ,si artistic [Bukarest] 561 (1931). S. 5 und 562 (1931). S. 7),
N. Tatu (in Dreptatea [Bukarest] 1383 (1932). S. 1) geschrieben als auch die 1939
in dem Band Tolstoi. Nietzsche (Verlag Cugetarea, Bukarest) erschienene bersetzung aus dem Deutschen ins Rumnische von Eugen Relgis (alias Sigler; es sei
noch erwhnt, da die Zeitschrift S,coala ,si Viat,a [Bukarest] 7 (1934). S. 386 388,

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die von N. T,ane stammende bersetzung aus dem Franzsischen des letzten
Kapitels Der Erzieher zur Freiheit verffentlicht hat). Relgis bersetzung wurde
in den Publikationen nsemnari ies,ene 1 (1939). S. 176 177, S,coala Basarabeana
[Kischinew] 1 2 (1939). S. 55 57, Gndul Vremii [ Jassy, Bukarest] 1 2 (1939).
S. 38, Atheneum [ Jassy, Bukarest] 1 (1939). S. 90 91 besprochen. Eine zweite
Auflage ist 1996 im Bukarester Wissenschaftlichen Verlag erschienen und wurde
unter anderen von Grete Tartler in Romnia literara 12 (1997). S. 19 rezensiert.
Rezensiert wurden auerdem die Bcher ber Nietzsche von Charles Andler,
Helmut Walter Braun, Felicien Challaye, Jules de Gaultier, Heinrich Mann,
Thierry Maulnier, Erich Podach, Georges Valbert.
Einen groen Wirbel in der damaligen Zeit verursachte die Polemik Paul
Souday Andr Suars, die sich in der rumnischen Presse gut widerspiegelt.
A. Suars hatte in der franzsischen Presse whrend des Ersten Weltkriegs eine
Stellungnahme zu Nietzsche verffentlicht, den er als moralisch Verantwortlichen fr die damals verbten Grausamkeiten betrachtete. Dem folgte 1921 eine
Widerrufung. Paul Souday erwidert Suars uerungen in einem Artikel in Le
Temps. Seine Replik wird in rumnischer bersetzung in der Zeitung Dimineat,a
[Bukarest] 5395 (1921). S. 3, unter dem Titel Reabilitarea lui Nietzsche. Campania de
refacere intelectuala [Nietzsches Rehabilitation. Die intelektuelle Wiedergutmachungskampagne] verffentlicht. Bezug darauf nimmt auch ein ungezeichneter Artikel, Pace
culturala [Kultureller Friede], aus der Zeitschrift Voint,a [Klausenburg] 35 (1921).
S. 2, der von der vorhin genannten bersetzung ausgehend einen Teil von
Soudays Ideen wiedergibt, d.h.: Suars bringe Nietzsche jetzt eine Hommage,
lasse ihm aber nicht die ganze Gerechtigkeit widerfahren; Nietzsche sei nicht
der Mann des Reiches gewesen, er habe das Reich konstant angeklagt, weil es
den Niedergang der Kultur zu verantworten und die Herrschaft der Philister verankert hat. Die von Nietzsche am deutschen Volk gebte Kritik diene dem
Zweck, es aus seiner Passivitt herauszulocken, sie sei demnach auch nur dem
Wunsch nach berhhung der Deutschen entsprungen. Am Schlu fhrt
Souday aus: Ist es wohl nicht die Pflicht der Denker, an der intellektuellen und
moralischen Verbesserung des Landes und der Welt zu arbeiten? [] Liegt es
wohl im Interesse Frankreichs, da Deutschland grob und barbarisch bleibt?
Ein Goethe, ein Kant, ein Nietzsche haben, wenn Sie so wollen, Deutschland
gedient, aber als gute Europer und groe Zivilisationsschpfer. In Nietzsches
Verteidigung greift auch, wie bereits erwhnt, B. Fundoianu ein. Das Echo
des Disputs ebbt auch 1925 nicht ab, als die Zeitschrift Rampa noua ilustrata 2326
(1925). S. 4, in einem ebenfalls anonymen Artikel, Nietzsche iertat [Nietzsche
verziehen], Suars Widerrufung erneut in Umlauf bringt.
Ohne in direkter Verbindung mit dieser Polemik zu stehen, ordnet der in der
Zeitschrift Adevarul literar ,si artistic 234 (1925). S. 4 erschienene Artikel Din viat,a
lui Nietzsche [Aus Nietzsches Leben] von Emilie Sirieyse de Villiers Nietzsche in die

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Kategorie der Trger einer schwarzen Mission ein, d.h. in die Reihe derer, die
die Menschen zum Bsen ermuntern und dazu neigen, sie zu Fall zu bringen.
Zerebral zerschmettert, enden sie noch vor ihrem Tod. 1932 wird in Paris ihr
Buch La faillite de surkomme et la psychologie de Nietzsche (Paris 1920), mit einem
Vorwort von Edouard Schur neu herausgegeben. Auf dieses Vorwort nimmt
G. Belea in der Zeitschrift T,ara noastra 72 (1932). S. 1 2 und 73 (1932). S. 1 2
ausfhrlich Bezug und behauptet, da es verglichen mit dem Buch eine komplexere Persnlichkeit zeichnet. Schur portrtiert Nietzsche jedoch eher in
schwarz und unterstreicht, da sich die Pangermanen die Theorie des bermenschen sehr rasch einverleibt htten als das genialste Evangelium, dessen Sinn es
ist, die Vorherrschaft der brutalen Kraft herauszuposaunen (Nr. 72, S. 1), da
diese Theorie den nietzscheanischen Geist aus der Seele des franzsischen Volkes endgltig eliminiert habe, dem paradoxe Formeln und in Prophetengewand
gekleidete Lgen fremd sind. Hingegen sei sie von dem Pathologischen, von
dem die Herde der pangermanischen Teutonen ergriffen und beherrscht war
(Nr. 73, S. 1), endgltig akzeptiert worden. Der Verfasser des Vorwortes wundert
sich, wie es diesem falschen Magier, diesem Jahrmarkt-Propheten gelungen
ist, so viele Menschen zu verfhren. Ohne es zu wollen, habe er sich als Urheber
der von seinen Landsleuten verbten Vandalismen erwiesen (Nr. 73, S. 2).
Nietzsche bleibt auch von den rumnischen Sozialisten nicht verschont.
Beispielsweise nimmt Ion Gherea in seinem Artikel Marx ,si Nietzsche [Marx und
Nietzsche] (in: Adevarul literar ,si artistic 267 (1926). S. 4) an, da die Theorie der beiden Moralen und des Kampfes zwischen diesen eine gewissenhafte Anwendung
der materialistischen Anschauung bezglich des Klassenkampfes sei, ohne da
Nietzsche den Namen Marx jemals auch nur ausgesprochen habe. Ebenso sei er
mit Max Stirner, dem Autor des Buches Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, verfahren,
dem er sehr viel verdanke. Dazu siehe auch Angelescu, Paraschiv: Stirner ,si Nietzsche [Stirner und Nietzsche]. In: Curentul 897 (1930). S. 1 2.
Unter dem Titel mpotriva nietzscheanismului [Gegen den Nietzscheanismus],
verffentlicht die Zeitschrift Transilvania [Hermannstadt] 56 (1927). S. 209211,
einen Nachdruck des in LIllustration vom 21. Mai 1927 erschienenen Artikels
Profet,iile moderne [Die modernen Prophezeiungen] von G. Ferrero. Der Autor geht von
der Prmisse aus, da Nietzsche, ein groer Erfinder von Bildern, von Politik
gar nichts versteht, da er vorausgesagt habe, da Ruland dank seines Absolutismus alle Chancen hat, lange Zeit zu berdauern. Nietzsches Philosophie sei
somit eine Apologie des Despotismus und eine wtende Zertrmmerung der
liberalen Doktrinen und Institutionen. Dem Moskauer Koloss fehlte einzig
und allein die Freiheit, und gerade Nietzsche und dessen Schler wollten den
Rest Europas dieser Freiheit berauben. Und der Koloss wurde am Boden zerstrt. Ein Beispiel und eine Lektion, deren Sinn das westliche Europa verstehen
und daraus profitieren msste. (S. 209)

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Der bereits erwhnte Paraschiv Angelescu, Pfarrer und Obere der rumnischen Kirche in Sofia, hat ebenfalls in Cuvntul, jedoch in zwei Folgen (815,
S. 1 2 und 817, S. 1 2) von 1930, den polemischen Artikel Fenomenul om + supra.
Fr. Nietzsche [Das Phnomen Mensch + ber. Fr. Nietzsche] verffentlicht, in dem er
Nietzsches Konzeption vom bermenschen auf eine lcherliche Art und Weise
darlegt: Der jetzige Mensch werde durch einen anderen Menschen, einen bermenschen ersetzt. Da dieser Mensch nicht mehr christlich sein wird, werde das
Evangelium Christi durch das Evangelium Zarathustras, des Propheten des
bermenschen, ersetzt. Die in Nietzsches Arsenal geschaffenen bermenschen
seien eine Truppe von Russen und russischen Juden, mit Lenin und Trotzki an
der einen Spitze, mit Stalin und Lunatscharski an der anderen, und darunter eine
Unmenge von Volkskommissaren, vorlufig nur eine Art bermenschlein.
Auf diese Weise habe Nietzsche in der slawischen Welt den Sieg davongetragen,
was ihm jedoch in der angelschsischen, teutonischen, lateinischen Welt usw.
nicht gelungen sei; die Leiden Jesu setzen sich fort, Nietzsche arbeitet durch die
Juden (Nr. 817, S. 1 2).
Andererseits sind wir dank der gemeinsamen Bemhungen eines Groteils
der europischen Intellektualitt nun auch in Rumnien Zeugen eines Denazifizierungsprozesses des in Deutschland von der faschistischen Ideologie vereinnahmten Nietzsche. Beispielhaft sollen im Folgenden einige uerungen der
zeitgenssischen Presse wiedergegeben werden:
Adevarul literar ,si artistic 334 (1927). S. 8, verffentlicht unter dem Titel Friedrich Nietzsche despre antisemitism [Friedrich Nietzsche ber den Antisemitismus]
den bekannten Brief Nietzsches vom 29. Mrz 1887 an Theodor Fritsch, in dem
er sich eindeutig von jedwedem Rassismus und Antisemitismus abgrenzt. Sechs
Jahre spter verffentlicht S. Sanin in Hasmonaea [Bukarest] 5 (1933). S. 15 16,
den Artikel Nietzsche a condamnat rasismul. Doua scrisori revelatoare [Nietzsche hat den
Rassismus verurteilt. Zwei offenbarende Briefe], in dem er Nietzsches kritische Einstellung zum Antisemitismus anhand der beiden Briefe an Th. Fritsch (vom 23. und
vom 29. Mrz 1887; vgl. KSB 8, S. 45 46 und 51) belegt.
Orizontul [Bukarest] 31 (1927). S. 370, verffentlicht den Artikel Un precursor
al europenismului: Nietzsche [Ein Vorlufer des Europismus: Nietzsche] von Pierre
Descaves, in dem der Autor der Meinung widerspricht, wonach Nietzsches
Theorien die Entwicklung des Nationalsozialismus und den militaristischen
Geist gefrdert htten.
Constantin Micu stellt in seinem Artikel Este Nietzsche un filozof nat,ional-socialist? [Ist Nietzsche ein nationalsozialistischer Philosoph?] (in: Cuvntul Liber [Bukarest]
21 (1935). S. 4) fest, da es Hitlerdeutschland gnzlich an Denkern mit groer
Autoritt mangele, die willens sind, die nationalistische Rassenmystik zu untersttzen. Durch seine Kulturagenten habe es in der Person Nietzsches den gesuchten Philosophenhelden identifiziert. Der Autor bezieht sich sodann auf die

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berzeugung des Franzosen Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle, da Nietzsches Werk

fast alle groen Momente Deutschlands viele Jahre im voraus antizipiere und
theoretisch vorbereite: von der Auslsung des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zum Aufstieg und Triumph Hitlers. Als Argument dient der von Nietzsche konzipierte
neue Mensch, der bermensch. Nachdem er dessen Wesenszge darstellt, stellt
sich Micu die Frage, ob dieses Modell der freien und perfekten Individualitt
wohl eine hnlichkeit mit dem gemeinen und vulgren Typ, mit den migestalteten und geknechteten Mitgliedern der Sturmbataillone aufweise? Knne man
wohl eine bereinstimmung des nietzscheanischen Heldens, der die hchsten
Gipfel des Denkens erklommen hat, mit der uniformierten menschlichen Karikatur feststellen, die, ohne kritischen Geist, ohne Persnlichkeit, ignorant und
untertan, bei den Militrparaden dem Fhrer mit Heil Hitler! zujubelt? Wie
weit ist Nietzsche vom Hitlerismus entfernt und wie nahe ist er bei einigen wesentlichen Merkmalen des marxistischen Denkens!, ruft C. Micu aus. Er zeigt
diese gemeinsamen Merkmale des Denkens von Nietzsche und Marx auf (die
Kritik der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, der idealistischen Philosophie, die
vehemente Ablehnung der alten Konzepte: Gott, Wesen, Substanz, Seele usw.)
und wirft ersterem dessen offenen Antisozialismus vor, was wesentlich zum Verpassen und zur Kompromittierung der Botschaft Zarathustras beigetragen habe.
Dadurch sei die Verflschung der nietzscheanischen Ideen erleichtert worden,
bis Nietzsche zum Vorlufer des Chauvinismus und der nationalen Revolution gemacht wurde. Aber die nietzscheanische Frage der Freiheit und Unabhngigkeit der Person habe absolut nichts mit dem Nationalsozialismus gemeinsam, dessen aktuelle Neigungen, sich das Individuum untertan zu machen und
es zu demtigen, bei Nietzsche blo Revolte ausgelst htten. Micu zitiert den
Fall Andr Gide, dieser groe Schler Nietzsches, der im Kommunismus die
Mglichkeit der Vervollkommnung der Individualitt gesehen habe. Auch Malrauxs Helden aus seiner La Condition Humaine seien unter dem Einflu des nietzscheanischen Denkens entstanden. Nietzsches Werk, bemerkt der Autor abschlieend, zeichnet sich somit nicht dadurch aus, da es ein Mittel zur
Unterdrckung des Menschen, sondern zu dessen Freiheit ist, da es nicht ein
Mittel zur Abschaffung der wirklichen menschlichen Individualitt, sondern zu
deren Verwirklichung ist. Was verwundert, ist nur die Tatsache, da diese von
den Sozialisten der damaligen Zeit vertretenen nietzschefreundlichen Ideen
gnzlich in Vergessenheit gerieten, als sie in vielen Lndern der Welt an die
Macht kamen!
Hier einige weitere Meinungen: Erasm (Petru Manoliu) verffentlicht in Credint,a [Bukarest] 596 (1935). S. 4, eine Note, in der er die u.a. auch von Nietzsches
Schwester vertretene Idee, dieser sei ein Vorlufer des Hitlerismus, ablehnt;
Nietzsche knne nicht mit Spengler oder Keyserling verglichen werden, die ihre
Philosophie auf dem 1919 in Versailles gebrochenen teutonischen Hochmut auf-

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gebaut haben. Und Ieronim S,erbu stellt in seinem in Cuvntul Liber 48 (1936).
S. 6, erschienenen Artikel Nietzsche ,si Hitlerismul [Nietzsche und der Hitlerismus] fest,
da Nietzsches Werk, voller Paradoxa und scheinbarer Gegenstze, einer politischen Ideologie ein immenses Material liefern knne. Auch die Hitleristen htten sich Nietzsche zunutze gemacht, jedoch die Bestandteile seines Denkens bis
zur Unkenntlichkeit verflscht. Der Autor stellt die kategorische Behauptung
auf, da Nietzsches Denken als Grundlage einer Ideologie, die ihren Schwerpunkt auf das Primat der rohen Gewalt legt, nicht genutzt werden kann, da
eine starke Dosis Zynismus und Leichtsinn vonnten ist, um Nietzsche als Vorlufer des Hitlerismus zu erklren. Er nimmt sich vor, eine Serie zu verfassen,
um anhand von Texten die totale Fremdheit des nietzscheanischen Geistes zu
dem des Hitlerismus zu belegen, denn von Anfang an ist es notwendig zu wissen, da Nietzsche sich in erster Reihe als Europer verstand. Es ist uns nicht
bekannt, weshalb Ieronim S,erbu die angekndigte Serie, von der man sich sehr
interessante Erkenntnisse versprach, nicht mehr schrieb.
Aus Nietzsches Werken erscheinen in dieser ganzen Zeit nur drei Bcher:
Antichristul [Der Antichrist]. bers. und Hg. George B. Rares, (alias George Emil
Botez). Mit einem Vorwort von Mihail Negru. Bukarest 1920; die zweite rumnische Version von Also sprach Zarathustra [As,a vorbit-a Zarathustra], bers. und
Hg. Eugen Relgis. Bukarest 1935; eine Auswahl von Gedichten: Ditirambe catre
Dionysos [Dionysos-Dithyramben]. bers. und Hg. George Silviu. Bukarest o. J. Es
ist verwunderlich, da keines dieser Bcher ein Echo in der Presse der Zeit gefunden hat.

3. 1944 1989
Unter dem Druck der sowjetischen Ideologie war Nietzsches Werk in einer
ersten Phase in Rumnien regelrecht verboten. Nun erscheinen gegen Nietzsche
gerichtete Schriften, wie Contribut,ii la filozofia capitalismului (Nietzsche) [Beitrge zur
Philosophie des Kapitalismus (Nietzsche)] (IX. Kapitel aus Kapital und Presse. Berlin
1891) von Franz Mehring (in: Pagini de critica [Kritikbltter]. bers. Annie Katz.
Bukarest 1958. S. 114 130) oder Esent,a react,ionara a nietzscheanismului [Das reaktionre Wesen des Nietzscheanismus] (Moskau 1959) von S. F. Oduev (bers. M[ihai]
Ciurdariu. Bukarest 1963). Es reicht schon in dem Mic dict,ionar filozofic [Kleines philosophisches Wrterbuch] (Moskau 41954 von M. Rozental und P. Iudin. bers. das
Redaktionskollegium. Bukarest 1955) unter dem Stichwort Nietzsche zu lesen:
deutscher idealistischer Philosoph, extremistischer Reaktionr, offener Apologet der brgerlichen Ausbeutung und der Aggression, direkter Vorlufer der
faschistischen Ideologen, um sich den Spa an der Beschftigung mit Nietzsches Werk zu verderben.

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Auch spter noch wird diese Linie von einigen rumnischen Intellektuellen
fortgefhrt, beispielsweise von Lucia Dumitrescu-Codreanu in dem Buch La
moartea lui Zarathustra nu plnge nimeni [Niemand beklagt Zarathustras Tod]. Bukarest
1981. Trotzdem verffentlicht die Zeitschrift fr Weltliteratur Secolul 20 ab etwa
1970 bersetzungen aus Nietzsche und kleine Essays ber sein Werk. Darber
hinaus erscheinen sogar drei seiner Bcher in rumnischer Sprache: Die Geburt
der Tragdie. bers. Ion Dobrogeanu-Gherea und Ion Herdan, in dem Band De
la Apollo la Faust [Von Apollo zu Faust]. Hg. Victor Ernest Mas,ek. Bukarest 1978.
S. 160 297; Gedichte. Zweisprachige Ausgabe. bers. Simion Danila. Bukarest
1980; Cazul Wagner [Der Fall Wagner]. Nietzsche contra Wagner. bers. Alexandru
Leahu. Bukarest 1983.
Einer der bedeutendsten zeitgenssischen Schriftsteller Rumniens, Nicolae
Breban, schreibt jetzt einige Romane nietzscheanischer Prgung (vor allem Bunavestire [Mari Verkndigung]. Jassy 1977), whrend zwei heute renommierte
Intellektuelle Arbeiten ber Nietzsche in einer neuen und nonkonformistischen
Vision vorgelegt haben: Liiceanu, Gabriel: Tragicul. O fenomenologie a limitei ,si a
depa,sirii [Das Tragische. Eine Phnomenologie der Begrenzung und der berwindung]
(Bukarest 1975, 21993), ber Nietzsches Geburt der Tragdie, und Frateanu, Vasile:
Critica gndirii mitice [Kritik des mythischen Denkens] (Cluj-Napoca 1980).

4. 1990 2004
Die Revolution von 1989 fand die rumnischen Philosophen, die bisher
gezwungen waren, sich in Forschung und Lehre ausschlielich mit dem Marxismus-Leninismus zu beschftigen, vollkommen unvorbereitet im Hinblick auf
ein Herangehen an Nietzsche. Dies wird bei einer Betrachtung des Inhaltsverzeichnisses der Jahrgnge 1990 2003 der Fachzeitschrift Revista de filozofie deutlich: In 84 Nummern wurden blo sechs Artikel ber Nietzsche verffentlicht!
Und im Jahre 1994, anllich seines 150. Geburtstages, wurde der Philosoph in
keiner Weise gewrdigt! Erst sechs Jahre spter, aus Anla seines 100. Todestages, machte die Zeitschrift auf dieses Ereignis durch die Verffentlichung von
zwei kurzen Beitrgen aufmerksam.
Die Zeitspanne 1990 2004 kennt eine wahre Explosion von bersetzungen
aus Nietzsches Werk, anfangs anhand franzsischer Ausgaben, spter direkt aus
dem Deutschen, aber anhand lterer Ausgaben. So erscheinen jetzt zum Beispiel
drei neue rumnische Versionen von Also sprach Zarathustra: eine von Victoria
Ana Taus,an (Bukarest 1991), die andere von S,tefan Aug. Doinas, (Bukarest 1994)
und die dritte von Simion Danila (Temeswar 2004). Heute verfgen wir ber rumnische bersetzungen aller anthumen und einiger posthumen Schriften
Nietzsches, einige davon in zwei oder gar mehreren Versionen.

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Simion Danila

Auch die nietzscheanische Exegese wurde mit neuen Bchern bereichert,

ob es sich nun um rumnische Beitrge handelt: Gulian, C. I.: Hegel. Tnarul
Nietzsche. Mircea Eliade [Hegel. Der junge Nietzsche. Mircea Eliade]. Bukarest 1992;
Gorgoi, Lucia: Friedrich Nietzsche ,si cultura romna interbelica [Friedrich Nietzsche und
die rumnische Kultur der Zwischenkriegszeit]. Cluj-Napoca 2000, oder um bersetzungen aus anderen Sprachen: Bertram, Ernst: Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie.
Bukarest 1998; Chamberlain, Lesley: Nietzsche in Turin. Bukarest 1999; Deleuze,
Gilles: Nietzsche. Bukarest 1999; Frenzel, Ivo: Friedrich Nietzsche. Bukarest 1997;
Khler, Joachim: Friedrich Nietzsche & Cosima Wagner. Pites,ti 2003; Mann, Thomas: Nietzsches Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung (im Band Deutschland und die
Deutschen, Bukarest 1998); Papini, Giovanni: Il Crepuscolo dei Filosofi. Bukarest
1991; Schestow, Leo: Die Philosophie der Tragdie [Nietzsche. Tolstoj. Dostojewskij]. Bukarest 1997; Vattimo, Gianni: Al di l del soggetto. Nietzsche, Heidegger
e lermeneutica. Constant, a 1994; Yovel, Yrmiyahu: Hegel, Nietzsche und die Juden.
Ein dunkles Rtsel. Bukarest 2000.
Im November 2000 veranstalteten die Kulturstiftung Das 21. Jahrhundert
und das Goethe-Institut in Bukarest das internationale Kolloquium Nietzsche als
Vorlufer des XX. Jahrhunderts (Vorstand: Gianni Vattimo; Teilnehmer: Mihailo
Djuric, Bernhard Irrgang, Stephan Gnzel, S,tefan Aug. Doinas,, Ion Ianos,i, Mircea Flonta u.a.). Die Nummern 1 6 von 2001 der Zeitschrift Secolul 21 ist gnzlich Nietzsche gewidmet.
Whrend dieser ganzen Zeit bersetzte ich, in meiner siebenten Einsamkeit zurckgezogen, sechs Bnde aus Friedrich Nietzsche nach der bei De
Gruyter erschienenen Edition Colli-Montinari; der siebente Band befindet sich
in Arbeit. Ich hoffe, alle 15 Bnde der kritischen Studienausgabe zu bersetzen,
um auf diese Weise die beste deutsche kritische Studienausgabe der Werke Friedrich Nietzsches den rumnischen Lesern zur Verfgung stellen zu knnen.
Diese Bemhungen um die Verbreitung des nietzscheanischen Werkes in
Rumnien stoen auf einen fruchtbaren Boden und spiegeln sich in der Rezeption Nietzsches durch die junge Generation wider. Das wahrscheinlich aktuellste
Beispiel liefert uns ein 18jhriger Dichter aus Lugoj (Lugosch, Banat), Mihai
Murariu, der noch die Schulbank drcken mu. Er ist ein Verehrer des deutschen
Philosophen und seine Gedichte wie das folgende sind vom Werk und der
Persnlichkeit Nietzsches inspiriert:

Die Rezeption Friedrich Nietzsches in Rumnien

Die Philosophiestunde
Nietzsche ist ein Nazi, sagt ein Mdchen,
er ist ein Atheist auf einem Blatt Papier,
ein Schnurrbrtiger mit Augenringen
und ein Narr auf einem Tafelbrett
Aber sie wissen nicht, was er uns bedeutet,
sie vergaen heute Zarathustra
in Falten aus Rost.
Ecce homo ich habe verstanden,
da er die letzte Chimre ist
mit leuchtenden Augen,
und sein Gewicht drckt heute schwerer denn je im Schulranzen.
(bersetzung Walter Tont, a)

245

246

Christoph Landerer/Marc-Oliver Schuster

MISZELLE
CHRISTOPH LANDERER/MARC-OLIVER SCHUSTER
BEGEHRLICH SCHRIE DER GEYER IN DAS THAL
ZU EINEM MOTIV FRHER WAGNER-ENTFREMDUNG
IN NIETZSCHES NACHLASS

Ich kann mir gar nicht denken, wie man W. in allen Hauptsachen mehr Treue halten
knne und tiefer ergeben sein knne als ich es bin: wenn ich es mir denken knnte,
wrde ichs noch mehr sein. Aber in kleinen untergeordneten Nebenpunkten und in
einer gewissen fr mich nothwendigen beinahe sanitarisch zu nennenden Enthaltung von h ufig erem persnlichen Zusammenleben mu ich mir eine Freiheit wahren, wirklich nur um jene Treue in einem hheren Sinne halten zu knnen. (KGB II 3,
Nr. 298)

Nietzsches Brief an Carl v. Gersdorff vom 2. Mrz 1873 zeigt Motive einer
beginnenden Entfremdung, die schlielich zum Bruch fhren wird. 1871, zur
Zeit der Abfassung der Geburt der Tragdie, scheint sein Verhltnis zu Wagner
noch ungetrbt vereinzelte Wolken am heiteren Himmel der Tribschener
Jahre1 sorgen fr allenfalls atmosphrische Verstimmung, sie ndern aber nicht
den Grundton der Beziehung, der in diesen Jahren noch auf Gleichklang angelegt ist. Du kannst Dir gar nicht denken, wie nah wir uns jetzt stehen und wie
unsre Plne sich berhren schreibt Nietzsche kurz nach Erscheinen der Geburt
der Tragdie im Januar 1872 an Erwin Rohde (KGB II 1, 28. Januar 1873, Nr. 192).
Vieles spricht allerdings dafr, da die Balance zwischen Treue und Freiheit fr
Nietzsche bereits 1871 eine delikate Angelegenheit war. Unbehagen, Vorbehalte
und Lust am Widerstand uern sich versteckter und verklausulierter, sie zeigen
sich in unverffentlichten Notizen und auch dort kann im Gegensatz zu den
offen wagnerkritischen Auslassungen des Jahres 1874 der kritische Gehalt
hufig nur erschlossen werden. Nietzsche betrieb in den Jahren der Tribschener
Freundschaft eine aufwendige Geheimhaltungs-Strategie2, die jeden Versuch
1

Borchmeyer, Dieter / Salaquarda, Jrg (Hg.): Nietzsche und Wagner. Stationen einer epochalen
Begegnung. Bd. 2. Frankfurt/Main. Leipzig 1994, S. 1294.
Groddek, Wolfram: Vorstufe und Fragment. Zur Problematik einer traditionellen textkritischen Unterscheidung in der Nietzsche-Philologie. In: Beihefte zu editio, Bd. 1. Textkonstitution bei mndlicher und bei schriftlicher berlieferung. Tbingen 1991. S. 167.

Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal

247

einer Rekonstruktion seiner tatschlichen menschlichen wie intellektuellen Verhltnisse mit Wagner zu einem mhevollen Unternehmen werden lt. Blickt
man genauer auf die versteckte Wagnerkritik des Jahres 1871, dann wird die gngige Auffassung, wonach die sptere Entfremdung sich erst nach dem Abschlu
der Geburt der Tragdie vorbereitet, allerdings entscheidend problematisiert.
Im folgenden soll ein Dokument der beginnenden Entfremdung behandelt
werden, das von der Forschung in diesem Kontext unseres Wissens bisher nicht
thematisiert wurde. Im Juli 1871 Nietzsche arbeitet gerade am Druckmanuskript
der Geburt der Tragdie entsteht whrend seines Sommeraufenthalts in Gimmelwald das uerlich unverdchtige Gedicht An die Melancholie, das bei nherer
Betrachtung dichte Wagner-Bezge aufweist. Auf den ersten Blick schildert Nietzsche ein Aufbumen gegen melancholische Anwandlungen inmitten einer als
Bergeinsamkeit ausgemalten Szenerie. Nietzsche in Gestalt des lyrischen Ich
preist die Melancholie, in wilder Felsnatur erscheint ihm ein Geyer:
Verarge mir es nicht, Melancholie,
Da ich die Feder, dich zu preisen, spitze,
Und da ich nicht, den Kopf gebeugt zum Knie,
Einsiedlerisch auf einem Baumstumpf sitze.
So sahst du oft mich, gestern noch zumal,
In heier Sonne morgendlichem Strahle:
Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal,
Er trumt vom todten Aas auf todtem Pfahle.
Du irrtest, wster Vogel, ob ich gleich
So mumienhaft auf meinem Klotze ruhte!
Du sahst das Auge nicht, das wonnenreich
Noch hin und her rollt, stolz und hochgemuthe.
Und wenn es nicht zu deinen Hhen schlich,
Erstorben fr die fernsten Wolkenwellen,
So sank es umso tiefer, um in sich
Des Daseins Abgrund blitzend aufzuhellen.
So sa ich oft, in tiefer Wstenei
Unschn gekrmmt, gleich opfernden Barbaren,
Und Deiner eingedenk, Melancholei,
Ein Ber, ob in jugendlichen Jahren!
So sitzend freut ich mich des Geyer-Flugs,
Des Donnerlaufs der rollenden Lawinen,
Du sprachst zu mir, unfhig Menschentrugs,
Wahrhaftig, doch mit schrecklich strengen Mienen.

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Christoph Landerer/Marc-Oliver Schuster

Du herbe Gttin wilder Felsnatur,

Du Freundin liebst es nah mir zu erscheinen;
Du zeigst mir drohend dann des Geyers Spur
Und der Lawine Lust, mich zu verneinen.
Rings athmet zhnefletschend Mordgelst:
Qualvolle Gier, sich Leben zu erzwingen!
Verfhrerisch auf starrem Felsgerst
Sehnt sich die Blume dort nach Schmetterlingen.
Dies Alles bin ich schaudernd fhl ichs nach
Verfhrter Schmetterling, einsame Blume,
Der Geyer und der jhe Eisesbach,
Des Sturmes Sthnen alles dir zum Ruhme,
Du grimme Gttin, der ich tief gebckt,
Den Kopf am Knie, ein schaurig Loblieb chze,
Nur dir zum Ruhme, da ich unverrckt
Nach Leben, Leben, Leben lechze!
Verarge mir es, bse Gttin, nicht,
Da ich mit Reimen zierlich dich umflechte.
Der zittert, dem du nahst, ein Schreckgesicht,
Der zuckt, dem du sie reichst, die bse Rechte.
Und zitternd stammle ich hier Lied auf Lied,
Und zucke auf in rhythmischen Gestalten:
Die Tinte fleut, die spitze Feder sprht
Nun Gttin, Gttin la mich la mich schalten!
(Nachla 1871, KSA 7, 15[1])
Die Interpretation des Gedichts und der zentralen Figur des Geyers stellt
einige Probleme, die ihren Ausdruck in stark divergenten Deutungsanstzen gefunden haben. Alexis Philonenko erschien der wste Vogel als perfektes Sinnbild der im Gedicht thematisierten Melancholie handelt es sich dabei doch
um ein Tier, das in gewisser Weise Leben und Tod kombiniert.3 Fr BernhardArnold Kruse dagegen ist das Bild des Geiers an sich nicht von tragender Bedeutung, sondern lediglich als groteske Umkehrung der singenden Nachtigall,

Philonenko, Alexis: Mlancolie et consolation chez Nietzsche. In: Revue de mtaphysique et de

morale 76/1 (1971). S. 81: Le sautaur est le symbole de la mlancolie car il est ltre vivant qui na
dautre fin que de dvorer le mort; il confond dans uns implacable contradiction la vie et la mort
et symbolise trs prcisemnt la pense du jeune Nietzsche que lon a voque en lisant un de ses
pomes.

Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal

249

welche seit Milton das Symboltier der sen Melancholie abgibt, zu verstehen.4
Die Spanne zwischen dem Geier und dem lyrischen Ich werde so zur Spannung zwischen der Begier und ihrer Befriedigung, offen gehalten durch die Illusion der Befriedigung im Traume.5 Ludwig Vlker wiederum kommt auf
den Geier gar nicht nher zu sprechen und sieht das Schreckliche, das von der
Melancholie ausgeht in ihrer Wahrhaftigkeit und daher im Widerspruch, der
zwischen ihr und dem Dichten besteht.6
Vlker zitiert das Gedicht noch nach der lteren Musarionausgabe, in der
die etwas altertmliche Sprache modernisiert wiedergegeben und daher auch
der vermeintlich archaisierende Geyer korrigiert wird. Kruse dagegen stand
die kritische Ausgabe von Colli/Montinari bereits zur Verfgung, Nietzsches
originale Schreibweise wird von ihm aber nicht reflektiert. Die Anspielung auf
Richard Wagners Stiefvater, die Nietzsche Jahre spter im Fall Wagner machen
wird,7 sollte es nahelegen, einen analogen Wagner-Bezug auch in Nietzsches
Gedicht zumindest zu erwgen. Kruse bemerkt zu dieser Interpretationsoption
lediglich, mit dem Symbol des Geiers drfte hier kaum auf das Wappentier
Wagners angespielt sein8 ein Schlu, der uns angesichts des sowohl textlichen
als auch biographischen Kontexts voreilig erscheint.
Zunchst verwundert die beharrlich angewandte Schreibweise Geyer
im Gedicht aus dem Sommer 1871 schon deshalb, weil Nietzsche in der zeitgleich entstandenen Geburt der Tragdie auf diesen orthographischen Eigensinn verzichtet. Das Bild des Geiers findet sich in Abschnitt 20,9 und Martin
Vogel ortet hier einen klaren Wagner-Bezug: Da der Sturmwind nicht mit
einem Adler, sondern einem Geier verglichen wird, ist darauf zurckzufhren,
da Wagner in seinem Wappen einen Geier fhrte, da sein Stiefvater Geyer

5
6

8
9

Kruse, Bernhard-Arnold: Apollinisch-Dionysisch. Moderne Melancholie und Unio Mystica.

Frankfurt/Main 1987. S. 231.
Ebd., S. 231 f.
Vlker, Ludwig: Muse Melancholie Therapeutikum Poesie. Studien zum Melancholie-Problem
in der deutschen Lyrik von Hlty bis Benn. Mnchen 1978. S. 67.
War Wagner berhaupt ein Deutscher? Man hat einige Grnde, so zu fragen. Es ist schwer,
in ihm irgend einen deutschen Zug ausfindig zu machen. Er hat, als der grosse Lerner, der er
war, viel Deutsches nachmachen gelernt das ist Alles. Sein Wesen selbst widerspricht dem,
was bisher als deutsch empfunden wurde: nicht zu reden vom deutschen Musiker! Sein Vater
war ein Schauspieler namens Geyer. Ein Geyer ist beinahe schon ein Adler (WA Nachschrift, KSA 6, S. 41). Nietzsches Spitze spielt auf Wagners Antisemitismus an die von Wagner
dem Judentum nachgesagte Gabe der Nachempfindung, die jdische Nhe zur Schauspielerei,
zum Theater und die Nhe des Namens Geyer zum bekannt jdischen Namen Adler. Wagner selbst der einen Geier in seinem Phantasiewappen fhrte lebte wahrscheinlich in Sorge,
er knnte jdischer Abstammung sein.
Kruse: Apollinisch-Dionysisch, a. a. O., S. 231.
Ein Sturmwind packt alles Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, Verkmmerte, hllt es wirbelnd
in eine rothe Staubwolke und trgt es wie ein Geier in die Lfte (GT 20, KSA 1, S. 132).

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Christoph Landerer/Marc-Oliver Schuster

hie.10 Vogels Interpretation ist nicht unbedingt berzeugend, da die Figur

des Geiers ins Bild des Forttragens von Abgelebtem ja durchaus pat. Andererseits aber ist gerade Abschnitt 20 reich an Verweisen auf den Meister.
Die Hoffnung fr eine Erneuerung und Luterung des deutschen Geistes
durch den Feuerzauber der Musik (GT 20, KSA 1, S. 131) war klar an Wagner
adressiert und das Bild Schopenhauers als Ritter mit Tod und Teufel drei Stze
weiter geht auf einen Drer-Stich zurck, den Nietzsche auf Wagners Wunsch
zum Weihnachtsfest 1870 besorgte. Der ganze Abschnitt ist ber weite Strecken
in eben jener verwagnerten Sprache verfat, die Nietzsche 15 Jahre spter, in
einem der Neuausgabe der Geburt der Tragdie 1886 vorangestellten Versuch
einer Selbstkritik, bitter beklagen sollte. In fast unmittelbarem Anschlu
an die Geier-Passage bemht Nietzsche die Mtter des Seins, deren Namen
lauten: Wahn, Wille, Wehe (GT 20, KSA 1, S. 132)11 eine jener dem spteren
Nietzsche peinlichen Belegstellen fr die Bilderwirrigkeit seines Erstlingswerks, das Wagner hier auch im penetranten Stabreim verpflichtet ist. Auf die
Schreibweise Geyer verzichtete Nietzsche in der Geburt der Tragdie aber
ebenso wie in unverffentlichten Aufzeichnungen zum Prometheus-Thema
oder etwa im Zarathustra, dessen betont archaisierende Sprache eine solche Orthographie noch am ehesten erwarten lt.
Ritter, Tod und Teufel war nicht der einzige Drer-Stich, den Nietzsche fr
Wagner zu besorgen hatte. Die Melancholiker-Pose, auf die Nietzsche in seinem
Gedicht anspielt (den Kopf gebeugt zum Knie), geht selbst auf Drers Stich
Die Melancholie zurck, und auch dessen Anschaffung hatte man in Tribschen von Nietzsche erbeten. Die Lieferung des Drersche[n] Blatt[s] unter
dem Titel Die Melancholie war zwar bereits fr das Weihnachtsfest 1869 vorgesehen, die Beschaffung erwies sich aber als schwierig. Im Mai 1870 schlielich
konnte Rohde eine Kopie des Drucks in Venedig ausfindig machen. Man hatte
sich brieflich verstndigt, da statt des 400 500 fr. kostenden Originalabzugs
fr den Geschenkzweck auch die mit Porto 18 1/2 fr. teure Kopie gengen
wrde.12 Zu den vielen Pflichten, die Nietzsche neben seiner nicht eben unaufwendigen Ttigkeit an Universitt und Pdagogium zu erledigen hatte,
zhlte im Sommer 1870 auch die Beaufsichtigung der Anfertigung von Wagners
Phantasiewappen, das einen Geier mit charakteristischer Geier-Krause zeigt.

10

11

12

Vogel, Martin: Apollinisch und Dionysisch. Geschichte eines genialen Irrtums. Regensburg
1966. S. 189.
Die sonderbare Trias findet sich nun im Zusammenhang mit den drei Abgrnden der Tragdie auch in einem Vorwortentwurf Nietzsches an Richard Wagner (Nachla 1871, KSA 7,
11[1], S. 354).
Khler, Joachim: Friedrich Nietzsche und Cosima Wagner. Die Schule der Unterwerfung. Berlin
1986. S. 61. Die bergabe des Drucks an Cosima fand am 11. Juni 1870 statt. Nietzsches Anfangsgehalt in Basel betrug brigens 3000 Fr.

Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal

251

Nietzsche war von Wagner, wie Khler schreibt, zunehmend als Mdchen fr
alles13 eingesetzt worden und begann unter der Last seiner Aufgaben zu leiden.
Khler zitiert eine Eintragung in Nietzsches Notizheft aus dem Juni des Jahre
1870, wonach groe Genies [] den Alltagsfliegen unfabar und recht eigentlich unberechenbar seien, weswegen sie zur Sicherung ihrer drohnenhaften
Existenz der Sklavenarbeit anderer bedrften. Khlers Schlufolgerung:
Nietzsche wute, wen er damit meinte.14
Da das ein Jahr spter entstandene Gedicht die Auftrge des Jahres 1870
Melancholie-Stich und Geier-Wappen kombiniert, wird man kaum als Zufall
ansehen knnen. Dazu kommt die allgemeine Bedeutung, die das Geier-Motiv in
Nietzsches Verhltnis zu Wagner hatte. Nietzsche sah sich in einer Wettkampfsituation mit Wagner,15 die gelegentlich kuriose Zge annahm. So war fr ihn
offenbar der Geier, der die Titelvignette von Wagners Autobiographie schmcken
sollte Nietzsche berwachte den Druck des zunchst noch streng geheimen
Unternehmens zur Inspirationsquelle fr eine makabre eigene Idee geworden,
denn auch sein Buch sollte eine Titelvignette schmcken, die einen Geier darstellte allerdings einen toten Geier. Nietzsches Geier steht im Kontext der Prometheus-Thematik, die in der Geburt der Tragdie eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Sein
Greifvogel ist daher der Geier, der an der Leber des Prometheus gezehrt hatte
und bei der Entfesselung des Prometheus sterben mute.16 Der Geier in Nietzsches Titelvignette scheint so nicht unmittelbar auf die Titelvignette Wagners
anzuspielen, aber Nietzsche unternahm alles, um die Assoziationskette zu schlieen. So whlte er fr sein Buch den gleichen Verlag, die gleiche Ausstattung,
das gleiche Papier wie Wagner.17 Martin Vogel bertitelte das betreffende Zwischenkapitel seiner Studie daher wohl auch nicht ganz unpassend Der tote
Geyer.18
Interpretiert man den Geyer in Nietzsches Gedicht aus dem Sommer 1871
vor dem Hintergrund von Nietzsches Verhltnis zu Wagner, dann klren sich
auch einige Eigenheiten der Textgestaltung, die ohne diesen biographischen Bezug rtselhaft bleiben. So macht etwa der offenkundige Widerspruch in der
grundstzlichen Haltung des lyrischen Ich gerade dann Sinn, wenn der biographische Kontext mitbedacht wird. Kruse hat mit Nachdruck auf diesen Widerspruch hingewiesen: Dem Sitzen als einem Ber widerspricht das Sitzen in
freudiger Betrachtung, der Unschnheit die Hhe des Fluges, der opfernden
ngstlichkeit die Macht der Lawine, der Bue die Wahrhaftigkeit der Gttin
13
14
15
16
17
18

Ebd., S. 73.
Ebd.
Vogel: Dionysisch-Apollinisch, a. a. O., S. 328.
Ebd., S. 331.
Ebd.
Ebd.

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Christoph Landerer/Marc-Oliver Schuster

Sprache.19 Melancholischer Ber und freudiger Betrachter des Geyer-Flugs

zugleich zu sein, entspricht auffallend der Ambivalenz in Nietzsches Verhltnis
zu Wagner: Unter den von Wagner geforderten Unterwerfungsgesten und
Treuebeweisen begann er zu leiden, bewunderte aber zugleich dessen grandiose
menschliche und knstlerische Erscheinung ein Zwiespalt, der nicht zu berbrcken war und der nicht nur Nietzsche zu schaffen machte.20
Der biographische Hintergrund dient so als Schlssel zum Verstndnis zentraler Passagen des Gedichts und informiert damit auch ber den Stand von
Nietzsches privater Reflexion seines Verhltnisses zu Wagner, das zu dieser Zeit
selbst in den Briefen und Entwrfen nur mit ausgesuchter Zurckhaltung behandelt wird. Die herbe Gttin Melancholie, wahrhaftig, doch mit schrecklich strengen Mienen, lt sich dabei mit Ludwig Vlker21 mit der schmerzhaften Wahrhaftigkeit einer schonungslosen Selbstreflexion identifizieren.
Als Ber sitzend erfreut sich das lyrische Ich/Nietzsche des Donnerlaufs der
rollenden Lawinen was wohl auch als Verweis auf die gewaltigen Effekte der
Wagnerschen Musik gelesen werden kann22. Die Melancholie aber, im Unterschied zum Zauberer Wagner unfhig Menschentrugs, ermahnt ihn, zeigt
drohend des Geyers Spur und weist auf der Lawine Lust, mich zu verneinen und in Wagner und seiner Kunst aufzugehen. Als Ber, d.h. reflexionsfernen und unterwerfungswilligen Wagnerianer sah Nietzsche sich gestern
noch zumal, unschn gekrmmt, wenngleich in freudiger Betrachtung. In
dieser bufertigen Haltung ist das lyrische Ich fr den Schrei des Geyers empfnglich, der vom todten Aas auf todtem Pfahle und mithin bedingungsloser
Unterordnung trumt. Das rollende Auge indes, stolz und hochgemuthe, zeigt
schon das Potential zu einer auflehnenden und reflexiven Haltung, auch wenn es
19
20

21

22

Kruse: Apollinisch-Dionysisch, a. a. O., S. 235.

Zu Wagners mitunter demtigendem Sozialverhalten siehe Josef Rattner: Wagner im Lichte
der Tiefenpsychologie, in: Ulrich Mller, Peter Wapnewski (Hg.): Richard-Wagner-Handbuch.
Stuttgart 1986. S. 783: Wagners Erotik bezog sich nicht nur auf Frauen, sondern auch auf
Mnner, die von ihm fasziniert wurden und in eine teilweise fast demtigende Abhngigkeit zu
ihm gerieten. Darunter waren meistens sexuell gehemmte Persnlichkeiten, fr die der expansive und selbstbewute Meister zum Idol wurde. Das berhmteste Beispiel dieser Art ist Nietzsche [] Ein Grundzug dieser Mnnerfreundschaften scheint darin zu bestehen, da Wagner
die Menschen danach einteilte, ob sie seinem Werk und ihm selbst ntzten oder schadeten. Wer
mit ihm befreundet sein wollte, sollte nach Mglichkeit seine eigenen Zielsetzungen aufgeben
und sich dem Wagnerschen Unternehmen oder Hofstaat anschlieen. Tat er dies, dann galt er
etwas beim Meister und bei Cosima, im gegenteiligen Falle verlor er rasch alle Gunst. Ein Beispiel hierfr ist Nietzsche []
Vlker: Muse Melancholie, a. a. O., S. 67 Das Schreckliche, das von der Melancholie ausgeht,
basiert auf ihrer Wahrhaftigkeit, offenbar also auf dem Widerspruch, der zwischen ihr und dem
Dichten besteht.
Das Bild eines donnernden Strom[s] verwendet Nietzsche in der Geburt der Tragdie zur Charakterisierung des in Wagners Tristan und Isolde ausgedrckten rasende[n] Begehren[s] des Daseins (GT 21, KSA 1, S. 135).

Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal

253

dem Sehenden versagt bleibt, zu den Hhen des Geiers aufzusteigen. Sein Blick
richtet sich dagegen in die Tiefe, um in sich des Daseins Abgrund blitzend aufzuhellen ein offenkundiger Verweis auf Nietzsches Geburt der Tragdie, die das
weltanschaulich-philosophische Fundment fr Wagners Kunst im Abgrunde
als dem dionysischen Untergrunde der Welt (GT 24, KSA 1, S. 155) begrnden sollte.
Eine Deutung von Nietzsches Gedicht aus dem Sommer 1871 als Dokument
des Aufbegehrens gegen Wagner bietet sich nicht nur aufgrund der vorgeschlagenen Textinterpretation an, sondern wird auch durch andere Zeugnisse im zeitlichen Umfeld nahegelegt, die eine beginnende Distanz auf menschlicher wie
theoretischer Ebene dokumentieren. Am Tag von Nietzsches Abreise nach
Gimmelwald (15. Juli) erhlt Wagner von ihm einen (nicht berlieferten) Brief,
der Cosima zum Urteil Anla gibt: Auch in dieser Lebens-Beziehung hat
R. [Richard] mehr Liebe verschwendet als er empfangen.23 Am 3. August 1871
Nietzsche hatte unmittelbar nach seiner Rckkehr aus Gimmelwald 5 Tage
in Tribschen verbracht notiert Cosima, Nietzsche sei in vielem recht unerfreulich durch eine nicht ganz natrliche Zurckhaltung seines Benehmens. Es
ist gleichsam, als ob er sich gegen den berwltigenden Eindruck von Wagners
Persnlichkeit wehrte.24 In den knapp mehr als zwei Wochen, die zwischen
diesen beiden Tagebucheintragungen liegen, entstand Nietzsches Gedicht An
die Melancholie. Seine Auflehnung und die Mistimmung in Tribschen darber
hatte sich sptestens seit dem Frhjahr vorbereitet. Am 11. Mai informiert
Cosimas Tagebuch ber eine Ungeschicklichkeit Nietzsches, der eine ihr gewidmete Schrift auch mit einer Widmung an seine Schwester versehen hatte:
Ich mu herzlich darber lachen, dann aber, mit R. darber sprechend, hier
einen bedenklichen Zug, wie eine Sucht des Verrats, gleichsam um sich gegen
einen groen Eindruck zu rchen, erkennen.25 Das Motiv ist dasselbe wie in
der Tagebucheintragung aus dem August: Nietzsche beginnt innerlich gegen
den groen Eindruck zu revoltieren, den Tribschenern blieb das nicht verborgen.
Wagner konnte allerdings nicht wissen, da Nietzsches Entfernung von ihm
lngst auch schon auf theoretischer Ebene begann. Im Frhjahr 1871 entsteht
eine Vorstudie zur Geburt der Tragdie das Fragment ber Wort und Musik
(Nachla 1871, KSA 7, 12[1]), der vielleicht bedeutendste musiksthetische Einzeltext Nietzsches , die mit erstaunlich vielen Auffassungselementen Wagners
auf kaum vershnliche Weise bricht. Die Inspirationsquelle fr Nietzsches
Hresien drfte ausgerechnet Wagners sthetischer Erzrivale Eduard Hanslick
23
24
25

Borchmeyer, Salaquarda: Nietzsche und Wagner, a. a. O., S. 1167.

Ebd., S. 1168.
Ebd., S. 1166.

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Christoph Landerer/Marc-Oliver Schuster

gewesen sein26, und es ist wohl auch kein Zufall, da Nietzsches sptere antiwagnerianische Ausflle manchen kritischen Bemerkungen Hanslicks auffallend
hneln.27 Bereits Klaus Kropfinger hatte bemerkt, da Nietzsches in Fragment
12[1] formulierte Stellungnahme zum Choralsatz der Beethovenschen Neunten
Symphonie sich wie eine Paraphrase ber Hanslick [liest],28 davor war schon
Carl Dahlhaus auf einige augenscheinliche bereinstimmungen aufmerksam geworden.29 Nietzsche folgt Hanslick dessen sthetik-Traktat er sptestens seit
1865 kannte auch in dessen Kritik an der Gefhlstheorie der Musik (die von
Wagner im wesentlichen verfochten wurde), er macht implizit selbst die Relativierung und Historisierung Schopenhauers mit und teilt Hanslicks quasi-phnomenologische Erkenntnishaltung. Alles theoretische Positionen, die von Wagner
als Affront aufgefat worden wren und daher in die Druckfassung der Geburt
der Tragdie nicht aufgenommen bzw. auf charakteristische Weise entschrft
wurden.30 Ob es tatschlich Hanslick war, der Nietzsches Wagner-kritische Wendung theoretisch vorbereitete, ist nicht einfach zu beurteilen; in seiner zunehmend kritischen Haltung stimmt der sptere Nietzsche sthetisch mit dem
frhen berein d. h. mit Auffassungen, die der nach 1868 zum Jnger Gewordene vor seiner Begegnung mit dem Meister vertrat. Der bekannte Ausspruch
Josef Hofmillers, Nietzsche sei in Wahrheit gar nicht von Wagner abgefallen,
sondern in den Jahren der Freundschaft eher zu Wagner abgefallen, um
schlielich zu sich selbst zurckzukehren, trifft jedenfalls die Verhltnisse auf
dem Gebiet seiner privaten sthetik ziemlich genau.31
Das Melancholie-Gedicht aus dem Sommer 1871 ist ein bisher unbeachteter Mosaikstein fr ein Verstndnis von allgemeiner Chronologie und spezifischen Ursachen der beginnenden Entfremdung Nietzsches von Wagner. Dieser
Vorgang hat eine biographisch-persnliche und eine sachlich-theoretische Motivebene, die auf komplizierte Weise miteinander verschrnkt sind. Das Melancholie-Motiv, das Nietzsche bemht, weist auf die menschlichen Probleme hin,
die sich fr ihn in seinem Verhltnis zu Wagner anzukndigen begannen. In wel26

27

28

29

30

31

Zum folgenden vgl. Christoph Landerer, Marc-Oliver Schuster: Nietzsches Vorstudien zur Geburt der Tragdie in ihrer Beziehung zur Musiksthetik Eduard Hanslicks. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31
(2002). S. 114 133.
Siehe dazu Manfred Eger: Nietzsches Bayreuther Passion. Freiburg/Br. 2001. S. 319 335. Egers
Schlufolgerungen scheinen gelegentlich allerdings etwas berzeichnet. Dazu Christoph Landerer: Nietzsche, Wagner und Hanslick. Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 531 535.
Kropfinger, Klaus: Wagners Musikbegriff und Nietzsches Geist der Musik. In: Nietzsche-Studien 14 (1985). S. 5.
Dahlhaus, Carl: Die doppelte Wahrheit in Wagners sthetik. Zu Nietzsches Fragment ber
Musik und Wort. In: ders., Zwischen Romantik und Moderne. Vier Studien zur Musikgeschichte des spten 19. Jahrhunderts. Mnchen 1974. S. 22 39.
Dazu im Detail Landerer, Schuster: Nietzsches Vorstudien zur Geburt der Tragdie, a. a. O.,
S. 126 ff.
Hofmiller, Josef: Nietzsche. In: Sddeutsche Monatshefte 29 (November 1931). S. 96.

Begehrlich schrie der Geyer in das Thal

255

chem Ma Nietzsches Wahrnehmung der Dinge dabei von Voreingenommenheit zeugt und wieviel Ungerechtigkeit in sie eingeflossen sein mag, ist hier nicht
zu beurteilen; entscheidend im Kontext der beginnenden Entfremdung ist die
im Gedicht thematisierte Haltung des Bers, zu der Nietzsche sich nicht auf
Dauer berufen fhlen konnte. Er war freilich nicht der einzige, den die intensive
persnliche Prsenz Wagners auf trb-melancholische Gedanken brachte. So
findet sich auch der Rausch des Leidens, den Kruse als charakteristisch fr die
gesamte melancholische Haltung des lyrischen Ichs im Gedicht beschrieben
hat32, in auffallend hnlicher Weise bei Cosima vorformuliert. Je tiefer ich leide,
je strker bildet sich in mir diese seltsame Wollust des Leidens aus, vertraut sie
im August 1869 ihrem Tagebuch an.33 Die jedenfalls intellektuellen Erfahrungen
mit Wagner drften denen des jungen Nietzsche hnlich gewesen sein: Wer
merklich aus seinem Ideenkreis trat und Eigenes bzw., wie das Fiasko um das
Brahmssche Triumphlied zeigt34, auch Fremdes prsentieren wollte, der war
beim Meister nur allzuschnell nicht mehr wohlgelitten, was dann nur die Alternative lie, Wagner seinen Willen zu lassen und den eigenen mehr oder minder zu negieren oder sich von ihm loszusagen.
Nietzsches Freundschaft mit Wagner stand 1872 nach der Verffentlichung
der Geburt der Tragdie nach allgemeiner Auffassung auf ihrem Wellenkamm,35 Borchmeyer und Salaquarda sprechen vom Erscheinen von Nietzsches Erstlingswerk als dem emphatischen Hhepunkt der Freundschaft.36
Mit Blick auf die wesentlichen sozialen Ereignisse der noch in Bayreuther Zeit
herzlichen Beziehung ist das sicherlich nach wie vor richtig. Aber in die Freundschaft hatten sich zumindest von Nietzsches Seite aus bereits Mitne eingemengt, wie auch auf theoretischer Ebene zunchst noch geheimgehaltene Differenzen auftauchen. Der Ri, der in den folgenden Jahren zutage treten sollte, zog
sich sowohl auf theoretischer als auch menschlicher Ebene schon tief ins Jahr
der Geburt der Tragdie hinein.

32
33
34

35

36

Kruse: Apollinisch-Dionysisch, a. a. O., S. 242.

Zit. nach Khler, Friedrich Nietzsche und Cosima Wagner, a. a. O., S. 62.
Nietzsches erfolgloser Versuch, Wagner zu einer Anerkennung des Konkurrenten zu bewegen,
wird von Curt Paul Janz (Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Bd. 2, Mnchen 1978. S. 585 f.) ausfhrlich geschildert. Bei Cosima findet sich dazu die nicht untypische Tagebucheintragung:
R. wird sehr bse (8. August 1874).
Peter Wapnewski: Nietzsche und Wagner. Stationen einer Beziehung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 18
(1989). S. 416.
Borchmeyer, Salaquarda: Nietzsche und Wagner, a. a. O., S. 1291.

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Thomas Brobjer

DISKUSSION
THOMAS BROBJER
NIETZSCHES RELATION TO THE GREEK SOPHISTS

The standard view of Nietzsches relation to the Greek Sophists is that he

praised and valued them and that he very likely was profoundly influenced by
them. There certainly are many striking general similarities between his thinking
and that of the Sophists. These include their general relativism (here used
broadly and vaguely, and including perspectivism, as contrast and opposed to
Platos and the metaphysical traditions emphasis on an objective truth), and the
denial of the distinction between a real and an apparent world, the denial
of the distinction between a real and an apparent truth and knowledge (for
example, in their rejection of Platos distinction between episteme and doxa). They
share a positive attitude towards scepticism in general and especially towards
scepticism about morality and religion. They emphasize subjectivism, and thus
also, at least in moral and aesthetic questions, that it is man who is the measure.
Furthermore, they share an interest in language and rhetoric and an emphasis on
the importance of power. They are also united in being opponents of Socrates
and Plato (and Platonism). Nietzsche also praised the Sophists highly in GtzenDmmerung (written in 1888) Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture []
this invaluable movement in the midst of the morality-and-ideal swindle of the
Socratic schools which was then breaking out everywhere (GD Was ich den
Alten verdanke 2) and in several notes from this period (early published and
made available in the compilation Der Wille zur Macht). This has led to the existence of a general or standard view that Nietzsche affirmed and praised the Sophists in general.
When I in the early 1990s examined Nietzsches relation to the Sophists in
relation to other work on Nietzsche and antiquity I found, somewhat to my
surprise, that this standard view was in many ways seriously mistaken. I discovered that Nietzsche shows little interest in the Greek Sophists, and when he
on rare occasions directs his attention towards them, he is more often critical
than praising. This disinterest is in fact evident in many ways. There are remarkably few references to the Greek Sophists in all of Nietzsches writings, and

Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists

257

those that exist are surprisingly unengaged and ambivalent.1 The contrast is great
between these few references to the Sophists and his many to each of many
other traditions such as; the pre-Socratics and their philosophy, stoicism, scepticism, Epicurus and Epicureanism and especially to Socrates and Plato. In
Nietzsches own several lists of his intellectual predecessors which includes,
for example, Heraclitus and Empedocles2 the Sophists are always missing and
in his almost countless praising references to ancient Greek culture and to the
ancient Greek masters the Sophists are completely absent until 1888.3
Nietzsches low degree of interest in the Sophists is, apart from his few references to them, evident in both his study Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der
Griechen and in his lectures Die vorplatonischen Philosophen where he has chapters or
sections dealing with the most important pre-Platonic philosophers but none for
Protagoras, Gorgias or the Sophists as a group.4
This disinterest is also apparent in his reading, where he does not show any
interest in them. In several books in Nietzsches library he has annotated the
pages near, but not the ones dealing with the Sophists. This is, for example, true
for Grotes Geschichte Griechenlands (6 vols., 1850/56).5 In Max Heinzes study Der
Eudmonismus in der griechischen Philosophie (1883) Nietzsche has cut open the pages
in the chapter dealing with Socrates but not those dealing with the Sophists.
This lack of engagement with the Sophists as a philosopher is even more remarkable when we take into account that Nietzsche certainly did not lack knowledge about them and that much of his work as a classical philologist (with a
1

There are about ten references to the movement and its representatives in all of Nietzsches published writings and only three of these are of much relevance. There are further ones in his notebooks, but these too are rare. There is only a single unimportant use of the word sophism in his
letters.
Nachla 1884, KSA 11, 25[454]: meine Vorfahren H er ac lit E mpe doc le s (Nietzsche also
mentions Spinoza and Goethe) and Nachla 1884, KSA 11, 26[3]: Die Kenntni der groen
Griechen hat mich erzogen: an Heraclit Empedocles Parmenides Anaxagoras Democrit ist mehr
zu verehren, sie sind vo ller (than the great philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and
Spinoza).
See, for example, my Nietzsches Ethics of Character. Uppsala 1995, especially pages 309f., for a
discussion of Nietzsches relation to Greek culture.
For Nietzsches lectures on the pre-Platonic philosophers, see KGW II 4, p. 360 f. Nietzsche did
not include the Sophists in these lectures and he seems also not to have intended to include them
in his planned, but not executed, continuation of this series on the Socratic schools. He ends the
lecture-series on Die Vorplatonischen Philosophen with the words: Damit ist die Reihe von
originalen und typischen TPGB erschpft man denke an Heraclit, Parmenides, Empedocles,
Democrit, Socrates. Jetzt kommt ein neues Zeitalter der TPGP, mit Plato anhebend, die complicirteren Charaktere, aus der Vereinigung der Strme, die von den originalen u. einseitigen TPGP
herstrmen, gebildet. So ist fr diesmal mein Ziel erreicht: spter werde ich die sokratischen
Schulen in ihrer Bedeutung fr das hellenische Leben besprechen.
To that comes that Grote, together with Lewes (both whom Nietzsche read), and Hegel, were
among the first to begin to take the Sophists seriously and to attribute to them at least some positive value.

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Thomas Brobjer

philosophical interest) concerned or was related to the Sophists. One of Nietzsches contributions to classical philology was his critical edition of the Certamen
and his arguments that it was written by the Sophist Alkidamas, a student of
Gorgias, and not during the late Hellenistic period as had previously been
thought.6 One of our sources of information about the Sophists, especially Protagoras, is Diogenes Laertius history of philosophy, which Nietzsche worked
extensively with and published several articles on. He also worked for almost
a full year as an advanced student (that is in a position more or less equivalent to
a doctoral student today) on a never completed study of Democritus, who was
contemporary with Socrates and the Sophists, and, who, like Protagoras, came
from Abdera. While working on this project in 1867 and 1868, Nietzsche encountered many both ancient and modern discussions of the Sophists, and he
often refers to them in his notes relating to this project.7 His general work on the
pre-Socratics in the early 1870s gave him much further knowledge about the
Sophists, as did his work on Plato and Platonic philosophy. One of Nietzsches
major ancient interests was rhetoric, an area in which the Sophists, of course,
played an important role.8 Before and during the early period as a professor,
Nietzsche compiled a detailed and massive index to 24 volumes of the classical
philological journal Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie, which contains 14 articles
about the Sophists which Nietzsche must have read.9 This, however, does not
seem to have increased his interest in or sympathy for them.
The results of my investigations have been presented in four papers; primarily in Nietzsches Disinterest and Ambivalence towards the Greek Sophists,10 but also
6
7

10

A papyrus found later has strengthened or confirmed Nietzsches view.

However, nowhere in these extensive notes (published both in BAW 3 5 and in KGW I 4 and
I 5) does he carry out any longer discussion of the Sophists. The Sophists as a group, and individual Sophists, such as Protagoras and Alcidamas, are frequently mentioned, and sometimes
sources, such as Aristotle, Plato, Diogenes Laertius, Rose and Westermann are given, but no discussion or evaluation of the Sophists is performed.
Before that, there are three references to the Sophists and Protagoras from his time at Pforta
(1862 64) his first references to the Sophists but they are of little or no interest.
The Sophists are mentioned by Nietzsche in a scholarly manner in several of his lectures, for
example, on Plato, on the pre-Platonic philosophers, on the rhetoric of Aristotle, on the study of
classical philology (Encyclopaedie der klass. Philologie), on ancient rhetoric, etc. The Sophists
are discussed most extensively in the lecture series Geschichte der griechischen Beredsamkeit
(held during the winter-term 1872/73), KGW II 4, pp. 363 411 (the sophists are discussed on
pages 370 384). Nietzsche here follows the classicist Friedrich Blass closely, whom he knew
personally and whose books he possessed and still are to be found in his library. His two references to Gorgias in MA 221 and VM 219 goes back to these lectures.
See my article Nietzsches Forgotten Book: The Index to the Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie. In:
New Nietzsche Studies 4 (Summer/Fall 2000), pp. 157 161.
This paper was presented at the American Philosophical Association (APA): Central Division
Meeting in May 1999, and published in International Studies in Philosophy 33 (Fall 2001),
pp. 523. It was originally written in the early 1990s and then carried the title Nietzsches Changing View of the Sophists: A Study of Nietzsches Reading of Victor Brochards Les sceptiques grecs.

Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists

259

in German Nineteenth Century Views of the Sophists (where Nietzsches views are
placed in the context of the views of other German, and British, philosophers
and classical philologists),11 Nietzsches Wrestling with Plato (in which I discuss
Nietzsches relation to Callicles and Thrasymachos),12 and in Beitrge zur Quellenforschung in this journal.13
Joel Mann has now attempted to vindicate decisively the general view
(p. 407) in a rather polemical paper entitled Nietzsches Interest and Enthusiasm for
the Greek Sophists in Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 406 428. To me, his paper
seems unnecessarily polemical, for in some ways we do not differ as much as the
titles of our respective articles and the tone of his paper may suggest. On several
occasions he builds unwarranted straw man arguments and seems to be carried
away by his own polemics. My argument was that Nietzsche was hostile to but at
the same time disinterested in the Sophists during the first period, 1869 1873,14
but that he turned more positive towards them in connection with the changes
of his philosophy near 1875/76 when he left his earlier more idealistic thinking
and turned more positivistic and pro-Enlightenment. This is not altogether surprising since the Sophists in some ways constituted representatives of a sort of
Enlightenment during the classical era. However, Nietzsche does not really show
any closer interest in them at this time. This is probably partly a reflection of his
being less concerned about antiquity during c. 1876 1880 than earlier compare the almost complete dearth of references to Dionysos during this period
together with the difficulty of completely breaking away from his own earlier
critical views, and from the old general hostile tradition against the Sophists. Important during this phase is that Nietzsche associated Thucydides with the Sophists, as I briefly discussed in my paper (compare the discussion below). Thereafter I discussed a third period, 1881 1886, in which there are essentially no
references to, or mention of, the Sophists at all, which certainly seems to reinforce the view that Nietzsche essentially had no interest in them (p. 9 of my
paper Nietzsches Disinterest and Ambivalence towards the Greek Sophists). These second and third periods can perhaps better be regarded as one long period of

11

12

13
14

This paper (which mainly deals with other German eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers than Nietzsche) has been presented at the Fourth Meeting of the International Society for the
Classical Tradition, Tbingen, 29 Juli-2 Aug. 1998, (and in a revised form at a Swedish meeting on
the classical tradition held in Hsselby Castle, Stockholm, August 2003), and is still awaiting publication in the conference proceedings.
Published in: Bishop, Paul (ed.): Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the
Classical Tradition. Woodbridge 2004. pp. 241 259. This paper has also been presented at a
conference at the department of philosophy at Uppsala University, 13 Feb. 2001 and at the British Nietzsche societys conference in Glasgow in September 2002.
In: Nietzsche-Studien 26 (1997), pp. 574 579.
The years 1874 and 1875 were not included in my periodization since Nietzsche makes no relevant statements regarding the Sophists at this time.

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Thomas Brobjer

relative disinterest towards the Sophists (c. 1876-c. 1886). Finally, I distinguished
a fourth (now third) period, 1887 and especially 1888, in which he increased his
appraisal of them. I argued that the reading of Victor Brochards Les sceptiques
grecs (Paris, 1887) was the stimulus for much of this new attitude (and was able to
show the impact of Brochard on Nietzsche by means of close textual parallels).
However, I would certainly not exclude other general influences, including perhaps F. A. Lange (compare discussion below). Thus, my overall view is that
Nietzsche was critical or hostile to the Sophists in his early phase but showed
little interest in them, turned more positive towards them in his middle phase,
but then seems to have had even less interest in them in spite of the many interesting parallels in their thinking until late in life. It is only during these last
two years that Nietzsche begins to clearly separate out the Sophists from Socrates and Plato, and thus to judge them on their own merits. This long period of
relative disinterest (or, at least, almost no explicit discussion of them) is of course
in some ways unsatisfactory, and worth more detailed examination.15 The fact
that Mann seems not to have been able to find a single additional relevant reference to the Sophists, or discussion of them, during this long period, apart from
those pointed out by me, makes the old standard view that Nietzsche praised
and was interested in them unlikely to be correct. One needs to be careful and
not interpret backwards, that is, draw conclusions from Nietzsches affirmative
statements in 1888 and apply this to his earlier view.16
Mann claims to accept my description of the first period (though, there is a
problem with this, discussed below) and the third one (although, he wishes to
add Lange as a further and principle stimulus for Nietzsches statements in
1888), and thus where we differ, and that which his title refers to, is primarily
Nietzsches relation to the Sophists during the long second period c. 1876 1886
(when he says almost nothing about them). Mann thus seems to accept most of
the three main specific points of my paper.17
15

16

17

The fact that Nietzsche says so little about the Sophists during this long period implies a disinterest, but by no means excludes the possibility that he held a more positive or negative view of
them which simply did not come to explicit expression.
One of the consequences of my discovery that most of Nietzsches statements in 1888 had his reading of Brochard as the main stimulus was to make such backwards interpretations more difficult.
Scholarship is advanced by critique of ones predecessors, but it is important to select the relevant questions and aspects to criticize. To me, we seem in agreement about more than we are in
disagreement about. We seem to agree on the two general questions on which my paper was
based, that Nietzsches relation to the Sophists is a potentially interesting one and that there exist
many similarities between his and their thinking. Furthermore, Mann seems, on the whole, to accept the three main specific points of my paper; the periodization of Nietzsches views of the
Sophists, that the reasons why he did not explicitly (until 1888) praise and pay allegiance to the
Sophists probably was an acceptance of the general sceptical attitude towards the Sophists
among philosophers for over two thousand years, and the relevance of Nietzsches reading of
Brochards Les sceptiques grecs (Paris, 1887).

Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists

261

Let us examine Manns and the old standard views case.18 But we need first
to begin by discussing Nietzsches position before 1876. For the early period,
c. 1869 1873, Mann claims to accept my view, but misrepresents it badly.19 He
presents it as one of disinterest and states: explicit references to the Sophists
during this time are scant and circumstantial, never displaying concern for the
Sophists in their own right (p. 407). This is highly misleading! I refer to it as
a hostile period (p. 7), not one of mere general disinterest, but one of active
disregard and critique of the Sophists. Significantly more than half of all of
Nietzsches explicit references to the Sophists occur during these five years and
many of them are distinctly critical!20 Nietzsche at this time, following Aristophanes, associates the Sophists to Socrates and Euripides, and this to a large extent
explains his critical attitude. He then regarded them as modern and as opponents of tragic culture. It is also likely that he was influenced by Schopenhauers
sceptical attitude.21 To realize this early critical attitude is important for this is
18

19

20

21

The standard view is so general and thus has been based on a general understanding rather than
detailed scholarship, that it does not speak of different periods etc of Nietzsches attitude towards the Sophists. Most of my discussion below will therefore refer to Manns article, but with a
view of him as representing the old standard interpretation.
He also misrepresents my view on page 414, where he summarizes my account of Nietzsches relation to the Sophists after 1876.
I am here referring, as is conventional, to Nietzsches complete works as published in KSA, i. e.
Nietzsches published works and notebooks (from 1869 1889). Were we to add his references
in his youth (basically 1867/68), and in his university lectures (almost all of the relevant ones
held for the first time during the period 1869 74) as is reasonable we would find that well
over 95 per cent of all Nietzsches explicit references to the Sophists were made during this
period.
Mann is correct in showing a healthy scepticism towards giving too much weight to merely
counting the number of references Nietzsche makes to different thinkers or ideas that can
(and should) only be a first approximate approach. But he is wrong to completely disregard it. To
claim that explicit references to the Sophists during this time are scant and circumstantial
(p. 407) and to suggest that this is in contrast to later periods a period in which Nietzsche
made about 20 times more references to the Sophists than during the rest of his life, a period at
least twice as long and to attribute this false view to me is patently bad scholarship!
Schopenhauer shared the general negative view of the Sophists that was common among essentially all philosophers until the twentieth century. He conducts no extensive discussion of the
Sophists but makes a number of snide remarks about them. In his Fragmente zur Geschichte der Philosophie (in Paralipomena) he refers to Sophisten und andere Narren, in the preface to the second
edition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1859) Geldverdienen mit der Pilosophie der Merkmal des Sophisten and in Paralipomena, paragraph 270, he makes a distinction between real philosophers and apparent philosophers: Man kann nmlich die Denker einteilen in solche, die
zunchst fr sich, und solche, die sogleich fr andere denken. Jene sind die echten, sind die Selbstdenker, im zweifachen Sinne des Worts, sie sind die eigentlichen Philosophen. [] Die andern sind
die Sophisten: sie wollen scheinen und suchen ihr Glck in dem, was sie dadurch von andern zu erlangen hoffen; hierin liegt ihr Ernst. (Schopenhauer, Smtliche Werke, vol. 5, p. 586.)
Schopenhauers hostility to the Sophists is perhaps still more noticeable in that he, like Hamann
and many others before him, uses the word Sophist as a term of abuse to describe and classify his
contemporary competitors and opponents, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and academic philosophers
more generally. We can note that Nietzsche does not use it as a general term of abuse.

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Thomas Brobjer

Nietzsches starting point (and this is also the period when he was most influenced
by Lange, whose influence at a later stage Mann emphasizes).
The main point of Manns disagreement with my previous paper is his claim
that Nietzsche was significantly more interested in and enthusiastic for the Sophists in the period 1876 to 1886. The claim is primarily based on three main arguments. (i) A close analysis of three of Nietzsches statements the first a note purportedly from 1876, a statement from the fifth book of Die frhliche Wissenschaft 351
(1886/87) and one in Gtzen-Dmmerung (1888) and claiming that they show a
consistent line of view. (ii) Nietzsches positive evaluation of Thucydides. (iii)
Nietzsches view of man as measure. One could feel that his case would have been
strengthened if he had given some sort of explanation of why Nietzsches attitude
towards and interest in the Sophists changed so dramatically at or near 1876. Nothing of the sort is offered. After the presentation of these three arguments, Mann
goes on to contend that Friedrich Albert Lange was an additional (more important) stimulus for Nietzsches positive statements in 1888 than Victor Brochard.

(i) The Argument Based on Close Textual Analysis

There are less than ten references to the Sophists in Nietzsches published
works and notebooks for the long period 1876 1886, and most of these are
brief and/or enigmatic. Essentially, the only possible exceptions to this are the
note KSA 8, 23[110] and section 168 of Morgenrthe (in which Nietzsche uses the
term Sophists in an extremely broad sense but then ends the section with an acceptance that an undefined view of the Sophists seems the most viable: Truth is
here so tangled and twisted one does not like the idea of trying to sort it out: let
the ancient error (error veritate simplicior) continue to run its ancient course!).
Thus Manns whole case and also much of the standard view rests to a very
large extent on his analysis of the note KSA 8, 23[110].22 I find his analysis somewhat tendentious, but on the whole reasonable.23 However, unfortunately Mann

22

23

Mann also expends almost twice as much room on his analysis of this note (pp. 407 411) as the
whole section in my paper discussing Nietzsches relation to the Sophists. This, of course, means
that there is an inherent imbalance between our analyses mine often done in one, or half of
one, sentence, while his is carried out on several dense pages.
Let me just give three examples of such tendentious arguments. The fact that Nietzsche writes
from the first person plural standpoint (p. 408), may indicate that this is his view, as Mann argues such a rhetorical use does indeed frequently occur in Nietzsches writings, but he often
also uses the first person plural form in other ways see Duncan Larges valuable paper Nietzsche
and Company: The Fist Person Pluralised, presented at a conference on Morgenrthe in Tourtour
(near Nizza) in September 2003, and will be published in the conference proceedings in 2005.
Furthermore, it is uncertain to what degree the first person plural at the top of the note applies
to the latter part of it, which was added later.

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263

fails to address one important question and therefore his case completely collapses, and with that much of his whole paper, and also the arguments for the old
standard view. This fatal error has to do with chronology. Mann attempts with this note
to establish an over-arching continuity (p. 424) from 1876 over 1886 to 1888,
which he frequently refers to and uses as an important argument in his paper.
Without this note no such continuity can successfully be argued. He repeatedly
states that this note was written in 1876, and it does belong to a set of notes that
were written between the end of 1876 and the summer of 1877. However, if one
examines the commentary volume KGW IV 4, p. 446, one discovers that it is
stated that the last four lines of the note, the relevant part relating to the Sophists, were added later: spter hinzugefgt! It is not stated and probably not
known when this addition was made, but this part of the note can obviously
not be used for, or as part of, any chronological argument.24

24

Mann uses the same argument in his analysis of Dawn 168, pages 411 413 of his paper. He there
criticizes my claims that Nietzsche does not agree with Plato that the Sophists (here associated
with Thucydides, Sophocles, Pericles, Hippocrates and Democritus) constituted a very immoral
culture (eine sehr unsittliche Cultur), and instead claims that this is Nietzsches view, and thus
that Nietzsche agrees with Plato in this regard (that is, Mann interprets the we at the end of M
168 as I, Nietzsche, while I interpret is as we modern ones). We have no indication that
Nietzsche then regarded the Sophists, including Thucydides, Sophocles et al as immoral on the
contrary, he claims in the same section that they constitute the last glorious flower of the older
Hellenic culture. Furthermore, we know that Nietzsche in Morgenrthe regarded both Socrates
and Plato as immoral (unsittlich and as Gegensatz des sittlichen Menschen, M 9 and 496.
Compare also M 116 (related to M 14) and Nachla 1884, KSA 11, 25[163]. Manns analysis and
discussion of this section thus becomes problematic and eccentric.
The claim that Nietzsche was always a careful philologist (p. 410) is a dubious statement for
anyone who knows both Nietzsche and antiquity. He was a profound philologist and philosopher, hardly a careful one (except possibly as a student).
Likewise, Manns claim that Nietzsche would have been much inhibited due to the fact that he
did not have much at all in a way of meaningful information about the Sophists (p. 409, repeated in other words on p. 411) seems highly improbable, and wrong. Nietzsche, as a classical
philologist with a special interest in Socrates and Plato, and earlier philosophical thinking, had a
fairly extensive knowledge about the Sophists. Furthermore, we know that a possible lack of detailed and certain knowledge did not greatly hamper him when it came to making statements and
judging other pre-Socratic philosophers (or the pre-Socratics as a group).
We can also note that Manns analysis of the note leads to a position where Nietzsches views are
diametrically opposed to Langes views of the Sophists as culturally detrimental. In itself, and for
me, this is no problem (since by the time Nietzsche wrote this, he had distanced himself from
Lange) but for Mann, who strongly emphasizes that Nietzsche was influenced by Lange, this is
a problem, and he ought to have addressed it.
It seems to me likely that the addition was made during or after the winter 1887/88, when we
know that Nietzsche held such views of the Sophists. This would also correspond well with the
time when he wrote the note KSA 13, 11[375] (the first note in which Nietzsche begins to affirm
the Sophists generally), and where he discusses them, Plato and other philosophers in terms
related to bergangsclimata. He there refers to the Sophists as a transitional state, bergangsform, and contrasts them to other philosophers. However, no certainty can be reached by
such speculations about when this addition was made.

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Manns analysis of the second station, from 1886/87, of his argument, the
vague statement in Die frhliche Wissenschaft 351,25 (pp. 414 417) is complex and
much less convincing in itself.26 It is also unfortunate that Mann does not discuss
the only note from this time in which Nietzsche explicitly refers to the Sophists,
KSA 12, 7[20], from the end of 1886/early 1887, which I refer to in my article.27
Though Nietzsches statement in the note is not completely unambiguous, it is
clear that he here emphasizes the kinship of the Sophists with Socrates and
Plato. It is only in the following two years that Nietzsche began to clearly separate the Sophists from Socrates and Plato. This note is thus much more consistent
with my interpretation of the statement in Die frhliche Wissenschaft that he
then viewed the Sophists, if at all, with critical disinterest (p. 9) than to Manns.
However, carefulness is required in regard to such obscure statements and it
is doubtful if any good argument can be built on these two statements from
1886/87.
We are thus left with Nietzsches enthusiasm for the Sophists in 1888, which
is well known and which I already have discussed in my earlier paper.

(ii) Thucydides as a Sophist

There are many interesting things to be said about Nietzsches relation to and
interpretation of the Greek historian Thucydides, especially for Nietzsches view
of history, but possibly also for his view of the Sophists.28 I would greatly wel-

25

26

27

28

Note that even if it could be shown that the addition was made close to 1877, that would not significantly change my interpretation of Nietzsches relation to the Sophists. We would still only
have one short and obscure note from this time far too little to speak about any interest in and
enthusiasm for the Sophists.
It was modesty that invented the word philosopher in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit the modesty of such
monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato . (W. Kaufmans translation of The
Gay Science. New York 1974.)
Note, for example, that Nietzsche in 1886, contrary to other periods in his life, including the
years nearby, made many appreciative statements regarding Plato. See my article: Nietzsches
Wrestling with Plato. In: Bishop, Paul (ed.): Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response
to the Classical Tradition. Woodbridge 2004. 241 259.
Die Philosophen-Moral von Sokrates ab [] der Kampf gegen die Sophisten ist psychologisch
schwer zu fassen: es ist eine Abtrennung nthig, um nicht mit ihnen verwechselt zu werden
(wozu Alles einlud, weil sie nmlich sich verwandt fhlten). Wettbewerb um die Jngling e
(Nachla 1886/87, KSA 12, 7[20])
Nietzsches knowledge of Thucydides was, of course, very thorough he taught him during the
winter term 1873/4 and during the summer term 1875 at the paedagogium and held seminars on
him at the Basel university during the winter term 1878/9. See Janz, C. P.: Friedrich Nietzsches
Akademische Lehrttigkeit in Basel 1869 bis 1879. In: Nietzsche-Studien 3 (1974), pp. 192 203.
In table 2 there is a misprint in that it states that Nietzsche taught Thucydides during the summer
term 1876 instead of 1875.

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265

come such studies. Mann repeatedly questions why I did not include Thucydides
among the Sophists. The simple answer is because Thucydides was not a Sophist,
although influenced by them. Nor does Mann refer to any classical scholar who
claims that he was. Guthrie, whom Mann refers to, claims explicitly that he, like
Euripides, was no Sophist, and I have never seen a list of the Sophists which
includes Thucydides. However, in several notes during the middle period
Nietzsche regards Thucydides not only as influenced by, but also as closely associated with Sophistic culture (as I briefly discuss on pages 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14
and in several footnotes of my paper).29 This certainly makes it a topic worth discussing, even if I cannot agree with Mann that one should accept Nietzsches
classification. To me, the fact that Nietzsche closely associates Thucydides (and many
others)30 to the Sophists is primarily a reflection of his vague and disinterested attitude towards
the Sophists.
Mann repeatedly accuses me of excluding Thucydides from the Sophists, but
oddly enough he is in spite of that not consistent and does so himself throughout
his paper (with comments such as that we have little knowledge about their
thinking, that we only possess fragments of their writings etc. which would be far
from true if we included Thucydides). Furthermore, if one were to follow
Manns argument that we ought to follow Nietzsches own classification which
I am not convinced by then one would also need to include among the Sophists, Euripides, Sophocles, Socrates, Democritus, Pericles, Anaxagoras, the

29

30

For a very brief comment on Nietzsches use of Thucydides in relation to his views on history,
see my paper: Nietzsches View of the Value of Historical Studies and Methods. In: Journal of
the History of Ideas 65 (2004), pp. 301 322.
It should be noted that Nietzsche does not seem to go beyond associating Thucydides with the
Sophists. He does not discuss or elaborate on this. The association occurs in five notes and in
section 168 of Morgenrthe. The five notes consist all of brief, one sentence claims which states
that Thucydides belongs to, or is the result of, the Sophistic movement, see Nachla 1876 80,
KSA 8, 19[72, 86], 31[4], 39[5] and KSA 9, 7[131].
Mann criticizes my lack of discussion of Thucydides on many occasions, especially on p. 413 f.
I mentioned him frequently, and briefly discussed him in my paper, as I indicated above, but carried out no longer discussion. There are two primary reasons for this. The allowed size of my
paper which was first presented orally was limited. Secondly, the question of Thucydides importance for Nietzsche goes far beyond his relation to the Sophists, and although interesting,
seemed to me not usefully covered in my paper. We can note that Manns paper, in spite of his
claim that Thucydides is important for understanding Nietzsches relation to the Sophists, and
the fact that his paper is very much longer than mine, does not contain any longer discussion of
Nietzsches relation to Thucydides.
My interpretation that Nietzsche began to view the Sophists more favourably near 1876 is to a
large extent based on Nietzsches view of Thucydides. If we were to exclude the notes where he
refers to Thucydides as closely associated to the Sophists, there would be very little evidence for
a positive evaluation of the Sophists before ca 1881, or even before 1887/88.
This argument is further strengthened by the fact that several of the persons Nietzsche includes
among the Sophists were even born before Protagoras, conventionally regarded as the first of
the Sophists.

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great Ionians and Hippocrates. If Mann had followed his own prescription
which he wisely does not the title of his paper would have been very misleading
and the arguments in it completely irrelevant.

(iii) Nietzsches Relation to Protagoras homo mensura Principle

There are many striking similarities between Protagoras homo mensura principle, that is, his claim that man is the measure of all things, and Nietzsches existentialist philosophy, which places man and mans experience of the world at the
centre. It is precisely these sorts of similarities which make it so surprising that
Nietzsche did not show a greater interest in Protagoras and the Sophists.31 However, as a critique of my paper Manns discussion of this question is useless. That
there are many important parallels between Nietzsches and the Sophists thinking, I have not only not denied, but very strongly emphasized in my paper.32
What Mann needed to do to go beyond my paper and I would have welcomed
that was to show that these many statements and concerns of Nietzsches are
not only similar to those of the Sophists, but that they are directly related to or
inspired (or influenced) by the Sophists. This may be possible, but is not yet
done.33
One of the reasons why Nietzsche is such a stimulating philosopher is the
tensions in his thinking. One fundamental such tension is the dichotomy between his affirmation, on the one hand, of life, health and creativity (which can
be regarded as a form of existentialism),34 and on the other hand, of honesty,

31

32

33

34

I find the section Of Maa and men (pp. 417 424) to be the most important and valuable part of
Manns paper, and I believe that it contains new analyses not previously published. I agree with
much of it (even though it is one-sided), for example the claims that the theme of measurement
and man as a measuring device is woven into the very fabric of Nietzsches philosophy [] At
the very least, Nietzsche appreciated the homo mensura as a tool to pose and explore the moral and
epistemological value problems that concerned him (p. 423).
This similarity or kinship between existentialist philosophy and homo mensura does not, however,
necessarily imply an influence from the Sophists and sympathy with Protagoras. Compare, for
example, Kierkegaard with his existentialist philosophy and severe critique of the Sophists.
I had even worked on a section on Protagoras and homo mensura for my paper, but never finished
it, since the maximum allowed size of my paper was limited. I will below present some of my results.
One could, for example, examine if Nietzsches early rejection of Plato and Platonic philosophy
corresponded to a sympathy with Protagoras and the Sophists. However, as I will discuss below,
there is little evidence that this was the case.
This tendency includes an emphasis on the fact that we are human beings, and that for us values
are important. Furthermore, this includes an acceptance of holding a personal relation to the
world and to ourselves (i. e. increasing the anthropomorphic tendency). This is, for example,
done through an emphasis of art and creativity. It also emphasizes the will and the strong will
(self-control).

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267

intellectual integrity, scepticism, of having the courage to see the world as it is,
and thus of truth, knowledge, scholarship and science.35 Both these aspects have
their dangers according to Nietzsche, the former that it can lead to idealism, romanticism and illusions, and the latter in that it can lead to nihilism and selfalienation. This tension goes through all of Nietzsches thinking and writings,
and although the centre of gravity of his sympathy shifts between these tendencies, he seems, on the whole, to always affirm both tendencies. Mann simplifies
Nietzsches thinking by only concentrating on the more existentialist (and more
anthropocentric and homo mensura related) aspect, and thus ignoring the many occasions when Nietzsche criticizes the homo mensura principle.
A serious discussion of Nietzsches relation to the homo mensura principle,
relativism, subjectivism and anthropomorphism, considering both arguments
for and against, is not carried out in Manns paper. One must then not only
examine and discuss similarities between Protagoras and Nietzsche, but also
problems such as Nietzsches strong emphasis on biology and physiology (which
strongly reduces his kinship with Protagoras homo mensura principle as individualistic, subjectivistic and relativistic which is the most common interpretation
of it, including Platos, Langes and Nietzsches own, see KGW II 4, p. 151,
quoted below Mann argues that Nietzsche interprets it differently, p. 422 f., but
gives no textual support for this claim) and still more importantly, Nietzsches
strong rejection of anthropomorphism (and thus also of the principle of man as
measure). Furthermore, it would, of course, be necessary to examine Nietzsches
early use of man as measure and its possible relation to his view of Protagoras.
After all, Nietzsches relatively negative and disinterested attitude towards the
Sophists in the late 1860s and early 1870s, when he was most concerned with
them, suggests that they were not the source of and direct influence on this aspect of his thinking.
Nietzsche refers to what can perhaps be called Protagoras homo mensura principle a number of times in his published books and notebooks (as discussed by
Mann), but does he really affirm the principle as Mann assumes? And does he relate it at all to Protagoras and the Sophists? Nietzsches earliest explicit reference
to the homo mensura principle in KSA (that is, in his published books and notebooks) occurs in Ueber Wahrheit und Lge im aussermoralischen Sinne (written in 1872/
73). However, his view there seems closer akin to a general skepticism than to an
acceptance of Protagoras homo mensura principle. In fact, he clearly rejects those
who accept that the world is merely measured by our measure (anthropomor35

This tendency includes working for a de-deification and a de-humanisation of nature and the
world. It also includes a critique of Christianity, idealism and the anthropomorphic interpretations of nature. From this perspective, we are not at the centre of the world, not created by
God, and not the purpose of it. Instead nature is chaos, mere energy, without teleology and purpose. In this mode Nietzsche denies free will.

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phic interpretations), and compares this view to that of astrology.36 Likewise, his
allusions to it in Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen and in Ueber die
Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten, from about the same time, seem again to imply a
rejection, or at least a critique, of it.37 Most, but not all, of his later references to
the principle continue to be enigmatic38 and/or mildly critical,39 and that is true
for all three periods. It is also noteworthy that in no case does Nietzsche relate
his explicit discussions of man as measure to Protagoras or the Sophists.40
Nietzsches desire to reduce the anthropomorphic character of our conception of the world is especially noticeable in Die frhliche Wissenschaft and the notes
from this period. He then frequently speaks of the need for a de-deification and
a de-humanisation of the world.41 In the fifth book of Die frhliche Wissenschaft,
section 346, written several years later, he, for example, argues:

36

37
38

39

40

41

Der Forscher nach solchen Wahrheiten sucht im Grunde nur die Metamorphose der Welt in
den Menschen; er ringt nach einem Verstehen der Welt als eines menschenartigen Dinges und
erkmpft sich besten Falls das Gefhl einer Assimilation. Aehnlich wie der Astrolog die Sterne
im Dienste der Menschen und im Zusammenhange mit ihrem Glck und Leide betrachtet, so
betrachtet ein solcher Forscher die ganze Welt als geknpft an den Menschen, als den unendlich
gebrochenen Wiederklang eines Urklanges, des Menschen, als das vervielfltigte Abbild des
einen Urbildes, des Menschen. Sein Verfahren ist: den Menschen als Maass an alle Dinge zu
halten, wobei er aber von dem Irrthume ausgeht, zu glauben, er habe diese Dinge unmittelbar als
reine Objekte vor sich. Er vergisst also die originalen Anschauungsmetaphern als Metaphern
und nimmt sie als die Dinge selbst. (KSA 1, 883)
KSA 1, p. 825 f. and 649f.
See, for example, JGB 3 where Nietzsche ends a discussion with the words: Assuming, that is
to say, that it is not precisely man who is the measure of things . I had in my earlier article
referred to Nietzsches statement here as ambivalent, but Mann finds that the opposite seems
true and interprets it to mean that Nietzsche uses and affirms the homo mensura principle (footnote 27 on page 420). To me, it remains ambivalent, and if one examines the only contemporary
note in which Nietzsche discusses the homo mensura principle, Nachla 1885/86, KSA 12, 2[93],
he seems there to be critical of the principle: Da das Denken gar ein Maa der Wirklichen sei,
da was nicht gedacht werden kann, nicht ist, ist ein plumpes non plus ultra einer moralistischen Vertrauens-seligkeit [] an sich eine tolle Behauptung, der unsre Erfahrung in jedem
Augenblicke widerspricht.
Although Mann lists 18 of the most important places where Nietzsche discusses the homo mensura
principle, he only discusses those instances where Nietzsche can be made to appear to approve
of it. Selecting which statements to analyze and interpret and this needs to be done with judgement and an open mind is equally important as ones ability to perform such analysis.
On several occasions, both early and late in his writings, Nietzsche relates the existential
theme of man as measure to Schopenhauer (rather than to Protagoras). It thus seems likely that
Schopenhauer was a more important stimulus for Nietzsches discussions of this theme than
Protagoras.
See, for example, FW 109 and 335 and the Nachla 1877/1881, KSA 8, 23[150]; KSA 9, 11[197,
238]. In Nachla 1881, KSA 9, 11[211] Nietzsche writes: Meine Aufgabe: die Entmenschlichung der Natur und dann die Vernatrlichung des Menschen, nachdem er den reinen Begriff
Natur gewonnen hat. For a discussion of this tendency in Nietzsches thinking, see my forthcoming paper: The Relation between Art and Science in Nietzsches The Gay Science, presented
at the conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, 12 14 September 2003, at the University of
Warwick.

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269

We are far from claiming that the world is worth less; indeed it would seem laughable
to us today if man were to insist on inventing values that were supposed to excel
the value of the actual world. That is precisely what we have turned our backs on as
an extravagant aberration of human vanity and unreason that for a long time was not
recognized as such. [] The whole pose of man against the world, of man as a
world-negating principle, of man as the measure of the value of things, as judge of
the world who in the end places existence itself upon his scales and finds it wanting
the monstrous insipidity of this pose has finally come home to us and we are sick of
it.42

In an attempt to examine Nietzsches earliest encounter and response to Protagoras homo mensura principle I have gone through his extensive Nachla from
before 1869, but have, surprisingly, been unable to find a single reference to Protagoras principle in spite of the fact that he in 1867 and 1868 worked intensively
with ancient philosophy and frequently refers to the Sophists.43 Nor have I been
able to find any references to it in Nietzsches extensive lectures (except the brief
mentioning of them in his Plato lectures, discussed below), nor in his letters. In
spite of the fact that Nietzsche explicitly refers to Protagoras close to a hundred
times in his notes from 1867 and 1868, and in his lecture notes, I have found no
relevant discussion of his homo mensura principle there!44 That is certainly not
what one would have expected for someone interested in, and even enthusiastic
about, the Sophists, and in particular Protagoras, and who is claimed to have a
sympathy for Protagoras homo mensura principle. A much more reasonable conclusion is that Nietzsche was not interested in the Sophists, and that his discussions relating to the man as measure theme do not have Protagoras as its
main source and stimulus.

42

43

44

Kaufmanns translation of The Gay Science. New York 1974. Compare GD (Sokrates 2), where
Nietzsche again discusses the same problem and states: Judgements, value judgements
concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only
as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms in themselves such judgements
are stupidities. One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of life
cannot be estimated. (Hollingdales translation in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ.
Harmondsworth 1968). His view is again much more akin to scepticism than to Protagoras relativism.
Mann, too, quotes and discusses this text from the fifth book of Die frhliche Wissenschaft (p. 421),
but he understands it as if Nietzsche approves of the homo mensura principle.
However, in Nietzsches notes to his planned dissertation on Teleology after Kant, Nachla
1868, KGW I 4, 62[3 58] which thus more concerns modern than ancient philosophy he
frequently criticizes teleology and other anthropomorphic conceptions of nature and cosmos.
It is a pity that Mann, who attempts to go beyond my previous paper and to emphasize Nietzsches kinship with Protagoras, makes no reference at all to this material! Admittedly, remarkably
little can be made of it for anyone who argues that Nietzsche sympathised with the Sophists, but
an impartial reader will in them find many arguments for Nietzsches disinterest and critique of
them. A discussion of this material by Mann would at least have shown his good intention and
that he had examined all available relevant information.

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Nietzsches explicit references to Protagoras and the homo mensura in his published books and philosophical notebooks are rare and often cryptic.45 An alternative additional approach to gain information about Nietzsches relation to Protagoras and his thinking is to examine his more explicit discussion of Protagoras
in his Plato lectures.46 Of especial importance are his summaries and discussions
of the dialogues Protagoras and Theaetetus, in which Protagoras relativism and
homo mensura principle is explicitly discussed.47 Contrary to what the old standard
view and Mann would make us expect, Nietzsche there shows no enthusiasm for
Protagoras and the homo mensura principle. Although the Protagoras ends in aporia,
Nietzsche sees the Platonic character Protagoras as the loser.48 He summarizes
Protagoras great speech early in the dialogue without special comment, and
ignores some of Protagoras strongly relativistic statements in the later part of
the dialogue. In his brief analysis of, and comment on, the dialogue he states:
Der Dialog hat nicht das Herbe u. Scharfe, wie die vorhergehenden. Er ist ebenfalls gnzlich exoterisch u. soll dazu dienen, den Respekt vor der Sophist. selbst
in ihren besten Erscheinungen herabzustimmen. Es ist gewi kein sehr frher
Dialog: es ist auch kein principiell wichtiger. Die Fragen sind ganz ungelst.
(Protagoras, KGW II 4, p. 122). This is not the response one would expect from
45

46

47

48

Nietzsche only makes two explicit references to Protagoras before 1888 in all of his published
works and philosophical notebooks (KSA), and he then does not relate him to the homo mensura
principle.
Mann, too, admits that Nietzsches statements regarding homo mensura often are cryptic, see, for
example, page 424.
Nietzsches probably most interesting discussion of Protagoras occurs in the second part of his
Plato lectures, where he discusses to what extent Plato was influenced by Heraclitus. On the
whole, Nietzsche denies this, and instead emphasizes Protagoras kinship with Heraclitus, and
that they belong to a different tradition (KGW II 4, pp. 150 152). He there argues that for Protagoras knowledge is equal to doxa or opinion, which further is equal to truth, and that the only
form of knowledge which exists is individualistic knowledge (so bleibe nichts brig als eine individuelle Erkenntni anzunehmen). Nietzsche continues: Plato geht also aus von einer
verzweifelten Skepsis in Betreff aller Erkenntni berhaupt, nicht etwa nur in Betreff der sinnlichen Dinge, sondern berhaupt (vor Bekanntschaft mit Socrates): er glaubt nicht mehr an die
Mglichkeit der Erkenntni: weil er auf der Basis des Cratylus steht giebt es Erkenntni, so
doch nur durch die Sinne. Wir mssen als erste Wirkung der Philosoph. auf Plato eine tr bsinnig e Verzweif lung annehmen. Damit war alles moralische Leben vernichtet, es gab keine
Richtschnur mehr, alle Begriffe sind in Flusse, das Individuum ist ohne jeden Halt u. kennt kein
Maa, keine Grenze. Hier blieb der Ausweg des Protagoras brig: der Cultus des Individuums,
der Mensch sich selbst Maa. Diesen Ausweg fand Plato nicht. (KGW II 4, pp. 151 f.) However,
there is no evidence that Nietzsche accepted either Platos or Protagoras position. We know that
Nietzsche at this time was critical towards individualism, and his overall relation to it is as complex and intricate as it is to the concept of man as measure.
See KGW II 4, pp. 119 122 and pp. 131 134.
Platos dialogue Theaetetus is our most important source of knowledge of Protagoras homo mensura principle, and its interpretation is discussed extensively in the dialogue.
Dabei hat S. also Protag. auf die entgegengesetzte Seite gedrngt. Damit schliet der Dialog.
(p. 122). This is certainly a reasonable and possible reading of the text, but not the only one. One
can note that it is one that follows Socrates rather than the Sophists and Protagoras.

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one who sympathized with, and had close kinship with, Protagoras homo mensura
principle. Likewise in Nietzsches discussion of the Theaetetus, in which he explicitly refers to Protagoras principle da der Mensch das Maa aller Dinge sei
(Theaetet, KGW II 4, p. 132), he shows no special attention or interest in it, and
gives it no particular comment. Nietzsche does not go beyond a brief paraphrase
of the dialogue, and in this case he does not even add any more personal comments after the summary, which he does for many other dialogues.
In Nietzsches Plato lectures (held four times between the winter semesters
1871/72 and 1878/79) one can find further evidence of Nietzsches difference
from and critique of the Sophists. In a section entitled Plato as moralist [Plato als
Ethiker] he writes:
The cardinal claim of the Sophists is the identity of hedu [pleasure], the agreeable, and
agathon [the good]. This is especially clear in Gorgias: if Kallicles had to accept the difference between hedu and agathon, he would unwillingly have had to retreat also from
all the other Sophistic claims. The evidence against the identity can be found in Gorgias, Philebus and the Republic.49

After the quoted sentence Nietzsche spends more than a full page on arguing
(apparently using both Platos and his own arguments) that pleasure is not identical with the good. Thus, it is clear that Nietzsche did not agree or sympathize
with what he regarded as the cardinal claim of the Sophists, nor all the other
Sophistic claims. Furthermore, Nietzsches opposition to hedonism and utilitarianism continued until his mental collapse.
Perhaps more disappointing than the inadequate historical and interpretative
scholarship Manns paper illustrates, is his unfortunate methodological discussion and his attempt to drive a wedge between scholarship and philosophy.
Good philosophy, like good science, requires accurate scholarship and acute
thinking. Scholarship and philosophy although frequently performed by different individuals belong together, just as mathematics and physics or naturalist
biology and biochemistry belong together for the purpose of giving us a better
understanding of the world, history and human thinking.

49

Der Kardinalsatz der Sophisten ist die I d ent itt von E angenehm und HB}O. Klar wird
dies besonders im Gorgias: hatte einmal Kallicles die Verschiedenheit von E u. HB}O zugestehen mssen, so mu er unwillig zurckweichen, auch in allen brigen Stzen der Sophistik.
Die Beweise gegen die Identitt finden sich im Gorgias Philebus und Republik (KGW II 4,
p. 171)

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Sources of Nietzsches Interest and Affirmation of the Sophists in 1888:

Lange and/or Brochard
After having presented his three main arguments against my previous paper,
Mann proposes F. A. Langes Geschichte des Materialismus (Iserlohn, 1866) as a
source to much of Nietzsches relation to the Sophists generally, including and
more specifically to his comments in 1888. He writes:
certain of Nietzsches remarks from 1888 can be traced back to Langes Geschichte,
a book which Nietzsche had studied intensively for over twenty years, having taken it
up with renewed vigor in 1884. [] Nonetheless, it can be shown that in all likelihood
much of the discussion in question, as well as the connection made to Democritus,
borrows heavily from Lange.50

The suggestion that Lange could be an important source and stimulus for
Nietzsches views of the Sophists is plausible and I too mentioned Lange as a
possible source or stimulus in my article for Lange was very important for
Nietzsches early encounter with philosophy in the later 1860s and perhaps in the
early 1870s.51 However, the suggestion needs some sort of support and arguments to be made plausible and relevant.
Mann produces only two such arguments. First, that there is a certain general
similarity between what Nietzsche says about the Sophists and what Lange says.
Secondly, that Nietzsche read Lange with enthusiasm in 1866, taken up with renewed enthusiasm in 1884 and that he possessed the second edition of Langes
work during this period (with a reference that he received this last information
from me). However, these claims contain serious errors and misrepresentations.
Let us start with the second claim relating to Nietzsches reading of Lange.
It is true that Nietzsche enthusiastically read the first edition of Langes work
(which was much shorter than later editions) in 1866, and continued to read, ex50

51

Mann, p. 425. He also makes similar claims at the beginning of the article, and several times in
even more detail on pages 427f.
There is no doubt that Lange constituted a strong influence on the young Nietzsche, and that he
read him intensively in 1866 and 1868, but how often did he return to the work after that? This is
a question not easily answered, but in 1873 he excerpts and paraphrases the work which suggests
a reading of it then. Thereafter he gives his copy of the book away. In 1881 and 1883 there exist
notes which may contain paraphrases from Lange, but that is not certain (or may come from
reading of other works which mention Lange). At the latest by 1884 and 1885 Nietzsche turned
critical of Lange. He seems then to be re-reading him. We have several notes which contain pagereferences to Langes book, quotations and in one note he claims to be reading Lange. In 1887 or
1888, Nietzsche seems to have bought the fourth edition of the book, and again re-read Lange (as
shown by the annotations throughout his copy of the book). The evidence for Nietzsches reading of Lange after 1869, can be found in KSA 7, 29[223], (KSA 9, 11[119], part of this note has
been identified as coming from Lange, but the identification is based on such general statements
that it is far from certain that Nietzsche read Lange at this time), (KSA 10, 17[73], which contains
a reference which Nietzsche may have taken from Lange), KSA 11, 25[318+424] and 34[99].

Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists

273

cerpt and quote it the following years. However, Nietzsche at this time did not
agree with Langes carefully positive evaluation of the Sophists as philosophers.
For example, Langes claim that the Sophists were modern was at this time, for
Nietzsche, an argument against them! An influence from Lange on Nietzsches
views of the Sophists at this time could have been seen as likely, but the evidence
seems to point against it.52 In the first edition, from 1866, the discussion of the
Sophists (essentially Protagoras) consists of about two pages (pp. 14 f.) in which
Lange, following Hegel, emphasizes their subjectivism. Lange was much aware
that the Sophists had previously been seen from a one-sided negative perspective. He claims in his book that it is due to Hegel and to the new German classical philology that a new picture with both light and dark sides is now possible.
He then gives such a mixed picture of them. Among the positive things he attributes to them are: Dagegen verdankt man ihren Bestrebungen die Grundlegung der Grammatik und die Ausbildung einer mustergltigen Prosa []
vor allem auch die hohe Ausbildung der Redekunst (p. 21). Philosophically he
seems to regard, as did Hegel, their position as a more or less necessary developmental stage, but thus as one which has been surpassed. However, in the field
of general culture, and especially political life of Athens, he, unlike Nietzsches
later view, sees their influence as negative:
Schon whrend des peloponnesischen Krieges, bald nach dem Tode des Perikles, war
die grosse Revolution im ganzen Leben der Athener entschieden, deren Trger vor
Allem die Sophisten waren. Dieser rasche Auflsungsprocess steht einzig in der Geschichte da [] Die Sophisten schufen auch die Demagogik; denn sie lehrten die Redekunst mit der ausdrcklichen Angabe, zu verstehen, wie man die Menge nach seinem Sinn und seinem Interesse lenken knne. Da entgegengesetzte Behauptungen
gleich wahr sind, so kam es fr Protagoras und seine Gesinnungsgenossen nur darauf
an, die persnliche Ansicht geltend zu machen, und es wurde eine Art moralischen
Faustrechts eingefhrt.53
52

53

However, see how Nietzsches friend Erwin Rohde, under the influence of Lange, can emphasize
and affirm Protagoras claim that man is the measure of all: Ueberhaupt komme ich immer zur
Erkenntni wie weise jener Sophist war, der trotz alles Gegenredens der Gesundheit seiner Zeit
behauptete da der Mensch das Maa der Dinge sei. Nicht wenig hat mir darin das Langesche
Buch (das Du allernchstens wiederbekommst) bestrkt, das mich auf der Reise stets in einem
erhhten Gedankenkreis erhalten hat. Ganz gewi hat er Recht, mit Kants Entdeckung von der
Subjectivitt der Anschauungsformen so bitter Ernst zu machen, und wenn er Recht hat, ist es
dann nicht ganz in der Ordnung da ein Jeder sich eine Weltanschauung whle die ihm, d.h. seinem ethischen Bedrfni, als seinem eigentlichen Wesen, genge? Letter to Nietzsche, 4 Nov.
1868, KGB I 3, No. 200, p. 299. Nietzsche, in his eight page letter of response, makes no reference to this discussion of Protagoras and the homo mensura principle.
Compare also Romundts letter to Nietzsche, 19 Sept. 1875, KGB II 6 1, No. 714, p. 227, which
also contains a brief reference to man as measure: ich bin mir nicht mehr das Maass der Dinge,
sondern drehe mich wieder mit allen anderen Krpern um eine Sonne. Den Todestag Schopenhauers bermorgon werde ich ganz anders fr mich feiern knnen als je zuvor.
Lange, Friedrich Albert: Geschichte des Materialismus. Iserlohn 1866, p. 19. These same words
are also used in the forth edition, on pages 35f. And earlier, on page 30, Lange had written on the

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Thomas Brobjer

This negative view of them culturally and politically is somewhat surprising,

for Lange, like Grote and Lewes, whom he refers to, was politically engaged and
active, with radical and socialist sympathies. Grote and Lewes had emphasized
that the Sophists had a positive social and cultural impact. Both Lange and
Nietzsche had read Grote and Lewes.54 We can note that Nietzsche, on the
whole, seems not to follow Langes condemnation of their social and cultural impact, nor does he seem to have accepted Langes interpretation of them as philosophers opposed to Socrates and Plato in that he closely aligns the Sophists
with them, at least until late in his life.
Mann twice refers to the fact that Nietzsche took up Langes book with renewed vigor in 1884, and refers to Salaquardas excellent study of Nietzsches
relation to Lange in Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978), pp. 236 253. But what Salaquarda
says (on page 241 f., not 239 as given by Mann) is very different:
Diese drei Notizen aus den Jahren 1884 und 1885 zeigen immerhin, da Nietzsche
auch in diesen Jahren einzelne Partien der Geschichte des Materialismus wieder gelesen
hat [] Sachlich ist nur eine der drei Notizien interessant, whrend in den beiden anderen mehr beilufige Bemerkungen zu finden ist: [] In der dritten Notiz setzt
Nietzsche sich mit Lange auseinander, wobei deutlich wird, da er sich von dessen
Position und somit auch von seiner eigenen frheren Position entfernt hat.

Nietzsches fairly severe and general critique of Lange in 1884/85 (together

with the fact that we do not know if he read the section dealing with the Sophists) and more importantly, that Nietzsche makes no reference to the Sophists
then make a positive influence from Lange in regard to the Sophists at this
time highly unlikely.
The case for Langes relevance in 1888, and, for example, the note KSA 13,
14[116], from early 1888, which Mann discusses and quotes on pages 426ff., is
stronger but also problematic. What I informed Mann about was not that
Nietzsche possessed Langes book during this period (which period is that?),
but that the fourth edition of Langes book from 1887 is among Nietzsches
private library, with annotations. Nietzsche must have acquired the book sometime during 1887 or 1888, and read much or all of it thereafter. We do thus not
know if he had read it before early 1888 when that note was written, or after-

54

same theme: In der Ethik treten die fatalen Conseequenzen des von Protagoras eingenommenen Standpunktes am offensten hervor.
Nietzsche had earlier read and at least in part agreed with Grotes new interpretation of the
Sophists. KGW II 3 p. 407: Neue Erscheinung die Sophisten: die Entwicklung eines abstrakten
Lehrerthums, das uns Modernen so nahe steht, da wir die Abneigung Platos u. Aristoteles gar
nicht begreifen. Das ganze gebildete Griechenland war brigens auf ihrer Seite. Grote hat ein
Verdienst, sie richtiger charakterisirt zu haben. Aber tiefer wird es erst, wenn man Socrates, nach
Aristophanes, als den Inbegriff der Sophistik versteht. Compare also KGW II 4, p. 357 358.
(We can note that Grote, in fact, also argued quite strenuously that Socrates was a Sophist.)

Nietzsches Relation to the Greek Sophists

275

wards.55 We do not even know if he had read the section on the Sophists at all,
though that seems reasonable to assume. There are no annotations in this section, so if he read it he seems not greatly moved by it. The earliest annotations in
the book are on p. 70, dealing with Epicurus and thereafter he has annotated
Langes discussion of Lucretius.56
Returning to Manns first claim that there are similarities between what Lange
and Nietzsche says regarding the Sophists. That is true, but to make an influence
likely one needs to point at some specific similarity or similarities (and one needs
also to examine if there are relevant differences and in this case there are and
one needs further to examine if there exists other possible sources which also
contain similar statement, and thus also could be sources). The similarities Mann
refers to are so general that they prove nothing and could come from many
sources Nietzsche read, including ones that he read much earlier and I listed 28
such sources in my paper, including Lange, apart from the many relevant ancient
texts and are consistent with Nietzsches general thinking.57 That is why I commented on the note 14[116] with the words: Most of it is rather general and cannot with certainty be shown to derive from any specific reading (p. 12). Mann
disapproves of certainty and boldly claims that Lange is a more probable
source or stimulus for the note KSA 13, 14[116] about which he claims: we will
scrutinize the unpublished note to find thoughts on the Sophists that are unlikely to have been inspired by Brochards Les sceptiques grecs, but rather by Langes
Geschichte des Materialismus (p. 424). To make such a claim, it is of course necessary to have read the books in question. Hopefully this is the case, but there is
nothing in the article which indicates that Mann has read or examined Brochard,
and his statement it is plausible that Nietzsche saw in it [Brochards book] the
55

56

57

From a purely chronological and statistical point of view, there is about an equal probability that
he read it before early 1888 as that he read it later.
We have no evidence that Nietzsche read the greatly expanded two volume second edition, of
which the first volume appeared in 1873 and the second in 1875 (which contains a reference to
Nietzsche himself). The fourth edition from 1882 (and re-printed in 1887) was reduced in size
through the elimination of most of the many footnotes.
Nietzsches copy of this edition of Lange, F.A.: Geschichte des Materialismus. Leipzig 1887, in
one volume, 852 pages, has been sparsely annotated throughout, with both a lead and a blue pencil. The annotations are all in the form of marginal lines and underlinings, no words or comments. Early in the book, the pages dealing with Epicurus and Lucretius are annotated, in the
second half of the book, the two chapters Individualism and Falsche und richtige Teleologie,
both under the main heading Darwinismus und Teleologie contain annotations and finally at
the end of the book, in the chapter Die Physiologie des Sinnesorgan und die Welt als Vorstellung also contains annotations.
Nietzsches association of Protagoras with Democritus is rather conventional (they came from
the same city-state and were more or less contemporary), and if any source for Nietzsches
knowledge of this should be pointed out, it is Diogenes Laertius. Nietzsche refers to this association several times already at the time when he worked philologically on his Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

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Thomas Brobjer

historical groundwork on the Sophists that he himself had been reluctant to lay
(p. 428) seems to indicate that he has not read it, for essentially nothing which
can be called such groundwork is present in the book. Furthermore, to discuss
textual influences it is important to use the correct editions and, of course, to
examine the books in the language in which Nietzsche read them. Nietzsche did
not possess the second edition of Langes work, which Mann uses in the English
translation, but the fourth, and, of course, in German. Furthermore, there are
better parallels to what Nietzsche says about the Sophists in the note in the text
of Brochard than in Langes. Mann would have made his case much more plausible and relevant if he had shown that Nietzsche had indeed read Lange shortly
before he wrote those notes.58 Without that, Manns article in this respect simply
contains nothing new. But even if it can be shown that Nietzsche had read Lange
then and that is clearly a possibility the fact that he turned critical of Lange in
the mid 1880s or earlier, that he already had read an early version of the text several times and that no more specific similarity has been identified makes Brochard a very much more likely candidate as a major stimulus for Nietzsches taking a more explicit stance and holding a more positive attitude towards the
Sophists in 1888.59
We know that Nietzsche read Brochard in early 1888, highly praised him and
I pointed out a number of very specific influences from Brochard to Nietzsche
based on identified quotations and paraphrases for example in notes KSA 13,
14[85, 97, 99, 100, 141, 147 150, 162 and 199], that is, from shortly before and
after the note Mann discusses. In fact, the note Mann quotes and discusses
(14[116]) is also almost certainly, at least in part, inspired by Nietzsches reading
of Brochard. Mann does not quote the whole note, and in the very first sentence
following the text reproduced by Mann, Nietzsche mentions how Timon, the
friend of Pyrrho, judged Plato. Timon and Pyrrho are not mentioned at all by
Lange, but are major characters in Brochards text.60
When discussing Nietzsches reading and influences on his thinking, there
exists a Charybdis and a Scylla to be avoided. The one error, not infrequent, is to

58

59

60

For example, by identifying some quotations or paraphrases from Langes text in Nietzsches
notes or books. I have spent a couple of days research attempting to find any such textual parallels (including using Nietzsches annotations in his copy of the book to guide my search) but it
yielded no certain or strong parallels.
Nietzsches reading of Brochard and his brief discussion of the Sophists is likely to have brought
the Sophists to his attention and made him aware of changes in his thinking generally, and towards the Sophists, which probably had occurred ever since c. 1876.
See Brochard, p. 71 f. for his discussion of Timons critique of Plato. I also in my previous paper
pointed at several other textual parallels which show that the note was inspired by Nietzsches
reading of Brochard. For example, this note, Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[116], is closely related
to the note 14[99], which very clearly follows Brochard, and in part is a direct excerpt from
Brochard.

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277

assume that Nietzsche was self-educated and read little, and thus that essentially
everything he wrote emanated from his own independent thinking. This picture
is fairly consistent with Nietzsches own claims, but recent scholarship has
shown that Nietzsche read extensively and that much of what he wrote was in direct response to such reading.61 Some of his reading was done for the purpose of
finding new information and acquiring new knowledge (such as, for example,
much of his natural scientific reading), while other reading served more the purpose of being a stimulus for Nietzsches thinking, including both positive stimuli
(as, for example, Brochard, mentioned above) and negative stimuli (such as his
reading about contemporary philosophy, for example, Dhring, and about pessimism). The second, and opposite error, frequent among those who work with
Nietzsche and one other thinker (or group of thinkers) be it Plato, Lessing,
Lange or Spinoza is that they greatly tend to exaggerate the importance of this
thinker for Nietzsche. This is perhaps natural, but nonetheless a fault, and, at
least in part due not only to an over-enthusiasm about the discussed influence,
but also to a lack of awareness of the many other possible sources which for
most questions and influences also exist. Mann seems, both in regard to his discussion of the Sophists and of Langes importance, to have tended towards this
second error.
Although there are many reasons for us to expect, and perhaps to wish, that
Nietzsche had had a more active relation to and interest in the Greek Sophists,
all evidence indicate that he was until his last active year 1888 remarkably disinterested and unengaged in them.

61

See, for example, much of Montinaris work, and that of many of his students and related
researchers, such as Giuliano Campioni, Paolo DIorio, Andrea Orsucci and Marco Brusotti. See
also my own: Nietzsches Reading and Private Library 1885 89. In: Journal of the History of
Ideas 58 (1997), pp. 663 693, and my forthcoming book: Nietzsches Knowledge of Philosophy: A Study and Survey of the Philosophical Influences on Nietzsche (Illinois University
Press).

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Thomas H. Brobjer

BEITRGE ZUR QUELLENFORSCHUNG

ABHANDLUNGEN
THOMAS H. BROBJER
SOURCES OF AND INFLUENCES
ON NIETZSCHES THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

The Birth of Tragedy is dated as published in 1872, and the first copies of the book
arrived to Nietzsche the first days of January. Some commentators have assumed that
Nietzsche wrote the study in 1871 and it is true that he worked intensively on it then.
However, it is well known that for most of its content it is the first half of the year 1870
which is seminal. He then held two lectures, Das griechische Musikdrama (18 January
1870) and Socrates und die Tragdie (1 February 1870), and wrote the essay Die dionysische Weltanschauung (summer 1870). These works contain most of the fundamental
ideas of The Birth of Tragedy; the first contains much of the general content of the book,
especially about the origin of tragedy (GT 5 10) and the Wagnerian view that Greek
tragedy should be seen as a Gesamtkunstwerk. The second lecture contains much,
almost word for word, about the decline of tragedy due to Socrates (and Euripides),
(GT 11 15), while the essay Die dionysische Weltanschauung contains much of the
texts of these two lectures, and adds the Leimotif of The Birth of Tragedy, the dichotomy
between the Apollinian and the Dionysian (GT 1 4).1

During the first three years as professor in Basel, 1869 1871, Nietzsche read much literature
relating to philosophical aspects of Greek tragedy in relation to his work on Die Geburt der Tragdie. His reading about tragedy was extensive. Two strands can be observed in this reading:
works dealing with different aspects of tragedy, especially its aesthetic significance, such as, for
example, works by Schlegel, Mller, Alberti, Wartenburg, Schiller, Vischer and Grote. The other
strand relates to the more specific question of Aristotles view of tragedy Nietzsche read, apart
from Aristotle himself (whose collected works in German he bought in 1868, but he also possessed several individual volumes), a number of studies of this question; Teichmller, Bernays,
Oncken, Spengel, Reinkens and heard the newly installed professor of philosophy in Basel,
Rudolf Eucken, in 1871 speak about Aristotles relevance for us today.
Another type of sources which Nietzsche may have read, and which often contained discussions
of Greek tragedy, are journals and especially philosophical journals. For example, the journal Der
Gedanke. Philosophische Zeitschrift. Organ der Philosophischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin was edited and published by C. L. Michelet in 9 volumes between 1861 and 1873, with a general left Hegelian emphasis. The journal had a rather strong emphasis on Hegel, with some sympathy for materialism
and occasionally expressing critique of Schopenhauer. A number of articles contain different
interpretations and discussions of tragedy. I have been unable to find any definite evidence that

Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

279

However, several of the fundamental ideas of The Birth of Tragedy can be traced further
back in time. Nietzsche discussed several of these ideas and themes with his friend
Romundt during the winter 1868/69. We can see from Romundts letter that Nietzsche
already then emphasized music as the key to understanding tragedy, the significance of
Sophocles and expressed a desire for a re-birth of Sophocles, discussed pessimism and
the importance of Wagner and Schopenhauer:
Ich sehe berall die Wirkung des Verkehrs mit Dir, mein lieber Freund [] aber die
Aussaat des Winters ist in diesem schnen Frhling aufgekeimt, die Hlmchen wehen
im Winde das ganze Feld bedeckend und ich kann die Krner nicht mehr finden. Es
tnt wie eine schne halb verklungene Sage von vergangenem und wiedererstandenem Pessimismus, vom Drama der Zukunft, in dem Sophocles wiedergeboren wird
und Laube aus dem Tempel treibt unter unserm begeisterten Zuruf, von der Musik als
dem Schlssel aller Kunstphilosophie, von Richard Wagner und Arthur Schopenhauer und von unzhligem Anderem zu mir herber, es ist ein groes Concert, in dem
ich als schlechter Musikant das Einzelne nicht mehr deutlich unterscheide, nur der
Concertmeister steht handgreiflich vor mir und in ihm erkenne ich Dich wieder, mein
lieber Nietzsche.2
However, the origin of Nietzsches ideas on tragedy and the content of The Birth of
Tragedy goes still further back in time, at least until his last year at Schulpforta, the spring
of 1864. This has not been sufficiently noticed and realized, and no conclusion from this
early development has been drawn. Such an early dating of many of the fundamental ideas
of The Birth of Tragedy has implications for our understanding of it and for the possible
influences on the work. I will here discuss some previously unrecognized sources which
strongly influenced his writing of the school essay about Sophocles, which foreshadows
much of the content of The Birth of Tragedy. Thereafter I will discuss some direct sources
on The Birth of Tragedy.
The origin of Nietzsches view of tragedy was developed while writing his commentary on the first choir-song of Sophocles King Oedipus with the title Primum Oedipodis
regis carmen choricum, written as a school essay at Pforta, in Latin, Greek and German,
during the spring of 1864.3 Here Nietzsche discusses, among other things, the origins of
Greek drama. He emphasizes the difference between German and Greek drama and the
importance of the choir and music in ancient times; indeed, he argues that Greek drama

2
3

Nietzsche read this journal. It contains a number of articles which could have been of interest
to him if he had seen it, especially in volume 2 (1862) with a number of articles on Greek philosophy, including about Heraclitus in issue one, and four articles about aesthetics and tragedy in
issue two, including Hegels Ansichten ber die antike Tragdie, in England anerkannt and Die
alte franzsische Tragdie und die Wagnersche Musik. Later volumes, but published before
Nietzsche wrote his Die Geburt der Tragdie, contain several potentially relevant articles by Boumann, for example, Ueber den Charakter des Sophokleischen Knigs Oedipus, Iphigeneia
in Tauris and a series of articles under the general title Ueber des Wesen der Tragdie. These
articles show, at least, that Nietzsche was far from alone among German thinkers at this time to
show intensive interest in Greek tragedy.
Romundts letter to Nietzsche, 4 May 1869, KGB II.2, No. 3, p. 8.
BAW 2, pp. 364 399. Nietzsche had earlier, in November 1862, written a school essay entitled
Primi Ajacis stasimi interpretatio et versio cum brevi praefatione, BAW 2, pp. 155 164, but
that essay is much less important and does not foreshadow The Birth of Tragedy in any more direct
way.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

had its origin in lyric and music.4 He even foreshadows his great debt to Wagner, in spite of
the fact that the essay was written before he became a dedicated Wagnerian. Although
Nietzsche has not yet began to use the dichotomy between the Apollinian and the Dionysian (based as it is on a Kantian and Schopenhauerian two-world view which he had
not yet encountered), both deities are discussed, and associated with vision and music
respectively.5 We thus see here many of the fundamental themes of Nietzsches first book,
Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geiste der Musik. This has received almost no attention in the
secondary literature.6
I will below briefly summarize the most frequently discussed influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy, and thereafter discuss a few other sources to this work and to the
school essay which have either not been discussed at all, or only received very little attention.

Summary of the Generally Known and Conventionally Emphasized Influences on

The Birth of Tragedy.
The content, reception and influence of The Birth of Tragedy have received much attention for well over a hundred years. Much less interest has been directed towards the
sources of and influences on the work, although such considerations can help us understand both its content and its reception better.7 In brief summary, the major influences on
4
5
6

BAW 2, p. 374.
BAW 2, pp. 380 82 and 398.
This important school essay is, for example, not mentioned in Ries, Wiebrecht: Nietzsche fr
Anfnger: Die Geburt der Tragdie. Mnchen 1999, who instead begins his discussion in 1870.
It is not mentioned in the recent and important works by Safranski, Latacz or Cancik. The only
brief discussions I am aware of is in Janz, Curt Paul: Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Vol. 1.
Mnchen, Wien 1978, pp. 121 f. and in von Reibnitz, Barbara: Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich
Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragdie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Kap. 1 12). Stuttgart, Weimar
1992, where she briefly discusses it. After mentioning the title of two of Nietzsches Pforta essays, she continues: Hier ist festzuhalten, da Nietzsche fr seinen ersten Baseler Vortrag ber
Das Griechische Musikdrama diese Hausarbeit [i. e. the Primum Oedipodis regis carmen
choricum] als eine Vorarbeit benutzen konnte. Nach sorgfltiger Einzelinterpretation des ersten
Chorliedes fhrt er die Tragdie unter ausdrcklichen Verweis auf Wagner als musikalisches
Kunstwerk vor und formuliert den Grundgedanken der Entstehung der Tragdie aus dem
Geiste der Musik. [Footnote: Vgl. bes. den zweiten Teil seines Kommentars: Gedanken ber
die chorische Musik in der Tragoedie.] Wichtige Elemente der in GT zugrundegelegten Auffassung von Entwicklung, Wesen und Wirkung der Tragdie sind 1864 bereits entwickelt. [Footnote: Bemerkenswert ist Nietzsches Versuch, durch Analogien, Verweise, Zitate (Shakespeare,
Goethe, Hlderlin, Wagner) Antikes an Modernes zu knpfen. Sein Ehrgeiz geht nicht allein auf
eine schulmig korrekte, altphilologisch-immanente Behandlung des gestellten Themas, er
sucht vielmehr, einen individuellen, von der Moderne aus interessanten Geschichtspunkt zu
finden.] (Ibd., p. 11). I am not aware that the school essay has been mentioned, analysed or discussed in any study in the English language. It is not mentioned in Lenson or Silk and Stern.
The great exception here is again von Reibnitz: Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, loc. cit.,
also the classical scholar Joachim Latacz important discussion of The Birth of Tragedys relation to
the classical scholarship of its time in Fruchtbares rgernis. Nietzsches Geburt der Tragdie und die
grzistische Tragdienforschung (lecture held in Basel 1994, published as a booklet in Basel 1998), and
in much more general terms (and based on the two mentioned books), Ries: Nietzsche fr Anfnger, loc. cit.

Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

281

Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy can be divided into four main groups; classical scholarship,
philosophical discussions, Wagner and a miscellaneous group of romantic stimuli.
(i) The influence from classical scholarship. There had been a long interest in the
problem of the origin of tragedy in classical scholarship before Nietzsche wrote his book.
Already then the conventional view claimed that tragedy had arisen from the cult of
Dionysus, stressed the importance of the Dithyrambs and of the choir as original, and
also of the importance of music. It has often later not been realized to what a large degree
Nietzsche merely followed the conventional view among classicists in his discussions of
the origin of tragedy. Much of the lack of response to The Birth of Tragedy among classicists
was simply due to that it did not contain anything new from a narrow classical scholarship
point of view.8 Nietzsche used and was influenced in these general respects by several
standard works about Greek literature, primarily K. O. Mllers Geschichte der griechischen
Litteratur (Breslau, 2nd edition, 1857) and G. Bernhardys Grundri der grichischen Litteratur
(Halle 1836 45), in two/three volumes, later revised and published in several further editions. These works also contained discussions of the nature and importance of ancient
music, which Nietzsche supplemented by a large number of studies (this was a theme
on which he lectured to his students and contributed to as a classical scholar), especially
the works by A. Rossbach and R. Westphal. Of special relevance for Nietzsches view of
exstasis as an important ingredient in Greek tragedy, and for his critical discussion of Aristotles view of tragedy, was his reading of Jacob Bernays and Yorck von Wartenburg,
whom he used extensively but did not name and acknowledge.9 This does not mean that
the book was not in several ways provocative for classicists. So it was, for example, in its
8

Nietzsche hat diese Einzelerkenntnisse weder bestritten noch gar bekmpft, sondern er hat sie
bernommen und als selbstverstndlich vorausgesetzt. Insoweit bedeutete seine eigene Schrift
weder eine Revolution noch berhaupt eine Neuerung. [Latacz note: Gerade daraus erklrt sich
ja die langdauernde Ignorierung der Nietzscheschen Tragdienentstehungstheorie in der Fachwissenschaft: Der eigentlich fachwissenschaftliche Teil seines Buches bot nichts Neues, der mit
Neuerung aufwartende Teil konnte nicht als fachwissenschaftlich gelten.] Dies trifft auch fr das
von Nietzsche so ausserordentlich stark betonte Element Musik zu. [] Dass am Anfang der
Tragdie die Musik stand, was damals eine allgemein geteilte berzeugung, nicht nur unter
Fachgrzisten, sondern auch im gebildeten Publikum. Latacz: Fruchtbares rgernis, loc. cit.,
pp. 19 f. That this is correct, can be seen in the review of the first edition of The Birth of Tragedy of
Wilamowitz, who claims that it is not a work of classical scholarship: In der tat liegt der hauptanstoss des buches in ton und tendenz. Herr Nietzsche tritt ja nicht als wissenschaftlicher forscher auf; auf dem wege der intuition erlangte weisheit wird [] dargeboten. [] er wollte ja
eben nichts von historie und kritik, von so genanter weltgeschichte wissen, er wollte ein dionysisch-apollinisch kunstwek, ein metaphysisches trostmittel schaffen, seine behauptungen
htten zwar nicht die gemeine tageswirklichkeit, aber die hhere realitt der traumwelt. Wilamowitz, republished in Grnder, Karlfried (ed.): Der Streit um Nietzsches Die Geburt der Tragdie. Hildesheim 1989, p. 29 and 55.
We also know that Nietzsche used some further more philological works for the construction of
his The Birth of Tragedy, for Nietzsche mentions this in a long letter to Rohde, 16 July 1872, KSB 4,
No. 239, in a discussion of how to respond to Wilamowitz critical review of the work. Nietzsche
there mentions the following works:
Welcker, F. G.: Griechische Gtterlehre. Gttingen 1857. Vol. 1, p. 262 (Nietzsche borrowed this
book in 1871.)
Curtius, G.: Grundzge der griechischen Etymologie. Leipzig, 2nd edition 1866, pp. 201 f.
Westphal, R.: Geschichte der alten und mitteralterlichen Musik. Breslau 1865, pp. 115 137.
Westphal, R.: Griechische Rhytmik und Harmonik nebst der Geschichte der drei musischen Disciplinen. Leipzig, 2nd edition 1862, p. 50. This book is still in Nietzsches private library.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

critique of Aristotles view of tragedy, in its praise of pessimism, in presenting a view of

the Greek far from the harmonious picture painted of them by Winckelmann and
Goethe, for its severe critique of Socrates and Plato (and of scholarship and science, including classical scholarship), for its critique of Euripides and for going against the positivism which was prevalent in classical scholarship at the time. However, the most problematic and provocative aspect of the book lay in its inspired manner of arguing and
building on metaphysical and philosophical (Schopenhauer), contemporary musical
(Wagner) and romantic notions, concepts and assumptions.
(ii) The influence from philosophy. Schopenhauers influence on The Birth of Tragedy
was enormous. This is true for its overall conception as well as for its style and much of its
terminology. Especially prominent is Schopenhauers philosophy of art and his emphasis
on the importance of music as the highest form of art. Also of importance is the twoworld construction (a true metaphysical world contra our apparent empirical world)
which constitutes the background to the Apollinian-Dionysian dichotomy.10 Kant, Schopenhauers predecessor, may also have contributed to this view. Kant is also likely to have
influenced Nietzsche to accept the view that there are limits to our ability and capacity to
rationally know, leaving room for Dionysian wisdom.
(iii) The influence of Wagner. The debt to Wagner is visible almost everywhere in The
Birth of Tragedy. The book is dedicated to him, his view of drama and music, and of opera as a
Gesamtkunstwerk, is present throughout the study, and the last third consists of a homage to
Wagner and the future rebirth of tragedy, which Nietzsche claimed that Wagner had began.
As shown by W. Schadewaldt, Wagner had an advanced knowledge and understanding
of Greek tragedy (and explicitly attempted to revive and learn from it), so that even in
many of the more specialized aspects touching on classical scholarship he seems to have
influenced Nietzsche (see the discussion of Wagners influence at the end of this article).
(iv) The influence of romantic ideas. Nietzsche, in the spirit of Schopenhauer and
Wagner, read and was influenced by a number of romantic philosophers and thinkers,
such as Schelling, F. Schlegel, Schiller, Hlderlin (discussed separately below) and perhaps
Hegel (who wrote extensively on Greek tragedy). A closely related group to these is the

10

We also know that he used Wagners friend, Semper, Gottfried: Der Stil in den technischen und
tektonischen Knsten, oder praktische Aesthetik. Leipzig 1860, which he read, and quoted in
Das griechische Musikdrama (1869), and sent a copy of it to Cosima. Das griechische Musikdrama,
KSA 1, p. 522 (quoted from vol. 1, page 75 of Sempers book). See also Nachla 1869, KSA 7,
1[19+21] (vol. 1, pages 214 219).
See also Rapp, Moritz: Geschichte des griechischen Schauspiels. Tbingen 1862, read in 1869.
Nietzsche read and quoted this work in Nachla 1869, KSA 7, 1[78]. The quotation is from page
176.
See, for example, GT 16, where Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of Schopenhauer: it
may be well to disclose the origin of this insight [] I see Apollo as the transfiguring genius of
the principium individuationis through which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to be obtained; while by the mystical triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and
the way lies open to the Mother of Being, to the innermost heart of things. This extraordinary
contrast, which streches like a yawning gulf between plastic art as the Apollinian, and music as
the Dionysian art, has revealed itself to only one of the great thinkers, so such an extent that,
even without this clue to the symbolism of the Hellenic divinities, he conceded to music a character and an origin different from all the other arts, because, unlike them, it is not a copy of the
phenomenon, but an immediate copy of the will itself, and therefore complements everything
physical in the world and every phenomenon by representing what is metaphysical, the thing in itself.
(Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I, p. 310.)

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283

group of romantic classicists, such as F. Creuzer, F. G. Welcker, J. Burckhardt and

J. J. Bachofen. Several of these thinkers seem to have influenced Nietzsches view of
Greek mythology and especially of Dionysus. Already Wilamowitz recognized
Nietzsches debt to this romantic tradition (apart from Schopenhauer and Wagner, who
also belong to the same tradition).11
A study of the dependence of and influence on The Birth of Tragedy from this interesting group of romantic thinkers (including a few other names not mentioned above),
both as a group and individually, ought to be performed and is likely to yield interesting
new results suitably fitting to a title of the sort The Romantic Origin of Nietzsches The
Birth of Tragedy.12 Nietzsches debt to this romantic tradition is likely to have been a major
reason for the negative (or non-response) to The Birth of Tragedy among classical scholars,
who at this time generally held anti-romantic and positivistic sympathies.
Most general discussions of Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy have concentrated on its departure from the neo-classical views of the harmonic and rational Greeks, expressed by, for
example, Winckelmann, Goethe and Lessing. Already Wilamowitz points out as it seems,
correctly that Nietzsche had not even read Winckelmann. Nietzsche himself points at this
deviation from the conventional view. However, although the neo-classical view may have
been conventional among the educated public, many specialists and classical scholars had
left, or partially left it and those mentioned above (in the first group) had gone furthest
away from it. In comparison to these classical scholars, especially several of the romantically inclined ones, Nietzsches originality was less dramatic than commonly assumed.13
11

12

13

Wilamowitz writes: ich dchte, die zeit lge hinter uns, wo in der archologischen erklrung mit
nonnischen wesen, gar Aion und Eniautos, spuk getrieben ward. Wer aber, wofern er es mit unserer wissenschaft ernst meint, muss es nicht schmachvoll oder lcherlich finden, dass heute
noch in Saint-Croix-Creuzerscher weise geredet wird von wundervollen mythen in den mysterien, vom brausenden jubelgesang der epopten, von einer dionysischen weltbetrachtung, die sich
vor den kritischen barbaren, Euripides und Sokrates, in die mystischen fluten des geheimcults
flchtet, und in den wunderbarsten metamorphosen und entartungen nicht aufhrt, ernstere naturen an sich zu ziehen (53. 69. 94 [these are Wilamowitz references to pages in the original edition of The Birth of Tragedy]) also Schopenhauersche philosophie, Wagnersche musik, wo mglich
Nietzschische philologie ist jetzt einmal des hierophanten mystische weisheit! Quoted from
Grnder (ed.): Der Streit, loc. cit., pp. 42 f. (which are equivalent to pp. 19 f. in Wilamowitz original publication).
For a few of them, individual studies of Nietzsches relation to them have been made. References
to such studies, together with her own interesting comments, can be found in Reibnitz study.
See also the important work by Ernst Behler, not mentioned in the index of Reibnitz work (but
two of his articles are listed in the bibliography): Behler, Ernst: Die Auffassung des Dionysischen durch die Brder Schlegel und Friedrich Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche-Studien 12 (1983),
pp. 335 354; id.: Friedrich Schlegels Rede ber die Mythologie im Hinblick auf Nietzsche. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 8 (1979), pp. 182 209; id.: Sokrates und die griechische Tragdie. Nietzsche
und die Brder Schlegel ber den Ursprung der Moderne. In: Nietzsche-Studien 18 (1989),
pp. 141 157; id.: Nietzsche und die Frhromantische Schule. In: Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978),
pp. 59 96; id.; Nietzsche und die Antike. In: Nietzsche-Studien 26 (1997), pp. 514 528 and id.:
A.W. Schlegel and the Nineteenth-Century Damnatio of Euripides. In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 27 (1986), pp. 335 368.
To take just one example, the recent article by Sweet, Dennis: The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy. In:
Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999), pp. 345 359, only discusses Nietzsches departure
from the neo-classical ideal (Winckelmann and Lessing) and follows Nietzsches own statements
closely. It therefore, although well argued and well written, contains nothing new at all, and since
ignoring the real context of Nietzsches thinking, becomes misleading.

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Previously Unidentified Sources to and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

I. Gustav Freytags Die Technik des Dramas (Leipzig 1863)
Gustav Freytag (1816 1895), German author, lecturer in German language and
literature and editor to the liberal nationalist journal Die Grenzboten in Leipzig, wrote several successful realistic novels, including Soll und Haben (1855) and Die verlorene Handschrift
(1864), both which Nietzsche read with appreciation. More importantly for us, he also
wrote an empirically and theoretical study of drama, Die Technik des Dramas (1863), which
Nietzsche read and used intensively in 1863.14 Later he would turn more critical toward
Freytag and his liberal nationalism.
Much of the content of Nietzsches school essay is based on (and copied from) Gustav Freytags study Die Technik des Dramas, which is thus also an important source and
stimulus for Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsches essay is a long detailed discussion
and analysis of the first choir of Sophocles King Oedipus, written in Latin, Greek and German. The theme was set by the teacher. It covers 38 printed pages in BAW, of which about
thirteen are in German. In the original (which is to be found in the Goethe Schiller
Archive in Weimar) it consists of a 72 page booklet, of which 69 pages have been used for
the essay by Nietzsche. The original contains the teachers comments, including fairly
many gut throughout the text, and an endcomment. Nietzsche received a 1, the highest grade, for it. The text consists of a preface in Latin, then two commentary sections
in Greek. Thereafter follows four more general sections in German. These are again followed by several sections in Latin, about 16 pages, twice briefly interjected by one or two
pages in German. The four middle German section are entitled: III. Die Wirkung der
Tragoedie und ihr Plan; [IV.] Ueber den Prolog der Tragoedie; Altera commentarii pars:
[I.] Gedanken ber die chorische Musik in der Tragoedie, mit Anwendung auf dieses
Chorlied and [II.] Das Schema des Chorliedes nach musikalischen Perioden (BAW 2,
pp. 368 380). These more general pages, written in German, are in important ways
influenced (or copied from) three works by Dronke, Freytag and Brendel, without in any
case giving or indicating the sources. The section Die Wirkung der Tragoedie und ihr
Plan begins with a definition of tragedy, and a general discussion of Sophocles and tragedy on one page, which is partly copied from, or follows closely, the work by Dronke
(discussed below). He then discusses King Oedipus, and bases the discussion closely on,
and excerpts from, Freytags Die Technik des Dramas. To show this, let me first quote
Nietzsche, then Freytag:
In ihr finden sich Peripatie- Erkennungs- Pathosscenen, geschmckte Berichte der
Endboten [] Prolog. Voraussetzung: Theben unter Oedipus in Pestzeit.
Erregendes Moment: Der Mord des Laios soll bestrafft werden, damit die Stadt befreit werde.
Erste Stufe. Teiresias, von Oedipus gerufen, weigert sich den Spruch zu deuten und
weist im doppelsinningen Wort auf den Mrder, im Zorne scheidend.15 [etc.]
14

15

Nietzsche lists it among the books he read most intensively in 1863 (BAW 2, p. 334). Other titles
which Nietzsche mentions and which may be of relevance for his early view of tragedy are Bernhardys history of Greek and Latin literature, Gervinus Shakespeare and Aeschylos, und ber ihn,
which probably refers to, or includes, Dronkes work, discussed below. Freytags book is available
in an English translation, under the title Technique of the Drama (Chicago 1895).
BAW 2, p. 370.

Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

285

Freytag, whom Nietzsche copied, had used almost exactly the same words:
Das kunstvollste Stck des Sophokles ist Knig Oedipus, es besitzt alle seinen Erfindungen der attischen Bhne, auer den Variationen in Gesngen und Chor, Peripatie-, Erkennungs-, Pathosscenen, geschmckten Bericht des Endboten. [] Der Prolog fhrt smmtliche drei Schauspieler auf und berichtet auer den Voraussetzungen:
Theben unter Oedipus in Pestzeit, auch das aufregende Moment, den Orakelspruch:
Der Mord des Laios sollte bestraft werden, damit die Stadt Befreiung von der Seuche
finde. Von da steigt die Handlung in zwei Stufen. Erste: Teiresias, von Oedipus gerufen, weigert sich den Orakelspruch zu deuten, hart von dem heftigen Oedipus verdchtigt, weist er in doppeldeutingem Rthselwort auf den geheimnivollen Mrder,
im Zorne scheidend.16 [etc.]
The first page of the section Ueber den Prolog der Tragoedie (BAW 2, p. 371) and
Gedanken ber die chorische Musik in der Tragoedie (BAW 2, pp. 374 f.) seem also to be
closely inspired by Freytag.17 This is then followed by Nietzsches strongly pro-Wagner
claims on page 376, which I suggest are inspired by his known reading of Franz Brendels
book Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich. Von den ersten christlichen Zeiten
bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig 1852, 2nd edition 1855), to be discussed below.
None of these sources are referred to or mentioned in the essay. In fact, oddly
enough, Nietzsche seems in the Latin preface to claim that he will not name the sources
he has used: May all these spirits [genii] support me, whose help I trust in such a manyfacetted work; whom it would not be correct to name, and whom I, even if it would be,
would not dare to name, since they, when named, immediately disappear. Since, according
to their mood and will, they come flying, without being forced or pleaded upon.18
There can be no doubt that Freytag played an important, but hidden, role for Nietzsches early concept of tragedy and the writing of the school essay. The extent to which he
is important for The Birth of Tragedy needs to be determined.19

II. Gustav Dronkes Die religisen und sittlichen Vorstellungen

des Aeschylos und Sophocles ( Jahrbcher fr classische Philologie 1861)
A so far unrecognized, but important influence on Nietzsches essay Primum Oedipodis regis carmen choricum, and thus probably also on his The Birth of Tragedy, is the little

16
17
18
19

Freytag, Gustav: Die Technik des Dramas. Leipzig 1863, pp. 148 f.
The former from ibd., pp. 103 105 and 146, and the latter from p. 79.
BAW 2, p. 364. Translated with the aid of Dr Johan Flemberg.
Freytag says fairly little about Aeschylus, but regarded Sophocles as the greatest of the ancient
tragedians, and, like Nietzsche, held Euripides in much lower regard. In the school essay, the
influence from Freytag seems to be only positive. Later, at the time of writing The Birth of Tragedy,
he is likely to also have represented a position Nietzsche had left, and then argued against. For
example, Freytag writes: So ist die Gesammtwirkung des Dramas, das Tragische, bei uns jener
griechischen verwandt, nicht mehr ganz dieselbe. Der Grieche lauschte in der grnen Jugendzeit
des Menschengeschlechts nach den Tnen des Prosceniums, erfllt von dem heiligen Rausch
des Dionysos, der Germane schaut in die Welt des Scheins, nicht weniger bewegt, aber als ein
Herr der Erde; das Menschengeschlecht hat seitdem eine lange Geschichte durchlebt, wir alle
sind durch historische Wissenschaft erzogen.

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known classical scholar Gustav Dronkes Die religisen und sittlichen Vorstellungen des Aeschylos und Sophocles, 116 pages, published as a separate volume for Jahrbcher fr classische Philologie in 1861. Nietzsche wished and received this book for his birthday in October 1863.
His heavily annotated copy of the book is still in his library today.
Nietzsches essay begins with a preface in Latin, followed by two sections in Greek
dealing with detailed commentaries. The third section, in German, broadens the scope
and is called: Die Wirkung der Tragoedie und ihr Plan. It begins with a quotation about
the nature of tragedy, taken from Dronke, p. 79, and the whole following page of discussion seems to be a compilation from Dronke, pp. 74 80.20
Nietzsches broader discussion of tragedy begins with the words:
Die Idee der Tragoedie ist also: die Gottheit verhngt oftmals dem Menschen Leiden ohne sein Verschulden, nicht nach Willkr, sondern zur Wahrung einer sittlichen
Weltordnung.
Selbst diese Leiden die hier als unfreiwillige Schuld auftreten gengen einem
hhern Plane [] Der Oedipus Knig verlangt aber in seiner Idee nothwendig den
Abschlu und die Vershnung im Oedipus Coloneus; [Nietzsche discusses that Oedipus Rex is not self-sufficient and connects it with Oedipus Colonus several times on
p. 369] [] [Nietzsche refers to Oedipus as the] groe Dulder [].21
This, and much of the discussion on the following page, is taken from Dronke, who
writes:
Die unfreiwillige Schuld ist und hierin liegt der Kern der Sophokleischen Vorstellung ein unverschuldetes Leiden, welches die Gottheit verhngt. [] Die Gottheit
verhngt diesem wie jenem Leiden ohne sein Verschulden. Aber das Walten derselben
ist kein willkrliches, sondern hat die Wahrung einer sittlichen Weltordnung zum
Zwecke. (p. 79)
A little earlier in the text Dronke had written:
Freilich der Schlu des Knig Oedipus gibt uns keine klare Antwort. [] Der Dichter
weist hiermit nachdrcklich darauf hin, da das sittliche und religise Problem,
welches die Geschichte des Oedipus bieten, in dem Knig Oedipus seine Lsung
noch nicht gefunden, sondern diese jenseits des ersten Oedipus zu suchen sei. Er verweist uns hiermit offenbar auf den Oedipus auf Kolonos. (p. 73, and repeated in different words on p. 76) [] [Dronke refers to Oedipus as] den schwergeprften
Dulder (p. 74)
Another possible source on Nietzsches school essay Primum Oedipodis regis
carmen choricum, apart from Freytag, Dronke and Brendel (discussed below in relation
to Wagner) and thus probably also on The Birth of Tragedy is A. Schlls Grndlicher
Unterricht ber die Tetralogie des attischen Theaters und die Kompositionsweise des Sophokles (Leipzig
1859).22
20

21
22

Dronke, Gustav: Die religisen und sittlichen Vorstellungen des Aeschylos und Sophocles
( Jahrbcher fr classische Philologie 1861), pp. 72 83 covers the following three chapters in the
book: Oedipus-Schuldfrage, Gegensatz von unfreiwilliger Irrung und dmonischer Verblendung sittliche Weltordnung and Oedipus auf Kolonos.
BAW 2, pp. 368 f.
We do not know for certain that Nietzsche read this work by Schll, but in March 1864, Pinder
asks Nietzsche to return books he had borrowed, among them Schll.

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287

III. Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie

A major influence on The Birth of Tragedy is Nietzsches reading of a number of relevant
articles in the classical journal Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie. Nietzsche wrote or compiled an index to it, consisting of 176 dense pages, at the time he wrote and conceived
The Birth of Tragedy, which was published as a separate volume in 1871/72.23 It covers volumes 1 24 of the new series, 1842 1869, of the Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie, consisting together of about 720 articles, 1500 shorter contributions (Miscellen) and over 15 000
pages.24 He worked on it for a long period of time, from 1867 to the end of 1871, most intensively during 1868 and 1869, with some additional work later, including much proofreading in 1870/71. The final index which was printed as a separate issue is dated 1871,
but seems to have been distributed early in 1872.
After it appeared, Nietzsche was disappointed, and he had reasons to feel that way.
Not only, according to his own statement, did he not receive a word of thanks from either
of the editors, Ritschl and Klette, nor does the published index contain any sign at all that
he had compiled and produced it. Compiling the index was mostly hard and uninspiring
work, and he received no payment. On the other hand, Nietzsches work on the index is
likely to have been one of the contributing factors for professor Ritschls strong support
of him and for his recommending him for the chair of classical philology in Basel.
Nietzsches work with the index significantly increased his knowledge of contemporary philological research, but also seems to have aggravated his alienation from philology
which he expressed in letters from this time (although never explicitly connected with the
work on the index) and eventually in Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie fr das Leben and
in the notes to the never finished Wir Philologen.
The index can be an important and useful tool for determining Nietzsches knowledge and reading about antiquity and tragedy. By means of it one can easily determine

23

24

For a longer discussion of Nietzsches work on the index, see Brobjer, Thomas H.: Nietzsches
Forgotten Book: The Index to the Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie. In: New Nietzsche Studies 4
(Summer/Fall 2000), pp. 157 161.
The table of contents of the published index is as follows:
A. Mitarbeiter-Verzeichni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
B. Inhalts-Verzeichni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
I. Zu griechischen und lateinischen Schriftstellern . . . . . 12
II. Litterarhistorisches und Bibliographisches . . . . . . . . 56
III. Epigraphisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
IV. Grammatisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
V. Metrisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
VI. Antiquarisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
VII. Topographisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
VIII. Mythologisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
IX. Archologisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
X. Historisches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C. Stellen-Verzeichni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
I. Griechische Schriftsteller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
II. Lateinische Schriftsteller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
D. Wrter-Verzeichni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
I. Griechische . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
II. Lateinische . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

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some of the more important texts the young Nietzsche read about the writers of Greek
tragedy etc. For example, under the heading Greek tragedy the following articles are
listed:
Nake, B., Ueber Symmetrie im Bau der Dialoge griechischer Tragdien
Nauck, A., Zu Wagners Poetarum tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta
Ribbeck, O., Zeitdauer der Tragdie
Schmidt, L., Zur Methode der litterargeschichtlichen Forschung
(Parodos und Stasimon)
Schraber, H., Zur Wrdigung des deus ex machina in der griechischen Tragdie
Seyffert, M., Zu den Fragmenten der griechischen Tragiker von A. Nauck
Sommerbrodt, J., Das Staatsexemplar der Tragdien des Aeschylus, Sophokles,
Euripides und die Schauspieler
Welcker, F. G., Zur Tragdie
Two further articles which, in part, deal with tragedy are mentioned and page-references given, but their titles are not listed.
Furthermore, for each of the three Greek authors of tragedy, Aeschylus, Sophocles
and Euripides about ten full articles are listed (and another about twenty, for each of
them, are mentioned, but titles not listed).
Much other information about Nietzsches reading of scholarly works about antiquity
can be identified with the help of this index.25

IV. Hlderlin.
The German poet Friedrich Hlderlin constitutes one of the fundamental literary influences on Nietzsche. Not only are there striking similarities in many of their attitudes
and literary styles, but Nietzsches writings often also explicitly echoes Hlderlins writings and they shared a number of fundamental values (such as love of Greek antiquity,
critique of Christianity and critique of the philistine nature of contemporary Germans).
Hlderlin was Nietzsches favorite poet at Schulpforta and we know that he read him intensively during the first half of the 1860s, i. e. while at Pforta, and also during the first
half of the 1870s when he refers to him as the glorious Hlderlin. There is a good argument for the case that Hlderlin played an important role in Nietzsches writing of both
The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I will here only briefly discuss his possible
influence on the former work.26
One of the main ideas of Die Geburt der Tragdie is that art and aesthetics can be divided
into two parts, a plastic and a musical one, and that the birth of tragedy occurred when
these two parts came together in a synthesis. Nietzsche gives them the names Apollinian
and Dionysian.

25

26

For example, Bernays, who played such an important role for Nietzsches concept of The Birth of
Tragedy, had published a very large number of articles, all which Nietzsche had read.
For a more general discussion, see Brobjer, Thomas H.: Discussion and Source of Hlderlins
Influence on Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001), pp. 397 412, and the references in it.
My discussion here is a mildly modified version of part of that article.

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Before we plunge into the midst of these struggles, let us array ourselves in the armor
of the insights we have acquired. In contrast to all those who are intent on deriving the
arts from one exclusive principle, as the necessary vital source of every work of art,
I shall keep my eyes fixed on the two artistic deities of the Greeks, Apollo and Dionysus, and recognize in them the living and conspicuous representatives of two worlds of
art differing in their intrinsic essence and in their highest aims. I see Apollo as the
transfiguring genius of the principium individuationis through which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to be obtained; while by the mystical triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of Being,
to the innermost heart of things. This extraordinary contrast, which stretches like a
yawning gulf between plastic art as the Apollinian, and music as the Dionysian art, has
revealed itself to only one of the great thinkers [i. e. Schopenhauer] [] this most important insight of aesthetics (with which, in the most serious sense, aesthetics properly begins).27
Already Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff criticized the dichotomy and its association with the Greek gods,28 but many commentators have seen it as one of Nietzsches
most important contributions to cultural philosophy and to our understanding of the
Greek world. The construction of the dichotomy has generally been taken as Nietzsches
own. Several commentators have discussed the origin of the dichotomy and have suggested possible influences on Nietzsche, but no definite source, which it is known that
Nietzsche read, has been found.29 All these accounts seem to start with a discussion of
Nietzsches and others use of the two Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. As I will show, it
is probably more correct to start from the basis of the dichotomy, the plastic and the
musical to which Nietzsche only added the names of the gods as labels.
The study and selection of Hlderlins life and writings which Nietzsche read and
used while at Pforta, entitled Moderne Klassiker. Deutsche Literaturgeschichte der neueren Zeit in
Biographien, Kritiken und Proben: Friedrich Hlderlin (Cassel 1853, 2nd edition 1859), selected
and written by William Neumann, contains and emphasizes precisely this dichotomy:
Er [Hlderlin] leistet wohl das hchste in der Verschmelzung des Plastischen und
Musikalischen, ohne aber den Kampf zwischen diesen Gegenstzen vllig auszufechten (p. 34)
and
Seine beiden Hauptwerke, Empedokles und Hyperion zeigen aber besonders die Strke
Hlderlins im Musikalischen und Plastischen. [] Der griechische Geist in Sprache
und Skulptur ist eine ewige Gestalt in der Geschichte. (p. 38)

27
28

29

GT 16. Walter Kaufmanns translation.

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von: Erinnerungen 1848 1914. Leipzig s. d. [1928], pp. 129 f.:
Apollinisch und dionysisch sind sthetische Abstraktionen wie naive und sentimentalische
Dichtung bei Schiller, und die alten Gtter lieferten nur klangvolle Namen fr einen Gegensatz,
in dem etwas Wahres steckt, so viele triviale Dummheiten auch nachschwatzende Halbbildung
mit den Wrtern auftischt. Apollon, nicht Dionysos, begeistert den Seher und die Sibylle zu hellseherischem Wahnsinn, und die Ekstase weckende Fltenmusik, nicht die Kithara des Gottes,
herrscht in seinem delphischen Kultus.
See Grnder, K. / Mohr, J.: Apollinisch/dionysisch. In: Historisches Wrterbuch der Philosophie. Hg. von Joachim Ritter und Karlfried Grnder. Vol. 1. Basel 1971, pp. 441 446; von Reibnitz: Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, loc. cit., and references in this work.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

Throughout the text Neumann emphasizes the close relation between Hlderlins language and music.
Perhaps the most important content of Nietzsches version of the dichotomy is that
of individuality (Apollinian) and the loss of individuality (Dionysian). This aspect of the
dichotomy is also present in Neumanns text:
Im Empedokles brach er das bermige Streben in den grenzenlosen Aether, ins All
durch sein Bedrfni der Schnheit, durch sein Streben nach Gestaltung, und gelangte damit aus der Sehnsucht zur Befriedigung, aus dem Unendlichen in die schne
Abgeschlossenheit der Individualitt, im Hyperion giebt er der Richtung in das All, dem unplastischen Pantheismus mehr Spielraum. (p. 99, italics added by me)
and
In Hlderlins Natur durchdringen sich die beiden Momente des Individuellen und des
Pantheistischen in der Weise, da das Individuelle in ihm der Dichter war, der sich in der
Besonderheit seines Naturells strker fhlte, als prosaische Naturen es je vermgen;
dagegen war die Macht des Pantheistischen in ihm der Philosoph, so da er sich am
treuesten im Hyperion reflektirt. (pp. 102 f.)
Nietzsche also explicitly refers to the Abgeschlossenheit des Individuums [i. e. the
containment or isolation of the individual] in a manner very similar to Neumanns Abgeschlossenheit der Individualitt:
Wie die griechische Natur alle furchtbaren Eigenschaften zu benutzen wei:
[]
das asiatische Orgienwesen (im Dionysischen)
die feindselige Abgeschlossenheit des Individuums (Erga) im Apollinischen.30
Nietzsche used the dichotomy Apollinian and Dionysian for the first time in his essay
Die dionysische Weltanschauung (summer 1870),31 and thereafter extensively in The
Birth of Tragedy. I thus suggest that Nietzsches reading of Naumanns discussion and selection of Hlderlin was an important contributing factor which enabled him to construct
the Apollinian/Dionysian dichotomy.

30

31

Nachla 1871/72, KSA 7, 16[18]. He also says similar things in Die Geburt der Tragdie, for
example in section 1: In fact, we might say of Apollo that in him the unshaken faith in this principium and the calm repose of the man wrapped up in it receive their most sublime expression;
and we might call Apollo himself the glorious divine image of the principium individuationis
(Kaufmanns translation).
Nietzsche appears to refer to Dionysisches and Apollinisches for the first time in the notes
P I 15a (equivalent to Nachla 1869/70, KSA 7, 3[1 95]), for example, in notes 12, 25, 27, 33,
35, 53, 73 and 86. Many of the notes nearby were written in response to Nietzsches reading of
the Schopenhauerian philosopher von Hartmann, Eduard: Philosophie des Unbewussten. Versuch einer Weltanschauung. Berlin 1869.

Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

291

V. Anselm Feuerbach
No truly convincing direct source for Nietzsches double-concept of the Apollinian
and Dionysian, which plays such a fundamental role in The Birth of Tragedy, has been suggested, in spite of the fact that both concepts had been used before Nietzsche. The best
discussion so far is that of Barbara von Reibnitz Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche.32 She
points out that Nietzsche first used the dichotomy in his lectures on the history of tragedy
in the summer of 1870, and then more extensively in the essay Die dionysische Weltanschauung, also written during the summer 1870, and suggests two sources for Nietzsches concept of the Dionysian, but none for the Apollinian.
bereinstimmend mit K. O. Mller, ohne ihn jedoch zu nennen, definiert Nietzsche
den Dionysoskult, aus dem der Dithyrambus hervorgegangene Begriff der dionysisch-tragischen Ekstasis deckt sich z. Tl. wrtlich mit Yorck v. Wartenburgs Katharsis-Schrift, die Nietzsche im Mai 1870 aus BUB entliehen hat. [] In diesem Zusammenhang erscheint zum ersten Mal die Antithese apollinisch-dionysisch: Die Lyrik,
aus der sich die griechische Tragdie entwickelte, war die dionysische, nicht die apollinische. Dies giebt fr die gesammte griechische Kunst einen Stilunterschied [the
text quoted in the last sentence is from Nietzsches lecture notes, which Reibnitz cites
as GOA 17, p. 297].33
A possible stimulus for Nietzsches concept of the Apollinian (rather than the Dionysian) is the painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829 1880) who had a special interest in and affinity to Greek antiquity. He aimed [] at a revival of antique classical ideals, considering them as the absolute standard of beauty; and he became the greatest representative
of classicism in Germany (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1945). Feuerbach expressed his
views of classicism in the interesting study Der vaticanische Apollo. Eine Reihe archologischsthetischer Betrachtungen (Stuttgart and Augsburg 1853, 2nd edition 1855), 373 pages.34
Nietzsche borrowed this work from the Basel university library in 1869 and read it carefully. The book contains extensive discussions of different aspects of Apollo in Greek art
and thinking. One of the most prominent features of Nietzsches description of the Apollinian is the connection between poetry/drama with the plastic arts (normally associated
with sculpture, and to a lesser extent painting).35 Feuerbach also connects the plastic with
poetry and drama, and like Nietzsche, he emphasizes the power of the unity of plastic
poetry with music. Also like Nietzsche, Feuerbach holds Aeschylus as the most profound of the writers of tragedy (p. 274) and almost completely ignores Euripides. In
chapters XIV and XV Feuerbach discusses Apollo and the plastic and their relation to
drama and the theatre. Nietzsche clearly read this with much sympathy, and quotes a full
page of Feuerbachs text (pp. 282 f.) in his Das griechische Musikdrama,36 as an example
of someone who, apart from Wagner (who is not mentioned by name) has argued that the
Greek drama is a Gesammtkunstwerk.
32
33
34

35
36

Von Reibnitz: Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, loc. cit., pp. 61 64, also 30 and 42.
Ibd., pp. 29 f.
I have examined the second edition, and the page-references below refer to this edition.
Nietzsche apparently knew Anselm Feuerbachs mother, as he states in a letter to Rohde, 7 Dec.
1872, KSB 4, No. 277, but nothing further is known about Nietzsches personal relation to the
Feuerbach family. Anselms father was a classical scholar.
See, for example, GT 1.
KSA 1, pp. 518 f. Nietzsche names Feuerbach, but not the source.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

VI. Oswald Marbach

The German author, translator, philologist and philosopher Oswald Marbach
(1810 1890) may have influenced Nietzsches writing of The Birth of Tragedy in important
ways. Marbach became professor in philosophy in Leipzig in 1845 and was married to
Richard Wagners oldest sister. He was especially interested in drama and aesthetics.
Nietzsche read and praised his translations (and commentaries) of Aeschylus and
Sophocles. Nietzsche and Marbach exchanged several letters and Marbach also sent
Nietzsche three other texts (Dramaturgische Bltter, in January/February 1870, ShakespearePrometheus: Phantastisch-satirisch Zauberspiele vor dem Hllenrachen, in March 1874 and
Offener Brief an Herrn Keck in early July 1874).37 It is the first of these texts that will
interest us here. Nietzsche does not appear to have sent him his The Birth of Tragedy, but
later (25 June 1876) he sent him his Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.
There exists a close kinship between Marbachs and Nietzsches views of drama,
music, Wagner and antiquity. After the writing of The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche highly
praised Marbach view of antiquity,38 and Marbach highly praised Nietzsches The Birth of
Tragedy in the letter from 3 March 1874 (KGB II.4, p. 398). In a later letter, 5 July 1874
(KGB II.4, pp. 505 f.) Marbach claims to feel isolated in his aesthetic and poetic strivings and that he has only found two encounters which have given him true joy, that of
Wagner and Nietzsche, both whom he refers to as Bundesgenossen.
This close kinship makes an influence from Marbach to Nietzsche more likely and
we know that Nietzsche received a relevant text by Marbach before he wrote The Birth of
Tragedy. In 1868 Nietzsche visited the sechste deutsche Tonknstler-Versammlung, held
in Altenburg 19 23 July. They there performed music by many composers, but especially
the most modern ones, Liszt, Berlioz and Wagner. On the 19th, Oswald Marbach held a
lecture entitled Die Wiedergeburt der dramatischen Kunst durch die Musik.39 In it he
discussed Wagners view of opera, with reference to the historical origin of drama by the
Greeks. We do not know for certain that Nietzsche heard this lecture, but it seems likely.
Anyway, at the end of January, or early February 1870 (at the time when Nietzsche was
much engaged with these problems) Marbach, on a recommendation from Wagner, sent a
copy of his Dramaturgische Bltter: Beitrag zur Wiedererhebung dramatischer Kunst in Deutschland
(Leipzig 1870) to Nietzsche.40 Nietzsches response to, and dependence on this text,
which no longer is in his library, seems not to have been examined before. The book, of
over 225 pages, contains a number of interesting and relevant essays, but most interesting

37
38

39
40

Marbach had also sent Nietzsche his translation and commentary to Aeschylus Oresteia.
Ich komme so spt dazu, Ihnen fr die bersendung Ihrer Oresteia und des Prometheus zu
danken, thue dies aber mit umso mehr berzeugung als gerade die Beschftigung mit der Oresteia ich lese im Colleg die Choephoren einer der Grnde war, der mich vom Briefschreiben
abhielt. Ich weiss kaum einen andern Menschen noch und gewiss keinen jetzt lebenden Philologen, der in einem so tiefen und natrlichen Verhltniss zur antiken Tragdie stnde wie Sie und
der so sehr gehrt zu werden verdiente, wenn er etwas von seinen inneren Erfahrungen mittheilt. Ich las mit dem grssten Wohlgefhl Ihre bersetzung und glaube nichts Besseres gelesen
zu haben, so dass ich mir sofort Ihre Sophocles-bersetsetzungen kommen liess. Im Commentar zur Oresteia fand ich die tiefsten und nachdenklichsten Sachen. Letter to Marbach, 14 June
1874, KSB 4, No. 369.
See KGB I.4, p. 507.
See Marbachs letter to Nietzsche, end of January/early February 1870 (KGB II.2, No. 69,
pp. 132 f.). See also Cosima Wagners letter, 31 January 1870 (KGB II.2, No. 68, pp. 131 f.).

Sources of and Influences on Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy

293

is the text Marbach presented in Altenburg, Die Wiedergeburt der dramatischen Kunst
durch die Musik.41
In the preface to the book Marbach constructs a dichotomy between an ancientheathen world and art with that of the later Jewish-Christian. In the third essay, Das
Staatstheater zu Athen he elaborates on (and praises) many aspects of ancient theatre and
drama. He especially emphasizes like later Nietzsche the importance of music, and
therefore also the choir. He briefly criticizes the modern understanding of the choir and
instead claims that it should be seen as a main character but which does not take part
in the action [nicht spielende [] das Fest begehnde Hauptperson] (pp. 44 f.). He also
frequently connects drama (and its early forms) to Dionysos/Bacchos, and he praises
Aeschylus and Sophocles as the greatest dramatists, while ignoring Euripides. Marbach
also like Nietzsche emphasizes that in antiquity there was a unity of the lyric, the epic,
the dramatic, the recitation, the song and the dancing while in modern time they have
falsely been separated.
In the essay Die Wiedergeburt der dramatischen Kunst durch die Musik Marbach
continues to elaborated on these themes, but in a more polemical or reformative manner.
He argues that dramatic art requires a Wiedergeburt, to be born again. To make this
possible, it is necessary for drama to be re-united with music, for it is the daughter of
music, the art of all arts. Marbach emphasizes the importance of music as the beginning of
all culture, and claims that together with music, speech originated (p. 137). He emphasizes the need for a unity of language and music in a manner which reminds one of
Nietzsches concept of the Dionysian and Apollinian Speech [Sprache] is from the beginning a follower of music, both of them interprets and compensates each other; music
uses speech for the purpose of making itself comprehensible, speech needs music to
achieve an effect [um eindringlich zu werden] (p. 137). Later, Marbach continues the
dichotomy by emphasizing the need for unity between sensation/feeling (related to
music) and thoughts (related to speech) (p. 144).
He strongly emphasizes, throughout the text, that ancient drama was a Gesamtkunstwerk, a unity of music, recitation and dance:
Musik, Poesie und Orchestik in ihrem Zusammenwirken schufen die dramatische
Kunst. [] Die Musik wird nicht blos gehrt, sie wird empfunden, indem der natrliche Mensch selbst wie das musikalische Instrument in Bewegungen, in Schwingungen versetzt wird. [] Poesie und Orchestik bestitzen diese Kraft nicht, aber
dafr sind sie verstndlicher als die Musik. [] Durch die Verbindung mit Poesie und
Orchestik erweitert die Musik ihr Gebiet, ihre Herrschaft ber die Seelen bis ins Un41

Marbachs book Dramaturgische Bltter contains the following essays:

Die Kunst der Neuzeit
Innere Grnde des Verfalles der Bhne der Gegenwart
Das Staatstheater zu Athen
Aeuere Grnde des Verfalles der Bhne der Gegenwart
Das Theater als Kunstanstalt und das Interesse des Staates an demselben
Ueber die Wiedergeburt der dramatischen Kunst durch die Musik
Ueber die Wiedergeburt dramatischer Kunst, mit Bezugnahme auf Aeschylos Oresteia
Die Kunst des Uebersetzens
Meine Bearbeitung Shakespearescher Stcke fr die deutsche Bhne
Zu Othello
Zu Romeo und Julia
Zu Hamlet

3
15
35
65
102
135
156
193
209
209
212
223.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

endliche. [] Indem aber die Musik diese Hlfe leistet [in modern art and opera],
kommt sie in den falschen Schein eine dienende Kunst zu sein, whrend sie doch
ausschliesslich dominirend ist. Der Verfall der Kunst und speciell der dramatischen
datirt von der zuerst aus Armseligkeit hervorgegangenen, dann aber aus Uebermuth,
Ueberschtzung und Eifersucht gepflegten Trennung der drei Knste, welche ursprnglich in vollkommenster Harmonie gestanden haben; der Musik, der Poesie und
der Orchestik. (pp. 138 f.)
Hereafter, Marbach again emphasizes the importance of the choir. Like Nietzsche,
Marbach emphasizes Wagners importance. He claims that the first steps to a rebirth
of the dramatic arts have been taken by the new German school of music, and especially
by Wagner and Liszt. Aus der Oper wird sich das wirkliche Kunstdrama wieder entwickeln, und diese Entwicklung hat schon thatschlich begonnen (p. 145). Also like
Nietzsche, Marbach rejects both naturalism and idealistic (or romantic) art, and instead
emphasizes that the true artist requires measure (p. 150). Both of them also see drama or
tragedy as primarily aesthetic, not moral. However, Marbachs texts are much shorter and
less sophisticated and do not contain the philosophical profundity that Nietzsches The
Birth of Tragedy contains.42
Many further possible influences of Nietzsches concept of tragedy ought to be examined. For example, Moritz Rapps Geschichte des griechischen Schauspiels (Tbingen 1862),
which is still in Nietzsches library and Julius Sommerbrodts Das altgriechische Theater
(Stuttgart 1865), 80 pages, also still in Nietzsches library. We further know that Nietzsche
used and quoted A. W. Ambros, Geschichte der Musik (Wien 1862ff.) in his Das griechische
Musikdrama (1869/70).

VII. Wagner
Wagners influence on The Birth of Tragedy was enormous. It is obvious from the text
itself (and most of the early drafts), with its preface to Wagner, by the arguments that
Wagner represents a revival of tragedy and by Nietzsches great general dependence on
Wagner at this time. However, Nietzsches early encounter with Wagnerian ideas and
music, before 1868, has received little attention, and I will therefore discuss it here. Thereafter I will summarize Wagners importance for Nietzsche after 1868, and for The Birth of
Tragedy, and briefly allude to three other aspects of his influence on the book, which are
not well known.
Nietzsche became a Wagnerian in early 1868 after a period of ambivalence towards
Wagner for a number of years. After he met and learnt to know Richard Wagner in person
in November 1868 he became an enthusiastic and dedicated Wagnerian which was to
affect the rest of his life. His Wagnerianism was not only limited to the field of music, but
affected his views and values in a wide range of areas. He read all of Wagners more theoretical works in 1869 and in the early 1870s, and was profoundly influenced by them. He
also read much about Wagner, including the pro-Wagnerian journal Musikalisches Wochenblatt, for which he even wrote a contribution (defending Zllner and Wagner). In the early

42

I have only examined the two named essays of Marbachs book. I have not found any certain specific details which could prove that Nietzsche used and was influenced by this work, but several
interesting general parallels, as discussed above.

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1870s, he, together with Wagner, discussed and planned to found a new Wagnerian journal with Nietzsche as the chief editor.43 Nietzsches first books, especially Die Geburt der
Tragdie, and the first and fourth Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen (about Strauss and Wagner),
and to a lesser extent also the second and third ones (about history and Schopenhauer)
can to a large extent be regarded as Wagnerian Streitschriften or polemics. This was recognized at the time,44 and Nietzsche was regarded as a Wagnerian and spokesman for
Wagners ideas in almost all reviews of his books until his mental collapse.
The one who first introduced Nietzsche to Wagners music and Wagnerianism was his
friend Gustav Krug. They had been friends since the age of about ten, but our first evidence of Krugs interest in Wagner and attempt to influence Nietzsche (and their mutual
friend Wilhelm Pinder) comes for the period 1860 1863 when they founded a cultural
society together, the Germania, for which they wrote monthly contributions (essays,
poems, or compositions) and four times a year held lectures to one another.
Almost all of Krugs interest was directed at music and composing, and he frequently
wrote and lectured about different Wagnerian themes. This interest is also reflected in the
few books and musical scores they bought for the society:45
Lohengrin by Wagner (suggested by Krug) 1860
Hlderlins Gedichte (Pinder) 1861
Dante-symphony by Liszt (Nietzsche) 1861
Anregungen fr Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, journal-subscription for 1861.46
Tristan und Isolde by Wagner (Krug) 1862
Nietzsche was seriously concerned with music, and his ideas on music and his
composing changed significantly during the period 1860 64. Many of his contributions
to the Germania concerned music and composing. In his autobiography from 1858,
Nietzsche had expressed a strong preference for classical music together with a highly
hostile attitude towards modern music.
I felt therefore also an unquenchable hatred against all modern music and everything
which was not classical. Mozart and Haidn [sic], Schubert and Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bach are the only pillars on which German music and I are founded.47

43

44

45

46

47

This journal was, in fact, founded in 1878 with the title Bayreuther Bltter, but by this time
Nietzsche had left the Wagerian camp and his role as chief editor was taken by Hans von Wolzogen. Nietzsche paid for a subscription of this journal for many years.
The negative views about Die Geburt der Tragdie among classical philologists may well to a large
extent have been due not so much to its discussion of antiquity as such, but to its unscholarly and
unscientific Wagnerian stance. Von Wilamowitz-Mllendorff: Erinnerungen, loc. cit., p. 127,
claims that Nietzsche hatte meinen moralischen Ingrimm durch einen frechen Ausfall auf Otto
Jahn besonders erregt. Otto Jahn was an important classical philologist, but also an anti-Wagnerian music critic. Later Wilamowtiz writes: es handelte sich gar nicht wirklich von die attische
Tragdie, sondern um Wagners Musikdrama (ibd.).
This list is based on the unpublished financial accounts of the Germania, GSA 71/219. They took
turns in suggesting what to buy.
In all previous accounts of the Germania it has been claimed, following Elizabeth FrsterNietzsche, that the subscription was to the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. Gustav Krug read this
Wagnerian journal most probably his father subscribed to it but there is no evidence that
Germania subscribed to it. This claim must be due to a confusion with the journal Anregungen fr
Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft which was also Wagnerian in spirit and edited by the same Brendel
who edited Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik.
Aus meinem Leben. Nachla 1858, KGW I.1, 4[77], p. 298.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

During 1861 and 62 his views changed profoundly. Several of his first contributions
to the Germania were parts of a planned but never concluded Christmas Oratorium. During this time, the first half-year, he seems still to hold on to his old views and argues that
the oratorium represented the highest form of music, higher than the opera, because it
was simpler, more religiously elevating and more available even to the uneducated.48
However, soon the interests and influence of Krug becomes more and more visible. In
March 1861 Krug held a synodal lecture about Wagner with he title Ueber einige Szenen
v. Tristan und Isolde, in July one Ueber die neudeutsche Musikschule, in February 1862
ber Wagners Faust ouvertre and in March Ueber Rheingold v. Wagner. In the second half of 1861, the Germania also subscribed to the cultural journal Anregungen fr Kunst,
Leben und Wissenschaft. It seems likely that it was Krug who persuaded the others that they
should subscribe to this pro-Wagnerian journal (we know that he bought a whole annual
volume at the time the Germania began its subscription).
Nietzsche very rarely refers to Wagner at this time, but his sister says that he and Krug
played Wagner on the piano and sang to it for days on end with enthusiasm in 1862. He
emphasizes the power of Wagners music in a note, possibly a draft for a suggested mutual
theme for all three members, or perhaps an excerpt from a musical journal.49 Thus, already in 1862 64 Nietzsche had a good knowledge of, and an enthusiasm for, Wagner. It
seems as if this enthusiasm cools for some years, perhaps partly due to the influence of
Otto Jahn (by whom Nietzsche read at least one book about music at this time and who
was his teacher at Bonn) and Eduard Hanslick (1825 1904), a theoretician of music
whom Nietzsche also read at this time, both critics of Wagner.50
In the winter 1865/66, in Leipzig, Nietzsche attended Zukunftmatineen, concerts with
music by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz, but we do not know how he responded to what he
heard.51 Half a year later he went through part of Wagners Walkre on the piano and
thereafter wrote that it contains parts which are highly beautiful and parts which are
equally awful so that the sum becomes nil.52
In 1867 he had frequent heated debates with his acquaintance Hffer, who was a Wagnerian, but in April 1868 he admitted that Hffer had the better and more healthy musical
judgement.53 In July the same year, for five days, 1923, he attended the Deutsche Tonknstler-Versammlung, where they played modern music, including Wagner.54 During this
48
49

50

51
52
53
54

Letter from Nietzsche to Pinder and Krug, 14 January 1861, KSB 1, No. 203.
BAW 2, p. 114. This note is apparently an excerpt from Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. Nietzsche suggested the theme Ueber des Wesen der Musik as a Preisthema for the Synod in January 1863,
and wrote notes on this theme.
Nietzsche again read Hanslick during the early 1870s, and was then possibly inspired by him to
view Wagner in a more critical light. See the discussion in Eger, Manfred: Zum Fall Wagner /
Nietzsche / Hanslick. In: Entdecken und verraten. Edited by Andreas Schirmer and Rdiger
Schmidt. Weimar 1999, pp. 111131. See also Anna Hartmann Cavalcantis excellent paper
Nietzsche als Leser: seiner frhen Quellen und die Lektre von Eduard Hanslick which also discusses Nietzsches annotations in his copy of a work by Hanslick. Cavalcantis paper was presented at a conference on Nietzsches reading and library in Weimar 2002, and will be published in
the conference proceedings. An important paper on this theme has also been published by Landerer, Christoph / Schuster, Marc-Oliver: Nietzsches Vorstudien zur Geburt der Tragdie in ihrer
Beziehung zur Musiksthetik Eduard Hanslicks. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002), pp. 114133.
Letter to Franziska und Elisabeth Nietzsche, 12 Nov. 1865, KSB 1, No. 487.
Letter to Gersdorff, 11 Oct. 1866, KSB 2, No. 523.
Nachla 1867/68, KGW I.4, 60[1], p. 518.
KGB I.4, p. 507.

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year he thus seems to have returned to the positive views of Wagner which he had held during the Germania-time, and began playing Wagner on the piano again. It was through such
playing that he came to be invited to meet Wagner himself in November 1868. From then
on, for about eight years, until 1875/76, he was a dedicated Wagnerian.55 During this time,
Wagner and Schopenhauer were to profoundly influence much of his thinking and writing.
Nietzsches first pro-Wagnerian period, ca 1862 64, seems to have been influenced
by Krug and by two written sources: The journal Anregungen fr Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft and Franz Brendels book Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich.
(i) The journal Anregungen fr Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, edited by Franz Brendel
and Richard Pohl, published in monthly instalments between 1856 and 1861, was a cultural journal with broad intellectual interests, but which focused on music, especially
Wagnerian music, and materialist philosophy. The Germania subscribed to the journal in
1861, and we know that Nietzsche read it.
Since the Anregungen fr Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft seems to contain so many articles
relevant for the young Nietzsches interest and development, and since this is a source
never previously noted or discussed, I will list some of the more interesting articles relating to music and antiquity, and a few other interesting titles.56 As we can see, Nietzsche

55

56

Nietzsches statements about Wagner is conveniently collected in the two volumes: Borchmeyer,
Dieter / Salaquarda, Jrg (ed.): Nietzsche und Wagner. Stationen einer epochalen Begegnung.
Frankfurt am Main 1994.
Volume 1 (1856):
Arthur Schopenhauers Ansicht ber Musik, von Dr. D. Asher.
The volume also contains six articles on different Wagnerian themes (Gluck und Wagner, Der
gesprochene Dialog in der Oper und das Recitativ, Richard Wagners Operntexte von Standpunct des Dramas (two articles), Albertis Richard Wagner und seine Stellung in der Geschichte der dramatischen Musik, Berlioz Verhltni zu R. Wagner, Das Verhltni der
Opern Wagners zu seiner Theorie and Wagners Stoffe.
Volume 2 (1857):
Das Studium der Antike von Seiten unserer Tonknstler, von F. Brendel.
Das Wahl antiker Stoffe fr das Drama, von F. Brendel.
Other articles deals with Wagner.
Volume 3 (1858):
Aesthetik und Physiologie
Philosoph und Kritiker in ihrem Verhltniss zum schaffenden Knstler.
Volume 4 (1859):
Aus und ber Schopenhauer. Von Louis Bchner (A series of four articles this year)
Other articles deal with Wagner.
Volume 5 (1860):
Schopenhauers Ansichten ber Musik
ber die Tragik
Ein Englnder ber Deutschland. Von Louis Bchner.
Other articles deal with Wagner (R. Wagners Textbuch zu Tristan und Isolde (3 articles), Poesie und Musik in ihrer Verbindung.
Volume 6 (1861)
Die Musik im franzsischen Roman. Von Alexander Bchner.
Other articles deal with Wagner (ber Den fliegenden Hollnder von Richard Wagner,
Semele und Lohengrin. Eine Parallele, R. Wagners Ring des Nibelungen (2 articles),
Das Drama des Gegenwart, Ueber Wagners Fliegenden Hollnder, Musik, Geist der
Tonkunst, Der Tannhuser in Paris and Physiologie der menschlichen Tonbildung.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

could have gained extensive knowledge about Wagner from this journal, and it contains
many other articles potentially relevant for the content of The Birth of Tragedy.
Another source for Nietzsches early knowledge of Wagner, is another Wagnerian
journal of music, also edited by Brendel, the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik, which Gustav
Krugs father subscribed to, which Krug read and referred to, and which Nietzsche also
sometimes read, especially in 1861 and 1868.
(ii) Franz Brendels book Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich: Von
den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig 1852, 2nd edition1855).
One of the most surprising aspects of Nietzsches school essay Primum Oedipodis
regis carmen choricum, is that it also contains high praise of Wagner and his conception
of tragedy, opera and the relation between drama and music. In the essay he writes that:
the sublime Greeks avoided the idiocy on which our operas until this day rests with the
exception of the brilliant plans of reform and deeds of R. Wagner the horrific misunderstanding of the relation between music and text, between tone and feeling [] we thus in
their [the Greeks] art, have what the most recent musical school has set up as the ideal of
art of the future.57
It seems likely that the most direct source for Nietzsches statements about Wagner in
the essay comes from Brendels book Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich. Krug received this book as a Christmas present in 1860, and recommended and lent
it to Nietzsche in the following years.58 We know that Nietzsche borrowed and used it. In
April 1862 he wrote down notes for a history of music, closely based on Brendels book
(BAW 2, pp. 64 66). Nietzsches notes discussing the nature of music from late 1862 and
early 1863 are also possibly inspired by his reading of Brendel.59 In the school essay from
the spring 1864, Primum Oedipodis regis carmen choricum, Nietzsche strongly praises
Wagner, and for a full page discusses Wagnerian themes, but he is not specific enough to
with certainty determine any specific source.60 However, the source is very likely the book
by Brendel, which contains many statements similar to Nietzsches. The book was written
in the form of 25 lectures and tells the story of the history of music from the earliest
Christian time until the present, culminating in lectures 23 and 24 about Wagner and his
view of music (the final and 25th lecture is a summary). His discussion there seems to have
inspired Nietzsche:
Das Grsste wurde geleistet nicht in der Oper selbst, sondern in der Musik zu classischen Tragdien. Jetzt trat Wagner mit seinen Opern hervor, und er ist der Erste gewesen, der nicht blos die Oper wieder zum Kunstwerk gemacht, sondern zugleich
auch die Aufgabe um einen gewaltigen Schritt weiter gefhrt hat. [] Mit Wagner trat
die Oper wieder an die Spitze der Entwickelung. [] Er hat die starre, nur specifisch
musikalischen Zwecken dienende Form zerbrochen, die Abgeschossenheit derselben
aufgehoben, er hat die einzelnen Bestandtheile in Fluss gebracht, und so die Mglichkeit einer innigeren Einheit von Poesie und Musik gegeben, die Poesie von den
egoistischen Ansprchen der Musik befreit [] zum ersten Male geforderten hheren

57
58

59
60

BAW 2, p. 376.
In a text written for the Germania, 14 April 1862 (reproduced in BAW 2, p. 441), Krug makes a
long quotation from the book (from p. 570 of the second volume, in the 6th edition of the work
from 1878). In a letter to Nietzsche from 20 February 1863, Krug asks him to return the Brendel
book if he is not using it just at the moment.
BAW 2, pp. 89, 114 and 171f.
BAW 2, p. 376.

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Einheit von Poesie und Musik, in der gleichen Berechtigung der verschiedenen zu einem Ganzen verbundenen Knste []. Wagner hat einen neuen Ausgangspunct genommen, indem er die
Musik aus ihrer absoluten Herrschaft verdrngte, und derselben die Stellung einer
Macht von nur relativer Bedeutung anwies. Die bisherige Oper war, wie wir gesehen
haben, zur Nullitt herabgesunken []. Durch Wagner ist der Weg bezeichnet worden
zu einer Melodiebildung anderer Art, einer Melodiebildung, die aus der innigsten Einheit von Wort und Ton entsteht []. Im vierten Abschnitt [von Kunst und Revolution]
giebt Wagner eine Vergleichung der wahren, der antiken, mit der modernen Kunst:
jene ist Kunst, diese knstlerisches Handwerk. [] Dass Wagner bei diesen Anschauungen zugleich von Griechenland und dem griechischen Drama seinen Ausgang nimmt, wurde schon vorhin erwhnt. [] Das Ziel ist eine Wiedervereinigung,
schon gegeben in Griechenland, und jetzt wieder zu erreichen auf hherer Stufe und
mit unendlich reicheren Mitteln. [] Was endlich die neue Einheit von Poesie und
Musik im Kunstwerk der Zukunft betrifft, so beruht diesselbe [] auf einer weit
innigeren Verbindung beider Elemente. [] Ich erblicke in dieser Theorie das
Grsste und Bedeutendste, das Folgenschwerste, was in neuerer Zeit auf knstlerischen Gebiete geleistet worden ist.61
During the period 1869 71, that is, at the time of writing The Birth of Tragedy, there
existed very strong direct influences from Wagner on Nietzsche. Much of this was though
the conversations they held, but three other aspects are worth mentioning:
1. Wagner had, before Nietzsche, discussed the relation between ancient drama and
modern opera, and foreshadowed much of Nietzsches statements in The Birth of Tragedy.
He had a much more detailed and advanced knowledge of Greek drama than has been
realized. This has been shown in some detail for the first time by the classical scholar
W. Schadewaldt in his lectures Richard Wagner und die Griechen. Drei Bayreuther Vortrge (1962).62 Already in 1849 Wagner had written down the note: Geburt aus der
Musik: schylos. Dcadence Euripides. In his work Oper und Drama (1851) Wagner
also discussed the question of the relationship between myth and drama.
2. Important is also Wagners letter to Nietzsche, shortly before 12 Feb. 1871 where
he asks Nietzsche to remain a philologist and as such help him bring about the great
Renaissance where Plato is unified with Homer and music is the key to understanding.
3. Nietzsche was greatly inspired by the reading of many of Wagners books, especially his Beethoven.
This work has been financially supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

61

62

Brendel, Franz: Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich. Von den ersten
christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. 6th edition. Leipzig 1878, pp. 556, 558f., 560f., 566f.,
568. It is interesting to see that in this edition, from 1878, Nietzsche himself is mentioned as one
of those who have written about Wagner (p. 572). This has not been noted in the otherwise
highly reliable compilation of all discussions of Nietzsche in German literature compiled by Richard Frank Krummel (Krummel, Richard Frank: Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist 1. Ausbreitung und Wirkung des Nietzscheschen Werkes im deutschen Sprachraum bis zum Todesjahr.
Ein Schrifttumsverzeichnis der Jahre 1867 1900. 2. verb. und erg. Aufl. Berlin, New York 1998).
Originally published in the Programmhefte der Wagner-Auffhrungen Bayreuth 1962 (1963/64). Also
available in Schadewaldt, Wolfgang: Hellas und Hesperien. Vol. 2. Stuttgart 1970, pp. 341 405.

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Nikolaos Loukidelis

NIKOLAOS LOUKIDELIS
QUELLEN VON NIETZSCHES VERSTNDNIS UND KRITIK
DES CARTESISCHEN COGITO, ERGO SUM 1

Nachweise aus: berweg, Friedrich: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie /

Schopenhauer, Arthur: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung / Dhring, Eugen:
Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie / Fischer, Kuno: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie
Unter den Philosophen der Neuzeit, auf die sich Nietzsche in seinem Gesamtwerk oft
bezieht, ist neben Baruch de Spinoza und Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz auch Ren Descartes zu nennen. Nietzsche ist unter anderem mit Descartes berhmtem Satz: cogito, ergo
sum2 und mit seiner damit zusammenhngenden Auffassung des Menschen als eines
denkenden Wesens bzw. einer denkenden Substanz vertraut, wie etwa aus der folgenden
Passage hervorgeht,3 in der sich Nietzsche kritisch ber die deutsche Kultur seiner Zeit
uert:
Zerbrckelt und auseinandergefallen, im Ganzen in ein Inneres und ein Aeusseres
halb mechanisch zerlegt, mit Begriffen wie mit Drachenzhnen berset, BegriffsDrachen erzeugend, dazu an der Krankheit der Worte leidend und ohne Vertrauen zu
jeder eignen Empfindung, die noch nicht mit Worten abgestempelt ist: als eine solche
unlebendige und doch unheimlich regsame Begriffs- und Wort-Fabrik habe ich vielleicht noch das Recht von mir zu sagen cogito, ergo sum, nicht aber vivo, ergo cogito.
Das leere Sein, nicht das volle und grne Leben ist mir gewhrleistet; meine ur-

Prof. Dr. Werner Stegmaier danke ich fr wertvolle Anregungen und Kritik whrend des letzten,
entscheidenden Stadiums der Vorbereitung dieser Studie.
Obwohl die Formel cogito(,) ergo sum in keiner der von Descartes selbst verffentlichten Schriften vorkommt sie findet sich im Brief Descartes an Regius von Januar 1642 (Descartes, Ren:
uvres, hrsg. von Charles Adam und Paul Tannery. Paris 1996. [Im Folgenden: AT] Band III.
S. 507), in der lateinischen bersetzung der Recherche de la vrit (AT X, S. 523) und im Gesprch
mit Burman (AT V, S. 147); dazu cf. Halbfa, Wilhelm: Descartes Frage nach der Existenz der
Welt. Untersuchungen ber die cartesianische Denkpraxis und Metaphysik. Meisenheim am
Glan 1968. S. 66 , hat sie sich statt z.B. des ego cogito, ergo sum der Principia Philosophiae (AT VIII,
S. 7 f.) in der Geschichte der Philosophie eingebrgert. Wenn man beide angefhrte Formeln
vergleicht, fllt einem auf, dass in der ersteren eine wichtige Nuance, nmlich die Betonung des
ego als Trgers des Denkens und der Existenz verloren geht. Trotzdem ist dieser Verlust, inhaltlich gesehen, nicht gravierend, da das ego als Subjekt auch bei der ersteren Formel vorausgesetzt
wird.
Cf. dazu Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 40[22]: NB. Es wird gedacht: folglich giebt es Denkendes
darauf luft die Argumentation des Cartesius hinaus aber die Realitt eines Gedankens ist es
nicht, die Cartesius wollte. Er wollte ber Einbildung hinweg zu einer Substanz, welche
denkt und sich einbildet.; ferner Nachlass 1887, KSA 12, 10[158]).

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sprngliche Empfindung verbrgt mir nur, dass ich ein denkendes, nicht dass ich ein
lebendiges Wesen, dass ich kein animal, sondern hchstens ein cogital bin. (HL 10,
KSA 1, S. 329)
Bei der Suche nach den Quellen von Nietzsches Verstndnis und Kritik des cogito, ergo
sum sollte man sich vorwiegend an vermittelnden Darstellungen orientieren, mit denen
sich Nietzsche nachweislich auseinandergesetzt hat und die sein Descartes-Bild geprgt
haben.4 Eine solche Darstellung ist im dritten Teil des von Friedrich berweg verfassten
Grundrisses der Geschichte der Philosophie enthalten, in einem Kapitel, das hauptschlich
von der Philosophie Ren Descartes handelt.5 Besondere Relevanz fr die hier untersuchte Problematik kommt folgender Stelle zu, in der berweg ber den Inhalt der zweiten Meditation referiert:
Wie Archimedes, sagt Descartes in der zweiten Meditation, nur einen festen Punkt
forderte, um die Erde bewegen zu knnen, so werde ich grosse Hoffnungen fassen
drfen, wenn ich glcklich genug bin auch nur einen Satz zu finden, der vllig gewiss
und unzweifelhaft ist. In der That ist Eins gewiss, whrend mir Alles als ungewiss erscheint, nmlich eben mein Zweifeln und Denken selbst und daher meine Existenz.
4

Grund fr diese Orientierung ist die Tatsache, dass Nietzsches Gesamtwerk keine Anhaltspunkte fr die Annahme eines tiefen Studiums der cartesischen Schriften aufweist. Das soll freilich nicht bedeuten, dass Nietzsche sich nicht gelegentlich mit Descartes Schriften befasst htte.
Das Motto zur Erstausgabe von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (KSA 2, S. 11; cf. Rethy, Robert A.:
The Descartes Motto to the first edition of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. In: Nietzsche-Studien 5
(1976). S. 289 297) stellt ein starkes Indiz dafr dar, dass Nietzsche den Discours de la mthode
(oder Teile davon) in seiner lateinischen Fassung aus deren dritten Teil der ins Deutsche bersetzte Text des Mottos stammt (AT VI, S. 555); dazu cf. Rethy: The Descartes Motto, a. a. O.,
S. 290 292 gelesen hat. Es ist deshalb sehr wahrscheinlich, dass Nietzsche den das cogito, ergo
sum begrndenden Gedankengang, wie er im vierten Teil dieser Schrift dargestellt wird, gekannt
hat.
berweg, Friedrich: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart. Dritter Theil. Die Neuzeit. Berlin 1866. Das Kapitel ber Descartes steht auf den Seiten
42 55 und trgt den Titel Descartes, Geulinx, Malebranche und gleichzeitige Philosophen.
Spuren der Lektre dieses Kapitels gibt es im Nachlass 1873, KSA 7, 26[1], wo Nietzsche aus
den Seiten 52 und 53 exzerpiert und auf sie explizit verweist. Auf diesen Seiten referiert berweg
vor allem ber den Inhalt der Principia philosophiae, indem er unter anderem in dieser Schrift
vorkommende Definitionen von Hauptbegriffen der cartesischen Philosophie wie Klarheit,
Deutlichkeit, Substanz, Attribut oft mit Heranziehung des Originaltextes wiedergibt. Eine Erschlieung der Exzerpte aus den Seiten 52 und 53 sowie einen umfassenden philologischen
Kommentar der nachgelassenen Aufzeichnung KSA 7, 26[1] findet man bei Schlechta, Karl /
Anders, Anni: Friedrich Nietzsche. Von den verborgenen Anfngen seines Philosophierens.
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1962. S. 88 99. ber Spuren von Nietzsches Lektre des dritten Teils
des Grundrisses der Geschichte der Philosophie insgesamt siehe die editorischen Anmerkungen in
BAW 3, S. 458 f., 461, 463f. und KSA 14, S. 547. Das von Nietzsche benutzte Exemplar befindet
sich in seiner persnlichen Bibliothek, zusammengebunden mit: berweg, Friedrich: Grundriss
der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart. Erster Theil. Das Alterthum.
3. Aufl. Berlin 1867 und berweg, Friedrich: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von
Thales bis auf die Gegenwart. Zweiter Theil. Die patristische und scholastische Zeit. 3. Aufl.
Berlin 1866. Laut Nota vom 9. April 1868 wurde die Bindung bei G. Jacobi in Naumburg ausgefhrt (zu allen angefhrten Angaben ber Nietzsches persnliches Exemplar des dritten Teils
des Grundrisses der Geschichte der Philosophie von Friedrich berweg siehe Campioni, Giuliano /
DIorio, Paolo / Fornari, Maria Cristina / Fronterotta, Francesco / Orsucci, Andrea (Hg.):
Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek. Berlin, New York 2003. S. 627 f.).

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Nikolaos Loukidelis

Gbe es auch ein mchtiges Wesen, welches es darauf angelegt htte, mich zu tuschen, so muss ich doch existiren, um getuscht werden zu knnen. Indem ich denke,
dass ich sei, so beweist eben dieses Denken, dass ich wirklich bin. Der Satz: ich bin,
ich existire, ist allemal, da ich ihn ausspreche oder denke, nothwendigerweise wahr.6
Cogito, erg o sum.7 Nur das Denken ist mir gewiss, ich bin eine res cogitans, id est
mens sive animus sive intellectus sive ratio.8 Die res cogitans ist eine res dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque et sentiens. (Nmlich
als cogitandi modos habe ich gewiss auch sinnliche Empfindungen, obschon die
Beziehung zu usseren Objekten und Affection der Sinne zweifelhaft sein mag.)
Nonne ego ipse sum qui jam dubito fere de omnibus, qui nonnihil tamen intelligo, qui
hoc unum verum esse affirmo, nego caetera, cupio plura nosse, nolo decipi, multa vel
invitus imaginor, multa etiam tamquam a sensibus venientia animadverto?9 Ich kenne
mich selbst als denkendes Wesen besser, als ich die Aussendinge kenne. (Die Aehnlichkeit mit dem Ausgangspunkte des Augustinschen Philosophirens und mit Stzen
6

Cf. Descartes Formulierung in der zweiten Meditation: Adeo ut, omnibus satis superque pensitatis, denique statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum, Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel
mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. (AT VII, S. 25)
Statt dieser von berweg angefhrten Formel kommt in der zweiten Meditation der Satz: Ego
sum, ego existo vor (dazu cf. Funoten 6 und 2). Wenn man aber die berlegungen verfolgt, die
Descartes zur Formulierung dieses Satzes gefhrt haben (ebd., S. 24 f.), stellt man fest, dass das
ego sum, ego existo als abschlieendes Glied einer Gedankenreihe auf[tritt], die als ganze durchaus
dem Cogito ergo sum quivalent ist [] (Rd, Wolfgang: Descartes. Die Genese des Cartesianischen Rationalismus. 3. Aufl. Mnchen 1995. S. 82). Cf. ferner die folgenden Ausfhrungen von
Werner Stegmaier: [] das Cogito ergo sum stellt einen Schlu dar, doch nicht in der Weise,
da unmittelbar vom Denken auf Existenz geschlossen wrde; denn hier besteht in der Tat
kein logischer Zusammenhang; sondern derart, da vom Denken als einem Akzidens auf eine
Existenz qua Substanz geschlossen wird []. Wenn darum die Principia und der Discours
die Beziehung von Denken und Existenz als Schlu, die Meditationes sie aber als Intuition
formulieren [], so vollziehen sie wohl in der Sache den Schlu, whrend aber der Discours
zugleich mit dem Je pense, donc je suis den Substanzbegriff einfhrt (1. u. 2. Abschnitt des
IV. Teils) und ihn (im 4. Abschnitt) in die Nhe des tre bringt und die Principia die Gleichung substantia/existentia ausdrcklich entwickeln und darum auch ausdrcklich schlieen,
verzichten die Meditationes, da sie in der angestrebten Voraussetzungslosigkeit ihrer Analyse
den Substanzbegriff bis zur III. Med. [] vermeiden, auch auf die ausdrckliche Formulierung
als Schlu. (Stegmaier, Werner: Substanz. Grundbegriff der Metaphysik. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1977. S. 136). ber die Bedeutung des cartesischen Substanzbegriffs fr die Interpretation
des cogito, ergo sum siehe unten.
Cf. auch berweg, Friedrich: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die
Gegenwart. Dritter Theil. Die Neuzeit. Berlin 1866. S. 42: Das Einzige, woran sich, wenn alles
Uebrige bezweifelt wird, nicht zweifeln lsst, ist das Zweifeln selbst und berhaupt das Denken
im weitesten Sinne als die Gesammtheit aller bewussten psychischen Processe. Mein Denken
aber hat meine Existenz zur Voraussetzung: cogito, ergo sum..
Hier gebe ich die von berweg aus der zweiten Meditation zitierten Stellen im Wortlaut des Originals wieder: a) Nihil nunc admitto nisi quod necessario sit verum; sum igitur praecise tantm
res cogitans, id est, mens, sive animus, sive intellectus, sive ratio, voces mihi pris significationis
ignotae. (AT VII, S. 27); b) Sed quid igitur sum? Res cogitans. Quid est hoc? Nempe dubitans,
intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque, & sentiens. Non pauca san
haec sunt, si cuncta ad me pertineant. Sed quidni pertinerent? Nonne ego ipse sum qui jam dubito fer de omnibus, qui nonnihil tamen intelligo, qui hoc unum verum esse affirmo, nego caetera, cupio plura nosse, nolo decipi, multa vel invitus imaginor, multa etiam tamquam a sensibus
venientia animadverto? (ebd., S. 28).

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des Occam und spterer Nominalisten ist augenfllig. Freilich fhrt Descartes die r e s
cogitans, also die Anwendbarkeit des Substanzbegriffs, und das eg o 10, also die Individuitt, die Einheit des Bewusstseins in sich und Verschiedenheit von anderm, ohne
Ableitung mit in seinen Fundamentalsatz ein. Lichtenberg hat geurtheilt,11 Descartes
habe nur schliessen drfen: Cogitat, ergo est.12 Ferner kann mit Kant in Frage gestellt
werden, ob das Bewusstsein, das wir von unserm Denken, Wollen, Empfinden, berhaupt von unsern psychischen Functionen haben, diese Functionen so, wie sie an sich
sind, auffasse oder mit einer Form behaftet sei, die nur der Selbstauffassung und nicht
dem Aufzufassenden an sich zukomme, in welchem Falle die durch den innern Sinn
vermittelte Selbsterscheinung ebenso, wie die durch die ussern Sinne vermittelte Erscheinung rumlicher Objecte, von dem, was eben diese Erscheinungen veranlasst,
z. B. unser Bewusstsein ber unser Zweifeln, Denken, Wollen von dem wirklichen innern Vorgang beim Zweifeln, Denken, Wollen verschieden und mit demselben ungleichartig sein wrde.13 )14
In bereinstimmung mit berwegs Feststellung, dass Descartes die r e s cogitans,
also die Anwendbarkeit des Substanzbegriffs [] ohne Ableitung mit in seinen Fundamentalsatz ein[fhrt] (siehe den eben zitierten Text) steht der folgende, von Nietzsche
im Nachlass unternommene Rekonstruktionsversuch des cogito, ergo sum: Es wird gedacht: folglich giebt es Denkendes: darauf luft die argumentatio des Cartesius hinaus.
Aber das heit, unsern Glauben an den Substanzbegriff schon als wahr a priori ansetzen [] (Nachlass 1887, KSA 12, 10[158], cf. auch oben Funote 3). Die Voraussetzungen, die berweg und Nietzsche monieren, entsprechen durchaus den Ansichten, die

10

11

12

13

14

Cf. Nietzsches Infragestellung der Behauptung, dass ich es bin, der denkt ( JGB 16; cf. auch
Nachlass 1881, KSA 9, 11[330]: Da ich dieses Vorstellende Sein bin [] ist nicht mehr gewi).
Dieser Satz lsst sich meines Wissens im Gesamtwerk von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg nicht
nachweisen. Allem Anschein nach bezieht sich berweg hier auf die folgende, zuerst 1801 verffentlichte nachgelassene Bemerkung Lichtenbergs: Wir werden uns gewisser Vorstellungen
bewut, die nicht von uns abhngen; andere glauben wir wenigstens hingen von uns ab; wo ist
die Grenze? Wir kennen nur allein die Existenz unserer Empfindungen, Vorstellungen und Gedanken. Es denkt, sollte man sagen, so wie man sagt: es blitz t. Zu sagen cogito, ist schon zu
viel, so bald man es durch Ich denke bersetzt. Das Ich anzunehmen, zu postuliren, ist practisches Bedrfni. (Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph: Vermischte Schriften, hrsg. von Ludwig
Christian Lichtenberg und Friedrich Kries. Gttingen 1801. Band II. S. 95 f.; ber die richtige
Kommasetzung im Satz andere [] von uns ab siehe Vaas, Rdiger / Kanz, Kai Torsten:
Konjekturen zu Lichtenbergs Es denkt (K 76). In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 1995. S. 288 290).
Nietzsche hat diese Bemerkung Lichtenbergs nachweislich gelesen allerdings in einer anderen
als der oben angefhrten Ausgabe; dazu siehe Stingelin, Martin: Unsere ganze Philosophie ist
Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs. Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-Rezeption im Spannungsfeld zwischen Sprachkritik (Rhetorik) und historischer Kritik (Genealogie). Mnchen
1996. S. 9, 123, 179.
Im Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 40[23], wo von [] cogito des cogitat und cogitatur [] die Rede
ist, gibt Nietzsche mit cogitat wie aus dem Kontext zu schlieen ist das schon in derselben
Aufzeichnung vorgekommene es denkt wieder.
Cf. den Nachlass 1881, KSA 9, 11[330]: Das einzige Sein, welches wir kennen, ist das vors t ellen d e S ein. Wenn wir es richtig beschreiben, so mssen die Prdikate des Seienden
berhaupt darin sein. (Indem wir aber das Vorstellen selber als Objekt des Vorstellens nehmen,
wird es da nicht durch die Geset ze d es Vo r st ellen s getrnkt, geflscht, unsicher? ) [].
berweg: Grundriss, a. a. O., S. 48.

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Descartes ber den Begriff der Substanz vertritt. Ein charakteristisches Beispiel hierfr
sind die 52 und 53 des ersten Teils der Principia Philosophiae, in denen Descartes unter
anderem behauptet, dass a) man aus der Konstatierung der Prsenz eines Attributs auf die
Existenz einer ihm zugrundeliegenden Substanz schlieen kann15 und b) jede Substanz
ber eine Haupteigenschaft bzw. Hauptattribut (das Denken fr eine substantia cogitans
und die Ausdehnung fr eine substantia corporea) verfgt, das ihr Wesen ausmacht und
auf das sich alle anderen Attribute beziehen.16 Von diesen fr das Verstndnis17 des cartesischen Substanzbegriffs18 wichtigen Auffassungen handelt berweg in einer auf Seite
52 f. des dritten Teils seines Grundrisses stehenden, von Nietzsche nachweislich gelesenen19 Stelle:
Aus jedem Attribute kann auf eine res existens oder substantia, der es zukomme,
geschlossen werden; aber jede Substanz hat eine praecipua proprietas, quae ipsius
naturam essentiamque constituit et ad quam aliae omnes referuntur; nempe extensio
in longum, latum et profundum substantiae corporae naturam constituit, et cogitatio
constituit naturam substantiae cogitantis; nam omne aliud, quod corpori tribui potest,
extensionem praesupponit estque tantum modus quidam rei extensae, ut et omnia
quae in mente reperimus, sunt tantum diversi modi cogitandi.20
Der Grund, den Descartes dafr angibt, warum aus dem Vorkommen eines beliebigen Attributs eine ihm zugrundeliegende Substanz erkannt werden kann, wird im 52 des
ersten Teils der Principia ausdrcklich genannt. Es handelt sich um den Grundsatz, dass
dem Nichts keine Eigenschaften zukommen oder anders formuliert dass Attribute
ohne Substanzen nicht mglich sind.21 Die Bedeutung dieses von berweg in seiner Descartes-Darstellung nicht thematisierten, auf die aristotelische Metaphysik zurckzufh15

16

17

18

19
20

21

Cf. Principia I, 52: Ex hoc enim qud aliquod attributum adesse percipiamus, concludimus
aliquam rem existentem, sive substantiam, cui illud tribui possit, necessari etiam adesse. (AT
VIII, S. 25).
Cf. Principia I, 53: Et quidem ex quolibet attributo substantia cognoscitur; sed una tamen est
cujusque substantiae praecipua proprietas, quae ipsius naturam essentiamque constituit, & ad
quam aliae omnes referuntur. Nempe extensio in longum, latum & profundum substantiae corporae naturam constituitt; & cogitatio constituit naturam substantiae cogitantis.(ebd.); ferner
den Titel des 53: Cujusque substantiae unum esse praecipuum attributum, ut mentis cogitatio, corporis
extensio (ebd.). In den eben zitierten Stellen werden die Begriffe attributum und proprietas
als Synonyme verwendet.
Wenn man a) und b) als wahr akzeptiert, kann man nicht umhin, aus der Feststellung der Prsenz
von Denken (Attribut) die Existenz eines denkenden Wesens (Substanz) abzuleiten (cf. Nietzsches Rekonstruktion des cogito, ergo sum im Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 40[22] und Nachlass 1887,
KSA 12, 10[158]).
Dazu siehe den zweiten, Descartes gewidmeten Teil der Untersuchung von Werner Stegmaier
ber den Begriff der Substanz (Stegmaier: Substanz, a. a. O., S. 85 145; die fr das Verstndnis
des cartesischen Substanzbegriffs wichtigen abschlieenden Paragraphen des ersten Teils der
Principia ( 48 ff.) werden auf den Seiten 133 145 errtert).
Dazu siehe oben Funote 5.
Das in dieser Stelle enthaltene lateinische Zitat (praecipua proprietas [] modi cogitandi)
stammt aus dem 53 des ersten Teils der Principia (cf. auch Funote 16).
Principia I, 52: [] facil ipsam [d.h. substantiam, N.L.] agnoscimus ex quolibet ejus attributo, per communem illam notionem, qud nihili nulla sint attributa, nullaeve proprietates aut
qualitates. (AT VIII, S. 25). Cf. Principia I, 11: [] notandum est, lumine naturali esse notissimum, nihili nullas esse affectiones sive qualitates; atque ide ubinque aliquas deprehendimus, ibi rem sive substantiam, cujus illae sint, necessari inveniri [] (ebd., S. 8).

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renden22 Grundsatzes fr die Interpretation des cogito, ergo sum hebt Arthur Schopenhauer
im vierten Kapitel des zweiten Bandes seines Hauptwerks Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
hervor23:
Cogito, ergo sum ist ein analytisches Urtheil: Parmenides hat es sogar fr ein identisches
gehalten: U H!S B=U OPFeO kTU UF LB FOBJ (nam intelligere et esse idem est, Clem. Alex.
Strom. VI, 2, . 23). Als ein solches aber, oder auch nur als analytisches, kann es keine
besondere Weisheit enthalten; wie auch nicht, wenn man, noch grndlicher, es als
einen Schlu, aus dem Obersatz non-entis nulla sunt praedicata ableiten wollte. Eigentlich
aber hat Kartesius damit die groe Wahrheit ausdrcken wollen, da nur dem Selbstbewutseyn, also dem Subjektiven, unmittelbare Gewiheit zukommt; dem Objektiven, also allem Andern, hingegen, als dem durch jenes erst Vermittelten, blo mittelbare; daher dieses, weil aus zweiter Hand, als problematisch zu betrachten ist. Hierauf
beruht der Werth des so berhmten Satzes. Als seinen Gegensatz knnen wir, im
Sinne der Kantischen Philosophie, aufstellen: cogito, ergo est, d. h. wie ich gewisse Verhltnisse (die mathematischen) an den Dingen denke, genau so mssen sie in aller
irgend mglichen Erfahrung stets ausfallen, dies war ein wichtiges, tiefes und sptes
Apperu, welches im Gewande des Problems von der M g l i ch ke i t s y n th e ti s ch e r
U r the ile a pri o r i auftrat und wirklich den Weg zu tiefer Erkenntni erffnet hat.
Dies Problem ist die Parole der Kantischen Philosophie, wie der erstere Satz die der
Kartesischen, und zeigt, kK PWO F PB.24
Darber hinaus kommt im oben zitierten Text eine bemerkenswerte Umformulierung des cogito, ergo sum in cogito, ergo est vor, die Schopenhauer als Rekonstruktion der
These Kants hinsichtlich des Problems von der M g l i ch ke i t s y n th e ti s ch e r U r thei le a pri ori versteht. Diese Umformulierung eignet sich zwar Nietzsche in folgenden Nachlassstellen an25, zugleich aber bringt er Einwnde gegen ihre Richtigkeit vor:

22

23

24

25

Dazu siehe Scholz, Heinrich: ber das Cogito, ergo sum. In: ders.: Mathesis Universalis. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. Hrsg. von Hermes, Hans / Kambartel,
Friedrich / Kaulbach, Friedrich. Basel, Stuttgart 1961. S. 75 94, S. 85; Halbfa: Descartes
Frage, a. a. O., S. 82. Beide Autoren verweisen auf den aristotelischen Satz: [] UiO P=TJiO
OFZ P=L zTUJ U! Q}I [] (Aristoteles: Metaphysik. 1071 a 1f.). Werner Stegmaier, der ebenfalls die aristotelische Herkunft dieses Grundsatzes feststellt (Stegmaier: Substanz, a. a. O.,
S. 134 ff.), geht zudem auf einen wesentlichen Unterschied zwischen der aristotelischen und der
cartesischen Konzeption der Substanz ein: [] galt das aristotelische PO zugleich, wenn auch
nicht in gleicher Weise fr P=TB und TZNCFCILUB, so beschrnkt Descartes den Sinn des esse
auf das Dasein; er bringt das Dasein des Seienden berhaupt auf die Seite der Substanz, sein
Wassein, seine Bestimmtheit auf die des Akzidens und identifiziert so Substanz und Akzidens
mit Dasein und Wassein. (Ebd., S. 135).
ber Schopenhauers Interpretation des cogito, ergo sum siehe auch den zweiten Absatz des 1. Kapitels des 2. Bandes von Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung sowie die ersten zwei Abstze der im
1. Band der Parerga und Paralipomena enthaltenen Skizze einer Geschichte der Lehre vom Idealen und Realen; cf. ferner Brands, Hartmut: Cogito ergo sum. Interpretationen von Kant bis Nietzsche.
Freiburg im Breisgau, Mnchen 1982. S. 228 246.
Schopenhauer, Arthur: Smmtliche Werke. Hrsg. von Julius Frauenstdt. Dritter Band. Leipzig
1873. S. 37. Der eben angefhrte Band befindet sich in Nietzsches nachgelassener Bibliothek
(dazu siehe Campioni u.a. (Hg.): Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek, a. a. O., S. 539 f.).
Cf. auch PHG 11, KSA 1, S. 847, wo Nietzsche die Formel ambulo, ergo sum oder ergo est gebraucht.

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Nikolaos Loukidelis

Grundgewiheit.
Ich stelle vor, also giebt es ein Sein cogito, ergo est. Da ich dieses Vorstellende
Sein bin, da Vorstellen eine Thtigkeit des Ich ist, ist nicht mehr gewi: ebenso wenig
alles w a s ich vorstelle. Das einzige Sein, welches wir kennen, ist das vorstellende
Sein. Wenn wir es richtig beschreiben, so mssen die Prdikate des Seienden berhaupt darin sein. (Indem wir aber das Vorstellen selber als Objekt des Vorstellens
nehmen, wird es da nicht durch die Gesetze des Vorstellens getrnkt, geflscht, unsicher? ) [] (Nachlass 1881, KSA 9, 11[330])
Etwas, das sich selber unmittelbar gewi ist ist Unsinn. Gesetzt z.B., Gott dchte
durch uns, und unsere Gedanken, sofern wir uns als Ursache fhlten, wren ein
Schein, so wre das Dasein der Gedanken nicht geleugnet oder bezweifelt, wohl aber
das ergo sum. Sonst htte er sagen mssen: ergo e s t. Es giebt keine unmittelbaren
Gewiheiten: cogito, ergo sum setzt voraus, da man wei, was denken ist und
zweitens was sein ist: es wre also, wenn das est (sum) wahr wre, eine Gewiheit
auf Grund zweier richtiger Urtheile, hinzugerechnet die Gewiheit, da man ein
Recht berhaupt zum Schlusse, zum ergo hat also jedenfalls keine unmittelbare
G!ewiheit". (Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 40[24])26
Wichtigen Ausfhrungen ber das cartesische cogito, ergo sum und seine damit zusammenhngende Auffassung des Menschen als einer denkenden Substanz ist Nietzsche
auch bei seiner Lektre des Descartes-Kapitels des Werks von Eugen Dhring: Kritische
Geschichte der Philosophie27 begegnet. In dieser Hinsicht kommen insbesondere drei Stellen
in Frage:
1) Die berhmteste metaphysische Anwendung des universellen Zweifels28 ist die an
der Spitze der Meditationen am weitlufigsten ausgefhrte Vorbereitung des Satzes:
Ich denke also bin ich (Cogito ergo sum).29
26

27

28

29

In beiden Aufzeichnungen, aus denen die oben zitierten Stellen entnommen sind, nimmt Nietzsche Stellung zu einschlgigen Passagen aus dem Werk von Spir, African: Denken und Wirklichkeit. Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie. 2. Aufl. Leipzig 1877; dazu siehe
DIorio, Paolo: La superstition des philosophes critiques. Nietzsche et African Spir. In: Nietzsche-Studien 22 (1993). S. 257 294, S. 280 f., 285f.
Dhring, Eugen: Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie von ihren Anfngen bis zur Gegenwart.
2. Aufl. Berlin 1873. Das Descartes-Kapitel steht auf den Seiten 257 277 und trgt den Titel
Cartesius. Sein berhmter Ausgangspunkt. Das von Nietzsche benutzte Exemplar ist in seiner persnlichen Bibliothek erhalten, zusammengebunden mit: Dhring, Eugen: Natrliche
Dialektik. Neue logische Grundlegungen der Wissenschaft und Philosophie. Berlin 1865. Laut
Rechnung vom 1. Juli 1875 wurden beide Bcher am 30. Juni bei C. Detloffs Buchhandlung in
Basel gekauft; laut Nota vom 31. Dezember 1875 erfolgte die Bindung am 11. Juli 1875 bei M. J.
Memmel-Tripet in Basel. Lesespuren befinden sich auf folgenden Seiten des Descartes-Kapitels:
261, 264, 268, 269, 271, 274 (zu allen in dieser und in den nchsten Funoten vorkommenden
Angaben ber Nietzsches persnliches Exemplar der Kritischen Geschichte der Philosophie von Eugen Dhring siehe Campioni (Hg.): Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek, a. a. O., S. 203).
Dhring stellt in seiner Descartes-Darstellung den Begriff des universellen Zweifels auf folgende
Weise dar: In den eignen Meinungen Alles vorlufig in Frage stellen, ist das Hauptmittel, durch
welches Cartesius methodisch zur unanfechtbaren Gewissheit gelangen zu knnen glaubte. An
Allem sei zu zweifeln und dann zuzusehen, wie sich neue Einsichten gewinnen liessen, die gleich
bei ihrer Wurzel aus vllig unzweifelhafter Wahrheit hervorgingen. (Dhring: Kritische Geschichte, a. a. O., S. 261. Auf Seite 261 von Nietzsches Exemplar gibt es Zeichen mit Bleistift.)
Ebd., S. 263.

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2) Von der grssten Wichtigkeit ist das Verstndniss der Art und Weise, wie bei Cartesius der Uebergang vom Negativen zum Positiven d. h. vom universellen Zweifel zu
jenem Satze gemacht wird [gemeint ist der schon im Text Nr. 1 angefhrte Satz: Ich
denke also bin ich, N. L.], dem der Zweifel nichts mehr soll anhaben knnen. Der
nach allen Richtungen zweifelnde Gedanke besinnt sich gleichsam auf sich selbst. Er
erkennt, dass um ihn und um das Bewusstsein, dessen Trger er ist, alle Zweifel so zu
sagen wie um einen festen Mittelpunkt kreisen. Hiedurch gewinnt er einen Standpunkt, den man in einem gewissen Sinn als heliocentrisch bezeichnen knnte. Das
Sein des Denkens ist das beharrliche Etwas, welches allen Zweifeln gegenber bestehen bleibt. Es kann sich nicht selbst in Frage stellen; denn dieser Act wrde nur ein
neuer Beweis seiner Existenz sein. Es ist mithin das Denken sich seiner selbst mit unmittelbarer Gewissheit bewusst. Gleichgltig gegen alle Beziehungen und Verhltnisse, ber die eine bejahende oder verneinende Antwort mglich ist, bleibt das Denken selbst als etwas Unerschtterliches unanfechtbar. Die Verhltnisse anderer
Existenzen zu ihm mgen auf die eine oder auf die andere Weise gedacht werden; das
Denken in seiner unmittelbaren sich selbst gewissen Thtigkeit bleibt stets der feste
Ausgangspunkt all solcher Bestimmungen.30
3) Hienach war Descartes im vollsten Recht, wenn er das Denken selbst nicht erst in
seiner Existenz verbrgen zu mssen, sondern in ihm selbst die letzte Brgschaft fr
alles Wissen von irgend einem Dasein zu finden glaubte. Dagegen griffen seine weiteren Operationen sofort willkrlich ber die reine Denknothwendigkeit hinaus und
fhrten Vorstellungen ein, die in ihrer Begrndungsart und in ihrem Inhalt dem heutigen Standpunkt als starke Naivetten gelten mssen. Zunchst entstand aus der
blossen Voraussetzung des Denkens, gegen die sich nichts einwenden lsst, die Annahme eines denkenden Dinges (substantia cogitans), die noch zu den rohesten Formen der Hypostasirung gerechnet werden muss. Aus dem Denken wurde ein Denken
des Etwas gefolgert, und dieses denkende Etwas verwandelte sich sofort in die volksmssige Vorstellung einer Seele. Es wre schon ein metaphysischer Uebergriff gewesen, wenn Descartes sich damit begngt htte, aus dem Denken das beharrende Ich
ableiten zu wollen. Die Vorstellung von einem zu Grunde liegenden Ich oder, mit andern Worten, von einem Subject des Denkens, enthlt bereits den Hauptfehler, der
sich in der Vorstellung einer denkenden Substanz eigentlich nur deutlicher ausgedrckt findet. Es ist einer kritischen Metaphysik nicht erlaubt, das Denken in einem
Ich als seiner bleibenden Grundlage, Ursache oder Quelle zu verdinglichen. Der Begriff des Ich muss vielmehr so gefasst werden, dass das Ich nicht als Ursprung sondern als Ergebniss von Bewusstseinsbestimmungen angesehen wird. Wie man aber
auch in dieser Beziehung urtheilen mge, in keinem Fall ist es gestattet, ein denkendes Etwas als beharrliche Grundlage vorauszusetzen. Der Begriff einer denkenden
Substanz ist nichts als eine falsche bertragung der Vorstellung, die man von der Materie hegt, in ein Gebiet, auf welchem etwas in hnlicher Weise Dauerndes bisher noch
gar nicht nachgewiesen werden konnte.31

30
31

Ebd., S. 265 f.
Ebd., S. 268 f. Auf Seite 268 von Nietzsches Exemplar befinden sich Zeichen und Anmerkungen
mit Bleistift, auf Seite 269 ein Eselsohr und Zeichen mit Bleistift. Die Seite 268 endet auf folgende Weise: Es wre schon ein metaphysischer Uebergriff ge-.

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Nikolaos Loukidelis

Dhring hebt in seiner Erluterung des cogito, ergo sum (siehe Text Nr. 2) das von ihm
positiv bewertete32 Moment der unmittelbaren Gewissheit des Denkens hervor33. Gerade
dieses Moment wird zu einem Hauptziel der in vielen Passagen von Nietzsches Werk34 geuerten Kritik an Descartes Grundsatz. Anders verhlt es sich jedoch mit den kritischen Ausfhrungen Dhrings zum Begriff der denkenden Substanz (substantia cogitans) bei Descartes (siehe Text Nr. 3),35 die mit vielen diesbezglichen uerungen
Nietzsches weitgehend in Einklang stehen. Ein markantes Beispiel hierfr36 bietet
der Aphorismus 16 von JGB, in dem unter anderem die Auffassung, dass berhaupt ein
Etwas es sein muss, das denkt (ebd.) kritisch betrachtet wird und die Berechtigung des
Gebrauchs des Begriffs Ich als Gedanken-Ursache37 (ebd.) in Frage gestellt wird.
Da Nietzsche die Geschichte der neuern Philosophie von Kuno Fischer nachweislich zu
Rate gezogen hat, um sich mit dem Werk von Kant und Spinoza vertraut zu machen,38
liegt es nahe, dass er sich auch mit dem entsprechenden Teil ber Descartes39 befasst hat.
32
33

34

35

36

37

38

39

Siehe ebd., S. 267 f.

Cf. ferner Schopenhauers Betonung des Moments der unmittelbaren Gewissheit des Selbstbewusstseins im oben zitierten Text.
Siehe z.B. die nachgelassenen Aufzeichnungen KSA 11, 40 [20], [23], [24], [25] von 1885 sowie
Aphorismus 16 von JGB, der sich auch auf Descartes Grundsatz bezieht, obwohl in ihm Descartes nicht beim Namen genannt wird. Ein wichtiger Auslser dieser Kritik war Nietzsches
Auseinandersetzung mit African Spirs Denken und Wirklichkeit (siehe Funote 26), der im
Anschluss an Descartes die unmittelbare Gewissheit des Denkens als Ausgangspunkt seines
Systems nimmt.
Cf. ferner berwegs Bemerkung, dass Descartes die res cogitans, also die Anwendbarkeit
des Substanzbegriffs [] ohne Ableitung mit in seinen Fundamentalsatz ein[fhrt] (siehe oben
Seite 3f.).
Cf. auch die Aphorismen 17 und 54 von JGB und die nachgelassenen Aufzeichnungen KSA 11,
40[20] von 1885, KSA 12, 7[63] von 1886 1887, KSA 12, 10[158] von 1887. Grundlage der
Kritik Nietzsches an den Begriffen Etwas, das denkt (cf. z. B. KSA 12, 10[158]), Ich als Substanz (cf. z. B. KSA 12, 7[63]) oder am traditionellen Seelenbegriff (cf. z. B. JGB 54) ist Nietzsches Auffassung, dass die (indogermanische) Sprache und ihre Grammatik uns dazu verfhren,
das Subjekt-Prdikat-Schema als a priori adquat fr die Beschreibung der Wirklichkeit vorauszusetzen. Dieses Moment wird in Dhrings kritischen Ausfhrungen nicht thematisiert. Ein
weiterer Unterschied zwischen beiden Standpunkten besteht darin, dass Dhring im Text Nr. 3
den Begriff der denkenden Substanz als eine falsche bertragung der Vorstellung, die man von
der Materie hegt, auf das Gebiet des Geistes bezeichnet, whrend Nietzsche die Genese des Begriffs des materiellen Dings fr eine Folge der Projektion des Glauben[s] an die Ich-Substanz
auf die uere Welt hlt (siehe GD, Die Vernunft in der Philosophie, 5).
Nietzsches Infragestellung des Begriffs Ich als Gedanken-Ursache wurde auch durch seine
Auseinandersetzung mit dem Buch von Drossbach, Maximilian: ber die scheinbaren und die
wirklichen Ursachen des Geschehens in der Welt. Halle an der Saale 1884 veranlasst. Siehe meinen diesbezglichen Nachweis im vorliegenden Band der Nietzsche-Studien.
Fischer, Kuno: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 3. und 4. Band: Immanuel Kant. Entwicklungsgeschichte und System der kritischen Philosophie. Mannheim 1860. Fischer, Kuno: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 1. Band: Descartes und seine Schule. Zweiter Theil: Descartes
Schule. Geulinx. Malebranche. Baruch Spinoza. 2. Aufl. Heidelberg 1865. Fr Exzerpte Nietzsches aus diesen Werken siehe z.B. BAW 3, S. 376 f., 379, 381 383, 387 390, 392 und Nachlass
1881, KSA 9, 11[193]; cf. auch die entsprechenden editorischen Anmerkungen in BAW 3,
S. 460 462 und KSA 14, S. 646.
Fischer, Kuno: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 1. Band: Descartes und seine Schule. Erster
Theil: Allgemeine Einleitung. Ren Descartes. 2. Aufl. Mannheim 1865.

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Obwohl ich keine zwingende Nachweise dafr finden konnte, dass Nietzsche diesen Teil
der Geschichte der neuern Philosophie tatschlich gelesen hat,40 gebe ich hier eine Stelle wieder,
die m.E. sehr wohl einen bedeutenden Einfluss auf Nietzsches Verstndnis und Kritik
des cogito, ergo sum ausgebt haben knnte:
Nichts ist gewi, als mein Zweifeln, mein Denken. Ich bin meines Denkens unmittelbar gewi, ich bin nur seiner gewi. Darum ist das einzige Princip der Gewiheit der
Satz: cogito ergo sum, ich bin ein denkendes Wesen, ich bin Geist.
Hier werden wir Mhe haben, die Einwrfe zu sondern und auseinanderzuhalten, die
in dichten Haufen gerade diesem Satz gegenberliegen. Es wird darum gut sein, sich
zu vergegenwrtigen, wie in jenem grundlegenden Satze eine Reihe von Stzen enthalten ist, die Descartes auch methodisch daraus ableitet. Darum wird auch in den
Einwrfen gegen das cogito sum mehr als eine Behauptung angegriffen.
Aus der Gewiheit, da ich denke, folgt 1) die Gewiheit dass ich bin, 2) dass ich ein
denkendes Wesen, also Geist bin. 3) Die Gewiheit des eigenen Daseins folgt nu r aus
dem Denken, aus keiner anderen Thtigkeit. 4) Aus dem Denken folgt nu r diese Gewiheit, nur die Selbstgewiheit und die Selbstgewiheit nur der denkenden Natur,
keine andere. 5) Diese Gewiheit folgt aus dem Denken u n m i tte l b a r.
Hier sind also folgende Haupteinwrfe mglich. 1) Aus dem Satz ich denke folgt
nicht der Satz ich bin Geist. Vielmehr folgt das Gegentheil. 2) Der Satz ich bin
folgt keineswegs nur aus dem Satz ich denke, sondern eben so gut aus jeder andern
Thtigkeit, die ich verrichte. Der Satz cogito ergo sum ist ein Schlu und als solcher
setzt er voraus, was er beweisen will, er ist also berhaupt gar keine Gewiheit. Den
ersten Einwurf erhebt besonders Hobbes, den zweiten Gassendi, den dritten widerlegt Descartes bei Gelegenheit der zweiten Einwrfe.41
Kuno Fischers Behauptung, dass im cogito, ergo sum eine Reihe von Stzen enthalten
ist, sowie die Auflistung von fnf solchen Stzen, die [a]us der Gewiheit, da ich
denke, folg[en], weisen groe hnlichkeiten mit folgender Passage aus JGB 16 auf:
Mag das Volk glauben, dass Erkennen ein zu Ende-Kennen sei, der Philosoph muss sich
sagen: wenn ich den Vorgang zerlege, der in dem Satz ich denke ausgedrckt ist, so bekomme ich eine Reihe von verwegenen Behauptungen, deren Begrndung schwer, vielleicht unmglich ist, zum Beispiel, dass ich es bin, der denkt, dass berhaupt ein Etwas
es sein muss, das denkt, dass Denken eine Thtigkeit und Wirkung seitens eines Wesens
ist, welches als Ursache gedacht wird, dass es ein Ich giebt, endlich, dass es bereits
fest steht, was mit Denken zu bezeichnen ist, dass ich we i s s, was Denken ist. Darber
hinaus betont Fischer im oben zitierten Text die unmittelbare Gewissheit des Denkens
und die Auffassung des Menschen als eines denkenden Wesens, zwei Momente, gegen die
sich Nietzsches Kritik am cogito, ergo sum oft richtet.

40

41

Solche Nachweise wren etwa Exzerpte bzw. Zitate aus diesem Buch im Gesamtwerk Nietzsches
oder das Vorhandensein eines von Nietzsche mit Lesezeichen versehenen Exemplars in seiner
nachgelassenen Bibliothek.
Fischer: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 1. Band. 1. Theil, a. a. O., S. 479. Diese Stelle
stammt aus dem Anfang des Abschnitts Die Einwrfe gegen das Princip der Gewiheit (ebd.,
S. 479 484).

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Maria Cristina Fornari

MARIA CRISTINA FORNARI

DIE SPUR SPENCERS IN NIETZSCHES
MORALISCHEM BERGWERKE

1. Ein Anfang aller Anfnge

Mit diesem Buche sagt Nietzsche von der Morgenrthe beginnt mein Feldzug
gegen die Moral (EH, M 1), eine Behauptung, die Mazzino Montinari nicht ganz zutreffend fand, angesichts der Tatsache, dass dieser Feldzug bereits in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches vorbereitet, angekndigt und zum Teil gefhrt worden ist.1
Wir sollten Nietzsches Behauptung jedoch ernst nehmen. Morgenrthe und Die Frhliche Wissenschaft, letztere in gewisser Weise eine Fortsetzung und Ergnzung der ersteren,2
beinhalten tatschlich etwas Neues (ein Anfang aller Anfnge3). Nietzsche gewinnt hier
einen neuen Blick auf Ursprung und Natur der Moral, ein Blick, der bereits in Richtung
Genealogie der Moral weist und ihn, wie er selber behauptet, vollkommen von seinen ersten,
noch ungeschickten und vorlufigen Hypothesen loslst.4
Das, was diesen Neuanfang zumindest teilweise rechtfertigt, der Grund fr diesen
Wandel, liegt, wie ich zu zeigen versuche, in Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit der englischen Philosophie, insbesondere mit der Evolutionstheorie Spencers und, wenngleich
in geringerem Mae, dem Utilitarismus John Stuart Mills, mit dem sich Nietzsche Ende
1879 / Anfang 1880 bewusst auseinandersetzt. Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Englndern in den Jahren 1879 bis 1882 ist in der Tat alles andere als zufllig und entscheidend
fr Nietzsches Gedanken zu Geschichte und Natur der Moral und ihrer weiteren Entwicklung.
Nietzsches Beziehung zur englischen Philosophie des Utilitarismus und der Evolutionstheorie sowie deren herausragenden Vertretern wird von den Nietzsche-Interpreten bis heute unterschtzt. Zu sehr verlassen sie sich auf Nietzsches eigene Aussagen, der seine Quellen jedoch nicht immer preisgibt und manchmal sogar dazu neigt,
sie unter der Maske einer offenen Gegnerschaft zu verbergen, sodass sie zwar Nietzsches polemischen Absichten erkennen und hervorheben, nicht jedoch seine konstruktiven.

3
4

Vgl. Montinari, Mazzino: Aurora nellopera di Nietzsche. In: Colli, Giorgio/Montinari, Mazzino
(Ed.): Opere di Friedrich Nietzsche. Milano 1964ff. Bd. V. S. 1.
Wie wir wissen, gehen in Die frhliche Wissenschaft Aufzeichnungen ein, die Nietzsche ursprnglich als Fortsetzung der Morgenrthe geplant hatte (Buch 6 9).
Nietzsche an Heinrich Kselitz, 18. Juli 1880, KSB 6, Nr. 40.
Vgl. GM, Vorrede, 4.

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311

hnlich wie bei Paul Re, in dem die meisten Interpreten eine eher beilufige und marginale Gestalt in der geistigen Entwicklung Nietzsches erblickt haben,5 wurden auch bei
Spencer nur die Angriffe, die sich in Nietzsches Werk und Nachlass finden, hervorgehoben.6 Wenngleich schon frh klar war, dass Spencer eine gewisse Rolle in Nietzsches Denken spielte,7 so doch nur als achtbarer, aber mittelmssiger Verteter der modernen Ideen,
5

Mit der tatschlichen Bedeutung Paul Res hat sich vor allem Hubert Treiber auseinandergesetzt, u.a. in seinen Abhandlungen: Treiber, Hubert: Wahlverwandtschaften zwischen Nietzsches Idee eines Klosters fr freiere Geister und Webers Idealtypus der puritanischen Sekte.
In: Nietzsche-Studien 21 (1992). S. 326 362; ders.: Zur Genealogie einer Science positive de la
morale en Allemagne. Die Geburt der r()ealistischen Moralwissenschaft aus der Idee einer
monistischen Naturkonzeption. In: Nietzsche Studien 22 (1993). S. 165 221, vor allem aber mit
seiner Edition der Schriften Res: Re, Paul: Gesammelte Werke 1875 1885. Hg. von Hubert
Treiber. Berlin, New York 2004.
Nietzsches Kritik richtet sich in erster Linie gegen das Zweckdenken Spencers, welcher zu wissen glaubt, welches die fr die Entwicklung eines organischen Wesens be gnstigste n Ums t n d e seien. Diese Bedingungen sind fr Nietzsche jedoch unerkennbar und keinesfalls
einheitlich, sondern Ergebnis eines Zusammenspiels der verschiedensten Triebe, einschlielich
der bsen und ungnstigen (vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[456], 11[43] u. [73]). Gewisse
Nachteile, die aus der Nichtanpassung des Menschen an seine Umgebung resultieren, knnten
sich ebenso gut als Vorzeichen neuer Mglichkeiten und unerwarteter Entwicklungen entpuppen. Im Gegensatz zu Spencers Behauptung, dass der Mensch sich in eine einzige, vorgegebene
Richtung entwickle, behauptet Nietzsche: In jedem Falle giebt es nicht Eine Handlung, die zu
thun ist, sondern so viele als es Ideale des vollkommenen Menschen giebt (Nachlass 1880
1882, KSA 9, 11[37]), es existiert kein absolutes Ziel der Menschheit. Gerade weil das Glck auf
entgegengesetzten Wegen erreicht wird, lt sich keine Ethik bestimmen (gegen Spencer)
(Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 8[12]), ja mehr noch: Spencers Vorstellung von der Zukunft des
Menschen ist nicht das Erg ebniss der Wissenschaft, sondern vielmehr ein Wunsch, der
aus seinen gegenwrtigen Trieben abgeleitet ist (vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 8[35]), und
gerade nicht die Verkrperung eines innewendigen psychologischen Hangs (vgl. Nachlass
1884 1885, KSA 11, 35[31]; Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 7[247]). Die modernen Ideale frchten aber das starke Individuum und bevorzugen eine einheitliche d. h. leicht vorhersehbare
Menschheit. Herr Herbert Spencer ist ein dcadent: mit dieser soziologisch gefassten Wendung
bezeichnet Nietzsche das niedergehende, alle organisatorische Kraft ermangelnde Leben
(GD, Streifzge 37). Die Krmer-Philosophie des Herrn Spencer (Nachlass 1885 1887,
KSA 12, 10[118]) idealisiere eine Welt vlliger Gleichheit und spontaner Kooperation. Spencer
setzt immer Gleichheit der Menschen voraus (vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 1[98]) und
deren Transformation in ntzliche Instrumente im Dienste des Ganzen. Aber dann werden
die Einzelnen immer schwcher es ist die Geschichte vom Untergang der Menschheit, wo das
Princip der Uninteressirtheit des vivre pour autrui und die Socialitt herrschen! (Nachlass
1880 1882, KSA 9, 10[D60]). Es ist die Geschichte einer entkrfteten Menschheit; eine
Menschheit mit solchen Spencerschen Perspektiven als letzten Perspektiven schiene uns der
Verachtung, der Vernichtung werth (FW 373; vgl. auch EH, Warum ich ein Schicksal, 4).
Vgl. u.a. Selle, Carl, Friedrich: Herbert Spencer und Friedrich Nietzsche. Vereinigung der
Gegenstze auf Grund einer neuen These. Diss. Leipzig 1902. Selle ist einer der ersten, der eine
Parallele zwischen den beiden Autoren sah, wenngleich er sie als Antipoden betrachtete. Scharrenbroich hingegen sieht Spencer im Umfeld einer angeblich utilitaristischen Auffassung Nietzsches, die er zur Zeit von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches von Paul Re bernommen habe. Was
Nietzsche Spencer vorwerfe, sei seine Kargheit, sein trockener Rationalismus, der ihm aus
Mangel an lebendigen und reichen Trieben hervorzugehen schien; Spencer will intensiveres
Fungieren der vorhandenen Lebensfunktionen, Nietzsche ein physiologisch hheres Dasein der
zuknftigen Menschheit (Scharrenbroich, Heinrich: Nietzsches Stellung zum Eudmonismus.
Bonn 1913. S. 44 f.). Aber welcher Unterschied zwischen Nietzsche und Spencer! bemerkte be-

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Maria Cristina Fornari

welcher vollkommen unschuldig die eigenen Verfalls-Instinkte als N o r m des sociologischen Werthurteils nimmt.8 Zusammen mit Mill, in gewisser Weise auch mit Darwin, und
den modernen Sozialisten kann er als bloes Kapitel in der Geschichte der altruistischen
Missverstndnisse in der europischen Moral abgehakt werden.9 Erst in jngster Zeit hat
Gregory Moore die Aufmerksamkeit auf den englischen Philosophen gelenkt und die Rolle,
die er in Nietzsches berlegungen zu einer strikt biologistischen Moralauffassung spielte,
beleuchtet.10 berlegungen, die in der Tat erst mit Nietzsches eingehender Auseinandersetzung mit diesem hervorragenden Vertreter der zeitgenssischen Philosophie einsetzen und
einen Dialog in Gang bringen, der zu teilweise berraschenden Ergebnissen fhrt, die nur
ein genaues Studium des Nachlasses und des Extratexts ans Licht bringen kann.
Im begrenzten Rahmen dieser Abhandlung mchte ich zeigen, wie die Resultate dieses Dialogs gerade in die Morgenrthe (und in die Aufzeichnungen aus dem entsprechenden
Zeitraum, denen wir hier nicht in vollem Umfang gerecht werden knnen) einflieen, die
gewissermaen als Auffangbecken fr die durch Spencer angeregten berlegungen fungiert. Ich will hier nicht in erster Linie auf die exakten Bezge zwischen den einzelnen
Aphorismen und ihren Quellen, die groenteils bekannt sind, eingehen, sondern zusammenfassend den roten Faden dieser berlegungen, oder besser die Hauptader dieses
moralischen Bergwerks freilegen, von der die einzelnen Brocken (die Aphorismen) lediglich die sichtbaren Spuren darstellen. Vielleicht liegt hier, um in Nietzsches Bild zu
bleiben,11 der leitende Gang und Ausweg: Wenn das stimmt, ist tatschlich Spencer der
Katalysator, oder zumindest einer der Katalysatoren, fr die entschiedene Hinwendung
zu einer verstrkt biologistischen Auffassung der Entstehungsgeschichte der Moral.12
Whrend Nietzsche in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches eine deskriptive, ja beinahe erzhlte Geschichte der moralischen Empfindungen im Laufe ihrer kulturellen und sozialen Entwicklung skizzierte, setzen tatschlich erst mit Beginn der 80er Jahre berlegungen zu einer mglichen Physiologie der Moral ein. Erst mit der Lektre Spencers und

8
9

10

11

12

reits Tille, Alexander: Von Darwin bis Nietzsche. Leipzig 1895. S. 213 14, whrend Richter
Selle vorwarf, Nietzsche unterstellt zu haben, er lasse Spencer nur als Soziologen und Moralisten
gelten: Wissen wir denn nicht, dass das ganze Werk Spencers durch und durch biologistisch ist?
Ihn als Soziologen kennen heit, ihn als Biologen kennnen. Trotz der geringen Sympathie, die
Nietzsche dem englischen Philosophen entgegenbringt, ist dessen Einfluss auf die Soziologie
und biologistische Moral Nietzsches fr Richter unbestreitbar (Richter, Charles: Nietzsche et les
thories biologiques contemporaines. Paris 1911. S. 29).
GD, Streifzge 37.
Vgl. Marti, Urs: Der groe Pbel- und Sklavenaufstand. Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit
Revolution und Demokratie. Stuttgart 1993. S. 162. Marti verzichtet in seiner exakten Aufarbeitung von Nietzsches Verhltnis zur Moderne auf eine Auseinandersetzung mit Spencer und konzentriert sich auf John Stuart Mill. hnlich verfhrt Brose (Brose, Karl: Sklavenmoral. Nietzsches Sozialphilosophie. Bonn 1990. S. 132162), der von einer angeblichen Einheit ausgeht und
beide Denker zusammen abhandelt, wobei Spencer nur implizit auftaucht. Vgl. auch Ottmann,
Henning: Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche. 2. Aufl. Berlin, New York 1999. S. 131137.
Moore, Gregory: Nietzsche, Biology and Methaphor. Cambridge 2002; ders.: Nietzsche, Spencer and the Ethics of Evolution. In: The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 23 (2002). S. 1 20. Unter
den italienischen Abhandlungen vgl. Bucchi, Stefano: Ereditariet e sentimenti morali. In: Rivista di Filosofia 81/2 (1990). S. 237 261.
Vgl. Nietzsche an Heinrich Kselitz, 18. Juli 1880, KSB 6, Nr. 40: Dabei grabe ich mit Eifer in
meinem moralischen Bergwerke und komme mir dabei mitunter ganz unterirdisch vor es
scheint mir jetzt so als ob ich inzwischen den leitenden Gang und Ausweg gefunden htte, indessen will so etwas hundertmal geglaubt und verworfen sein.
Vgl. Moore: Nietzsche, Spencer and the Ethics of Evolution, a.a. O., S. 3.

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verwandter Autoren (wie Fouille und Espinas, mit denen er sich zur gleichen Zeit auseinandersetzt) konkretisiert sich in Nietzsche der Gedanke einer physiologischen Herleitung der Moral aus der Vorherrschaft der Triebe.
Wenn schlielich die Bedeutung der von Foucault so deutlich hervorgehobenen,13
methodologischen Unterscheidung zwischen Ursprung und Herkunft auf die Distanzierung von den englischen Moralisten zurckgeht, die angeblich nicht in der Lage waren,
von den moralischen Thatsachen, die sie selbst verkrperten, zu abstrahieren (vgl. JGB
211), so kommt Nietzsche meiner Meinung nach doch erst, nachdem er sich eingehend
mit der Geschichte der altruistischen Moral auseinandergesetzt hat, zu einer klaren Unterscheidung zwischen moralischem Urteil und Vorurteil, dem entscheidenden Gedanken dieser Schrift von 1881, wie aus dem Untertitel hervorgeht.

2. Erste Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Thema Moral

Schon seit seiner Jugend hat sich Nietzsche, wie wir wissen, mit der neueren englischen Philosophie auseinandergesetzt. Vor allem durch Albert Lange, aber auch Eduard
von Hartmann kommt er mit dem Positivismus und natrlich auch Darwins Evolutionstheorie in Kontakt, deren wissenschaftliche Annahmen er teilt, jedoch nicht ohne die dramatischen psychologischen Konsequenzen vorherzusehen. Das Thema des Darwinismus
und des schrecklichen Kampfes der Individuen und der Gattungen wurden von Nietzsche bereits 1868 gegen den Optimismus der Kantischen Teleologie ins Feld gefhrt,14
sowie gegen den philistrsen Optimismus eines Darwinianers sui generis, David Strauss,
gegen den sich die erste Unzeitgeme Betrachtung richtet.
Erst in der Mitte der 1870er Jahre jedoch bekommen die Englnder fr Nietzsche
paradigmatischen Stellenwert, als Chiffre der Moderne. Zu Beginn der zweiten Hlfte des
19. Jahrhunderts verkrperten die englische und die kontinentale, allen voran die deutsche Philosophie, die beiden entgegengesetzten Strmungen spekulativen Denkens: wissenschaftlich, tatsachenbewusst, vor allem modern die erste, idealistisch, romantisch,
traditionell metaphysisch die letztere. Wer in den Wissenschaften nicht die Sprache des
Empirismus spricht und vom Nutzen in der Moral, ist nicht auf der Hhe der Zeit, wie
der Schopenhauerianer Du Mont 1876 bekennt,15 und nur der eifrige und feine Geist der
englischen Skeptiker konnte Deutschland aus seinem dogmatischen Schlaf erwecken, in
den es durch den Missbrauch Hegelscher Kategorien und ein Festhalten an transzendentalen metaphysischen Systemen versunken war so zumindest hat es damals ein feiner
italienischer Beobachter der europischen Lage gesehen.16
Es ist leicht nachvollziehbar, wie Nietzsche, der allem Neuen gegenber offen war
und bereit, jeden Hauch zeitgenssischer Kultur einzuatmen, sich ganz von selbst dem

13

14
15

16

Vgl. Foucault, Michel: Nietzsche, La gnalogie, lhistoire. In: ders.: Hommage Jean Hyppolite.
Paris 1971. S. 145 172.
Vgl. BAW 3, S. 371 394.
Du Mont, Emerich: Der Fortschritt im Lichte der Lehren Schopenhauers und Darwins. Leipzig
1876 (BN). Vorwort.
Vgl. Barzellotti, Giacomo: Le condizioni presenti della filosofia e il problema della morale. In:
Rivista di filosofia scientifica 1/5 (1882). S. 1 36; ders.: Il pessimismo filosofico in Germania e
il problema morale dei nostri tempi. In: Nuova Antologia 19 (1889). S. 246 270. 20 (1889).
S. 254 277. 21 (1889). S. 274 290.

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Maria Cristina Fornari

ersten dieser beiden Pole als dem modernsten und methodisch angemessensten zuwandte, nachdem er, von den metaphysischen Versuchungen befreit, in sich den Wunsch
versprt hatte, Licht auf Ursprung und Bedeutung unserer erkenntnistheoretischen und
moralischen Konstruktionen zu werfen vielleicht noch ohne genaue Kenntnis der Autoren, Themen und Probleme, aber in dem sicheren Gefhl, dass nur hier die Mglichkeit
zu einer berwindung der Metaphysik und einem konkreten Studium der Moral gegeben
sein wrde, das bislang einem transzendent Bereich angehrte.17
Der radikale Empirismus und Naturalismus der englischen Philosophen ist dazu angetan, jeglichen metaphysischen Trost und jegliche anthropozentrische Illusion zunichte
zu machen. Der Darwinsche Mensch, jenes absolut natrliche Wesen, das im Lauf der
Zeit auf die Herausforderungen einer feindlichen Umgebung reagiert und sowohl Verteidigungs- wie Erhaltungsstrategien entwickelt, verkrpert den Schlussstein zum Verstndnis der wirklichen Natur all dessen, was absolut, dauerhaft, berhistorisch erscheint. Vor
diesem Hintergrund ist Moral nichts anderes als das Ergebnis einer psycho-physischen
Organisation und einer kulturellen Fixierung, von deren Entstehung und ursprnglicher
Motivation nur noch Spuren erkennbar sind. Der moralische Mensch steht, wie wir aus
einem wichtigen Aphorismus von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches wissen, der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht nher, als der physische Mensch (MA 37). Dies ist die programmatische Behauptung, die ber dem Buch fr freie Geister steht, und die Nietzsche
zusammen mit Paul Re aus einer radikalen bernahme des Darwinschen Paradigmas
herleitet.18
Zur Zeit von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches prft Nietzsche zusammen mit Paul Re,
den er aufgrund seiner wissenschaftlichen Vorlieben und offenen Anhngerschaft an
Darwin als Englnder bezeichnet, die Mglichkeit eines utilitaristischen Ursprungs der
Moral. Es scheint ihm nicht unmglich, die moralische Wertetafel aus einem Kanon utilitaristischer Bedrfnisse, allen voran der Selbsterhaltung, abzuleiten, unter notwendiger
Einbeziehung uralter Determinanten wie Lust und Schmerz. Nietzsche teilt grtenteils
Res anthropologisches Urteil ber die ursprngliche Einheit von gut und ntzlich und
schliet, gesttzt auf Darwins berlegungen zum sozialen Instinkt und zum Elterninstinkt in Die Abstammung des Menschen, in dieser Phase nicht aus, dass die Moral zu den
erhaltenden Strategien gehre, die dem Gemeinwohl dienen, und sich durch Gewhnung
im Lauf der Zeit in einen Automatismus verwandelt haben.
Es berrascht also nicht, wenn Nietzsche Ende 1879, als er diese Studien intensiviert,
das Bedrfnis hat, sich mit Spencer und dessen Entwurf einer moralischen Grundlegung

17

18

Im brigen bezeugt ein Band von Kelly, wie sehr damals Wissenschaft mit Darwinismus
einherging und wie sehr letzterer der in Deutschland hauptschlich durch Zeitschriften- und
Zeitungsartikel weite Verbreitung fand und Mitte der siebziger Jahre den Hhepunkt des Interesses erreichte sehr bald dazu diente, als Waffe im Kampf gegen die Festungen des konservativen Establishment eingesetzt zu werden. Der Darwinismus eroberte die wissenschaftliche
Gemeinde Deutschlands sehr schnell und grndlich. Von Anfang an galt er als progressive Ansicht. Die ersten Anhnger waren junge Forscher, die auerhalb der gngigen universitren Strmungen standen entweder an kleinen Universitten oder ohne akademische Stellung []. Im
Gegensatz dazu waren die ersten Gegner Darwins die ltesten und arriviertesten Mitglieder der
akademischen Gemeinde und die konservativsten von einem religisen Gesichtspunkt aus.
(Kelly, Alfred: The Descent of Darwin. The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany,
1860 1914. Chapel Hill 1981. S. 21).
Vgl. Re, Paul: Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen. Chemnitz 1877. S. VIII.

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315

auseinander zu setzen, die in der Evolutionsgeschichte nachgewiesen werden kann.19 Ein

Entwurf, der unter anderem in England, auf neuer Basis, zu einer heftigen Debatte ber
den Ursprung des Bewusstseins gefhrte hat, die Nietzsche mit groem Interesse verfolgte. In seiner Bibliothek stehen unter anderem Werke von Bain, Lubbock und Tyndall,
die sich mit dieser Frage auseinandersetzen, vor allem aber Lecky, dessen ausfhrliches,
an Bezgen und Zitaten reiches erstes Kapitel der Sittengeschichte Europas Nietzsche zu
Beginn der achtziger Jahre als regelrechtes Handbuch und Kompendium gedient hat.20
Wenn Nietzsche also 1880 anfngt, mit groem Interesse Die Thatsachen der Ethik 21 zu lesen, tut er dies vermutlich eher auf der Suche nach Besttigung als nach Ablehnung.

3. Die Absurditt des guten Zwecks

Nietzsche setzt sich mit dem Utilitarismus Spencers auseinander, um eine Hypothese
zu berprfen, ist aber gleich zu Beginn mit einer offensichtlichen Unregelmigkeit
konfrontiert: Wo Spencer berall, im gesamten Universum einen Fortschritt von Einfachen zum Komplexen, vom Homogenen zum Heterogenen sieht, mit einer von der Natur selbst als Zweck diktierten und durch die Evolutionsgesetzte geregelten fortschreitenden Perfektionierung aller Organismen das, was man im moralischen Bereich gut22

19

20

21

22

Von Spencer hat Nietzsche bereits im Sommer 1875 die Einleitung in das Studium der Sociologie
(Leipzig 1875) gelesen. Ausgehend von einer einzigen Erwhnung dieses Buches in Nietzsches
Aufzeichnungen datiert Thomas Brobjer (Nietzsches Ethics of Character. A Study of Nietzsches Ethics and its Place in the History of Moral Thinking. Uppsala 1995. S. 146) die Lektre
auf Herbst 1883. In Wirklichkeit bildet ein Abschnitt aus der Einleitung die Quelle zu FW 43:
Vgl. Fornari, Maria Cristina: Beitrge zur Quellenforschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 27 (1998).
S. 558.
Lecky, William Edward H.: Sittengeschichte Europas von Augustus bis auf Karl den Grossen.
Leipzig, Heidelberg 1879 (BN).
Spencer, Herbert: Die Thatsachen der Ethik. Autorisirte deutsche Ausgabe. Nach der zweiten
englischen Auflage bersetzt von Prof. Dr. B. Vetter. Stuttgart 1879 (BN). Nietzsches Interesse
an Spencer ist ernst und drngend. Im November 1879 fragt er seinen Verleger nach etwas
von diesem hochberhmt!en" Philosophen, hchst lehrreich fr uns, weil er inmitten ungeheurer englischer Material-Sammlungen sitzt und schlgt sogar eine deutsche bersetzung von
dessen soeben in London erschienenem Buch The Date of Ethics vor (Nietzsche an Ernst
Schmeitzner, 22. November 1879, KSB 5, Nr. 907; 28. Dezember 1879, KSB 5, Nr. 921). In
Wirklichkeit war Spencers Buch bereits auf deutsch erschienen: Nietzsche erwarb diese bersetzung am 5. Februar 1880 durch die Buchhandlung Domrich in Naumburg und lie sie sich von
der Mutter nach Venedig schicken (Nietzsche an Franziska Nietzsche, 27. Mrz 1880, KSB 6,
Nr. 18).
Der Satz, dass derjenige ein ideal sittlicher Mensch ist, dessen bewegliches Gleichgewicht vollkommen ist
oder sich der Vollkommenheit ausserordentlich nhert, erhlt, wenn wir ihn in physiologische
Sprechweise bersetzen, die Form, dass in jenem die Functionen jeder Art in gehriger Weise erfllt
werden. Jede Function hat irgend eine directe oder indirecte Beziehung zu den Bedrfnissen des
Lebens: schon die Thatsache ihrer Existenz als eines Ergebnisses der Entwicklung ist an sich ein
Beweis, dass sie unmittelbar oder auf Umwegen durch die Anpassung innerer an ussere Thtigkeiten hervorgebracht worden ist. Demzufolge ist also Nicht-Ausfhrung derselben in normalem
Maassstabe nichts anderes als Nicht-Befriedigung eines Erfordernisses zu vollkommenem Leben. [] Der
sittliche Mensch kennzeichnet sich also dadurch, dass seine Functionen und zwar sind es, wie wir
sahen, deren viele und von verschiedenster Art smmtlich gerade in dem Grade ausgefhrt

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Maria Cristina Fornari

nennen wrde ist Nietzsche von Anfang an skeptisch, was die Mglichkeit angeht, diesen Zweck eindeutig zu bestimmen, obwohl er bereit ist, das Gute als dasjenige zu
definieren was einem Ziele dient.23 Vielmehr beginnt Heft NV1 genau mit der Lektre
von Spencers Thatsachen der Ethik, und einer Reihe von drngenden Fragen darber, was
aus moralischer Sicht die beste Handlung sein knnte:
Wie soll man handeln? So da der Einzelne mglichst erhalten bleibt? Oder so da die
Rasse mglichst erhalten bleibt? Oder so da eine andere Rasse mglichst erhalten
bleibt? (Moralitt der Thiere) Oder so da das Leben berhaupt erhalten bleibt? Oder
so da die hchsten Gattungen des Lebens erhalten bleiben? Die Interessen dieser
verschiedenen Sphren gehen auseinander.24
Spencer, dieser Verherrlicher der Selektions-Zweckmigkeit (Nachlass 1880
1882, KSA 9, 11[43]), glaubt zu wissen, was begnstigende Umstnde einer organischen
Entwicklung sind, und in welche Richtung sich die Menschheit bewegt. Er behauptet,
dass es in der Natur um eine progressive Anpassung von Organen und Funktionen geht,
mit dem offensichtlichen Ziel, das Leben zu krftigen und zu erhalten, worin er das nahe
und ferne Ziel des Evolutionsprozesses sieht. Diese Behauptung enthlt eine implizite
Wertannahme, die Nietzsche nicht gelten lassen will. Dem Gedanken, dass dasjenige gut
ist, was auf Verlngerung des Lebens bis zu seiner ussersten Grenze hin25 wirkt, hlt Nietzsche
entgegen: Zu wissen, dies ist gesund, dies erhlt am Leben, dies schdigt die Nachkommen ist durchaus noch kein Regulativ der Moral! Warum leben? Warum durchaus froh
leben? Warum Nachkommen? (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[123]). Diese Annahme
impliziert nicht nur das Vorurteil, dass es eine Richtung gebe, auf die hin sich die Menschheit zu entwickeln habe, sondern vor allem auch eine Annahme ber den Sinn dieses
ganz und gar nicht selbstverstndlichen Werthes der Werthe, das Leben (Nachlass
1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[105]), dessen Genealogie erst noch zu erforschen ist (M 106 u.
M 108).26
Im vierten Kapitel der Thatsachen der Ethik, ber das sich Nietzsche ausfhrlich auslsst, besteht Spencer darauf, dass die bereinstimmung der Handlungen mit ihrem Ziel
das Kriterium fr deren moralische Bewertung sei. Die moralischen Gesetze mssen also
von den natrlichen Folgen der Handlungen abgeleitet werden, oder, was dasselbe ist, von

23

24
25

26

werden, dass sie den Existenzbedingungen gehrig angepasst sind. (Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik,
a. a. O., S. 82 83, mit deutlichen Lesespuren und einem Ausrufezeichen am Rand. Diese und die
folgenden Unterstreichungen entsprechen den Unterstreichungen in Nietzsches Exemplar der
Thatsachen der Ethik).
Alle Moralisten haben gemeinsame Censuren ber gut und bse, je nach sympathischen und
egoistischen Trieben. Ich finde gut, was einem Ziele dient: aber das gute Ziel ist Unsinn. Denn
berall heit es gut wozu?, Gut ist immer nur ein Ausdruck fr ein Mittel. Der gute Zweck ist
ein gutes Mittel zu einem Zweck (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[75]).
Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 1[4]. Vgl. auch 3[171] u. 4[12].
Wir drfen in jedem Fall die Frage stellen: ist die Handlung geeignet, das vollkommene Leben in der
Gegenwart aufrecht zu erhalten, und wirkt sie auf Verlngerung des Lebens bis zu seiner ussersten Grenze hin?
Je nachdem die Antwort auf jede dieser Fragen bejahend oder verneinend ausfllt, wird die
betreffende Handlung damit von selbst als gut oder bse bezeichnet, wenigstens was ihre unmittelbaren Folgen betrifft, gleichgltig welche Tragweite sie fr die Zukunft haben mag. (Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 84).
M 106 in Anlehnung an J. Baumann (vgl. Orsucci, Andrea: Orient-Okzident. Nietzsches Versuch
einer Loslsung vom europischen Weltbild. Berlin, New York 1996. S. 199).

Die Spur Spencers in Nietzsches moralischem Bergwerke

317

der Betrachtung der natrlichen Beziehung zwischen Handlungen und deren Folgen,27
die im sozialen, psychischen und moralischen Bereich genauso wirken wie im physischen.
Die evolutive Methode enthllt so ihren heuristischen Wert: Aufgabe der Ethik ist es
demnach, Normen herauszuarbeiten, die den allgemeinen Existenzbedingungen entsprechen, jene natrliche Causalitt,28 an deren Gutheit nicht gezweifelt werden
darf.29 Den angeblichen Causalitten in Gebieten, wo in Wahrheit es nur ein Hintereinander giebt, danken viele Illusionen ber die Moral ihre Entstehung (Nachlass
1880 1882, KSA 9, 1[76]), gibt Nietzsche mit Baumann zu bedenken, und bestreitet,
dass die Einschtzung der Folgen, fr die Bestimmung moralischer Normen ausschlaggebend sein knne.
Spencer meint, das eigentlich Moralische sei, die wirklichen natrlichen Folgen einer
Handlung in Betracht zu ziehen nicht Lob Tadel Strafe. Aber dies i n B e tr a ch t
ziehen war un mora lisch ! Die That wird gethan, wa s d a b e i a u ch h e r a u s kommt! (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 12[185])
Spencer mache sich als schlechter Psychologe nicht klar, wie das Bewusstsein der
Causalitten auf moralischem Gebiet zur Auflsung der normierenden Kraft der Sittlichkeit fhre,30 und wie gerade die Verachtung der wirklichen Ursachen und Folgen
einer Handlung und ihre Ersetzung durch eine Welt p h a n ta s ti s ch e r C a u s a l i t te n
die Errichtung einer eingebildeten moralischen Welt begnstige (vgl. M 10 u. M 33):
Es ist nicht wahr, da gut und schlecht die Ansammlung von Erfahrung ber zweckmig und unzweckmig ist [] [schreibt Nietzsche]. Das wichtigste: b l i n d e s G e horchen, wo befohlen wird, und bergang der Furcht in Verehrung. Heiligung
des Verehrten! (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[456], vgl. auch 6[455])
Auf diese erbliche Verkehrtheit des menschlichen Intellekts werden wir noch zurckkommen.

27
28
29

30

Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 60.

Ebd.
Ein hinlnglich fest eingewurzeltes Bewusstsein von der Causalitt erzeugt den unerschtterlichen Glauben, dass von den wichtigsten bis herab zu den gleichgltigsten Handlungen der
Menschen in der Gesellschaft Folgen ausgehen mssen, welche, ganz abgesehen von jeder gesetzlichen Einwirkung, in hherem oder geringerem Grade zum Wohl oder zum bel der Menschen ausschlagen mssen. []. Ist es nicht klar, dass, wenn die Gesetzgebung auf der Ausbung gewisser
Handlungen besteht, welche naturgemss wohlthtige Wirkungen haben, und andere verbietet,
welche natrgemss verderblich wirken, dass dann diese Handlungen nicht etwa durch die Gesetzgebung zu guten oder bsen gemacht werden, sondern vielmehr die Gesetzgebung ihre eigene Autoritt von den natrlichen Folgen der Handlung ableitet? Nichtanerkennung dieser Wahrheit aber ist
nichts anderes als Nichtanerkennung der natrlichen Causalitt. (Spencer: Die Thatsachen der
Ethik, a.a. O., S. 59 60).
Spencer verwechselt die Systeme der Moral wie soll gehandelt werden? mit der Entstehung der
Moral. Der Mangel der Einsicht in die Causalitt ist fr letztere wichtig (Nachlass 1880 1882,
KSA 9, 1[106]).

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Maria Cristina Fornari

4. Die vielfltige Welt der Triebe

Gerade aus dem Respekt vor den Folgen leitet Spencer seine Begrndung einer rationalen Ethik ab: seine Wissenschaft von guten Handeln, welche diejenigen Handlungen
herausstellt und bestimmt, die die Entwicklung als gut im Sinne des Evolutionsprozesses selektioniert hat.31 An erster Stelle steht die Selbsterhaltung und Pflege der Nachkommen und vor allem die gegenseitige Untersttzung beim Erreichen der Zwecke, eine
natrliche Folge des von Nietzsche heftig kritisierten physiologischen Primats der altruistischen Instinkte. Der arterhaltende Trieb, von allen Vererbungen am sichersten vererbt welches ist der Ausgangspunkt?, fragt sich Nietzsche zu Beginn von Heft NV1,
das die frischen Eindrcke seiner Lektre der Thatsachen der Ethik enthlt.32
Spencers berlegungen zum Instinkt im Hinblick auf Selbsterhaltung und Ernhrung
(Spencers Lieblingsthema, aber auch dasjenige von Schneider und Espinas33), berzeugen
Nietzsche von der Unmglichkeit, den Trieben einen Zweck und eine Richtung zuzuschreiben. Unser Instinkt der Triebe greift in jedem Falle nach dem nchsten ihm Angenehmen: aber nicht nach dem Ntzlichen (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 11[5]), und
wenn es einen positiven Ausgang gibt, wie im Fall der ausgebrteten Eier,34 so handelt es
sich um das zufllige Ergebnis eines gnstigen Zufalls und gewiss nicht um das Resultat
einer a priori stabilierten Ausrichtung der Natur auf die beste aller Entwicklungen hin.
Das physiologische Primat des Altruismus ist unhaltbar. Spencers Behauptung, dass jede
bewusste oder unbewusste Handlung, die das Opfer des Einzelnen zum Zwecke der Lebenssteigerung eines Anderen fordere, zweifellos altruistisch sei35, entgegnet Nietzsche:
Die Erzeugung einer Nachkommenschaft ist nicht altruistisch. Das einzelne Thier folgt
dabei einer Lust, an der es oft zu Grunde geht (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 1[110]).
Und weiter:
NB NB. Es giebt keinen Selbsterhaltungstrieb sondern das Angenehme suchen,
dem Unangenehmen entgehen erklrt alles, was man jenem Trieb zuschreibt. Es giebt
auch keinen Trieb als Gattung fortexistiren zu wollen. Das ist alles Mythologie (noch
bei Spencer und Littr). (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[145]).

31

32
33

34
35

Die von mir vertretene Ansicht ist die, dass die Ethik im eigentlichen Sinne die Wissenschaft vom
guten Handeln die Entscheidung, wie und war um gewisse Handlungsweisen verderblich und gewisse andere wohlthtig sind, zu ihrem Gegenstande hat. Diese guten und schlechten Resultate knnen
nicht zufllige, sondern mssen nothwendige Folgen der Ordnung der Dinge sein, und meiner
Ansicht nach ist es nun die Hauptaufgabe der Moralwissenschaft, aus den Gesetzen des Lebens
und den Existenzbedingungen abzuleiten, welche Arten des Handelns nothwendigerweise Glck und welche Unglck zu erzeugen streben. Hat sie dies gethan, so mssen ihre Deductionen als die Gesetze
des Handelns anerkannt und ohne Rcksicht auf eine directe Beurtheilung von Glck oder
Elend verfolgt werden. (Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 62).
Vorst. 3[85] (N V 1,156: KGW V 3, S. 363).
Schneider, Georg Heinrich: Der Thierische Wille. Leipzig [1880]; ders.: Der menschliche Wille
vom Standpunkte der neueren Entwickelungstheorien (Des Darwinismus). Berlin 1882 (beide
BN); Espinas, Alfred: Die thierischen Gesellschaften. Eine vergleichend-psychologische Untersuchung. Braunschweig 1879 (BN).
Vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 1[54], 1[56], 3[85].
Vgl. Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., Cap. XII: Altruismus versus Egoismus,
S. 219 237.

Die Spur Spencers in Nietzsches moralischem Bergwerke

319

Die Welt der Triebe kennt folglich kein vorherbestimmtes Ziel. Im Gegenteil, das Ziel
des Individuums ndert und erneuert sich mit seinen Trieben und Stimmungen. Die
letzten Ziele, schreibt Nietzsche, sind gar nicht auf einmal durch Begriffe zu erreichen: wir knnen immer nur Ziele s o weit sehen, als wir Triebe vorher haben. Wie
weit unsre Triebe wachsen knnen, wei niemand (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[18])
und niemand wei, mit welcher Strke sie sich bemerkbar machen. Was wei der Mensch
ber sich selbst? Nichts kann doch unvollstndiger sein, als das Bild der gesamten Triebe,
die sein Wesen konstituieren. Kaum dass er die grberen beim Namen nennen kann: ihre
Zahl und Strke, ihre Ebbe und Flut, ihr Spiel und Widerspiel unter einander, und vor Allem die Gesetze ihrer Ernhrung bleiben ihm ganz unbekannt (vgl. M 119).
Dieses polypenartige Wesen, das wir sind, macht seine Erfahrungen blind, wobei vielleicht die besten Ergebnisse herauskommen (gerade diejenigen, die Spencer als unzweckmig verurteilt htte). Infolgedessen wird der ganze ausgewachsene Polyp etwas
ebenso Zuflliges sein, wie es sein Werden ist, schreibt Nietzsche in Aphorismus 119 der
Morgenrthe, indem er das, was fr Spencer und Espinas das herausragende Beispiel einer
funktionalen Organisation war, in eine Metapher verwandelt.36 Unsere Handlungen sind
Versuche, Spiele mit den Trieben und ihrem Appetit, spielende uerungen des Dranges nach Ttigkeit, welche wir durch die Theorie der Zwecke missdeuten und falsch verstehen.
eine angenehme Handlung thue ich nicht, weil ihr Zweck, ihr Ende eine angenehme
Empfindung mit sich bringt: sie ist nicht Mittel zu diesem Ende. Sondern das Angenehme ist so in sie gedrungen, da sie sofort, nich t e r s t a m En d e, angenehme
ist. Mit den Zwecken machen wir Menschen uns vernnftiger als wir sind! Warum
schmeckt uns diese Speise? Quem im finem? Keine Antwort! berall wo unsere
Triebe reden, ist der Zweck eine Grothuerei! (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9,
7[218]).

5. Im Dienste der Triebe

Die Dynamik der Triebe, ber die Nietzsche nicht zuletzt dank Spencer nachdenkt,
zwingt ihn, die zur Zeit von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches aufgestellte Hypothese zu korrigieren, derzufolge gute Handlungen diejenigen sind, die ursprnglich auf der Basis ihrer Ntzlichkeit selektioniert worden sind. Nietzsche gesteht seinen Irrtum in einer Aufzeichnung aus dem Jahr 1880 ein:
Nicht die verg essenen Motive und die Gewhnung an bestimmte Bewegungen ist
das Wesentliche wie ich f r her annahm. Sondern die zwecklosen Triebe von Lust
und Unlust. (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[366]).
Damit einher geht die Hypothese, dass es gerade der Trieb sei, der unweigerlich das
moralische Modell bestimme, wenngleich in einer alles andere als eindeutigen Richtung.
Die Werthtafel stimmt g a r nicht mit den Gra den d e s N u tz e n s (gegen Spencer)

36

Den Begriff der Ernhrung erweitern; sein Leben nicht falsch anlegen, wie es die thun, welche
blo ihre Erhaltung im Auge haben. Wir mssen unser Leben nicht uns durch die Hand schlpfen lassen, durch ein Ziel sondern die Frchte aller Jahreszeiten von uns einernten (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 11[2]).

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Maria Cristina Fornari

(Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 11[20]). Vielmehr scheint es der strkste Trieb zu sein, derjenige, der gerade das bergewicht hat, der den Verlauf einer mglichen Entwicklung bestimmt. Dies klingt fr Nietzsche wie eine Umkehr des Bisherigen.
Ich schlage das Bild vor: reizt es euch, so werdet ihr es nachahmen mssen. Nicht die
Ziele, sondern die Befriedigung des bereits vorhandenen Triebes zwingt zu dieser
oder jener Moral. N icht die Vernunft! wenn nicht im Dienste eines Triebes! (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[108]).
In diesem wie in zahlreichen anderen Fragmenten aus dem Herbst 1880 schlgt
Nietzsche eine Lesart der Entstehung der Moral vor, die von den leitenden Trieben ausgeht. Mchtige Triebe, die a posteriori die Annahme eines ethischen Systems erfordern,
das sie rechtfertigt (immer neue Versuche, diese Triebe nachtrglich mit der Wahrheit im
Einklang zu finden, Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[144]). Was bestimmt denn das
Wertherscheinen? Ein Trieb, der seinerseits nur innerhalb eines moralischen Systems
seine Sanktionierung erfhrt (M 38). Die Moral kommt, wenn der Trieb und die
Werthschtzung bestimmter Art schon da ist. Dies gilt von allen Ethiken (Nachlass
1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[123]).
Welches also ist der Trieb, der die moderne Moral bestimmt, die christliche Moral,
deren weltliche Gestalt nichts anderes ist als die utilitaristische Ethik, und die nicht nur
den Altruismus, die Gte und die Nchstenliebe als absolute Werte annimmt, sondern
diese unter umgekehrten Vorzeichen auch noch historisch zu rechtfertigen vorgibt (M 60,
M 132, M 146)?
Nietzsche ist, wie wir wissen, davon berzeugt, dass der Herdeninstinkt die physiologische Formierung sei, aus der sich die gesamte Kasuistik unserer heutigen Imperative
entwickle.37 Spencer verkrpert demnach mit seiner Auffassung einer Moral, die sich
ganz natrlich an den Bedrfnissen der Gattung orientiert, die konkrete Umsetzung dieses ethischen Modells. Die Charakterisierung des Menschen als Herdentier, die von der
Frhlichen Wissenschaft an zentrale Bedeutung erlangt, spielt, abgesehen von einem einmaligen Auftauchen in einem Fragment von 1873,38 bis zum Frhjahr 1881 keine Rolle mehr.
Es ist meiner Meinung nach erneut Spencer, der Nietzsche zu dieser Metapher ermutigt,
und ihm die Natur und die Rolle dieses uerst mchtigen primum mobile der Moral klar
macht.

37

38

Es ist nicht verwunderlich dass Nietzsche, der bislang mit einer Untersuchung der Triebe beschftigt war, zu einer Definition des Heerdeninstincts gelangt (Nietzsche verwendet den Ausdruck Heerdentrieb nur drei Mal, in Nachlass 1881 1882, KSA 9, 11 [185] und 11 [193], sowie
Nachlass 1885 1887, KSA 12, 8[1]). Die beiden Termini Instinkt und Trieb die von den
Interpreten hufig austauschbar verwendet werden, sind dies keinesfalls, und Nietzsche ist sich
ihres semantischen Unterschiedes durchaus bewusst, auch wenn er sich nicht immer daran hlt.
Die Instinkte erscheinen als das Ergebnis einer Selektion, Strukturierung und Verkrperung der
Triebe, eine Art Kristallisation dessen, was von den Trieben wahrgenommen wird. Nur so kann
Nietzsche den Herdenistinkt als das Ergebnis einer Fixierung gewaltiger uranfnglicher Determinanten, wie die Furcht, auf der Ebene des organischen Gedchtnisses auffassen. Die Bedeutung Spencers hierbei kann meiner Meinung nach nicht berschtzt werden.
Nachlass 1869 1874, KSA 7, 29[149].

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321

6. Genius der Gattung

Ich mag nun mit gutem oder bsem Blicke auf die Menschen sehen, ich finde sie
immer bei Einer Aufgabe, Alle und jeden Einzelnen in Sonderheit: Das zu thun, was
der Erhaltung der menschlichen Gattung frommt. Und zwar wahrlich nicht aus einem
Gefhl der Liebe fr diese Gattung, sondern einfach, weil Nichts in ihnen lter, strker, unerbittlicher, unberwindlicher ist, als jener Instinct, weil dieser Instinct eben
das Wesen unserer Art und Heerde ist (FW 1).
Im ersten Aphorismus der Frhlichen Wissenschaft betont Nietzsche die Prioritt eines
gegebenen moralischen Modells. Daher rhrt die Hartnckigkeit eines Instinkts, der quasi
wie ein physiologisches Substrat in unserer Natur weiterlebt. Er ist das Echo von Neigungen und Abneigungen ber ungeheure Zeitrume hinweg. Wie ist es mglich, dass sie sich
noch so deutlich bemerkbar machen?
In diesem Punkt war Spencer eindeutig: Ntzlichkeitserfahrungen, die sich im Verlauf
der Evolution herausgebildet und gefestigt haben, wurden in Form von Vernderungen
des Nervensystems organisch auf die nachfolgenden Generationen vererbt. Sie entwickelten sich in und zu gewissen Fhigkeiten moralischer Intuition zu einem gewissen
Gefhl richtigen und falschen Handelns, zu einer Art apriori, dem jedes Individuum
zwangslufig unterliegt. Das Bewusstsein wre demnach nichts weiter als eine Artikulation und Organisation der Instinkte, die im Gedchtnis ihren wertvollsten Verbndeten
fnde (Gedchtni hat Ursachen der Moralitt und wir haben es nicht in der Hand!
NB, schreibt Nietzsche in einer Aufzeichnung aus dem entsprechenden Zeitraum,
Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[344]).
Nietzsche erwgt diese Hypothese und findet sie sogar viel vernnftiger und psychologisch haltbarer als jene, welche den Ursprung der Moral im Vergessen der primitiven ntzlichen Motive des Handelns erblickte.39 Nicht das Vergessen, sondern das Einschreiben in die Akten des organischen Gedchtnisses der Gattung der Begriff wurde
1867 von Maudsley eingefhrt40 , das was diese fr ntzlich oder schdlich erachtet,
knnte das Bewutsein ausmachen und das Grundthema der Sittlichkeit.41 In dem Aphorismus Genius der Gattung aus der Frhlichen Wissenschaft scheint Nietzsche sogar die
historische und substantielle Aprioritt eines kollektiven Bewusstseins als zwangslufige
Konsequenz der Herdenbildung des Individuums zu teilen (insbesondere mit dem Spencer-Anhnger Espinas).
Das moralische Gefhl ist demnach erblich? Zunchst mchte man sich gegen die
Theorie der Vererbung so lange wehren als es geht, schreibt Nietzsche in einer Vorstufe zu
Aphorismus 34 der Morgenrthe, wo er sich genau diese Frage stellt. Der Aphorismus (wie
auch der nchste, Aphorismus 35) kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass moralische Gefhle zwar
bertragen werden, jedoch in Form von starken Neigungen und Abneigungen. Urteile und
Wertschtzungen vererben sich in Form von Gefhlen, auf denen dann spter sich unser
moralisches Urteil aufbaut. Der Vorschlag Spencers, demzufolge Zu- und Abneigungen
39
40

41

Vgl. GM I 3.
Von einem organischen Gedchtnis, als einem in jeder Krperzelle vorhandenen Gedchtnis,
hat zum ersten mal der Physiologe Henry Maudsley gesprochen in Physiology and Pathology of the
Mind (London 1867). Darin stellte auch er die Hypothese einer durch organische Prozesse erfolgten Fixierung von Gedanken und Gefhlen auf, Kategorien, die von der Struktur und Organisation der Nervenzentren der Spezies aufgenommen werden.
Vgl. GM I 3.

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Maria Cristina Fornari

organisch gemacht werden durch Vererbung der Einwirkung angenehmer und schmerzlicher Erfahrungen auf die Vorltern,42 ist fast identisch. Nietzsche markiert diesen Abschnitt in seinem Exemplar der Thatsachen der Ethik mit einem Randstrich und schreibt:
Die Gutmthigen haben ihr Wesen durch die bestndige Furcht erlangt, welche ihre
Voreltern vor fremden bergriffen gehabt haben, sie milderten, beschwichtigten,
baten ab, beugten vor, u.s.w. und zuletzt vererbten sie diesen ganzen zarten und
wohlgespielten Mechanismus auf ihre Kinder und Enkel. Diesen gab ein gnstigeres
Geschick keinen Anlass zu jener bestndigen Furcht: nichtsdestoweniger spielen sie
bestndig auf ihrem Instrumente. (M 310)43
Wo es Moral gibt, gibt es folglich immer auch Wertschtzungen und Hierarchien, das
Resultat uralter Neigungen und Abneigungen, die sich noch immer bemerkbar machen.
Eine Hierarchie, die nicht wir festgeschrieben haben, sondern der Herdeninstinkt in uns,
der fr die ganze Herde oder Gattung spricht.44 Ist es tatschlich das Echo eines natrlichen
sympathetischen Affekts, wie Darwin, Spencer oder Espinas glauben wollten? Fr Nietzsche ist es hauptschlich die Furcht, ein uraltes Gefhl in jenem schrecklichen prhistorischen Moment, in dem der Mensch den Schwankungen einer feindlichen Umgebung ausgesetzt war, und in dem das Alleinsein ein schreckliches Urteil darstellte.45 Nur in der
Gemeinschaft kann man sich erhalten, sprach damals die Furcht: Furcht ist die Macht, von
welcher das Gemeinwesen erhalten wird (Nachlass 18801882, KSA 9, 3[119]). Das moralische Bewusstsein, das Sammelbecken uralter Erfahrungen, ist ein Abkmmling der
Furcht und der Not. Auch dieses zentrale Thema der Morgenrthe war Spencer nicht fremd.46

7. Die Angewohnheit, zu gehorchen

Die Handlungsweise, die man heute als moralische bezeichnet, ist Spencer zufolge
alles andere als natrlich. Zumindest in einer Anfangsphase, in der der Mensch noch nicht
in der Lage war, die wirklichen Konsequenzen einer Handlung abzuschtzen, und sie folglich, in Spencers Perspektive richtig zu beurteilen, musste sie auferlegt worden sein. Sie ist
eine Art von Dressur, in der das soziale Zusammenleben knstlich ermglicht wird durch
ein pr-altruistisches Gefhl, als dessen Grund Spencer die Furcht ausmacht, die Furcht
vor Rache, vor Strafe, vor dem Zorn Gottes. Das Gefhl der Pflicht wchst im Wilden,
dessen einzige Einschrnkung, neben der Furcht vor seines Gleichen, der Furcht von
dem Geist seiner Vorfahren ist. Diese anfngliche Haltung gegenber der Unterordnung
lebt mchtig bis in unsere Tage weiter und ist charakteristisch fr jegliche Art von Moral.
Wie die Verhaltensformen der Unterordnung den Anfang jeglicher Moral ausmachen
und ihr historisch vorausgehen, illustriert Spencer in einem ausfhrlichen Artikel in der
Revue Philosophique 47 im Hinblick auf den besonderen Aspekt der Zeremonien. Laut Spen-

42
43
44
45
46

47

Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 37.

Vgl. auch M 30, M 104, M 111, M 312.
Vgl. FW 116.
Vgl. FW 117.
Vgl. auch Orsucci: Orient-Okzident, a.a. O., insbesondere Kapitel IV: Kannibalische Gtter,
Teufelsverehrung, Askese: Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit Spencer.
Spencer, Herbert: tudes de sociologie. In: Revue Philosophique III (1878), tome 5. S. 1 28;
113 126; 281 307; 489 533; 642 654; tome 6. S. 113 129.

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cer leitet sich der grte Teil unserer ethischen und sozialen Regeln von der Disziplin ab,
welche die zeremoniellen Gebruche bestimmt.
Avant quil y ait des lois, il faut quil y ait un potentat auquel des hommes soient soumis, qui promulgue des lois, et en impose lautorit. Avant de reconnatre des obligations religieuses, il a fallu que les hommes reconnussent une ou plusieurs puissances
surnaturelles. Il est vident que la conduite qui exprime lobissance un chef, visible
ou invisibile, doit prcder dans le temps le frein civil ou religieux quil impose.48
Anhand von zahlreichen anthropologischen Beispielen vertritt Spencer die These,
dass die Weigerung, sich den zeremoniellen Vorschriften zu unterwerfen, einer Rebellion
und einer Missachtung der Autoritt gleichkam. In Per, war die Todestrafe die hufigste
Strafe, weil der Schuldige nicht fr die verbte Tat bestraft wurde, sondern weil er die
Tabu des Inkas gebrochen hat.49 Verbote und krperliche Verstmmelungen bis hin zu
unseren Opfern und Gebeten dienen dazu, die Gunst der Mchtigen zu erwerben, damit
ihr Zorn nicht die Gemeinschaft treffe.50
Nietzsche unterschreibt diese Anmerkungen voll und ganz. Die Ausfhrungen ber
die Zeremonie, d. h. die Anwendung einer Praktik, die an sich keinerlei Vernunft und unmittelbare Zweckdienlichkeit aufweist, liefert ihm sogar den Schlssel zum Verstndnis
der ultima ratio sittlichen Handelns:
Bei rohen Vlkern giebt es eine Gattung von Sitten, deren Absicht die Sitte berhaupt
zu sein scheint; die aber die fortwhrende Nhe der Sitte, den unausgesetzten Zwang,
Sitte zu ben, fortwhrend im Bewusstsein erhalten: zur Bekrftigung des grossen
Satzes, mit dem die Civilisation beginnt: jede Sitte ist besser, als keine Sitte. (M 16)51

48

49

50

51

Ebd., t. 5, S. 4. Nietzsche notiert u.a. in seinen Notizheften: berall wo es eine furchteinflende Macht giebt, die befiehlt und gebietet, entsteht Moralitt d.h. die Gewohnheit zu thun und
zu lassen, wie jene Macht will, der das Wohlgefhl auf dem Fue folgt, der Gefahr entronnen zu
sein: whrend im umgekehrten Falle das Gewissen sich regt, die Stimme der Furcht vor dem
Kommenden, des Verdrusses ber das Gethane usw. Es giebt persnliche Mchte, wie Frsten,
Generale, Vorgesetzte, dann Abstrakte wie Staat Gesellschaft, endlich imaginirte Wesen, wie
Gott, die Tugend, der kategorische Imperativ usw. (Nachlass 18801882, KSA 9, 1[107]).
Les Pruviens ntaient pas encore arrivs lpoque o lon voit dans les transgressions de
lhomme contre lhomme des torts redresser, et o lon comprend quil y a lieu de proportionner la pnalit au dommage; le crime rel tait linsubordination: ce qui donne penser que linsistance sur les signes de subordination constituait la partie essentielle du gouvernement.
(Spencer: tudes de sociologie, loc. cit., tome 5, S. 5).
Der Akt, einen Teil des eigenen Krpers zu opfern, zum Zeichen der vlligen Unterwerfung, hat
fr Spencer auch den mnemotechnischen Wert de remettre en mmoire perptuit la puissance du matre, en tenant en veil la crainte qui mne lobissance (Spencer: tudes de sociologie, loc. cit., tome V, S. 283). Eines der zahlreichen diesbezglichen Beispiele ist die Verstmmelung der Finger: les naturels des les Tonga se font couper une partie de leur petit doigt,
en sacrifice aux dieux pour obtenir la gurison dun parent malade (S. 284). Nietzsche kennt diesen Brauch offenbar, wie aus einer Aufzeichnung von 1883 hervorgeht: Die Tonga-Insulaner
schneiden die kleinen Finger ab, als Opfer (Nachlass 1882 1884, KSA 10, 8[1]). Vgl. auch
M 221: Moralitt des Opfers.
Die Aussage, jede Sitte ist besser, als keine Sitte, wird von Orsucci dem Theologen und Religionsphilosphen Gustav Roskoff zugeschrieben, den Nietzsche zusammen mit Spencer in
1[105] von Sommer 1880 zitiert. Orsucci betont ausdrcklich die Bedeutung von Roskoffs Werk
Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturvlker (Leipzig 1880), fr die ethnologischen berlegungen
Nietzsches in dieser Zeit (vgl. Orsucci: Orient-Okzident, a.a. O., S. 190 ff.).

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Maria Cristina Fornari

Nietzsche gelangt in der Morgenrthe zu einer wichtigen Schlussfolgerung: Sittlichkeit

ist nichts Anderes (also namentlich nich t m e h r!), als Gehorsam gegen Sitten, welcher
Art diese auch sein mgen (M 9). Wenngleich Nietzsche hier lediglich seine bereits in
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches zum Ausdruck gebrachte Position zu bekrftigen scheint,
d. h. die Reduktion der Sittlichkeit auf Gehorsam gegenber der Tradition, so misst er hier
dieser Hypothese doch endgltige Bedeutung bei, indem er sie als Grundeinsicht in die
Entstehung der Moral charakterisiert.
Die verschiedenen, von Spencer beschriebenen Haltungen der Unterwerfung lassen
sich fr Nietzsche zusammenfassen in der Unterwerfung unter die Tradition, verstanden
als eine hhere Autoritt, welcher man gehorcht, nicht weil sie das uns N tzliche befiehlt, sondern weil sie b ef ieh lt (M 9; vgl. auch M 19). Als Grund dieser Verbindung
zur Sittlichkeit erblickt Nietzsche die aberglubische Furcht vor einer berlegenen Autoritt. Die Furcht beschreibt er jetzt bezeichnenderweise und mit Nachdruck als natrliche
Grundlage einer primitiven Moral.
Nicht nur das Erbe unseres ursprnglichen Verhltnisses zur Natur, die anthropomorphisch als schrecklich und fremd aufgefasst wurde, erklrt unsere Neigung zur Furcht
(M 23), auch unsere physiologische Ausstattung ist dafr verantwortlich, dass das als beruhigend empfundene Element der Gemeinschaft in uns viel strker ausgeprgt ist als alle
individuelle Velleitt. Nietzsche schliet daraus, dass erst in relativ fortgeschrittenen Zeiten der Einzelne in der Lage ist, sich vom Joch der Tradition zu befreien. In Wirklichkeit
existiert jener furchtbare Druck der Sittlichkeit der Sitte, unter dem alle Gemeinwesen
der Menschheit lebten, viele Jahrtausende lang vor unserer Zeitrechnung (M 14), immer
noch und bestimmt alle sozialen Beziehungen. Die Prsenz des Anderen, des feindlichen
Tieres ist also die Voraussetzung fr das Verstndnis des Herdeninstinkts, der das sittliche
Gefhl zum Gesetz werden lsst. Im Lichte dieser berlegungen prft Nietzsche noch
einmal seine genealogische Hypothese: Nicht das unegoistische Handeln ist (durch Vergessen) aus Vererbung entstanden, sondern das fortwhrende D e n ke n a n A n d e r e als
Maa unserer Handlungen (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 4[50]). Auf diese Weise wird
aus jeder menschlichen Beziehung, selbst aus der reinsten und interesselosesten, ein bloes Spiel von Verstellung und Heuchelei.

8. Chamleons und Schafe

Damit haben wir ein letztes Element hinzugefgt: Die Moralitt ist zwar tierisch in
ihrem Ursprung, aber wer in den tierischen Gesellschaften eine Antizipation der fleiigen
und liebenden menschlichen Gesellschaft zu sehen glaubte, hat sich getuscht, sie ist vielmehr ein Schlachtfeld zwischen Wesen, sie gezwungen sind, sich gegenseitig aneinander
zu messen, um nicht unterzugehen.
Jene Moralitt, welche am allerstrengsten von Jedermann gefordert, geehrt und heilig
gesprochen wird, die Grundlage des socialen Lebens: was ist sie denn als jene Verstellung, welche die Menschen nthig haben, um mit einander ohne Furcht leben zu
knnen? Der allergrte Theil dieser Verstellung ist schon in Fleisch Blut und Muskel
bergegangen, wir fhlen es nicht mehr als Verstellung, so wenig wir bei Begrungsworten und hflichen Mienen an Verstellung denken: was sie trotzdem sind. (Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 3[23])

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Auch Spencer leugnet nicht die Rolle der Heuchelei in sozialen Beziehungen:
Bewegungen des Krpers und Vernderungen im Gesicht sind sichtbare Wirkungen
von Gefhlen, und sind diese sehr lebhaft, so entziehen sich jene der Controle des
Willens. Ist jedoch ein Gefhl, sei es sensationeller, sei es emotioneller Art, minder
heftig, so knnen jene ganz oder theilweise unterdrckt werden, und wir haben ja
auch die mehr oder weniger tief eingewurzelte Gewohnheit, welche die Folgeerscheinung unserer Natur ist, der es oft sehr unerwnscht wre, wenn Andere sehen knnten, was in ihr vorgeht. Fr unsere gegenwrtigen Charaktereigenschaften und Verhltnisse sind aber solche, aus den genannten Ursachen entspringende Verstellungen
so unerlsslich, dass sie ja sogar zu einem Bestandtheil unserer moralischen Pflichten
geworden sind; wird doch Verstellung um ihrer selbst willen oft als ein Element des
gesitteten Betragens hingestellt. All das hat aber nur seinen Grund in dem Vorwalten
von Gefhlen, welche mit dem social Guthen in Widerspruch stehen von Gefhlen,
die nicht an den Tag gelegt werden knnen, ohne Zerwrfnisse oder Entfremdung
hervorzurufen.52
Das gesellschaftliche Leben ist eine einzige Schule des Verdachts: Das Bedrfnis nach
Sicherheit und Vorhersehbarkeit schafft eine Reihe von Verhaltensweisen, die darauf abzielen, die Absichten und Gefhle des Nchsten zu verstehen und ihm zu entlocken. Daher die Beachtung der Mimik und Gestik: wir lernen die Meinungen und Erwartungen des
Anderen zu reproduzieren und sie vorherzusehen, um uns nicht von ihnen berraschen
zu lassen. Sie werden in einem langsamen, stetig wachsenden Prozess der Konvergenz
und physiologischen Anpassung53 imitiert und assimiliert. Selbst die sublimsten Gefhle
wie Liebe und Mitleid haben den gleichen Ursprung: ihr letztes Ziel ist es, den Anderen
zu erraten, um ihn zu neutralisieren und angstfrei ber ihn verfgen zu knnen (M 309,
M 248, M 532).54 Verstellung, aber auch Verstecken: der moralische Mensch passt sich,
wie das Chamleon, das sich an die Umgebung anpasst, um den Hschern zu entkommen,
mit wahrhaft tierischer Schlue den Existenzbedingungen an, versteckt sich im Kollektiv,
unterdrckt seine Einzigartigkeit, um ein Stck Sicherheit zu erlangen (vgl. M 26).

52

53
54

Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 225 226. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 3[84]
scheint eine Antwort auf Spencer zu sein: Was jetzt die Bildung fordert, unsere Gemthsbewegungen nicht auszudrcken, ist die lange Folge der Furcht: die Menschen sollen nicht sehen, was
in uns vorgeht, wobei vorausgesetzt wird, da es immer etwas Schlimmes ist oder da wir damit
unseren Feinden gute Gelegenheiten geben. Die hfische Verstellung, der Stoicismus in einem
festgehaltenen artigen Gebrdenspiel geht von bsen Voraussetzungen ber die Mitmenschen
aus: sie sollen uns nicht kennen lernen, es wre unser Schade. Vgl. auch Nachlass 1880 1882,
KSA 9, 1[96] u. 3[83].
Vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 3[24] u. [33].
Vgl. auch Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 4[280]: Sich vorstellen, was ein Anderer empfindet,
wenn wir dies oder jenes thun also den Nutzen oder Nachtheil von uns zu berechnen aus dem
erschlossenen Nutzen oder Nachtheil eines Anderen, zu welchem ihn unsere Handlung fhrt
das ist ein g eb t im Thierreich in den Mitteln des Schutzes und des Angriffs. Sich die Wirkung
auf einen Anderen vorstellen und um des Anderen willen etwas thun die grte Schule! der
Erkenntni! Dazu hat am wenigsten das instinktive Mitleid gefhrt, sondern die Angst und
deren Phantasie: und ihr Resultat ist vom Hunger (als Ausgang des Angriffs auf ein anderes Wesen) acceptirt worden. Zu errathen, wie es einem zu Muthe ist, aus seinen Gebrden, ob er fliehen oder angreifen will usw. ohne die hchste Anspannung des Intellekts durch die Noth
htte man das nicht gelernt.

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Maria Cristina Fornari

Nietzsche fand ein herausragendes Beispiel dieser Art von Anpassung gerade in den
zeitgenssischen Lehren, mit denen er sich auseinandersetzte: Was sind die Anpassung
Spencers, der gesellschaftliche Organismus Fouilles, das Bewusstsein von Espinas anderes, als Formen von Mimikry, bei denen das Individuum im kollektiven System verschwindet? Das Vermischen und Sichanpassen im moralischen Sinn ist gleichbedeutend
mit dem Einnehmen eines allgemeinen, und gerade deshalb untauglichen und unfruchtbaren Standpunkts, der das Individuum von der Verantwortlichkeit fr einen eigenen
Wertmastab befreit.
Dies ist das Charakteristikum der modernen Gesellschaft, in welcher G l e i ch h e i t
gilt als verbindend und erstrebenswerth! Es spukt [darin] ein falscher Begriff von Eintracht
und Frieden, als dem ntzlichsten Zustande (Nachlass 18801882, KSA 9, 11[303]);
in der das Aufgehen des Individuums in der Funktion des Ganzen als wnschenswert
erscheint, um die Zentrifugalkraft kontrollieren und eliminieren zu knnen (M 132). Dies
ist der Grundgedanken einer Cultur der Handeltreibenden, in welcher der Markt auf das
Sicherheitsbedrfnis reagiert, indem er den Wert einer jeden Sache im Verhltnis zu seinem
Tauschwert bestimmt und so ganz unwahrscheinliche quivalenzen schafft (M 175).
Aber was fr ein Menschentypus geht aus der bernahme solcher Wertetafeln hervor? Ein schwacher Typus, einer der unfhig ist zu Schaffen, gutmtig und klein an Geist:
er ist nur Sand und Schleim, unfhig zur Errichtung einer Gesellschaft, die dem Nihilismus die Stirn bietet und eine Umwertung aller Werte in eine bejahende und aristokratische Richtung vorbereiten kann.
Sind wir denn bei einer solchen ungeheuren Absichtlichkeit, dem Leben alle Schrfen
und Kanten abzureiben, nicht auf dem besten Wege, die Menschheit zu Sand zu machen? Sand! Kleiner, weicher, runder, unendlicher Sand! Ist das euer Ideal, ihr Herolde der sympathischen Affectionen? (M 174)55
So fragt Nietzsche mit Alexis de Tocqueville, welcher in Die Demokratie in Amerika
schreibt: Die Mitglieder eines demokratischen Gemeinwesens gleichen den Sandkrnern am Meeresufer, deren jedes sehr klein ist und an keinem andern haftet. Er warnte
vor den Gefahren der Demokratie und befrchtete nicht ein Ueberma von Freiheit,
sondern von allzu bereitwilliger Fgsamkeit, nicht die Anarchie, sondern die Servilitt, nicht
den allzu jhen Wechsel, sondern eine chinesische Erstarrung.56
55
56

Vgl. auch Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 6[163].

Nietzsches Quelle ist J. S. Mills Rezension von Tocquevilles Die Demokratie in Amerika, erschienen in der Edinburgh Review von 1840 und auf deutsch erschienen in Bd. 11 von Mills Werken
(Mill, John Stuart: Gesammelte Werke. Autorisierte Uebersetzung unter Redaktion von Theodor
Gomperz. Leipzig 1869 75 [BN]. Bd. 11. S. 1 67, 37 u. 46, mit zahlreichen deutlichen Zeichen
und Unterstreichungen Nietzsches). Vgl. Nachlass 1880 1882, KSA 9, 3[98]: Je mehr das
Gefhl der Einheit mit den Mitmenschen berhand nimmt, um so mehr werden die Menschen
uniformirt, um so strenger werden sie alle Verschiedenheit als unmoralisch empfinden [laut
Tocqueville: Je besser Jeder wei, da er auf gleicher Stufe mit jedem einzelnen Individuum
steht, desto hilfloser und unbedeutender fhlt er sich der gesammten Masse gegenber und
desto unglaublicher erscheint es ihm, da die ganze Welt fehl gehen knne Mill: Gesammelte
Werke, a. a. O., S. 34, mit Zeichen am Rand]. So entsteht nothwendig der Sand der Menschheit:
Alle sehr gleich, sehr klein, sehr rund, sehr vertrglich, sehr langweilig. Das Christenthum und
die Demokratie haben bis jetzt die Menschheit auf dem Wege zum Sande am weitesten gefahren.
Ein kleines, schwaches, dmmerndes Wohlgefhlchen ber Alle gleichmig verbreitet, ein verbessertes und auf die Spitze getriebenes Chinesenthum, das wre das letzte Bild, welches die
Menschheit bieten knnte?.

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327

Zu fordern, dass Alles guter Mensch, Heerdenthier, blauugig, wohlwollend,

schne Seele oder, wie Herr Herbert Spencer es wnscht, altruistisch werden solle,
hiesse dem Dasein seinen g rossen Charakter nehmen, hiesse die Menschheit castriren
und auf eine armselige Chineserei herunterbringen (EH, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 4).
Fr Spencer gilt genau das Gegenteil:
dass ohne gengende Sicherheit des Lebens, welche den Menschen mglich macht,
ohne Furcht ihren Geschften nachzugehen, weder Glck noch Wohlstand der Einzelnen wie der Allgemeinheit bestehen knne []57.
Heerde ist Nietzsches schlichter Kommentar zu dieser Seite der Thatsachen der
Ethik.58 Er will damit zeigen, wie sehr diese Werte von einem Instinkt vorgegeben sind
und nicht von einer vernnftigen Logik, oder gar einer angeblichen natrlichen Notwendigkeit. Ein Instinkt, der nach Unangreifbarkeit strebt und nach dem kleinen Glck und
dessen Ideale, indem sie sich an die modernen Lebensbedingungen angepasst haben, inzwischen den durchschnittlichen europischen Geschmack erobert haben.
Nietzsches Kritik an dieser Art von Genealogie, der er vor allem mangelnden Geschichtssinn vorwirft, brandmarkt gerade die Annahme eines moralischen Standpunkts,
der historisch gerechtfertigt zu sein beansprucht, aber in Wirklichkeit genau das ethische Modell verabsolutiert, das den Trieben und Bedrfnissen seiner jeweiligen Trger
entspricht.
Nietzsche hat sich mit den Englndern auseinandergesetzt, um Anregungen fr seine
Geschichte der Moral zu gewinnen, konnte aber keine Hilfe finden. Sie sind weder Philosophen noch Psychologen, sondern philosophische Arbeiter ( JGB 211), lediglich darauf bedacht, die Bestimmung der herrschenden Werte in Formeln zu fassen. Sie knnen
(und wollen) sich so deren Bann nicht entziehen, wodurch sie als Moralhistoriker vllig
inakzeptabel werden. Aber in dem emotionalen Modell ihrer Wertprferenzen hat Nietzsche doch einen wichtigen Schlssel zur Interpretation gefunden. Ihr symptomatisches
Festhalten an einem alten und subtilen, aus Selbsterhaltung einverleibten Moralsystem59
verleitet ihn zu dem entgegengesetzten Versuch, zum Experiment mit den Trieben, zur
spielerischen Umgestaltung, deren Ergebnis nie in einer bestimmten Konstellation fixiert
wird, sondern immer fr die verschiedensten Perspektiven offen bleibt. Erst nachdem
er die Geschichte der altruistischen Philosophie durchlaufen hat, kommt Nietzsche zu
einem Schluss, der ihm schlielich gestatten wird, den Vorhang zu heben fr die unge57

58

59

Spencer: Die Thatsachen der Ethik, a.a. O., S. 58, von Nietzsche unterstrichen und am Rand mit
Ausrufezeichen versehen.
Nietzsche notiert die Randnotizen Hornvieh und Heerde auf S. 57 und 58 von Spencers
Thatsachen der Ethik, wo dieser gegen Hobbes polemisiert und dessen Doktrin einer von der Autoritt des Gesetzes hergeleiteten Moral. Spencer zufolge macht sich Hobbes nicht klar, wie das
Gesetz ganz im Gegenteil eine natrliche Harmonie sanktioniert, die sich gem den spontanen
Regeln der Evolution entwickelt und stabilisiert. Nietzsches Einwand (der mit Hobbes bereinstimmt, indem er am Rand ego notiert) bezieht sich auf den angeblich natrlichen Ursprung
des Rechts: Spencer setzt immer Gleichheit der Menschen voraus (Nachlass 1880 1882,
KSA 9, 1[98]): Nietzsche ist sehr kritisch gegenber einem Konzept von natrlicher Gleichheit,
anstelle eines Gleichgewichts von Macht, welches fr ihn die wahre Quelle der Gerechtigkeit
ausmacht. In welchem Sinn allein Recht zwischen Individuen mglich ist, als anerkannter und
aufrecht erhaltener Zustand und Grad von Macht, erlutert Nietzsche in M 112.
Und da man eine Moral will, setzt schon einen moralischen Kanon voraus! Man sollte doch
Ehrfurcht haben vor dieser einverleibten Moral der Selbsterhaltung! Sie ist bei weitem das
feinste System der Moral! (Nachlass 1884 1885, KSA 11, 25[437]).

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Maria Cristina Fornari

heure Flschung der Psychologie der bisherigen Moralen (Nachlass 1885 1887,
KSA 12, 10[57]). Psychologie wird auf diese Weise zu einer Morphologie und Entwicklungslehre des Willens zur Macht ( JGB 23), in welcher sich der Utilitarismus und
Eudmonismus sowie die Herdenmoral als entscheidende Stufen auf dem Weg der Entwicklung eines moralischen Modells erweisen werden.60 Haupt-Gesichtspunkt der historischen Methodik (GM II 12) wird der Wille zur Macht, ein bewegtes Feld miteinander
streitender Krfte, das weder Furcht noch kleine Finalitten kennt: Die Ableitung aller
Affekte von einem Willen zur Macht, ist die reifste Lsung in Bezug auf den Ursprung der
Moral. Die Genealogie der Moral markiert in diesem Sinn den Endpunkt Nietzsches. Nicht
umsonst trennt er sich in diesem Werk endgltig von den Englndern (allen voran Paul
Re), aber mit der Kraft und beinahe Bitterkeit dessen, der zu seinem Bedauern gezwungen ist, seine Schulden anzuerkennen.

60

Zur Psychologie als Morphologie des Willens zur Macht vgl. Wotling, Patrick: Der Weg zu
den Grundproblemen. Statut et structure de la psychologie dans la pense de Nietzsche. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 26 (1997). S. 1 33, und Wotling, Patrick: La Pense du sous-sol. Paris 1999.

Nietzsches Reading about China and Japan

329

THOMAS H. BROBJER
NIETZSCHES READING ABOUT CHINA AND JAPAN

Nietzsches relation to Indian and Buddhist thinking has received a fair amount of
attention. Such discussions are well founded for Nietzsche frequently mentions or discusses different aspects of Indian and Buddhist thinking, and had read a not insignificant
number of books dealing with it.1 Knowledge of such reading seems to me to be a precondition for correctly analyzing and understanding Nietzsches relation to, and use of
Indian thinking. Much less attention has been given to Nietzsches relation to Chinese and
Japanese philosophy, culture and thinking. This is not surprising, for he says very much
less about them. However, there is an extensive interest in Nietzsches thinking in China
and Japan, and Nietzsches interest in and knowledge of Chinese culture was not nonexistent, though limited. His knowledge of and interest in Japanese culture, on the other
hand, seems to have been basically non-existent. In this paper I will discuss his knowledge
of and reading about China, and at the end very briefly comment about his relation to
Japan. Adrian Hsia and Chiu-Yee Cheung recently discussed Nietzsches knowledge of
and reading about Chinese culture.2 They only identified three sources for Nietzsches
knowledge of China Confucius, Lao-tse and Kohler. I disagree with them about the
former two potentially most interesting ones, which works I do not believe Nietzsche
read. In this paper I will explain why I disagree, and also list and briefly discuss another
ten sources for Nietzsches knowledge of Chinese culture, some of which, including an
unidentified one which he read in 1881, are more important than the ones discussed by
Hsia and Cheung.

For Nietzsches relation to Buddhism, see, for example, Mistry, Freny: Nietzsche and Buddhism.
Berlin, New York 1981; Parkes, Graham (ed.): Nietzsche and Asian Thought. Chicago, London
1991, 2nd ed. 1996, and Morrison, Robert G.: Nietzsche and Buddhism. Oxford 1997. These and
several other studies, especially Mervyn Strung in his article Nietzsches Trans-European Eye
which has been published in at least three different publications, have mentioned a fairly limited
number of relevant books Nietzsche read, and more or less the same titles, and thus given the
impression that the question of the sources to Nietzsches knowledge of Buddhism has been adequately answered. For example, the most recent extensive study, Morrisons, claims that there
only exists five sources for Nietzsches acquaintance with Buddhism; Oldenberg, Mller,
Koeppen, Coomaraswamy and Schopenhauer. Sprung argues similarly for Indian thinking more
generally. However, a number of important sources have been missed. I have in an earlier article
Nietzsches Reading about Indian Philosophy, to be published in a conference book in Italy
2005, edited by G. Campioni and M. C. Fornari, and also in a slightly different version in a special
issue on Nietzsche and Eastern philosophy of Journal of Nietzsche Studies (Fall 2004), pp. 3 36,
discussed and shown that Nietzsches acquaintance with Eastern and especially Indian thinking
was greater than has previously been assumed.
Hsia, Adrian / Cheung, Chiu-Yee: Nietzsches Reception of Chinese Culture. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 296 312.

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Thomas H. Brobjer

Nietzsche had a significant interest in and knowledge about Indian philosophy, and frequently discussed it, but his interest in Indian culture was more limited. For the case of
Chinese philosophy and culture the situation is reverse, on a much lower level. He seems
to have had almost no knowledge of or interest in Chinese philosophy (if we except Buddhism, which he mostly associates with India), but shows some interest in Chinese culture. In fact, much of this is a reflection of a general interest in the Orient in Germany
during the nineteenth century.3
Nietzsche seems to have been taught almost nothing about Asia during his upbringing and at school. His first real encounter with it seems to have been in the writings of
Schopenhauer, whom he began to read at the end of 1865. Schopenhauers fairly extensive discussions of Eastern philosophy, and its close similarity to his own philosophy, is
surely a strong source of inspiration for Nietzsches knowledge of and interest in Indian
thinking, but Schopenhauer also discusses Chinese philosophy and culture, including
quotes Lao-tse (but shows little interest in Confucius), so Nietzsche would also have acquired some knowledge about Chinese thinking from him. However, I have found no references to Chinese thinking during Nietzsches student years, 1864 69, when the influence from Schopenhauer was at its strongest, and Schopenhauer is thus unlikely to
have been an important source and stimulus for him in this respect.
In April 1869 Nietzsche travelled to Basel to take up a position as professor of classical
philology. I have found no evidence of any interest in Oriental thinking during Nietzsches
first year in Basel, but in 1870 he began to read extensively about Buddhism. Nonetheless,
Buddhism and Eastern thinking remained very much a minor theme of his thinking during
the period 186974, and I have found very few references to Chinese thinking.
In 1875 Nietzsches interest in Eastern (primarily Indian) philosophy reached a crescendo. His interest in or awareness of Chinese thinking and culture was also stimulated at
this time. Nietzsche bought, borrowed and read a number of books relating to Oriental
philosophy, some of these are also relevant for his interest and knowledge of Chinese
thinking. He read or looked through Friedrich Anton von Hellwalds Culturgeschichte
in ihrer natrlichen Entstehung bis zur Gegenwart (Augsburg 1874) which contains accounts of
all the major cultures, including the Asian ones (compare the discussion below, for 1881
and 1883), and he borrowed Max Mllers Einleitung in die vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
(Strassburg 1874) from the university library in Basel in October, which contains some
discussions of Chinese and Japanese religion, and probably read it.4 He also bought, read,
used, annotated and recommended the American chemist, physiologist and historian
John William Drapers Geschichte der geistigen Entwickelung Europas (Leipzig, second edition,
1871).5 This work, although primarily about European intellectual history, contains a

See, for example, Moore, Gregory: From Buddhism to Bolshevism. Some Orientalist Themes in
German Thought. In: German Life and Letters 56 (2003), pp. 20 42, and several of the contributions in Parkes (ed.): Nietzsche and Asian Thought, loc. cit. Recently, much information has
been made available in Macfie, Alexander Lyon: Eastern Influences on Western Philosophy.
Edinburgh 2003.
This work of 353 pages consists of four lectures on comparative religion, and two added essays,
Ueber falsche Analogien in der vergleichenden Theologie and Ueber die Philosophie der Mythologie. The whole work contains references and discussions of Eastern religion and philosophy.
The original English title is A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. This work expresses a
strong belief in progress and science. The main theme of the book is to argue the case that history, including intellectual history, is determined by laws and not mere chance events. Nietzsche

Nietzsches Reading about China and Japan

331

digression about Hindu theology in chapter 3, pages 56 75, dealing with comparative
theology in India, Vedaism and Buddhism. In this chapter Draper briefly alludes to Buddhism in China, and in a four page section at the end of the second volume in a chapter
called The Future of Europe, Draper discusses China somewhat more, and states:
A trustworthy account of the present condition of China would be a valuable gift to
philosophy, and also to statesmanship. [] [China] has even made them [the people
living in China], if not homogeneous, yet so fitted to each other that they all think and
labour alike. Europe is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may
see what we shall be like when we are old.
Nietzsche will later share this view, but this is not necessarily an influence from
Draper, for it was a view frequently held in the nineteenth century.
Most interesting for our purpose is that Nietzsche also bought two massive books
about Chinese philosophy, Confucius Ta-Hio: Die erhabene Wissenschaft (Leipzig 1875) and
Lao-tse Tao-te-king: Der Weg zu Tugend (Leipzig 1870) in February 1875. However, I have
found no evidence that Nietzsche read these works, and they are no longer in his library.
Perhaps he bought them for the sake of giving them away as gifts or because he intended
to read them later, but changes in his interest prevented that. We have no information at
all about the Lao-tse book, but the Confucius volume he had bound later in February and
thereafter lent it to his acquaintance Marie Baumgartner in March 1875. In a letter to him,
3 April 1875, she writes: About your Confucius-book, I have so far only seen enough to
determine that it seems to be an extraordinarily thorough and conscientious work, and
I am much looking forward to enjoying it without stress, in as far as I can understand it.
However, regretfully, I do not see when I shall find the time for it (KGB II.6/1, p. 96).
Thereafter we hear nothing about the book. I suspect that Nietzsche allowed her to keep
it. Nietzsche makes no references at all to Confucius or Lao-tse at this time nor to Chinese philosophy generally, and it thus seems to me unlikely that he read them. His few references to them occur much later, in 1885 and 1887/88.6
Nietzsches general interest in Indian and Oriental philosophy in 1875 was probably
more of a remnant of his earlier Schopenhauerian, pessimistic and metaphysically
oriented thinking than suggesting the new much less idealistic and more positivistically
oriented ways of thinking he was turning to at this time, 1875/76. Furthermore, he makes

bought this and another work by Draper, Geschichte der Konflikte zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft
(Leipzig 1875), in 1875, as shown by book-bills in the Goethe-Schiller archive. He also recommended Draper to Gersdorff, from whom we have a letter to Nietzsche, 25 April 1875, KSB 5,
No. 439, mentioning it: Endlich ist auch Draper eingetroffen und ich sage dir nun vorlufig
besten Dank dafr, dass du mir zu guten Bchern verholfen hast. Much later, in a letter to
Overbeck, 24 March 1887, KSB 8, No. 820, Nietzsche criticizes Draper (and Lecky):
Lecky habe ich selbst in Besitz: aber solchen Englndern fehlt der historische Sinn und auch
noch einiges Andre. Das Gleiche gilt von dem sehr gelesenen und bersetzten Amerikaner
Draper.
Nietzsches only references to Confucius occur late, once in a note, Nachla 1885, KSA 11,
36[48], in TI, Improvers, 5, and AC 55. His two only references to Lao-tse occurs even later, in
Nachla 1887/88, KSA 13, 11[368], and in AC 32. Hsia and Cheung argue, loc. cit., p. 302, that a
sentence of Nachla 1883, KSA 10, 8[6], has its origin in Nietzsches reading of Lao-Tse. However, the similarity to the suggested source is not convincing, and anyway, the source has already
been identified by Stingelin, Martin: Beitrge zur Quellenforschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 20
(1991), p. 412, to be from Albert Hermann Posts Bausteine fr eine allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft auf
vergleichend-ethnologischer Basis (Oldenburg 1880 81), compare discussion below.

332

Thomas H. Brobjer

essentially no references to China and Chinese thinking in the lectures he gave in Basel
between 1869 and 1879.7
By 1880 Nietzsche had left the university, was feeling healthier and began to read
more. At this time he read Josef Poppers Das Recht zu leben und die Pflicht zu sterben (Leipzig
1879), apparently with much sympathy.8 This work, like Nietzsches Human, All Too
Human, was first published in 1878 and dedicated to the memory of Voltaire. In the introduction Popper writes that the only thinker superior to Voltaire is Confucius. The rest
of the book contains occasional praising references to him, but Nietzsche seems not to
have responded to this.
As we have seen, Nietzsche makes essentially no discussion of China before 1880 and
Morgenrthe. However, at this time he begins to make some references to China and Chinese culture, foreshadowing his later more pronounced view. He seems to suggest that
for discussing culture and morality it is useful to have many perspectives (including,
for example, that of the Chinese Nachla 1880, KSA 9, 1[73]). Most of what he says in
this respect seems to be based on his reading about anthropology, cultural history and the
history of law.9 China represents to him a strong sense of stability (compare his view of
Russia and the Roman Empire),10 but it also represents a system or society where the individuals have been made into sand, that is small, weak, egalitarian and boring.11
It is in the summer of 1881 and during the following year that Nietzsches real interest
in Chinese culture begins and he makes a large number of references to Chinese culture in
his notebooks and in Die frhliche Wissenschaft.
In 1881 Nietzsche found and picked up the figure of Zarathustra as his spokesman
while reading the cultural historian and anthropologist Friedrich Anton von Hellwalds
Culturgeschichte in ihrer natrlichen Entstehung bis zur Gegenwart (Augsburg 1874, 2. ed. 1875),
839 pages.12 The importance of Nietzsches reading of this book appears not to have
been well examined, in spite of the fact that it probably was of great importance to him.
Nietzsche seems to have read it in 1875, more carefully in 1881 and then again returned to
it in 1882 and 1883. This work contains fairly extensive discussions of Indian and Chinese
cultures and a brief one about Japan,13 placed into the context of general cultural devel-

10
11
12

13

I have only found three brief references or mentionings of China or Chinese thinking. One to
Chinese language, one about Chinese religion (probably from Mller, this statement is also
repeated in HAH I 111) and a comment that some argue that Pythagoras philosophy is similar
to and influenced by Chinese philosophy (also stated in PTG 1). Nietzsche seems sceptical to
this last point, but does not completely reject it.
See my article Nietzsches Reading at the Time of Morgenrthe: An Overview and a Discussion of
his Reading of J. Popper, to be published in the Nizza conference proceedings in 2005, edited by
Paolo DIorio.
For the relation to Chinese culture, see Nietzsches reading of Johann Julius Baumanns Handbuch
der Moral nebst Abriss der Rechtsphilosophie (Leipzig 1879), Nachla 1880, KSA 9, 4[52].
M 206.
Nachla 1880, KSA 9, 3[98]. Compare also his view of the last man below.
Cf. DIorio, Paolo: Beitrge zur Quellenforschung mitgeteilt von Paolo DIorio. In: NietzscheStudien 22 (1993), pp. 395 397.
The book (in the edition from 1875) begins with five chapters on early and primitive cultures,
chapter 6 is called Das Reich der Mitte im Alterthume, pp. 72 93, then a short chapter 7, Das
Inselreich des Ostens, pp. 94 97 (about Japan), then chapter 8, about ancient Indian culture,
Aryavarta, pp. 98 124. The following chapter, Die alten Culturvlker Vorderasiens,
pp. 125 162, begins with a discussion of Zarathustra, and it is from here that Nietzsche took his
figure (Nachla 1881, KSA 9, 11[195]). Nietzsche thus read and excerpted this chapter during

Nietzsches Reading about China and Japan

333

opment, from a rather Darwinistic and aristocratic perspective.14 The chapter on China
contains the following subchapters: Ursprung und Alter der chinesischen Cultur, Die
chinesische Schrift, Aelteste Culturschtze, Die angebliche Erstarrung der chinesischen Cultur, Familien- und Geschlechtsleben, Religise Entwicklung and Geistige Entwicklung. Hellwald has a generally favorable view of China, and argues against
the common view of Chinese culture as stagnated and petrified.
This year Nietzsche also ordered Leopold Katschers Bilder aus dem chinesischen Leben
(Leipzig 1881) from his publisher. This seems to be a reflection of a genuine interest
to learn to know more about China and Chinese culture, for at this time there is a marked
increase in Nietzsches references and discussions of things Chinese (though little about
Chinese philosophy). However, this book is not in his library, and when I examined it, it
seems not to have been the source of Nietzsches statements regarding China.15 He probably received another book about China.16
Nietzsche seems at this time to have viewed the Chinese as mostly passive and satisfied, and thus critically. We can, for example, note that he writes down into his notebook
in the winter 1882/83: (the last man: a sort of Chinese).17
In 1883, at the time of working on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche seems to have returned to and read Hellwalds Culturgeschichte yet again (as discussed above). He also read
and annotated Albert Hermann Posts Bausteine fr eine allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft auf vergleichend-ethnologischer Basis, 2 vols. (Oldenburg 1880 81), which is a study of law based on
a comparative anthropological perspective, with frequent references to Asian cultures.
In the more anthropological parts, Post frequently discusses Asian, including Chinese,
thinking and culture, both ancient and modern. Several of Nietzsches notes from this
time are excerpts from this work (for references, see the table at the end of the article).

14

15

16

17

the first half of 1881, probably in August. The book also gives much bibliographical information, some of which Nietzsche noted down when he returned to the book in 1882, see
Brobjer, Thomas B.: Beitrge zur Quellenforschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 448 f.
Hellwald strongly emphasizes the importance of power, of survival of the fittest, and the book
was dedicated to the great German Darwinist Ernst Hckel.
Orsucci, Andrea: Beitrge zur Quellenforschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), pp. 444 f. has
identified Nietzsches reference to die chinesische Rache in FW 69 to Katscher, pp. 235 f.
However, I am not convinced that the attribution is correct. The similarity between Nietzsches
statement and the suggested source is not particularly great, though knowing that Nietzsche had
ordered the book shortly before this time would seem to make the attribution very probable.
However, Nietzsche makes a fairly large number of references to different aspects of Chinese
culture at this time, 1881 and 1882, some of them clearly reflecting some current reading. See
especially the fairly large number of notes, some of them fairly specific, in KSA 9, notebook 11
(i. e. M III 1), from early-autumn 1881. I collected these together and read Katschers book in
Mnchen last year with the expectation to find the sources of the statements in Katscher, but
I was not able to find relevant claims in it and concluded that Katscher was not the source.
If his publisher sent him another book, which later was lost, this remains unidentified. Another
possibility is that his publisher did not send him anything, and the information he used was
gained through other reading, possibly from, for example, (but I have not examined these works)
Otto Peschels Vlkerkunde (Leipzig 1874), which Nietzsche read in 1879 (and then possibly
again in 1883), Hellwalds Die Erde und ihre Bewohner, which he ordered in 1881 or possibly from
the journal Der Beobachter. Allgemeine Anleitung zu Beobachtungen ber Land und Leute fr Touristen,
Exkursionisten und Forschungsreisende (1881), edited by David Kaltbrunner, which he also ordered
in June 1881.
Nachla 1882/83, KSA 10, 4[204]. Nietzsche used the expression last man in the first book of
Za (1883) to represent the opposite of bermensch.

334

Thomas H. Brobjer

This reading seems to have confirmed Nietzsches views for by 1885 his mostly
negative view of Eastern philosophy was firmly set. For example, in a note from 1885/86 in
which he describes the planned content of book two of The Will to Power he writes: Critique
of the Indian and Chinese way of thinking, likewise the Christian (as preparing the way for a
nihilistic). The danger of dangers: Nothing has any meaning.18 For these years, 1885 and
1886, when Nietzsche finished his Thus Spoke Zarathustra and wrote his Beyond Good and Evil,
there seems to have been few Eastern stimuli on Nietzsches thinking. An exception was
that in 1885, in Sils Maria, he was befriended by a Dutch man with experience from China,
who, during informative discussions told him much about life there.19
In the year 1887 Nietzsche read and annotated at least one booklet by the historian
and anthropologist of law, Josef Kohler, Der chinesische Strafrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Universalgeschichte der Strafrechts (Wrzburg 1886), 51 pages, and possibly also Das Recht als Kulturerscheinung: Einleitung in die vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft (Wrzburg 1885), 29 pages, and used
their contents in On the Genealogy of Morals.20 He also seems to have re-read Posts Bausteine
fr eine allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft auf vergleichend-ethnologischer Basis, for he used the information in the book extensively in On the Genealogy of Morals.21
Nietzsches interest in and knowledge of Japanese culture and thinking was minimal,
much less than that of Chinese. Most of Nietzsches very rare references to Japan and Japanese culture occur between 1884 and 1887, and seem to be due to his friendship with the
painter and writer Reinhart von Seydlitz (1850 1931) who was intensively interested in
Japan. Nietzsche met Seydlitz for the first time in 1876 in Bayreuth, and they quickly became friends, and frequently exchanged letters until Nietzsches collapse, though they
rarely met. Nietzsche read Seydlitz short story Im toten Punkt in 1877 and in 1885 he several times refers to Seydlitz Le Japonisme.22
We have seen that Nietzsches interest in and knowledge about China was fairly limited, but nonetheless significantly greater than previously suggested, by, for example,
Adrian Hsia and Chiu-Yee Cheung. His knowledge about Chinese philosophy and religion
seems to have been relatively limited, while his knowledge about Chinese general culture
was greater, as exemplified by his reading of an unidentified book in 1881 (perhaps Katscher), Hellwald, Post and Kohler. However, on the whole, his view of Chinese culture
seems not to significantly differ from that of most Europeans in the nineteenth century.
This work has been financially supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

18
19
20

21

22

Nachla 1885/86, KSA 12, 2[100].

See letter to Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, 21 August 1885, KSB 7, No. 625.
Both booklets are in Nietzsches library, the former with some annotations, the latter with extensive annotations, including with comments on many pages. It is not known when he read the
latter, but it must have been near 1887.
Nietzsche also copied down the name and title of Cremers Culturgeschichte des Orients, together
with five other titles, into his notebook, Nachla 1886/87, KSA 12, 5[110], probably as planned
reading. He is unlikely to have read Cremers book, and it is anyway more about Arabian culture
than Asian cultures.
I have been unable to determine what this Le Japonisme refers to. It may be a literary work, but
more likely it is a reference to Seydlitz general and artistic interest in Japanese art and style.

335

Nietzsches Reading about China and Japan

Chronological Listing of Nietzsches Reading about Chinese and Japanese Culture

The first column lists the authors and titles. A left bracket signifies that Nietzsche may
not have read the work (or not read it in the year discussed). The second column (BN)
lists if the book is available in Nietzsches private library with a Y for yes. Stars after the
Y indicate little (*), medium (**), and much (***) annotations made by Nietzsche in his
copy of the book. The third column gives short comments about Nietzsches reading of
and response to the book. The last column gives the reference where Nietzsche mentions,
or discusses, the book (a two- or three-digit number for letters (KSB) and a number containing brackets for his notebooks (KSA)).
Author and Title

BN

Comment

Ref.

Paraphrase, quotations and page-ref.

KSA 7, 5[30+31+
37+40+50 65+71]+
Encyklopdie-lectures,
KGW II.3, p.410

1870
Mller, Max: Essays. 2 vols. Leipzig 1869. Y*
Vol. 1: Beitrge zur vergleichenden
Religionswissenschaft, Vol. 2: Beitrge
zur vergleichenden Mythologie und
Ethologie.
1875
[Confucius, Ta-Hio: Die erhabene Wissenschaft. Leipzig 1875.

Nietzsche bought this

book in February
1875

Bcherrechnungen

[Lao-tse, Tao-te-king: Der Weg zur

Tugend. Leipzig 1870.

Nietzsche bought this

book in February
1875

Bcherrechnungen

Hellwald, Friedrich Anton von: Culturgeschichte in ihrer natrlichen Entwicklung von den ltesten Zeiten bis zur
Gegenwart. Augsburg 1874.

Paraphrase and reference. Nietzsche will

read the work again in
1881 and 1883

KSA 8, 5[58]

Mller, Max F.: Einleitung in die verglei-

chende Religionswissenschaft. Straburg
1874.

Borrowed from the

Basel Univ. library
Oct. 1875

Draper, John William: Geschichte der

geistigen Entwicklung Europas. 2. Aufl.
Leipzig 1871.

Gersdorff had been

recommended the
book by, or borrowed
it from, Nietzsche.
Nietzsche bought his
copy in 1875.

Popper, Josef, Das Recht zu leben und

die Pflicht zu sterben. Sozialphilosophische Betrachtungen anknpfend an
die Bedeutung Voltaires fr die neuere
Zeit. 2. Aufl. Leipzig 1879.

Nietzsche possessed
Koschny to Nietzsche,
this book, and wrote 19 Jan. 1880
to the publisher to inquire about the
author.

[Peschel, Otto: Vlkerkunde. Leipzig

1874.

List of books to read.

Possibly also read in
1883

Gersdorff to N: 25. 4.
1875 and KSA 8, 5[198].
Bcherrechnungen

1879

KSA 8, 39[8]

336
Author and Title

Thomas H. Brobjer
BN

Comment

Ref.

[Post, August Hermann: Bausteine fr

Y**
eine allgemeine Rechtswissenschaft auf
vergleichend-ethnologischer Basis. 2 vols.
Oldenburg 1880 81.

Nietzsche orders

118

Baumann, Johann Julius: Handbuch der

Moral nebst Abriss der Rechtsphilosophie. Leipzig 1879.

Y***

Nietzsche wants book

sent to him. Paraphrase, with page-reference. Possibly also
read in 1883.

18+ KSA 9,
4[52+53+57+121+
130 133+274],
6[56+343]

[Katscher, Leopold: Bilder aus dem

chinesischen Leben. Leipzig 1881

Nietzsche orders. He
probably received
another unidentified
book about China

118

Hellwald: Culturgeschichte, loc. cit.

Paraphrase and reference.

KSA9,
11[195+267+299]

[Hellwald, Friedrich Anton von:

Die Erde und ihre Bewohner.

Nietzsche orders from 123

Overbeck

[Kaltbrunner, David (ed.): Der

Beobachter Allgemeine Anleitung
zu Beobachtungen ber Land und
Leute fr Touristen (1881), Hefte 1 4,
10 11.

Nietzsche orders
through Schmeitzner.
In booklets 2 and 11
most pages have been
cut opened, in the
other none

Hellwald: Culturgeschichte, loc. cit.

Reading

406

Post: Bausteine, loc. cit.

Y**

Paraphrase, quotation
and page-references

KSA 10, 7[247 248],

8[5 9]

Y*

Nietzsche apparently
had the essay translated for him

Annotations

Y**

Paraphrases and uses.

KSA 12, 8[6]+JGB,

194+ GM II,
3+4+9+10+13+14+
17+19 +GM III, 9+14

Nietzsche uses.

GM II, 5+13

1880

1881

118

1883

1884
Robins, E.: Maenadism in Religion. In:
The Atlantic Monthly, October 1883.

1887
Post: Bausteine, loc. cit.

Kohler, Josef: Das chinesische StrafY*

recht. Ein Beitrag zur Universalgeschichte des Strafrechts. Wrzburg 1886.

337

BEITRGE ZUR QUELLENFORSCHUNG

NACHWEIS AUS ZEITSTIMMEN AUS DER REFORMIRTEN KIRCHE
mitgeteilt von T HOMAS H. B ROBJER

Nachla August bis Dezember 1865, KGW I.4, 35[1], pp. 69 72 (also published in BAW 3,
pp. 125 128). This whole text, including the subtitles, is an excerpt. (I will give examples from the beginning and the end of the text.)
Die Weltanschauung des kathol. Mittelalters
Im Mittelpunkt des Weltalls die Erde, um sie Sieben Himmel mit Sonne Mond und
Planeten. Dann die achte Sphaere mit den unkrperlichen Sternen, die neunte der krystallin Himmel, die zehnte das Empyrium. Hier thront Gott mit seinem Sohn und den
Auserwhlten, []
Der Unterschied zwischen Himmel u. Erde fllt weg. Damit fllt auch die Hlle. Und
damit Engel u. Teufel.
Die Gotteslehre. Gott hat nicht die Vernunft, sondern er ist die Vernunft. Die Idee des
Guten. des Schnen. pati deum.
Zeitstimmen aus der reformirten Kirche der Schweiz, herausgegeben unter Mitwirkung schweizerischer
Theologen von H. Lang, evangelischen Pfarrer in Wartau, Zweiter Jahrgang. Winterthur 1860. Volumes two and three of this journal contain a long article, in ten parts, called Die moderne Weltanschauung, von H. Lang. The first part begins on page 365, and Nietzsches excerpt on page 368:
1. Die Weltanschauung des katholischen Mittelalters. [p. 368] []
Im Mittelpunkt des Weltalls steht die Erde; um sie bewegen sich in verschiedener
Geschwindigkeit Sonne, Mond und Planeten in sieben ber einander gelagerten Himmeln.
Die anderen leuchtenden Sterne sind unkrperlichen und ohne Schwere und hngen frei im
Himmelsraum der achten Sphre. Ueber dieser wlbt sich die neunte Sphre, der krystallinische Himmel, und ber dieser die zehnte, die Feuersphre das Empyreum, welche stille
steht. Hier thront Gott mit seinem Sohn und den Auserwhlten, [p. 369] []
1) Der Unterschied, den die alten Religionen zwischen Himmel und Erde gesezt
haben, fllt weg. [p. 441] []
2) Fllt so der Himmel als eine von der Erde verschiedene, ber der Erde sich wlbende Lokalitt, so fllt auch sein Gegensatz, die Hlle, das Unterreich unter die Erde,
damit aber auch die Bewohner, mit welchen die Phantasie frherer Zeiten diese beiden
Lokalitten bevlkert hatte: die Engel und die Teufel. [p. 442] []
3) Mit der vernderten Ansicht vom Weltgebude verndert sich von selbst die Ansicht von Gott. [p. 447] [] Gott hat nicht Vernunft, sondern er ist die Vernunft. [p. 448]
[] Die Idee des Guten [p. 449] [] Die Idee der Schnheit [p. 450] [] pati Deum (die Gottheit erdulden) [p. 450]

338

Thomas H. Brobjer

It seems to me likely that the next text published in KGW I.4, that is, 36[1] (BAW 3, 128 130),
covering three pages, also is an excerpt from this journal, although I have not identified it.

339

NACHWEISE AUS MLLER, LUCIAN: GESCHICHTE DER

KLASSISCHEN PHILOLOGIE IN DEN NIEDERLANDEN UND
JAHN, OTTO: AUS DER ALTERTHUMSWISSENSCHAFT
mitgeteilt von T HOMAS H. B ROBJER

Encyclopdie der klassischen Philologie, 3. Hollndische Philologie, KGW II.3, pp. 357 362. This
whole section is a close excerpt or summary based on Mller (this work is also mentioned in a footnote by
Nietzsche himself). I will merely exemplify with the beginning of the text:
In den Niederlanden entwickelt sich seit der 2. Hlfte des 14. Jhd. allmhlich der Sinn
fr das Alterthum. Die holl. Humanisten gewannen ihre Ausbildung in Italien Frankreich
Deutschland, seit 1430 auch auf der Belgischen Univers. Lwen. []
Mller, Lucian: Geschichte der Klassischen Philologie in den Niederlanden. Leipzig 1869, p. 1:
Seit der zweiten Hlfte des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts entwickelte sich auch in den
Niederlnden allmhlich der Sinn fr klassische Studien [] Ihre grndlichere Ausbildung gewannen die hollndischen Humanisten in Italien, Frankreich und Deutschland,
seit dem zweiten Viertel des fnfzehnten Jahrhunderts auch auf der neugestifteten Belgischen Universitt Lwen. []
[Nietzsches excerpt begins on page 1 and continues to page 120 of Mllers book.]
Encyclopdie der klassischen Philologie, 4 and 5. Englische Philologie and Deutschland, KGW
II.3, pp. 362 365. These two sections contain a few excerpts from Otto Jahn. I will exemplify with the
last paragraph:
Chr. Gottl. Heyne 1729 1812 neues bergewicht der Interpretation. [] Gesners
Nachfolger in Gttingen. Der philol. Technik ist er nicht vllig Herr. Er sieht das Kulturhistorische. Er fhrt die Disciplin der Mythologie ein.
Jahn, Otto: Aus der Alterthumswissenschaft: Populre Aufstze. Bonn 1868. Bedeutung und Stellung
der Alterthumsstudien in Deutschland, pp. 1 50, p. 30:
Chr. Gottf. Heyne (1729 1812), Gesners Nachfolger in Gttingen [] Der philologischen Technik, der Kritik und Grammatik nie mit vlliger Sicherheit Herr [] seine
besondere Sorgfalt der fachlichen und sthetischen Erklrung der Schriftsteller, wie
der historischen Erforschung des Alterthums berhaupt zu, und brachte mit treffenden
Blick namentlich das culturhistorische Moment zur Geltung. Die Mythologie, [] fhrte
er [] ein.

340

Nikolaos Loukidelis

NACHWEIS AUS TEICHMLLER, GUSTAV:

DIE WIRKLICHE UND DIE SCHEINBARE WELT
MITGETEILT VON

N IKOLAOS L OUKIDELIS

Nachlass August-September 1885, KSA 11, 40[30]:

Die groe Gefahr steckt in der Annahme, da es unmittelbares Erkennen gbe (also
Erkennen im strengen Sinn berhaupt!) Teichm!ller" p. 35.
Nietzsche bezieht sich hier auf Teichmller, Gustav: Die wirkliche und die scheinbare
Welt. Neue Grundlegung der Metaphysik. Breslau 1882 ein Werk, mit dem er sich in der
Zeit der Entstehung der oben angefhrten Aufzeichnung auseinandersetzte.1 Mazzino Montinari hat bei
der Kommentierung dieser Aufzeichnung in der KGW (VII 4/2, S. 492) ein umfangreiches Zitat
von Seite 35 wiedergegeben, das aber den Begriff des vermittelten und nicht des unmittelbaren Erkennens
expliziert.2 Nietzsche kann also bei der Angabe der Seite 35 diese Passage nicht gemeint haben, da die
Angabe zweifellos als Beleg fr eine Behauptung Teichmllers, nach der es unmittelbares Erkennen
gbe, zu verstehen ist. Stattdessen findet man bei
Teichmller: Die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt, a. a .O., S. 34 f.:
Dementsprechend macht er [d.h. Immanuel Kant, N.L.] einen ganz willkrlichen Gebrauch von dem Worte Intuition und will der Vernunft keine Anschaulichkeit zugestehen,
weil er sich darunter immer nur sinnliche Gegenstnde vorstellt, /35/ als wenn das Wesen der Anschauung nicht bloss in der U n m i tte l b a r ke i t bestnde, die den Elementen
des inneren Sinnes und auch der Vernunft und des Verstandes doch in ganz gleicher
Weise zukommt, wie den Elementen des usseren Sinnes.
1
2

Dazu cf. z. B. auch Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 40[12], 40[24].

Das Zitat lautet: Suchen wir also den gemeinsamen Charakter aller Intuition, so mssen wir als
Gegensatz dazu das vermittelte Erkennen heranziehen und auf beides dann zugleich den Blick
heften. Das Vermittelte ist derart, das es nur nach und nach sich aus Elementaranschauungen zusammenschliesst, wie z.B. das Bild eines Baumes aus den einzelnen Farbeneindrcken, die zusammen die Figur und das Ganze des Baumes bilden; denn unsere Seele muss dabei auffassend
ebenso verfahren, wie der Maler schaffend verfhrt, indem er einen Farbenklex an den andern
fgt. Ebenso ist es fr den inneren Sinn ein vermitteltes Erkennen, wenn wir z.B. den Totaleindruck eines Festes uns analysiren und die einzelnen Gefhle uns anschaulich vergegenwrtigen,
aus denen sich der Totaleindruck zusammensetzte. Vermittelt im intellectuellen Gebiete ist die
Erkenntniss, die wie bei den Beweisen Euclids sich noch nicht sofort einstellt, wenn wir die Bedingungen des Lehrsatzes gehrt haben, sondern erst aus den fremd hinzugenommenen Lemmaten und Constructionen folgt, wie auch jede Definition die Einheit des Begriffs durch Angabe der Merkmale vermittelt. Wir drfen aber den Begriff des Intuitiven nur in erster Linie auf
das schlechthin Einfache beziehen und knnen dann noch der Erfahrung gemss einen gewissen Spielraum fr eine erworbene Intuitionskraft frei lassen, weil die Grsse des Bewusstseins
darber entscheidet, was in einem Act erkannt werde und was nicht mehr hineinfalle. Der letzte
Satz des Zitats (Wir drfen [] nicht mehr hineinfalle.) steht am Anfang eines neuen Absatzes, was bei Montinaris Wiedergabe des Zitats nicht erkennbar ist.

Beitrge zur Quellenforschung

341

In der oben angefhrten Passage ist von Unmittelbarkeit als Wesen der Anschauung die
Rede. Wenn man dazu bercksichtigt, dass der Begriff der Anschauung bei Teichmller sich nicht nur auf
den Bereich sinnliche[r] Gegenstnde beschrnkt, sondern auch die Ttigkeit des inneren Sinnes und [] der Vernunft und des Verstandes umfasst, dann folgt daraus mit Notwendigkeit,
dass das Produkt dieser Ttigkeit nmlich die Erkenntnis einen unmittelbaren Charakter haben
muss. Das ist genau der Punkt, dem Nietzsche in der nachgelassenen Aufzeichnung 40[30] von 1885
kritisch gegenbersteht, und auf den er sich auch bezieht in
JGB 281:
Wird man es mir glauben? aber ich verlange, dass man mir es glaubt: ich habe immer nur schlecht an mich, ber mich gedacht, nur in ganz seltnen Fllen, nur gezwungen,
immer ohne Lust zur Sache, bereit, von mir abzuschweifen, immer ohne Glauben an
das Ergebniss, Dank einem unbezwinglichen Misstrauen gegen die M glichkeit der
Selbst-Erkenntniss, das mich so weit gefhrt hat, selbst am Begriff unmittelbare Erkenntniss, welchen sich die Theoretiker3 erlauben, eine contradictio in adjecto4 zu empfinden: diese ganze Thatsache ist beinahe das Sicherste, was ich ber mich weiss. Es
muss eine Art Widerwillen in mir geben, etwas Bestimmtes ber mich zu glauben.
Steckt darin vielleicht ein Rthsel? Wahrscheinlich; aber glcklicherweise keins fr meine
eigenen Zhne. Vielleicht verrth es die species, zu der ich gehre? Aber nicht mir: wie
es mir selbst erwnscht genug ist.

Da sich Nietzsche auf die Theoretiker bezieht, ist es nicht auszuschlieen, dass er neben
Teichmllers Ansichten auch die eines weiteren (oder mehrerer weiterer) Philosophen im Auge
hat.
Den Ausdruck contradictio in adjecto gebraucht Nietzsche auch am Anfang von JGB 16, um
unter an-derem die Konzepte der unmittelbaren Gewissheit und der absoluten Erkenntnis
(d. h. Konzepte, die dem in JGB 281 als Anspielung auf Teichmller vorkommenden Begriff der
unmittelbaren Erkenntnis auffallend hneln) zu kritisieren. Offensichtlich gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen JGB 281 und JGB 16, der auch darin besteht, dass sich Nietzsche in beiden
Aphorismen auf Teichmllers Ansichten ohne ihn beim Namen zu nennen bezieht (als Bezugnahme auf Teichmllers Ansichten ist auch Nietzsches Kritik am Begriff der Intuition
der Erkenntniss in JGB 16 zu betrachten). Den Zusammenhang zwischen JGB 281 und JGB 16
hat auch Laurence Lampert in seinem Kommentar zu JGB erkannt (Lampert, Laurence: Nietzsches Task. An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil. New Haven, London 2001. S. 280), ohne
aber dabei auf die Rolle Teichmllers hinzuweisen.

342

Nikolaos Loukidelis

NACHWEIS AUS DROSSBACH, MAXIMILIAN:

BER DIE SCHEINBAREN UND DIE WIRKLICHEN URSACHEN
DES GESCHEHENS IN DER WELT
mitgeteilt von N IKOLAOS L OUKIDELIS

Im Rahmen seiner in JGB 16 unternommenen Kritik am ich denke formuliert Nietzsche einige
Gewissensfragen des Intellekts, deren eventuelle Beantwortung im Rekurs auf eine Art
Intuition der Erkenntniss seiner Ansicht nach auf keinen Fall berzeugend sein kann. Zu diesen
Fragen gehrt auch folgende: [] Was giebt mir das Recht, von einem Ich, und gar von einem
Ich als Ursache, und endlich noch von einem Ich als Gedanken-Ursache zu reden?.1
Zum Gebrauch der Formel Ich als Ursache wurde Nietzsche auch durch seine Begegnung mit
folgender Textstelle angeregt:
Drossbach, Maximilian: ber die scheinbaren und die wirklichen Ursachen des Geschehens in der Welt.
Halle a. S. 1884. S. 14 f.:
Herr Prof. Dr. SCHAARSCHMIDT, dessen Widerlegung des subjectiven Idealismus in den phil. Mon.-Heften B. XIV Heft 7 schon in meiner Schrift: ber Kraft und
Bewegung etc. erwhnt /15/ wurde, weist auf die Erfahrungsthatsache hin, dass das Ich
nicht bloss vorstellende Thtigkeit hat, nicht bloss Theorie ausbt, sondern auf automatische Weise Vernderungen hervorbringt, die neben dem Vorstellen hergehen, die zwar
vorgestellt werden, aber sich vom Vorstellen toto genere unterscheiden. Das Ich ist
Sache (Wesen, Wirklichkeit, Seiendes, Substanz) weil es Ursache ist. Das Ich ist mehr
und thut mehr als ein cogito ergo sum ausdrckt; es weiss sich als res cogitans et movens; nicht sowohl im cogitare als im movere steckt sein esse. . . . . . Insofern ich mich als
Willenskraft aus dem Willen heraus erkenne, muss ich dem, auf das ich wirke, also zunchst meinem eigenen Krper, Wirklichkeit beimessen, da er meiner Anstrengung nicht
bloss weicht, sondern auch oft widersteht. .. . . . . . Nicht der Umstand, dass wir bei spontanen Bewegungen, die wir ausfhren, Empfindung haben, verschafft uns die berzeugung einer fremden Realitt, sondern das Bewusstsein der relativen Hemmung, welche
unsere Anstrengung erfhrt.
Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Buch hat deutliche Spuren sowohl im Nachlass von 1885,
als auch in JGB hinterlassen.2 Das von Nietzsche benutzte Exemplar ist noch heute in seiner persnlichen Bibliothek erhalten; auf Seite 14 befinden sich Zeichen und Anmerkungen mit Bleistift, auf
Seite 15 ein Eselsohr und Zeichen mit Bleistift.3

1
2

Cf. auch Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 35[35], 38[3].

Dazu s. Schmidt, Rdiger W.: Nietzsches Drossbach-Lektre. Bemerkungen zum Ursprung des
literarischen Projekts Der Wille zur Macht. In: Nietzsche-Studien 17 (1988). S. 465 477.
Campioni, Giuliano/ DIorio, Paolo / Fornari, Maria Cristina / Fronterotta, Francesco / Orsucci, Andrea (Hg.): Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek. Berlin, New York 2003. S. 199.

Rezensionen

343

REZENSIONEN
RALF ROSMIAREK
BRIEFPARTNER UND ZEITGENOSSEN NIETZSCHES
Reich, Hauke: Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon: Verwandte und Vorfahren,
Freunde und Feinde, Verehrer und Kritiker von Friedrich Nietzsche. Basel
(Schwabe) 2004. (Beitrge zu Friedrich Nietzsche 7). 220 Seiten. ISBN
3-7965-1921-0.
Ein Personenlexikon zu Nietzsche ist ein Desiderat der Nietzsche-Forschung. Es ermglichte, in handlicher Form den Forschungs- und Informationsstand zu Nietzsches
lebensweltlichem Umfeld zu prsentieren und knnte somit zu einem unentbehrlichen
Hilfsmittel bei anstehenden editorischen, biographischen und (kultur)historischen Forschungsaufgaben werden.
Forschungs- und Wissensstnde der Zeit finden ihren Niederschlag in Enzyklopdien, Handbchern oder Lexika. Wie ist es im Fall des Philosophen Nietzsche um den
Forschungsstand bestellt? Seine Rezeption und Rezeptionsgeschichte ist und wird nicht
zuletzt durch die Edition seiner Werke und (zunehmend) Briefe bestimmt. Eine auerordentliche Funktion haben die Nachberichte innerhalb solcher Ausgaben, sind sie fr
die Erhellung und Entmythologisierung des Welt- und Lebenskontextes doch grundlegend. Die Qualitt dieser Nachberichte ist fr die Soliditt der auf ihr beruhenden weiteren Forschung nicht hoch genug zu veranschlagen. Seit Nietzsches Erkrankung 1889
gab es, einsetzend mit Heinrich Kselitz (alias Peter Gast), immer wieder neue Anlufe zu
einer verllichen Herausgabe seiner Werke und Briefe; ihre Geschichte braucht hier
nicht wiederholt zu werden. Nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs und mit dem Einsetzen einer, wenn auch zaghaften, philosophischen Annherung und Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche, fanden die philologischen Arbeiten in neuerlichen Versuchen ihre
Fortsetzung. Zu konstatieren ist freilich, da ber hundert Jahre nach Nietzsches Tod
trotz aller intensiven Bemhungen noch immer keine abgeschlossene Gesamtausgabe
seiner (hand)schriftlichen Hinterlassenschaft vorliegt. Der philosophische, historische
wie biographische Diskurs um Nietzsche erfordert jedoch allererst den zuverlssigen
Text und ebenso die verlliche Darstellung des lebensweltlichen Kontextes. Die biographischen Zusammenhnge aber sind bislang noch weniger zureichend dokumentiert.
Wer den Entwicklungen, Entscheidungen, Handlungen, Bekanntschaften, dem Erleben
und Erleiden, wer also dem Leben Nietzsches nachspren will, der ist noch immer an die
Labyrinthe zahlreicher Archive verwiesen. Wie also kann sich beim gegenwrtigen Editionsstand ein Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon prsentieren? Worauf darf der (forschende) Leser hoffen? Welchen Zweck verfolgt ein solches Lexikon?

344

Rezensionen

Es ist nichts Neues mehr, da konomische Zwnge sich vor allem auf lngerfristige
Forschungsarbeiten und -vorhaben auswirken. Einem solchen Zwang unterliegt auch die
Ausgabe von Nietzsches Briefwechsel. Die Texte der Briefe von und an Nietzsche sind
zwar ediert, und die Nachberichtsbnde sind abgeschlossen. Die Einschnitte gegenber
dem ursprnglichen Editionsplan sind freilich unbersehbar. Ein Gesamtregisterband
wird nach allem Anschein nicht mehr erscheinen,1 die Bnde mit Briefen ber Nietzsche
sowie der Ergnzungsband zum kranken oder spten Nietzsche2 entfallen. Einschrnkende Vernderungen gegenber dem konzipierten Vorgehen weisen auch die Nachberichte zu den drei Abteilungen der Briefwechselausgabe aus. So verzichten bereits die
Nachberichte zur zweiten Abteilung auf die Erarbeitung eines kommentierten Briefpartnerverzeichnisses.3 Offensichtlich keinen Einflu (mehr) auf das Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon hatten die ebenfalls im Jahre 2003 vorgelegten Nachberichte der dritten Abteilung zur KGB.4 Welche Quellen bilden dann die Grundlage dieses Lexikons? Der Autor
selbst stellt heraus: als wichtigste zu nennen sind hier die Register zur KGB, die Nachberichte zur KGB (S. 8). Zuvor aber bemerkt er, da es ein kleineres Problem bei
der Suche nach Nietzsches Bekannten ist, da die Brief- und Werkausgabe zu Nietzsche
noch nicht vollendet ist (ebd.). Hier freilich liegt die Crux der vorliegenden lexikalischen
Arbeit.
Das Vorwort gibt keinen weiteren Aufschlu ber eigene Recherchen des Autors
nach Bekanntschaften Nietzsches, es erhellt auch nicht die Zwecke und Ziele des Lexikons, Systematik und Struktur der vorgenommenen Eintrge bleiben unerklrt. Der
ebenfalls unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Aufnahme bzw. Ausgrenzung von Personen problematische Begriff Zeitgenossen wird nicht diskutiert. Sollte hierzu allein der Untertitel mit dem Hinweis auf Verwandte, Vorfahren, Freunde etc. gengen? Im Vorwort
heit es einschrnkend (und etwas ungrammatisch): In diesem Lexikon alle Menschen
aufzunehmen, mit denen Nietzsche verwandt oder befreundet, die er gekannt oder gesehen hat, ist natrlich unmglich (S. 8). Wer also findet Aufnahme? Aufgenommen sind
alle Verwandten, Bekannten und Freunde, zu denen Nietzsche eine persnliche Beziehung hatte, sowie Menschen, die Nietzsche Briefe geschrieben oder Briefe von ihm erhalten haben oder die in Briefen erwhnt werden (ebd.). So aber mten auch Personen
wie Aristoteles, Bach, Dostojewski, die Nietzsche in Briefen erwhnt, aufgenommen
werden. Wie aber lassen sich Menschen, die eine persnliche Beziehung zu Nietzsche
unterhalten, eruieren, wei der Autor doch selbst, da im Leben eines Menschen nicht
alle Bekanntschaften schriftliche Erwhnung finden (ebd.)? Das ausgrenzende Kriterium bleibt ebenso vage: Keine Aufnahme in dieses Lexikon fanden Personen, die
Nietzsche bloss gekannt haben mag (ebd.). Angesichts dieser Formulierung berraschen dann die Eintrge von Personen, die Nietzsche erst nach dessen Erkrankung und
wohl allenfalls nur fr kurze Zeit sahen, wie etwa Walter Jesinghaus, Harry Graf Kess1

2
3
4

Im Vorwort zur KGB hie es noch unter Punkt 9: Die Arbeiten an der KGB werden mit einem
Gesamtregister abgeschlossen (KGB I 1, S. XI).
Vgl. ebd., S. V f., den Editionsplan.
S. ebd., S. IX f., und KGB I 4, S. 695 ff.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel. Dritte Abteilung. Siebenter Band.
Erster Teilband. Nachbericht zur dritten Abteilung. Briefe von und an Friedrich Nietzsche
Januar 1880 bis Dezember 1884. [Hrsg. v. Norbert Miller]. Verfasst von Renate Mller-Buck u.
Holger Schmid. Berlin, New York 2003, und Zweiter Teilband. Nachbericht zur dritten Abteilung. Briefe von und an Friedrich Nietzsche Januar 1885 bis Dezember 1886. [Hrsg. v. Norbert
Miller]. Verfasst von Holger Schmid. Berlin, New York 2003.

Rezensionen

345

ler, Gabriele Reuter, Raoul Richter etc. Henry van de Velde kannte Nietzsche allerdings
persnlich gar nicht. Sind diese Eintrge durch die Rubrik der Kritiker gedeckt, die freilich auer im Untertitel zum Lexikon nirgends mehr Erwhnung finden? Wie erklrt sich
die Aufnahme etwa der Schriftstellerin Eugenie Galli, von der es lediglich heit, Galli
sprach mit dem Wirt Durisch in Sils-Maria ber N (S. 73), oder des Hausverwalters
Krause aus Pforta, der in den Registern der KGB keine Erwhnung findet, dessen formaler Eintragsumfang hier jedoch mehr Raum einnimmt, als beispielsweise der von Nietzsches Vater, obgleich betont wird: Die Lnge der Eintrge wird durch die Relevanz der
Person fr Nietzsches Leben und Werk bestimmt (S. 13)? Wie gestaltete sich hier Nietzsches persnliche Beziehung? Warum unterbleibt aber die Aufnahme des Kommissionsrates Christian Gotthilf Teichmann und dessen Ehefrau, der doch in Nietzsches
Briefen aus der Schlerzeit mehrfache Nennung erfhrt und zudem mit der Familie
Nietzsche freundschaftlichen Verkehr unterhielt?5 Grotesk wird es, wenn es zum Beschlu des Vorwortes heit: Die, zu denen Nietzsche nheren Kontakt hatte oder von
ihm erwhnt werden, mgen hier pars pro toto fr jene stehen, die keinen eigenen Eintrag
erhalten haben (S. 9).6 Oder mag hier der Zweck des Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikons beschrieben sein?
Da eigene Recherchearbeit zu den Bekanntschaften Nietzsches durch den Autor
nicht stattfand, wird schon beim ersten lexikalischen Eintrag sichtbar, der zugleich eine
mangelhafte Systematik und Struktur offenbart. Nicht allein da Nietzsches ehemaliger
Student Ackermann (S. 17) seine(r)/(s) Vornamen(s) ermangelt und seiner Lebensdaten entbehrt, ist fr ein Personenlexikon und dessen Informationsgehalt zumindest
fragwrdig.7 Der Leser bleibt zudem auf sich allein gestellt, um der Beziehung zwischen
Nietzsche und Ackermann nachzuspren. Beklagt der Autor zuvor, da jede Suche mit
mehreren Registern konfrontiert wird (S. 8), so mutet er dem Nutzer seines Lexikons
eben dieses erneut zu. Nur ein Blick in die Register der Nachberichte der KGB bringt
Aufschlu, da jener Ackermann8 im Brief Nietzsches an Friedrich Ritschl vom 6. April
1872 Erwhnung findet und von Nietzsche als ehemaliger katholischer Theolog in
Luzern, ein denkender Kopf und strenger Charakter (KGB II 1, Nr. 206) herausgehoben
wird. Warum wird hier nicht wenigstens auf die Fundstelle bei Nietzsche oder dessen
Umfeld verwiesen? Warum wird auf die Angabe der Recherchequelle(n) bezglich der
Lebens- und Sterbedaten (Kirchenbcher, Brgerbcher etc.) verzichtet, warum die gelegentlich angegebene Rubrik Zur Person nicht konsequent genutzt? Denn an diesem
Ort wre ein solcher Aufweis nicht nur ntig, sondern auch sinnvoll. Jede weitere Perso-

Siehe hierzu Rosmiarek, Ralf / Heimer, Falko / Buchta, Alexander: Wie man mit Herrn Hammer datiert : Neudatierungen und Bemerkungen zu Briefen von und an Nietzsche aus dem Jahr
1858 innerhalb der Kritischen Gesamtausgabe von Nietzsches Briefwechsel (KGB). In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 313 364. S. 335 f.
Diese Personen erhalten unter dem Lemma NN (* ?; ?) dann aber doch einen eigenen Eintrag (S. 152).
Kay Weniger stellt im Vorwort zu seinem Personenlexikon des Films heraus: Das Kernproblem
aller Personenrecherche [] war und ist die Erfassung korrekter Geburts- und Sterbedaten.
Weniger, Kay: Das groe Personenlexikon des Films. Erster Band. AC. Erik Aaes Jack Carson. Berlin 2001, S. 5.
Im Brieftext erscheint: Hr. Achermann (sic!), KGB II 1, Nr. 206. In den Semesterberichten
Nietzsches heit es Ackermann (KGB II 7,1, S. 573 ff.); eine Berichtigung der Lesart unterbleibt sowohl im Stellenkommentar (KGB II 7,1, S. 237 f.) als auch in den Berichtigungen des
Nachberichts (KGB II 7,1, S. 673).

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Rezensionen

nenforschung htte dann von hier aus ihre Fortsetzung finden knnen. Die Darlegung
konsultierter und erschlossener Quellen wrde, angesichts der bereits erwhnten konomischen Zwnge, so manche Wiederholungen vermeiden, erheblichen Kosten- und
Zeitaufwand bedeutend minimieren.
In Parenthese: Vielleicht darf an dieser Stelle die Frage an Autor und Verlag gerichtet
werden, warum das Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon in einer derart verbindlichen und endgltig scheinenden Form, nmlich einer Druckausgabe, zum gegenwrtigen Zeitpunkt und
beim derzeitigen Forschungsstand vorgelegt wurde? Wre nicht ein offenes Personenlexikon in Form eines Retrievalsystems ein geeigneteres bio-bibliographisches Medium?
Die sptere Publikation in Buchform ist damit keineswegs ausgeschlossen. Eine solche
offene Datenbank knnte dem Forscher einerseits Gelegenheit bieten, seine aktuellen
Informationen in das System zu speisen, andererseits ebensolche Informationen fr die
eigene Forschung herauszuziehen. Das Datensystem wre auerdem in der Lage, den
strukturellen Kalamitten, wie sie innerhalb der jetzt vorgelegten Druckversion begegnen, zu entkommen. Familienstrukturen, Verwandtschafts- und Freundesbezge, soziale
Beziehungen jeglicher Art lieen sich durch entsprechende Verknpfungen transparent
und leicht abrufbar gestalten. Ein derartiges Datenbanksystem bedrfte natrlich der
entsprechenden Wartung, einer zentralen Regie und Verantwortlichkeit. Universitt, Verlag, Nietzsche-Studien, Nietzsche-Gesellschaft erschienen dazu als mgliches exekutives
Organ. Es bte sich zugleich die Chance zu einem lebendigen und innovativen Dialog
zwischen den verschiedenen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen der Nietzscheforschung.
An- und Einbindungen verwandter Forschungsstrnge (Andreas-Salom, Deussen, Frster-Nietzsche, Kselitz, Meysenbug, Overbeck, Re etc.) wren gleichermaen realisierbar und angesichts vielfltiger computergesttzter Optionen wnschenswert.
Die vorgelegte Druckausgabe lt hingegen die systematischen und strukturellen
Schwchen nur allzu offensichtlich hervortreten. Bereits der formale Aufbau der Eintrge, nach dem Schema Namen, Lebensdaten, Stellung zu Nietzsche etc. differiert stark;
z. B. bei Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (S. 145) und Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche (S. 150).
Namenseintrge bleiben hufig, trotz lngst vollstndig ermittelter biographischer Daten, unvollstndig; z.B. bei Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche (S. 67) statt Therese Elisabeth
Alexandra Frster-Nietzsche. Lebens- und Sterbedaten sind uneinheitlich ausgewiesen;
z. B. bei Johanne Friederike Nietzsche (S. 151) und Margarethe Pinder (S. 167). Gleiches
gilt fr den verwandtschaftlichen Bezug zu Nietzsche und ebenso fr die Verwandtschaftsstruktur innerhalb der Familien Nietzsche, Oehler und Frster; z.B. Friedrich August Engelbert Nietzsche (S. 149). Unabdingbar zu einer raschen und verbindlichen
Orientierung des Lesers wren vorab formulierte oder doch zumindest erkennbare klare
Strukturprinzipien, etwa dergestalt: einheitliche Angabe der Lebensdaten; Verwandtschaftsgrad oder Status zu Nietzsche; Ausbildung; Orte oder Stationen der Ttigkeit;
Kontaktaufnahme und Verhltnis zu Nietzsche; Fundstellen; Literaturangaben und je
nach Bedeutung ein eventuelles Werkverzeichnis. Da der Autor jedoch fr die Personen
des Zeitraumes 1849 bis 1864 ganze Eintrge oder wenigstens lngere Passagen, mit all
den darin enthaltenen Irrtmern und Fehlern,9 dem Nachbericht der ersten Abteilung zu

Problematisch und korrekturbedrftig sind die Eintrge im kommentierten Briefpartnerverzeichnis (KGB I 4, S. 695 ff.) u. a. zu Robert Buddensieg, Bernhard und Friederike Daechsel,
Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, Erdmuthe Nietzsche, Edmund und Oscar Oehler, Wilhelm Pinder.
Siehe zu etwaigen Korrekturen Rosmiarek / Heimer /Buchta: Wie man mit Herrn Hammer datiert, a. a. O., S. 319 ff.

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Nietzsches Briefen (KGB I 4) entnimmt oder entlehnt, wird dem Leser die Strukturlosigkeit der Eintrge evident.
Der Informationsgehalt zu den Personen wurde aus den verschiedenen nationalen
wie internationalen biographischen Lexika bzw. den Nachberichten zur KGB gewonnen.
Der offensichtliche Verzicht auf eine durchgngige berprfung der einzelnen Belege
und einer entsprechenden Korrektur lt dieses Lexikon einmal mehr eine Vielzahl an
Druckfehlern, Irrtmern und falschen Angaben tradieren. Stellvertretend sei hier z.B.
auf die sinnentstellenden, berdies polemischen Eintrge zu Bernhard (Ludwig) und Paul
Arthur Frster (S. 65 f.) verwiesen. Nicht Paul sondern Bernhard Frster begegnete
Nietzsche im Juli 1875. Auch bei der Begegnung Frster Overbeck ist Bernhard Frster
der Besucher.10 Zu konstatieren bleiben ferner disparate und durch neuere Forschungen
revidierte Inhalte; z.B. Carl Ludwig Nietzsche: Syphilis im Endstadium (S. 145) und
Franziska Ernestine Rosaura Nietzsche: Carl Ludwig Nietzsche !" Gehirnkrankheit
(S. 146). Die gelegentlichen redaktionellen berarbeitungen, vor allem Personen betreffend, die durch das kommentierte Briefpartnerverzeichnis (KGB I 4) dargestellt sind,
erweisen sich als wiederum korrekturbedrftig; z.B. Edmund Oehler: Thondorf statt
Thorndorf, dort starb er auch am 05. 09. 1891, nicht jedoch in Gorenzen (S. 154 f.),
und Oscar Oehler: Obernburg statt Dernburg, Lochau statt Loschau (S. 156). Die
mangelnde Autopsie handschriftlicher Belege sowie der Fachliteratur, der fehlende Dialog, vielleicht auch die fehlende Dialogbereitschaft zwischen Autor und Forschenden, erweist sich als schweres Versumnis und zeitigt ein fatales Ergebnis.
Mit dem Nietzsche-Zeitgenossenlexikon liegt bestenfalls ein unvollstndiges, um
einige biographische Einzelheiten angereichertes Register von Namen vor. Dennoch
knnte die Realisierung einer offenen Personendatenbank zu Nietzsche und seinem
lebensweltlichen Kontext von hier ihren Ausgang nehmen. Bei einer wie auch immer gearteten Neuauflage eines Zeitgenossenlexikons liee sich das Versumte nachholen.
Autor, Verlag und Forschende htten dann die Mglichkeit zu einem fruchtbaren und
konstruktiven Diskurs. Das Desiderat bleibt vorerst bestehen.

10

Siehe hierzu die Briefwechsel zwischen Bernhard Frster und Pauline Frster (Goethe- und
Schiller Archiv Weimar, 72/1542) sowie zwischen Bernhard Frster und Elisabeth FrsterNietzsche (ebd., 72/BW 1400).

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WERNER STEGMAIER
NIETZSCHES PHILOSOPHIE DER KUNST
UND SEINE KUNST DER PHILOSOPHIE.
ZUR AKTUELLEN FORSCHUNG UND FORSCHUNGSMETHODIK

1. Randbedingungen der Erforschung von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst

Die allgemeinen Bedingungen der Nietzsche-Forschung sind besonders gut. Die
Texte stehen nun mehr und mehr in vorbildlicher Dokumentation zur Verfgung. Nach
der ersten kritischen Gesamtausgabe der Werke und des Nachlasses von Giorgio Colli
und Mazzino Montinari (KGW), deren Studienausgabe (KSA), allerdings ohne die Arbeiten bis 1869 und die unentbehrlichen Nachberichte, seit langem auch auf CD-ROM vorliegt, erscheint nun eine zweite, differenziertere Ausgabe des spten Nachlasses, herausgegeben nunmehr in Verbindung mit der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften zunchst von Marie-Luise Haase und Michael Kohlenbach, dann von
Marie-Luise Haase und Martin Stingelin, als IX. Abteilung der KGW. Sie gibt in einer
ebenso aufwndigen wie vorbildlichen Edition Nietzsches Nachlahefte aus den Jahren
1885 bis 1889 vollstndig mit allen Korrekturstufen und zugleich Faksimiles der Originale auf CD-ROM wieder.1 Biographisches Material liegt, in ebenfalls grndlicher Aufarbeitung, wie bei keinem andern der groen Philosophen vor. Das Verzeichnis von
Nietzsches persnlicher Bibliothek ist als Grundlage der Erforschung seiner Quellen umfassend neu recherchiert und neu herausgegeben worden.2 Das globale Interesse an
Nietzsche und die Internationalitt und Interdisziplinaritt der Nietzsche-Forschung

Bisher erschienen sind: Nietzsche, Friedrich: Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Begrndet

von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari. Weitergefhrt von Volker Gerhardt, Norbert Miller,
Wolfgang Mller-Lauter und Karl Pestalozzi. Neunte Abteilung: Der handschriftliche Nachla
ab Frhjahr 1885 in differenzierter Transkription. Herausgegeben von Marie-Luise Haase und
Michael Kohlenbach. In Verbindung mit der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademischen der Wissenschaften. Bd. 1 3: Notizhefte N VII 1 4. Bearbeitet von Marie-Luise Haase, Michael Kohlenbach, Johannes Neininger, Wolfert von Rahden, Thomas Riebe und Ren Stockmar unter
Mitarbeit von Dirk Setton. Berlin, New York 2001. Bd. 4: Arbeitshefte W I 3 7. Herausgegeben
nach Marie-Luise Haase und Michael Kohlenbach von Marie-Luise Haase und Martin Stingelin.
Bearbeitet von Nicolas Fzesi, Marie-Luise Haase, Thomas Riebe, Beat Rllin, Ren Stockmar,
Jochen Strobel und Franziska Trenkle unter Mitarbeit von Falko Heimer. Berlin, New York
2004. Ab Bd. 4 erscheint die Ausgabe im Groformat, das die seitengetreue Wiedergabe auch
groformatiger Hefte erlaubt. Die Abteilung IX ist auf 13 Bnde angelegt.
Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek. Herausgegeben von Giuliano Campioni, Paolo DIorio,
Maria Christina Fornari, Francesco Fronterotta und Andrea Orsucci unter Mitarbeit von Renate
Mller-Buck. Berlin, New York 2003. (Supplementa Nietzscheana. Herausgegeben von Thomas
Bning, Wolfgang Mller-Lauter, Karl Pestalozzi. Bd. 6).

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349

werden bekundet durch eine Vielzahl von Tagungen in jedem neuen Jahr, immer weiter
sich vermehrenden Sprachkreisen, mehreren eigens der Nietzsche-Forschung gewidmeten Zeitschriften, Jahrbchern und Monographien-Reihen und einer immer weitlufigeren Rezeptionsforschung. Auf dem Feld der Kunst dokumentierte sich Nietzsches Wirkung noch zu seinen Lebzeiten in zahlreichen Nietzsche-Darstellungen in Malerei und
Bildender Kunst.3 Seine Rezeption hat auch auf dem Feld der Kunst angehalten und ist
seither ber alle Kunstgattungen hinweg lebhaft untersucht worden.4
Nietzsches Experimental-Philosophie, wie er sie in einer Nachla-Notiz nannte
(Nachla 1888, 16[32], KSA 13, S. 492), und besonders seine Philosophie der Kunst fordern immer wieder neue Experimente mit immer wieder neuen Interpretationen heraus.
Angesichts ihrer Kreativitt, Originalitt und oft auch Extremitt glauben sich auch ihre
Interpreten hufig zu hnlich kreativen, originellen und, vor allem, extremen Hypothesen
verpflichtet. Nach ber hundert Jahren Nietzsche-Forschung sind zwar weiterhin berraschend neue Gesichtspunkte und Entdeckungen keineswegs ausgeschlossen, aber doch
zunehmend weniger zu erwarten. Der sich rasch erweiternde Umfang der internationalen
Nietzsche-Forschung hat auf der andern Seite dazu gefhrt, da ihre Ergebnisse zunehmend weniger wahrgenommen und so Entdeckungen immer wieder neu gemacht werden. Damit ist eine Grundbedingung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung in Frage gestellt.
Zugleich sind jedoch erste Anfnge gemacht, sie wiederherzustellen. Zum einen liegt nun
ein auerordentlich verdienstvoller Bericht zur franzsisch-, italienisch- und englischsprachigen Nietzsche-Forschung zwischen 1960 und 2000 vor von

Reckermann, Alfons: Lesarten der Philosophie Nietzsches. Ihre Rezeption und

Diskussion in Frankreich, Italien und der angelschsischen Welt 1960 2000.
Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2003. (Monographien und Texte zur
Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 45). 336 Seiten. ISBN 3-11-017452-9.
Er bringt nicht schematische Kurzreferate, sondern erschliet die Nietzsche-Forschung in den drei Sprachkreisen orientiert an Grundproblemen und stellt entsprechende
Querbezge innerhalb der Sprachkreise und unter ihnen auch dort her, wo sie von den
jeweiligen Autoren nicht hergestellt wurden. Reckermanns Darstellungen zeichnen sich
durch klare Konturen, ein profundes eigenes Nietzsche-Verstndnis und sichere kritische
Einschtzungen aus. Der Band ist mit einer umfassenden Bibliographie und dichten
Registern ausgestattet. Auch er legt ein deutliches Schwergewicht auf die Philosophie der
Kunst bei Nietzsche. Vergleichbares fehlt und wre sehr zu wnschen fr die deutsch3

Vgl. Ottmann, Henning: Art. Nietzsche-Darstellungen in Malerei und bildender Kunst. In: Ottmann, Henning (Hg.): Nietzsche-Handbuch. Leben Werk Wirkung. Stuttgart, Weimar 2000.
S. 480 485.
Vgl. Hillebrand, Bruno: Nietzsche und die deutsche Literatur. Bd. 1: Texte zur Nietzsche-Rezeption 1873 1963. Bd. 2: Forschungsergebnisse. Mit einer weiterfhrenden Bibliographie hg. von
Bruno Hillebrand. Mnchen, Tbingen 1978; Meyer, Theo: Nietzsche und die Kunst, Tbingen,
Basel 1993; Thatcher, David S.: Musical Settings of Nietzsche Texts. An Annotated Bibliography
(I-III). In: Nietzsche-Studien 4 (1975). S. 284 323, Nietzsche-Studien 5 (1976). S. 355 383,
Nietzsche-Studien 15 (1986). S. 440 452; Ottmann, Henning: Art. Musik. In: Ottmann (Hg.):
Nietzsche-Handbuch, a.a. O., S. 479 f.; Libert, Georges: Nietzsche et la musique. Paris 2000;
Tietz, Udo: Musik und Tanz als symbolische Formen. Nietzsches sthetische Intersubjektivitt
des Performativen. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002). S. 75 90; Hoffmann, David Marc: Art.
Film. In: Ottmann (Hg.): Nietzsche-Handbuch, a. a. O., S. 434 f.; zur Architektur s. u.

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sprachige Nietzsche-Forschung, dem vierten ihrer bisher noch bedeutsamsten Sprachkreise.

Die bersicht ber das bereits Erschlossene und damit Anschlsse an den Stand der
Forschung werden zum zweiten nun erleichtert durch das von Henning Ottmann herausgegebene, im Jubilumsjahr 2000 erschienene Nietzsche-Handbuch.5 Es enthlt zahlreiche
einschlgige Artikel auch im Umkreis der Philosophie der Kunst von im einzelnen unterschiedlicher, im ganzen aber ansprechender Qualitt. ber einen eigenen Artikel Kunst
verfgt das Handbuch merkwrdigerweise nicht, auch nicht zu Stil. Jacob Burckhardt
wird unter der Rubrik Freunde gefhrt; seine magebliche Bedeutung fr Nietzsches
Stellung zur Bildenden Kunst taucht dort kaum auf. Das Handbuch bringt jedoch und
damit sind zugleich wichtige Stichworte zur Erschlieung von Nietzsches Philosophie der
Kunst genannt Artikel zu Apollinisch/Dionysisch, Artistenmetaphysik, in dem allerdings wenig von Nietzsches spterer Distanzierung von ihr die Rede ist, und sthetik, der
noch kaum berzeugt (Christian Schle), zu Musik, in dem freilich die Musik des Vergessens in FW 367 und die Musik des Lebens in FW 372 noch nicht auftauchen6 (Sven
Brmsel), einen herausragenden Artikel zu Tragdie, der einige neu eingespielte Vorurteile der Nietzsche-Forschung zur GT zurechtrckt (Gherardo Ugolini), zu Schaffen
(Ingo Christians), Genie (Giuliano Campioni) und Rausch (seinerseits klrungsbedrftig) (Stephan Gnzel), zu Poetik (sehr kurz zu Formen und Mitteln von Nietzsches philosophischer Schriftstellerei, auch Stil wird hier erwhnt) und Rhetorik (ausfhrlich zu
Nietzsches vieldiskutierter Basler Rhetorik-Vorlesung) (Martin Stingelin) und deutlich
ber den Stand der Forschung hinausfhrende Artikel zu Nietzsches Quellen auf dem
Gebiet der Malerei und der Bildenden Kunst und zu seiner Auseinandersetzung mit der
Romantik (Claus Zittel), zur Architektur (einschlielich ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte), zu
Renaissance/Renaissancismus und, wie erwhnt, zu Nietzsche-Darstellungen in Malerei
und bildender Kunst (Henning Ottmann), jeweils mit weiterfhrender Literatur.
Zum dritten haben die Nietzsche-Studien selbst seit einigen Jahren ihren Rezensionsteil konsequent ausgebaut, eben mit dem Ziel, die bersicht ber neue Ergebnisse der internationalen Nietzsche-Forschung laufend zu erneuern und zugleich ihre Desiderate
kenntlich zu machen. Auch dies ist wiederum nur in internationaler Kooperation und bei
weitem nicht vollstndig mglich. Bisher ist es jedoch weitgehend gelungen, Autorinnen
und Autoren zu gewinnen, die der schwierigen Aufgabe gewachsen waren und sie selbstlos bernommen haben. Alle drei Hilfen zur bersicht ber die internationale NietzscheForschung knnten dazu beitragen, ihre Sprachkreise, die dazu tendieren, sich um so
mehr auf sich selbst zu konzentrieren und von den anderen zu isolieren, je mehr die Forschung sich in ihnen verdichtet, wieder miteinander in Austausch zu bringen. Dies ist von
besonderem Gewicht bei der international am besten zugnglichen englischsprachigen
Nietzsche-Forschung, in der fremdsprachige Literatur in nennenswertem Umfang nur
noch in rhmlichen Ausnahmefllen herangezogen wird.7
5

Ottmann (Hg.): Nietzsche-Handbuch, a. a. O. Vgl. die Besprechung in Sommer, Andreas Urs:

Nachlese zum Nietzsche-Jahr 2000. Enzyklopdische, bio- und bibliographische Neuerscheinungen. In: Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001). S. 488 498, S. 492 f. Ich danke A. U. Sommer fr
Vorarbeiten auch zu dieser Besprechung.
Vgl. dazu Stegmaier, Werner: Philosophischer Idealismus und die Musik des Lebens. Zu
Nietzsches Umgang mit Paradoxien. Eine kontextuelle Interpretation des Aphorismus Nr. 372
der Frhlichen Wissenschaft. In: Nietzsche-Studien 33 (2004). S. 90 128.
Vgl. Sommer, Andreas Urs: Neue Gesamtdarstellungen und Einfhrungen. In: Nietzsche-Studien 33 (2004). S. 374 387, hier S. 381.

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351

Dort wird auch, im Anschlu an die sonst so verdienstvolle Pionierarbeit Walter

Kaufmanns,8 ganz unbefangen weiterhin aus dem zunchst von ihm (zusammen mit R. J.
Hollingdale) bersetzten Will to Power zitiert,9 trotz aller Bemhungen Mazzino Montinaris, das sogenannte Hauptwerk Nietzsches als unhaltbar zu entlarven.10 Dies wirft neben
dem Problem der bersicht ber die schon geleistete Nietzsche-Forschung erneut das
Problem des Gewichts der nachgelassenen Notizen auf. Die Neuausgabe des Nachlasses
stellt noch deutlicher vor Augen, da es sich hier nicht eigentlich um Fragmente von
Aphorismen oder Abhandlungen handelt, wie es Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsches und Peter
Gasts Wille zur Macht noch nahelegte und wie sie auch Montinari noch nannte, also Werke
oder Werkstcke, die unvollendet blieben, sondern lediglich um Notizen, die Nietzsche
zunchst fr sich selbst gemacht hat. Fr sich selbst aber notiert man anders und anderes,
als man fr Leser schreibt. Die Nachlahefte enthalten Material, das Nietzsche zu einem
groen Teil wohl zur Verffentlichung gedacht, so aber eben nicht verffentlicht hat, also
Material nicht fr Leser, sondern nur fr ihn. Wenn er es verffentlichte, dann zumeist
nur unter erheblichen Bearbeitungen und Umgruppierungen, mit denen er, wie er (im
verffentlichten Werk) schrieb, sehr spezifische Anforderungen an die Leser verband. Es
ist weiterhin nicht grundstzlich geklrt und bersichtlich aufgearbeitet worden, wie sich
das Corpus der Nachla-Notizen zum Corpus des von Nietzsche verffentlichten oder
zur Verffentlichung bestimmten Werks verhlt, zum einen, wie sie im ganzen gegeneinander zu gewichten sind,11 zum andern und vor allem aber, welche Themen im einzelnen
Nietzsche nur in seinen Notizen bearbeitet und nicht der ffentlichkeit anvertraut hat
ber die sogenannten naturwissenschaftlichen Beweise der Wiederkunftslehre hinaus,
bei denen dies immer klar war. Z. B. gilt dies auch fr weite Zusammenhnge seiner weniger spektakulren, aber auch fr die Philosophie der Kunst elementaren Philoso8

9
10

11

Vgl. Pickus, David: The Walter Kaufmann Myth. A Study in Academic Judgement. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 226 258.
Vgl. Reckermann: Lesarten Nietzsches, a. a. O., S. 139 142 (mit Anm. 300).
Montinari, Mazzino: Nietzsches Nachla von 1885 bis 1888 oder Textkritik und Wille zur
Macht. In: Jahrbuch fr Internationale Germanistik, Reihe A (Kongreberichte) 2 (1976) (Akten
des V. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Cambridge 1975). S. 36 58, wiederabgedruckt
in: Salaquarda, Jrg (Hg.): Nietzsche, Darmstadt 1980 (Wege der Forschung, Bd. 521).
S. 323 349, engl. bersetzung in: Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsches Unpublished Writings from
1885 to 1888; or, Textual Criticism and the Will to Power. In: Ders.: Reading Nietzsche. Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Greg Whitlock. Urbana, Chicago 2003.
S. 80 102.
Vgl. v. a. Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. Bd. 1. Pfullingen 1961. S. 17: Was Nietzsche zeit seines
Lebens verffentlicht hat, ist immer Vordergrund. [] Die eigentliche Philosophie bleibt als
Nachla zurck. (hnlich noch einmal Heidegger, Martin: Was heit Denken? Tbingen 1974.
S. 70); Schlechta, Karl: Philologischer Nachbericht. In: Friedrich Nietzsche. Werke in drei Bnden. Bd. 3. Mnchen 1956. S. 1403 f., der erklrte, da in Der Wille zur Macht nichts Neues
steht; nichts was denjenigen berraschen knnte, der alles das kennt, was N verffentlicht oder
fr die Verffentlichung bestimmt hat, und Baeumler, Alfred: Der Nachla und seine Kritiker.
In: Nietzsche, Friedrich: Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte. Ausgewhlt und geordnet von Peter Gast unter Mitwirkung von Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche. Mit
einem Nachwort von Alfred Baeumler. Stuttgart 1964 u. . (Krners Taschenbuchausgabe.
Bd. 78). S. 711 715 (Schlechtas Verleugnung des Philosophen Nietzsche). Karl Lwith verteidigte den Willen zur Macht ebenso nachdrcklich wie Heidegger und Baeumler, mit dem Unterschied, da er sich zugleich stark auf das von Nietzsche verffentlichte aphoristische Werk
sttzte. Vgl. Lwith, Karl: Smtliche Schriften. Bd. 6: Nietzsche. Stuttgart 1987. S. 510 523 u.
526 534.

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phie des Zeichens.12 Sicher aber lassen es die so unterschiedlichen Arten von Texten
nicht oder doch nicht lnger zu, sie buntgemischt zusammenzustellen, wie es zumeist
immer noch geschieht. Die Nachla-Notizen, in der nun denkbar bersichtlichen Prsentation aller Korrekturen, Streichungen und Ergnzungen, knnen fraglos eine ausgezeichnete Hilfe sein, um den Sinn dessen zu erschlieen, was Nietzsche verffentlicht hat,
mehr aber doch nicht. Die methodische Konsequenz kann darum nur sein, die NachlaNotizen jeweils auf die verffentlichten Texte zu beziehen, in die sie transformiert wurden, wie es Montinari mit seinem Kommentar zur Studienausgabe vorbereitet hat und es
die inzwischen erarbeiteten Nachberichte zur KGW nun weit differenzierter ermglichen, oder sie als fallengelassene oder bewut zurckgehaltene Texte zu behandeln.
Die Frage des Verhltnisses der Notizen zu den Werken ist wiederum besonders bedeutsam fr Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst und seine Kunst der Philosophie. Nietzsche hat seine Gedanken in seinen Notizen vorlufig oft noch thetisch und eben dadurch
scheinbar definitiv formuliert. So scheinen sie seine wahren Meinungen wiederzugeben.
Htte es sich dabei um seine wahren Meinungen gehandelt, wre kein Grund ersichtlich,
warum Nietzsche sie nicht auch so htte mitteilen sollen. Er hat jedoch im verffentlichten
Werk ausdrcklich darauf aufmerksam gemacht, da er auf definitive, d.h. von allen Kontexten gelste, abstrakt definierte Begriffe verzichten wolle, auf abstrakte Begriffe fr etwas, das sich nicht abstrakt definieren lasse, ohne dadurch schon seinen Sinn zu verschieben oder zu verlieren.13 Statt dessen fhrte er mit den vielfltigen und komplexen Formen
seiner philosophischen Schriftstellerei, insbesondere dem Aphorismus und dem Aphorismen-Buch, immer neu vor, wie Sinn sich in wechselnden Kontexten verschiebt, und es ist
ein Teil seiner (verffentlichten) Philosophie des Zeichens, da ihr Sinn flssig bleiben
mu (GM II 12, KSA 5, S. 315), wenn dieselben Zeichen in immer wieder neuen Kontexten
verwendet werden sollen. Sie sind darum jedoch nicht schon vieldeutig. Denn es sind wiederum die jeweiligen Kontexte, die sie hinreichend eindeutig machen. Kunst aber ist gerade das Paradigma fr die hinreichende Eindeutigkeit von Zeichen in Kontexten ohne
abstrakte (also kontextenthobene) Definitionen ihres Sinns in allgemeingltigen Begriffen. Unpersnlichkeit und Allgemeingltigkeit, die die Ehre der Erkenntniss ausmachen, wre nach Nietzsche hier ein Fehlgriff (GM III 6, KSA 5, S. 346). Das gilt nach
Nietzsche auch fr die Philosophie, soweit sie ber die Wissenschaften hinausgeht. Es gehrte fr ihn zur Philosophie und insbesondere zu seiner Philosophie, sie bewut unvollstndig zu lassen, um sie wirksamer zu machen. Mitunter, schrieb er in MA I 178, ist
die reliefartig unvollstndige Darstellung eines Gedankens, einer ganzen Philosophie
wirksamer, als die erschpfende Ausfhrung: man berlsst der Arbeit des Beschauers mehr, er wird aufgeregt, das, was in so starkem Licht und Dunkel vor ihm sich abhebt, fortzubilden, zu Ende zu denken und jenes Hemmniss selber zu berwinden,
welches ihrem vlligen Heraustreten bis dahin hinderlich war.
12

13

Vgl. Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches Zeichen. In: Nietzsche-Studien 29 (2000). S. 41 69. Eine
andere Frage ist, warum Nietzsche einige seiner so bedeutsamen frhen Arbeiten wie PHG und
WL nicht verffentlicht hat. Bei WL kann man eine zu starke Verpflichtung an die Quellen vermuten, aber eben nur vermuten (vgl. Meijers, Anthonie: Gustav Gerber und Friedrich Nietzsche.
Zum historischen Hintergrund der sprachphilosophischen Auffassungen des frhen Nietzsche.
In: Nietzsche-Studien 17 [1988]. S. 369 390). In anderen Fllen haben Nietzsche solche Verpflichtungen wenig gestrt.
Vgl. GM II 13, KSA 5, S. 317: alle Begriffe, in denen sich ein ganzer Prozess semiotisch zusammenfasst, entziehen sich der Definition; definirbar ist nur Das, was keine Geschichte hat. Fr
Nietzsche haben alle Begriffe ihre Geschichte.

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Eine solche unvollstndige Darstellung ist aber zugleich bescheidener, weil sie zu
weiterer gedanklicher Arbeit einldt. Denn auch und gerade jedes gute Buch, schreibt
Nietzsche dann MA II, VMS 153, hat den Fehler der Neuheit, und was in ihm an
Geist, Ssse und Goldglanz ist, muss sich erst mit den Jahren entwickeln, Jahren philologischer Kunst. Und dann gilt auch: Gute Leser machen ein Buch immer besser und
gute Gegner klren es ab. (KSA 2, S. 442)
Einer solchen Abklrung steht jedoch entgegen, da in der internationalen und interdisziplinren Nietzsche-Forschung, auch und gerade auf dem Feld der Philosophie der
Kunst, die Prmisse zum Gemeingut geworden ist, Nietzsches Philosophie sei ambivalent und widersprchlich Schriften zu Nietzsche beginnen notorisch mit derartigen Versicherungen. Sie stehen freilich in offenkundigem Widerspruch zu eigenen uerungen
Nietzsches, der sich unzweideutig gegen Zweideutigkeiten erklrt hat.14 Er hatte sich
wohl schon frh notiert: Nothwendige Widersprche im Denken, um leben zu knnen.
(Nachla 1870/71, 7[58], KSA 7, S. 151), und er hat nicht aufgehrt, solche Widersprche namhaft zu machen. Aber dies sind ja dann Widersprche in den Gegenstnden seines
Denkens, nicht in seinem Denken. Die Prmisse der Ambivalenz und Widersprchlichkeit
seines Philosophierens setzt eben die Konsistenz eines logischen Systems voraus, die
Nietzsche bekanntlich nicht nur nicht gesucht, sondern aus philosophischen Grnden ausdrcklich verworfen hat.15 Ambivalenz und Widersprchlichkeit lt sich nur dort namhaft machen, wo Begriffe abstrakt definiert werden. Das geschieht merkwrdigerweise
gerade in der Nietzsche-Forschung gewhnlich so, da Stellen aus ihren Zusammenhngen isoliert und miteinander konfrontiert werden, und noch leichter ergeben sich solche
Ambivalenzen und Widersprche natrlich dann, wenn man Stellen aus den nachgelassenen Notizen und dem verffentlichten Werk, womglich noch aus verschiedenen Phasen
von Nietzsches Literatur, konfrontiert. Versucht man zu erraten, warum so regelmig
so vorgegangen wird, so verrt sich, mit Nietzsche zu sprechen, die Prmisse der Ambivalenz und Widersprchlichkeit seines Philosophierens als Lizenz der Interpreten zu eigenen Systembildungen. Denn man kann dann von dem, was man jeweils als ambivalent und
widersprchlich darstellt und davon wird bei Nietzsche zuletzt nichts ausgenommen ,
jeweils das beiseite lassen, was sich nicht in die Interpretation fgt. So aber verhindert die
Prmisse gerade, die von Nietzsches sorgfltig geschaffenen Kontexte seines verffentlichten Werks zu erschlieen. Nietzsche hat seine Leser eigens gewarnt, Paradoxien, auf
die sie stoen, schon fr die des Autors zu halten.16 Guten Freunden aber hat er von
vornherein einen Spielraum und Tummelplatz des Missverstndnisses zugestanden, weil
gute Freunde immer zu bequem sind und gerade als Freunde ein Recht auf Bequemlichkeit zu haben glauben, was ihm freilich zu lachen gebe ( JGB 27).17 Von einem
guten Leser erwartete er dagegen bekanntlich anders als von guten Freunden, da er
ihn lese, wie gute alte Philologen ihren Horaz lasen (EH, Warum ich so gute Bcher
schreibe 5, KSA 6, S. 305): die Texte wie Thatsachen ablesen knnen, ohne sie durch
14
15

16

17

Vgl. Stegmaier: Philosophischer Idealismus, a.a. O., S. 90 f.

Vgl. den vielzitierten Aphorismus GD, Sprche und Pfeile 26, KSA 6, S. 63, mit den Vorstufen
im Nachla 1887/88, 10[146], KSA 12, S. 538; 11[410], KSA 13, S. 189; 15[118], KSA 13, S. 477,
und bes. 18[4], KSA 13, S. 533.
Vgl. MA I 185: Die sogenannten Paradoxien des Autors, an welchen ein Leser Anstoss nimmt,
stehen hufig gar nicht im Buche des Autors, sondern im Kopfe des Lesers. Vgl. Stegmaier:
Philosophischer Idealismus, a.a. O., S. 90 95.
Vgl. die hier wiederum aufschlureiche Umgestaltung der vorausgehenden Notizen zum
schlielich verffentlichten Text und dazu Stegmaier: Nietzsches Zeichen, a.a. O.

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Interpretation zu flschen, ohne im Verlangen nach Verstndniss die Vorsicht, die Geduld, die Feinheit zu verlieren (AC 52). Wenn Interpretation nach Nietzsche unvermeidlich ist und jede Interpretation unvermeidlich auch von einem Willen zur Macht zeugt,
dann mte wohl gerade die Nietzsche-Forschung ihren Willen zur Interpretation durch
einen guten Willen zu guter Philologie eindmmen und Ambivalenzen und Widersprche, wo immer sie sich in Nietzsches Texten zeigen mgen, so weit wie mglich nicht
dort, sondern in den eigenen Interpretationen vermuten.
Auf dem Feld der Philosophie der Kunst wird man von Nietzsche darum ebensowenig wie ein System im brigen eine systematische sthetik oder Theorie der Kunst
erwarten drfen oder es eben, erwartet man sie doch, wieder mit Ambivalenzen und Widersprchlichkeiten zu tun haben. Nietzsche stellt wohl GT zu Beginn in den Horizont
der aesthetischen Wissenschaft (GT 1, KSA 1, S. 25), macht dann aber das sthetische
gerade zum Problem, das, ehemals nach den Griechen, jetzt nach Wagner, gerade keine
allgemeinen Normierungen zult. Im Grunde, heit es dann (GT 8, KSA 1, S. 60 f.),
ist das aesthetische Phnomen einfach; man habe nur die Fhigkeit, fortwhrend ein
lebendiges Spiel zu sehen und immerfort von Geisterschaaren umringt zu leben, so ist
man Dichter; man fhle nur den Trieb, sich selbst zu verwandeln und aus anderen Leibern
und Seelen herauszureden, so ist man Dramatiker. Der wahrhaft aesthetische Zuhrer
(GT 22, KSA 1, S. 141) bzw. der wahrhaft aesthetische Zuschauer (GT 24, KSA 1,
S. 151) ist danach der, der das Schne und Erhabene nicht nach vorgegebenen Mastben
(zumal moralischen Mastben) hrt und schaut, sondern mit aesthetischer Lust (ebd.,
S. 152). Die neuere Aesthetik (GT 5, KSA 1, S. 42), unsere Aesthetiker (GT 19,
KSA 1, S. 123 u. .), nmlich die weiterhin im Sinn von Aristoteles moralisch interpretirenden Aesthetiker (GT 22, ebd., S. 142 u. .), behandelt Nietzsche im verffentlichten
Werk kritisch oder ironisch, in seinen Notizen hhnisch. Sie glauben, wie er schon frh
fr sich bemerkt, an das Fertigsein: die Kunst ist fertig, die Aesthetik ist fertig. (Nachla
1869, 1[8], KSA 7, S. 13)18 Im Sptwerk kndigte er selbst statt dessen eine bisher so unberhrte, so unaufgeschlossene P hysio lo g i e d e r s th e ti k (GM III 8, KSA 5, S. 356),
schlielich ein Hauptwerk Zur Physiologie der Kunst (WA 7, KSA 6, S. 26) an, in
dem er die Kunst statt aus vorgeblichen Normen aus den delikateren Nten des Lebens
18

Nietzsche notierte sich ferner: Von der b ewuten Aesthetik des homerischen Zeitalters kann
man sich kaum einen hinreichend naiven Begriff machen. (Nachla 1869/70, 2[24], KSA 7,
S. 54). Bewute sthetik komme erst mit dem Sokratismus und Euripides auf (Nachla 1869,
1[18], KSA 7, S. 13, u. 1[106], KSA 7, S. 41). Sofern fr den frhen Nietzsche mit Wagner der
Einblick in die Urphnomene zurckkehrte, ist an ihm unsre Aesthetik zu Schanden geworden. (Nachla 1871, 9[36], KSA 7, S. 284; vgl. UB IV 3, KSA 1, S. 442) Nietzsche notierte wohl
gelegentlich den Plan, mit Blick auf Aischylos selbst eine Neue Aesthetik (mit reichstem allseitigem Material) zu verfassen, jedoch im Verbund mit einer Neuen Kulturbetrachtung, einer
Neuen Rhythmik, einer Neuen Sprachphilosophie und einer Neuen Behandlung der Mythen (Nachla 1871, 9[151], KSA 7, S. 331), fhrte ihn in dieser Form jedoch nicht aus. sthetik
htte nur Sinn als Naturwissenschaft: wie das Apollinische und das Dionysische (Nachla
1871/72, 16[6], KSA 7, S. 395). ber die Art, wie Professoren Aesthetik treiben, hatte er weiterhin nur Spott brig (Nachla 1873, 28[1], KSA 7, S. 615). Die Schriften Wagners, eines ganz
Groen, der von Erlebtem redet, ersetzten auch die sthetik Lessings und Schillers (Nachla
1875, 11[32], KSA 8, S. 222). In der Zeit von MA erwog Nietzsche in seinen Notizen die spter
so genannte Unterscheidung von Rezeptions- und Produktionssthetik, doch wiederum nur, um
beide zu verwerfen (Nachla 1876/77, 20[1], KSA 8, S. 360). sthetik von Knstlern wie Schiller
sei, so dann der verffentlichte Aphorismus, fehlgeleitete Affe c tation de r Wisse nschaftlich keit b ei K n st ler n (MA II, WS 123).

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355

zu verstehen suchen wollte, machte auch noch zahlreiche Notizen dazu, kam aber nicht
mehr zu seiner Ausarbeitung.19 Und wie bei seiner Genealogie der Moral einzelne Philosophen, Religionsstifter und Priester wren Gegenstand einer solchen Physiologie
einzelne Knstler gewesen, so wie Nietzsche sich auch zuvor stets an einzelne Knstler
und Werke aus der Geschichte der europischen Musik, Literatur und Kunst hielt, die er
auch als Einzelne von Einzelnen auf jeweils einzelne Weise verstanden wissen wollte (und
das schlo auch Wagner ein).
Die GT ldt zwar dazu ein, wenigstens den Gegensatz des Dionysischen und Apollinischen als allgemeine sthetische Unterscheidung zu betrachten, und hufig wird angenommen, Nietzsche habe in seinem ganzen Werk an ihr ungebrochen festgehalten. Aber
auch dies ist schwer haltbar, zum einen, weil Nietzsche sich selbst klar von seiner frhen
Artisten-Metaphysik (die er in GT noch aesthetische Metaphysik nannte GT 5,
KSA 1, S. 43) distanzierte, in deren Rahmen er die Unterscheidung entfaltet hatte,20 zum
andern, weil der Gegensatz auch in GT nicht als Unterscheidung einer sthetik eingefhrt wird. Die Unterscheidung sollte vielmehr den Pessimismus der Griechen verstndlich machen, nmlich so, da die (apollinische) Tragdie die Griechen instandgesetzt habe, in die (dionysischen) Abgrnde, die zerstrerische Grausamkeit des Daseins
zu sehen, indem sie bewies, wie Nietzsche in FW noch schrieb, da der tragische Held da
noch Worte, Grnde, beredte Gebrden und im Ganzen eine helle Geistigkeit findet, wo
das Leben sich den Abgrnden nhert, und der wirkliche Mensch meistens den Kopf und
gewiss die schne Sprache verliert. (FW 80) Kunst wird so schon im frhen Werk als Ergebnis und Ausdruck einer Lebensnot verstanden: Ihn [den Hellenen] rettet die Kunst,
und durch die Kunst rettet ihn sich das Leben. (GT 7, KSA 1, S. 56). Die Kunst ermglichte den Griechen nach Nietzsche das berleben in einer Weise und in einem Ma,
fr die seine Zeit den Sinn fast verloren habe, und die er in Wagners Kunst wiederkehren
zu sehen glaubte. Verstand er diese Ermglichung in GT noch als Rechtfertigung (des
Daseins als einem sthetischen Phnomen), so nahm er sie mit der Artisten-Metaphysik in FW 107 zurck in ein bloes Ertrglich-Machen: Als sthetisches Phnomen ist
uns das Dasein immer noch e r t r glich ,21 und er berschrieb den Aphorismus
Un sere l et zt e Da n kba rkeit g eg en die Ku n st.
Wenn Kunst als Ausdruck einer Lebensnot verstanden wird, ist keine besondere, sie
gegen andere Lebensnte abgrenzende Philosophie der Kunst mehr mglich. So kann
Nietzsche das Dionysische zuletzt als Bestimmung seines Philosophierens berhaupt verstehen.22 Sofern die Philosophie sich seit Sokrates wesentlich als Wissenschaft und Wis19

20

21

22

Vgl. weiterhin Lypp, Bernhard: Dionysisch apollinisch: Ein unhaltbarer Gegensatz. Nietzsches
Physiologie der Kunst als Version dionysischen Philosophierens. In: Nietzsche-Studien 13
(1984). S. 356 373, und Pfotenhauer, Hans: Die Kunst als Physiologie. Nietzsches sthetische
Theorie und literarische Produktion. Stuttgart 1985.
Wohlfart, Gnther: Artisten-Metaphysik. Wrzburg 1991, und ders.: Friedrich Nietzsche. In:
Nida-Rmelin, Julian / Betzler, Monika (Hg.): sthetik und Kunstphilosophie. Von der Antike
bis zur Gegenwart in Einzeldarstellungen. Stuttgart 1998. S. 578 585, versteht Nietzsches
Grundlehre der ewigen Wiederkunft als neue Artisten-Metaphysik des spten Nietzsche,
als Metaphysik der Kunst und anti-christliche Kunst-Religion (S. 581).
Vgl. auch schon Nachla 1869/70, 3[95], KSA 7, S. 86; Nachla 1873, 29[87], KSA 7, S. 668; MA
I 141 u. 151; MA II, VMS 174; Nachla 1880, 7[226], KSA 9, S. 364.
Vgl. JGB 295: dass Dionysos ein Philosoph ist, und dass also auch Gtter philosophiren,
scheint mir eine Neuigkeit In einer Vorstufe erscheint die frhliche Wissenschaft (gai
saber) als Philosophie des Dionysos; die Notiz schliet: Also sprach zu mir Dionysos.
(Nachla 1885, 34[181], KSA 11, S. 482 f.

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senschaft wiederum so verstanden hat, da sie das Leben nach wahr und falsch von einem
theoretischen Standpunkt aus zu unterscheiden hat, der dann dem Leben selbst enthoben
sein mu, hilft die Orientierung am Gott D i o n y s o s, jenem grossen Zweideutigen und
Versucher Gott ( JGB 295), das Philosophieren im Leben und am Leben oder kurz: flssig zu erhalten und auf durch abstrakte Definitionen gewonnene Eindeutigkeiten zu
verzichten.23 Von jenem lebensenthobenen theoretischen Standpunkt aus erscheint die
Kunst, die sich der Unterscheidung von wahr und falsch entzieht, jedoch generell als
Flschung. Sofern nach Nietzsche aber auch die Wissenschaft im Zusammenhang des
Lebens und seiner Willen zur Macht steht, ist auch sie eine bestndige Flschung der
Welt, und sie ist es, sofern sie (mehr oder weniger naiv) identische Flle voraussetzt,
die es im Leben nicht gibt ( JGB 4), sogar in einem hheren Ma als die Kunst. In der Orientierung am Leben hat die Kunst, sofern sie nicht auf der Unterscheidung von wahr und
falsch beharrt, einen weiteren Horizont als die Wissenschaft, und sofern die Philosophie
mit ihrer Kunst der Wissenschaft einen weiteren Horizont erffnet, ist sie philosophische
Kunst oder frhliche Wissenschaft. Philosophische Kunst ist Wissenschaft, sofern auch
sie mit Hilfe logischer Fiktionen ( JGB 4) eindeutige und feste Grenzen ziehen kann,
und Kunst, sofern sie diese Grenzen auch wieder berschreiten kann und ermutigt, immer
neue Grenzen zu ziehen und sie immer neu zu berschreiten und so den Evolutionen des
Lebens zu folgen. Mag auch Nietzsches Figur Zarathustra nicht besonders frhlich sein,
auch und gerade Also sprach Zarathustra ist ein Werk dieser philosophischen Kunst als
frhlicher Wissenschaft.

2. Themenspektrum der Neuerscheinungen

Das Themenspektrum der aktuellen Forschung zu Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst
und seiner Kunst der Philosophie lt sich zunchst an vier einschlgigen Sammelbnden
ablesen:

Kemal, Salim / Gaskell, Ivan / Conway, Daniel W.: Nietzsche, Philosophy and
the Arts. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1998. XV + 351 Seiten.
ISBN 0-521-59381-6.
Schweppenhuser, Gerhard / Gleiter, Jrg H.: Nietzsches Labyrinthe. Perspektiven zur sthetik, Ethik und Kulturphilosophie. Weimar (Universitts-Verlag) 2001. (Philosophische Diskurse 4). 151 Seiten. ISBN 3-86068-149-4.
Seubold, Gnter (Hg.): Man ist viel mehr Knstler als man wei. Bilder und
Bildner: Werk- und Lebenskunst bei Friedrich Nietzsche. Mit Beitrgen von
Martina Bretz u.a. Alfter, Bonn (DenkMal-Verlag) 2001. (Nietzsche Denken 2). 220 Seiten. ISBN 3-935404-00-X.
Seubert, Harald (Hg.): Natur und Kunst in Nietzsches Denken. Kln u.a. (Bhlau)
2002. (Collegium Hermeneuticum 8). XII + 207 Seiten. ISBN 3-412-09502-8.
23

Vgl. Stegmaier, Werner: Philosophie der Fluktuanz. Dilthey und Nietzsche. Gttingen 1992.
S. 365 372.

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357

Kemal, Gaskell und Conway, deren Band nur Beitrge von englischsprachigen Autoren
enthlt, gehen davon aus, dass sich Kunst und Philosophie bei Nietzsche gegenseitig bedingen und Nietzsches Philosophie nicht ohne seine Reflexionen auf die Kunst zu verstehen sei. In einem ersten Teil werden Grundfragen behandelt wie Nietzsches Konzeption der Ironie, die mit der Tragdie das Maskenspiel gemeinsam habe (Ernst Behler), die
Transformationen seiner Konzeption des Dionysischen (Martha C. Nussbaum, Adrian
del Caro24), die Probleme der sthetischen Rechtfertigung des Daseins (Randall Havas)
und Nietzsches sthetik(en), soweit davon die Rede sein kann (Aaron Ridley). Dann, in
einem zweiten Teil, werden spezielle Fragen der Quellen- und der Rezeptionsforschung
errtert: der Bezug von Nietzsches Geschichtskonzeption in HL zur Bildenden Kunst
der franzsischen Romantik, in der eine hnliche Zersplitterung des historischen Bewutseins zu finden sei (Stephen Bann), Gustav Klimts Adaption Nietzschescher Motive
von der Erlsungskraft der Kunst in seinem Beethoven-Fries (Timothy W. Hiles) und die
Nhe der Kunst improvisierender Selbsterschaffung zum Jazz ( John Carvalho). In einem
dritten Teil kommen die vieldiskutierte sthetische Existenz und nun auch ihre politischen, Demokratie eher frdernden als gefhrdenden Implikationen zur Sprache, die in
der aktuellen anglo-amerikanischen Nietzsche-Forschung besondere Beachtung gefunden haben (Fiona Jenkins, Henry Staten, Salim Kemal, Daniel W. Conway).25 Der Band
schliet mit Nietzsches Dionysian arts: dance, song, and silence (Claudia Crawford).
Der von Schweppenhuser und Gleiter herausgegebene Band stellt nicht nur eine sthetische Rechtfertigung der Welt, sondern auch gleich eine sthetische berwindung des Daseins in Aussicht und zur Interpretation von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst eine seiner
Leitmetaphern in den Titel: Labyrinthe. Behandelt werden dann eine Reihe gegenwartsbezogener Fragestellungen, die Metapher des Labyrinths selbst (va Grply, Rdiger
Schmidt-Grply) und, auf dem Feld von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst, dessen experimental-sthetische Umwertungen der Architektur und seine Begeisterung fr die Mole
Antoniella in Turin ( Jrg H. Gleiter), auerdem die mglichen Folgen von Nietzsches
(nicht verwirklichtem) Leipziger Plan, mit Rohde und Gersdorff in Paris zu studieren was
ihn vielleicht mit Lautramont zusammengefhrt und zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit
dessen wegweisendem sthetischem Selbstverstndnis gebracht htte (Steffen Dietzsch).
Der von Seubold zusammengestellte ist vielleicht der erstaunlichste unter den angezeigten Bnden. Er ist systematisch angelegt (ohne da hier Vollstndigkeit mglich wre)
und philologisch zumeist gut fundiert. Die Autorinnen und Autoren sind ausnahmslos
junge Leute. Ihr gemeinsames Ziel ist die Reflexion von Nietzsches philosophischer
Kunst und philosophischem Kunstbegriff aneinander. Werk- und Lebenskunst werden
als Einheit gesehen, die Werkkunst nicht der jetzt so prominent gewordenen Lebenskunst geopfert. In einem ersten Teil werden Nietzsches Bezge zu Knstlern dargestellt,
24

25

S. auch die Monographie von del Caro, Adrian: Dionysian Aesthetics. The Role of Destruction
and Creation as Reflected in the Life and Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Frankfurt am Main,
Bern, Cirencester (UK) 1981.
Vgl. die Besprechungen von Bretz, Martina / Hofmann, Doris Vera: Nietzsche now. Zum Stand
der amerikanischen Nietzsche-Forschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 29 (2000). S. 332 354, bes.
S. 333 339, und Siemens, Herman: Nietzsches Political Philosophy. A Review of Recent Literature. In: Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001). S. 509 526. Zum politischen Nietzsche in der aktuellen
franzsischen Nietzsche-Forschung vgl. Bretz, Martina / Hofmann, Doris Vera: Franzsische
Neuerscheinungen zur Nietzsche-Forschung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 453 488, hier
S. 457 464.

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die Autoritten auch fr seine Philosophie wurden, Goethe, Wagner und (mit Einschrnkungen) Paul Bourget. Nach Pasquale Memmolo bildet Goethe den konstanten Orientierungspunkt fr Nietzsches langwierigen Versuch der Selbstfeststellung (S. 25). Zu
Wagner ist das meiste natrlich doch schon gesagt (Matthias Koll). Auch schon bekannt
ist, da Nietzsches Begriff der dcadence, den er im Sptwerk auf Wagner bezieht, von
Bourget geprgt ist; hier wird es mit einem detaillierten Stellenfundus nachgewiesen
(Volker Neumann). Der zweite Teil ist Nietzsche als Selbst-Bildner und seinen SelbstBildern gewidmet. Martina Bretz exponiert ebenso philologisch sorgfltig (unter Differenzierung von Werken und Notizen und ihrer Chronologie) wie philosophisch durchdacht Nietzsches Kunstbegriff nach seinem Abschied von der Artistenmetaphysik:
Danach stellt Nietzsche neben die Kunst nun die Wissenschaft, unterzieht beide der Aufklrung und geht dabei von der Kunst der Kunstwerke zur philosophischen Kunst ber.
Was bleibt, ist die Selbstdistanz des Lebensknstlers, der weiss, dass auch der eigene
Lebensentwurf eine Fiktion ist, und der daher auch sich selbst gegenber die Haltung des
amsierten Zuschauers einnehmen kann (S. 132), wie es Nietzsche etwa in FW 383 dokumentiert. Nach Jakob Kneser nimmt Nietzsche in seiner spten Kunstphilosophie den
Wahrheitsbegriff wieder auf. Sofern der Wille zur Wahrheit nun als ein Wille zur Kunst
verstanden wird, wird damit der Kunstcharakter der Philosophie und der Wissenschaft
berhaupt herausgestellt. Nach Philipp Wittmann und Frank Zabel haben Nietzsches
musikalisch eher bescheidene Kompositionen fr ihn eine therapeutische, aber auch
eine entgrenzende Funktion. Im ganzen ist nach Bernd Draser Lebenskunst nach Nietzsche ebenso die Kunst, sich zu verlieren, wie sich zu finden, nmlich die Kunst, sich zu
verlieren, um sich neu wiederzufinden. In einem dritten Teil werden dann wieder Rezeptionen in konkreten Kunstzusammenhngen verfolgt, hier in der Architektur des Nationalsozialismus (Kerstin Dnicke), in Foucaults sthetik der Existenz (Malte Brinkmann)
und in der Kulturkritik von Botho Strau (Ansgar Maria Hoff).
Seubert hat fr seinen Band, der eine Tagung in Halle im Jubilumsjahr 2000 dokumentiert, groenteils gut eingefhrte und als einziger auch Nietzsche-Forscher(innen) aus
mehreren Sprachkreisen gewonnen. Die Beitrge sind nicht immer neu, bestehen z.T. aus
Zitaten-Zusammenstellungen ohne Rcksicht auf Werk, Nachla und Entstehungszeiten
und werden hufig entweder an Quellen Nietzsches oder bestimmten Rezeptionen seiner
Philosophie festgemacht. Dennoch enthlt er einige herausragende Beitrge, und das
Ganze lt sich ebenfalls als fortlaufender Gedankengang lesen. Den Auftakt macht auch
hier Goethe als Gegen-Wagner (S. 9), dem freilich das Orgiastisch-Dionysische der
Griechen fremdgeblieben sei (Dieter Borchmeyer). Peter Ptz arbeitet die Grundspannung zwischen Kunst und Erkenntnis in einem dem Leben verpflichteten Denken heraus, von der er auch in seiner gerade fr an Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst Interessierte noch immer unerreichten Einfhrung ausgegangen ist.26 Die Spannung erstarrt
nicht in Antithetik und lst sich nicht im Primat sei es der Kunst oder der Erkenntnis,
sondern erzwingt unablssige Perspektivierungen der einen durch die andere. Damit ist
Gadamers Kritik an Nietzsches vermeintlichem sthetizismus schon der Boden entzogen. Sofern auch Nietzsche schon Wahrheit als Wahrheit der Kunst denkbar gemacht hat,
lt sich, so Jean Grondin, Gadamer mit Nietzsche vershnen. Mit Hilfe Heideggerscher
Denkbewegungen lt sich nach Th. C. W. Oudemans anhand der dichterischen Gestalt
des Zarathustra auch die Konstitution menschlicher Identitt fern vom Herstellen verstehen und die Abendrthe der Kunst (MA I 223) im Sinn der Kunst der Kunstwerke
26

Ptz, Peter: Friedrich Nietzsche. 2., durchges. Aufl. Stuttgart 1975.

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359

als Bedingung und Anfang einer neuen, lebensgestaltenden Kunst nach Karsten Harries
im Anschlu an Benn. Josef Simon begreift die philosophische Kunst dann entschieden
philosophisch: als Arbeit mit Gegenbegriffen und gezielten Umkehrungen von Gegenstzen zur Vermeidung metaphysischer Festlegungen und zur Ermglichung von lebensnotwendigen Umorientierungen. Das gilt auch fr den in den Titel des Bandes gestellten
Gegensatz von Natur und Kunst. Als deren Einheit lt sich nach Babette E. Babich das
schpferische Chaos denken, dessen berflle ebenso in der Natur wie in der Kunst gebndigt werde, und auch der Gegensatz des Apollinischen und Dionysischen ist mit Jrgen Sring nicht sthetisch, sondern im Anschlu an Hlderlin als letzter ontologischer Grund des Lebens zu denken. Pascal David trgt schlielich die Musik in das
Verhltnis von Kunst und Leben ein als das nach FW 106 Unwiderlegbare (Mit Tnen
kann man die Menschen zu jedem Irrthume und jeder Wahrheit verfhren: wer vermchte einen Ton zu widerleg en?). Eugenio Mazzarella und Istvn M. Fehr bekrftigen noch einmal Heideggers (nach Wolfgang Mller-Lauter jedoch kaum mehr haltbare)
Deutung, da Nietzsche die Metaphysik sthetisiert und damit bersteigert und vollendet
habe.27 Holger Schmid wendet sich zuletzt FW 370 und dessen zwiefacher Interpretation zu, wonach Kunst ebenso wie Philosophie entgegengesetzten Leiden, dem Leiden
an der U eberf lle des L ebens ebenso wie an der Ve r a r mu n g d e s L e b e n s,
entspringen kann und beide Leiden in einem Verlangen nach S e i n und Ve r e w i g en ebenso wie nach Wer den und Z erst r u n g zum Ausdruck kommen knnen.
So erweisen sich nach Nietzsche, tiefer angesehen, beide Arten des Verlangens als
zweideutig (FW 370), eine Zweideutigkeit, die Nietzsche jedoch nicht stehen lt, sondern mit seiner Genealogie der Kunst und Philosophie aus dem Leiden gerade aufzuklren sucht.28
Die aktuellen Monographien zu Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst greifen naturgem die allgemeineren Fragen auf. Man kann sie einteilen in Versuche,
(a) Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst in der Geschichte der Philosophie der Kunst
zu situieren und gegenber anderen Autoritten zu profilieren:

Geisenhanslke, Achim: Le sublime chez Nietzsche. Paris (LHarmattan) 2000.

176 Seiten. ISBN 2-7384-8918-4.
(b) Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst in seiner eigenen Philosophie zu situieren:

Pothen, Philip: Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. Aldershot (Ashgate) 2002. X +
235 Seiten. ISBN 0-7546-0792-5 / 0-7546-0793-3.
27

28

Vgl. Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang: ber Werden und Willen zur Macht. Nietzsche-Interpretationen
I. Berlin, New York 1999, und ders.: Heidegger und Nietzsche. Nietzsche-Interpretationen III.
Berlin, New York 2000. S. auch das Themenheft der New Nietzsche Studies Heidegger and The
Will to Power as Art (3, 1999) mit Beitrgen von Jacques Taminaux, Babette E. Babich und
Holger Schmid.
Vgl. auch Schmid, Holger: ber die Tragweite der Artisten-Metaphysik. In: Nietzsche-Studien 13 (1984). S. 437 442, hier S. 440. Schmid thematisiert die Unterscheidungen von FW 370
mittels der Unterscheidung exoterisch-esoterisch, die er seiner Kunst und Philosophie eng
zusammenfhrenden Nietzsche-Interpretation im ganzen zugrundelegt. Vgl. ders.: Nietzsches
Gedanke der tragischen Erkenntnis. Wrzburg 1984.

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Cherlonneix, Laurent: Nietzsche. Sant et maladie, lart. Paris (LHarmattan)

2003. (Collection Ouverture philosophique). 322 Seiten. ISBN 2-7475-3150-3.
Kang, Yong-Soo: Nietzsches Kulturphilosophie. Wrzburg (Knigshausen und
Neumann) 2003. 192 Seiten. ISBN 3-8260-2357-9.
(c) seine Philosophie im ganzen von seiner Philosophie der Kunst aus zu interpretieren:

Grner, Rdiger: Nietzsches Kunst. Annherungen an einen Denkartisten. Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig (Insel Verlag) 2000. 363 Seiten. ISBN 3-458-34310-5.
Audi, Paul: LIvresse de lart. Nietzsche et lesthtique. Paris (Librairie Gnrale
Franaise) 2003. 221 Seiten. ISBN 2-253-94351-7.
(d) seine Philosophie im ganzen im Blick auf seine Philosophie der Kunst als exemplarische Philosophie der Moderne und/oder der Postmoderne zu identifizieren:

Rampley, Matthew: Nietzsche, Aesthetics, and Modernity. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2000. XI + 286 Seiten. ISBN 0-521-65155-7.
Die genannten Hinsichten sind natrlich eng miteinander verschrnkt. Zu einem
neuen Schwergewicht in der Erschlieung von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst ist nach
der Musik, die fr ihn von Anfang an die Leitkunst war und auch blieb,29 nun auch
29

Zu Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit der Musik vgl. in den Nietzsche-Studien (jeweils mit
weiterer Literatur) Love, Frederick R.: Nietzsches Quest for a New Aesthetic of Music: die
allergrte Symphonie, groer Stil, Musik des Sdens. In: Nietzsche-Studien 6 (1977).
S. 154 194; Janz, Curt Paul: Friedrich Nietzsches Verhltnis zur Musik seiner Zeit. In: Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978). S. 308 326; Bruse, Klaus-Detlef: Die griechische Tragdie als Gesamtkunstwerk Anmerkungen zu den musiksthetischen Reflexionen des frhen Nietzsche. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 13 (1984). S. 156 176; Schellong, Dieter: und im Kleinsten luxurirt.
Zur Bedeutung von Nietzsches Diagnose der Dcadence in der Musikpraxis. In: Nietzsche-Studien 13 (1984). S. 412 436; Kropfinger, Klaus: Wagners Musikbegriff und Nietzsches Geist
der Musik. In: Nietzsche-Studien 14 (1985), S. 1 12; Hudek, Franz-Peter: Nietzsche im Lichte
der Musik-Fachwelt. Eine rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studie. In: Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990).
S. 230 245; Janz, Curt Paul: Die Musik im Leben Friedrich Nietzsches. In: Nietzsche-Studien 26
(1997). S. 72 86; Dufour, ric: Lesthtique musicale formaliste de Humain trop humain. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 28 (1999). S. 215 233; ders.: La physiologie de la musique de Nietzsche. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 30(2001). S. 222 245; Tietz: Musik und Tanz, a. a. O.; Landerer, Christoph /
Schuster, Marc-Oliver: Nietzsches Vorstudien zur Geburt der Tragdie in ihrer Beziehung zur Musiksthetik Eduard Hanslicks. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002). S. 114 133; Stegmaier: Philosophischer Idealismus, a. a. O. Das Journal of Nietzsche Studies hat dem Thema Musik im Herbst
1991 ein Themenheft gewidmet (Mood, Music and the Subject, mit Beitrgen von Gary
Peters, Will McNeill und Graham Parkes), die New Nietzsche Studies ihren ersten Band 1996
(Nietzsche and Music mit Beitrgen von Tracy B. Strong, David B. Allison, Gary Lemco, Holger Schmid und einer Auswahlbibliographie von Babette E. Babich). Curt Paul Janz hat anllich
der Verleihung des Nietzsche-Preises des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt am 24. Oktober 1998 seine
Forschungen zu Friedrich Nietzsches Frage nach dem Wesen der Musik zusammengefhrt
(in: Nietzscheforschung 5/6 (2000). S. 15 22; vgl. die Laudatio von Renate Reschke ebd.,
S. 23 31).

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361

(e) Nietzsches Erfahrung und Philosophie der Bildenden Kunst geworden:

Im Namen des Dionysos: Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophie als Kunst. Beitrge

von Heinz Friedrich u. a., Waakirchen (Oreos) 1995. (Bayerische Akademie
der Schnen Knste: Eine Veranstaltungsreihe zum 150. Geburtstag des Philosophen). S. 141 216.
Kostka, Alexandre / Wohlfarth, Irving (Hg.): Nietzsche and An Architecture of
Our Minds. Los Angeles 1999 (= Issues and Debates, published by the
Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities). XI +
364 Seiten. ISBN 0-89236-485-8.
Buddensieg, Tilmann: Nietzsches Italien. Stdte, Grten und Palste. Berlin
(Klaus Wagenbach) 2002. 252 Seiten. ISBN 3-8031-3609-1.

3. Thesen und Resultate der monographischen Neuerscheinungen

zu Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst im ganzen
(a) Geisenhanslke, ein deutscher Autor, der vor allem an die franzsische (Nietzsche-)
Forschung anschliet und sein Buch auch auf Franzsisch publiziert hat (die englischsprachige Nietzsche-Forschung allerdings weitgehend ausspart), stellt Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst in die Tradition des seit Benjamin, Adorno und Lyotard wieder viel
diskutierten Begriffs des Erhabenen. Auf dieser Tradition liegt auch das Schwergewicht
des Buches. Danach ist das Erhabene bei Homer und auch noch bei Platon mit dem enthousiasms verbunden, der jedoch durch den Diskurs ber das Erhabene nach und nach aus
ihm getilgt worden sei. Nietzsche, der den Begriff Hunderte von Malen gebraucht (auch
im Plural als Erhabenheiten),30 hat keine Theorie des Erhabenen entworfen. Das bedeutet wohl, so Geisenhanslke, da es unmglich ist, das Erhabene in Nietzsches Werk zu
fixieren (S. 165); es zeigten sich nur verkleidete Formen des Erhabenen (S. 11). Geisenhanslke spricht dennoch von einer thorie du sublime chez Nietzsche. Denn sofern Nietzsche in GT die apollinische Gestalt mit dem Schnen und den dionysischen
Rausch (ivresse) und das Sich-Loslassen (dessaisissement de soi) mit dem Erhabenen verbinde und das Erhabene als die knstlerische Bndigung des Entsetzlichen (GT 7,
KSA 1, S. 57) bestimme, schreibe er sich in die Tradition von Kants Theorie des Erhabenen ein (beides wird denn auch unter der Interpretationsprmisse der Ambivalenz und
Widersprchlichkeit von Nietzsches Philosophieren vorgetragen). Im Blick auf Wagner
be Nietzsche auch eine critique du sublime, sofern der Enthusiasmus hier zur bloen
Rauscherzeugung verkommen sei. In seiner eigenen philosophischen Schriftstellerei aber
habe er dem Erhabenen eine neue enthusiastische Gestalt gegeben, zumal da, wo sie ins
Gedicht und den Gesang bergehe, und sein Za sei eine einzige criture du sublime.
Im Letzteren kann man eine durchaus aufschlureiche Art der sthetisierung von
Nietzsches Philosophie sehen. Denn wenn nach Kant im Erhabenen Macht, Gewalt,
30

Lypp: Dionysisch apollinisch, a. a. O., S. 370, nimmt irrtmlich an, Nietzsche habe den Begriff
des Erhabenen verworfen.

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Gre und ber-Gre erfahren und dabei ebenso die Anschauung wie die Vernunft
herausgefordert wird, so hat Nietzsche die Philosophie als solche in dieser Dimension gesehen, sie in seinem Za auch sichtbar in diese Dimension gestellt und in ihm (und nur in
ihm) die gewaltigen Lehren vom bermenschen, vom Willen zur Macht und von der
ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen als Lehren vorgetragen. Die Aphorismen-Werke MA,
M und insbesondere FW, deren Bcher Za thematisch und chronologisch einschlieen,
bewegten sich dann, folgt man diesem Gedanken, in der Dimension des Schnen, das anders als die einschchternden Reden Zarathustras ein lustvoll freies Spiel31 der Erkenntniskrfte zult. In diesem Spiel spielen sich dann Philosophien ein und knnen so
unterschiedlichen Lebensbedingungen und Lebensnten entsprechen. Es giebt viele andere und gewiss auch viele hhere Erhabenheiten der Philosophie, und nicht nur solche,
welche dsterer und anspruchsvoller sind, als die meinen, schrieb Nietzsche in der Morgenrthe, aber es gibt auch das heimliche und einsame Schwrmen eines Schmetterlings,
hoch an den Felsenufern des Sees, wo viele gute Pflanzen wachsen: er fliegt umher, unbekmmert darum, dass er nur das Leben Eines Tages noch lebt, und dass die Nacht zu
kalt fr seine geflgelte Gebrechlichkeit sein wird. Es wrde sich wohl auch fr ihn eine
Philosophie finden lassen: ob es schon nicht die meine sein mag. (M 553)
(b) Was die Situierung von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst in seiner eigenen
Philosophie angeht, so hat in der angelschsischen Nietzsche-Forschung Richard Schacht
mit zwei Beitrgen, die in reprsentative neue Aufsatzsammlungen zur Nietzsche-Forschung Eingang fanden,32 Mastbe gesetzt. Danach ist die Kunst bei Nietzsche nicht
als reprsentativ, sondern als transfigurativ zu begreifen die Tragdie hat nach Nietzsche das Leben der Griechen nicht so sehr dargestellt als verndert. Das Transfigurations-Theorem steht jedoch in sichtlicher Spannung mit dem Rechtfertigungs-Theorem
und dies wiederum mit dem Pessimismus Schopenhauers, fr den das Leben im ganzen
ja nicht zu rechtfertigen, sondern nur zu erlsen war. Nietzsche aber erkannte in den
Griechen ein lebensbejahendes Volk, das in der Kunst das Mittel gefunden hat, nicht das
Leben, sondern den Lebensekel zu berwinden. Bei ihnen kam fr Nietzsche, so Schacht,
Kunst und Leben zum Ausgleich, wurde fast zur Einheit. Distanziert man schon den frhen Nietzsche in dieser Weise von Schopenhauer, so wird eine Kontinuitt seines Kunstdenkens in GT entlang der Unterscheidung apollinisch-dionysisch auch ber die Absage
an die Schopenhauersche Metaphysik hinweg in seinem weiteren Werk denkbar. Zwar treten nach Schacht dann zunchst die Themen der Lge und der Tuschung strker hervor.
Im Thema des grossen Stils aber werde die Einheit von Kunst und Leben im spten Werk
als apollinisch-dionysische Selbstberwindung in ihrer hchsten Gestalt sichtbar. In ihr
aber sei dann auch die Idee der sthetischen Rechtfertigung der Welt transfiguriert.
Auch Julian Young, dessen Monographie Nietzsches Philosophy of Art 33 zu einem weiteren Meilenstein in der englischsprachigen Forschung zu Nietzsches Philosophie der
Kunst geworden ist, lag an der ungebrochenen Einheit von Nietzsches Werk. Er lt
31
32

33

Vgl. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, AA V 240, 321.

Schacht, Richard: Making Life Worth Living: Nietzsche on Art in The Birth of Tragedy [1977].
In: Richardson, John / Leiter, Brian (Hg.): Nietzsche. Oxford u.a. (Oxford University Press)
2001. (Oxford Readings in Philosophy). S. 186 209, und ders.: Nietzsches Second Thoughts
about Art [1981]. In: White, Richard (Hg.): Nietzsche. Aldershot u.a. (Ashgate/Dartmouth)
2002. (The International Library of Critical Essays in the History of Philosophy). S. 417 432.
Vgl. die Besprechung beider Bnde bei Sommer: Neue Gesamtdarstellungen, a. a. O., S. 380 382.
Young, Julian: Nietzsches Philosophy of Art. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1992.

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363

Nietzsche jedoch nicht von Schopenhauer loskommen, sondern nach Phasen der Distanzierung von ihm am Ende wieder zum seinem Pessimismus zurckkehren. Nietzsche, so
Young, lasse sich berhaupt nur von Schopenhauer her verstehen, GT sei bloe Schopenhauer-Adaption, und die Emanzipation von Schopenhauer sei auch im aphoristischen
Werk nicht geglckt. Nietzsche habe in FW nicht mehr erreicht als eine Art manic frivolity which is really no more than a symptom of desperation and despair (S. 92). In dieser
Einheit von Nietzsches Werk im Schopenhauerschen Horizont aber gebe es dann keine
einheitliche Philosophie der Kunst, sondern verschiedene in den verschiedenen Phasen.
Gegen Young wendet sich nun Pothen mit seiner neuen Monographie, ohne darum zu
Schacht zurckzukehren. Nietzsche habe sich sehr wohl von Schopenhauer gelst indem er auch und gerade die Kunst kritisiert habe. Wohl sei Nietzsches Leidenschaft fr
die Kunst nicht zu leugnen. Seine Philosophie sei aber dennoch viel weniger eine Philosophie als eine radical critique of art and the arts (S. 7) und nicht nur der Kunst der
Kunstwerke, sondern jeglicher Kunst der Illusionserzeugung berhaupt. Nietzsche beweise in seinem ganzen Werk a deep suspicion and at times hostility gegen die Kunst
(S. 1), ja, sofern auch Kunst Ausdruck eines verflschenden Willens zur Macht sei,
a strong and consistent condemnation of the work of art (S. 6). Kunst ist also, bei aller
Leidenschaft fr sie, nicht Verklrung des Lebens und nicht Stimulans zum Leben,
sondern allein kritikwrdige Tuschung ber das Leben. So konstatiert Pothen ein unauflsliches Dilemma bei Nietzsche und treibt dabei die Ambivalenz- und Widerspruchsprmisse noch ber das bliche hinaus: Nietzsche sei in seinem Dilemma nicht unfreiwillig
widersprchlich, sondern intends to contradict himself, und das sei unvermeidlich, da er
in seiner Kritik die Sprache des Kritisierten gebrauchen msse (S. 198). Zum Beleg wird
mit dem hier naheliegenden Argument, Nietzsche habe verffentlichten Werken berhaupt mitraut, trotz Vorbehalt ausfhrlich von Will to Power Gebrauch gemacht.
Dennoch geht Pothen auch Nietzsches verffentlichtes Werk durch, dabei laufend
Anknpfungen an frhere oder sptere Philosophen (u.a. Kant, Hegel, Heidegger und
Habermas) suchend. Er schliet konsequent auch einen sthetizismus Nietzsches aus,
wie ihn Nehamas34 in der englischsprachigen Nietzsche-Forschung plausibel gemacht hat.
Schon der Nachla aus der Zeit der so sthetizismusverdchtigen GT sei, mit de Man und
Lacoue-Labarthe gelesen, sthetizismuskritisch und bereite die sptere Selbstkritik vor.
Vor allem aber sei Nietzsche gerade in der Za-Dichtung mit seiner Dichter-Kritik viel nher an Hegel und dessen These vom Ende der Kunst als an Schopenhauers Erlsung
durch die Kunst. Heidegger sei darin zu folgen, da die Kunst vor Nietzsches instrumentalism, und Habermas darin, da das Vernnftige vor dem sthetischen zu retten
sei (wobei Habermas nicht hinreichend gesehen habe, da Nietzsche ja selbst die Kunst
als Tuschung zurckwies, S. 198 f.).
Pothen zitiert abschlieend die Nachla-Notiz von Ende 1880 (7[290], KSA 9, S. 379):
Um in der Kunst ein Mittel der Macht zu sehen: wie mu man da die Dinge verdrehen oder den Umsturz des Bestehenden erstreben! Wie viel Enttuschung!, um damit
Nietzsches Enttuschung ber die Kunst zu belegen, die wiederum in seiner Enttuschung ber Wagner manifest sei und in seiner Enttuschung, da das Dionysische in
Kunst aufgegangen sei (S. 200 f.). Zu so zu sichtlichen Verdrehungen kann es leicht

34

Nehamas, Alexander: Nietzsche. Life as Literature. Cambridge/Mass., London 1985. Deutsch:

Nietzsche. Leben als Literatur. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Brigitte Flickinger. Gttingen
1991. Vgl. die Diskussion bei Schacht, Richard: On Self-Becoming. Nietzsche and Nehamass
Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche-Studien 21 (1992). S. 266 280.

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kommen, wenn, wie bei Pothen, Nietzsches konkrete Bezge auf konkrete Knstler (auer Wagner), etwa auf Raffael oder Lorrain, und auf seine eigene philosophische Kunst
am Rand bleiben. Wre er von ihnen ausgegangen, htten sie ihn vielleicht schon seine
Prmisse, Nietzsche befasse sich, wenn er sich mit konkreter Kunst befasse, stets mit der
Kunst als solcher (S. 8), verwerfen lassen.
Der Franzose Laurent Cherlonneix, ein Philosoph, der nach dem Klappentext seines
Buches nun in Berlin Biologie studiert, betrachtet Nietzsches Philosophie des Lebens
als medizische Philosophie (philosophie mdicale) und versucht eine medizische
Interpretation (interprtation mdicale) seiner Philosophie der Kunst. Wenn Kunst aus
Lebensnten entspringt, so sind die sprbarsten Lebensnte die Nte der Gesundheit,
die Krankheiten, und wir haben seit Nietzsche und mit Nietzsche, so Cherlonneix, immer
strker medizinisch zu denken gelernt. Cherlonneix legt Nietzsches Gesundheits- und
Krankheitsdenken nach der Maxime des sorgfltigen Lesens (lire scrupuleusement, S. 9)
unter detailreicher Einbeziehung auch von Nietzsches eigener Krankheitsgeschichte in
aller Ausfhrlichkeit dar. Die Dimensionen der philosophie mdicale sind danach die Philosophie der Natur, die Theorie der Erkenntnis und die Philosophie der Kunst, die fr
Nietzsche die brigen einschliee. Denn nichts drnge so wie Krankheit auf die wahre
und klare Erkenntnis ihrer Ursachen in der Natur, nichts aber auch so sehr auf Verklrung
ihrer Unertrglichkeit. Krankheit, vermutet Nietzsche in der Tat, inspiriert Philosophen
am strksten, insbesondere solche, die Frieden, Glck, einen Endzustand irgend
welcher Art suchten (FW, Vorrede 2). Krankheit und Krankheiten aber sind, arbeitet
Cherlonneix heraus, wiederum nichts, was sich schlechthin verallgemeinern liee, jede
Krankheit und jede Gesundheit sind, wie jeder Mediziner gerne besttigt, individuell.
Dennoch haben sie einen allgemeinen Zug: in ihrer Selbstbezglichkeit. Nietzsche hat
mit seinem spten Philosophem der groen Gesundheit, der Gesundheit, die sich an
ihren Gegenstzen, den Krankheiten, strken und steigern kann, so wie Nietzsche es
selbst erfuhr und in EH beredt schilderte, die Mglichkeit erffnet, die Philosophie der
Kunst und die frhe Unterscheidung des Dionysischen und des Apollinischen in die philosophie mdicale einzulassen. Hier zeigt sich dann auch, so Cherlonneix, die Kohrenz
seiner sthetik (cohrence de lesthtique nietzschenne): Kunst ist dionysisch, sofern
sie wie die Krankheit das Leben stimuliert und steigert, und sie ist apollinisch, sofern sie
es in Gesundheit erhlt und seine Nte auf Zeit therapeutisch verklrt. Gesundheit ist danach (bei Schaffenden) nie von Bestand, sondern bestenfalls in einem prekren Gleichgewicht mit der Krankheit. Krankheit kann nach Nietzsche aber auch chronisch werden
und dann eine absteigende Entwicklung, Verfall, chronische Entartung, Erkrankung anzeigen (GD, Streifzge eines Unzeitgemssen 33). Dann wird auch die Kunst dekadent, wird sie zur Kunst der Krankheit, wird sie zu dem, was der spte Nietzsche unter
Romantik zusammenfate und verwarf.
Hier wre dann freilich an Nietzsches Frage Wa s i s t Ro m a n ti k ? in FW 370 zu
erinnern und an die Alternative der Nte, die er hier erffnete, die Not nicht nur der
Ve rar mu ng des L ebens , sondern eben auch der U e b e r f l l e d e s L e b e n s, die
nicht Krankheit ist und die nach Nietzsche eine Apotheosenkunst denken lt, dithyrambisch vielleicht mit Rubens, selig-spttisch mit Hafis, hell und gtig mit Goethe, und
einen homerischen Licht- und Glorienschein ber alle Dinge breitend. Ein Beispiel fr
eine philosophische Kunst auf dieser Hhe nennt Nietzsche nicht, er sieht sie nur kommen, sieht ihn kommen! den dionysischen Pessimismus (KSA 3, S. 622). Trotz
seiner Maxime des lire scrupuleusement bercksichtigt Cherlonneix diesen Aphorismus
nicht.

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365

Der Koreaner Yong-Soo Kang zieht um Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst schlielich
einen noch weiteren Kreis, die Philosophie der Kultur. Er hat sich mit seiner knapp zweihundertseitigen Wrzburger Dissertation die enorme Aufgabe gestellt, die Interdependenzen von Kunst und Kultur in Nietzsches Werk deutlich zu machen. Er geht es, ohne
sich zu Vergleichen mit seiner Heimatkultur herausfordern zu lassen, nach den Leitbegriffen Verinnerlichung, Disziplinierung und Bemhung um hhere Kultur im
ganzen durch. ber Kulturphilosophie und Kulturkritik hier wird der obligate Exkurs
zu Adorno eingefgt, Inspirationen geben auerdem Freuds Unbehagen in der Kultur
und Foucaults Kritik der Gewalt und Kulturanthropologie hinaus wird, im Blick auf den
bermenschen, auf eine Transanthropologie hingefhrt, deren Kennzeichen wiederum die sthetisierung der Kultur, die individualisierte Kultur und die Leibkultur sind, die sich dann in der sthetisierung im Tanz vollendet.
(c) Nietzsches Philosophie ist nicht erst im englischen Sprachbereich von Nehamas
sthetisiert, das heit als ganze von emphatischen Interpretationen seiner Philosophie
der Kunst aus erschlossen worden, sondern zuvor schon im franzsischen Sprachbereich,
vor allem von Bataille und Klossowski.35 Nehamas hat dabei Nietzsches vielfltigen Formen
philosophischer Schriftstellerei groes Gewicht gegeben und sich dazu wiederum auer
auf Klossowski auf Deleuze, Blanchot, Derrida und Kofman berufen. Im (mehr oder weniger engen) Anschlu an Foucault und dessen (mehr oder weniger engen) Anschlssen
an Nietzsche36 wurden dann im englischen (MacIntyre, Nussbaum, Rorty) und auch im
deutschen Sprachbereich (Reuber, Schmid, Frchtl) sthetik und Ethik zu allzu geflligen sthetiken der Existenz oder Philosophien der Lebenskunst zusammengefhrt,
die sich nur noch sehr bedingt auf Nietzsche und Foucault berufen konnten.37 Zuletzt hat
der franzsische Philosoph Mathieu Kessler wieder nahe an Nietzsches Texten dessen Philosophie als gnzlich sthetisch (entirement esthtique) konzipiert und zu zeigen versucht, da bei Nietzsche nicht nur Metaphysik und Philosophie berhaupt sthetisch
berwunden wrden sofern Kunst freier ist als eine Philosophie, die nur Wissenschaft
sein will und dann leicht zur Metaphysik wird , sondern da auch alle Werte sthetisch
im Sinn einer Ethik der Singularitt (was nicht schon heit: einer Lebenskunst) umgewertet wrden.38 Wozu schon Kessler tendiert, treibt wiederum der Deutsche Ansgar
Maria Hoff ins Extrem:39 Nietzsche wolle mit seiner Kritik der Metaphysik den Eigensinn
35

36

37

38

39

Vgl. Reckermann: Lesarten Nietzsches, a. a. O., S. 21 28, und zu den Querbezgen zu Nehamas
S. 178 180.
Vgl. Ansell-Pearson, Keith: The Significance of Michel Foucaults Reading of Nietzsche. Power,
the Subject, and Political Theory. In: Nietzsche-Studien 20 (1991). S. 267 283.
Vgl. Berrios, Ruben: Nietzsches Vitalistic Aestheticism. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003).
S. 78 102, und Zittel, Claus: sthetisch fundierte Ethiken und Nietzsches Philosophie. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 103 123. Nietzsche selbst gebrauchte den Begriff Lebenskunst nicht fr so etwas wie die Kunst von Lebensentwrfen, sondern, nahe an der Alltagssprache, fr das Geschick, sich in seinen Lebensbedingungen ertglich einzurichten und unter
ihnen zu bestehen. Vgl. MA II, VM 365 und MA II, WS 266.
Kessler, Mathieu: Nietzsche ou le dpassement esthtique de la mtaphysique. Paris 1999. Vgl.
die (ungndige) Besprechung von Bretz / Hofmann: Franzsische Neuerscheinungen, a. a. O.,
S. 474 476.
Hoff, Ansgar Maria: Das Poetische der Philosophie. Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida. Bonn 2002. Vgl. die (freundliche) Besprechung von Windgtter, Christof: Nietzsches Impulse fr die Postmoderne. In: Nietzsche-Studien 33 (2004).
S. 424 436, hier 429 431.

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der Sprache freisetzen und poetisiere, rhetorisiere, metaphorisiere gezielt seine philosophische Sprache, um Philosophie als Verschlingung der Sprache in sich selbst zu erweisen. Nietzsche wird damit dann um alle Erkenntnis- und Wahrheitsansprche gebracht,
die er, zumindest poetisch, ja weiterhin vorgetragen hat. Aus der Groen Verlegenheit,
ob die Philosophie eine Kunst oder eine Wissenschaft ist, die der frhe Nietzsche wahrnahm und die ihn zu dem Schlu brachte, der Philosoph erkennt, indem er dichtet, und
dichtet, indem er erkennt, wird das erkennt vollends gestrichen (Nachla 1872/1873,
KSA 7, 19[62], S. 439).40
Rdiger Grner nun, deutscher Germanist an der University of London, will die
Reflexion des Grundzusammenhangs von Denkkunst und Kunstdenken in Nietzsches
Philosophie (S. 311, Anm.) liefern, die in der Nietzsche-Forschung noch fehle. Er versucht das ohne systematische Auseinandersetzung mit der philosophischen NietzscheForschung, auch nicht mit Nehamas. Er versteht Nietzsche radikalsthetisch als Intellektuellen, der mit Gedanken komponierte (S. 11), geht davon aus, da Nietzsche einen
unstillbaren Hunger nach lebendiger Vergeistigung hatte, da die Essenz seines Lebens
Intellektualismus war, da sein Hunger nach Leben stets auch eine Denkkonstruktion
gewesen ist, in der er nun einmal der Kunst [] eine berragende Rolle zugewiesen
hatte (S. 13). Auch Grner huldigt, ohne darum die zugehrige Interpretationslizenz allzusehr zu strapazieren, der Widersprchlichkeitsprmisse und nicht nur fr Nietzsche
allein. Danach hat Nietzsche lediglich die Intellektualitt der Moderne in ihrer ganzen
Widersprchlichkeit auf die Spitze getrieben, aber nicht als reine Denkbung, sondern als
gelebtes Denkkunstwerk (S. 14). Dieses Kunstdenken eines Denkknstlers (in bewutem Doppelsinn) wird biographisch entfaltet, ausdrcklich ohne Absicht, es systematisch
zu erfassen (S. 22), und ohne Schwergewicht auf die philosophischen Zusammenhnge
berhaupt. So entsteht fr das gebildete Publikum der Insel-Taschenbcher eine
durchaus eindrucksvolle Bildungsgeschichte Nietzsches unter besonderer Bercksichtigung der Kunst, wie es sie in der Tat bisher nicht gegeben hat. Philosophische Kunst
umfat hier dann die Kunst des Vorworts, insbesondere des delikaten Vorworts an
Wagner in UB IV (S. 110 ff.), die Lebenskunst, die, so Grner nchtern, bei Nietzsche
aus einer Reihe von selbst erstellten Ditvorschriften nebst genauem Zeitplan fr die di40

Vgl. Abel, Gnter: Wissenschaft und Kunst. In: Djuric, Mihailo / Simon, Josef (Hg.): Kunst und
Wissenschaft bei Nietzsche. Wrzburg 1986. S. 9 25 [= WK], und ders.: Logik und sthetik. In:
Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987). S. 112 148 [= L]. Danach ist bei Nietzsche keine logische
Kluft zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst anzunehmen, sondern Wissenschaft kann ebenso als
Kunst wie Kunst als kognitiv relevante Ttigkeit und beide als unterschiedliche Weisen der
Interpretierens verstanden werden (WK, S. 9). Sofern fr jede kognitiv relevante Ttigkeit Logik vorauszusetzen ist, ist diese wiederum nicht nur als formale, sondern im Sinn von Leibniz,
Kant, Hegel und Wittgenstein als kategorialisierende Logik anzusetzen, als Inbegriff der
form- und gestalt-produzierenden Funktionen des grundbegrifflichen Systems (L, S. 112),
die Nietzsche in seinen Notizen im Begriff eines Sche mas zusammenfat, we lche s wir
n ich t abwer f en knnen (Nachla 1886/87, 5[22], KSA 12, S. 193 f.). Wenn andererseits
sthetik nach ihrem weiteren Begriff in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft als die auf Formen sinnlicher Anschauung bezogene Organisationslehre gefat wird (L, S. 113), dann geht es in beiden, Logik und sthetik, um die Bildung von Formen und Gestalten (L, S. 114), und beides ist im
Welt-und-Selbstverhltnis (L, S. 118) nur abstrakt oder theoretisch zu trennen, sofern es
nmlich, wie noch bei Kant, um eine Theorie des Welt-und-Selbstverhltnisses geht. Bei Nietzsche sind beide, so Abel, dagegen im Interpretations-Gedanken zusammengefhrt, der seinerseits konsequenterweise wieder nur Interpretation sein kann (vgl. JGB 22 und FW 374). Abel
entwickelt ihn allerdings fast ausschlielich anhand nachgelassener Notizen Nietzsches.

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versen mavollen Speisen bestand (S. 154), die Kunst der Freundschaft fr jemand
wie Lou (S. 196 ff.) und dann auch die Denkkunst, morgenrthend und frohsinnig
(S. 209 ff.). Grner charakterisiert sie so: Nietzsches Kunst des Denkens, die sthetik
seines Philosophierens, war bedingt von seinem metapherngesttigten kritischen Bewutsein, das sich an Gegenstzen orientierte. (S. 221 f.). Den Abschlu bildet die
Macht aus Kunst (S. 268 ff.), eine sthetizistische Politik (S. 271), die darum, so Grner, noch keine faschistische war, sondern Politik im Sinn kulturellen Bemhens, wobei
freilich Nietzsches Mehrdeutigkeiten unvermeidlich ideologisch motivierte Interpretationen herausforderten (S. 275 f.). Als Knstler, so der Tenor der Darstellung, war
Nietzsche vor allem Musiker, so wie er selbst zuletzt noch schrieb: Hat man bemerkt,
dass die Musik den Geist frei macht? dem Gedanken Flgel giebt? dass man um so mehr
Philosoph wird, je mehr man Musiker wird? (WA 1). Nach Grner hat Nietzsche immer als (scheiternder) Komponist geschrieben, und Nietzsches Texte haben entsprechend Partiturcharakter (S. 126). Darum habe er auch vor allem an seinem Stil gearbeitet, zu seiner, so Grner, Selbstverwirklichung: Im Stil verwirklicht sich die Eigenheit
des Ichs; im Stil gewinnt das Ich seine spezifische sprachliche Gestalt (S. 180) In der
Frage des Stils erwies sich fr Nietzsche das sthetische als existentiell. (S. 188). Nietzsche habe sich selbst die Lizenz erteilt, seine eigenen Metaphern und Metonymien
quasi beliebig zu bewegen, ungeahnte Relationen herzustellen und das Gedachte poetisch und rhetorisch zu steigern um ber alle vermeintlichen Wahrheiten hinweg die
Kunst als ehrliche Lge zu erweisen (S. 129).
Stil zielt sicherlich nicht auf Wahrheit und ist auch nichts begrifflich zu Vereindeutigendes. Aber Grner will seinen sthetizistischen Nietzsche gerade hier vereindeutigen:
Nietzsche kam es darauf an, verstanden zu werden. (S. 189). Jeder Nietzsche-Interpret
mu annehmen, da Nietzsche verstanden werden wollte, und dann natrlich so, da er,
der Interpret, ihn verstehen konnte. Nietzsche hat auch so zu schreiben verstanden, da
(fast) jeder annehmen konnte, ihn zu verstehen auch wenn ihn dann andere anders verstanden.41 Aber Nietzsche hat auch ausdrcklich und mitunter sarkastisch vgl. auer
JGB 27 z. B. FW 371 und FW 381 vor dem Glauben gewarnt, man werde ihn verstehen
knnen. Er wollte, wie er dort schrieb, ebenso gewiss auch n i ch t verstanden werden,
wollte mit seinem Stil erklrtermaen seine Zuhrer whlen, auswhlen, seligieren: indem er sie whlt, zieht er zugleich gegen die Anderen seine Schranken (FW 381). So
kann und sollte gerade jemand, der ihn sthetizistisch interpretiert, nicht sicher sein, ihn
verstanden zu haben. Nietzsche schrieb zuletzt in EH, ich greife nur Sachen an, wo ich
keine Bundesgenossen finden wrde, wo ich allein stehe, wo ich mich allein compromittire Ich habe nie einen Schritt ffentlich gethan, der nicht compromittirte: das ist
mein Kriterium des rechten Handelns. (EH, Warum ich so weise bin 7, KSA 6, S. 274).
Und er setzt an spterer Stelle, im Zug eines Angriffs auf die Deutschen, hinzu, bisher
htten sie sich an ihm compromittirt (EH, Warum ich so gute Bcher schreibe, WA 3,
KSA 6, S. 360). Kein Interpret Nietzsches, ob Deutscher oder nicht, kann davon sicher
sein, sich mit seiner Art, ihn zu verstehen, welcher auch immer, unfreiwillig an ihm zu
kompromittieren. Es knnte Nietzsches Kunst gewesen sein, so zu schreiben, da er Lesern, die Sicherheiten jedweder Art suchen, sie ihnen lt und sie sogar in ihnen bestrkt,

41

Vgl. die berhmte Debatte zwischen Gadamer und Derrida in: Forget, Philippe (Hg.): Text und
Interpretation. Deutsch-franzsische Debatte mit Beitrgen von J. Derrida, Ph. Forget,
M. Frank, H.-G. Gadamer, J. Greisch und F. Laruelle. Mnchen 1984. S. 24 77.

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um auf seine Art ber sie zu lachen,42 und, indem er dies sagte, zugleich die zu ermutigen,
die ihren Sicherheiten mehr und mehr mitrauen lernten. Aber niemand kann dann jemals sicher sein, zu welchen Lesern er jeweils gehrt.
Eben dies stellt Paul Audi, akademischer franzsischer Philosoph, der in rascher
Folge Bcher ber die Autorschaft, ber die Ethik und ihre Paradoxe, ber Europa, die
Ortlosigkeit, ber Dichtung (Mallarm) und Bildende Kunst (Picasso, Frdric Pajak),
alle bei den Presses Universitaires de France (PUF), verffentlicht hat, in den Mittelpunkt
seiner Interpretation von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst. Er setzt nun ganz auf die
Kunst als grtes Stimulans des Lebens, auf die Kunst als organische Funktion, auf
die Kunst als schaffende. Die cration ist, so Audi, eine excdence de la subjectivit (S. 24), und Nietzsche betreibe eine mission la cration: Librer, augmenter,
intensifier, exalter le sentiment de vivre. (S. 132). Audi selbst versucht mit seinem kleinen
Buch eine anatomie de la cration (S. 24). Was Nietzsche Schaffen nennt, liege tiefer
als der Antagonismus des Dionysischen und Apollinischen oder der Kraft (force) und
der Form (forme) (S. 12 f.). Cration als force zur forme sei ein zugleich sthetisches und ethisches unbedingtes Gebot, ein impratif esth/thique (S. 17). Doch
sie sei kein du sollst, sondern ein ich mu (S. 18) und zeige sich in der Trunkenheit
(ivresse) der Kunst selbst, indem sie zu immer neuen Formen immer neuer Selbstberwindung treibe. Audis zentrale Referenz dafr ist eine groe Nachla-Notiz aus dem
Frhjahr 1888 zur Liebe. In der Liebe, der sinnlich-erotischen ebenso wie in der religisen oder der Heiligen-Liebe wird, schrieb Nietzsche dort, die Kunst eben zur organischen Funktion und zum grten Stimulans des Lebens. Eingelegt in den engelhaftesten Instinkt des Lebens wird sie sublim zweckmig auch noch darin, da sie
lgt , sie verschiebt selbst die Werthe, macht reich zur Verschwendung, lt
Idioten des Glcks Flgel wachsen und tut selbst zur Kunst, zur Lyrik, zur Musik,
die Thre auf, all dies durch die Transfigurationskraft des Rausches (Nachla 1888,
14[120], KSA 13, S. 299), franzsisch die force transfiguratice de livresse (S. 140), die
sie erzeugt. So zugespitzt hat Nietzsche dies tatschlich nur in seinen Notizen geschrieben und bewut oder unfreiwillig fr sich behalten.43 Die cration de livresse fr einen
excs dexcdence mit der Aussicht auf eine acceptation jubilante de soi in einer subjectivit sans sujet (S. 134 f.) aber ist, so Audi, die Form des modernen Kunstwerks seit van
Gogh und Czanne, Kandinsky und Mark Rothko, die Audi, neben Mallarm und Baudelaire, D. H. Lawrence und Beckett zu Zeugen macht, neben Philosophen wie Rousseau,
Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein und Derrida, vor allem aber Heidegger. Nicht zu Zeugen macht er Bataille und Klossowski, deren Mission einer cration de
livresse er doch erneuert hat.
(d) Rampley bewegt sich bei seinem Versuch, Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst als
exemplarische Philosophie der Moderne darzustellen, sicher zwischen den internationalen Strngen der Nietzsche-Forschung. Er fhrt einige der bisher gekennzeichneten Tendenzen zusammen, mit dem (erstaunlichen) Anspruch, als erster Nietzsches Philosophie

42

43

Er schrieb in FW 381 ganz drastisch: Man hat nmlich als Immoralist zu verhten, dass man die
Unschuld verdirbt, ich meine die Esel und die alten Jungfern beiderlei Geschlechts, die Nichts
vom Leben haben als ihre Unschuld; mehr noch, meine Schriften sollen sie begeistern, erheben,
zur Tugend ermuthigen. Es geht noch unangenehmer weiter.
Vgl. lediglich die schon von Montinari KSA 14, S. 761, vermerkten Notizen Nachla 1888,
14[117], KSA 13, S. 293 295, und anschlieend 17[5], S. 526 f., aus derselben Zeit.

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der Kunst im Zusammenhang des Problems der modernen Kultur zu thematisieren. Er

bindet sie zunchst in die Geschichte der sthetik ein und schliet sie insbesondere an
Kant und Hegel an. Im Gegensatz zu Gilles Deleuze sieht er bei Nietzsche besonders
starke Affinitten zu Hegel und findet in ihm, wie schon Walter Kaufmann, einen dialektischen Denker, den er nun stark an Adorno annhert, whrend Heidegger fr ihn nur
eine marginale Rolle spielt. Auch fr Rampley ist der Widerspruch, der nun nicht mehr
wie fr Hegel zu bndigen sei, das organisierende Prinzip von Nietzsches Philosophie. Er
habe sich in der Spannung zwischen einem extremen erkenntnistheoretischen Skeptizismus und einem fortwhrenden Glauben an die Mglichkeit von Normativitt bewegt.
Sein Ziel sei gewesen, dem modernen Nihilismus nicht, wie Heidegger wollte, eine neue
Metaphysik, sondern eine neue knstlerische Praxis entgegenzusetzen. Zu deren Verdeutlichung stellt Rampley erneut die GT in den Mittelpunkt, um sie nun negativ-dialektisch zu interpretieren. Auch fr ihn besteht kein Bruch, jedenfalls kein radikaler Bruch
zwischen dem frhen und dem spteren Werk, das dann chronologisch durchgegangen
wird. Mit alldem macht er gut die Spielrume (und Alternativen) deutlich, in denen seine
Thematik heute behandelt wird.

4. Thesen und Resultate der Neuerscheinungen

zu Nietzsches Erfahrung und Philosophie der Bildenden Kunst
Nietzsches durchaus intensive Beziehung zur Bildenden Kunst wurde in der Nietzsche-Forschung bisher wenig beachtet, mitunter auch geleugnet.44 Dabei liegt sie auf der
Hand. Trotz seiner halbblinden und arbeitsscheuen Augen45 begeisterten ihn die Stdte
und Landschaften, in denen er leben konnte, vor allem Venedig, Genua, Sils-Maria im
Oberengadin, Rapallo, Nizza und Turin, durch ihr Licht, durch ihre Bauten und (im Fall
Nizzas nur) durch ihr Farbenspiel. Er reiste eigens zu krzeren Besuchen nach Sizilien,
Rom und Florenz, mit Reisefhrern, in denen er anstrich, was er sich ansehen wollte.46
Aber nur in solchen Ausnahmen erlebte er die Kunst Italiens als Tourist. Statt dessen
lebte er in ihrer Gegenwart und glaubte sie zum Leben zu brauchen. Sein kunsthistorisches Interesse war dabei gering; er sah weitgehend zufllig, was er sah, oder wollte es
doch zufllig gesehen haben, und notierte sich dafr auch eine eigene Philosophie des Sehens, genauer des Vergessens beim Sehen: Nie sehen wollen, u m zu sehen! Als Psychologe mu man leben und warten bis von selber das durchg esiebte Ergebni vieler
Erlebnisse seinen Schlu gemacht hat. Man darf niemals wissen, woher man etwas wei
/ Sonst giebt es eine schlechte Optik und Knstlichkeit. / Das unfreiwillige Ve rg e ss e n des Einzel-Falls ist philosophisch, nicht das Vergessen wollen, das absichtliche Ab44

45

46

Vgl. Meyer: Nietzsche und die Kunst, a. a. O., S. 105, der seinerseits auf Bertram, Ernst: Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie. Berlin 1918, verweist.
Nachla 1881, 14[7], KSA 9, S. 624. Die Notiz lautet vollstndig: Mit meinen halbblinden und
arbeitsscheuen Augen gehe ich jetzt die Wege am liebsten, wo meine Fe nicht mehr zu de nke n brauchen ich kann und mag nicht mehr im Gebirge und in schlecht gepflegten Kleinstdten wohnen, wo Leben und Stolper n zusammengehrt. In Gebirgen hat Nietzsche freilich
weiterhin gewohnt und in (mehr oder weniger) gepflegten groen Stdten.
Gsell-Fels, Theodor: Italien in sechzig Tagen. 2. Aufl. Mit 6 Karten, 18 Plnen und Grundrissen.
Leipzig 1878, und ders.: Sd-Frankreich, nebst den Kurorten der Riviera di Ponente, Corsica
und Algier. 2. Aufl. Leipzig 1878, beide nach: Nietzsches persnliche Bibliothek, a.a. O., S. 269 f.

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strahiren: letzteres kennzeichnet vielmehr die nicht-philosophische Natur die C o l por t ag e- P h ilo sophen, wie er sie eingangs nennt, welche nicht aus ihrem Leben,
sondern aus ihren Sammlungen von Beweisstcken fr gewisse Thesen eine Philosophie
aufbauen (Nachla 1887, 9[64], KSA 12, S. 369 f.). Museen besuchte er ungern; er hatte
selten, wie er an Malwida von Meysenbug schrieb, Vergngen an einer bildnerischen
Darstellung (Mitte Mrz 1875, KSB 5, Nr. 436, S. 36). Die Vatikanischen Museen in Rom
berging er ganz, auch Michelangelos Moses in San Pietro i Vincoli, den Jacob Burckhardt bermenschlich genannt hatte, suchte er nicht auf. Ausnahmen von seiner Abneigung gegen Museen machte er vor allem fr Rubens, van Dyck und Claude Lorrain. Im
brigen schtzte er neben Drer, dessen Stiche Melencolia und Ritter, Tod und Teufel er besa, Michelangelo und Leonardo Raffael, dessen Sixtinische Madonna er als einziges Gemlde (auf seine Art) ausfhrlich wrdigt (MA II, WS 73).47 Unter den Bildhauern blieb
fr ihn Phidias mageblich. Zu Berninis Triton-Brunnen auf der Piazza Barberini in Rom
dichtete er sein Nachtlied (Za II, KSA 4, S. 136 138, vgl. EH, Za 4 und 7, KSA 6, S. 341 u.
345). In der Architektur wahrte er eine idiosykratische Abneigung gegen Kirchen. Stattdessen faszinierten ihn, wie schon Richard Wagner und Jacob Burckhardt, Adels-Palste
der Renaissance und hier vor allem Filippo Brunelleschis Palazzo Pitti in Florenz, zuletzt
die von Alessandro Antonelli in Turin neu errichtete Mole Antoniella, das damals hchste
gemauerte Bauwerk. Mehr als an den Architekten war er dabei an den Bauherrn und ihrem Willen interessiert, ihrem Dasein durch ihre Bauten Stil zu geben. Auch das findet
sich schon bei Jacob Burckhardt.48 Jacob Burckhardts Cicerone und Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien hatten Nietzsches Architekturverstndnis fraglos stark geprgt. Die inzwischen herausgegebenen und sorgfltig kommentierten Vorlesungen Burckhardts zur
Aesthetik der Bildenden Kunst aus den Jahren 1870 und 1872,49 die Nietzsche nicht
gehrt haben mute, um von ihrem Inhalt hinreichende Kenntnis zu bekommen, lassen
jedoch auch betrchtliche Spielrume gegenber Burckhardts Kunstdenken erkennen.
Spricht Burckhardt von Architectur nach Aufgaben und dementsprechend von einer
Kunstgeschichte nach Aufgaben,50 nmlich Aufgaben oder Funktionen des Bauens
und Gestaltens, so hat fr einen Nietzsche die Kunst Aufgaben fr die Philosophie, nmlich Rume zu schaffen, in denen freie Geister wie er denken knnen. Der Aphorismus
280 der FW, den er A r ch it ekt u r der E r ke n n e n d e n berschrieb und der von den
Hallengngen italienischer Stdte handelt, charakterisiert vielleicht am schrfsten seinen Zugang zur Architektur. Er beginnt so: Es bedarf einmal und wahrscheinlich bald
einmal der Einsicht, was vor Allem unseren grossen Stdten fehlt: stille und weite, weitgedehnte Orte zum Nachdenken, Orte mit hochrumigen langen Hallengngen fr
schlechtes oder allzu sonniges Wetter, wohin kein Gerusch der Wagen und der Ausrufer
dringt und wo ein feinerer Anstand selbst dem Priester das laute Beten untersagen wrde:
Bauwerke und Anlagen, welche als Ganzes die Erhabenheit des Sich-Besinnens und
Bei-Seitegehens ausdrcken. Und er schliet: Wir wollen un s in Stein und Pflanze
bersetzt haben, wir wollen in u ns spazieren gehen, wenn wir in diesen Hallen und Grten wandeln. (KSA 3, S. 525) An die Malerei stellte Nietzsche verwandte Ansprche und

47

48

49
50

Vgl. Shapiro, Gary: Archaeologies of Vision. Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying. Chicago 2003, und die Besprechung von Windgtter: Nietzsches Impulse, a. a. O., S. 431 436.
Vgl. Burckhardt, Jacob: Aesthetik der Bildenden Kunst (Vorlesung 1863). Hg. v. Irmgard Siebert. Darmstadt 1992. S. 60 f. u. 94.
S. vorige Anmerkung.
A. a. O., S. 83 ff., bzw. Einl. der Hg., S. 24.

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371

fand sie erfllt, in Lorrain.51 Wenn er in JGB 31 schrieb, es sei die Kunst der Nuance,
welche den besten Gewinn des Lebens ausmacht, und zuletzt von sich sagte: ich bin
eine nuance (EH WA 4, KSA 6, S. 362), so war fr ihn Lorrain der Knstler der Nuance
par excellence, und mit seinem Namen hat Nietzsche zuletzt auch seine philosophische
Kunst bezeichnet: ein Claude Lorrain ins Unendliche gedacht (EH GD 3, KSA 6,
S. 356).
Es ist keine leichte Aufgabe, dieser ebenso idiosynkratischen wie souvernen Art
der Wahrnehmung von Architektur und Kunst gerecht zu werden. Eine ganze Reihe von
Architekten, Kunsthistorikern und auch Philosophiehistorikern52 haben seit einigen Jahren damit begonnen. Das grere Schwergewicht der Forschung liegt jedoch weiterhin
nicht bei der Wirkung der Bildenden Kunst auf Nietzsche, sondern bei der Erforschung
seiner Wirkungen auf die Bildende Kunst, die kaum zu berschauen sind und ein fast unbegrenztes Feld der Forschung erffnen: kaum ein Knstler von Rang, der sich nicht in
irgendeiner Weise folgenreich mit Nietzsche auseinandergesetzt htte.
Der von Kostka und Wohlfarth herausgegebene Sammelband, der auf ein vom Getty
Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, und den
Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar organisiertes internationales Symposion im Jahr 1994 in
Weimar zurckgeht, zeigt wiederum das Spektrum der Themen. Kostka, ein Franzose, ist
Professor fr deutsche Kulturgeschichte in Frankreich, Wohlfarth, ein Amerikaner, lehrt
franzsische und deutsche Literatur in den USA und in Frankreich. Beide haben eine Pionierleistung vollbracht, indem sie Beitrger(innen) nicht nur aus ihren Lndern und aus
Deutschland, sondern auch aus Italien und Kanada zusammenfhrten und mit ihnen gemeinsam ein erstes Gesamtbild von Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit der Bildenden
Kunst einerseits und zu seiner Bedeutung fr die Bildende Kunst entstehen lieen. Auf
einen Rckblick auf die Architektur-Metaphern in der modernen Philosophie von Descartes bis Nietzsche (Claudia Brodsky Lacour) folgen auch hier schon Beitrge zur Labyrinth-Metapher (Karsten Harries, Anthony Vidler). Der zweite, umfangsreichste Teil
bringt Dokumentationen zur Rezeption von Nietzsches Philosophie der Kunst. Bercksichtigt werden hier die Wirkungen ebenfalls schon auf Gustav Klimt (Werner Hofmann),
auerdem aber auf Giorgio de Chiricos pittura metafisica (Paolo Baldacci), auf die
Dada-Bewegung (Hanne Bergius), auf Harry Graf Kesslers und Joseph Beuys Visionen
vom Neuen Menschen (Alexandre Kostka) und, natrlich, auf Henry van de Velde (Lon
Ploegaerts). Beitrge zu Nietzsches eigenem Architekturverstndnis von Tilman Buddensieg und von Fritz Neumeyer und noch einmal ein Beitrag zur Rezeption, nun bei Le
Corbusier ( Jean-Louis Cohen), schlieen den Band ab. Im Anhang wird eine erste Zusammenstellung von Nietzsche-Texten mit Bezug zur Architektur mitgeteilt.
In demselben Jahr 1994 (dem Jahr von Nietzsches 150. Geburtstag) ging auch Wieland
Schmied in einem Vortrag, der, in einer erweiterten Version, im oben angezeigten Band der
Bayerischen Akademie der Schnen Knste abgedruckt ist (S. 141 216), den Wirkungen
51

52

Vgl. Schulze, Ingrid: Nietzsche und Claude Lorrain. In: Nietzscheforschung 4 (1998).
S. 217 225, die wiederum auf die vorausgehende Begeisterung Goethes, Stifters und Burckhardts fr Lorrain aufmerksam macht (Burckhardt hatte gar ein Sonett auf ihn gedichtet), und
Shapiro: Archaeologies of Vision, a.a. O., S. 41 ff., der Deutungen von Gemlden Lorrains in
Nietzsches Sinn versucht.
Vgl. die bereits genannten Artikel Architektur von Ottmann und Malerei/Bildende Kunst von
Zittel im Nietzsche-Handbuch. Zittel verweist auf einige ltere Arbeiten, die sich jedoch nur in sehr
begrenztem Umfang oder mit Einzelaspekten von Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit der Bildenden Kunst befassen.

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Nietzsches auf die Bildende Kunst nach (Im Namen des Dionysos. Friedrich Nietzsche
und die Bildende Kunst). Er dokumentiert der Reihe nach Wirkungen auf Joseph Beuys,
Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, den Jugendstil, den Expressionismus, die Fauves, die Dada-Bewegung, unter den Surrealisten auf Max Ernst und Andr Masson und unter den
Futuristen auf Boccioni, Carr, Marinetti, Meidner. Ausfhrlich behandelt werden dann
Max Klinger und de Chirico (der meinte, der einzige zu sein, der Nietzsche verstanden
habe), und Otto Dix, der eine lange unbekannte Bronze-Bste eines gealterten, vom Leben aufgeriebenen und doch noch immer Strmen trotzenden Nietzsche geschaffen hat.
Am strksten, vermutet Schmied, haben auf die Knstler GT, FW und EH, vor allem aber
Za gewirkt. Im einzelnen ist das jedoch nur schwer zu belegen. Im ganzen bleiben die Zuordnungen (nicht nur Schmieds und nicht nur in der Malerei) eher vage, mitunter sind sie
ingenis.53
Schmied hat sich wie die meisten der brigen Autor(innen) gefragt, worauf Nietzsches so starke Wirkung auf Knstler beruhte. Seine Antwort sei hier stellvertretend
zitiert: Es war wohl ebenso der rcksichtslose Kulturkritiker, der keine Tabus kannte
und die radikalste Absage an die eigene Zeit formulierte, wie der alles Menschliche, Allzumenschliche durchschauende Psychologe. Es war der von allem Knstlerischen faszinierte Denker, der wie kein anderer das Selbstwertgefhl der Knstler strkte, der den
Instinkt ber den Intellekt stellte, wie der unvergleichliche Wortknstler, der Dithyrambiker und Aphoristiker, das artistische Sprachgenie, das betrte. Sicher war es auch der
Mann, der zu Abenteuer und Wagnis rief und einlud, um der Erkenntnis willen gefhrlich zu leben, wie der Verdammer allen Mitleids, der Bejaher aller Tiefen und Hhen
menschlicher Existenz, der Philosoph der freien Geister, der keine Bindungen kannte,
der eine Umwertung aller Werte forderte, der die Verachtung des Staates predigte und
den Rausch der Einsamkeit verkndete. Und bestimmt spielte neben all diesen kaum zu
trennenden Einzelzgen die Lebenslegende Nietzsches eine Rolle, sein unglckliches,
mrtyrerhaftes Schicksal, das ihn schlielich als htte er zu viel gewagt und die Gtter
herausgefordert in Wahnsinn verfallen lie. [] So haben denn auch die verschiedenen
knstlerischen Bewegungen, die sich von Nietzsche inspiriert zeigten, durchaus nicht nur
auf die gleichen Zge seines Werkes reagiert. War es fr die Expressionisten das dionysische Pathos, das alle Lebensphnomene durchpulste und das mitreiende Feuerwerk
des Stils, was sie am strksten ansprach, so war es fr die Fauvisten neben der Verherrlichung des Lebens das Loblied auf den lateinisch-mediterranen Geist, was ihnen die Gedanken Nietzsches so sympathisch machte. Wenn die Futuristen vor allem der Verchter
seiner Gegenwart faszinierte, der Zertrmmerer der alten Tafeln mit den berholten
Gesetzen, der einen Fluch auf das Christentum schleuderte und zugleich zum Aufbruch
in unbekannte Territorien rstete, so war ein anderer Italiener, Giorgio de Chirico, der
Vater der pittura metafisica, zur gleichen Zeit von einem ganz anderen Nietzsche betroffen, von dem Poeten, der dunkel-dionysische Lieder sang und der in seinem Zarathustra
wie in seinen spten Briefen aus Turin oder in Ecce homo immer wieder nach der Stunde
des groen Mittags-, eine herbstliche, nachmittgliche Stimmung beschwor, die Strahlen
und Schatten einer sinkenden Sonne, Stimmungen, die de Chirico in gemalte Visionen
zu verwandeln versuchte, denen er Namen gab wie Melancholie des Unendlichen.
(S. 169 172)

53

Vgl. zur Rezeption ferner Erbsmehl, Hans-Dieter: Kulturkritik und Gegensthetik. Zur Bedeutung Friedrich Nietzsches fr die bildende Kunst in Deutschland, 1892 1918. Ann Arbor/
Mich. 2001, und den Beitrag von Kerstin Dnicke in dem von Seubold hg. Band (s. o.).

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Fritz Neumeyer, Professor fr Architekturtheorie, hat seine Beobachtungen zu Nietzsches Architekturverstndnis zu einer Monographie ausgearbeitet, sein Schler Markus
Breitschmid folgte ihm mit einer weiteren und dokumentierte im Anhang auf nun 73 Seiten
das Textcorpus aus dem philosophischen Werk Friedrich Nietzsches zum Baugedanken. Beide Bnde sind in den Nietzsche-Studien bereits von dem Kunsthistoriker Matthias Mller besprochen worden.54
Nun ist der Kunsthistoriker Tilmann Buddensieg Nietzsches Kunsterfahrungen in Italien (und Nizza) im einzelnen nachgegangen, allem, was er dort nachweislich oder wenigstens wahrscheinlich sah:55 Stdte, Palste, Kirchen, Tempel, Ruinen, Bilder, Grabmale
auf Friedhfen usw. Er geht chronologisch vor (soweit Nietzsche nicht an seine Sttten
zurckkehrte), und so kann man sein reich bebildertes Buch auch als Chronik lesen. Fhrer fr Buddensieg sind noch einmal die Gsell-Fels-Reisefhrer, nun die Nietzscheschen
Anstreichungen darin. Buddensieg will mit seinem Cicerone zeigen, da Nietzsche ein
Italien gesehen hat, das kein Reiseschriftsteller, kein Historiker und Kunstwissenschaftler je zuvor so gesehen hat (S. 11): Palste, die nicht von Architekten, sondern vom Reprsentationswillen der Bauherrn knden (die Ausnahme ist die Mole Antonelliana, die
auch Nietzsche nach ihrem Architekten nennt), Kirchen, die Nietzsche erst ertrgt,
wenn Gras und rother Mohn auf den Mauern wuchert und der Himmel durch zerbrochne Decken blickt,56 ein Brunnen inmitten der Stadt, zu dem er jenes einsamste
Lied gedichtet [hat], das je gedichtet worden ist (EH Za 4, KSA 6, S. 341), ein Friedhof
(der Campo Santo di Staglione bei Genua), auf dem er, ein Grabstein-Narr, eine Liebesklage zum Grabrelief eines Mdchens schreibt und seinen Thrnen Lauf lt,57 usw.
Darberhinaus bieten die Kommentare und Reflexionen zu Nietzsches Kunsterfahrungen freilich wenig; sie erschpfen sich weitgehend in Paraphrasen von Nietzsches eigenen
uerungen. Intensive eigene Nachforschungen hat Buddensieg mit seinen Mitarbeitern
in Venedig angestellt, wo er wieder eines von Nietzsches Zimmern ermitteln konnte, der
durch eine Spanische Wand abgetrennte Teil der Sala Grande im Palazzo Berlendis am
Ponte della Misericordia gegenber der Toteninsel
Nietzsche ging es bei der Kunst, das haben die Philosophen deutlich gemacht, stets
um mehr als die Kunst der Kunstwerke. Architekten und Kunsthistoriker haben nun vermittelt, an welchen konkreten Werken auch der Bildenden Kunst Nietzsche seine sthetischen Erfahrungen machte, die ihm immer rasch zu philosophischen gerieten. Nun
wre philosophisch zu ermitteln, wie seine konkreten sthetischen Erfahrungen sich zu
philosophischen transfigurierten und wie sie dazu beitrugen, sein philosophisches Denken im ganzen zu formieren. Nietzsche wollte von Malern lernen, den Dingen Beleuchtung und Farben zu geben (FW 152), ihnen die perspektivischen Durchblicke, das
Nicht-mehr-Sehen und Hinzusehen beim Sehen, ablernen (FW 299), aber ebenso den
Architekten das S i ch-hinein-bilden in den Stoff (Nachla 1884, 25[94], KSA 11, S. 32),

54

55

56
57

Neumeyer, Fritz: Der Klang der Steine.Nietzsches Architekturen. Berlin 2001; Breitschmid,
Markus: Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur. Luzern 2001. Besprechung von Mller, Matthias: Nietzsche und die Architektur. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003).
S. 526 530.
Vgl. auch Hdl, Hans Gerald: Italienische Stdte. Orte in Nietzsches metaphorischer Landschaft. Eine Annherung. In: Nietzscheforschung 10 (2003). S. 299 315. Hdl sttzt sich jedoch lediglich auf Texte Nietzsches und den Briefwechsel.
Nachla 1883, 13[3], KSA 10, S. 447, Vorstufe zu Za III, Die sieben Siegel 2, KSA 4, S. 288.
Idyllen aus Messina, KSA 3, S. 341, und Nachla 1884, 28[65], KSA 11, S. 330.

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den Schauspielern das Rollenspiel (FW 356), den Musikern das Hren der Musik des
Vergessens (FW 367) und der Musik des Lebens (FW 372) und den Tnzern das dionysische Philosophieren (FW 381), allen Knstlern im ganzen das, was er frhliche Wissenschaft nannte. Er bildete seine philosophische Kunst nicht im berschreiten der
Knste, sondern in ihrer Transfiguration ineinander heran.58 Schon frh hatte er notiert:
Alle Kunstgesetze beziehn sich auf das bertragen. (Nachla 1871/72, 16[6], KSA 7,
S. 395). Und im spten Werk schrieb er noch: Das Wesentliche bleibt die Leichtigkeit der
Metamorphose. (GD, Streifzge 10).

58

Vgl. Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches Kunstphilosophie. In: Majetschak, Stefan (Hg.): Klassiker
der Kunstphilosophie. Mnchen 2005. S. 199 222.

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375

ARNE GRN
JENSEITS? NIETZSCHES RELIGIONSKRITIK REVISITED.
ZUM STAND DER FORSCHUNG IN SACHEN NIETZSCHE UND
DIE CHRISTLICHE RELIGION1

Wie wohl kein anderer Denker wird Nietzsche so rezipiert, dass es auch um eine Diagnose der Zeit geht. Wie kein anderer denkt Nietzsche selber zeitdiagnostisch. Er diagnostiziert oder prognostiziert die Ambivalenz der Moderne, die als Frage in der NietzscheRezeption im 20. Jahrhundert offen bleibt. Wenn die Postmoderne als eine Radikalisierung
der Moderne in der Weise verstanden wird, dass die Emanzipation von heteronomen Bestimmungen auch die Anerkennung des unhintergehbaren Pluralismus der Perspektiven
bedeutet, scheint die philosophische Postmoderne ohne Nietzsche nicht denkbar zu sein.
Damit stellt sich die weitere Frage nach der Ambivalenz der Postmoderne, die aber auch
die Diskussion ber Nietzsche wieder erffnen wrde.
Nietzsches Denken ist nicht nur beilufig ein religionskritisches Denken, sondern
bezieht sich wesentlich auf Religion. In der Auffassung der Moderne als Emanzipation von
heteronomen Bestimmungen wird Nietzsches Religionskritik auf relativ einfache Weise rezipiert. Es geht dann um Emanzipation von Religion als Fremdbestimmung (wobei schon
die Zweideutigkeit hereinspielt, dass Religion menschliche Fremdbestimmung ist). Es ist auch
relativ einfach, diese Emanzipation so radikalisiert zu verstehen, dass es um die Anerkennung des unhintergehbaren Perspektivenpluralismus geht. Wenn die durch Gott verbrgte
Universalperspektive wegfllt, wird die Vielfalt der individuellen Perspektiven freigesetzt.
Die Dinge werden aber dadurch kompliziert, dass nicht nur Religion als (menschliche) Fremdbestimmung, sondern auch (menschliche) Emanzipation Ambivalenz in sich
trgt. So kann man (eigene) Fremdbestimmung und (eigene) Ambivalenz nicht einfach
in der Religion parken. Dazu kommt, dass Religion menschliche Ambivalenz nicht nur
in sich trgt, sondern sie auch ausdrckt und interpretiert. Schon von hier aus wre Nietzsches Religionskritik im Lichte seiner Diagnose der Ambivalenz der Moderne noch einmal neu zu diskutieren.
In einer postmodernen Situation, die auch von der Rckkehr der Religion, und
zwar in Gestalt von Religionen, geprgt ist, gibt es noch mehr Anlass, die Religionskritik
Nietzsches wieder aufzugreifen. Zwar gibt es den Anschein, als sei nicht Religion, sondern Religionskritik berholt. In einer Welt, die durch den unhintergehbaren Pluralismus
von Perspektiven bestimmt ist, ist auch Religion (nur) noch eine Perspektive, und zwar
dergestalt, dass Religion selbst im unhintergehbaren Pluralismus von Religionen aufgeht.
Es scheint also konsequent zu sagen, dass (eine) Religion nicht von aussen kritisiert werden kann. Religionskritik lst sich damit selbst auf.
1

Die Erarbeitung dieser Studie wurde von der Nationalen Forschungsstiftung Dnemarks gefrdert.

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Rezensionen

Religion zeigt aber auch, dass wir nicht nur in und mit der Vielfalt von Perspektiven,
sondern auch in und mit dem Konflikt von perspektivischen Weltdeutungen leben. Und
nicht nur Religion zeigt, dass es nicht einfach ist, der Absolutsetzung der eigenen Perspektive zu entgehen. Nicht nur ist der unhintergehbare Perspektivenpluralismus auf dem negativen Hintergrund von Religion zu verstehen; die Rckkehr der Religionen verkrpert
dergestalt diesen Pluralismus, nicht als Idee, sondern als oft schwer interpretierbares Faktum, dass das Problem der Ambivalenz sich nochmals aufdrngt. In dieser Situation wird es
zur Aufgabe, Religionskritik wieder oder sogar neu zu formulieren, und zwar dadurch, dass
noch einmal berlegt werden muss, was es heisst, die Welt perspektivisch zu verstehen.
Religionen sind nicht nur perspektivische Interpretationen der Welt, sondern auch
Weisen des Umgangs mit Interpretationen. Der Umgang der Religionen mit Interpretationen ist von menschlicher Zweideutigkeit geprgt, kann aber auch als Umgang mit
Interpretationen auf die Vielfalt von menschlicher Zweideutigkeit reflektieren. Auch
in diesem Sinne ist Religionskritik keineswegs berholt. Vielleicht besteht die Aufgabe
darin, die Einsicht kritisch zu wiederholen, die in Nietzsches Denken als wesentlich religionskritischem Denken liegt. Um es thetisch zu formulieren: Bei Nietzsche gehrt beides zusammen, Religionskritik und Perspektivismus. Obwohl Perspektivismus als unhintergehbar gilt, gehen wir mit diesem unhintergehbaren Perspektivismus oft in naiver
Weise um. Hier knnte eine reformulierte philosophische Religionskritik vielleicht andere
Mglichkeiten erffnen.
Die im ersten Teil zu besprechenden Bnde zeugen von einer offenen Diskussionslage, in der es mglich ist, nach der Bedeutung von Religion und Nicht-Religion zu fragen.
Was steht in dieser Alternative berhaupt auf dem Spiel? Ist sie sinnvoll? Die in den Bnden vertretenen Interpretationen werden oft auf einen negativen Hintergrund prsentiert,
als Gegenspiel zu verkrzenden Auffassungen wie: nach Nietzsche sei Gott schlicht tot,
Christentum nicht lnger mglich und Religion einfach berholt. Es ist aber nicht leicht,
Grundfragen wieder zu stellen und dadurch Nietzsche noch einmal oder neu zu interpretieren. Ein Weg wre vielleicht der folgende: Wenn Nietzsche berhaupt Christentum und
Religion berwindet, dann durch Denkfiguren, die ihrerseits die Frage wieder erffnen,
was Religion und Christentum bedeuten. Dies gilt insbesondere fr die Figur des Jenseits,
die ich in den anschliessenden systematischen berlegungen als Leitmotiv nehme.

I
1. Biser, Eugen: Nietzsche Zerstrer oder Erneuerer des Christentums?
Darmstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) 2002. 178 Seiten. ISBN
3-534-16027-4.
2. Kster, Peter: Kontroversen um Nietzsche. Untersuchungen zur theologischen Rezeption. Zrich (Theologischer Verlag Zrich) 2003. 383 Seiten.
ISBN 3-290-17277-5.
3. Hbner, Hans: Nietzsche und das Neue Testament. Tbingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2000. XI + 290 Seiten. ISBN 3-16-147489-9.
4. Sommer, Andreas Urs: Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist. Ein philosophisch-historischer Kommentar. Basel (Schwabe) 2000. (Beitrge zu Friedrich Nietzsche. Bd. 2). 783 Seiten. ISBN 3-7965-1098-1.

Rezensionen

377

5. Havemann, Daniel: Der Apostel der Rache. Nietzsches Paulusdeutung.

Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2002. X + 312 Seiten. (Monographien
und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 46). ISBN 3-11-017523-1.
6. Mourkojannis, Daniel: Ethik der Lebenskunst. Zur Nietzsche-Rezeption in
der evangelischen Theologie. Mnster, Hamburg, London (LIT) 2000. (Studien zur systematischen Theologie und Ethik. Bd. 23). 231 Seiten. ISBN
3-8258-4674-1.
7. Broisson, Ivan: Nietzsche et la vie spirituelle. Paris (LHarmattan) 2003.
(Ouverture Philosophique). 200 Seiten. ISBN 2-7475-4449-4.
8. Vogel, Beatrix (Hg.): Von der Unmglichkeit oder Mglichkeit, ein Christ
zu sein. Symposion 1996 des Nietzsche-Kreises Mnchen. Vortrge aus
den Jahren 1996 2001. Mnchen (Allitera) 2001. (Mit Nietzsche Denken.
Publikationen des Nietzsche-Forums Mnchen e. V. Bd. 2). 347 Seiten.
ISBN 3-935284-47-0.
9. Willers, Ulrich (Hg.): Theodizee im Zeichen des Dionysos. Nietzsches
Fragen jenseits Moral und Religion. Mnster, Hamburg, London (LIT)
2003. 239 Seiten. ISBN 3-8258-5561-9.
10. Striet, Magnus: Das Ich im Sturz der Realitt. Philosophisch-theologische
Studien zu einer Theorie des Subjekts in Auseinandersetzung mit der
Sptphilosophie Friedrich Nietzsches. Regensburg (Friedrich Pustet) 1998.
(ratio fidei. Beitrge zur philosophischen Rechenschaft der Theologie.
Bd. 1). 329 Seiten. ISBN 3-7917-1624-7.
1. Zugang zur Religionskritik Nietzsches findet die Rezeption vor allem mit der
Rede vom Tode Gottes im Aphorismus 125 der Frhlichen Wissenschaft. Ein gutes Beispiel
dafr gibt die Nietzschedeutung Eugen Bisers. Nach Biser ist der Tod Gottes Nietzsches Zentralmotiv. Unter die Frage im Untertitel Zerstrer oder Erneuerer des
Christentums? sammelt Biser in diesem Buch zentrale Motive seiner frheren Arbeiten
zu Nietzsche. Ausgangspunkt ist die Interpretation des Schlsseltextes vom Tode
Gottes. Was Nietzsche hier versucht, ist nach Biser ein parabolischer Widerruf des Gottesbegriffs von Anselms ontologischem Argument: des Begriffs des unbersteiglich
Grssten (quo maius nihil cogitari potest). Die Argumentation Bisers sttzt sich darauf,
dass laut Heinrich Heine der ontologische Gottesbeweis dem Blutbad von Kants Kritik der klassischen Gottesbeweise unbeschdigt entronnen ist: Davon musste sich
der dem Ziel der Eliminierung des Gottesbegriffs verschriebene Nietzsche ebenso betroffen wie herausgefordert fhlen. Alles musste daran gesetzt werden, um auch diesen
Pfeiler zu Fall zu bringen (S. 17). Der Hauptpunkt in Nietzsches gleichnishaftem
Aphorismus ist nach Biser der Begriff des Horizonts. Die zentrale Metaphorik zeigt,
dass der Text seine Mitte in der traditionellen Formalbestimmung des Gttlich-Grssten (S. 95) hat.
Wenn aber das Attentat auf Gott auf die Destruktion des Christentums zielte, warum
ist es dann nicht genug, den das christliche Systemgebude tragenden Gottesbegriff
grundlos zu machen? Wenn das Christentum ein System ist, so dass man das Ganze
zerbricht, wenn man einen Hauptbegriff, den Glauben an Gott, aus ihm herausbricht
(GD, Streifzge eines Unzeitgemssen 5), warum rollt dann das Christentum nicht ins

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Rezensionen

Nichts?2 Warum fllt der Gottesgedanke nicht einfach weg? Warum scheint es nicht zu
gelingen, eine einzige Realitt an dessen Stelle zu setzen? Nietzsche wusste, dass der
Gottesgedanke die ganze Kultur durchwirkt, bis hinein in die Ordnung der Grammatik:
Ich frchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik glauben
(GD, Die Vernunft in der Philosophie 5). Die Schatten des toten Gottes sind noch zu
besiegen (FW 108).
Nach Biser bestehen die zustzlichen Strategien Nietzsches teils in einer destruktiven
Auslegung des Christentums, teils in einer exzessiven Verbalpolemik. Mit seinem rekonstruktiven Zugang fokussiert Biser auf die erste Strategie, die auf die Selbstauflsung des
Christentums hinausluft. In dieser Sicht durchlief das Christentum eine Auslegungsgeschichte, die durch die Einbeziehung systemfremder Interpretamente immer weiter
vom Ursprung wegfhrt (S. 97). Die Geschichte des Christentums ist eine Auslegungsgeschichte, die die Geschichte des schrittweise immer grberen Missverstehns eines
urspr nglichen Symbolismus ist (AC 37). Die erste Strategie beginnt also mit
dem exorbitanten Satz (S. 19): im Grunde gab es nur Einen Christen, und der starb
am Kreuz (AC 39). Als Antwort auf die Fragen der Jnger: we r wa r d a s ? wa s wa r
d as? und warum gerade so? (AC 40) sedimentierten, als eine erste Grundschicht der
Geschichte, folgende, in diesem Sinne schon ausserchristliche Interpretamente: erstens
die Stilisierung des Gekreuzigten zum Typus des Erlsers, zweitens die Deutung seines
Todes als Opfertod, drittens die Lehre von der dadurch erbrachten Shneleistung. In der
Geschichte des sogenannten Christentums wird die Wahrheit Christi durch die immer
subtiler elaborierte christliche Wahrheit verdrngt, aber diese Verdrngung rchte sich
(S. 99). Nachdem die christliche Wahrheit selbstkritisch geworden war, zog sie am Ende
ihren Schluss g eg en sich selbst (GM III 27).
Dass die Geschichte des Christentums die Geschichte des schrittweise immer grberen Missverstehens eines ursprnglichen Symbolismus ist, erffnet die Frage, worin dann
das echte, das ursprngliche Christenthum besteht, das zu allen Zeiten mglich sein
wird (AC 39)? Biser interpretiert dies so, dass fr Nietzsche ein Christentum jenseits seiner dogmatischen Festlegungen und seiner moralischen Selbstdarstellung noch jederzeit
mglich ist (S. 9). Hier spielt die Auslegung der zweiten Strategie Nietzsches hinein:
Nach Biser lsst sich in der immer strkeren Attacke auf das Christentum in diesem wie
in einem Palimpsest ein Gegensinn erkennen (S. 22). Die exzessive Polemik des Antichrist liest er als Kompensation eines dunkel gefhlten Scheiterns. Es ist die sich Nietzsche zunehmend aufdrngende Einsicht, dass mit einer Umdrehung der bekmpften
Position keine wirkliche Affirmation zu erreichen war, gesteigert durch den Eindruck,
dass sein Widerspruch insgeheim von der Kraft des Negierten lebte (S. 78). Der Antichrist dokumentiert, so Biser, die Inversion einer Logik, indem Nietzsche zu einer von
keinem Theologen erreichten Innensicht des Gekreuzigten sich erhebt (S. 78): Und er
bittet, er leidet, er liebt m i t denen, i n denen, die ihm Bses thun (AC 35). An dieser
Stelle gelangt, nach Biser, Nietzsches Kampf tatschlich an sein Ende. Hier liegt die ungemein komprimierte Mitte von Nietzsches Verhltnis zum Christentum und der Beweggrund seiner Rekonstruktion des so vehement Bekmpften (S. 111).
Whrend der erste Teil des Buches berschrieben ist: Nietzsches Kritik des Christentums, trgt der zweite Teil die berschrift: Nietzsches Rekonstruktion des Christentums. Biser fragt selbst, wie sich der Ansatz glaubhaft machen lsst, dass Nietzsche die Rekon-

E i n Begriff hier weg, eine einzige Realitt an dessen Stelle und das ganze Christenthum rollt
ins Nichts! (AC 39).

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379

struktion des Christentums gewollt und ins Werk gesetzt haben soll, und antwortet:
Letzlich nur durch den Rekurs auf seine Persnlichkeit. Verbirgt sich, so fragt Biser,
hinter dem destruktiven Hauptduktus eine Gegenstrmung, die fr den hinter dem
Zerstrer verborgenen Erneuerer spricht (S. 83)? Biser schliesst sich der Bemerkung
von Jaspers an, es sei bei Nietzsche im Kampf schon wie ein Aufhren des Kampfes,
wenn er sich gleichsam in den Gegner verwandelt. Der Rekonstruktionsthese Bisers
liegt die Tatsache zugrunde, dass die von Jaspers hervorgehobene Absicht des Angreifers,
den Bekmpften zu schonen und sein berleben zu wollen, nicht nur der Gestalt Jesu,
sondern zuletzt auch dem Christentum gilt, von dem Nietzsche wiederholt bemerkt, dass
es, wenngleich in dogmenfreier Form, jederzeit noch mglich sei (S. 108).
Damit sind wir am zentralen Passus in Bisers Buch angelangt: Wenn auch nicht von
der Wiederherstellung des Christentums bei Nietzsche die Rede sein kann, so doch von
seiner durch Nietzsche zwar nicht intendierten, aber doch ermglichten Rekonstruktion.
Es wre, skizzenhaft angedeutet, ein Christentum ohne Gewalt und machtmssig gesttztes Ordnungsgefge, ohne Dogmen und mter, ohne die in einem jahrhundertelangen
Verfremdungsprozess eingeschleusten Implikate jdischer, platonischer und asketischer
Provenienz und ohne die Zwangsideen von Snde, Opfer und Entshnung, das sich als
solches um den aufbauen wrde, der nun nicht als letzter und einziger, sondern als erster
Christ gelten knnte: um einen Jesus jenseits aller Unterscheidungen und Gegenstze
(S. 23). Biser gibt zu, dies sei zweifellos ein extrem utopisches Bild des Christentums, jedoch ein Bild, das wie alle grossen und gltigen Utopien dazu angetan ist, verhrtete
Strukturen aufzubrechen und die bestehenden Verhltnisse ihrer grsseren Zukunftsgestalt entgegenzufhren (S. 24). Die echt e Geschichte des Christenthums, von der in
AC 39 die Rede ist, wrde dann sowohl in der Entlarvung der Geschichte des Missverstehens als auch in der Freilegung der utopischen Mglichkeit bestehen.
Biser versucht, die Umrisslinien der Nietzsche vorschwebenden Zukunftsgestalt
des Christentums sichtbar zu machen als die Gestalt eines aus der Lebens- und Todespraxis Jesu hervorleuchtenden Christentums. Diese Zukunftsgestalt kann nur auf dem
Weg einer umfassenden Reduktion jener Elemente erreicht werden, die nach Nietzsches
berzeugung die Urform verfremdend berlagerten (S. 116). In die Selbstinterpretation
des Christentums haben sich hchst unterschiedliche Implikate eingemischt: paulinischer
Judaismus, gnostische Mysterienkulte, augustinischer Platonismus und orientalischer Asketismus wobei aus der Botschaft eine Moral, eine Heilslehre, ein System und eine Disziplin wurde. Die Rekonstruktion wird sich durch die Freilegung der Urgestalt so gestalten mssen, dass von der (Selbst-) Auflsung der berlagernden Interpretamente auf die
damit zum Vorschein kommende Urgestalt zurckgeschlossen wird. Die Zukunftsgestalt
wird also dadurch gewonnen, dass die berlagerungen der Geschichte (des Missverstehens) rckgangig gemacht werden.
Biser hat dazu beigetragen, die Frage von Nietzsche und Christentum nicht als abgemacht gelten zu lassen, sondern wieder zu erffnen. Nietzsche fr das Christentum, auch
fr eine Zukunftsgestalt des Christentums, zu reklamieren reduziert aber wiederum die
Frage. Hier mchte ich drei Punkte aufgreifen.
Erstens die Interpretation von FW 125 als Ausgangspunkt. Hier leuchtet mir die Prmisse nicht ein, Kants Kritik der Gottesbeweise treffe nicht den ontologischen Gottesbeweis. Die Argumentation scheint die Bedeutung von Nietzsches gleichnishaftem Text
zu verkrzen. Horizont ist keine isolierte Metapher, die man in die Formalbestimmung
des Gttlich-Grssten zurckbersetzen kann. Sofern Horizonte zu jedem Leben gehren, geht es beim Verlust eines Horizonts nicht schon um radikale Orientierungslosigkeit,
vielmehr knnen dadurch neue Mglichkeiten erffnet oder freigesetzt werden (der Ho-

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Rezensionen

rizont erscheint uns endlich wieder frei, wie es in FW 343 heisst). Horizontlosigkeit ist
kein Indiz dafr, dass es um die Destruktion des ber alles Denken Grssten geht. Die
Bedeutung vom Tod Gottes wird erst durch die radikale Orientierungslosigkeit und die
ebenfalls damit verbundenen radikalen neuen Mglichkeiten manifest.
Zweitens stellt sich mit der zentralen Rekonstruktionsthese Bisers die Frage, was Christentum heisst, wenn es fr Nietzsche jederzeit noch mglich ist. Der Ausgangssatz lautet
doch: Das Wort schon Christenthum ist ein Missverstndnis (AC 39). Die Jesusdeutung in Der Antichrist ist vor allem die Infragestellung des Christentums. Die Bewegung
umzukehren, indem man eine Zukunftsgestalt des Christentums durch die Reduktion seiner ganzen Auslegungsgeschichte (und Christentum ist auch eine Auslegungsgeschichte)
vorschlgt, ist nicht problemlos. Die berlagerungen der Verfallsgeschichte, die abgetragen werden mssen, um zur Urgestalt zurckzukommen, sind ja auch die ersten berlagerungen: die Stilisierung des Gekreuzigten zum Typus des Erlsers, die Deutung seines Todes als Opfertod, und die Lehre von der dadurch erbrachten Shneleistung. Wenn
Biser schreibt, dass fr Nietzsche ein Christentum jenseits seiner dogmatischen Festlegungen und seiner moralischen Selbstdarstellung jederzeit noch mglich ist, scheint
Christentum doch irgendwie identifizierbar zu sein: Es ist Christentum, nur ohne seine
dogmatischen und moralischen Festlegungen. Die Frage wre dann, ob die ursprngliche
Gestalt und Mglichkeit des Christentums mit Christentum zu verbinden ist. Wenn
Christentum mit Auslegung zu tun hat, kann man es nicht jenseits von seiner Geschichte
finden. Was durch die Reduktion der Auslegungsgeschichte freigelegt werden soll, ist eine
ursprngliche Mglichkeit, ein Jesuanismus. Die radikale Bedeutung dieser Mglichkeit,
als Umbruch aller Verhltnisse, verstehen wir aber nur durch eine Geschichte, die auch
eine Geschichte des Missverstehens ist. An der ursprnglichen Mglichkeit haftet eine
ussere Geschichte, in der der Umbruch erfahren und (miss)verstanden werden kann.
Drittens ist die Frage, welchen Sinn es hat, von Nietzsches Rekonstruktion des Christentums zu reden. Einerseits sagt Biser, die vorgeschlagene Rekonstruktion sei von
Nietzsche nicht intendiert, sondern nur ermglicht. Andererseits heisst es aber, dass
Nietzsche die Rekonstruktion des Christentums gewollt und ins Werk gesetzt habe, so
dass die Aufgabe des Buches die Rekonstruktion seines Rekonstruktionsversuchs ist
(S. 112). Eine theologische Vereinnahmung Nietzsches ist nicht nur als Interpretation
problematisch, sondern lsst auch die Mglichkeit, selber theologisch zu denken, von
dem so rekonstruierten Nietzsche oder der Rekonstruktion Nietzsches abhngen.
2. Im Buch von Peter Kster sind 8 Aufstze gesammelt, die in einem Zeitraum von
fast 30 Jahren verffentlicht wurden, die Hlfte davon in den Nietzsche-Studien, darunter
der grosse Aufsatz Nietzsche-Kritik und Nietzsche-Rezeption in der Theologie des
20. Jahrhunderts, der wie bekannt in Nietzsche-Studien 1981/1982 erschien. So werde ich
hier nur den zentralen Gedankengang hervorheben, der schon in den ersten Aufstzen,
Die Renaissance des Tragischen von 1972, Nietzsches Beschwrung des Chaos von
1973 und Das Fest des Denkens. Ein polemisches Motto Heideggers und seine ursprngliche Bedeutung in Nietzsches Philosophie von 1975, formuliert wurde, ein Gedankengang, der seine Aktualitt in keiner Weise verloren hat.
Nehmen wir noch einmal den Aphorismus 125 der Frhlichen Wissenschaft als Ausgangstext. In einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Eugen Biser betont Peter Kster,
dass der Text vom tollen Menschen im Kontext interpretiert werden muss. Der Begriff
Horizont muss im Zusammenhang der sich gegenseitig interpretierenden Metaphern von
Meer, Horizont und Sonne verstanden werden. So bedeutet der Sturz nach allen Seiten ja,
dass der Mensch selber zerrissen wird. Der Tod Gottes wird deshalb nicht gegen den for-

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malen Gottesbegriff des ontologischen Arguments gedacht, sondern gegen das Christentum, und zwar gegen das Geschaffensein des Menschen durch Gott. Was damit freigesetzt wird, ist der Mensch selbst als Schpfer. Unter dem heuristischen Prinzip des
Todes Gottes3 inszeniert Nietzsche ein umfassend experimentelles Denken, das geradezu ein Gesamtexperiment der Menschheit mit sich selbst inauguriert (S. 10) und sich
im dionysischen Zugleich von Ja und Nein ausdrckt (S. 13).
Gegen Heidegger betont Kster, dass die ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen und die
in ihr gegebene Seinsverfassung des Willens zur Macht erst aus dem Dionysischen
wirklich gedacht werden knnten, da Nietzsche auch und gerade mit dem Namen Dionysos das Zentrum seines Denkens und Wollens zu bezeichnen glaubte. Das Dionysische
steht zuerst und immer neu fr ein umfassendes Jasagen zum Leben, das eine Bejahung
des Vergehens und Vernichtens ist. Im Dionysischen denkt Nietzsche das Undenkbare,
die Identitt des Ja und Nein, das Zugleich des Ewig-sich-selber-Schaffens und des
Ewig-sich-selber-Zerstrens (S. 27). Im jede Sprache zerbrechenden Fest geht es um die
in dieser Undenkbarkeit sich berschwenglich geniessende Selbstaufhebung nicht nur des
Denkens, sondern des Menschseins im ganzen. Das Dionysische nimmt damit eine Doppelstellung ein es ist nicht nur Gegenbegriff zum Apollinischen, sondern auch der eine
Grundwille, der sich in der Bewegung durch das Dionysische und das Apollinische hindurch ausdrckt. Es gibt nur Eine Welt, und die ist widersprchlich.
Damit interpretiert Kster die doppelte Lehre vom Willen zur Macht und von der
ewigen Wiederkunft als dionysisch: Alles geht auf den Grundwillen, Chaos, zurck. Dass
das prometheische Schaffen des Menschen ins Chaos zurckfhrt, besttigt die Lehre: Es
geht um eine fast paradoxale Selbstbersteigerung in Selbstvernichtung. Im Experiment
absoluter Selbstbersteigerung (durch Einswerden mit dem eigenen Daseinsgrund) kann
der Experimentierende sich selbst nicht anders wollen denn als willenlosen Spielball von
Trieben und gnadenlosen Welttendenzen, in deren zyklischen Kmpfen, Siegen und Untergngen die alles beherrschende, weil allein ,wirkliche Urlust des dionysischen Schaffens- und Vernichtungswillens rastlos und endlos sich selbst befriedigt (S. 49). Die Freiheit, die sich im Experiment mit sich selbst ausdrckt, luft auf Bejahung von Chaos (als
widersprchlich) hinaus. Chaos ist nicht einfach Folge der Eliminierung Gottes, sondern
Gott wird umgekehrt zum Chaos zurckgefhrt. Die Welt ist als eine ungeschaffene
und damit als eine ewig in sich selbst kreisende, abgrndig und widerspruchsvoll sich
bermchtigende Willensbewegung als Wille zur Macht, auszulegen (S. 79). Der Sturz
in die Nacht der Gottlosigkeit ist darum nichts anderes als die Selbsterffnung des Gesamtcharakters der Welt.
Da das abgrndige Chaos als der wirkliche Gesamtcharakter der Welt unertrglich
ist, erschafft der Mensch sich eine Fiktionswelt. Die Welt als Chaos zu deuten und zu bejahen wird dann Bewhrung bermenschlicher Souvernitt. Damit wird die Welt verfgbar und den Menschen zu schpferisch-zerstrerischem Experiment preisgegeben.
Weil der Mensch aber die vollkommene Selbstverfgung nie erreichen kann, muss er sich
an sich selbst gewaltsam vergreifen. Wenn er sich dennoch durch einen Grundwillen zur
totalen Verfgung des Menschen ber sich selbst bestimmt, scheint er sich in einen heillosen Selbstwiderspruch zu verrennen.
3

Die Aussage vom Tode Gottes ist notwendige Stufe auf dem Denkweg zum bermenschen,
aber nur als eine heuristisch-befreiende Negation: Der Tod Gottes ist fr Nietzsche nicht anderes als ein heuristisches Prinzip zur Vernderung, Entfesselung und berwindung des Menschen (S. 70). Das Prinzip des Gottestodes wird durch die Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkunft
des Gleichen abgelst.

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Kster verbindet Nietzsche-Interpretation und Zeitdiagnose der Moderne, liest aber

eigentlich nicht Nietzsche selber als Diagnostiker, sondern liest ihn diagnostisch. Zwar
schreibt Kster, Nietzsche stelle prognostisch ber das 20. Jahrhundert das Zeichen
der Selbstfeier, des Omnipotenzwahns Omnipotenz verstanden als die Herrschaft des
Menschen ber sich selbst. Das Problem kommt aber bei Nietzsche zum Ausdruck. Damit rckt Kster Nietzsche selber in eine zeitdiagnostische Perspektive: Die Menschen
des 20. Jahrhunderts sind zunehmend von einem verborgenen Grundwillen beherrscht,
und zwar dem Willen zur entscheidenden Absage an die Kreatrlichkeit der Welt und des
Menschen und zur totalen Selbstverfgung. Der bermensch wird damit Leitbild einer
Selbstapotheose (S. 168 ff.), die in der totalen Souvernitt ber sich selbst besteht. Indem der Mensch ohne Halt sich selbst bilden soll und grenzenlos ber sich selbst verfgt,
fhrt seine Formung zum Chaos zurck. Die Kehrseite der modernen Entschlossenheit
des Menschen zu sich selbst ist damit, dass der Mensch sich selbst zum billigen Material
seines Experimentierens wird (S. 52).
Die kritische Perspektive bedeutet aber auch, dass Kster sich gegen eine Re-Christianisierung Nietzsches wendet. Theologische Vereinnahmungen Nietzsches bershen
nicht nur seine Radikalitt, sondern auch die theologische Aufgabe, die als Antwort auf
Nietzsches Herausforderung vor allem eine kritische ist. Im Aufsatz ber das Fest des
Denkens wird die Aufgabe programmatisch so formuliert: Fr den Theologen ergibt
sich die weitere Frage, ob christliches Denken (also Theologie) hier noch einmal oder
sogar ganz neu kritische Gesichtspunkte zur Analyse der gegenwrtigen, die Zukunft
vorbereitenden Situation beitragen kann. Dass der Beitrag ein kritischer sein msste, das
sollte die vorliegende Untersuchung zumindest nahegelegt haben. Wollte man in dem von
Nietzsche gewhlten Bild bleiben, dann fiele dem zuknftigen christlichen Denken notwendig auch (aber nicht nur) die Rolle eines Feststrers oder Spielverderbers zu. Denn
das Spiel, das hier der Mensch mit sich selbst zu spielen begonnen hat, ist nun einmal kein
harmloses Kinderfest, es decouvriert sich vielmehr zunehmend als ein enthusiastischer
und destruktiver Omnipotenzwahn. Feststrung wre demgegenber das Programm
einer radikalen Ernchterung. Spielverderben wrde heissen, die Fiktion bermenschlicher Totalverfgung unbeirrt mit der nchternen Realitt des Menschen zu konfrontieren (S. 173). Fehlt diese Ernchterung, muss die Fiktion (ber)menschlicher Totalverfgung (auch als Fiktion von Totalbejahung) verzweifelt die menschliche Zerfallenheit
verneinen.
In der Einleitung zum Buch heisst es auch programmatisch, Nietzsche sei im Bereich der Theologie mglichst nchtern und mit gebotener Distanz als Chance eines anstehenden Lernprozesses zu verstehen. Ihn in genauer Weise zu lesen und beim Wort zu
nehmen, heisst auch zu versuchen, die eigene Zeitgenossenschaft und die Abgrndigkeit
der Epoche zu verstehen. Eine ernsthafte theologische Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche kann deshalb auch ein Indiz dafr bilden, wie es um eine Theologie angesichts der
Moderne und speziell ihrer sich entfaltenden Sinn- und Destruktionspotenziale bestellt
ist (S. 9).
3. Hans Hbners Buch Nietzsche und das Neue Testament gibt ffentliche Vorlesungen
wieder und bewegt sich im Stil einer Einfhrung. Es vertritt aber auch eine Gesamtinterpretation, die um die Frage Nietzsche und das Christentum kreist. Hbner nimmt seinen
Ausgangspunkt auch beim Aphorismus 125 der Frhlichen Wissenschaft und endet mit dem
Nihilismus. Dazwischen wird Nietzsches Werk und Biographie unter dem Gesichtspunkt interpretiert, Nietzsches Atheismus sei ein erlittener Atheismus. Dadurch dass er an
seinem Atheismus leide, zeige Nietzsche, was Gottlosigkeit heisst. Sein erlittener Athe-

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ismus drfte es vor allem sein, an dem der Theologe und im Grunde jeder denkende
Christ verstehen lernen kann, was Atheismus zutiefst bedeutet (S. 271). Indem Nietzsche die Gottlosigkeit so ernst nimmt, dass er selber darunter leidet, ist er fr die Theologie eine besondere Herausforderung. Dabei soll es, so Hbner, nicht um eine billige
Apologetik gehen. Nietzsche wird hier jedoch von einer theologischen Innenperspektive
interpretiert, die in Gefahr steht, ihn theologisch zu reklamieren. Wie die Theologie dann
durch Nietzsche herausgefordert wird, leuchtet nicht ganz ein.
Die These des Buches ist, dass Nietzsche von Grundstrukturen christlichen Denkens
geprgt ist. Dies zeige sich nicht nur darin, dass er von der Gottesfrage bewegt ist und
nicht davon loskommt. Hbner will vor allem mgliche Entsprechungen von philosophischen Denkstrukturen bei Nietzsche und theologischen Denkstrukturen bei den
neutestamentlichen Autoren aufzeigen (S. 115). Die Entsprechungen, Affinitten
oder Parallelen, die im Denken Nietzsches und im theologischen Denken aufgezeigt
werden, sind aber zu allgemein, um die Frage nach der theologischen Bedeutung von
Nietzsches Religionskritik wirklich in den Griff zu bekommen. Dass z.B. Nietzsche ein
entschieden hermeneutisch engagierter Mensch war, dass auch das ganze Neue Testament vom
Geist des Hermeneutischen durchdrungen ist und dass die beiden sich dann in ihrer hermeneutischen Intention treffen (S. 17), wird mit Hinweis auf die hermeneutische Grundeinstellung begrndet, dass der Angesprochene versteht, wenn er auf seine Existenz angesprochen
wird (S. 22). Erstens ist dies aber nher zu entfalten (hier wre Kierkegaard als Gesprchspartner besser als Heidegger und Bultmann, zumal wenn es um das Problem von
Existenzmitteilung und Perspektivismus geht). Zweitens reicht es keineswegs aus, mit
solchen Affinitten die These zu begrnden, Nietzsche sei Theologe geblieben freilich
ein atheistischer Theologe , weil ihm das theologische Koordinatensystem geblieben ist
(S. 22). Laut Hbner wird Nietzsche nie von der Theologie loskommen. Ihre gedankliche Struktur wird sein atheistisches Denken prgen (S. 38). Wenn Nietzsche aber als
theologische Herausforderung ernst genommen werden soll, muss unser Verstndnis davon, was Theologie ist, selber ins Spiel gebracht werden. Wir verstehen weder Nietzsche
noch die Theologie besser, wenn sein Denken auf das theologische Koordinatensystem
zurckgefhrt wird. Die Ausfhrungen Hbners enthalten aber auch wichtige Differenzierungen der Fragestellungen, z. B. zum Zeitproblem und zur Entlarvung der Selbstgerechtigkeit.
Was den Ausgangs- und Endpunkt betrifft, wird mit Verweis auf den tollen Menschen
Gottlosigkeit als Horizontlosigkeit interpretiert. Es ist aber, um es zu wiederholen, nicht
ohne weiteres von Horizontlosigkeit die Rede. Horizontlosigkeit ist nicht, wie dem Aphorismus 343 der Frhlichen Wissenschaft zu entnehmen ist, die Antwort: endlich erscheint
uns der Horizont wieder frei, gesetzt selbst, dass er nicht hell ist, endlich drfen unsre
Schiffe wieder auslaufen, auf jede Gefahr hin auslaufen, jedes Wagniss des Erkennenden
ist wieder erlaubt, das Meer, unser Meer liegt wieder offen da, vielleicht gab es noch niemals ein so offenes Meer. Es geht also nicht um Horizontlosigkeit, sondern um einen
Horizont von neuen Mglichkeiten. Die entscheidende religionsphilosophische Frage
liegt meines Erachtens genau hier: Ist das offene Meer nicht die Dimension von Unendlichkeit, die uns berwltigt, und in der sich gerade Religion bewegt?
Auch wenn Hbner mit Recht die Frage der Hermeneutik betont und auf Heidegger
und besonders Bultmann hinweist, scheint mir die Aufgabe doch eher darin zu bestehen,
die Hermeneutik dadurch weiterzufhren, dass wir auslegen, was es heisst, dass wir verstehend in einer Welt der (auch fremden) Perspektiven leben. Gerade in seiner Religionskritik ist Nietzsche nicht nur in der Linie vorwrts zu Heidegger und Bultmann zu lesen,
sondern auch als Aufforderung dazu, neu nach den Mglichkeiten einer existentialen

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Hermeneutik zu fragen: Dass unsere Welt eine Welt zwischen Perspektiven ist, fordert, dass
wir die Bestimmung von Da-sein als Verstehen4 auch daraufhin auslegen.
4. Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist von Andreas Urs Sommer ist, wie der Untertitel
lautet, ein philosophisch-historischer Kommentar, fast 800 Seiten zu den 62 Paragraphen
des Antichrist (und zum Gesetz wider das Christenthum). Das Buch ist eindrucksvoll, nicht nur
wegen des Umfangs des Materials, das in das Buch eingeschrieben ist, sondern auch wegen seiner Akribie. Das Buch ist gut lesbar, ist aber auch oft zu breit, mit zu vielen Worten, geschrieben. Hervorzuheben ist aber, dass Sommer nach dem systematischen Gehalt
von Der Antichrist fragt, jedoch keine geschlossene Rekonstruktion geben will. Es geht darum, Nietzsches Text genau zu lesen und zu voreiligen Systematisierungen Abstand zu
halten. Dass eine geschlossene Rekonstruktion nicht mglich ist, ist schon darin begrndet, dass es einen Riss zwischen Nietzsche als Radikalaufklrer und als Gesetzgeber gibt,
eine bruchartige Spannung zwischen Perspektivismus und Dogmatismus. Dass der Antichrist, in Gestalt eines Buches und in der Gestalt Nietzsches, exklusiv auf die Wahrheit
zugreifen zu knnen glaubt, lsst seine eigenen Intentionen zwiespltig erscheinen:
Einerseits wendet sich seine radikalisierte Aufklrung gegen alle tradierten Wahrheitsansprche, im genealogischen Wissen darum, dass nichts wirklich wahr und letzlich alles erlaubt ist. Andererseits stellt diese Aufklrung strukturell gleiche Wahrheitsansprche in
ebenso unnachgiebigem Tone (S. 231).
Dies zeigt sich nicht nur in einem Zwiespalt zwischen neuen Dogmen und radikalem
Individualismus. Die Kritik der moralischen Religion des Christentums wird selber moralisch. Der historisch-genealogische Zugang in Antichrist 24 ff. kehrt die traditionelle
Bewertung einer konventionellen Selbstinterpretation des Christentums in zweifacher
Weise um: Erstens durch eine Kontinuitt zwischen Judentum und (paulinischem) Christentum, die fr Nietzsche so entscheidend ist, dass er im Christentum letzlich nur eine
billige Kopie des Judentums sieht (AC 24). Dass es im (paulinischen) Christentum um
eine Rejudaisierung geht, diese Interpretation hat Entnatrlichung der Natur-Werthe als
Schlsselbegriff. Zweitens ist die neue Lesart Nietzsches Umdeutung einer Heilsgeschichte in eine Unheilsgeschichte. Laut Sommer hat niemand vor Nietzsche in dieser Radikalitt die Unheilsgeschichte zu schreiben gewagt (S. 239).5
Eine moralische Deutung mischt sich also in den genealogischen Zugang ein. Das
Paradoxe an der antichristlichen Kritik moralischer Geschichtsinterpretation ist gerade die eigene moralische Interpretation im Zeichen des Immoralismus (S. 240). Das Immoralische lsst Nietzsche
als moralisch gelten. Auch hier zeigt sich, dass Nietzsche negativ dem Christentum verhaftet bleibt: der Antichrist imitiert bis in den Exklusivittsanspruch hinein die konterkarierte Vorlage (S. 239).
Sommers Kommentar beschreibt und diskutiert differenziert die Tragfhigkeit mglicher Interpretationen. Als Beispiel dafr kann (in aller Krze) der Kommentar zur
Jesusdeutung Nietzsches in AC 28 35 dienen: Im psychologischen Typus des Erlsers verfolgt Der Antichrist den Zweck einer Immanentisierung Jesu. Erst Paulus
4
5

Heidegger, Martin: Sein und Zeit. 18. Auflage. Tbingen 2001. 31.
Dies wre auch ein Beispiel dafr, dass die Diskussion ber Nietzsche davon profitieren wrde,
Kierkegaard einzubeziehen, denn auch bei Kierkegaard wird die Geschichte des Christentums in
einer Lesart interpretiert, die die Vorzeichen vollstndig umkehrt (S. 239). Bei Kierkegaard
wird die Geschichte in einer negativen Radikalitt beschrieben, die die menschliche Zweideutigkeit direkter in den Griff bekommt. Vgl. auch die Sammelbesprechung von Wenche Marit
Quist: Nietzsche and Kierkegaard Tracing Common Themes, in diesem Band.

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fhrt eine metaphysische konomie der Erlsung ein (S. 282). Das Interesse fr den
Erlser wird von einer religisen oder historisch-biographischen Ebene auf eine genealogisch-moralgeschichtliche und typologische verlagert. Dieser Zugang ist aber nicht
ohne Spannungen. So schaltet einerseits die physiologistische Schlussfolgerung auf die
Ursachen eines Habitus (in AC 30) die Kontingenz aus. Andererseits ist (auch in AC 30)
die Liebe die paradoxe Konsequenz des Instinkt-Hasses (S. 306): Jesus kann eigentlich nicht mit der Realitt leben, aber noch viel weniger gegen sie. Die Figur soll laut
Sommer einerseits alle Realitt hassen und andererseits alle Realitt ,im Gefhl zulassen in sich verbinden. Dennoch sei Liebe zu einem Phnomen zweiten Ranges geworden und habe ihre Prominenz als Ursprungsmacht verloren (S. 307). Gleichzeitig
nehme Jesus aber in dieser Praktik der Liebe kein Umwertungs- oder Umflschungswerk
vor. Es gehe ihm um etwas, nmlich um das Geschehenlassen, die Auflsung aller Gegenstze in seinem praktizierten Nicht-Wollen (S. 322). Es fehlt ihm ein Wille zur
Macht. In diesem Sinne ist er ein extremer Gegentypus des antichristlichen Nietzsche.
Warum, fragt Sommer, whlt Der Antichrist als Formvorgabe nicht den jesuanischen
Symbolismus des Geschehenlassens, die Gelassenheit angesichts eines ohnehin zum Untergang reifen Christentums (S. 333)? Jesus als typologische Figur zeuge aber nicht nur
von frag-wrdigen Spannungen im antichristlichen Zugang. Indem Nietzsche seinen
,Typus als einen in sich kohrenten Gegenentwurf zur paulinischen und kirchlichen
Christologie etablieren will, muss er Jesus auch bei der Passion auf den einmal festgelegten Typus reduzieren (S. 335). Wenn Nietzsche dann in AC 37 das Christentum als
Abirrung von einem idealen Ursprung dem jesuanischen Symbolismus beschreibt,
gilt hier das als normativer Ursprung, was frher selber Produkt der Krankheit, der Degeneration war (S. 346).
In der Darstellung des Christentums als Abirrung spielt auch Uniformierung der
Geschichte mit. So unterschlagen die Invektiven gegen das schauderhafte Heidentum
des Opfertodsgedankens (in AC 41) nach Sommer sein emanzipatorisches Potential: dass
den Menschen ein Leben jenseits der Vergeltungslogik, des Rachegedankens und der
Selbsterniedrigung vergnnt sei (S. 379, mit Hinweis auf GM II 21: jenen Geniestreich
des Chri st ent hums). Auch spiele Der Antichrist gegen das dogmatische Christentum
einen anderen Dogmatismus aus: einen vorkritischen Begriff von Wissenschaft (S. 473 f.,
zu AC 49). Dazu komme, dass ein fundamentaler Zwiespalt zwischen esoterischer Heilslehre und universalem Heilsanspruch die ganze Schrift durchziehe: Zum einen ist die Alternative nur fr die wenigen Vornehmen und Starken, zum anderen soll das Christentum
mit all seinen moralischen Implikationen ausgerottet werden.
In Der Antichrist kommt es nach Sommer auf die positive Gegenfigur des Christentums an und fr sich nicht an je nach Situation knnen Buddha oder Manu, Davidisches Knigtum oder aristokratische Hierokratie, Jesus, Rom oder Islam, Wissenschaft
oder Kultur, Dionysos oder Apollon, Lust oder Unlust in diese Rolle schlpfen (S. 603).
Damit stellt sich die Frage, was dann Christentum ist, wenn Nietzsche an verschiedenen
Stellen von so unterschiedliche Gegenfiguren Gebrauch macht. Der Schluss scheint zu
sein: Also muss gut sein, was das Christentum gegen sich hat (S. 621). Etwas positiver
interpretiert, argumentiert Der Antichrist nach Sommer situativ: Der antichristliche Standpunkt ist immer nur als das Andere des Christentums nher bestimmt. Das Christentum selber als das jeweils Andere ist aber die Negativschablone, gegen die sich die Hyperboreer experimentalphilosophisch abheben wollen (S. 485).
Diese bruchartigen Spannungen, auf die ein freies Nachdenken stsst, finden, so
scheint es, ihre Lsung (wenn man so sagen darf) in AC 54: Der Antichrist ist ein ganz bestimmtes Rollenspiel, inszeniert als ein Kampf von berzeugungen gegen andere ber-

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zeugungen. Ihr eigentlicher Inhalt ist die Freiheit Freiheit von allen Festschreibungen
und Zwngen (S. 526). Das heisst: Alle vermeintlich antichristlichen berzeugungen
dienen nur einem einzigen Ziel, nmlich einer skeptischen Strategie der tiefgreifenden Verunsicherung (S. 527). Am Christentum wird im Antichrist exemplarisch vorgefhrt, wie
sich alle berzeugungen verbrauchen und wie man dadurch souverain wird (S. 528).
Auch die Lehren der Ewigen Wiederkunft und des Willens zur Macht sind in diesem
Sinne berzeugungen. Damit gibt AC 54 die Mglichkeit, Nietzsches Sptwerk undogmatisch, vielleicht dialektisch, gewiss aber im Kern skeptisch zu lesen (S. 533). Der
hyperboreische Skeptiker instrumentalisiert berzeugungen (S. 547).
Dass diese Lsung aber nicht das letzte Wort ist, zeigt sich schon in AC 55, wo das
Ideal ein panoptisches ist: alles zu sehen, was es berhaupt zu sehen gibt: Die Hyperboreer,
auf ihrer Metaebene, sind anscheinend dem Perspektivismus nicht unterworfen (S. 544).
Denn der hyperboreische Skeptiker wechselt eben die berzeugungen wie andere Leute
die Hemden (S. 603). Dies verhindert nicht, dass Der Antichrist die ganze Geschichte auf
sein eigenes Problem hin liest und dabei Interpretation und Faktizitt vertauscht: Die
strategische Umkehrung der perspektivischen Losung, alles sei Interpretation, besteht
darin, zu behaupten, alles, was man selber fr wahr hlt, sei wahr, sei Tatsache (S. 629 f.).
Der Kommentar Sommers verfhrt nachdenklich-fragend. Spannungen oder gar Widersprche in einem Text zu sehen, ist nicht ein blosses Spiel, es ist auch die Mglichkeit
des Lesers, seinen eigenen Weg durch den Text zu finden. Man soll auch den Mut haben,
sich selbst als Leser zu verstehen.
Anstelle eines Nachwortes schliesst Sommer mit 62 Mutmassungen ab. Als Leser
htte ich anstelle der Mutmassungen eine weitergefhrte Diskussion der Probleme vorgezogen, die beim Lesen des Antichrist stets auftauchen und in den Kommentaren verstreut diskutiert werden. Dies gilt besonders von den Problemen, die in der Skepsis als
Lsung stecken, die bei Sommer aber nur berhrt werden. Die 42. Mutmassung lautet:
Die auf 54 fussende Annahme, Nietzsches Wenigste schwngen sich zu einem skeptischen Metastandpunkt jenseits christlich-antichristlicher Grabenkmpfe empor, ist vielleicht nur eine Wunschprojektion des Kommentators. Dieser knnte den Antichrist pazifizieren und kanonisieren wollen (S. 690). Wenn man aber als Leser nicht den Wunsch
hat, den Antichrist zu pazifizieren oder zu kanonisieren, sondern zu diskutieren, ob der
skeptische Metastandpunkt eine Wunschposition ist, wird man im Stich gelassen. Der
entscheidende Punkt scheint mir dies zu sein: Der skeptische Metastandpunkt wre eine
Weise, uns selbst zu verstehen. Wir knnen diesen Standpunkt nur einnehmen, indem wir
uns als diejenigen verstehen, die dies tun. Wie verstehen wir uns, wenn wir uns so verstehen (wollen)? Wie Sommer bemerkt, kommt es darauf an, wie man mit berzeugungen,
nicht nur der anderen, sondern auch und besonders mit den eigenen berzeugungen umgeht. Mit Nietzsche geht es darum, sich Freiheit gegenber berzeugungen zu verschaffen. berzeugungen sind Gefngnisse (AC 54). Wenn dies aber so interpretiert wird,
dass man berzeugungen verbraucht und instrumentalisiert, versteht man sich selbst als
ein Subjekt, das seiner berzeugungen und in dem Sinne seiner selbst mchtig ist.
Dies setzt nicht nur voraus, dass man sich eine restlose Klarheit ber die eigenen berzeugungen verschaffen kann, sondern bedeutet, dass Skepsis selbst ein Mittel ist. Wenn
wir uns als frei gegenber den eigenen berzeugungen verstehen, wie verstehen wir dann
die anderen? Sind berzeugungen nicht Perspektiven, oder besser: gehen berzeugungen nicht in den perspektivischen Zugang zur Welt ein? Ist der skeptische Metastandpunkt nicht ein Versuch, der Perspektivitt zu entgehen? Die Frage zeigt, wie schwierig es
ist, den perspektivischen Charakter unseres Verstehens zu verstehen.

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5. Die Abhandlung von Daniel Havemann nimmt ihren Ausgangspunkt in Entwicklungen der neueren Nietzscheforschung, die Nietzsche nicht als Lehrer einer neuen
Wahrheit, sondern seine neuen Lehren als Lehren fr den Umgang mit Lehren und
Wahrheiten sehen. Mit seiner Abhandlung will Havemann nicht nur eine Lcke in der
Nietzsche-Forschung fllen, indem er das Paulusbild Nietzsches im Zusammenhang von
dessen Philosophie und der benutzten Quellen darstellt; er will auch einen Beitrag dazu
leisten, diesen Umgang mit Nietzsche theologisch fruchtbar zu machen. Nietzsches
Christentumskritik soll als eine heilsame Verunsicherung der Theologie verstanden
werden. Fast programmatisch heisst es: Die theologia crucis ist der Verzicht auf theologische Herrschaft und Macht (oder um es in Nietzsches Begriffen zu sagen: auf die Sicherheit
der Moral). Sie hat ihre Botschaft nicht, sondern sie muss sie in der jeweiligen Begegnung
mit dem Anderen stets neu finden (S. 16).
Im ersten Teil zeichnet Havemann als Hintergrund fr Nietzsches eigene Paulusdeutung die Wege der exegetischen Paulusforschung und die damit verbundenen Paulusbilder (von Ferdinand Christian Baur besonders ber Carl Holsten und Hermann
Ldemann zu Franz Overbeck) nach, mit dem Schwerpunkt auf der Entdeckung des
Menschen Paulus. Der zweite Teil behandelt die frhe Paulusdeutung Nietzsches, wie
sie besonders im 68. Aphorismus der Morgenrthe sichtbar wird. Die berwindung des jdischen Gesetzes durch Paulus stellt Nietzsche dar als eine Geschichte des Paulus selbst,
als einen Akt des Ressentiments: Paulus brauchte nach Nietzsche seine Theologie, um
sich fr sein Leiden an seiner Ohnmacht eine Erlsung zu schaffen (S. 97). Durch die
Neuinterpretation seiner Situation (seiner Ohnmacht) schafft sich Paulus ein Mensch
mit ungeheurem Willen zur Macht, aber ohne wirkliche Macht ber sich selbst ein
neues Gefhl der Macht und erschliesst durch diese Ersatzhandlung einem ganzen Zeitalter eine neue Lebensmglichkeit. In Nietzsches Paulusdeutung liegt Faszination und
Ambivalenz: In seiner Interpretation des Damaskuserlebnisses spiegeln sich seine
selbstempfundene Nhe und Ferne zu Paulus wieder, Nhe durch die grosse hnlichkeit der Begriffe und Motive, mit denen er sein eigenes und das paulinische Offenbarungserlebnis darstellt, Ferne, indem Nietzsche die erlebte Unfreiwilligkeit als die Notwendigkeit des eigenen Werdens interpretiert (S. 121).
Der dritte Teil, der Hauptteil des Buches, widmet sich der Paulusdeutung Nietzsches
in Der Antichrist, mit dem Typus Jesus als Antitypus zu Paulus. Havemann versucht, die
polemische Form von Nietzsches Paulusdeutung als Teil seiner Kritik der christlichen
Moral zu interpretieren. Nietzsche will keine neue Lehre an die Stelle der alten setzen.
Die Umwertung selbst ist, streng genommen, nicht positiv formulierbar. Nietzsche braucht
den Angriff, um sich zu formulieren: Der Angriff, die Polemik selbst ist die Umwertung
(S. 136 f.). Die Polemik lsst dem Anderen die Freiheit, sich dazu mit seiner Moral zu verhalten, sie vereinnahmt nicht, sondern wahrt die Distanz (144).
Im Typus Jesus stellt Nietzsche eine Liebe ohne Ressentiment dar. Das Christentum des Typus Jesus ist keine Lehre, sondern eine gelebte Lebensmglichkeit, eine Praktik. Der Glaube der guten Botschaft formuliert sich auch nicht er lebt, er wehrt sich
gegen Formeln (AC 32). Jesus redet bloss vom Innersten, das Leben, alles brige,
die ganze Realitt, die ganze Natur, die Sprache selbst, hat fr ihn bloss den Werth eines
Zeichens, eines Gleichnisses (AC 32). Havemann zufolge sind die Gleichnisse nach
Nietzsche eine Form der Mitteilung, die die eigene Deutung bewusst hlt. Sie bleiben
Gleichnis, Zeichen, die jeder fr sich selbst neu deuten muss []. Die Aufhebung der
Dogmen im Gleichnis ist selbst Teil der frohen Botschaft Jesu (S. 160 f.). Damit lsst
der Typus Jesus eine grosse Nhe zu Nietzsche selbst spren. Er entdeckt in dem von
ihm selbst gezeichneten Typus Jesus eine Weise, mit Leiden umzugehen, die ihm vertraut

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ist (S. 161). Havemann geht mit Werner Stegmaier einen Schritt weiter: Nietzsche stellt
mit dem Typus Jesus im Antichrist seine eigene Rede vom Willen zur Macht in Frage.
Denn dessen Leben steht nicht nur jenseits von gut und bse, sondern auch jenseits des
Willens zur Macht (S. 162). Mit dem Typus Jesus stellt sich die nietzschesche Frage nach
dem Wert des Macht-Willens. Nhe und Distanz sind hier reflektiert: Der Typus Jesus ist
deshalb auch der Gegentypus zu Nietzsche selbst (S. 162). Als positive Impulse fr
Nietzsches neues Jesusbild im Antichrist werden dann Dostojewskij und Tolstoi, und als
negativer Renan besprochen.
Havemann geht danach zur Paulusdeutung Nietzsches in Der Antichrist ber. Wie es in
AC 42 heit: In Paulus verkrpert sich der Gegensatz-Typus zum frohen Botschafter,
das Genie im Hass. Im Symbol Gott am Kreuz sieht Nietzsche die Grundlage der
paulinisch-christlichen Moral. Er greift damit den tragenden Begriff der paulinischen
Theologie an, und zwar in der Weise, dass er die Umwertung ernst nimmt, die das Wort
vom Kreuz fr die damalige Welt bedeutet haben muss, und die schockierende rgerlichkeit des Kreuzes freilegt (S. 206). Diese Umwertung ist aber in einer Dogmatisierung und Moralisierung des Evangeliums durch Paulus eingebunden. In Paulus Deutung
des Kreuzes sieht Nietzsche die geniale Schpfung des Symbols einer neuen Moral, in der
man moralisch, im Ressentiment, mit Leiden umgeht. Leiden ist nur ertrglich, wenn man
es rechtfertigen kann, indem man ihm einen Sinn gibt. Die eigentliche Kraft dieses Symbols liegt fr Nietzsche in der Rechtfertigung des Leidens (S. 189). Das Symbol vermittelt
den Leidenden ein neues Selbstwert- und Machtgefhl. Aus dem Symbol Gott am
Kreuz wird so eine moralische Rechtfertigung des Leidens, nmlich die Rechtfertigung
einer Moral der Moral der Schwachen und Leidenden. Indem Nietzsche Moral von der
moralischen Verurteilung her versteht, sieht er als Merkmal der Sklavenmoral, dass sie die
moralische Verurteilung braucht, um mit Leiden leben zu knnen (S. 228). Die Macht
der Moral besteht damit auch darin, dass man gegenber der eigenen Moral unfrei wird.
Aus Schwachheit sich selbst gegenber muss man sich selbst durch die eigene Moral
rechtfertigen. Dies gelingt nur dadurch, dass die Macht der Moral verleugnet wird.
Der entscheidende Punkt fr Nietzsche, auch in seiner Paulusdeutung, ist also der
Macht-Charakter der Moral. Dies zeigt sich auch darin, dass er Paulus als GegensatzTypus zum Typus Jesus vom Typus des Priesters her versteht. Whrend der Typus
Jesus fr das eigene Evangelium kein Deutungsmonopol beansprucht, typisiert Nietzsche im Priester Paulus eine Moral, die sich in Gott selbst heiligspricht, um sich so gegen andere durchzusetzen (S. 229). Dass die Polemik Nietzsches Teil seiner Kritik ist, ist
laut Havemann dieser negativen Typisierung zu entnehmen. Durch seinen Angriff vermeidet es Nietzsche, selbst eine moralische Lehre gegen den moralischen Lehrer zu
stellen (S. 222). Gegen die priesterliche Typisierung stellt Havemann die Parallele zwischen Paulus und Nietzsche, dass beide sich im Medium der Schrift inter-individuell
mitteilen.
Der Schlussteil des Buches mit dem Titel Einer trage die Last des Anderen. Perspektiven fr ein nicht-moralisches Christentum aus der paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre unternimmt das Experiment, die Theologie des Paulus von Nietzsches Begriffen her zu sehen und zur Sprache bringen (S. 262). Im Anschluss an Gal. 6,2 (Einer
trage die Last des anderen, so werdet ihr das Gesetz Christi erfllen) wird als Kerneinsicht geltend gemacht: Liebe bedeutet fr Paulus, den anderen in der Fremdheit seiner Moral ertragen. Damit ist Liebe fr Paulus keine moralische Tugend, sondern eine Weise des Umgangs mit Moral. Und gerade darin ist sie Ausdruck der Rechtfertigung durch Gott (S. 269).
Dass Nietzsches Christentumskritik als Moralkritik in keiner Weise gegenstandslos
ist, bedeutet nicht, dass sie den moralkritischen Motiven im Christentum gerecht wird.

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Moral wird auch im Christentum von moralischer Verurteilung her verstanden. Liebe bedeutet hier Freiheit gegenber Moral, nicht nur der anderen, sondern auch der eigenen,
und damit auch eine Freiheit fr den anderen. Auch deshalb ist die aktualisierende Interpretation Havemanns sympathisch. Vielleicht ist sie jedoch zu sympathisch. Wenn er
schreibt, dass Nietzsche keine eigene Moral gegen die christliche stellen, sondern
diese selbst provozieren und in neue Bewegung versetzen will (S. 195), scheint mir dies
zu unbestimmt (geht es nur darum, den anderen in neue Bewegung zu versetzen?). Wenn
es am Ende heisst: Auch die Liebe wahrt wie die Moral der Vornehmheit die Fremdheit
des Fremden (S. 283), stellt sich das Problem: Wie wird die Fremdheit des Anderen gewahrt?6 Weder der Hinweis auf Liebe noch auf die Moral der Vornehmheit schliesst die
Mglichkeit aus, dass wir dies nicht tun, also die Fremdheit des Anderen wahren, obwohl
wir es tun wollen. Dass es so ist, ist vielleicht gerade das, was Fremdheit bedeutet.
6. Daniel Mourkojannis untersucht anhand von Nietzsches Moralkritik als Leitfaden
die Nietzsche-Rezeption in der evangelischen Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert. Wie der Titel seines Buches Ethik der Lebenskunst angibt, will er Nietzsches kritische Herausforderung der Theologie und insbesondere der theologischen Ethik dadurch positiv bestimmen, dass es dabei um Nietzsches Reformulierung der Ethik in der Dialektik von Kunst
und Leben geht. Diese Dialektik besteht in einer Dialektik der sthetisierung des Lebens und der Existentialisierung der Kunst (S. 14). Ethik als Lebenskunst ist eine Ethik
der Selbstgestaltung. Inwiefern ist dies eine sthetisierung der Existenz? Das eigene Leben als Kunst zu sehen bedeutet, dass man um die Knstlichkeit aller Daseinsformen,
auch der eigenen, weiss. Dass eine Daseinsform knstlich ist, weiss man, wenn man sieht,
dass sie eine Interpretation der unendlich interpretierbaren Welt darstellt. sthetisierung
kann damit Existentialisierung bedeuten, denn eine Ethik, die um den perspektivischen
Charakter der Werte weiss, nach denen sie sich ausrichtet, fordert absolute Selbstverantwortlichkeit. Es geht also um eine ethische Lebensform im Sinne einer selbstbestimmten
Lebensfhrung, die einen aperspektivischen und interpretationslosen Standpunkt aufgegeben hat (S. 12). Dazu kommt erstens, dass die Gestaltung des eigenen Selbst im
Sinne sthetischer Stimmigkeit verstanden wird, zweitens, dass sthetische Existenz als
der Versuch begriffen wird, den existenziellen Perspektivismus in die Ethik zu integrieren, und zwar im Rckgriff auf die Kunst, die mit der Unabschliessbarkeit der Interpretationsmglichkeiten ihrer Werke der beste Garant fr die Vieldeutigkeit des Lebens ist
(S. 187).
Nach einem ersten Teil, der die Rezeption von Nietzsches sthetisch-ethische[r] Lebensform allgemein, in einem aussertheologischen Kontext, skizziert, versucht der
zweite Teil die doppelte Forderung im Haupt- und Untertitel des Buches einzulsen. Die
These ist, dass auch die evangelische Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert die Neuorientierung
Nietzsches in der Ethik, ihre Thematisierung im Zusammenhang von Kunst und Leben
wahrnimmt und fr die eigenen Anstze nutzbar macht (S. 71). Die Theologie selber ist
durch die Herausforderung der Moderne in einem Transformationsprozess begriffen, in
dem eine subversive Radikalisierung des eigenen Denkens in Widerspruch und Anknpfung an Nietzsche stattfindet (S. 13). Damit stellt das Buch von Mourkojannis eine gewisse Korrektur zur Peter Ksters Aufsatz ber Nietzsche-Kritik und Nietzsche-Rezep-

Vgl. auch: Das Pathos der Distanz trgt der Andersartigkeit und Einzigartigkeit jedes einzelnen Rechnung (S. 201). Dies erffnet nicht nur die Frage, wie man der Andersartigkeit und
Einzigartigkeit des Anderen Rechnung trgt, sondern auch, ob man das kann.

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tion in der Theologie des 20. Jahrhunderts dar. Nach Kster wird in theologischen
Nietzsche-Interpretationen nicht selten die Mglichkeit verdeckt, dass die Theologie in
Nietzsches Denken immerhin einer radikalen Infragestellung ihrer Legitimitt und ihrer
Mglichkeit gegenberstehen knnte.7 Wie Mourkojannis selber andeutet, geht es um
beides: Radikalisierung und Verdeckung.
Der zweite Teil des Buches gibt einen berblick ber die vielfltigen Formen der Rezeption von Nietzsches moralkritischer Neuorientierung innerhalb des Protestantismus.
Als Hauptvertreter figurieren Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Barth und Emanuel Hirsch. Auf je
eigene Weise radikalisiert und verdichtet sich die Transformierung der Ethik der drei
Theologen in Anknpfung an Nietzsches Auflsung eines metaphysischen Moralbegriffs. Troeltschs ethischer Historismus betont mit Nietzsche die individuelle Verantwortung zur autonomen Wertproduktion und gegen Nietzsche auch die soziale Verantwortung, die diesem Schaffensakt innewohnt. Wo Troeltsch noch um den ethischen Sinn
der Geschichte gerungen hat, kann Barth diesen preisgeben, da er den Ausgangspunkt im
Relativismus und Atheismus whlt (S. 130). Mourkojannis zeigt, wie tief die NietzscheRezeption in die zweite Auflage des Rmerbriefs eingeht. Barths facettenreiche Rezeption
ist nietzscheanisch-antinietzscheanisch: Der Sinn der Historie ist weder in ihr noch jenseits von ihr: Barth kann ihn nietzscheanisch in ihren hchsten Exemplaren sehen. Zugleich aber sind diese ganz antinietzscheanisch neue Menschen, die allein Gottes Mglichkeit sind (S. 135). Massstab fr Barths Neuorientierung in der theologischen Ethik
ist Nietzsches Kritik an einem moralischen Gottesbegriff, in dem Gott bloss zu einer
Moral-Hypothese funktionalisiert wird und so letztlich zum Widerspruch des Lebens
degeneriert. Gott wird von Barth nun als Inbegriff allen Lebens und als Krisis jeglicher
menschlicher Orientierung verstanden.
In Barths Nietzsche-Rezeption in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik kristallisiert sich dann die
Alternative heraus: Christus als das Symbol einer Ethisierung der Existenz in der Teilhabe an dem gebietenden, sich gebenden Gott, und auf der anderen Seite Dionysos als
Symbol fr den permanenten Entwurf seiner selbst in der Teilhabe am Schaffensprozess
des Lebens (S. 180). Hirsch sieht dagegen in Nietzsches Dionysos ein naturalistisches
Nachbild des lutherischen Gottesbegriffs, indem das Dionysische nur ein anderes Wort
fr das ewig zerstrende und ewig schaffende Leben selbst ist. Obwohl Hirsch kritisch
gegen Nietzsche einwendet, dass die ethische Existenz dem als Dionysos getauften Wirbelwind des Weltgeschehens preisgegeben ist, findet die unverrechenbare Irrationalitt
des Lebens ihren festen Ort in seiner Ethik (S. 158).
Das Buch schliesst mit einer kurzen Darstellung der Entwrfe von Thomas J. J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor und Don Cupitt (aber nicht Gianni Vattimos) als christliche[m]
Nietzscheanismus (189ff.). Wenn die Frage ist, wie christlich motivierte Ethik berhaupt auf eine Konzeption zurckgreifen kann, deren Bedingung die Aufhebung jeglicher dem Schaffensprozess des Lebens vor- oder bergeordneten Grsse ist, scheint
es folgerichtig, Entwrfe ins Spiel zu bringen, die kein Jenseits mehr zurcklassen
(S. 190 f.). Die Diskussion scheint mir aber auf halbem Wege Halt zu machen. Sie geht von
einer Voraussetzung aus, die frag-wrdig ist: Wenn wir von Jenseitskonstruktionen befreit
sind, folgt die totale Lebensaffirmation.8 Vielleicht sollen wir dann die kritische Frage (im
7
8

Kster: Kontroversen um Nietzsche, a. a. O., S. 179.

Befreit vom Ballast metaphysik-beschwerter Gottes- und Moralbegriffe wird die menschliche
Schpferkraft in der Konstruktion moralischer Werte und theologischer Formeln anerkannt
(S. 197). Wir haben dann eine nietzscheanische Weise einer Theologie und theologischen Ethik
der totalen Lebensaffirmation (S. 191).

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Geiste Nietzsches und im Geiste Kierkegaards) stellen: Wozu brauchen und gebrauchen wir diese neue Konstruktion von Jenseitsfreiheit und die Vorstellung von totaler Lebensaffirmation?
Dazu kommen Fragen, die die Konzeption einer sthetisch-ethischen Existenz betreffen. Wenn Mourkojannis von Nietzsches Aufriss einer sthetisch stimmigen und damit
ethischen Existenz (S. 16) spricht, wie ist diese Verbindung (damit) nachzuvollziehen?
Gengt es, auf die Anerkennung von perspektivischer Knstlichkeit und absoluter Selbstverantwortlichkeit hinzuweisen? Wenn Ethik auch damit zu tun hat, was mich mit dem
Anderen verbindet, stellt sich die Frage von Anerkennung und Mitteilung, die im Buch
nur kurz berhrt wird. Nietzsche selbst hat den unberschreitbar individuellen Ausgangspunkt in der Moral nicht als Verlust oder Gefahr beklagt, sondern in der Freiheit von
den letzten Grnden die eigentliche Herausforderung begriffen (S. 39). Wenn wir selbst
diese Herausforderung denken wollen, mssen wir fragen, was dann Freiheit von den letzten Grnden bedeutet. Es gengt nicht (lnger), diese Freiheit als Antwort zu geben.
7. Auch Ivan Broisson nimmt als Leitfaden den Gedanken des individuellen Selbstwerdens. Der Titel seines Buches Nietzsche et la vie spirituelle deutet aber einen anderen Zugang an. Als erster Schritt und mit Hinweis besonders auf MA I 282 285 und M 440 argumentiert Boisson dafr, dass Nietzsche dsirait inaugurer une nouvelle forme de vie
contemplative (S. 37), wo es um Discipline de vie geht (wie die berschrift des ersten
Teiles des Buches lautet). Die Prinzipien dieser Selbstzucht tragen asketische Zge. Boisson argumentiert dafr, dass Askese bei Nietzsche nur dann Lebensverneinung bedeutet,
wenn sie eigener oder letzter Zweck ist (so dass man das Leben so lebt, dass es nicht wert
ist zu leben). Wie es in GM III 7 heisst: Das asketische Ideal bedeutet bei einem Philosophen nicht, dass er das Dasein verneint, sondern er bejaht darin vielmehr sein Dasein
und nur sein Dasein. Wenn Nietzsche die asketische Grundhaltung als eine negative
Einstellung zum Leben kritisiert, geht seine Kritik so Broisson nicht auf die Askese als
Mittel, sondern auf das lebensverneinende Ziel, das die Askese als Selbstzweck hervortreten lsst. Die Askese des Philosophen ne mne pas lanantissement, mais laccomplissement de soi, qui pour le penseur est reprsent par la haute spiritualit (S. 183,
Geistigkeit (GM III 7)). Die Askese fhrt hier den Einzelnen jenseits von Gut und
Bse. Wohin fhrt sie dann? Boisson antwortet: zu la haute spiritualit (S. 104). Im
zweiten Teil des Buches, Prsence du sacr dans la vie, versucht er, diese Antwort zu
entfalten. Er hebt zunchst hervor, dass Gtter fr Nietzsche, wie Kunstwerke, Schpfungen von Menschen sind: ils peuvent exprimer les plus hautes esprances de celui qui
les a crs (S. 128). Als figures dexpression weisen die Gtter aber auf etwas anderes
hin, auf das Heilige (im Sinne des Numinosen) im Leben. Dies fhrt zu dem Schluss, dass
die ewige Wiederkunft, comme vnement du Oui la vie, le coeur dune nouvelle vie
spirituelle ist (15). Man kann aber fragen, ob der Titel des Buches damit eingelst wird.
Der Ausdruck la vie spirituelle ist im Kontext selber erklrungsbedrftig. Im Buch wird
er durch die Gedanken von der Askese als Selbstzucht und der Bejahung des Lebens erklrt. Was fgt aber der Begriff von Spiritualitt (oder spirituellen Praktiken) hinzu?
8. Der Band Von der Unmglichkeit oder Mglichkeit, ein Christ zu sein enthlt, wie der Untertitel sagt, Beitrge eines Symposions und Vortrge des Nietzsche-Kreises Mnchen.
Viele der Beitrge stellen aber die im Titel liegende Frage nicht wirklich von Nietzsche
aus. Ich werde hier nur auf zwei Beitrge eingehen.
In ihrer Einleitung betont die Herausgeberin, Beatrix Vogel, dass Nietzsches Christentumskritik Bestandteil und Mittel seiner Versuche ist, zu einer vllig neuen Deutung

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der Welt vorzustossen. Sie versucht, seine Kritik durch zwei Grundgedanken zu bestimmen: Verelendung der Welt und Verelendung des Menschen. Mit dem monotheistischen
Gottesbegriff geht eine grundlegende Zweiteilung der einen Welt einher. Zu dieser Dualitt kommt es durch die Konzeption des Guten selbst, die die Wirklichkeit in Gut und
Bse zerreisst. Durch die Auffassung, dass es mglich ist, den Zwist zwischen Gut und
Bse allgemein, d.h. durch eine grundstzliche Einstellung, zu entscheiden (Pavel
Kouba), wird der Grundcharakter des Lebens verneint (S. 22). Die Welt nach Nietzsche
(mit dem Buchtitel von Pavel Kouba) ist durch eine unaufhebbare Zweideutigkeit gekennzeichnet. Beatrix Vogel stellt die Frage, ob in der Offenheit der Postmoderne nicht
auch die Denkform der Dualitt weiterentwickelbar ist, indem Dualitt als Steigerung von
Artikulation von Differenzen bestimmt wird.
In seinem Beitrag Wohin ist Gott? nimmt (der 1999 verstorbene) Jrg Salaquarda
die Frage nach der Un-Mglichkeit des Christseins direkt in den Griff. Wie der Untertitel
lautet, geht es um berlegungen zur Mglichkeit des Christseins unter Bedingungen der
Moderne. Die These Salaquardas ist, dass in Nietzsches und Heideggers Einwnden gegen Religion und Christentum Anstze enthalten sind, die Mglichkeiten fr ein Christsein auch unter Bedingungen der Moderne erffnen (S. 196). Genauer gesagt haben beide
Denker die Abwesenheit Gottes in der Moderne in einer Weise aufgefasst, die Raum fr
eine genuin christliche Interpretation dieses Phnomens lsst. Ich gehe hier nur auf die
Nietzsche-Interpretation ein. Ausgangspunkt Salaquardas ist es, dass Christsein durch
das Heilshandeln Gottes in Christus ermglicht ist. Die protestantische Tradition hat
dies zentral als die Rechtfertigung des Gottlosen ausgelegt. Das in den christlichen
Texten bezeugte Rechtfertigungsgeschehen bedeutet nicht, dass wir bessere, ganzheitlichere, Gott nun im vollen Umfang erkennende Wesen werden, sondern es ist die Zusage,
dass wir als gottferne, als fragmentierte, als todesverfallene Menschen und Wesen von
Gott akzeptiert sind (S. 199). Wenn der tolle Mensch auf dem Markplatz erklrt, dass
wir, d. h. die Menschen, die sich mit den in der Moderne wichtigen Dingen des Leben beschftigen, Gott gettet haben, bedeutet dies, dass wir durch unser Denken und Handeln
die Voraussetzungen untergraben haben, unter denen die fr die Tradition bestimmende
Gottesvorstellung eine lebendige Option war. Damit ist aber die Frage nach der Mglichkeit des Christseins nicht erledigt, sondern ist mit Nietzsches Grundeinsicht erneut so zu
stellen, dass die Welt als das Spiel von interpretierenden Machtwillen ein Geschehen ist,
,hinter dem es keine an-sich-seiende Wirklichkeit, keine Hinter-Welt gibt (S. 207). Der
gekreuzigte Christus ist ein mchtiges Symbol dafr, dass der Starke und Vollkommene
auf seine Privilegien verzichten kann (S. 209).
9. Unmittelbar leuchtet es nicht ein, ein Buch zu Nietzsches Fragen jenseits von
Moral und Religion unter dem Hauptthema Theodizee und dem Obertitel Theodizee im Zeichen des Dionysos zu stellen. Wollte Nietzsche nicht das Problem der Theodizee dadurch
unterlaufen, dass er ihm seine Voraussetzungen zu entziehen suchte? Bei genauerem Zusehen geht es aber auch bei Nietzsche um die Frage der Theodizee. Schon die Bemerkung
in der Geburt der Tragdie gibt einen Ausgangspunkt dafr: Um leben zu knnen, mussten
die Griechen diese Gtter, aus tiefster Nthigung schaffen []. So rechtfertigen die Gtter das Menschenleben, indem sie es selber leben die allein gengende Theodicee!
(GT 3, KSA 1, S. 36). Das Zitat gibt auch die Umkehrung der Fragerichtung an. Bei
Nietzsche geht es um die Rechtfertigung der Wirklichkeit und in kritischer Perspektive
um die Rechtfertigung der verneinten oder verleumdeten Wirklichkeit.
In seinem Aufsatz Apollinische Einheit und dionysische Pluralitt bestimmt Josef
Simon das tragische Denken Nietzsches. Nietzsche stellt sich entschieden auf die Seite

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des tragischen Bewusstseins und damit auf einen Standpunkt vor der Entstehung des
theoretischen Menschen, wenn er sagt, alles sei Interpretation, weil es keinen extramundanen Standpunkt gibt (S. 13). Als der erste theoretische Mensch verstand Sokrates
Moral in einem allgemeingltigen und damit theoretisch zu begrndenden Sinn. Die
christliche Philosophie hat diesen theoretischen, posttragischen Ansatz der sokratischplatonischen Philosophie in sich aufgenommen. Gott wird hier als die absolute theoretische Position jenseits des Lebens und jenseits aller besonderen Orientierungsmglichkeiten gedacht (S. 19). Bei der Rede vom Tode Gottes geht es darum, den Gedanken
der fehlenden bersichtlichkeit der Welt zu ertragen (S. 20). Entsprechend ist der Gedanke von der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen der tragische Gedanke der Bejahung des Schicksals in seinem individuellen Verlauf (amor fati). Er ist dionysisch aus
dem bewegten Standpunkt heraus gedacht.
Whrend Josef Simon Nietzsche affirmativ als tragischen Denker liest, geht es in
Christoph Trckes Lektre in den Eingeweiden des Geistes um die eigene Tragdie
Nietzsches. In seinem exemplarischen Schicksal kndigt sich die Gefahr einer Tragdie
der menschlichen Vernunft an. Wie lsst sich rckhaltlos intellektuelle Redlichkeit ben,
ohne dass der Intellekt haltlos zerfllt? (S. 28). Nietzsches Vision des grossen Menschen
als des Menschen ohne jegliche Schwche, will sagen ohne Ideal ist ein Ideal ersten
Ranges: ein vollkommen souvernes, selbstgengsames Wesen, das Leben ohne jeden Filter oder Vorbehalt in vollen Zgen geniessend. Ein solches Wesen gibt es nicht ausser
als sehnlichen Wunsch und Gedanken in menschlichen Kpfen. Und so entpuppt sich
der Anti-Utopist Nietzsche als Utopist, am Ende gar als messianischer, schreibt Trcke
(S. 34) mit Hinweis auf GM II, 24: Aber irgendwann, in einer strkeren Zeit, als diese
morsche, selbstzweiflerische Gegenwart ist, muss er uns doch kommen, der e rl s e n d e
Mensch der grossen Liebe und Verachtung, der schpferische Geist. Nietzsches Tragdie ist so die Tragdie des Ideals.
Der Beitrag von Ralf Witzler Recht ohne Moral bei Nietzsche. Zum Problem der
Gerechtigkeit verfhrt in zwei Schritten. Erstens geht es um die Begrenzung der Moral,
indem Nietzsche das Recht von der Moral freihalten will. Zweitens erschpft sich Gerechtigkeit bei Nietzsche nicht in der Anerkennung eines moralfernen Rechtspragmatismus. Im Gegenteil steht Gerechtigkeit auf das engste mit der Tugend der Redlichkeit als
deren Grundlage verknpft jenseits des Rechts wie der Moral (S. 53). Witzler weist
hier auf Nietzsches Bestimmung hin: Gerechtigkeit ist Liebe mit sehenden Augen,
welche nicht nur alle Strafe, sondern auch alle Schuld trgt, als die Gerechtigkeit, die
Jeden freispricht, ausgenommen den Richtenden! (Za I Vom Biss der Natter).
Elisabeth Heinrich rekonstruiert in ihrem Aufsatz Der Begriff Gott war bisher der
grsste Einwand gegen das Dasein Nietzsches genealogische Religionskritik. Zu dieser genealogischen Rekonstruktion gehrt, dass Nietzsche die traditionelle Gestalt des
Theodizeeproblems umkehrt, indem das bel nicht als ein Einwand gegen den Gottesglauben geltend gemacht, sondern zu dessen eigentlichem Grund erklrt wird. Die genealogische Rekonstruktion der religisen Vorstellungen und Praktiken tritt an die Stelle solcher Argumente, die die Gltigkeit von Glaubensstzen widerlegen wollen. Trotzdem
liegt ihre destruktive Potenz zu einem grossen Teil darin, dass sie die Frage nach dem
Wert der genetisch destruierten Vorstellungen mit einschliessen. So ist das Kriterium fr
eine Beurteilung der Glaubensinhalte ihre lebenssteigernde oder lebensmindernde Wirkung. Nietzsches Religionskritik hat das Ziel, zu einer berwindung des bisherigen
Menschseins durch den bermenschen beizutragen, dergestalt dass die religise Deformation des Menschen nur durch eine radikale Destruktion der Religion aufgehoben werden kann. Nietzsches bermensch ist durch die Totalverfgung ber sein Wollen und

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Schaffen charakterisiert, indem er sich ungeteilt der Erde zuwendet (S. 101). Er bedarf
damit keiner berirdischen Rechtfertigung des bels in der Welt mehr. Die genealogische
Religionskritik birgt aber die Gefahr des Fanatismus in sich, wenn sie auf die schrankenlose Verfgung des Menschen ber sich selbst baut (S. 102).
Dass die Religionskritik Nietzsches auf die berwindung von Religion abzielt, geht
auch aus dem Aufsatz Nietzsches Kritik des Christentums von Jrg Salaquarda hervor.
Nietzsche sieht die Religion als durch das historische Bewusstsein prinzipiell berholt an.
Das Christentum ist nicht lnger eine lebendige Option. Warum ging Nietzsche dann
dazu ber, das Christentum vehement zu bekmpfen? Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung in
den achtziger Jahren mit der jdisch-christlichen Tradition zielt darauf ab, die Menschen davon zu berzeugen, dass Gott tot ist, und dass sie Konsequenzen daraus ziehen
mssen. Salaquarda hebt drei Grundzge in den verschiedenen Strategien Nietzsches
hervor: erstens ist Christentum fr Nietzsche Ausdruck einer Moral des Ressentiments,
zweitens hlt er daran fest, dass Christentum als Religion durch den Sieg der historischen
Betrachtungsweise lngst widerlegt worden ist, drittens bedient Nietzsche sich vorwiegend der Methode der Genealogie. Was den ersten Punkt betrifft, muss man, so Salaquarda,
zwischen der Entdeckung des Ressentiments als einer seelischen Grundhaltung und der
These, die jdisch-christliche Tradition sei ausschliesslich Produkt und Ausgestaltung des
Ressentiments, unterscheiden. Man kann sowohl der These zustimmen, dass Ressentiment als menschlich-allzumenschlicher Zugriff in allen Bereichen des Menschlichen zu
finden ist, als auch die Auffassung vertreten, dass die jdisch-christliche Tradition Gegenbilder zum Ressentiment darbietet. Auch der zweite Punkt ist nicht so einfach entscheidbar: Es ist der Theologie und Religionsphilosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts gelungen, Distinktionen herauszuarbeiten, die die Spannung zwischen historischer Betrachtungsweise
und Anspruch des Glaubens plausibel austragen. Kern dieser Lsung ist die Einsicht,
dass der Glaube zwar nicht die Fhigkeit verleiht, Tatsachen zu sehen, wo es keine gibt;
wohl aber, Tatsachen in einem bestimmten Licht zu verstehen (S. 114). Zum dritten
Punkt bemerkt Salaquarda, dass Nietzsches genealogische Kritik Religion auf Moral zurckfhrt und dadurch die Eigenart von Religion verfehlt.
In seinem perspektivenreichen Beitrag Advokat Gottes und des Teufels: Nietzsches
Theologie erffnet Werner Stegmaier wieder die Frage nach Theologie als Denken Gottes bei Nietzsche. Er versucht den neuen Anfang herauszuarbeiten, der in Nietzsches Religionskritik angelegt ist. Nietzsche will nicht, wie Schopenhauer und Feuerbach, Religion
durch Moral ersetzen. Wenn man mit einer Kritik der Vergttlichung der Moral und der
Moralisierung Gottes ansetzt, wird es statt dessen mglich, zu einer neuen Sicht nicht
nur der Religion, sondern auch der Moral, zu einer neuen Moral im Umgang mit Moral
zu gelangen. Nietzsche stellt nicht die Religion als solche oder die Moral als solche in
Frage. Er hat stets angenommen, dass Menschen, auch er selbst, ohne beide nicht leben
knnen (S. 166). In seiner Theologie geht es Nietzsche dann um einen Gott des Denkens der Moral und der Religion, einen Gott des Denkens selbst (S. 167). Menschen denken Gott, um leben zu knnen. Um sich dem ussersten im Denken auszusetzen, brauchen Philosophen einen Gott, der ihnen dazu verhilft. Der Gott, den Nietzsche denkt, ist
ein Gegen-Begriff zum jdisch-christlichen Gott und somit nicht ohne diesen und nur
von ihm her zu denken. Die Gegen-Begriffe Nietzsches sind pragmatische Begriffe in
dem Sinne, dass sie andere Begriffe in Bewegung bringen. Dionysos ist dann bei Nietzsche nicht einfach ein anderer Gott, sondern ein anderer Begriff. Er ist ein Begriff fr
das Denken selbst, das Denken, das nichts anderes tut und nichts anderes tun kann als
Unterscheidungen zu machen und Unterscheidungen wieder aufzuheben. In diesem
Sinne denkt Nietzsche Gott als Beunruhigung, als Unruhe der Moral, die ohne diesen

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Gott fest und hart zu werden droht (S. 176). Gott jenseits von Gut und Bse ist ein
Gott nicht einer Moral, sondern eines Denkens, das ber die Moral hinaus denken kann.
Ein solcher Gott, eine solche Religion knnte dann umgekehrt Kriterium fr Moralen
sein (S. 174).
Im darauf folgenden Aufsatz stellt Andreas Urs Sommer die Frage nicht nach Nietzsches Theologie, sondern nach einer Theologie nach Nietzsche und vor allem nach
Der Antichrist. Es geht ihm um die Bedingungen der Mglichkeit, nach Nietzsches Der
Antichrist noch christliche Theologie zu treiben, Theologie als begriffliche Explikation
dessen, was Christentum ausmacht. Genauer gesagt geht es um die Fragen selber, denen
sich eine solche Theologie zu stellen htte, wenn sie bereit ist, sich in Frage stellen zu lassen (S. 181). Sommer behandelt dann sieben neuralgische Punkte: Der psychologische Typus des Erlsers und das auf Jesus folgende Christentum, wie es sich mit dem
Ressentiment im Christentum verhlt, Verjenseitigung, Vermoralisierung der Lebenswelt
durch priesterliche Selbstermchtigung, Heteronomie und Autonomie, Pathos der
Distanz, und letzlich Skepsis und berzeugungen. Sommer versucht in seiner knappen
Skizze, die komplexen Fragestellungen differenziert darzustellen. Die Frage ist aber,
ob die Differenzierung nicht dadurch weiter getrieben werden muss, dass auch die Ausgangspunkte im Anschluss an Nietzsche, besonders der Perspektivismus, ernsthafter
in Frage gestellt werden. Die Freiheit von aller berzeugungen derart zu bestimmen,
dass es um berzeugungen als Mittel zur Erreichung von Freiheit (S. 188) geht, muss
zu grundstzlicheren Fragen fhren, z. B. wie wir mit unseren berzeugungen und
Freiheit umgehen, und wie wir uns als Subjekte voraussetzen (besonders wenn wir uns
so verstehen, dass wir berzeugungen verbrauchen).9 Erst hier beginnt meines Erachtens die Diskussion fruchtbar zu werden, wie sich Skepsis und Glaube zueinander verhalten.10
Die Theodiezeefrage tritt als Hauptthema im Beitrag Magnus Striets auf: Nietzsches
Anti-Theodizee. Oder: Wie hielte ichs aus, ein Ich zu sein? Der Titel spiegelt die doppelte These wieder: Erstens geht es bei Nietzsche um eine strikte Anti-Theodizee.
Seine Absicht ist es, die Welt zu sich selbst zu erlsen (S. 194). Im frhen Werk ist die
Welt nur als sthetisches Phnomen zu rechtfertigen. Das Motiv der Rechtfertigung findet sich in der Formel des amor fati wieder. In beiden Fllen aber nimmt das Subjekt eine
9

10

Sommer weist in seinem Aufsatz wieder darauf hin, dass Der Antichrist exemplarisch vorfhrt,
wie man berzeugungen verbraucht d. h. instrumentalisiert (S. 188). Ein solches
(Selbst-)Verstndnis setzt ein in dem Sinne absolutes Subjekt voraus, das sich so beherrscht, dass
es sich von den eigenen berzeugungen ablsen kann, indem es sie (fr sich) instrumentalisiert.
Die Beitrge von Werner Stegmaier und Andreas Urs Sommer sind erneut abgedruckt in: Mourkojannis, Daniel / Schmidt-Grply, Rdiger (Hg.): Nietzsche im Christentum. Theologische
Perspektiven nach Nietzsches Proklamation des Todes Gottes. Hg. im Auftrag des Kollegs
Friedrich Nietzsche der Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen. Basel (Schwabe)
2004. 158 Seiten. (Beitrge zu Friedrich Nietzsche. Bd. 8). Der Band enthlt auerdem Beitrge
von Eugen Biser (Der Zuspruch im Widerspruch: Nietzsches provokative Kritik des Christentums), Gerd-Gnther Grau (Oh Zarathustra, du bist frmmer als du glaubst. Nietzsches
christliche Kritik des Christentums), Hermann Braun (Wanderer auf Erden, nicht Reisender
nach einem letzten Ziel. Nietzsches philosophischer Abgesang auf das Christentum), Hermann-Peter Eberlein (Nietzsches Tod Gottes und Overbecks Ende des Christentums
eine Analogie), Daniel Mourkojannis (Christus oder Dionysos: Zu Karl Barths NietzscheRezeption), Ulrich Willers (Nietzsche und seine theologischen Interpreten. Erfahrungen
Einsichten Irritationen) und Horst Georg Phlmann (Nietzsche und wir Christen. Versuch
einer kritischen Rezeption seines Denkens).

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ambivalente Stellung ein. Dies fhrt zweitens zu der These, dass der radikalste Umgang
Nietzsches mit der Theodizeefrage die Erklrung des Subjekts und seiner Fragen zu
Epiphnomenen nicht subjekt-gesteuerter Willen-zur-Macht-Prozesse ist (S. 205). Mit
dem Versuch einer Renaturalisierung des Ich kann Nietzsche aber die mit seinem Programm einer Anti-Theodizee verbundenen Ansprche in geltungstheoretischer Hinsicht nicht einlsen (S. 195, 207).
Der Herausgeber, Ulrich Willers, unterscheidet in seinem Epilog Das Theodizeeproblem christlich-allzuchristlich zwischen der Theodizeefrage und dem theoretischphilosophischen Projekt der Theodizee. Damit kann er Nietzsche nicht nur auf eine
Theodizeekritik hin, sondern auch von der Theodizeefrage her lesen: Nietzsche entwickelt nicht eigentlich eine Anti-Theodizee, vielmehr stellt er die bekannten Fragen in
einer Art reframing anders (S. 234). Er habe die Theodizeefrage als Frage nach dem
Leid, der Not des Daseins, den ungelsten menschlichen Tiefenproblemen zwischen
Freude und Hoffnung, Angst und Verlorenheit in der Welt niemals verdrngt, sondern
jenseits von Gut und Bse verwandeln wollen (S. 7). Indem Nietzsche die Frage verwandelt, werden seine Anfragen an ein christliches Selbstverstndnis heute unumgnglich:
Welche Erfahrungen lasst ihr Christen zu? Wie ist eine moralische Welt aushaltbar? Die
moralische Deutung der Welt macht den Menschen klein, sie leugnet die entscheidenden
Erfahrungen ernsthaften Menschseins, indem sie nicht wrdigt, was zu wrdigen wre:
die Abgrndigkeit, das Fremde und Herausfordernde. Nietzsches eigene tragisch-dionysische Antwort bedeutet, dass keine Gestalt des Lebens noch zu rechtfertigen ist ausser dadurch, dass sie gelebt, geliebt, gutgeheissen wird, ohne nach irgend einer Rechtfertigungsinstanz fr solches Tun Ausschau zu halten (S. 232).
10. Die Grundthese des Buches von Magnus Striet ist, dass sich bei Nietzsche
eine Radikalisierung der Kantischen Vernunftkritik ereigne (S. 132). Es geht um eine
Weiterschreibung, die die von Kant vollzogene kopernikanische Wende, als subjekttheoretische Wende des Denkens, radikalisiert. Wie Kant setzt Nietzsche die Strukturen
des menschlichen Bewusstseins als konstitutiv fr den faktisch vorliegenden Begriff der
Wirklichkeit und unseres Handelns an. Die Radikalisierung besteht dann darin, dass
Nietzsche den faktisch vorliegenden Begriff der Wirklichkeit, zu dem auch gehrt, dass
bestimmte Phnomene der Erscheinungswelt kausal auf die menschliche Freiheit als deren transzendentale Bedingung zurckgefhrt werden, nicht mehr als Synthesisleistung
eines in dieser Leistung sich vollziehenden Ich interpretiert, eine Leistung, die dieses Ich
notwendig zu seinem eigenen Vollzug bedarf, sondern dass diese angeblichen Vollzugsformen des Ich nur vermeintlich einer Kausalitt aus menschlicher Freiheit entstammen
und statt dessen Erscheinungsphnomene zweiten Grades eines ich- und subjektlosen
Geschehens darstellen, das Nietzsche mit dem Namen der Willen-zur-Macht bezeichnet
(14 f.). Die Radikalisierung der subjekttheoretischen Wende endet somit in Nietzsches
Erklrung des Subjekts zu einer Fiktion. Die weitere These des Buches lautet, dass
Nietzsche deshalb fr die Theologie als Herausforderung zu begreifen sei, weil sein Philosophieren sich auf die Aufhebung des subjekt- bzw. freiheitsheoretischen philosophischen Paradigmas konzentriere, das es doch, so die weitergehende Behauptung, gerade
erlaube, die philosophischen Implikationen des Glaubens zu vergewissern und damit der
Rechenschaftspflicht des Glaubens Genge zu tun (S. 47). Es geht also im Buch um die
eigentlich dogmatisch-fundamentaltheologische Herausforderung, vor die Nietzsche
die Theologie stellt, dadurch da er der Theologie das fr die systematische Begrndung
und Entfaltung leitende Prinzip der von ihr zu verantwortenden Glaubensaussagen entzieht, sofern seine Fiktionserklrung zutrifft (S. 23).

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Der erste Teil Der gewollte Schein. Nietzsche und die Radikalisierung der Vernunftkritik behandelt die Grundtese, Nietzsche radikalisiere die mit Kant eingelutete subjekttheoretische Wende, und fngt in heuristischer Absicht mit dem Willen-zur-Macht
als Schlsselkategorie im Sptwerk Nietzsches an. Denn wenn die Wirklichkeit als Willen-zur-Macht-Geschehen bestimmt wird, gibt es wohl kaum reale Anschlussmglichkeiten fr eine theologische Gottesrede bei Nietzsche (S. 41). Striet wendet sich deshalb
gegen eine latente Theologisierung Nietzsches, vor allem gegen die voreiligen theologischen Beanspruchungen oder gar Vereinnahmungen Nietzsches durch Eugen Biser
(168 f.). Was aber bedeutet fr Nietzsche die erst [als] Willen-zur-Macht-Lehre durchgefhrte Vernunftkritik, wie die These lautet (S. 148)? Neuzeitlich gesprochen begreift
Nietzsche die Konstitution der Welt durch menschliche Subjektivitt als ein Wille-zurMacht-Geschehen. Dies ist aber ein subjektloses Geschehen. Die theoretische Vernunftkritik wird bei Nietzsche in der Weise radikalisiert, dass die fundamentale Differenz
von Erscheinung und Ding an sich hinfllig wird. Kants Theorie der Erkenntnis radikalisiert Nietzsche dahingehend, dass der Schein nun universal wird. Damit ndert sich aber
auch die Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Die von Kant erschlossene Freiheit des Willens
erscheint als nur vermeintliche Freiheit, und zwar dadurch, dass statt auf eine Kausalitt
aus Freiheit bei Nietzsche auf eine Willen-zur-Macht-Kausalitt geschlossen wird. Die
Kritik der Vorstellung von Willensfreiheit wird dann komplementr mit der zweiten Kritiklinie, der Genealogie der Moral, interpretiert: Dass der Glaube an reale Willensfreiheit
nur ein Epiphnomen vorbewusster Prozesse darstellt, lsst sich Nietzsche zufolge genealogisch aufklren (S. 154).
Im nchsten Schritt wird die Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen als
Nietzsches Versuch interpretiert, ein Gegenmittel zum Nihilismus zu finden. In ihrer
ethischen Fassung als Aufforderung zur Weltbejahung setzt sie philosophisch eine
menschliche Subjektivitt in einem transzendentallogischen Sinn voraus, die aber zur
Fiktion erklrt wird (S. 169 f.). Es wird berlegt, ob sich Nietzsches Destruktion des Ich
nicht als Folge einer bestimmten Schwierigkeit der Wiederkunftslehre selbst interpretieren lsst, indem diese auch als ontologisch-kosmologische Interpretation der Wirklichkeit zu verstehen ist, die fr das Moment einer freien menschlichen Subjektivitt []
keinen Platz mehr lsst (S. 170). Die Wiederkunftslehre ist in sich problematisch, und
zwar auch durch die Spannung zwischen Faktizitt und Affirmation. Was im d i o n y s i schen Jasag en zur Welt, wie sie ist, ohne Abzug, Ausnahme und Auswahl (Nachlass
1888, KSA 13, 16[32]) affirmiert werden soll, ist der am Ende des Nihilismusgeschehens
stehende extremste Nihilismus selbst (S. 171). Mit der Formel des amor fati geht es
darum, die nihilistische Erfahrung purer Faktizitt umzukehren. Als bergang zu der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche im zweiten Teil des Buches wird Nietzsches
Kritik des Subjekts als eine Radikalisierung des neuzeitlichen Subjektdenkens beschrieben, die ein Selbstaufhebungsverfahren der Vernunft darstelle (S. 268). Die Ich-Identitt ist Grundfiktion aller weiteren Fiktionen (S. 173).
Der zweite Teil Nach Nietzsche. Philosophisch-theologische Untersuchungen zu
einer Theorie der Subjektivitt soll die philosophisch-theologische Herausforderung
durch Nietzsche weiterverfolgen. Dies geschieht anhand der Frage: Knnte es aber
nicht sein, dass Nietzsches Philosophie deshalb aporetisch bleibt, weil das Ich als Prinzip
des Erkennens, Wollens und Handelns in seiner Prinzipienfunktion fr diese Vollzge
unhintergehbar ist, und es seine eigene Unhintergehbarkeit in dem Moment erkennt, wo
es sich aus dieser Funktion selbst verabschieden will? (S. 219). Striets eigenes Ziel ist es,
einen konstruktiven Beitrag zu einer Theorie des Subjekts zu liefern, die sich in der Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche bewhrt hat (S. 243). Er versucht dabei vor allem, eine

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Vermittlungsfigur zwischen der Selbstbewusstseinstheorie von Dieter Henrich und der

Freiheitslehre von Hermann Krings zu skizzieren. Die These wird hypothetisch so formuliert: ob nicht die von Henrich als Feld beschriebene Struktur des Bewusstseins, also
einschliesslich des Momentes des prreflexiven Wissens und Vertrautseins mit sich selbst,
einer der Gehalte ist, in dem das transzendentallogisch Frhere, die nur formale Selbstbeziehung der immanenten Transzendenz, Grund nimmt, und so die abstrakte Identitt
der ursprnglich erffneten Differenz zu einer wirklichen, gehaltvollen Identitt wird
(S. 283). Damit wird auch, so die weitere These, das Bewusstsein eigener Kontingenz verschrft. Wirkliches Kontingenzbewusstsein kann es nur als Leistung einer Reflexion geben: und zwar als Leistung einer deshalb nach dem Unbedingten fragenden Vernunft,
weil sie so die hier vertretene These die Vernunft der formal unbedingten Freiheit ist
(S. 280).
Dies leuchtet nicht ganz ein, weder die Vermittlungsfigur, noch die Erklrung des Bewusstseins eigener Kontingenz. Der Preis ist, dass Kontingenz selbst formal bestimmt
wird: als das Dass der formal unbedingten Freiheit und die Struktur ihrer Vollzugsformen. Obwohl von Kontingenzerfahrung die Rede ist, wird Kontingenz von der Reflexion
her bestimmt und nicht umgekehrt Reflexion durch Kontingenzerfahrungen in Gang
gesetzt. Die im Buch gesuchte Alternative zu Nietzsche wird nicht selbst von Nietzsches
radikaler Bestimmung des Kontingenzbewusstseins herausgefordert. Ursprnglichkeit
und Kontingenz der Freiheit werden in der Weise verbunden, dass die Erfahrung eigener
Kontingenz selbst begrndet wird: Kontingenz wird durch die Instanz bestimmt, die ermglicht, dass wir sie als eigene Kontingenz verstehen. Wenn wir aber mit Nietzsche versuchen, Kontingenz wirklich als eigene Kontingenz zu verstehen, steht gerade die Bedeutung dieser Instanz selbst in Frage.
Die philosophisch-theologischen Auseinandersetzungen des Buches sind von oft aufschlussreichen Interpretationen getragen (obwohl die Darstellung nicht besonders bersichtlich ist). Dass das Buch systematisch ausgerichtet ist, ist ebenfalls zu begrssen. Die
philosophisch-theologischen Auseinandersetzungen betonen mit Recht philosophisch
die Frage nach dem Subjekt. Sie entgehen einer latenten oder voreiligen Theologisierung
Nietzsches, auch indem sie am Potential des neuzeitlichen Denkens (besonders Fichtes)
fr die Theologie festhalten. Das Buch will eine philosophisch-theologische Alternative
zu Nietzsches Erklrung des Subjekts zur Fiktion finden. Es fllt aber auf, dass die gesuchte Alternative Nietzsche nur als negativen Hintergrund braucht. Obwohl von der
Herausforderung Nietzsches die Rede ist, wird die Alternative nicht selber durch Nietzsche besonders nicht durch seinen Perspektivismus herausgefordert. Anders gesagt
leiden die Auseinandersetzungen von einer doppelten Engfhrung, sowohl subjektivittstheoretisch als auch theologisch. Dass es in einer Theorie der Subjektivitt darum
geht, wie wir uns in dem verstehen (sollen), was wir denken und tun, bedeutet nicht, dass
sie einen Letztgrund finden muss. Was wir als Prinzip fr das Selbstverstehen finden
knnen, ist vielleicht gerade das, dessen Bedeutung im Selbstverstehen auf dem Spiel
steht. Dem entspricht, dass Subjektivitt schon da ins Spiel ist, wenn wir Subjektivitt als
Prinzip fr uns suchen. Damit kann philosophisches Nachdenken eine andere Rolle fr
die Theologie spielen, als das fr die systematische Begrndung und Entfaltung leitende
Prinzip der von ihr zu verantwortenden Glaubensaussagen (S. 23) zu vergewissern. In
beiden Hinsichten stellt die ambivalente oder gar aporetische Radikalisierung des Subjektdenkens durch Nietzsche fruchtbare Herausforderungen.

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II
Jenseits von Transzendenz? Was bedeutet dieser Forschungsstand in Sachen Nietzsche
und die christliche Religion? Wie hat man sich, wenn man ihn ernst nimmt, zu ihm zu
verhalten? Nietzsches Denken ist wesentlich kritisches und zwar religionskritisches Denken. Eine neue Stellungnahme zum (religions)kritischen Denken Nietzsches muss der
Verknpfung von Religionskritik und Perspektivismus nachgehen. Unmittelbar scheint
das vielleicht einfach: Wenn religise Transzendenzvorstellungen entfallen, stehen wir
vor der unhintergehbaren Vielfalt individueller Perspektiven. Religion ist aber menschliche Fremdbestimmung. Zum unhintergehbaren Perspektivismus gehrt auch Religion,
und zwar in der Weise, dass mit Religion das Problem der Perspektive, und zwar genau als
Perspektivenvielfalt, verschrft wird.
Kehren wir mit dieser Fragestellung zurck zum Aphorismus 125 der Frhlichen Wissenschaft, der wie wir gesehen haben oft den Zugang zu Nietzsches Religionskritik bildet. Dann ist die Frage schon: welcher Zugang? Zugang wozu oder wohin? Um gleich den
Bogen von der Frhlichen Wissenschaft zu Der Antichrist zu schlagen, knnte man mit AC 18
antworten: Gott als die Formel fr jede Verleumdung des Diesseits, fr jede Lge eines
Jenseits. Wenn der Gott des Jenseits tot ist, wird das Leben des Diesseits frei entlassen.
Es gibt aber mehrere Merkwrdigkeiten am Text vom tollen Menschen und vom Tod
Gottes:
1. Es handelt sich um eine zweifach indirekte Rede vom Tod Gottes. Erstens ist der
Aphorismus eine Erzhlung vom tollen Menschen, der Gott sucht. Zweitens erzhlt er
vom Tod Gottes als einem Ereignis.Was meint die (indirekte) Rede, dass Gott tot ist?
Ein Gott, der sterben kann, ist ein von Menschen geschaffener Gott. Als solcher kann er
von Menschen gettet werden. Der Tod Gottes ist ein (ungeheures) Ereignis im Leben
der Menschen. Man lebt ein Leben, in dem der Hinweis auf Gott seine Bedeutung verloren hat.
2. Auf diesem Hintergrund berrascht das Zwischenstck, das mit der Frage anfngt: Aber wie haben wir dies gemacht? Diese Passage erzhlt von der Bedeutung des
Gottesbegriffes, und zwar so, dass sie ber elementare Lebensorientierungen spricht. Der
Gottlosigkeit als radikaler Orientierungslosigkeit entspricht rckwrts die Grundorientierung durch den Gottesbegriff. Dies bedeutet aber, dass die Vorstellung eines Jenseits
eine Weise ist, diese Welt hier zu ordnen. Die Transzendenz wirkt im Leben, indem sie
in die elementaren Lebensorientierungen eingreift. Menschen leben so, dass sie sich in
Raum und Zeit orientieren, und zwar in der Weise, dass sich ihre Lebensorientierung
durch individuelle und soziale Wertsetzungen in einer Raum-Zeit ereignet.
3. Wenn das Ereignis des Gottestodes von radikaler Bedeutung ist, ist es bemerkenswert, dass im Aphorismus 125 der FW die Menschen, die am Ereignis teilnehmen, seine
Bedeutung nicht sehen. Der Text zeichnet ein merkwrdiges Verhltnis von Ereignis und
Bewusstsein. Man lebt, als ob Gott tot sei. Man lebt aber auch so, dass man dies nicht
denkt. Die Beziehungslosigkeit von Ereignis (Beteiligtsein) und (Nicht-)Denken fordert
zum Nach-Denken heraus. Das merkwrdige Verhltnis von Ereignis und Bewusstsein
ist in Aphorismus 108 vorgezeichnet: Wir leben in und mit den Schatten des toten Gottes.
Insofern als diess ungeheure Ereigniss noch unterwegs ist (FW 125), gehrt Bewusstsein selbst zum Ereignis.
4. Nach vorwrts liegt aber auch das offene Meer, auf das schon in Aphorismus 124
als Eingang zur Rede vom Tod Gottes angespielt wird. Der radikalen Orientierungslosigkeit entsprechen vorwrts die radikalen neuen Mglichkeiten. Der Horizontlosigkeit
in FW 125 entspricht der endlich wieder freie Horizont in FW 343. Wie gesagt geht es in

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FW 125 nicht um Horizontlosigkeit tout court. Weil Horizont zum Leben gehrt, kann
Nietzsche Horizont als Metapher dazu verwenden, die radikale Bedeutung vom Tod Gottes sichtbar zu machen. Die Menschen am Markplatz, die nicht an Gott glauben, sehen
sich nicht als von Orientierungslosigkeit betroffen. Die Passage von Horizontlosigkeit ist
ein Gegenspiel. Es geht um eine Erfahrung: ein Ereignis, dessen Bedeutung die Beteiligten und davon Betroffenen selber erst entdecken sollen. In gewissem Sinne fngt das
Neue schon hier an, und zwar damit, dass die Erfahrung ernst genommen wird. Die unterschwellige Verbindung von Horizontlosigkeit und endlich wieder freiem Horizont liegt
in der Verbindung von Orientierungslosigkeit (der radikalen Bedeutung vom Tod Gottes)
und Unendlichkeit (der ebenfalls radikalen Bedeutung von den neuen Mglichkeiten).
Die neuen Mglichkeiten verstehen wir nur durch die Erfahrung von Orientierungslosigkeit. Erst in dieser kann der Horizont wieder frei werden. Wenn wir uns in das Wir des
Textes hineinlesen, sind wir also auf dem Wege, haben das Land verlassen und sind zu
Schiff gegangen. Wir haben die Brcke und das Land hinter uns. Wir bewegen uns i m
Horizo n t des U nendlich en (FW 124). Auf dem offenen Meer ist die Fahrt gefahrvoll, der Horizont beweglich und frei, wir fahren auf eigene Gefahr.
Wir sind also auf dem Wege, aus Orientierungslosigkeit uns neu zu orientieren. Es
ist nicht nur eine neue Orientierung an Stelle einer alten, sondern (mit Werner Stegmaier)
eine Orientierung darber, wie man sich im Leben orientiert. Wohin fhrt uns der Weg?
Wenn wir ihn in den Kontext versetzen und uns an den Eingang erinnern (Gott als die
Formel fr jede Verleumdung des Diesseits), geht es um die Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits: zur Welt, zum Leben.
Die Bewegung vorwrts (nach neuen Mglichkeiten) und zurck (zum Diesseits)
scheint einfach, aber nur im Gegensatz zu einer ebenfalls als einfach verstandenen Transzendenzbewegung. Dass diese Bewegung schon kompliziert ist, haben wir gesehen. Denn
Transzendenz haftet sozusagen an dieser Welt. Indirekt wird in der Transzendenzbewegung diese Welt als die Welt ausgezeichnet, die durch die Transzendenz gedacht wird: Es
ist diese eine Welt, die in zwei Welten gedacht wird. Man lebt dieses Leben mit der Vorstellung vom Jenseits: So zu leben, dass es keinen Sinn mehr hat zu leben, da s wird jetzt
zum Sinn des Lebens (AC 43). Darin liegt, dass Religion Bewegung in bezug auf
diese Welt ist.
Umgekehrt hat die Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits mehr mit Religion zu tun, als es
scheint. Erstens erhlt sie ihre emphatische Bedeutung als Bewegung zum Diesseits, als
Affirmation des Lebens von der Religion als Transzendenzbewegung. Zweitens ereignet
sich diese Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits im Horizont des Unendlichen. Im Horizont des Unendlichen ist aber das Element, in dem sich Religion bewegt, indem sie
und zwar auf zweideutige Weise ausdrckt und interpretiert, dass es nichts Furchtbareres giebt, als Unendlichkeit (FW 124). Wenn wir uns im Horizont des Unendlichen
bewegen, verstehen wir vielleicht erst, worum es bei Religion geht.
In der Bewegung zum Diesseits zurck fllt aber das Jenseits weg. Dass das Jenseits
durchbrochen wird, ist die Bedingung dafr, dass wir die Welt wiedergewinnen. Wenn
die Transzendenz der Welt als die Transzendenz eines Gottes verstanden ist, ist sie im gewissen Sinne begriffen: Transzendenz ist, wo alles beginnt und endet. Sie ist von Gott
umfasst. Wenn diese Transzendenz aber wegfllt, wo sind wir dann wohin sind wir dann
mit uns gestellt? Sind wir dann endlich in der Welt angekommen? Die Bewegung jenseits
von Transzendenz Gottes ist schwindelerregend. Wenn wir durch diese Bewegung zu dieser Welt zurckkehren, dann in diesem Schwindel, in dem vielleicht die Transzendenz, die
an dieser Welt haftet, aufbricht: als Fremdheit und Unendlichkeit der Welt. Auf diesem
Wege zurck sind wir auf offenem Meer.

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401

Der Aphorismus vom tollen Menschen und vom Tod Gottes gibt einen Zugang zum
religionskritischen Denken Nietzsches dadurch, da hier eine Bewegung anfngt, und
zwar die Bewegung auf immer radikalere Immanenz hin. Welchen Sinn hat diese Bewegung? Die Bewegung zur Welt zurck (und die darin eingeschriebene Religionskritik) hat
die moderne Kultur so tief geprgt, dass sie selbstverstndlich vorkommt, so selbstverstndlich, dass es schwierig ist, nach ihrer Bedeutung zu fragen. Wie Andreas Urs Sommer bemerkt, verneint Nietzsche als Antichrist die jdisch-christliche Weltverneinungslogik selber, um damit die Welt wiederzugewinnen.11 Gewinnen wir dann die Welt
wieder? Ist Welt so etwas, das wiedergewonnen werden kann?
Dass die Bewegung zurck keine selbstverstndliche ist, zeigt schon der merkwrdige
Umstand, dass wir mit den Schatten des toten Gottes kmpfen mssen. Wie auch Sommer bemerkt, erledigt das Christentum sich selbst, ohne dass der Nihilismus aus der Welt
geschafft wre.12 Wir haben schon den Abstand zwischen (ungeheurem) Ereignis und
(fehlendem) Bewusstsein davon berhrt. Die Lage ist von einer Geistlosigkeit (in kierkegaardschem Sinne) geprgt. Dass immer direktere Angriffe auf das Christentum als
christliche Moral notwendig sind, hat damit zu tun, dass es im Gottesgedanken um
Grundorientierung in der Welt und im Leben geht. Gott lebt in der Grammatik und in der
Moral weiter. Ich frchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik
glauben (GD, Die Vernunft in der Philosophie 5). Damit wird die Diagnose aber
ambivalent: Gott ist tot, indem man so lebt, dass der Hinweis auf Gott seine Bedeutung
verloren hat. Dennoch werden wir vielleicht von Gott nicht loskommen.
Der Aphorismus vom Tod Gottes erzhlt nicht nur vom Tod eines metaphysischen
Gottes, sondern von einem ungeheuren Ereignis, das noch unterwegs ist.13 Wenn wir hier
von Metaphysik sprechen, so ist sie in das Leben verwickelt und bleibt noch in der Grammatik zurck. Die Religionskritik Nietzsches richtet sich danach mehr gegen Moral (als
die Schatten des toten Gottes) als gegen Religion. Damit erffnet sich wieder die Frage
nach dem Verhltnis von Religion und Moral.
Jenseits von Moral? Ist die Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits auch eine Bewegung jenseits von Moral? Wenn der Gottesbegriff geflscht, der Moralbegriff geflscht (AC 26)
ist, kann man nach einem Begriff von Gott und von der Moral jenseits der moralischen
Verflschung von Gott einerseits und der Heiligsprechung der Moral andererseits fragen.
Wenn einerseits im Angriff auf die christliche Moral nur der moralische Gott berwunden
wird, ein Gott, der eine bestimmte allgemeine Moral absichern sollte,14 stellt sich die
Frage, ob es dann jenseits von Moral sinnvoll wird, wieder von Gott zu reden. Kommt
Gott wieder jenseits von Gut und Bse?15 Oder sowohl als gut als auch als bse

11
12
13

14

15

Sommer: Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist, a.a. O., S. 268.

Ebd., S. 57.
Das grsste neuere Ereigniss, dass Gott todt ist, dass der Glaube an den christlichen Gott
unglaubwrdig geworden ist beginnt bereits seine ersten Schatten ber Europa zu werfen
(FW 343).
Vgl. Havemann: Der Apostel der Rache, a.a. O., S. 187. Nach Havemann (S. 185 f.) ist Tod
Gottes kein eigentlicher Teil der Christentumskritik Nietzsches. Nietzsche greife Christentum
als Moral, nicht als Religion an. Die Kritik der christlichen Moral hngt aber mit der Bewegung
jenseits von Gottes Transzendenz zusammen. Der moralische Gott (vgl. Nachla 1886/87,
KSA 12, 5[7] (Lenzer Heide-Entwurf), S. 213: Im Grund ist nur der moralische Gott berwunden.) ist Gott in der Moral, die Schatten des toten Gottes ist.
Vgl. a. a. O.: Hat es einen Sinn, sich einen Gott jenseits von Gut und Bse zu denken?

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(AC 16)? Andererseits geht die Bewegung nicht einfach jenseits von Moral. Die Bewegung scheint wieder eine doppelte zu sein: Indem Moral die Gefahr in sich birgt, moralistisch zu werden, ist Moral durch Moralittskritik (wieder) zu entdecken.
Nietzsches Religionskritik scheint vor allem Christentumskritik und seine Christentumskritik vor allem Kritik der christlichen Moral zu sein. Eine Zurckfhrung von Religionskritik auf Moralkritik bersieht aber, dass die zweifache Kritik auch zu einer Differenzierung sowohl von Moral als auch von Religion fhren kann.16 Wenn Religion auf
Moral zurckgefhrt wird, entweder so, dass die Funktion der Religion sei, Moral zu
untersttzen, oder so, dass Religion durch Moral ersetzt wird, sieht man nicht, dass Religion auch die Mglichkeit gibt, ber Moral, und zwar ber die Grenzen der Moral, nachzudenken.
Wie Daniel Havemann dargestellt hat, fordert Nietzsches Christentumskritik als
Kritik der christlichen Moral dazu heraus, Perspektiven fr ein nicht-moralisches
Christentum zu untersuchen. Nietzsches Kritik gibt neue Mglichkeiten fr eine nichtmoralische Rede von Gott. Aber nicht nur das. Die doppelte Kritik als Religions- und
als Moralkritik gibt auch erneut die Mglichkeit, kritisch ber Moral zu reden, indem
wir nach den Grenzen der Moral fragen. Diese Bewegung ber Moral hinaus ist aber
nicht einfach. Wir mssen nach den Grenzen der Moral fragen, weil wir nicht ohne Moral
leben knnen. In dieser Bewegung ber Moral hinaus sehen wir auch, dass wir uns selbst
nicht auf einen Standpunkt jenseits der Moral stellen knnen. In diesem Sinn ist Moral
fr uns unhintergehbar. Wenn wir aber selber den Standpunkt der Moral einnehmen,
sehen wir nicht, was wir selber tun, und Moral wird moralistisch. Moral hat grundstzlicher damit zu tun, dass wir uns schon selbst zu den Anderen und zu uns selbst gestellt
haben.
In dieser Perspektive (in der Bewegung ber Moral hinaus, in der wir auch unsere Moral entdecken) geht es nicht nur um eine nichtmoralische Rede von Gott, sondern um
Christentum als Moralittskritik. Im Christentum knnen wir die Bewegung ber die Moral hinaus als eine Kritik des moralischen Urteilens, aber auch als eine Ethik der Liebe finden, die nach den Grenzen der Moral fragt.17 Ebenfalls in dieser Richtung liegt nicht nur
eine Kritik des Willens zur (Selbst-) Rechtfertigung, sondern auch eine mgliche Kritik
des Willens zur Macht. Wir knnen mit Nietzsche gegen Nietzsche fragen: Warum brauchen wir die Vorstellung von souverner Strke? Was trgt diese Vorstellung zu unserer
Stellung in der Welt bei?
Diese Frage zeigt auch, dass die Frage von Normativitt jenseits von Nietzsches Moralkritik wiederkehrt. Die Bewegung zum Diesseits zurck ist mit Normativitt behaftet.
Wir sind aber noch nicht so weit, diese Bewegung zurck kritisch mitzumachen. Bis jetzt
haben wir nur gesehen, dass die Bewegung die Frage von Religion und Moral und zwar
in ihrer Beziehung zueinander wieder und neu erffnet.

16

17

Es geht nicht nur um eine Differenzierung zwischen Religion und Moral, sondern auch um die
Unterschiede, die in Religion und Moral selbst auf dem Spiel stehen. Die zweifache Differenzierung besteht darin, dass sowohl Religion als auch Moral dadurch differenziert verstanden
werden, dass zwischen Religion und Moral differenziert wird. So ist Religion nicht auf Moral zurckfhrbar, sondern gibt die Mglichkeit, nach den Grenzen der Moral zu fragen. Zu der Differenzierung von Religion und Moral vgl. den Aufsatz von Stegmaier: Advokat Gottes und des
Teufels, a. a. O.
Diese Mglichkeit wre nicht zuletzt durch eine Interpretation und Diskussion von Kierkegaards Taten der Liebe zu entfalten.

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403

Jenseits von Christentum? Jenseits von Religion? Die Differenzierung von Religion und Moral
stellt uns wieder vor die Frage, ob die Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits eine Bewegung
jenseits von Christentum ist. Ist sie eine Bewegung, die Religion hinter sich lsst?
Die Religionskritik Nietzsches ist vor allem Kritik des Christentums. Sie ist es auch in
der Weise, dass Religion jenseits von Christentum mglich scheint. Die Christentumskritik Nietzsches ist aber nicht ohne Spannungen. Die Kritik kommt nicht nur von aussen.
Dass der Glaube an den christlichen Gott unglaubwrdig geworden ist, liegt auch am
Christentum selber. Das Christentum hebt sich selbst auf, berwindet sich selbst, und
zwar bei Nietzsche selbst. Meine Formel dafr: der Antichrist ist selbst die nothwendige
Logik in der Entwicklung eines echten Christen, in mir berwindet sich das Christenthum
selbst (Nachlass 1888, KSA 13, 24[1], S. 622). Wie Andreas Urs Sommer bemerkt: Der
Antichrist als Schrift und als Person gibt sich zu erkennen als einer, der auf dem Boden
des Christentums gross geworden ist, der diesem Boden entstammt und gleichzeitig seine
usserste Negation ist.18 Nietzsches Christentumskritik ist eine Konsequenz des Christentums selber.
Dass das Christentum durch sich selbst zugrunde geht, ist das Gesetz des Lebens:
Alle grossen Dinge gehen durch sich selbst zu Grunde, durch einen Akt der Selbstaufhebung: so will es das Gesetz des Lebens, das Gesetz der nothwendig en Selbstberwindung im Wesen des Lebens (GM III 27). So geht auch das Christentum durch sich
selbst an seiner Moral zugrunde. Erst geht es als Dogma an seiner eigenen Moral zugrunde, jetzt muss es auch als Moral zugrunde gehen: wir stehen an der Schwelle d i e s e s
Ereignisses. Nachdem die christliche Wahrhaftigkeit einen Schluss nach dem anderen gezogen hat, zieht sie am Ende ihren st rksten Schluss, ihren Schluss g e g e n sich selbst;
dies aber geschieht, wenn sie die Frage stellt wa s bed e u te t a l l e r W i l l e zu r Wa h r heit? (GM III 27).
Es lohnt sich zwei, drei Probleme in dieser Textpassage aus Zur Genealogie der Moral
festzuhalten: Erstens, wenn Nietzsche hier das Christentum in das Gesetz der notwendigen Selbstberwindung im Wesen des Lebens einfgt, wie verhlt sich diese Einfgung zu
der diagnostischen Kritik, das Christentum sei als Moral widernatrlich und lebensfeindlich? Dies stellt das Problem der Normativitt im Begriff des Lebens (und in der Bewegung zum Leben zurck). Zweitens, die notwendige Selbstberwindung im Wesen des
Lebens kann sich auf verschiedene Weise vollziehen. Sie kann als eine Selbstaufhebung
geschehen, indem eine Gestalt an sich selbst zerbricht, und sie kann sich als eine gelungene Selbstberwindung ereignen. Dieser Unterschied zeigt ebenfalls das Problem der
Normativitt an, und zwar in einer Ambivalenz, die auch in Religion zu finden ist. Drittens,
dass das Christentum aufgrund seiner Moral als Moral zugrunde gehen wird, fhrt Nietzsche zu seinem Problem. Die Frage: was bedeutet aller Wille zur Wahrheit? ist Nietzsches
eigene Frage: Und hier rhre ich wieder an mein Problem, an unser Problem, meine un bekannte n Freunde ( denn noch weiss ich von keinem Freunde): welchen Sinn htte
unser ganzes Sein, wenn nicht den, dass in uns jener Wille zur Wahrheit sich selbst a ls
P roblem zum Bewusstsein gekommen wre? (GM III 27). Kurz, die Religionskritik
Nietzsches richtet sich vor allem gegen die christliche Moral, aber das Christentum geht
eben an seiner eigenen Moral zugrunde,19 und in diesem Zugrundegehen zeigt sich Nietz18
19

Sommer: Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist, a.a. O., S. 56.

Vgl. FW 357: Man sieht, was eigentlich ber den christlichen Gott gesiegt hat: die christliche
Moralitt selbst, der immer strenger genommene Begriff der Wahrhaftigkeit, die BeichtvterFeinheit des christlichen Gewissens, bersetzt und sublimirt zum wissenschaftlichen Gewissen,
zur intellektuellen Sauberkeit um jeden Preis. (Vgl. GM III 27).

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sches Problem. Nietzsches Fragen ist mit dem Christentum verwickelt. Dass es sich nicht
nur um Selbstaufhebung oder sogar Selbstkritik des Christentums handelt, sondern um
eine Kritik, die sich vom Christentum nhrt, scheint mir auch dem Aphorismus 344 der
Frhlichen Wissenschaft zu entnehmen: dass auch wir Erkennenden von heute, wir Gottlosen und Antimetaphysiker, auch unser Feuer noch von dem Brande nehmen, den ein
Jahrtausende alter Glaube entzndet hat, jener Christen-Glaube, der auch der Glaube
Platos war, dass Gott die Wahrheit ist, dass die Wahrheit gttlich ist Dies lsst die
Frage offen: Wie wenn Gott selbst sich als unsere lngste Lge erweist?
Die Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits findet nicht nur auf dem Hintergrund des Christentums statt, sondern ist auch durch ihre Fragen mit dem Christentum verbunden.
Nietzsche spielt aber auch andere Formen und Mglichkeiten von Religion gegen die jdisch-christliche Tradition aus. Selbst wenn die Bewegung jenseits des Christentums geht,
fhrt sie vielleicht nicht jenseits der Religion berhaupt. Gibt es hier eine Parallele zur
Moral in dem Sinne, dass auch in der Bewegung ber Religion hinaus Religion zu entdecken ist?
Wie Der Antichrist erklrt, stand auch Israel ursprnglich zu allen Dingen in der
richtig en, das heisst der natrlichen Beziehung. Sein Javeh war Ausdruck des Macht-Bewusstseins, der Freude an sich, der Hoffnung auf sich (AC 25). Dies weist zurck auf
AC 16: Ein Volk, das noch an sich selbst glaubt, hat auch noch seinen eignen Gott. In
ihm verehrt es die Bedingungen, durch die es obenauf ist, seine Tugenden, es projiciert
seine Lust an sich, sein Machtgefhl in ein Wesen, dem man dafr danken kann. Wer reich
ist, will abgeben; ein solches Volk braucht einen Gott, um zu opfer n Religion, innerhalb solcher Voraussetzungen, ist eine Form der Dankbarkeit. Man ist fr sich selber
dankbar: dazu braucht man einen Gott. Wie Andreas Urs Sommer bemerkt, wird Religion hier anthropologisch gedeutet. Die Betrachtungsweise ist funktionalistisch: Gott ist
eine Konstruktion, aus dem Willen eines Volkes geboren; Gtter funktionieren als das
verdichtete Selbst- und Wunschbild einer Gemeinschaft.20 Die Notwendigkeit (dazu
braucht man einen Gott) ist aber vielleicht in einem strkeren Sinne zu verstehen. Es ist
schon bemerkenswert, dass es um eine Projektion geht, die nicht zurckgenommen werden muss, um in der richtigen Beziehung zu allen Dingen zu stehen. Religion wird nicht
nur aus einer anthropologischen Sicht gesehen, sondern auch philosophisch bestimmt:
Sie ist eine Weise, mit den eigenen Lebensbedingungen umzugehen, indem man sich darauf bezieht, und zwar dadurch, dass man die Bedingungen als die eigenen bejahen (oder
verneinen) kann. Religion ist so eine Form der Dankbarkeit.
Religion als ein Grundverhalten zu den eigenen Lebensbedingungen berhrt Nietzsches Anliegen. Das wird vielleicht deutlicher, wenn wir Religion vom anderen Ende her
sehen: Religion verhlt sich zum Leiden (vgl. die oben zitierte Stelle aus GT 3, KSA 1,
S. 36). Es lohnt sich, dem Argument nher zu folgen: Wenn man zum Leiden befhigt ist,
kann man das Dasein nur ertragen, wenn einem dieses Dasein selbst als Dasein von Gttern gezeigt wird. In gewissem Sinne wird die Projektionsthese hiermit umgekehrt: Um
genau das eigene Dasein ertragen zu knnen, brauchen die Griechen ihre Gtter, in denen sie dies Dasein als gerechtfertigt zu sehen bekommen.
Religion hat mit Subjektivitt nicht nur in dem Sinne zu tun, dass sie eine Konstruktion ist. In der Religion verhalten Menschen sich zu sich selbst als Subjekte. Sie tun dies
schon dadurch, dass sie sich zu dem eigenen Dasein verhalten, das sie selber zu ertragen
haben. Sie schaffen Gtter, um das eigene Dasein, als zu ertragendes, in den Blick zu be-

20

Sommer: Friedrich Nietzsches Der Antichrist, a.a. O., S. 181, vgl. 201f.

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405

kommen. In der Religion kann menschliche Subjektivitt aber auch so umgekehrt werden, dass Menschen sich selber als Bild oder Erscheinung eines Grundes sehen. So fhlte
Nietzsche sich um im Kontext der Geburt der Tragdie zu bleiben zu der metaphysischen Annahme gedrngt, dass das Wahrhaft-Seiende und Ur-Eine, als das ewig Leidende
und Widerspruchsvolle, zugleich die entzckende Vision, den lustvollen Schein, zu seiner
steten Erlsung braucht (GT 4, KSA 1, S. 38). Fr jenen geheimnissvollen Grund unseres Wesens, dessen Erscheinung wir sind, ist der Traum lebenswichtig.
Ein Volk braucht einen Gott nicht nur, um das Dasein zu ertragen. Religion kann auch
eine Form der Dankbarkeit sein. Beides gehrt zusammen: Um das Dasein, an dem man
leidet, in Dankbarkeit zu ertragen, braucht man einen Gott. Was hier in Frage steht, ist die
Bedeutung der Religion als Grundverhalten zur Welt. Das Problem ist ein philosophisches:
Wie ist es mglich, sich zum eigenen Leben als dem Leben, das man selber zu leben hat,
so zu verhalten, dass man es voll bejaht? Das eigene Leben voll zu bejahen impliziert, dass
einem mit diesem Leben ein Problem gestellt ist. Bejahung hat ihren Sinn darin, dass man
die andere Mglichkeit berwindet: das Leben zu verneinen oder zu verurteilen. Dionysos soll Begriff dafr sein, unbegrenzt ohne Ressentiment Leiden auf sich nehmen
zu knnen, aber schaffend, das Leben bejahend.21 Jesus dagegen steht ausserhalb aller
Religion (AC 32), indem er das Leiden in Liebe ohne Widerstand trgt: das ewige Leben
ist da, als Leben in der Liebe, in der Liebe ohne Abzug und Ausschluss, ohne Distanz
(AC 29). Der Typus Jesus steht nicht nur jenseits des Willens zur Macht, sondern verkrpert das Problem, wie ist es mglich, das Leben ohne Abzug zu bejahen. Ohne Abzug
heisst nicht ohne Leiden; das eigene Leben lebt man erst, wenn man auch darunter leidet.
Aber es gibt auch Leiden, in dem das eigene Leben kaum mehr (wieder)erkennbar ist.
Der Bewegung zurck zum Diesseits, die ihr Ziel darin hat, das Leben zu bejahen,
kommt damit eine normative Bedeutung zu. Religion und Moral knnen mit dem Problem des Lebens und des Leidens auf zweideutige Weise umgehen, so dass das Leben
selbst verneint werden kann. Als Grundverhalten zum Leben, das man zu ertragen hat,
hat Religion mit dem Problem zu tun, das sich auch fr die Bewegung auf Immanenz hin
stellt. Dass diese Bewegung nicht einfach ist, geht schon aus Nietzsches Genealogie der
Religion hervor, deren Schlsselbegriff Entnatrlichung ist. Es leuchtet keineswegs ein,
dass die Mglichkeit der Religion, gegen die n a t rlichen Bedingungen (AC 24) andere Mglichkeiten zu stellen, verkehrt im Sinne von lebensfeindlich ist. Sie kann auch ein
anderes Leben wahrnehmen lassen.
Jenseits? Diesseits? In seinem Versuch, das Diesseits radikal zu bejahen, braucht
Nietzsche die Figur des Jenseits. Nicht nur in dem Sinne, dass ein Diesseits als solches auf
ein Jenseits bezogen ist, das dann als Schein entlarvt werden kann. Nietzsche braucht die
Figur des Jenseits auch in der Weise, dass das Diesseits (das Leben und die Welt) nur
durch eine Bewegung jenseits erreicht werden kann: jenseits von Moral und Religion, die
das Leben verstellen, und damit jenseits von menschlichen Vorstellungen, aber auch jenseits seiner selbst. Das Leben radikal zu bejahen, fordert eine Selbst-bersteigerung des
Menschen. Damit scheint Nietzsche nicht nur eine Grundfigur der Religion zu wiederholen die Selbstbersteigerung des Menschen , sondern die Bewegung findet auch in
dem Element statt, das Religion auf zweideutige Weise ausdrckt und interpretiert: Wir
bewegen uns im Ho r iz o n t des U nendlichen, und es gibt nichts Furchtbareres als
Unendlichkeit (FW 124).

21

Havemann: Der Apostel der Rache, a.a. O., S. 165.

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Auf den ersten Blick scheint es einfach: Wenn wir jenseits von Religion als Transzendenzbewegung kommen, kommen wir zur Welt zurck. Schon das Ausgangsproblem ist
aber rtselhaft: Warum sind wir nicht einfach in der Welt? Warum sind wir im Leben nicht
einfach am Leben? Durch Religion kommen das Leben und die Welt als Probleme zum
Ausdruck. Wenn wir jenseits der Religion kommen, stehen wir noch immer vor dem Problem Leben und Welt. Knnen wir berhaupt das Diesseits bestimmen? Ist es nicht das
Leben hier, das uns berschreitet und berwltigt, so dass die Vorstellung von Transzendenz ein Versuch wre, dies Leben zu bestimmen?
Die Immanentisierung, die Bewegung auf eine immer radikalere Immanenz hin, fhrt
nicht einfach zur Welt zurck. Erstens entdeckt die Bewegung zur Welt zurck Chaos als
den Gesamtcharakter der Welt, zweitens geht die Bewegung zurck um die Bejahung der
Welt: Wir kommen nur zur Welt zurck, indem wir sie bejahen. Nietzsches Gegenbegriff
zur Religion als Transzendenzbewegung, zu Gott als der Formel fr jede Verleumdung
des Diesseits (AC 18), ist Dionysos: das dionysische Ja zu einer Welt des Werdens und
Vergehens: diese meine dionysische Welt des Ewig-sich-selber-Schaffens, des Ewigsich-selber-Zerstrens [] Diese We l t i s t d e r W i l l e zu r M a ch t u n d n i ch ts
auerd em!Und auch ihr selber seid dieser Wille zur Macht und nichts auerdem!
(Nachlass 1885, KSA 11, 38[12]).
Der Gegenbegriff Dionysos ist ein mythischer Gegenentwurf, erdacht, um mit dem
Leiden an der Welt affirmativ umzugehen. Es geht um d a s g r s s te S ch we r g e w i ch t
(FW 341), sofern es um das Leben geht. Noch im Gegensatz zur Jenseitsbewegung der
Religion formuliert Nietzsche: Wenn man das Schwergewicht des Lebens n ich t ins Leben, sondern ins Jenseits verlegt ins N i ch ts , so hat man dem Leben berhaupt das
Schwergewicht genommen (AC 43). Wie aber legt man das Schwergewicht des Lebens
ins Leben? Dadurch dass man das Leben bejaht. Ist es aber mglich, das Leben nur zu bejahen? Wird man dadurch dem Leben in seinen widersprchlichen Formen gerecht? Was
bejaht man, wenn man das Leben bejaht?
Bei Nietzsche tauchen besonders zwei Probleme auf: erstens Normativitt (in bezug
auf das Leben), zweitens (Un-)Erreichbarkeit oder (Un-)Verfgbarkeit (in bezug auf die
Welt). Beide Probleme fhren zu einem dritten: zum Problem der Subjektivitt (in bezug
auf die ganze Bewegung auf das Diesseits hin). Hier sollen die drei Probleme nur angezeigt werden:
Erstens die Normativitt des Lebens. Die Bewegung auf das Diesseits hin fhrt nur
zum Leben, wenn das Leben bejaht wird. Nicht nur ist (die Forderung der) Bejahung
selbst normativ aufgeladen. Die Frage ist auch: Welches Leben soll bejaht werden? Hier
schwankt die Antwort Nietzsches zwischen dem Leben in seiner Widersprchlichkeit
einerseits und einem besonderen Leben, dem starken und natrlichen Leben, andererseits. Man kann dafr argumentieren, dass das starke, natrliche Leben darin besteht, das
widersprchliche Leben zu ertragen. Das bedeutet aber, dass es das richtige Leben ist: das
Leben, das in der richtigen, und das heisst: natrlichen Beziehung zum Leben steht. Im
ersten Fall (was bejaht werden soll, ist das Leben, wie es ist: widersprchlich) ist auch das
verkehrte Leben, das Leben des Missrathenen, zu bejahen. Alles Leben ist, wie es ist,
in Ordnung. Im zweiten Fall (was bejaht werden soll ist das Leben, das in der richtigen Beziehung zum Leben steht: das das widersprchliche Leben ertrgt und bejaht) ist nur ein
bestimmtes Leben zu bejahen, gegen ein verkehrtes, widernatrliches Leben.
Jenseits von Moral taucht damit eine Normativitt auf, die in dem Sinne unhintergehbar ist, dass sie in die Bewegung zurck zum Leben, auf das Diesseits hin, eingeschrieben
ist. Die Frage ist, ob dieser impliziten, vorausgesetzten oder mitgetragenen, Normativitt
bei Nietzsche Rechnung getragen wird, in dem Sinne, dass sie als ein Problem themati-

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407

siert wird, das sein eigenes Ideal in Frage stellt. Das Problem zeigt sich als das Problem
von Natur und Normativitt, Strke und Normativitt. Die (emphatische) Bestimmung
von Natur und Strke soll eine Naturalisierung von Normativitt bedeuten. Nietzsche
versucht, Moral zu naturalisieren, indem gut und bse in gut und schdlich bersetzt und
das Leben am Leben gemessen wird, so dass das Kriterium ist, ob etwas lebensfeindlich
ist. Normativitt wird aber nur dadurch naturalisiert, dass Natur (und Strke) selber normativ bestimmt wird: gegen das Widernatrliche. Normativitt wird durch die (emphatische) Bestimmung von Natur versteckt, indem diese von einer impliziten Normativitt
getragen wird.
Die Normativitt, die in der Bewegung auf eine immer radikalere Immanenz hin auftaucht, ist nicht die Normativitt eines Ideals, die man whlen kann oder nicht, oder
durch ein anderes Ideal ersetzen kann, sondern sie hat mit dem elementaren Verhltnis zu
tun, dass wir leben, indem wir uns zum Leben verhalten. Das heisst aber, dass das Leben
nicht einfach mit sich selber zusammenfllt. Wenn die Frage am Anfang war, ob wir in
der Bewegung jenseits der Tranzendenz Gottes (als Formel fr Fremdbestimmung des
Lebens) das Leben zurckgewinnen, kommen wir nicht nur zum Leben zurck: Wir kommen selber dazwischen. Wenn die Immanenz radikal verstanden werden soll, muss sie
auch das Leben umfassen, das verkehrt ist, indem es durch Transzendenz als Fremdbestimmung geprgt ist.
Zweitens (Un-)Erreichbarkeit oder (Un-)Verfgbarkeit der Welt. Wie zeigt sich die
Welt in der Bewegung zurck zur Welt? Von der Fremdbestimmung (des Jenseits) befreit
scheint sie erreichbar. Sie ist unsere Welt. Diese ganze Welt, die uns wirklich etwas angeht, in der unsere Bedrfnisse Begierden Freuden Hoffnungen Farben Linien Phantasien Gebete und Flche wurzeln diese ganze Welt haben wir M e n s ch e n g e s ch a ffen und haben es ver g essen, so dass wir nachtrglich noch einen eigenen Schpfer
fr alles das erdachten, oder uns mit dem Probleme des Woher? zerqulten (Nachlass
1881, KSA 9, 14[8]). Chaos ist aber auch der Gesamtcharakter dieser Welt. Dies bedeutet,
dass diese Welt den menschlichen Deutungsversuchen entzogen ist. Sie ist unerreichbar.
Sie ist als diese Welt zu bejahen: als die Welt des Ewig-sich-selber-Schaffens und des Ewigsich-selber-Zerstrens. In diese Welt sind wir selber eingefgt, indem sie uns berwltigt.
Wir sind im Horizont des Unendlichen. Die Frage ist dann, ob es auch bei Nietzsche eine
doppelte Wirklichkeit gibt: die Wirklichkeit der Welt, in der wir interpretierend leben, und
die Wirklichkeit, die unter unserer interpretierten Wirklichkeit verborgen bleibt und die
sich dadurch zeigt, dass unsere Interpretationen zusammenbrechen, indem die Welt uns
berwltigt.
Damit stellt sich wieder das Grundproblem von Leben und Leiden. Das Leiden gilt
als erstes Argument gegen das Dasein, als dessen schlimmstes Fragezeichen (GM II 7).
Damit das zeugenlose Leiden aus der Welt geschafft werden konnte, haben Menschen
Gtter erfunden. Der Umgang der Religion und der Moral mit dem Leiden ist besonders
darin zweideutig, dass mit dem Versuch, das Leben zu rechtfertigen und zu be- oder verurteilen, Menschen sich auf einen Standpunkt stellen, von dem aus sie zur Wirklichkeit
berlegen und fremd (AC 8) hinblicken knnen.
Dass die Welt uns in Leiden und Freude berwltigt, zeigt, dass sie zu uns kommt. Wir
erreichen nicht nur die Welt durch unser Schaffen, sondern wir werden selber schon erreicht und berhrt. Als die Welt des Schaffens und Zerstrens ist die Welt uns nicht nur
nicht entzogen und unerreichbar, wir gehen selber in der Welt unter. Die Bewegung zurck zur Welt ist auch Selbstaufhebung. Wir haben unser Schicksal jenseits von uns selbst:
in der Welt, deren Gesamtcharakter Chaos ist. Die Antwort auf das Problem des Leidens
und Lebens ist damit Selbstbersteigerung in der Bejahung dieser Welt.

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Drittens ist Subjektivitt, wie schon bemerkt, bei beiden Problemen der Normativitt
(des Lebens) und der (Un-)Erreichbarkeit (der Welt) im Spiel. Dass die Bewegung zurck
zum Leben mit Normativitt behaftet ist, dass das Leben nicht einfach mit sich selbst zusammenfllt und dass die Welt sich in der Bewegung zurck als un-erreichbar zeigt, dass
Weltbejahung Selbstberstieg fordert, hngt damit zusammen, dass wir zurckgehen und
damit uns bewegen. Es stellt sich damit auch die Frage, ob wir in der Bewegung zurck
uns selbst gewinnen. Werden wir uns vielleicht selbst verfgbar? Oder werden wir uns
in dieser Bewegung gerade selbst entzogen? Wir mssen die Frage nach der Subjektivitt
erneut stellen, und da hilft es nichts, die Vorstellung vom einheitlichen, selbstmchtigen
Subjekt als Gegenspieler zu whlen. Subjektivitt ist schon darin im Spiel, dass wir das
Leben so leben, dass wir uns dazu verhalten. Wir stossen bereits auf Subjektivitt als
Problem, indem es menschliches Leben ist, sich zum Leben zu verhalten.
Mit dem Problem der Subjektivitt sind wir zu der Ausgangsfrage zurckgekommen:
Perspektivismus und Religionskritik. In der Bejahung des Lebens und der Welt besttigt
sich einerseits eine Perspektive auf das Leben und die Welt. Andererseits scheint die Bewegung zurck zum Leben, dessen Gesamtcharakter Chaos ist, uns jenseits dieser Perspektive der Subjektivitt zu fhren. Damit stellt sich die Frage, wie der perspektivische
Charakter von Selbstberwindung zu verstehen ist. Auch Religion geht mit Perspektiven
in der Weise um, dass sie einerseits Subjektivitt als Perspektive auf die Welt ausdrckt
und interpretiert, andererseits Subjektivitt auf einen Grund zurckfhrt, so dass es um
Subjektivitt als Selbstberstieg geht.
Dass Nietzsches Denken wesentlich religionskritisches Denken ist, zeigt sich darin,
dass die kritische Frage nach Sinn und Bedeutung der Religion Grundthemen bei Nietzsche selbst ins Spiel bringt: Leben, Welt, Perspektive. Wie wir gesehen haben, spielen
diese Themen eine kritische Rolle fr eine philosophische Diskussion von Nietzsches
Denken. Die Religionskritik ernst zu nehmen, heisst auch, philosophische Grundfragen
an Nietzsche erneut zu stellen. Religion bewegt sich auf zweideutige Weise in einer Dimension von Fragen, die Grunderfahrungen von Leben, Welt und Subjektivitt angehen.
Wenn wir philosophisch ernst nehmen, worum es in der Religion geht, zeigt sich, dass
Religion auch in der Bewegung ber die Welt hinaus eine Bewegung in bezug auf die Welt
darstellt. Sie tut etwas mit der Welt. Dies liegt schon in Nietzsches Kritik der Religion
als Transzendenzbewegung: Sie denkt die Welt so, dass sie ohne Wert ist. Religion kann
nur eine andere Welt denken, indem sie dadurch diese Welt denkt. Sie denkt diese Welt
als zwei Welten. Deshalb kann Nietzsche die Transzendenzbewegung umkehren, indem
er versucht, diese Welt affirmativ zu denken. Sein Denken ber Leben, Welt, Perspektive
ist in eine religionskritische Denkbewegung eingeschrieben, und wenn wir versuchen,
diese Bewegung nachzuvollziehen, wird die Frage nach Sinn und Bedeutung der Religion
wieder erffnet.

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409

HARTWIG FRANK
NIETZSCHES SYSTEM NACH JOHN RICHARDSON

Richardson, John: Nietzsches System. New York, Oxford (Oxford University

Press) 1996. IX + 316 Seiten. ISBN 0-19-509846-3.
Richardson, John: Nietzsches New Darwinism. Oxford, New York (Oxford
University Press) 2004. XII + 288 Seiten. ISBN 0-19-517103-9.
Nietzsche gilt in der Philosophie als ein Denker gegen das System. Er hat das Systemdenken mit verbal zum Teil drastischen uerungen angegriffen und in seinen Schriften
seine Gedanken meist in aphoristischer Form dargestellt. Der hieraus folgenden Deutung,
dass Nietzsches Philosophieren selbst unsystematisch sei, stellt John Richardson in seinem
1996 erschienenen Buch Nietzsches System eine Lesart der Texte Nietzsches entgegen, nach
der diesen ein Systemanspruch innewohne, der den formalen Kriterien traditioneller Metaphysik gengen soll.1 Nietzsche hatte selbst, so lautet Richardsons These, eine Metaphysik,
hier verstanden im Sinne einer Ontologie, die wie Metaphysik vor ihm beansprucht, eine
systematische wahre Theorie ber das Sein (being) oder Wesen (essence) zu sein (S. 3).
Um diese in der Nietzsche-Forschung ungewhnliche und wohl auch unplausible
These dem Leser nahe zu bringen, muss vor allem ein Haupteinwand (S. 9), der gegen die
Annahme eines ontologischen Systems bei Nietzsches gemacht werden kann, entschrft
werden, nmlich der Einwand, Nietzsche habe das Denken und die Wahrheit als jeweils
standpunktgebundene Interpretationen perspektiviert.2 Die in diesem Einwand liegende
Spannung zwischen Ontologie und Perspektivismus stellt denn auch das Schlssel-

In der in der Nietzsche-Forschung gefhrten Diskussion ber Nietzsches Metaphysik nimmt Richardsons Ansatz in mehrerer Hinsicht eine Zwischenstellung ein: Mit Heidegger sieht er Nietzsche in der Tradition der Metaphysik, will diese jedoch, anders als Heidegger selbst, nicht auf dessen Philosophie zulaufen lassen (S. 6). Gegen den Postmodernismus, vertreten vor allem durch
Derrida, wendet er ein, dass dieser den Perspektivismus Nietzsches bertreibe und so in Schwierigkeiten bei der Rechtfertigung der eigenen Position komme (S. 12). Doch habe seine NietzscheLektre von der postmodernen so sehr profitiert, dass sein Unternehmen sogar verstanden werden knne als an ontology in the neighborhood of postmodernism itself (S. 6, vgl. auch S. 12).
Mit Maudemarie Clark teilt er die Auffassung, Nietzsches Metaphysik sei empirisch begrndet,
jedoch nicht, wie sie meine, im Sinne eines neokantianischen Empirismus (S. 4). Methodisch
positioniert Richardson sich selbst als der Analytischen Philosophie nahestehend (S. VII).
Richardson (S. 38) verweist dazu besonders auf zwei Stellen bei Nietzsche. Zum einen auf
JGB 22, wo Nietzsche von der von ihm vertretenen Auffassung, dass jede Macht in jedem Augenblicke ihre letzte Consequenz zieht sagt: Gesetzt, dass auch dies nur Interpretation ist
und ihr werdet eifrig genug sein, dies einzuwenden? nun, um so besser. (KSA 5, S. 37) sowie
Nietzsches Feststellung, nein, gerade Thatsachen giebt es nicht, nur Interpretationen (Nachla 1886/87, KSA 12, 7[60], S. 315).

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thema von Nietzsches System dar (S. 35). Und sie bildet zugleich den Rahmen der Untersuchung zu Nietzsches eigener Metaphysik, indem sie auf zwei verschiedene Weisen aufgelst werden soll: In Kapitel 1 wird dazu eine Zwei-Ebenen-Strategie verfolgt, nach der
sich ber einer zugrundeliegenden ontologisch-transzendentalen Ebene des Willens
zur Macht ein ontisch-empirischer Bereich der Perspektiven dieses Willens erffnet
(S. 262). Diese Strategie gestattet, die ontologische Ebene zunchst von der Perspektivierung zu lsen und in dieser Isolation die Ontologie Nietzsches als solche zu betrachten.
Allerdings hat dieses Verfahren, wie Richardson zugesteht, weder in Nietzsches Texten
noch in seiner Denkweise hinreichenden Rckhalt (S. 262 f.). Deshalb wird im abschlieenden 4. Kapitel in Hinsicht auf den Begriff der Wahrheit bei Nietzsche eine Vereinbarkeit von Ontologie und Perspektivismus diskutiert, die insbesondere zeigen soll, dass der
Perspektivist Nietzsche zurecht beanspruchen kann, mit seiner Interpretation eine gegenber anderen Interpretationen wahrere Interpretation zu vertreten.
Nietzsches System besteht aus vier Kapiteln, die berschrieben sind mit 1. Sein,
2. Werden, 3. Wert und 4. Wahrheit. Entsprechend dem Schlsselthema des Buchs
erscheinen die Kapitel 2 und 3 eher als bergnge von der zunchst versuchten, aber
doch unzureichenden Zwei-Ebenen-Lsung des Verhltnisses von Ontologie und Perspektivismus im 1. Kapitel zu ihrer auf den Wahrheitsbegriff bezogenen Lsung im 4. Kapitel. Sie werden im Folgenden auch nur in dieser Hinsicht herangezogen.3
Bevor im 1. Kapitel Nietzsches Ontologie in einer abstrakt-begrifflichen Weise, wie
sie bei Nietzsche selbst nicht zu finden ist, entfaltet wird, gibt Richardson einige einschrnkende Hinweise zu seinem Unternehmen, die auch einen Leser, der die Hauptthese
des Buchs als abwegig verwerfen mchte, zum Weiterlesen anregen knnen. Denn Nietzsches Metaphysik stehe zwar in der metaphysischen Tradition der Philosophie, stelle in
ihr aber eine neue Art von Metaphysik dar, die aus einer Modifizierung der metaphysischen Zentralbegriffe des Systems, der Wahrheit und des Wesens resultiere (S. 5). Die
neue Art, Metaphysik zu betreiben, zeige sich zunchst in der Weise, wie Nietzsche selbst
philosophiert. Danach soll und braucht die systematische Einheit, die den Ansichten
Nietzsches unterstellt wird, nicht auch schon in einer methodisch systematischen Weise
auffindbar zu sein, denn: It may even discourage the philosopher from so baring himself, even to himself: the unity of his thought should be generated from the system of his
unconscious drives and attitudes and can be vitiated by overexplicitness. So, in mapping
Nietzsches thought, we are charting structures he often preferred not to discover or express; to an extent, his thought fills out this system dispite his own conscious efforts.
(Ebd.) Diese Ausgangslage, so Richardson, erklrt zum einen some of gap zwischen
seinem Buch und Nietzsches Texten (ebd.), und sie fordert zum anderen dazu heraus,
zu der deep structure von Nietzsches Denken vorzudringen (S. 6). Die weitere Untersuchung wird dann zumindest zeigen knnen, what a Nietzschean system (even if not
Nietzsches own) might be (ebd.), und damit das System zunchst als eine an der Erfahrung zu prfende Hypothese offerieren (S. 7).
Hiermit ist schon eine Besonderheit der Nietzsche zugeschriebenen Metaphysik und
der in Kapitel 1 entfalteten Ontologie bei Nietzsche angedeutet: diese sind keine a priori
3

Richardson verfolgt jedoch besonders im 3. Kapitel neben dem Hauptthema, dem Nachweis
einer eigenstndigen und eigentmlichen Metaphysik bei Nietzsche, noch eine andere Absicht
mit seiner Monographie: Er mchte die unseren moralischen Plausibilitten sehr entgegenstehenden Werte wie Anti-Egalitarismus, Anti-Demokratismus aus Nietzsche heraus plausibilisieren und so uns schmackhaft (palatable) machen. Wir werden darauf nur kurz eingehen. Der
Punkt wird in Nietzsches New Darwinism wieder aufgegriffen.

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411

gegebenen und inhaltlich bestimmten Wahrheiten, sondern bilden die begriffliche Struktur (conceptual structure), in der und durch die Nietzsche seine Gedanken zum Ausdruck bringt (S. 16) und deren Geltung einer empirischen Prfung unterliegt (S. 12
und 44).4 Kapitel 1 beschreibt diese ontologische Struktur ausgehend vom Willen zur
Macht. Dieser Wille bildet das Zentrum von Nietzsches Ontologie, weshalb Richardson
auch kurz von der Macht-Ontologie (power ontology) Nietzsches spricht.5 Der Wille
zur Macht ist zunchst nicht personal gebunden, sondern erscheint ontologisch grundlegend in seiner simplest unit als Trieb (drive). Schon beim Trieb finden wir, was fr
den Willen zur Macht insgesamt kennzeichnend ist, die Gerichtetheit auf ein Ziel hin, eine
immanente teleologische Struktur (telic structure) (S. 20). Nietzsches Ontologie sei damit zugleich eine Teleologie, trotz aller Attacken, die Nietzsche selbst gegen das teleologische Denken gefhrt hat. Denn Nietzsche hatte, so Richardson, bei seinen Angriffen gegen die Teleologie nur solche Formen derselben im Blick, die er gerade nicht vertritt. Die
Teleologie des Willens zur Macht ist nmlich weder eine conscious teleology (the claim
that mind directs the course of things) noch eine steady-state teleology (the claim that
the end aimed at is some stable condition) noch eine holistic teleology (the claim that
the world in general is a unit with its own end) (S. 21, Anm.). Sie ist vielmehr eine nonconscious intentionality (ebd.), die ihre activity pattern[s] entwickeln will (S. 26).
An dieser Stelle kommt nun auch die radikale Neudeutung von Ontologie durch
Nietzsche in den Blick. Die Basiseinheiten dieser Ontologie, die Triebe, sind nmlich weder Substanzen noch Subjekte, nichts hinter oder vor der Aktivitt ihres Wollens Liegendes, sondern nichts anderes als diese Aktivitt selbst. Sie sind Prozesse (S. 101), deren Ziel
nicht Stabilisierung, sondern Wachstum ist. Die Macht, die sie wollen, ist zunchst das
Wachstum selbst, im Sinne einer Steigerung ihrer Aktivitt oder Strke (S. 28). Zugleich
bedeutet dieser Wille zur Macht auch das Streben nach Macht ber andere (ebd.), die
Einverleibung anderer Triebe, um sie zu regieren (S. 33). Die beste, und wie Richardson
hier schon hinzufgt, wahreste Art, diese Einverleibung zu vollziehen, besteht nicht
darin, die anderen Triebe zu bloen Mitteln der eigenen Machtsteigerung zu machen,
sondern sie in ihrer Eigenart weiter wirken zu lassen und dabei doch zu beherrschen:
To help to the more important sort of power or growth, the forces subjected must
keep their own characters and not be utterly made over into mere facilitating tools;
they must add their own telic patterns and viewpoints to its fabric. Its only by coming
to rule persistingly different forces that a will expands not just quantitatively, reproducing its own patterns in other, but qualitatively: to include those still-foreign behaviors as phases or elements in its own thus fuller effort. I think this is a key point
in Nietzsches distinctive notion of power: it knits together powers main aspects as
growth and domination, by specifying the best (truest) way of growing by ruling.
(S. 34 f.)

Eine solche in der Erfahrung gegrndete Metaphysik findet Richardson schon bei Aristoteles
und unterstreicht damit seine konservative Lesart (einen Ausdruck, auf den er wiederholt zurckkommt, vgl. S. VII, 4, 14, 76 und 142) der Texte Nietzsches als grundstzlich der metaphysischen Tradition zugehrend. Ein lngerer Abschnitt im 2. Kapitel behandelt dann Konvergenzen von Nietzsches und Platons Ontologien hinsichtlich des Verhltnisses von Sein und Zeit.
Im Anhang ist jedem der hier rezensierten Bcher eine Liste der englischen bersetzung der
wichtigsten Termini Nietzsches beigefgt. Sie ist nicht nur der Lektre frderlich, sondern dient
auch dem Anliegen des Verf., to try to give definiteness or precision as philosophical terms to
the words he [Nietzsche] most often uses to state his views. (S. 6)

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Damit ist Nietzsches Macht-Ontologie in ihren abstrakt-begrifflichen Grundzgen

skizziert. Bevor wir auf das Hauptanliegen des Buchs, das Verhltnis dieser Ontologie zum
Perspektivismus zu sprechen kommen, seien thesenartig einige Folgerungen angedeutet,
die Richardson aus dieser ontologischen Grundlegung fr die Entfaltung von Nietzsches
System zieht. Sie beziehen sich auf die Bestimmung des Wesens des Willens zur Macht, der
Zeitlichkeit der Macht-Ontologie und des Stellenwerts der Ethik in Nietzsches System.
Die Frage nach dem Wesen des Willens zur Macht stellt sich in der hier entworfenen
Ontologie ausgehend von der Mglichkeit seiner Nicht- oder Fehlrealisierung. Wenn das
Wesen des Willens zur Macht in der Steigerung der Aktivitt besteht, wie kommt es dann,
dass einige Triebe dieses Wesen verfehlen und reaktiv werden? Das Gegensatzpaar aktiv und reaktiv, das Richardson von Gilles Deleuze bernimmt und das, wie er betont,
eigentlich keine Unterscheidung bei Nietzsche selbst ist (S. 39),6 bildet in der Macht-Ontologie die Basisformen des Willens zur Macht. Es korrespondiert mit Nietzsches Gegensatz von Herr und Sklave (S. 40), der hier, wiederum anders als bei Nietzsche, grundlegend zunchst nicht moralisch, sondern ontologisch gedeutet wird. Dem Wesen des
Willens zur Macht kommt danach eine logische Prioritt des Aktiven, eine teleologische
Prioritt zu, die auch von der Gerichtetheit des reaktiven Willens schon vorausgesetzt
wird (S. 43). Fr diesen ist ein Gehorsam kennzeichnend, bei dem der unterworfene Trieb
die Ziele und Perspektive des unterwerfenden Triebs ber seine eigenen stellt. Dies kann
entweder affirmativ geschehen, im Herdentier, oder negativ, in der Person des Ressentiments (S. 41 f.). Die Konsequenzen dieser in der Herr-Sklave-Unterscheidung verkrperten Gegenberstellung von aktivem und reaktivem Willen werden in den folgenden Kapiteln unter dem Aspekt der Zeitlichkeit (Kapitel 2), der Werthaftigkeit (Kapitel 3)
und des Willens zur Wahrheit (Kapitel 4) entfaltet. Jeder dieser Aspekte fhrt zu dem
Ergebnis, dass Nietzsches Konzeption des bermenschen (overman) eine dialektische
Synthese aus den ontologischen Eigenarten der Triebstrukturen von Herr und Sklave ist
(S. 68 71 und S. 135 140).
Ein wesentliches Merkmal der Macht-Ontologie ist die ihr immanente Zeitlichkeit
(S. 74). Bei Nietzsche selbst kommt sie in der Prferenz des Werdens gegenber dem Sein
zum Ausdruck, eine Prferenz, die Nietzsche mit dem von ihm hochgeschtzten Heraklit
teilt. Doch berraschenderweise ist es fr Richardson nicht Heraklit, der auf die Verzeitlichung der Ontologie bei Nietzsche am nachhaltigsten gewirkt hat, sondern Platon.
Denn Platon hatte in seiner Attacke gegen das Werden (S. 89) schon die Aspekte der
Zeitlichkeit herausgearbeitet, die Nietzsche dann mit seiner These, Sein sei Werden, aufnimmt: den Prozesscharakter, die Kontextualitt und die Intentionalitt des Werdens
(S. 101 109). Von dieser Bestimmung des Werdens her erscheint Nietzsches theory of
reality dann sogar weniger als eine ontology but a genealogy, taking that term to imply
not merely an interest in somethings kind or origin (genea), but in it as a becoming (genomenon). (S. 104) Die genealogische Ausrichtung der Macht-Ontologie wird besonders
deutlich in dem in einer Person synthetisierten Willen, der in der Zeit seine Zeit hat, d.h.
genealogisch gesehen Vorgnger und Nachfolger hat, und im Raum mit ihm gleichzeitigen benachbarten Willen verflochten ist (S. 161). Durch diese doppelte Relationalitt der
im Willen synthetisierten Triebe in Zeit und Raum, die Richardson als Kontextualitt bezeichnet, befinden sich die personifizierten Willen in einem agon mit- und gegeneinander (S. 162), in dem jeder seine Macht maximieren will (S. 148 f.).

Obwohl es auch bei Nietzsche zu finden ist, vgl. etwa GM II, 11 und 12, (KSA 5, S. 310 f. und
315 f.) und Nachla 1887, KSA 12, 9[112], S. 400 und 10[111], S. 520.

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413

Maximierung der Macht ist denn auch der Rat, der aus der Macht-Ontologie in ethischer Hinsicht folgt. Hier scheint nun allerdings Richardsons Nietzsche-Interpretation
am strksten mit Nietzsches eigener Intention zu divergieren. Denn Nietzsche nimmt ja
nicht nur, worauf schon hingewiesen wurde, das Verhltnis von Herren und Sklaven als
ein primr moralisches, als Verhltnis von Herren- und Sklavenmoral, sondern fr ihn ist
auch die Ontologie der wahren Welt letztlich Ausdruck eines moralisch bedingten Willens zur Wahrheit.7 In seiner konservativen Lesart beschreibt Richardson Nietzsches
Verhltnis von Metaphysik (Ontologie) und Ethik aber so: Nietzsches power ontology
projects a certain human ideal the overman as well as a sense in which this ideal is our
good. This is one more way his metaphysics is traditional: by grounding an ethics. (S. 14)
Diese Ethik, die vielleicht aber auch eher eine Rangordnung (ranking) als eigentlich eine
Ethik sein knnte (S. 147), wird dann auf zwei Fragestellungen hin genauer expliziert: das
Freund-Feind-Verhltnis (S. 185191) und das Verhltnis der Geschlechter (S. 191201).
In beiden Fllen gelingt es Richardson, wie ich glaube, berzeugender als bei den politischen Werten (S. 163182) zu zeigen, wie im Kontext der der Macht-Ontologie zugrundeliegenden Triebaktivitten verbal zunchst schockierende uerungen Nietzsches so
gelesen werden knnen, dass ihr ethischer Sinn durchaus konsensfhig werden knnte.
Dennoch fllt Richardsons Urteil ber die politischen und ethischen Werte Nietzsches
insgesamt ablehnend aus: we migth be a bit less disturbed by his insistent rankings of persons when we bear in mind that they do not imply the sort of blaming of those they rank
low that moral judgements migth. Still, I think this doesnt affect our main qualms against
Nietzsches hierarchism. If anything, it might disturb us all the more that his inegalitarian
politics and ethics so disvalue those who arent free to be otherwise. (S. 216) Jedoch werden im abschlieenden 4. Kapitel gerade Hierarchie und Rangordnung zu wichtigen Bestimmungen, um die Macht-Ontologie mit dem Perspektivismus vereinbaren zu knnen.
Im letzten Kapitel geht es nun nicht mehr um die Werte bei Nietzsche schlechthin,
sondern um den speziellen Wert Wahrheit. Die crux hierbei zeigt sich zunchst in der
Frage, ob Nietzsche fr seine eigenen Anschauungen den Anspruch erhoben habe, dass
sie wahr seien (S. 220). Da Richardson meint, dass Nietzsche dies getan habe, gilt es also
zu klren, mit welchem Recht er das tun konnte angesichts des von ihm vertretenen Perspektivismus. Dazu wird fr die im 1. Kapitel entwickelte Macht-Ontologie vorausgesetzt, dass sie nicht blo eine Perspektive unter anderen, sondern gegenber anderen eine
wahrere Perspektive sei und damit wahr sei (S. 222) im Sinne des neuen Wahrheitsbegriffs bei Nietzsche.8 Um dies zu zeigen, reicht die Ontologie und Perspektivismus
isolierende Zwei-Ebenen-Strategie des 1. Kapitels nicht mehr aus. Vielmehr msse nun
herausgearbeitet werden, wie der Perspektivismus, den die Macht-Ontologie impliziert,
die Wahrheit dieser Ontologie selbst besttigen knne (ebd.). Der Weg zu dieser Besttigung fhrt ber Nietzsches Genealogie des Willens zur Wahrheit.
7

Vgl. dazu Nietzsches Ausfhrungen ber den Gegensatz von wahrer und scheinbarer, aber einzig wirklicher Welt in der Nachla-Notiz vom Frhjahr 1888, die berschrieben ist: Ursprung
der wa h ren Welt. Dort heit es zum Verhltnis von Moral und Wahrheitswillen: Die Absicht war, sich auf eine ntzliche Weise zu tuschen: die Mittel dazu, die Erfindung von Formeln
und Zeichen, mit deren Hilfe man die verwirrende Vielfalt auf ein zweckmiges und handliches
Schema reduzirte. Aber wehe! jetzt brachte man eine Moral-K ateg orie ins Spiel: kein Wesen will sich tuschen, kein Wesen darf tuschen, folglich giebt es nur einen Willen zur Wahrheit. Was ist Wahrheit? (KSA 13, 14[153], S. 336 f.)
Wahrheit ist fr Nietzsche, so Richardson, empirisch, nicht apriorisch, hypothetisch, nicht gewiss,
und unvollstndig (partial ), nicht absolut oder vollendet (complete) (S. 284 286).

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Rezensionen

Wahrheit, so heit es zunchst mit Nietzsche, sei das Ziel eines besonderen Willens
oder Triebs, des Willens zur Wahrheit (S. 236). Dieser Wille erweise sich aber selbst, so
Richardson, als ein historischer Prozess mit an evolving conception of truth as its goal
(S. 237). Diese Entfaltung des Wahrheitsbegriffs findet in drei Hauptphasen statt
(ebd.), von denen Nietzsche in seiner Polemik gegen den Wahrheitsbegriff und bei seiner
Diskreditierung des Willens zur Wahrheit nur die zweite Phase im Blick hatte (S. 238 und
243). Denn es ist diese Phase, in der der Wille zur Wahrheit moralisch wird (S. 244). Wie
schon bei der Unterscheidung von Herr und Sklave und bei der Bestimmung des Verhltnisses von Metaphysik und Ethik zeigt sich hier nun zum dritten Mal, dass fr Richardson
der Moral bei Nietzsche die Ontologie, einschlielich ihrer gnoseologischen Implikationen, grundlegend vorgelagert ist. Aus dieser Sicht ist es dann durchaus konsequent, der
moralischen Phase des Willens zur Wahrheit eine vormoralische Phase vorhergehen zu
lassen. In dieser ersten Phase ist die Aktivitt, aus der der Wille zur Wahrheit hervorgeht,
zunchst ein Instrument der Triebe, die the task of viewing the world to a single
functionary, der Aktivitt des Denkens, delegieren (S. 239) allerdings schon hier ein
Instrument, dem die Tendenz of taking control over things innewohnt (ebd.). Dieses
early thinking dient den Trieben mit empirischen Wahrheiten, wie etwa dass bestimmte Pflanzen fr bestimmte Organismen bekmmlich, andere dagegen schdlich
seien (S. 242). In der zweiten Phase beginnt die dem Wahrheitstrieb eigene Intentionalitt
sich auf sich selbst zu richten, thinking now trying to view itself as an end in itself, und
der Wille zur Wahrheit wird zum asketischen Gegner der Triebe (S. 243). Dieser Prozess kulminiert nach Nietzsche schlielich in dem Infragestellen des Werts der Wahrheit
durch den Willen zur Wahrheit selbst (S. 250) und damit im Nihilismus. So weit geht bekanntlich Nietzsches Genealogie des Willens zur Wahrheit. Richardson muss, in Verfolgung seines Projekts, eine Metaphysik mit Wahrheitsanspruch bei Nietzsche nachzuweisen, weitergehen. Und so heit es, zur Vollendung dieses Projekts berleitend: Saying
what follows, in this Nietzschean genealogy of the will to truth, is the strategic crux of this
book. (S. 251)
Was folgt ist eine Umorientierung (reorients), die der Wille zur Wahrheit selbst vollzieht (S. 252). Er berwindet das Ressentiment, das ihm in der zweiten Phase eigen war,
und kommt into his own, to its active maturity (ebd.).9 Den Willen zur Wahrheit in seiner dritten Phase charakterisiert Richardson so:
It retains its aggressive intent, as a will to power; it still wants to dominate the other
drives but now sees this domination aright: not as lying in suppression or obliteration
but in a certain way of using the drives, by collaborating with them. Nietzsche still
wants the will to truth strong, indeed dominant, but not omnipotent or exclusive.
(Ebd.)
Dass dies schlielich Nietzsches principal view (S. 253) in dieser Sache geworden
war, will Richardson dann in drei Argumentationszgen zeigen: an Nietzsches zunehmender Wertschtzung der Wahrheit (S. 253257), an Nietzsches Auffassung von Wahrheit als
Ausdruck des Gesundwerdens10 und seiner Vision der neuen Philosophen, die deshalb
9

10

Richardson verweist hierzu auf Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 18[17], S. 537, wo ein Kapitel des Plans
zu: d er Wille zu r Macht berschrieben ist mit: Der Wille zur Wahrheit (erst gerechtfertigt
im Ja-Werth des Lebens).
In Analogie zu Nietzsches Ausdruck der groen Gesundheit prgt Richardson den Ausdruck
groe Wahrheit: So, in parallel to that great health, Nietzsche wants a great truth that incorporates lies as well, or that shows them not utterly false after all. (S. 278) Er verweist dazu

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415

mit Redlichkeit und Mut an der Wahrheit auch leiden knnen (S. 257262) und an Nietzsches neuem Wahrheitsbegriff, durch den Macht-Ontologie und Perspektivismus vereinbar werden. Ich beschrnke mich im Folgenden auf diesen letzten Argumentationsstrang.
Damit macht-ontologisch gesehen einige Perspektiven gegenber anderen als wahrer ausgezeichnet werden knnen, und zwar nicht nur quantitativ als mehr erkennend
als die anderen, sondern auch qualitativ als besser erkennend (S. 264 280), bedarf es, so
Richardson, einer gegenber der klassischen Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit modifizierten Auffassung von Korrespondenz. Nach dieser vernderten Auffassung von
Korrespondenz, die Nietzsche vertreten habe, wird Wahrheit nicht an intentionalen Gegenstnden des Bewusstseins oder der Sprache gemessen, sondern an der intentionalen
Struktur des in den Blick Nehmens (viewing) und Urteilens (valuing) (S. 280).11 Je
mehr die intentionale Struktur eines erkennenden Willens mit der Willensstruktur der
Realitt korrespondiert, je aktiver ein Wille die Gegenstze und Widersprche der Realitt
und des Lebens erfassen und aushalten kann, je gesnder und strker also ein Wille ist,
desto wahrer wird seine Perspektive sein. Hieraus ergibt sich dann eine nach den Kriterien von Aktivitt oder Gesundheit in der Macht-Ontologie verankerte Rangordnung der
Perspektiven (S. 286).
So kann Richardson im Hinblick auf den neuen Wahrheitsbegriff sein Projekt einer
Metaphysik bei Nietzsche vollenden: Aus dieser Korrespondenzauffassung der Wahrheit
folgt nmlich, dass der Erkennende, um auch nur einen Teil erkennen zu knnen, schon
mit dem jeweils relevanten Ganzen korrespondieren msse (S. 281). Dieses Ganze
ist letztlich das Leben selbst, weshalb Nietzsche, dieser Logik folgend, schlielich aspires to transcend his personal, our cultural, and even the human viewpoint, to that of all
life (S. 289). Dieser Standpunkt des Lebens ist aber nichts anderes als Nietzsches core
ontological thought: reality consists of contextual perspectives willing power (S. 286).
Richardsons 2004 erschienene zweite Nietzsche-Monographie Nietzsches New Darwinism schliet in zweierlei Hinsicht unmittelbar an die Problemstellungen der ersten an:12
Zum einen soll die in Nietzsches System entworfene Macht-Ontologie, die nun als Nietzsches dominante (S. 6), obwohl fr uns nicht gerade plausible Auffassung (S. 12) und als

11

12

wie mir scheint nicht schlssig auf JGB 34, insbesondere dort auf die uerung Nietzsches:
Ja, was zwingt uns berhaupt zur Annahme, dass es einen wesenhaften Gegensatz von wahr
und falsch giebt? Gengt es nicht, Stufen der Scheinbarkeit anzunehmen und gleichsam hellere und dunklere Schatten und Gesammttne des Scheins, verschiedene valeurs, um die Sprache der Maler zu reden? (KSA 5, S. 53 f.).
Jedoch stehe Nietzsche auch hierin schon in einer Tradition: So, generally, Nietzsche follows
the classical correspondence model of a microcosm mirroring a (the) macrocosm, the part isomorphic to the whole. (S. 280)
Die Originalitt seines Herangehens an die Frage nach Nietzsches Verhltnis zum Darwinismus
gegenber den in der gegenwrtigen Nietzsche-Forschung vertretenen Positionen (genannt werden Stack, George J.: Lange and Nietzsche. New York, Berlin 1983; Stegmaier, Werner: Darwin,
Darwinismus, Nietzsche. Zum Problem der Evolution. In: Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987).
S. 264 287; Poellner, Peter: Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Oxford 1995; Dennett, Daniel C.: Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York 1995; Ansell-Pearson,
Keith: Viroid Life: Reflections on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition. London, New
York 1997; Morrison, Robert G.: Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic
Affinities. Oxford 1997; Moore, Gregory: Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor. Cambridge 2002)
sieht Richardson vor allem darin, Nietzsches Biologismus to philosophize, d.h. to develop
and weigh its argumentative coherence (S. 11).

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sein basales Erklrungsprinzip bezeichnet wird (S. 46), durch einen Nebenweg (minority
way) in Gestalt einer Macht-Biologie (S. 12) ergnzt und gefestigt (S. 65) werden.13
Dieser Aufgabe ist das mit dem Titel Biologie berschriebene 1. Kapitel gewidmet.
Zum anderen sollen Nietzsches Werte, die die noch weitgehend akzeptierten, durch das
Christentum geprgten moralischen Wertauffassungen in provozierender Weise herausfordern, daraufhin geprft werden, ob sie nicht durch eine neue Lesart an Akzeptanz gewinnen knnen. Dies wird in den brigen drei Kapiteln Metaethik, Ethik-Politik und
sthetik versucht. Wenn sich somit die beiden Bcher in den behandelten Themen
nahe kommen und zum Teil berschneiden, so ist doch die Herangehensweise an diese
Themen in ihnen sehr unterschiedlich. War die Untersuchung in Nietzsches System metaphysisch-systematisch ausgerichtet, so folgt sie in Nietzsches New Darwinism dem Gedanken der Evolution durch Selektion. Nietzsche, so will Richardson zeigen, ist in seinen
Auffassungen ein Evolutionist und hierin grundlegend beeinflusst von Darwin. Mit Rekurs auf Darwins Evolutionstheorie, so die Hauptthese des Buchs, lasse sich Nietzsche
nicht nur besser verstehen (S. 3), sondern bestimmte seiner Anschauungen auch plausibler deuten (S. 4).
Hinsichtlich der zentralen Fragestellung des Buchs, Nietzsches Verhltnis zum Darwinismus, sind, so legt Richardsons Untersuchung nahe, mindestens drei Aspekte zu unterscheiden. Zunchst ist Nietzsches Stellung zu Darwins Auffassungen selbst zu klren.
Da Nietzsche seine Kenntnis des Darwinismus, den er dann attackiert, weniger von Darwin selbst als vielmehr aus den Schriften deutscher und englischer Sozialdarwinisten
bezog (S. 16), ist seine Beurteilung von Darwins eigenen Anschauungen nicht frei von
Missverstndnissen (S. 16 ff.). So verbergen sich hinter Nietzsches Polemik gegen den
Darwinismus grundlegende bereinstimmungen mit Darwin selbst, die sich vor allem in
der Sicht auf die Evolution durch Selektion als einem noncognitive process (S. 15) und
einer besonderen Art von Teleologie dieses Prozesses (S. 8) grnden. In diesem Verstndnis von Evolution sind fr Nietzsche, wie im 1. Kapitel ausfhrlich diskutiert wird, nicht
nur Triebe Selektionsprodukte, sondern ist auch der Wille zur Macht der natrlichen Selektion unterworfen. Darwin und dem Darwinismus hlt Nietzsche deshalb entgegen,
dass die Evolution durch Selektion fashions wills to power, not to survival (S. 46). Und
dies sei, so Richardson, im Vergleich zu Nietzsches anderen, also auch den macht-ontologischen Anschauungen, his best view (S. 52).
Zweitens geht es um Nietzsches Antizipationen im Hinblick auf den modernen Neodarwinismus, der, wie die terminologische Unterscheidung anzeigt, nicht mit dem im
Buchtitel genannten neuen Darwinismus Nietzsches identifiziert werden darf.14 Drei

13

14

In gewisser Weise scheint der Macht-Biologie sogar eine fundierende Rolle hinsichtlich der
Macht-Ontologie zuzukommen. Whrend es in Nietzsches System (S. 18), allerdings nur in einer
Nebenbemerkung, heit, Nietzsche habe die Macht-Biologie (hier noch gleichgesetzt mit
Macht-Psychologie) zur Macht-Ontologie ausgebaut (extended), geht Richardson in Nietzsches New Darwinism an mehreren Stellen davon aus, dass sich von der Macht-Biologie her nicht
nur Nietzsches Gedanken besser verstehen lassen als mit der unplausiblen Macht-Ontologie,
sondern dass auch Aspekte der Macht-Ontologie in der Terminologie der Macht-Biologie erklrt (be restated) (S. 119) und dabei Absurditten wie die Annahme eines mentalen Vitalismus im Willen zur Macht vermieden werden knnen. Dazu wird nun aber ausdrcklich zwischen
Macht-Biologie und Macht-Psychologie unterschieden (S. 64 f.).
Letzterer scheint insofern das Attribut neu erhalten zu haben, als er Nietzsches eigene, originre Auffassung des Darwinismus darstellt, also sowohl von den Auffassungen Darwins als auch
von denen der Sozialdarwinisten zu unterscheiden ist.

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417

solcher Antizipationen werden erwhnt (S. 43 f.): (1) Sub-individual competition, d. h. dass die
Konkurrenz in der Evolution schon auf der Ebene der Triebe als der units of selection
stattfindet, (2) Population thinking, wonach die primren biologischen Entitten chains
of individuals oder genauer chains of drives sind, und (3) Exaptation, d. h. die berformung von Funktionen durch andere Funktionen zu einer anderen als deren ursprnglicher Bestimmung, antizipiert in Nietzsches Feststellung, dass die Ursache der Entstehung eines Dings und dessen schlieliche Ntzlichkeit, dessen thatschliche Verwendung
und Einordnung in ein System von Zwecken toto coelo auseinander liegen.15
Und drittens steht Nietzsches Verhltnis zum Sozialdarwinismus zur Debatte. Diese
Fragestellung ist in den Kapiteln 2 bis 4, in denen Nietzsches Werte behandelt werden,
stndig prsent. Das Problem stellt sich hier geradezu umgekehrt zum Verhltnis Nietzsches zu Darwin selbst. Denn hinter einer scheinbaren, Nietzsche meist diskreditierenden bereinstimmung mit sozialdarwinistischen Auffassungen lassen sich nun durchaus
entscheidende Differenzen feststellen, die Nietzsches Ideen eher annehmbar machen
knnen. Diese Annehmbarkeit soll Nietzsches New Darwinism vor allem zeigen. Ich gehe
auch hier auf einige Ergebnisse wiederum nur thesenartig ein. Dabei handelt es sich zunchst um Nietzsches metaethische Extrapolation des Selektionsmechanismus ber die
natrliche Selektion im Darwinismus hinaus. Mit ihr soll dann herausgearbeitet werden,
dass Nietzsches Umwertung sowohl ethischer wie auch politischer Werte nicht nur Negation der Werte in der Herdenmoral ist, sondern jeweils einen aufhebenswerten Kern
aus dieser erhlt. Schlielich geht es bei der Umwertung auch wieder um den Wert der
Wahrheit, diesmal in Beziehung auf Kunst und Schnheit.
In Hinsicht auf die biologische Evolution vertritt Nietzsche nach Richardson eine
quasi-darwinistische Auffassung der natrlichen Selektion, nach der drives are initially
designed as bodily propensities enhancing the fitness of the organism, i. e., its capacity for
(what we now know to be) genetic copying. (S. 148) Die natrliche Selektion schaffe damit die Tatsachen (facts), in denen fr Nietzsche die Werte und deren Rangordnung gegrndet sind (S. 68 f. und 108). In Nietzsches Metaethik werde durch diese Beziehung der
Werte zu Fakten dann insbesondere die Auszeichnung von Nietzsches eigenen Werten
gegenber anderen perspektivischen Wertordnungen begrndet. Richardson meint so
zeigen zu knnen, dass Nietzsche
uses his quasi-Darwinian facts about the sources of our values to raise himself (as he
thinks) into a superior valuative stance, from which he carries out his revaluation
of values. This stance gives credit or support to the new values that result from this
revaluation. So these new values are partly based on his (purportedly factual) genealogy of human values. (S. 68)
In dieser Genealogie der Werte sind drei Selektionsmechanismen zu unterscheiden
(S. 69). ber die natrliche Selektion, die die Fakten fr die Genese der Werte schafft,
lagert sich eine andere, von den Darwinisten nicht bercksichtigte Art von Selektion, die
soziale Selektion (social selection) (S. 81 94). Durch sie werden die Triebe selegiert,
d. h. hier gezhmt und zivilisiert, die dann fr den Herdeninstinkt und die Herdenmoral
kennzeichnend werden: Mitleid, Altruismus und das Streben nach Gleichheit. Whrend
die Wertbildung durch natrliche und soziale Selektion in einem evolutionren Prozess
abluft, findet die dritte Art der Selektion, die Selbst-Selektion als die Wahl neuer eigener
Werte, nicht auf evolutionrem Wege, sondern durch Einsicht (S. 97 101) in die Ge-

15

GM II, 12 (KSA 5, S. 313).

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nealogie der Werte und Einverleibung (S. 101 103) der in dieser Einsicht gewonnenen
besten, d.h. krperlich die Gesundheit und geistig die Wahrheit frdernden (S. 170)
Werte statt. Da diese Selbst-Selektion vom Evolutionsprozess losgelst ist (S. 121), ist
sie Ausdruck der Freiheit, ja sie ist selbst die Freiheit als ur-value (S. 115). Ohne hier
nun weiter in die detaillierte Diskussion dieser Selektionsmechanismen einzudringen,
kann doch festgehalten werden, dass wir es wieder, wie schon bei der Herr-Sklave-bermensch-Triade in Nietzsches System mit einer dreistufigen Entwicklung zu tun haben, in
der das letzte Stadium zugleich das hchste ist, weil es eine Synthese der vorhergegangenen Stadien darstellt. Richardson spricht denn auch ausdrcklich davon, dass wir in
Nietzsches account of values, a certain overall dialectic of stages feststellen knnen
(S. 78), eine Dialektik, die durchaus als Hegelian (S. 124) verstanden werden knne.16
In der Folge dieser dialektischen Lesart wird im 3. Kapitel Nietzsches Umwertung der
Werte nicht als bloe Negation der moralischen Werte des Mitleids und des Altruismus
und der politischen Werte der Gleichheit und der Zivilisierung (Zhmung) angesehen,
sondern als ihre Aufhebung in die neuen Werte der Hrte, der Selbstheit, der Rangordnung und der Zchtung gedeutet. Mitleid wird so zu empathy controlled by hardness,
Altruismus zu a giving rooted in selfishness (S. 176). In politischer Hinsicht fhrt
die Zchtung zu einer neuen, werteschaffenden Elite, antizipiert in den neuen Philosophen (S. 191), die aufgrund der genealogischen Einsicht in die Herkunft der Werte nicht
nur durch Selbst-Selektion ihre Werte frei bestimmen knne (S. 196), sondern auch die
Werte in der Herde verbessern und so schlielich a healthy herd (S. 213) herausbilden
werde. Durch diese neue Elite knnte Nietzsches Gegenwert gegen soziale Gleichheit
und Zivilisierung der Triebe, nmlich to breed a rank order (S. 190) schlielich sogar
allgemein akzeptabel werden, insofern sich dann zeigen wird, dass Nietzsche mit ihm
also aspire to make a new herd that is better off in both its own terms and in his (S. 216).
Die drei Selektionsmechanismen werden dann noch einmal im 4. Kapitel durchgespielt, um das Verhltnis von Kunst und Wahrheit bei Nietzsche zu klren.17 Den Stellenwert dieser Problematik im Rahmen seiner Untersuchung bestimmt Richardson so:
This fourth locus of Darwinism in Nietzsche is probably the most surprising of all.
His aesthetics may well be the last place wed expect to find this a factor in his thinking. We associate Nietzsches aesthetic bent with his attacks on science and dont expect to find his science guiding his aestheticism. When we do find it there in that role,
we see how pervasive his Darwinian element really is. (S. 221)
Den Nachweis, dass Nietzsches wissenschaftliche und vor allem darwinistische Ansichten seine sthetischen bestimmen, fhrt Richardson in zwei Argumentationsstrngen. Zunchst zeigt er, dass Nietzsche die sthetischen Triebe als Selektionsprodukte
sieht, die ihre Wurzeln in der Sexualitt (S. 236 243) und ihren Selektionsvorteil in der
von ihnen durch Rausch erzeugten Erregbarkeit haben (S. 229 236). Diese Argumentation ist das eigentlich darwinistische Element in dieser Frage. Doch die Fragestellung hat
noch eine weitere Dimension. Denn Kunst und Wahrheit scheinen sich ja unvereinbar gegenberzustehen: Kunst schafft Illusionen und ist insofern Lge, Wahrheit zerstrt Illusionen und ist insofern hsslich (S. 222). Hier zielt die Antwort Richardsons nun auf den
16

17

Richardson widmet Nietzsches Kritik an der Idee des Fortschritts einen ausfhrlichen Abschnitt
(S. 161 171), weist aber darauf hin, dass sie leaves untouched kinds of personal and social progress in which he [Nietzsche] still believes (S. 137).
Das Schne (beauty) als Alternative zum Wahren hatte Richardson schon in Nietzsches System
(S. 245 f.) kurz erwogen.

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419

neuen Darwinismus Nietzsches im eigentlichen Sinne, seine die natrliche und soziale
Selektion bersteigende Selbst-Selektion oder Freiheit. In ihr befinden sich Kunst und
Wahrheit in einer close and complementary relation (S. 250). Der self selector wird
nmlich dadurch, dass er sich am Schnen erfreuen (enjoying), es beurteilen (judging) und auch hervorbringen (making) kann (S. 252), den zerstrerischen Wirkungen
eines zgellosen Erkenntnistriebs Einhalt gebieten (S. 253). Doch eben darin sind die sthetischen Werte der Wahrheit schon verpflichtet (S. 6).
Gegen Ende von Nietzsches System macht Richardson das offenherzige Eingestndnis:
Of course, Ive pushed Nietzsches views in a metaphysical direction from the beginning,
and the upshot isnt in doubt. (S. 284) Ebenso konsequent wird in Nietzsches New Darwinism Nietzsches Anschauungen der evolutionistische Gedanke der Selektion unterlegt. Es
ist natrlich legitim, solche Interpretationen zu versuchen und ihre Mglichkeiten auszutesten. Richardsons Lektre fhrt in beiden Bchern dazu, dass, wie er selbst immer wieder betont, vieles bei Nietzsche anders zu verstehen sei, als man es zunchst wohl erwarten wrde und auch verstanden hatte. Was uns Richardson prsentiert, ist tatschlich ein
oft berraschend anderer Nietzsche.

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ANDREA BERTINO
NIETZSCHES PHILOSOPHIE DES MASSES

1. Giovanola, Benedetta: Nietzsche e lAurora della misura. Roma (Carocci editore) 2002. 243 Seiten. ISBN 88-430-2404-3.
2. Totaro, Francesco (Hg.): Nietzsche tra eccesso e misura. La volont di potenza
a confronto. Roma (Carocci editore) 2002. 348 Seiten. ISBN 88-430-2102-8.
3. Totaro, Francesco (Hg.): Nietzsche e la provocazione del superuomo. Per
unetica della misura. Roma (Carocci editore) 2004. 199 Seiten. ISBN
88-430-3229-1.
Die drei hier vorzustellenden Bnde verfolgen eine gemeinsame, von Franceso Totaro an der Universitt von Macerata vorgezeichnete Forschungslinie, Nietzsches Philosophie als Philosophie des Maes zu lesen. Das berrascht insofern, als Nietzsche in der
Regel als Philosoph des bermaes, wenn nicht des Unmaes gilt. Die neue Interpretation bewhrt sich jedoch durchaus.
Sie wird am umfassendsten von Benedetta Giovanola in ihrer Dissertation Nietzsche und die Morgenrthe des Maes entwickelt, die bei Francesco Totaro entstanden ist.
In einem erstem Teil zeigt sie, inwieweit das Ma schon in den groen Nietzsche-Interpretation der 30er Jahre bercksichtigt wurde. Lwith1 hatte es wohl in Nietzsches Philosophie erkannt und anerkannt, in Gestalt eines goldenen Mittelweges in der Bewegung
vom Menschen zum bermenschen, hielt Nietzsche im ganzen aber doch fr einen zum
Extremismus neigenden Denker. Jaspers2 sah in Nietzsche einen Denker, der von der Magie des Extremem geradezu verfhrt war, wies aber, so Giovanola, zugleich den Weg zu
einer mavolleren Deutung seiner Philosophie. Dabei betont er Nietzsches Emphase
des Schaffens, das immer auch ein Werten und das bedeute auch: ein Messen sei. Heidegger3 dagegen verstand Nietzsches Metaphysik des Willens zur Macht so, da in ihr der
Mensch das Ma aller Dinge werde, womit die Idee des Maes gerade verfehlt sei. Denn
das Ma des Menschen sei nun das des Herstellens und damit der technokratischen Herrschaft ber die Erde. Giovanola setzt dieser Logik der Herrschaft im Anschlu an die
Heidegger-Kritik von Mller-Lauter eine Logik des Gleichgewichts von Mchten (equipotenza) entgegen, in dem sich nach Nietzsche alles hlt, soweit es sich hlt, und in dem sich

1
2
3

Lwith, Karl: Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen. Berlin 1935.
Jaspers, Karl: Nietzsche. Einfhrung in das Verstndnis seines Philosophierens. Berlin 1936.
Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. 2 Bde. Pfullingen 1961; ders.: Nietzsches Wort Gott ist tot
(1943). In: ders.: Holzwege. Frankfurt am Main 1952; ders.: berwindung der Metaphysik
(1936 46) / Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra? (1953). In: ders.: Vortrge und Aufstze. Pfullingen
1990.

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die Philosophie des Willens zur Macht (oder besser: der Willen zur Macht) erst authentisch erflle. Dabei kann sich die Autorin auch auf Arbeiten von Biuso,4 Semerari,5 Abbey,6 Brobjer,7 van Tongeren8 und Totaro9 berufen.
In den beiden systematischen Teilen ihres Buches wird zunchst Nietzsches Begrifflichkeit des Maes in Beziehung auf die konkreten und besonderen Ausdrucksweisen der
lebenden Individualitt (Alla ricerca della misura: la microconcettualit nietzscheana), dann sein
Paradigma des Maes in Beziehung auf die Grundbegriffe von Nietzsches Philosophieren
Wille zur Macht, bermensch usw. (Il paradigma della misura: la macroconcettualit nietzscheana) untersucht. Giovanola geht von der Morgenrthe aus, in der Nietzsche die Begrifflichkeit des Maes am klarsten entfalte. Sie macht deutlich, da Ma in seinem deskriptiven
wie normativen Sinn fr Nietzsche nur haltbar ist, wenn es im Leben des Individuums in
der bung einer micropotenza esistenziale zum Ausdruck kommt. Zu ihr gehre, da
die Praxis einer Steigerung der Macht sich stets in Rcksicht auf das Streben nach Macht
auch der anderen vollziehe und darin ihr Ma habe. Nietzsche habe zwar seinen Gedanken
des Willens zur Macht nicht positiv als Gedanke einer equipotenza dargelegt, aber negativ das berma ebenso im Theoretischen wie im Praktischen verurteilt, wie Giovanola in
den Kapiteln Misura e teoria und Misura e prassi zeigt. Sie versteht so auch Nietzsches
Kritik des Historismus und des Christentums. Das Historismus sei durch ein berma
des historischen Erkenntnis charakterisiert, das Christentum leide an einer bermigen,
krankhaften Empfindsamkeit und stelle darum das Mitleid in den Mittelpunkt seiner Weltanschaung. Nietzsche drnge dagegen auf eine neue Weisheit des Maes (una nuova
saggezza della misura) gegen das bermige Verlangen nach Geld, Luxus und Macht, das
den zeitgemen Menschen kennzeichne und in dem gerade seine Mittelmigkeit
liege. Mittelmigkeit aber entsteht, wie die Autorin berzeugend zeigt, nach Nietzsche
immer dann, wenn der Einzelne allgemeine Mae nur bernimmt, sei es von einer ererbten
Religion, sei es vom zeitgenssischen Moralkodex, statt sich sein Ma selbst zu geben.
Man wird der These sicher zustimmen knnen, da Nietzsche das Ma, den goldenen
Mittelweg, ebenso auf theoretischem wie auf praktischem Gebiet geschtzt habe. Schwieriger ist es schon zu behaupten, da Nietzsche den Willen zur Macht eines Maes im
Sinne einer Selbsteinschrnkung fr fhig gehalten habe. Und wenn es sicher richtig ist zu
sagen, der Wert des Maes liege fr Nietzsche im Schaffen eines Maes fr die eigene
Existenz, so wird man darauf doch kaum eine Ethik des Maes grnden knnen. Denn
sie liee sich nicht mitteilen, da jeder sich sein Ma unter seinen Bedingungen und auf
seine Weise geben mu und dies nicht auf dem Weg ber eine mitteilbare Begriffe zu geschehen braucht. Es gbe dann eben auch keine interpersonelle oder allgemeine Ethik.
Auf keinen Fall lt das Paradigma des Maes zu, praktische Gesetze zu formulieren und

4
5
6
7

Biuso, Alberto Giovanni: Lantropologia di Nietzsche. Napoli 1995.

Semerari, Furio: Il gioco dei limiti. Lidea di esistenza in Nietzsche. Bari 1993.
Abbey, Ruth: Nietzsches Middle Period. Oxford, New York 2000.
Brobjer, Thomas: Nietzsches Ethics of Character. A Study of Nietzsches Ethics and Its Place in
the History of Moral Thinking. Uppsala 1995.
Tongeren, Paul van: Reinterpreting Modern Culture. An Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsches
Philosophie. Purdue (Indiana) 2000; ders.: The Non-Greek Element in Christianity. Contest and
Measure in Nietzsches Critique of Christianity. In: Lippit, John / Urpeth, Jim (Hg.): Nietzsche
and the Divine. Manchester 2000. S. 96 114; ders.:, Nietzsches Revaluation of the Cardinal Virtues: the Case of Sophrosyne. In: Phronimon 3 (2001), Heft 1. S. 128 149.
Totaro, Francesco: Misura, potenza, vita in Nietzsche, im zweiten hier besprochenen Band, sowie ders.; Superuomo e senso dellagire, im dritten Band.

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zu deduzieren, um so das Handeln einer Gesellschaft zu regulieren. Dem stimmt auch die
Autorin in ihren Ausfhrungen zu einer etica della misura zu. So kann das Ma zuletzt
und damit beginnt Giovanola denn auch ihre Ausfhrungen zum paradigma della
misura ein sthetisches sein, nach der berhmten Metapher des Gartens in M 174, wo
Nietzsche rhetorisch fragt, ob man dem Anderen mehr ntzt, indem man ihm unmittelbar fortwhrend beispringt und hilft was doch nur sehr oberflchlich geschehen kann,
wo es nicht zu einem tyrannischen bergreifen und Umbilden wird oder indem man
aus sich selber Etwas formt, was der Andere mit Genuss sieht, etwa einen schnen, ruhigen, in sich abgeschlossenen Garten, welcher hohe Mauern gegen die Strme und den
Staub der Landstrassen, aber auch eine gastfreundliche Pforte hat. (M 174) So haben
nach Giovanola Nietzsches sthetik und Ethik, aber auch seine Gnoseologie und Ontologie ihre gemeinsame Wurzel in einem gemeinem Bedrfnis nach einem Gleichgewicht,
das individuelle Menschen in ihrer Autonomie jeweils zueinander finden.
Im Band Nietzsche tra eccesso e misura. La volont di potenza a confronto, der Beitrge der
Tagung La volont di potenza: eccesso e misura in/a partire da Nietzsche der Universit di Macerata im Mai 2000 versammelt, hat Francesco Totaro selbst sein Konzept des Maes mit
dem zentralen Begriff der equipotenza formuliert (Misura, potenza, vita in Nietzsche). Erffnet
wird der Band mit dem Beitrag Ancora sulla natura e i limiti della volont di potenza von Franco
Bianco, nach dem der Wille zur Macht nicht ontologisch, sondern nur ethisch-antropologisch verstanden werden kann. Eugenio Mazzarella versucht in seinem Beitrag Nietzsche e il
giudizio del cristianesimo zu zeigen, da Nietzsches Beurteilung des Christentums als lebensfeindlich grndlich verkehrt sei, weil er die Gier nach Leben auch und gerade dessen vernachlssige, der das ewige Leben suche. Dann antwortet Hans Martin Gerlach in seinem
Beitrag Friedrich Nietzsche. Piattaforma girevole tra moderno e postmoderno auf Habermas These,
Nietzsche sei zur Drehscheibe zwischen Modernitt und Postmodernitt geworden,
Nietzsche habe den Rationalismus der Moderne, der auf Sokrates zurckgehe, fr eine dionysische Zeit geffnet, in dem Natur und Mensch wieder zusammengedacht werden
knnten. Weitere Beitrge sind den Themen der Subjektivitt, der Kunst, der Musik und
der Wahrheit, mehrere dem bermenschen und dem Willen zur Macht gewidmet; Beitrge
zu Nietzsches Leopardi-Lektre und zur Nietzsche-Rezeption Schelers, Jaspers, Bubers,
Leo Strauss, Finks und Derridas schlieen sich an, alle mit Ausnahme von einem (Gnter
Wohlfart) von italienischen Nietzsche-Forschern und -Forscherinnen. Das Thema des
Maes bringt vor allem Pierangelo Sequeri in seinem Beitrag La misura delleccesso. Bataille vs.
Nietzsche wieder in die Diskussion. Er liest auch Bataille, den man als Denker des bermaes schlechthin kennt, als obsessiven Denker des Maes, der am berma das Ma
zu offenbaren versucht. Giuliano Campioni berprft in seinem Beitrag Il superuomo e il tiranno positivista: Nietzsche contra Renan sorgfltig Nietzsches Verhltnis zu Renan und stellt
an seinem Asketismus-Begriff heraus, da es hier, anders als bei Renan, um eine Selbstbildung des Menschen nach dem Ma der Einheit von Leib und Geist gehe. Besonders bedeutsam fr das Thema des Maes bei Nietzsche ist sicherlich Umberto Reginas Beitrag
Leccedenza in Nietzsche. Er geht von JGB 207 und der Unterscheidung des objectiven Menschen als einem der kostbarsten Werkzeuge, die es giebt, das aber in die Hand eines
Mchtigeren gehre, und dem csarischen Zchter und Gewaltmenschen der Cultur,
dem complementren Menschen, in dem das brige Dasein sich rechtfertigt, aus. Das
unterscheidende Kennzeichen des letzteren und ebenso des bermenschen sei das Hinausgehend-Sein (essere eccedente) in Bezug auf sein Sein. Fr dieses essere eccedente mache es
keinen Sinn, einen bestimmten Stand der Evolution des Menschen festzulegen, aber die
Notwendigkeit seiner Selbstberwindung ffne ihn neu fr das Gttliche auch nach dem
Tod Gottes. Nicht fr den Gott des Monotono-Theismus, sondern fr einen ganz an-

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423

deren Gott, der helfen kann, die Hindernisse bei der Selbstberwindung des Menschen zu
berwinden. Streiten wird man ber die Idee Reginas, die ja schon des fteren geuert
wurde, da Nietzsches Anti-Christentum wesentlich christlich sei, eben weil es alles andere
als indifferent sei. Doch diese Nicht-Indifferenz bezeugt ja lediglich die fraglose religise
Spannung von Nietzsches Philosophieren, nicht schon dessen Christlichkeit. Giorgio
Penzo (Nichilismo positivo e la realt autentica del sacro) spinnt den Faden mit dem Thema des
Heiligen weiter. Er versteht den Nihilismus und die Angst, die mit ihm einhergeht, als
fruchtbaren Anla zur Begegnung des Menschen mit dem Heiligen.
Der Titel des jngsten, 2004 erschienenen Bandes Nietzsche e la provocazione del
superuomo. Per unetica della misura ist selbst eine Provokation, sofern die Provokation des
bermenschen Mastab fr eine Ethik des Maes werden soll. Zwei seltener behandelte Themen seien hier herausgehoben. Paul van Tongeren versucht in seinem abschlieenden Beitrag L bermensch e la democrazia. Ricerca sulla misura in Nietzsche den bermenschen, den er als Chiffre der Transzendenz des Menschen denkt, mit der Demokratie
und Nietzsches Befrchtung zu vershnen, sie laufe auf eine Nivellierung aller Unterschiede unter den Menschen, also auf vllige Mittelmigkeit hinaus. Der Gedanke des
bermenschen biete hier eine auch politisch bedeutsame Alternative. Sie verhindere
nicht die Demokratie selbst, sondern knne verhindern, da allein utilitaristische Kriterien zum Ma der Demokratie gemacht wrden. Nietzsche erscheine nur dann antidemokratisch, wenn Demokratie als Versprechen eines komfortablen Lebens fr alle
gelte. Andrea Orsucci und Maria Cristina Fornari widmen sich der Beziehung zwischen
dem Gedanken des bermenschen und dem Evolutionsgedanken. Orsucci greift auf die
frhen Deutungen Raoul Richters und Oswald Spenglers zurck und zeigt an ihnen und
anderen die Deutungsspielrume zwischen biologischer Zchtung und biologisch unreduzierbarer Transzendenz des Menschen bei Nietzsche. Fornari (Superuomo ed evoluzione)
erkennt den Einflu der evolutionistischen Theorie auf Nietzsches Idee des bermenschen an, grenzt beide aber auch voneinander ab: der Mensch und seine mgliche Brcke
zum bermenschen mache einen Bruch oder Ri in der Evolution aus.
Auch nach Francesco Totaro (Superuomo e senso dellagire in Nietzsche) kann der bermensch nicht als Ergebnis einer biologischen Evolution der menschlichen Spezies, sondern mu als Idealtypus gedacht werden, der nicht in irgendeinen Progressismus einbezogen werden kann. In Bezug auf die Notiz vom Herbst 1883 (KSA 10, 16[73]) Maa und
Mitte zu finden im Streben ber die Menschheit hinaus: es mu die hchste und kraftvollste Art des Menschen gefunden werden! will Totaro zeigen, dass in Nietzsche der
Wille zur Zukunft und Wille zum Ma bereinstimmen. Danach bedeutet das Konzept
des bermenschen und sein kennzeichnendes Hinausgehend-Sein keinen Widerspruch
zum Paradigma des Maes, in dem Nietzsche hier gelesen wird. Eher wird es zum Modell
einer Ethik, die den Sinn des Handelns in die aktive Wertsetzung, in die Fhigkeit, eigene
Mae der Dinge durchzusetzen, und nicht in ein passives Wahrnehmen von Werten legt.
In diesem Sinn kann auch Benedetta Giovanola (Nietzsche e il superuomo: Volont di potenza
come volont di misura) wiederum sagen, dass der bermensch der Trger eines Willens zum
Ma, nach dem man sein Denken und sein Handeln kalibrieren kann sei.
In dieser Perspektive ist der bermensch der Ma-Gebende schlechthin whrend
es einfach ist und ein Zeichen von Schwche sein kann, Mae nur hinzunehmen. Aber
natrlich kann das nur ein Ideal oder eine regulative Idee sein. Dem Menschen in seiner
Geworfenheit und seiner Beschrnktheit ist auch nach Nietzsche ein schlechthin
freies und selbststndiges Ma-Geben nicht mglich. Doch sich dem bermenschlichen
absoluten Ma-Geben zu nhern, knnte durchaus eine konkrete Mglichkeit der Moralitt der Menschen sein.

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CARSTEN PALLESEN
DAS EWIGE WIEDERKUEN DES GLEICHEN

Hffe, Otfried (Hg.): Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Berlin (Akademie Verlag) 2004. (Klassiker Auslegen 29). 187 Seiten. ISBN 3-05-003026-7.
In der von Otfried Hffe verantworteten Reihe Klassiker Auslegen ist nach Band 14,
den Volker Gerhardt zu Also sprach Zarathustra zusammengestellt hatte,1 von Hffe selbst
nun der Band 29 zu Nietzsches Schrift Zur Genealogie der Moral herausgegeben worden.
Der kooperative Kommentar enthlt elf Originalbeitrge in deutscher und englischer
Sprache, einige davon in bersetzung. Die Beitrge interpretieren, wie in der Reihe Klassiker Auslegen blich, fortlaufend Abschnitte der Genealogie der Moral.
Hffe gibt eine aufschlureiche Einfhrung in Nietzsches Moralgenealogie und ihre
Bedeutung fr die gegenwrtige Philosophie vor dem Hintergrund der Moralphilosophien von Aristoteles und Kant. Nietzsche selbst hat sich vom Utilitarismus distanziert
und seine Moralkritik in die Nhe Kants gerckt. Die Eigenart seiner Moralphilosophie
besteht jedoch nach Hffe vor allem in seinem argumentativen und rhetorischen Stil, der
den Leser mit Haken und sen auf beunruhigende Weise fesselt, festhlt und mitreisst.
In der Sache sei nicht die Kritik der Mitleidsmoral das Neue, die antiken und neuzeitlichen Moralphilosophien wie der Platons, Hobbes, Spinozas, La Rochefoucaulds und
Kants gemeinsam ist. Gleichwohl werde Nietzsches Kritik als eine besonders harte Krnkung des menschlich-allzumenschlichen Narzimus empfunden. Verletzend seien nicht
zuletzt evolutionsbiologische Redeweisen wie die vom Heranzchten eines Thiers, das
versprechen darf. Im brigen gibt die Einfhrung eine Synopse der Themen und Thesen
der drei Abhandlungen. Hffe findet hier wohl Argumente, Auslegungen und Hypothesen, sieht aber auch, da Nietzsche mit seinem Untertitel Eine Streitschrift wissenschaftliche Ansprche deutlich in Frage stellt. So bleibe ein irritierender Widerstreit zwischen nchterner wissenschaftlicher Analyse und persnlicher Parteinahme. Aber eben
dies ist, wie Nietzsche in seiner Vorrede anzeigt, von ihm bewut so beabsichtigt.
Die Vorrede selbst wird von Annemarie Pieper ausgelegt. Nietzsche erffne die Moralgenealogie neu mit der Frage nach dem Wert der Werte selbst, also mit der Rckwendung der Moral auf sie selbst. Er stellt damit eine neuartige systematische Frage, obwohl
er selbst sagt, er knne und wolle auch kein systematischer Denker sein, und wirft so ein
Problem auf, das den Leser irritiert, ohne ihm die Lsung vorzugeben. Die Frage nach
der Herkunft der Moral fordert extreme Mittel, um berhaupt zur Geltung zu kommen.
Nach Nietzsche haben andere Moralgenealogen sie so unterschtzt, da sie ihre systema-

Gerhardt, Volker (Hg.): Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin 2000. (Klassiker Auslegen. Bd. 14). Vgl. Kupin, Alexander: Neuerscheinungen zu Also sprach Zarathurstra. In: Nietzsche-Studien 33 (2004). S. 407 417, hier S. 409 412.

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425

tische und methodologische Reichweite bersehen haben. Die Moral lt sich in ihrer
Selbstbezglichkeit nicht als apriorisches Prinzip fassen, sondern nur als eine schwer zu
entziffernde Hieroglyphenschrift lesen und auslegen (GM, Vorrede 7); daran konnte unter anderen dann Jacques Derrida mit seiner Grammatologie anknpfen. Zu seiner historischen Methodik uert sich Nietzsche nher erst in der Zweiten Abhandlung (GM
II 12, KSA 5, S. 315), wo er seine Theorie eines in allem Geschehn sich abspielenden
Macht -Wi llens als eine Philosophie des Zeichens und der flssigen Form und des
noch mehr flssigen Sinns umreit. In der Vorrede wird der Sinn von Nietzsches Genealogie als einer Semiotik einem umstrittenen Thema jedoch nur beilufig behandelt.
Die Auslegung der Ersten Abhandlung wird von Jean-Claude Wolf eingeleitet. Sein
Beitrag Exposition von These und Gegenthese: Die bisherige englische und Nietzsches
Genealogie der Moral (I 15) bemht sich um eine historische und systematische Bestimmung von Nietzsches Begriff der Moral in einer Macht-Perspektive. Darin unterscheide sich Nietzsches Genealogie von dem utilitaristischen Moralbegriff angelschsischer Provenienz seiner Zeitgenossen. Nietzsches Machtbegriff wird von Wolf nher als
ein nicht-vitalistischer bestimmt: der Wille zur Macht manifestiert sich als Illusionsresistenz
bzw. im Ertragen von Wahrheit (S. 35). Wolf will damit postmoderne Nietzscheinterpretationen korrigieren, die bei Nietzsche keine Wahrheiten, sondern nur Perspektiven shen. Nietzsches Ausflle gegen die englischen Moralphilosophen hlt er fr unangemessen. Freilich gehe es hier auch um eine Selbstkritik Nietzsches; die Kritik der englischen
Moralpsychologie wegen ihres Mangels an historischem Geist sei auch eine Abrechnung
mit einer eigenen frheren Position. Wolf kritisiert ferner Nietzsches etymologische Versuche als problematisch. Darberhinaus begehe Nietzsche selbst die naturalistischen
Fehlschlsse, die er bei anderen kritisiere. Mit seiner Genealogie entkomme Nietzsche keineswegs der kritischen Frage nach der Begrndung und absoluten Gltigkeit der Moral.
Im zweiten Beitrag zur Ersten Abhandlung, Lightning and Flash, Agent and Deed
(I 6 17), diskutiert Robert Pippin Nietzsches Theorie der Subjektivitt im Licht des
romantischen Expressivismus. Ausgangspunkt der Erluterung ist der Abschnitt I 13.
Nietzsches Anti-Subjektivismus und Anti-Voluntarismus stnden in unmittelbarem
Gegensatz zu seinem Bestehen auf der Verantwortung des Einzelnen. Auf der einen Seite
wrden naturalistisch Selbsterhaltung und Eigeninteresse als Motor der Moral angegeben, auf der anderen werde ein solcher Naturalismus als eine mechanistische Unsinnigkeit abgelehnt (GM II 12, KSA 5, S. 315). Wenn Nietzsche sage, das Thun ist Alles
(GM I 13, KSA 5, S. 279), kritisiere er damit eine Theorie der Subjektivitt, die das Tun
mit einer Intentionalitt verbinde, die als Ursache von Wirkungen gedacht wird. Dieses
nicht-intentionalistische Handlungskonzept wird nach Pippin erst verstndlich und perspektivenreich in dem expressivistischen Kontext, den Charles Taylor bei Herder, Humboldt und besonders Hegel erschlossen hat.
Otfried Hffes eigener Beitrag Ein Thier heranzchten, das versprechen darf
(II 1 3), mit dem die Auslegung der Zweiten Abhandlung eingeleitet wird, setzt sich
mit Nietzsches Konzept des Versprechens auseinander. Beim Versprechen handelt es sich
fr Nietzsche nicht um ein Sollen oder Knnen, sondern um ein Drfen. Es gehe dabei
auch nicht wie im Gegensatz zwischen Kant und den Utilitaristen um moralische Pflichten gegenber anderen. Paradoxe Begriffe wie Thiermensch (GM II 22) seien Fingerzeige dafr, da Nietzsches Begriffe wie Verantwortung, Autonomie und Gewissen in
einen anderen Kontext gehren. Hier werde eine personale Moral und Souvernitt angesprochen, die Nietzsche zugleich mit gesellschaftlichen Bezgen verbinde. Hffe sieht
mit Hinweis auf John Rawls in diesem Versprechens-Konzept das Moment einer kontraktualistischen Gesellschaftstheorie in der Nachfolge Hobbes. Versprechen darf nur, wer

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seines Gedchtnisses mchtig ist und wer fr seine Zukunft garantieren kann. Der Preis
fr dieses Vermgen ist die sogenannte Sittlichkeit der Sitte (GM II 2). Der Thiermensch mu zuerst berechenba r, r e g e l m ssig, nothwendig geworden sein
(GM II 1), um ein Versprechen eingehen zu drfen. Das geschieht nicht wie bei Aristoteles durch bloe Einbung, sondern durch die ungeheure Arbeit des Menschen an
sich selber (GM II 2). Diese Arbeit ist die Bedingung der Mglichkeit einer bersittlichen Souvernitt, mit der Nietzsche nach Hffe einen staatsrechtlichen Kontext anspricht. Die Moral nach Nietzsche habe einen unleugbaren Rechtscharakter und stehe
darin in einem gewissen Verwandtschaftsverhltnis zu Kant. Der Rechtscharakter der
Souvernitt betreffe vor allem die Herrschaft ber sich selbst, aber auch die Herrschaft
ber die Natur und die Umwelt voller Sklaven-Individuen. Souvernitt und Verantwortlichkeit gehrten so zusammen, und in ihnen seien Macht nach innen und auen verbunden. Wenn Nietzsche sagt, diese Souvernitt zeichne sich durch das stolze Vorrecht auf
ein gutes Gewissen aus, so stimmt nach Hffe auch dieser Begriff des Gewissens als Vorstufe eines Wissens mit dem Kants berein.
Volker Gerhardt beginnt seinen Beitrag Schuld, schlechtes Gewissen, und Verwandtes (II 47) mit der Frage, wie weit die heterogenen Themen der Zweiten Abhandlung zu Recht als verwandt betrachtet werden knnen, wie Nietzsches Titel vorgibt.
Obwohl es auch nach Gerhardt im Ausgangspunkt um eine Kantische Fragestellung geht,
sei die Zweite Abhandlung im ganzen ein Abschied von Kant. Nietzsche unternehme eine
Detranszendentalisierung der Vernunft und sei Wegbereiter einer psychologischen und
soziologischen Entlarvung der Moral. Dennoch affirmiere Nietzsche apriorische Begriffe
wie Freiheit und Gleichheit, die seinen eigenen Begriff des souvernen Individuums begrndeten. Auch nach Gerhardt liegt darin ein unmittelbarer Widerspruch. Nietzsches
eigene Ethik der individuellen Verantwortlichkeit (S. 81) und Tugenden wie Redlichkeit,
Tapferkeit und Gerechtigkeit seien nicht vereinbar mit ihrer genealogischen Perspektivierung. Das Ideal des guten Gewissens und der Souvernitt steht nach Gerhardt im Widerspruch zur wirklichen H ist o r ie der Mo r a l (GM, Vorrede 7). Auch er legt in der Moralisierung der auermoralisch entstandenen Sittlichkeit auf das Vertragsverhltnis, das
nach Nietzsche mit quivalenzen in der Ausbung von Grausamkeit beginnt und bis in
den Kern der christlichen Religion hineinreicht. Gerhardt wendet hier ein, da Nietzsches
Genealogie einer ideologiekritischen Reduktion unterliege, sofern sie die Lust an der
Grausamkeit zur Letztbegrndung der Moralisierung des Menschen mache.
Jean-Christophe Merle setzt sich dann mit Nietzsches Straftheorie (II 8 15) auseinander. Nach ihm gibt Nietzsche zwei unterschiedliche Genealogien der Strafe. Die
Strafe werde zum einen im ltesten und naivsten Moral-Kanon der G e r e ch ti g ke i t
(GM II 8) begrndet. Dieser Kanon setzt einen Glauben an die Gerechtigkeit als Tauschgerechtigkeit voraus. Danach hat jedes Ding einen Preis, und alles kann abgezahlt werden
(GM II 8 10). Die zweite Genealogie der Strafe besteht in einer Theorie der ffentlichen
Strafen ohne Bezug auf das Schuldgefhl des Verbrechers (GM II 14 15). Der Verbrecher ist nicht Schuldner wie im naiven Moral-Kanon, sondern Angreifer oder Terrorist.
Im ganzen gibt es nach Nietzsche nicht eine Genealogie der Strafe, sondern eine Synthesis von Sinnen (GM II 13). Merle erscheinen sie im ganzen nicht berzeugend, insbesondere nicht Nietzsches These zur Genealogie des Schuldgefhls, wonach nicht der Verbrecher, sondern der gemeine Brger durch die Wahrnehmung ffentlichen Strafe die
Schuld verinnerliche die These, die besonders Michel Foucault inspiriert hat , und auch
nicht die These, nach der ein hinreichend erstarktes Machtbewutsein einer Gesellschaft
es zulasse, ihre Schdiger straflos zu lassen. Nach Merle stnde ein solches Aufgeben der
Strafe im Widerspruch zu Nietzsches Satz in GM II 11, wonach eine Rechtsordnung

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427

souverain und allgemein gedacht, nicht als Mittel im Kampf von Macht-Complexen, sondern als Mittel gegen allen Kampf berhaupt, [] ein lebensfeindliches Princip [wre],
eine Zerstrerin und Auflserin des Menschen, ein Attentat auf die Zukunft des Menschen, ein Zeichen von Ermdung, ein Schleichweg zum Nichts. (KSA 5, S. 313). Da
die Synthesis von Sinnen der Strafe nach Nietzsche so auseinanderfllt, ist auch dem
Umstand geschuldet, da Merle die beiden Genealogien der Strafe (GM II 8 10 und
14 15) von den Abschitten GM II 11 13 absondert, in denen Nietzsche den schon erwhrten Haupt-Gesichtspunkt der historischen Methodik darlegt. Nietzsches Theorie
vom flssigen Sinn ist nicht nur das Mittelstck der Genealogie der Moral, sondern auch ihr
Motor und ihre Pointe. Dafr hat vor allem Werner Stegmaier in seinem Werkkommentar
berzeugend argumentiert. Er hat der systematischen Tragweite von Nietzsches Methodik einen perspektivenreichen Exkurs gewidmet.2 Der Abschnitt htte in dem vorliegenden Buch einen entsprechenden Beitrag verdient.
Besonders eindrucksvoll sowohl rhetorisch als auch philosophisch findet Richard
Schacht Nietzsches Genealogie des schlechten Gewissens. In seinem Beitrag Moral und
Mensch (II 16 25) diskutiert Schacht, selbst Herausgeber eines Bandes von Interpretationen zur Genealogie der Moral,3 Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral als eine Naturalisierung
der Anthropologie. Nietzsche folge zwar einem biologischen Lamarckismus, der theoretisch nicht standhalte Nietzsches Kulturtheorie setze voraus, da moralische Eigenschaften erblich seien. Seine Intuitionen seien aber oftmals weitaus besser als seine Theorien, so Schacht, und so versteht er Nietzsches Genealogie nicht als wissenschaftliche
Theorie, sondern eher als eine spekulative Interpretation und eine khne Hypothese zur
Sozialisierung des Menschengeschlechts. Die Moralgenealogie sei mit Nietzsches eigenen
Worten als Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft zu betrachten. In ihr werde die Naturalisierung des Menschen nicht zu einer Reduktion, sondern zu einer Bereicherung des
Menschen. Und selbst die Moralpathologien verbinde Nietzsche mit einer verheiungsvollen Tiefe. Je krankhafter der Tiermensch, desto interessanter, bser und unheimlicher
sei er. Schuld, Snde und schlechtes Gewissen wrden als Tonika betrachtet, die das
Lebensgefhl erhhten wie Kokain oder Askese, und das schlechte Gewissen werde zum
Mutterscho eines Sublimierungsprozesses.
Die Erluterung der Dritten Abhandlung zum Thema Was bedeuten asketische
Ideale? wird eingeleitet von Franois Gurys Beitrag Die asketischen Ideale der Knstler und der Philosophen (III 1 10). Die ersten zehn Abschnitte, die er interpretiert, haben eine nur vorbereitende Bedeutung im Hinblick auf die Hauptfrage der Abhandlung.
Nietzsche stellt hier aber auch seinen eigenen Typus als asketischer Philosoph anderen
Typen wie Schopenhauer und dem Knstler-Typus eines Richard Wagner gegenber. Gerade ihm traut Nietzsche jedoch die Strke nicht zu, deren die Praktik der Askese bedarf.
Erst mit der Frage, was nicht nur asketische Ideale fr Priester, sondern der Priester
fr das asketische Ideal jetzt im Singular bedeutet, wird die moralgenealogische
Fragestellung fortgefhrt, und nun in einer kulturtheoretischen Perspektive. In seinem
Beitrag Die Bedeutung des Priesters fr das asketische Ideal. Nietzsches Theorie der
Kultur Europas (III 11 22) hebt Werner Stegmaier hervor, da es Nietzsche in diesen
Abschnitten um einen Begriff des Priesters als Reprsentanten des Ernstes geht. Die
2

Vgl. Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral. Darmstadt 1994. S. 60 93 (4. Kapitel: Vorrede und Mittelstck der Genealogie der Moral: Die Methode der Genealogie, der
Begriff des flssigen Sinns und die Ordnung des Geflechts).
Schacht, Richard (Hg.): Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality. Essays on Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1994.

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Frage des Ernstes betrifft in der Genealogie der Moral nichts weniger als das berleben der
Kultur Europas. Nach Nietzsche liegt in der Moral des asketischen Ideals sowohl die
Schwche als auch die Strke der Kultur Europas. Nicht die theoretische Aufklrung (Platons und Kants), sondern eben diese Moral zeichnet nach Nietzsche Europa aus. Um deren Aufklrung willen bedient sich Nietzsche zunehmend provokativerer und aggressiverer Formulierungen und Invektiven. Danach ist die Moral eine Gefhrdung des Lebens,
sie hat eine Verdummung und Vergemeinerung Europas herbeigefhrt, weil sie fr sich
selber notwendig blind ist, sich selbst, so Stegmaier, tabuiert. Nietzsche habe gezeigt, da
das asketische Ideal ebenso selbstbezglich wie selbstwidersprchlich sei: es rette vom
Nihilismus durch einen aktiven Willen zu m N i ch ts (GM III 28). Durch ihre Selbsttabuisierung habe die Moral Europas sogar den Tod Gottes berlebt, weil sie imstande
gewesen sei, ihre Paradoxien zu invisibilisieren. Eben dies war nach Nietzsche das Werk
des asketischen Priesters. Er dachte bei diesem Typus nicht nur an den Apostel Paulus,
sondern, so Stegmaier, an jede Art von Zwischenperson, die ber Definitionsmacht in
ffentlichen Belangen (S. 158) und nicht zuletzt ber die entsprechenden Medien verfgt.4 Damit werden auch Knstler, Philosophen und Wissenschaftler in die Kategorie
des asketischen Priesters einbezogen und natrlich Politiker von Berufswegen (Nachla 1885, KSA 11, 34[162], S. 475) und nicht zuletzt Wagner, den Nietzsche in seinen Notizen zu einer Neu en u nz eit g em en B e tr a ch tu n g einen alten dick-umrucherten Oberpriester nennt (Nachla 1885, KSA 11, 41[2] 1 u. 7, S. 669 u. 676).
Um die Probleme der Moral ins grelle Licht zu stellen, hat Nietzsche nicht nur einen
metamoralischen Stil der Skandalisierung und (Selbst-)Kompromittierung entwickelt,
sondern, wie Stegmaier betont, zugleich ein hypothetisches und vorsichtiges Verfahren,
das eben darin begrndet ist, da Fragen einer Moral nicht ohne Rckgriff auf diese Moral theoretisierbar sind. Anderfalls wre Nietzsche selbst nichts anderes als ein Priester
gewesen. So sollte von den Interpreten gerade der Genealogie der Moral ernst genommen
werden, was Nietzsche im Rckblick auf sie schreibt: sie sind vielleicht in Hinsicht auf
Ausdruck, Absicht und Kunst der berraschung, das Unheimlichste, was bisher geschrieben worden ist. (EH GM, KSA 6, S. 352). Nietzsches Moraltheorie ist keine Theorie im
gewhnlichen Sinne, sondern ein methodisch komplexer Versuch, der Moral gegenber
erst einmal Distanz zu gewinnen, um Spielrume fr neue Orientierungen zu erffnen.
Die Abhandlungen der Genealogie der Moral machen nach Stegmaier ein wirkungvolles
Hypothesengeflecht, ein wirkungsvolleres als manche Theorie aus (S. 161), das als solches ebenso Freud wie Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lvinas und von Stegmaier besonders herausgestellt Luhmann Anschlumglichkeiten bot.
In dem abschlieenden Beitrag Der Wille zur Wahrheit (III 23 28) setzt Charles
Larmore voraus, da es Nietzsche um eine Wahrheitstheorie geht oder doch gehen
msse. Auch Wissenschaftler, die nicht mehr an Gott glauben, sind nach Nietzsche, anders als seine freien Geister, mit ihrem Streben nach bloer Wahrheit noch Abkmmlinge und Sklaven der christlichen Redlichkeitsmoral, d e n n s i e g l a u b e n n o ch a n d i e
Wahrheit (GM III 24). Nach Larmore stellt der Wille zur Wahrheit jedoch keine
moralische Verpflichtung, sondern eine des Denkens dar, und eben darin liege eine Inkohrenz von Nietzsches Wahrheitstheorie. Nietzsches Perspektivismus und sein Begriff
des Lebens gebe ein falsches Bild des Denkens. Die Wahrheit knne nicht nur als eine

Stegmaier verweist dazu auf Braatz, Kurt: Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine Studie zur Theorie der ffentlichen Meinung. Berlin, New York 1988. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 18). Bes. S. 175 275.

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Konstruktion des Denkens aufgefasst werden, das seinerseits nur als Ausdruck der Strke
oder Schwche des Lebens zu verstehen sei. Nur auf den Hintergrund seines uneingeschrnkten Perspektivismus, der ihn das Vergewaltigen, Zurechtschieben, Abkrzen,
Weglassen, Ausstopfen, Ausdichten, Umflschen als Wesen alles Interpretirens sehen
lasse (GM III 24), knne Nietzsche die Frage stellen: Warum nicht lieber Lge als Wahrheit? Doch Larmore bersieht die andere Seite dieses Interpretierens, die das eigentliche
Auslegen ausmacht. Die Zurechtlegung ist nur der Anfang des Interpretierens, das bei Nietzsche zumeist gerade zur Rechtfertigung des Eigensinns des Ausgelegten hinfhrt. Larmore
bergeht auch Nietzsches letzte positive Bestimmung der asketischen Moral im abschlieenden Abschnitt der Genealogie der Moral. Hier scheint Nietzsche selbst in eine metaphysische Bestimmung zu verfallen, wenn er vom asketischen Ideal als dem besten Mittel
gegen die Sinnlosigkeit des Leidens schreibt: In ihm war das Leiden ausg elegt; die
ungeheure Leere schien ausgefllt; die Thr schloss sich vor allem selbstmrderischen
Nihilismus zu (GM III 28). Nach Nietzsches Vorrede ist seine Genealogie Herkunftsanalyse und nicht wie herkmmliche Moraltheorien eine metaphysische Begrndung der
Moral aus einem apriorischen Ursprung, und Foucault hat den Unterschied zwischen Ursprung und Herkunft noch einmal besonders betont.5 So aber stellt sich eine Frage, die
errtert zu werden verdient htte, ob nmlich Nietzsche zum Schlu nicht selbst darauf
verfllt, das asketische Ideal aus einem metaphysischen Ursprung zu begrnden. Als probatestes Mittel gegen die Sinnlosigkeit des Leidens scheint die Moral auch fr Nietzsche
selbst eine quasimetaphysische Unhintergehbarkeit zu bekommen. Hier htte, zumal
Nietzsche die Genealogie der Moral eher abbricht als abschliet, eine Kritik ansetzen knnen, die sich von einer Theorie der Anerkennung anregen lassen knnte. Denn kme die
Moral nicht aus dem Leiden an der Leere, sondern aus dem Bedrfnis nach Anerkennung,
so wre sie in ihrer Notwendigkeit oder ewigen Wiederkunft nicht metaphysisch zu verstehen, sondern als immer neuer Kampf des Anerkennens, aus dem dann auch der Wille
zur Macht und zur Wahrheit zu verstehen wre.
Nietzsches Streitschrift Zur Genealogie der Moral hat, wie man wei, enorme Wirkungen
auf die Psychoanalyse, die Soziologie, die Semiotik, die Hermeneutik, die Kulturtheorie
und andere Disziplinen gehabt, die sich nur zgernd oder, wie Luhmann, gar nicht zu ihr
bekannt haben. Die Wirkungen werden gleichwohl von der jngeren Nietzscheforschung
immer umfassender dokumentiert. Um so erstaunlicher ist es, da viele der Beitrger des
hier besprochenes Bandes kaum ein ausreichendes Bewutsein von der entscheidenden
Bedeutung der kommunikativen, semiotischen und hermeneutischen Aspekte des Auslegens zu haben scheinen, die Nietzsche doch selbst in seiner Schrift manifestiert. So gibt
der Band zwar mancherlei aufschlureiche Beispiele fr geduldiges W i e d e r k u e n,
wie es Nietzsche seinen Lesern am Ende seiner Vorrede empfiehlt. Wiederkuen mu
jedoch nicht den Horizont verengen, im Gegenteil. Er wird freilich verengt, wenn man
Nietzsche ohne eine Gesamtinterpretation seines Denkens zu verstehen versucht, sondern vorgefate Begriffe und Methoden an seine Texte herantrgt. Die Beitrge zeugen
aber kaum von solchen Gesamtinterpretationen. Das mag dem Charakter eines kooperativen Kommentars geschuldet sein, der dafr keinen Raum lt. Er erzwingt einen unfreiwilligen Perspektivismus, den die jngere Nietzsche-Forschung bei Nietzsche so nicht
findet und der von einigen Beitrgen des Kommentars sogar als Feindbild bekmpft wird.

Foucault, Michel: Nietzsche, die Genealogie, die Historie. In: Ders.: Von der Subversion des
Wissens. Hg. und aus dem Franzsichen und Italienischen bersetzt von Walter Seitter. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Wien 1978. S. 88 109.

430

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ENRICO MLLER
NIETZSCHE UND DIE GRIECHEN

Bishop, Paul (Hg.): Nietzsche and Antiquity. His Reaction and Response to the
Classical Tradition. Rochester, NY (Camden House) 2004. (Studies in German
Literature, Linguistics, and Culture). XII + 504 Seiten. ISBN 1-57113-282-1.
Die Aufmerksamkeit der Forschung gegenber Nietzsches Antikebild ist in den
letzten Jahren stetig gewachsen. Dieser Trend scheint sich fortzusetzen. Zu begren ist
dabei insbesondere die interdisziplinre Ausrichtung der einschlgigen Deutungen.
Das jngste Beispiel interdisziplinr orientierter Interpretationen zum Thema bietet ein
ertragreicher Sammelband, der die Beitrge der Twelfth Annual Conference of the Friedrich
Nietzsche Society beinhaltet. Die im September 2002 unter dem Titel Nietzsche and the
Classical Tradition in Glasgow abgehaltene Veranstaltung bildet zugleich einen reprsentativen Querschnitt durch die gegenwrtige anglo-amerikanische Nietzscheforschung.
Inhaltlich unterschieden werden die insgesamt 32 Beitrge nach fnf Sachgruppen:
1.) The Classical Greeks, 2.) Pre-Socratics and Pythagoreans, Cynics, and Stoics, 3.)
Nietzsche and the Platonic Tradition, 4.) Contestations sowie 5.) German Classicism. Die
hier gegebene Darstellung kann angesichts der Flle und Verschiedenheit der Anstze
weder reprsentativ noch exemplarisch vorgehen. Ausgewhlt sind darum im folgenden
zum einen Beitrge, die Nietzsches Griechenbild im Ganzen aus einer bestimmten Perspektive beleuchten (I.). Von besonderer philosophischer Brisanz bleibt andererseits
Nietzsches Verhltnis zu den Protagonisten des abendlndischen Logos-Denkens Sokrates und Platon (II.).
1. Leitend fr beinahe alle Perspektiven des Griechenbildes Nietzsches ist seine
Grundauffassung, dass die hellenische Kultur das Spektrum menschlicher Mglichkeiten
am umfassendsten und offensivsten ausgemessen hat. Ein Seitenblick auf das klassische Zeitalter Athens mag dies illustrieren: Hier koexistierten eine intensiv gelebte Demokratie mit extremer Aggressivitt nach auen und exzessiver Sklaverei nach innen,
Philosophie, Rhetorik und Wissenschaft mit Opferpraxis und Mysterienkulten, hchste
interindividuelle Distinktionsfhigkeit in Wort und Gebrde mit demonstrativer Grausamkeit. Dies zu sehen und zu benennen, fllt heutzutage leichter. Die altertumswissenschaftliche Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte, die strukturale Analyse und die historische
Anthropologie haben die Griechen in ihrer Fremdheit augenscheinlich werden lassen und
zu ihnen eine geradezu ethnologische Distanz aufgebaut. Nietzsches Freilegung griechischer Inhumanitt ist in diesem Sinn bereits seit lngerem wissenschaftliches Programm.
Provozierend wirkt sie indessen bis heute stets da, wo sich die Entlarvung griechischer
Grausamkeit mit affirmativen Gesten und kulturreformatorischer Programmatik verbindet. Dementsprechende Texte des Frhwerks wie Homers Wettkampf und Der griechische
Staat legen insofern einen ideologiekritischen Interpretationsrahmen nahe. Nicholas Mar-

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431

tins Beitrag zur Revision des Frhwerks im Hinblick auf mgliche rassentheoretische
Implikationen (Breeding Greeks: Nietzsche Gobineau, and Classical Theories of Race,
S. 40 53) und Martin A. Ruehls Untersuchung zur politischen Dimension von Nietzsches Griechenbild (Politeia 1871: Young Nietzsche on the Greek State, S. 79 97) sind
solche ideologiekritischen Relektren. Ausgehend vom Aphorismus 272 der Morgenrthe
betitelt: Die Reinigung der Rasse fragt Martin erneut nach der Berechtigung einer
rassistischen Inanspruchnahme Nietzsches und hebt dabei auf eine mgliche Nhe zum
Father of Racism Joseph-Arthur Gobineau ab. Dabei wird schnell ersichtlich: Von
einem direkten Einfluss Gobineaus auf Nietzsches frhe Arbeiten kann keine Rede sein,
die gelegentliche Aufnahme rassistischen Vokabulars sei aber, wenngleich in einem anders orientierten Gebrauch derselben, wahrscheinlich.1 Auf inhaltlicher Ebene sei Nietzsches Rassen-Verstndnis very different vom hierarchischen Schema des Franzosen.
Den prinzipiellen Unterschied klrt Martin wie folgt: Unlike Gobineau, Nietzsche
understands race to be the product primarily of social and environmental, rather than
biological factors (S. 43). Statt aus indogermanischer Ursprnglichkeit lasse Nietzsche
die Griechen aus einem Chaos von Rassen, mongolische und jdische Stmme eingeschlossen, entspringen (S. 45 f.) ohne Zweifel ein Affront gegen den weitgehend antisemitisch fundierten Philhellenismus. Als Rasse formiert sich das Griechentum durch
Reinigung nur, insofern es eine kulturelle Identitt durch die Ausprgung einer bestimmten Ordnung sozialer und politischer Praktiken gewinnt. Recht unvermittelt, im
Ergebnis aber hnlich, fllt Martins Fazit zum Umgang Nietzsches mit der jdischen Tradition aus. Abseits rassistischer de kultiviere Nietzsche zwar die geschichtsphilosophische Konstruktion des Sklavenaufstands der Moral in Form eines antisemitischen Mythos, lasse jedoch keinen Zweifel daran, dass innerhalb seines Greek-inspired model for
Europes future, Jews have a vital role to play (S. 48).2
Martin Ruehls Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche kreist um Der Griechische Staat.
Drei Thesen strukturieren dieselbe. Mit der kleinen Schrift, einem transitional text with
regard to Nietzsches intellectual re-alignement in the early 1870s (S. 93) sei, so Ruehls
originelle Vermutung, ein erster Bruch in Nietzsches Beziehung zu Wagner angezeigt.
Dessen neohumanistisches Verstndnis der griechischen Polis, das als zentraler Referenzpunkt der eigenen antikapitalistischen sthetik fungiere, werde durch Nietzsches krasse
Zeichnung griechischer Politik massiv in Frage gestellt. Darber hinaus sei ein deutlicher
Einfluss des Griechenbilds von Jacob Burckhardt zu verzeichnen, dem hier die Rolle des
intellektuellen Widerparts zur Tribschener und Bayreuther Atmosphre beigemessen
wird. Andererseits habe Burckhardts Konzept antipolitischer Kulturgeschichte Nietzsches demokratie- und modernittsfeindliche Haltung nochmals radikalisiert. Auf dieser
Basis exponiert Ruehl seine am weitesten reichende These: In Der griechische Staat sei eine
politische Programmatik prfiguriert, die sich im spteren Werk Nietzsches durchhalte
und die es darum nicht erlaube, den Philosophen in einem apolitischen Horizont anzu1

Schon bei Schank, Gerhard: Rasse und Zchtung bei Nietzsche. Berlin, New York 2000.
(Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung, 44) und Ottmann, Henning: Philosophie
und Politik bei Nietzsche. Berlin, New York 1987. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 17) ist dieses Fazit gezogen worden. Martin fhrt beide Autoren bei der Einfhrung
des Problems an, ohne spter wirklich ber sie hinauszugehen.
Ein Bezug zur jdischen Rezeption Nietzsches wre zur Untermauerung dieser These hilfreich.
Zur Mglichkeit und Produktivitt eines jdischen Nietzscheanismus vgl. Stegmaier, Werner /
Krochmalnik, Daniel (Hg.): Jdischer Nietzscheanismus. Berlin, New York 1997. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzscheforschung. Bd. 36).

432

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siedeln. Zu Recht werden die Bejahung des Krieges, der Glaube an die Notwendigkeit der
Sklaverei und die auf Zchtung des Genies abzielende kastenartige Rangordnung als beklemmende Grundpfeiler der Nietzscheschen Politeia von 1871 herausgestellt. Doch was
die textimmanente Interpretation freilegt, ist schon im Kontext des zeitgleichen Nachlasses nicht mehr als ultima ratio haltbar. Das Griechentum, das dort in zahllosen Varianten
aus der kolonisatorischen Anverwandlung fremder Kulturleistungen, der alle Lebensbereiche kennzeichnenden agonalen Praxis und der mit dieser einhergehenden Individualisierung und Etablierung immer neuer Differenzen entfaltet wird, ist im Horizont eines
neoplatonistischen Kastensystems nicht einmal vorstellbar. Nietzsches wohl schwchster
Text berhaupt ist nicht zufllig Cosima Wagner zugeeignet ein verkrampfter berbietungsversuch, der nichts weniger bietet als eine Summe seiner die Griechen betreffenden Studien. So plausibel Ruehls Interpretaion des zugrunde gelegten Textes ist, so wenig
berzeugt doch die abschlieende Generalisierung der politischen Ideen von GS zu Leitlinien des philosophischen Sptwerks berhaupt. Eines Sptwerks, das zudem auf knapp
zwei Seiten als bloer Steinbruch zur Besttigung der frhen Dogmen herangezogen wird.
Ein religionswissenschaftliches Thema steht demgegenber im Zentrum der Ausfhrungen Albert Henrichs (Full of Gods: Nietzsche on Greek Polytheism and Culture,
S. 115 137): der Polytheismus der Griechen. Bereits zu Beginn wird Nietzsches Perspektiven auf die griechische Religiositt und Kultpraxis eine Nhe zu mageblichen zeitgenssischen Forschungen, namentlich denen Walter Burkerts, attestiert (S. 120). Nietzsches offenkundige Prferenz fr polytheistische Theologien wird hierbei in zweifacher
Weise befragt. Im Hinblick auf ihre Funktion innerhalb der Philosophie Nietzsches heit
es: Nietzsche was intellectually attracted to the polytheism of the Greeks because it provided him with a viable historical and emotional alternative to Christianity (ebd.). Die an
die Gegenwart adressierte Aufwertung des griechischen Menschenbilds gegenber
christlichen Anthropologien bildet dabei nur eine Seite. berdies lege die polytheistische
Mythologie perspektivenreichere Mglichkeiten der Weltauslegung nahe, whrend monotheistische Gottesbilder in strker normativen Moralvorstellungen und substantialistischen bzw. dualistischen Groerzhlungen mnde. Zur Aktualitt dieser Sichtweisen
konstatiert Henrichs: Nietzsche evidently started a trend. (S. 121) Der konkreten Darstellung griechischer Vielgtterei im Werk Nietzsches gilt der zweite und umfangreichere
Teil der jetzt philologisch-rekonstruktiv angelegten Arbeit Henrichs. Hier wird deutlich
gemacht, wie verschieden, teilweise entgegengesetzt Nietzsche das Verhltnis von chthonischen und olympischen Gttern thematisiert. In den Vorlesungen zur Encyclopaedie der
klassischen Philologie ist es die vorgngige Gtterwelt der Schnheit, aus der die chthonischen Mchte als notwendige Gegengewalten entfaltet werden. In der zeitgleichen Geburt
der Tragdie wird die titanische Schreckensherrschaft beinahe dialektisch vom Olymp des
schnen Scheins abgelst, um schlielich in der dionysisch-apollinischen Aufhebung zu
mnden. Die fr GT kennzeichnende Reduktion des homerischen Pantheons auf den
Gegensatz von Apollo und Dionysos und die Dominanz disparater dionysischer Szenarien innerhalb dieser Duplicitt fhren Henrichs zum Resultat: Polymorphous himself, Dionysos has become the signal deity of Nietzsches polytheism. (S. 129)
2. Nietzsches Kritik an der spezifischen Ausprgung der europischen Logos-Philosophie hat nicht zuletzt die Form einer lebenslangen intensiven Auseinandersetzung
mit deren Begrndern Sokrates und Platon. Nietzsches oft polemische Befunde zu den
Athenern sind dabei keine philosophiegeschichtlichen Kommentare. Vielmehr sind sie
Wertungen eines Philosophen, der mit ihnen sein eigenes Denken profiliert und insofern
Stationen einer permanenten philosophischen Selbstvergewisserung. Oftmals scheinen

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433

sich gerade die heftigsten Attacken Nietzsches aus einer Notwendigkeit der Abgrenzung
zu seinen Athener Vorgngern zu erklren. In diesem Sinn problematisiert David N.
McNeill die Ambiguitt der Sokratesbezge Nietzsches (On the Relationship of Alcibiades Speech to Nietzsches Problem of Socrates, S. 261 275). In betonter Nhe zur
harmonisierenden Lesart Walter Kaufmanns wird dabei zunchst der Leitbildcharakter
der sokratischen Denkungsart hervorgehoben (vgl. dazu S. 274, note 1). Die eigentliche
Absicht McNeills besteht indessen darin, fr den zentralen Text Das Problem des Sokrates der Gtzen-Dmmerung a profound intertextual relationship between Nietzsches
apparently polemical treatment of Socrates and the Urbild for any such apparent polemic
against Socrates, Alcibiades ambigous encomion to Socrates in Platos Symposion (S. 260)
herauszuarbeiten. Die pathologisierende Polemik Nietzsches gibt sich dabei als gezielte
Rezeption der leidenschaftlichen Anklage und Liebeserklrung des Alkibiades zu erkennen. Fr McNeill ist die polemische berbietung Platons dabei bloe Textoberflche,
hinter der Nietzsche seine eigene Bewunderung fr die paradigmatische philosophische
Umwertung des Sokrates inmitten der transitorischen Verhltnisse des untergehenden
Athens verschleiere. Zurecht wird hier festgehalten: Die teils diagnostische, teils therapeutische Stellung zur umgebenden Kultur verbindet Nietzsche und Sokrates.
Einen gnzlich anderen Weg schlgt die Darstellung von Thomas Brobjer ein (Nietzsches Wrestling with Plato and Platonism, S. 241 259). Angesichts kaum noch zu berblickender Interpretationsmglichkeiten des intrikaten philosophischen Verhltnisses
von Nietzsche zu Sokrates und Platon wird hier in rigoroser Weise auf den Abbau von
Komplexitt gesetzt. Dementsprechend werden gegen die Resultate der neueren Nietzscheforschung zwei Eingangsthesen angefhrt, nach denen gilt (1.) Nietzsche did not
have a personal engagement with Plato, sowie wenig spter (2.): he only set up a caricature of Plato as a representative of the metaphysical tradition (S. 241). Zweierlei erstaunt hier. Beide Thesen sind wenig innovativ, vielmehr zhlen sie zum Urgestein der
Nietzscherezeption. Sie wiederholen bekannte Schlagworte Nietzsches bei gleichzeitiger
Ausblendung der zu ihnen gehrenden Kontexte. Zugleich stellt sich die Frage, von welcherart wrestling mit Plato berhaupt noch die Rede sein soll, wenn Nietzsche zwar
a good knowlegde of Platos writings, but little engagement with his philosophy (ebd.)
attestiert wird. Wer im folgenden eine philosophische Reflexion derartig gro angelegter
Urteile erwartet, wird enttuscht. Statt dessen bietet Brobjer einen Querschnitt durch die
lebenslangen Platonbezge Nietzsches, fhrt gelufige Stellen an und unterscheidet dabei
in wenig aussagekrftiger Weise zwischen negativen und positiven, manchmal ambivalenten views oder comments. Auch der angefhrte Beleg, in dem Nietzsche selbst sein
alter ego Zarathustra platonisieren lsst, irritiert nicht beim Nachweis der vermeintlichen
Bedeutungslosigkeit platonischer Philosophie fr dessen Denken. Bereits frher dargelegte Thesen Brobjers, nach denen Nietzsche ein apolitischer Denker sei und berdies
auch fr die griechischen Sophisten kein wirkliches Interesse aufbringe (S. 253 f.),3 runden das merkwrdige Verfahren bloer philosophischer Depotenzierung ab. Die Frage
nach dem hermeneutischen Beitrag sich in bloer Negativitt vollbringender Darstellungen fr die Forschung drngt sich auf.
Ambitionierter und im Urteil entgegengesetzt zu Brobjer nimmt sich Laurence Lamperts (Nietzsche and Plato, S. 205 219) Untersuchung zu Nietzsche und Platon aus. Der

Zur kritischen Diskussion von Brobjers Darlegungen von Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit
den Sophisten vgl. bereits: Mann, Joel E.: Nietzsches Interest and Enthusiasm for the Greek Sophists. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 406 428.

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imposante Eingangssatz der Studie gibt unmissverstndlich die Richtung vor: Nietzsche
read Plato differently from the way we do, and I am persuaded he read him correctly.
(S. 205) Eine Rehabilitierung ist also intendiert. Die provozierende Grundunterscheidung
zwischen philosophischen Arbeitern und eigentlichen Philosophen, nmlich Befehlenden und Gesetzgebern ( JGB 211) gibt dafr in der Tat einen geeigneten Interpretationsrahmen ab. In der Gesetzeskraft des platonischen Denkens, ihrem Anspruch auf
zeitberdauernde Wertsetzungen manifestiere sich nach Nietzsche das Philosophische in
nuce. Die fortdauernde Kritik Nietzsches an den sthetischen, ethischen und politischen
Plausibilitten des Platonismus vollzieht sich so gesehen auf der Basis einer vorgngigen
Anerkennung der Umwertungsleistung Platons im Ganzen. Die prachtvolle Spannung
des Geistes, die der Platonismus in Europa erzeugt hat ( JGB, Vorrede), sei ein Erbe, das
letztlich in der Gestalt Nietzsches einen neuen, nunmehr antiplatonischen Begriff der
Philosophie ermgliche (S. 208 f.). berhaupt ist Jenseits von Gut und Bse der Bezugspunkt
der Deutungen Lamperts. In Interpretation der Aphorismen 7, 28, 30, 190 und 191, die
Platon in ein bestimmtes Verhltnis zu Epikur, zu Aristophanes und zu Sokrates rcken
bzw. seine Stellung in der Evolution der europischen Moralitt thematisieren, entfaltet er
ein esoterisches Platonbild Nietzsches. Nach diesem habe Platon Lehren im Sinne einer
moralischen Ontologie inauguriert, um eine neue Lebensordnung zu schaffen und philosophisch zu legitimieren. Dabei sei es freilich insofern nicht redlich zugegangen, als Platon wusste, dass sein moralisches und gesetzgeberisches Pathos die Lebenswirklichkeit
verfehle. Als pia fraus, als gerechtfertigte Lge, wie Lampert mit Bezug auf GD, Die
Verbesserer der Menschheit 5 folgert, sei gerade dieses Pathos jedoch ein Kennzeichen
fr beinahe jede religise oder philosophische Etablierung einer moralischen Weltordnung. Sptestens hier erreicht Lamperts Deutung einen Punkt, an dem sie Gefahr luft,
die notwendige Esoterik indirekter Mitteilung mit strategisch verschleierten Herrschaftsphantasien zu verwechseln. Bedenkenswert und produktiv bleibt das originelle Fazit, das
den Platonismus bereits in Platon selbst ansiedelt: Nietzsches Plato wrote esoterically
and invented Platonism as an instrument of philosophical rule. (S. 217) Ist damit auf die
Mglichkeit einer Reserve Platons gegenber den propositionalen Gehalten seiner Dialoge hingewiesen, wird man schwerlich widersprechen wollen. Legt Lampert Platons
Verborgenheit und Sphinx-Natur (FW 351) aber auf eine kalkulierte Esoterik fest, in der
Gesetzgebung als realpolitischer Anspruch und nicht mehr als begriffspolitische Praxis
verstanden ist, wren Platon, Nietzsche und Nietzsches Platon gleichermaen verfehlt.
3. Auch der neue Sammelband macht bei aller Verschiedenartigkeit der in ihm vorgetragenen Lesarten zunchst eines sichtbar: Nietzsches Philosophie ist zu einem mageblichen Teil aus seiner im Zeitraum der Basler Professur erarbeiteten Neudeutung des
Griechentums hervorgegangen. So gab ihm das Phnomen der Tragdie Mglichkeiten
an die Hand, die Grenzen einer theoretisch disziplinierten Welterschlieung in einem sthetischen Horizont sichtbar zu machen. Seine Beschftigung mit den fast vergessenen
Anfngen der Philosophie vor Sokrates lie ihn zwangslufig und in folgenreicher Weise
darauf reflektieren, was Philosophie eigentlich sei. Auf diese Weise verbanden sich die
spekulative Neudeutung griechischer Kulturleistungen mit der Ausbildung und Kultivierung eigener philosophischer Prferenzen. Im spteren, genuin philosophischen Werk
Nietzsches treten die Griechen dann zwar dem Umfang nach als Bettigungsfeld zurck,
bilden jedoch stets nunmehr in punktueller Form ein vorrangiges Medium zur Selbstvergewisserung der eigenen philosophischen Praxis.
Ist dies so, dann erfordert das Thema Nietzsche und die Griechen ber die historisch-philologische Hermeneutik hinaus ein Interpretationsniveau, dass der angefhrten

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435

Wechselwirkung Rechnung trgt. Von dort, wo die Philosophie Nietzsches gleichsam ausgeblendet wird, um sich auf dessen Deutung des Griechentums beschrnken zu knnen,
mag zwar kompetentes Spezialistenwissen, schwerlich aber ein innovativer Interpretationsansatz zu erwarten sein. Nicht allein Statements ber die Griechen im Sinne feststehender Positionen gilt es zu rekonstruieren und ihre Plausibilitt zu prfen, sondern auch
die Prsenz der Griechen im Denken Nietzsches und die Bedeutung dieser Prsenz fr
dieses Denken sind augenscheinlich zu machen. Vor dem Hintergrund seines je eigenen
Problembewusstseins wren die Bezge zum Griechentum dann als wechselnde, sich verndernde Standpunkte in einer philosophischen Bewegung zu interpretieren. Auch im
Hinblick auf den stetigen Zuwachs an neueren Arbeiten zu den Griechen bei Nietzsche
bleibt indessen festzuhalten, dass eine solche, philosophisch orientierte Gesamtdarstellung zum Thema bisher noch immer nicht vorliegt.4
An dieser Stelle seien darum in zugespitzter Form jene dominierenden Tendenzen der
gegenwrtigen Forschung zum Antikebild Nietzsches angefhrt, die eine philosophische
Interpretation zwar ergnzen, nicht aber ersetzen knnen:
Die historisch-philologische Analyse zu bzw. Kritik an Einzelaspekten von Nietzsches Deutungen.
Die geistesgeschichtliche Kontextualisierung Nietzsches in der deutschen Antikerezeption und Altertumswissenschaft des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts.
Das ideologiekritisch inspirierte Paradigma, nach dem sich Nietzsches Verstndnis
von Hellas in archaisierender Mythologisierung, antiklassizistischen Gesten und reaktionren politischen Konzeptionen erschpfe.
Das psychologisierende Schema, nach dem Nietzsches zur Personalisierung neigende Form der Auseinandersetzung mit antiken Sujets auf Konzepte der Kompensation, Projektion oder der Therapie ausgelegt wird.
Die auf das kulturreformatorische Programm der Frhschriften abzielende Deutung, nach der Nietzsche in vergleichsweise naiver Manier eine Wiederherstellung der
griechischen Lebenswelt in der Moderne propagiere bzw. dieselbe auch nur fr mglich
halte.
Der dekonstruktivistisch-kulturkritische Ansatz, nach dem Nietzsche kein Griechenbild, sondern eine Vielzahl unvermittelbarer Griechenbilder vorgelegt habe, von denen aus die Moderne via negationis auf ihre Grenzen ausgelegt wird.
Der von Paul Bishop herausgegebene Band fgt sich in die hier skizzierte Bestandsaufnahme vergleichsweise problemlos ein. Die angefhrten Perspektiven werden in ihm
weitgehend aufgenommen und variiert, dabei mitunter auch als vermeintlich neu ausgewiesen ein fr die Forschung gnzlich neuer Aspekt der Auseinandersetzung Nietzsches mit der griechischen Antike konnte vom Rezensenten nicht ausfindig gemacht
werden. Dies mag zum einen mit der selbst auferlegten Begrenzung des Themas zu
tun haben vielleicht zeigt sich das philosophische Potential und die Originalitt
der Griechenreflexe Nietzsches eher dann, wenn man diese nicht ausschlielich als eine
Response to the Classical Tradition zu fassen versucht. Andererseits befremdet die im
angloamerikanischen Sprachraum noch immer weit verbreitete Unkenntnis der kontinentalen Forschung, vor allem mageblicher deutscher und italienischer Arbeiten der letzten
Jahrzehnte, im Hinblick auf das Thema nach wie vor.

Demnchst erscheint: Mller, Enrico: Die Griechen im Denken Nietzsches. Berlin, New York
2005. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung).

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DANIEL MOURKOJANNIS
NIETZSCHES EUROPA-PHILOSOPHIE

1. Elbe, Stefan: Europe. A Nietzschean Perspective. London, New York (Routledge) 2003. (Routledge Advances in European Politics. Bd. 11). 168 Seiten.
ISBN 0-415-36975-4.
2. Merlio, Gilbert / DIorio, Paolo (Hg.): Le rayonnement europen de Nietzsche. Paris (Klincksieck) 2004. (Germanistique. Collection dirige par JeanMarie Valentin). 264 Seiten. ISBN 2-252-03445-9.
Wenn man die Europische Union nicht nur als ein rein konomisches, administrativ-juristisches Integrationsmodell denken will, sondern auch nach der ihr zugrunde
liegenden Idee sucht, dann stt man unweigerlich auf Europismus-Denker zwischen
den Weltkriegen wie Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber oder auch Georg Simmel. Dass deren
Ideen einer europischen Kultursynthese selbst wiederum von einem groen europischen Denker des 19. Jahrhunderts inspiriert worden sind, nmlich von Friedrich Nietzsche, ist weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten. Es ist zweifellos ein groes Verdienst der
Studie von Stefan Elbe, einem Politikwissenschaftler, diese Zusammenhnge aufzuzeigen
und die aktuellen Fragen nach der Bedeutung Europas in eine dezidiert nietzschesche
Perspektive zu stellen. Ihm gelingt ein frischer und distinkter Blick auf die zentralen Probleme im europischen Einigungsprozess, in dem er sie zurckbindet an Nietzsches Analyse des europischen Nihilismus, seiner Kritik am Nationalismus und Rassismus und an
sein Konzept vom guten Europer.
Stefan Elbes Untersuchung setzt beim Ungleichgewicht zwischen der institutionellen
Entwicklung Europas auf der einen Seite an, wie es sich z. B. in den Maastrichter Vertrgen niedergeschlagen hat, und dem offensichtlichen Fehlen eines tieferen Verstndnisses
dessen, was Europa eigentlich darstellen soll, auf der anderen Seite. Es bleibt, so Elbe,
bei allem administrativen Fortschritt merkwrdig unbestimmt, auf welches Ziel hin die
Europisierung aller Lebensbereiche eigentlich ausgerichtet ist. Die Debatte um die fehlende Seele Europas hat diese Orientierungslosigkeit deutlich zum Ausdruck gebracht.
Warum, so fragt Elbe abschlieend in seinem ersten und einleitenden Kapitel, ist es bis
heute so schwierig, eine auf die Zukunft ausgerichtete Vision fr das europische Einigungsprojekt zu formulieren, und in den folgenden Kapiteln versucht er dann eine Antwort mit Nietzsche zu geben.
Die aktuelle Schwierigkeit, wenn nicht gar Unmglichkeit, eine europische Leitkultur zu entwickeln, hat nach Nietzsche ihren Ursprung im europischen Nihilismus, den
er wiederholt apostrophiert hat. Nihilismus, wie Nietzsche ihn versteht, ist der Verdacht
gegen jegliche Weltdeutung, gegen jeden Versuch, dem Weltgeschehen irgendeine tiefere
Bedeutung zukommen zu lassen, und sei es auch nur im Sinne eines technischen oder moralischen Fortschritts; nachdem die Falschheit und Verlogenheit aller christlichen Welt-

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437

deutungsversuche erkannt wurde, wren auch solche Interpretationen nicht mehr glaubwrdig. Der Tod Gottes, so formuliert es Elbe im Anschluss an Nietzsches berhmten
125. Aphorismus vom tollen Menschen in der Frhlichen Wissenschaft, lasse bis heute keine
kultursubstantialistischen Integrationsmodelle auf europischer Ebene mehr zu. Denn
das Wahrheitsideal des christlichen Glaubens, sein Wahrhaftigkeitspathos habe sich
schlielich gegen sich selbst und alle vereinheitlichenden Weltdeutungsversuche gewendet und sie als Sinnsetzungen ohne alle hhere Deckung entlarvt. Und er folgert:
This deeper dimension of European nihilism also has important ramifications for the
contemporary debate on the Europe idea, and for understanding why, even today, it is
proving so difficult to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe. First and foremost, this discussion of the death of god can be read as an enlightening perspective
on what the idea of Europe meant in the past (will to truth), why this past Europe
is no longer credible (will to truth puts itself into question), and why it remains so difficult to actually come up with a new convincing answer for the twenty-first century
(all attempts to reactivate a new true world seem unconvincing following the death
of God). In this discussion of European nihilism Nietzsche effectively exposed how
post-Platonic, European culture had initially emerged and flourished by basing itself
on the overriding pursuit of truth. (S. 36)
Nietzsche habe sich, darauf weist Elbe zu Recht hin, allerdings nicht mit der diagnostischen Feststellung eines ansteigenden Nihilismus in Europa begngt. Vielmehr habe er
mit seiner Vision vom guten Europer die entscheidende Frage zu beantworten versucht, [if] it would be possible to articulate a meaningful idea of Europe without recourse to the traditional metaphysical hypotheses that no longer appear credible following the death of God (S. 39).
Im folgenden Kapitel befasst sich Elbe lange und umstndlich mit den Ideologemen,
die Nietzsches Konzeption des guten Europers entgegenstehen: dem Nationalismus,
dem Rassismus und dem Antisemitismus. Elbe ordnet sie dem zu, was Nietzsche in seinen nachgelassenen Notizen den u nvollst ndig en Nihilism (Nachla 1887, KSA 12,
10[42], S. 476) genannt hat. In ihm hatte Nietzsche eine echte gesellschaftliche Gefhrdung gesehen, nmlich fehlgeleitete Versuche, dem Nihilismus und der damit einhergehenden Bedeutungslosigkeit und Zuflligkeit des eigenen Lebens zu entgehen. Elbe
schliet hier u.a. an Benedict Anderson an,1 nach dem der Nationalismus, hnlich wie der
Rassismus und der Antisemitismus, ein Versuch war, die dem Leben durch den Tod Gottes genommene Bedeutung neuen Sinn zu geben:
Correspondingly, in Andersons account, the waning appeal of religious modes of
existence pointed to the need for a secular transformation of fatality into continuity,
contingency into meaning, and in Andersons view few things were better suited to
this end than an idea of nation (S. 49 f.).
Tatschlich steht das Projekt der europischen Einigung stndig in der Gefahr, in die
Falle des unvollstndigen Nihilismus zu laufen, selbst und gerade da, wo es den Nationalismus mit Hilfe der europischen Idee zu berwinden versucht. Ob es sich um einen blo
funktionalen Ansatz handelt, der noch gefangen ist im Glauben an die strukturierende
Gestaltungsmacht von Rationalisierungsprozessen oder im Gegensatz dazu um einen

Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London 1991. S. 77.

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mehr humanistischen Ansatz, der dem Ideal einer gesamteuropischen kulturellen Identitt verpflichtet ist, nie treten diese Anstze aus dem Schatten des Todes Gottes heraus,
weil sie selbst Teil dieser Bewegung sind, die zum Ende der metaphysischen Gewissheiten
gefhrt hat:
The broad parameters of the contemporary debate on Europe consequently also do
not promise to address adequately the problem of European nihilism. [] Both the
nationalist response, as well as the counter-response by Europeanists to articulate an
overarching idea of Europe, represent strategies of incomplete nihilism resting on the
old way of finding meaning through the will of truth. Both still seek the comfort of
metaphysics and both still play the game of modern politics within the matrix of the
will of truth. The good Europeans whom he hoped might emerge in the future
would be unlikely to pursue either of these strategies (S. 87).
Der Frage, wie denn nun Nietzsches europische Vision unter Absehung einer vereinheitlichenden Idee Europas aussehen kann, geht Elbe in den beiden abschlieenden
Kapiteln seines Buches nach. Zum Schlsselbegriff wird hier der Typus des guten Europers, unter dem Nietzsche, so fhrt Elbe aus, eine spezifisch europische Weise der
Existenz versteht, die gerade auf kultursubstantialistische europische Integrationsmodelle verzichtet. Statt dessen fhlt sie sich dem experimentellen Projekt radikaler Autonomie und kreativer individueller Freiheit verpflichtet: Die Heterogenitt, ja Inkommensurabilitt dessen, was Europa je konkret bedeuten kann, wird von den guten Europern
nicht auf eine letzte, fr alle verbindliche Wahrheit oder Idee hin berwunden, sondern
ausgehalten. Dem Einheitsgedanken wird eine eigene europische Existenz entgegengehalten, deren Kennzeichen ein absoluter Nonkonformismus sei, der sich deutlich abhebe
vom sublimen Sklaventum einer modernen, egalitren Konsumentengesellschaft. Entsprechend fllt denn auch das Fazit Elbes im Blick auf die gegenwrtigen Legitimationsprobleme der europischen Wertegemeinschaft aus:
In this account Europeanization would manifest itself not primarily in a political or
institutional project, but in the emergence of those good europeans who can actually
tolerate free thoughts, and who can share in an experience of freedom that has long
been lost in the political project of Europe. To continually recover this experience of
freedom is the challenge of Nietzsches European thought (S. 121).
Unschwer erkennt man in der hier vorgelegten Deutung von Nietzsches gutem Europer Nietzsches Sorge um die Herausbildung der Ausnahmemenschen, also eines hheren Menschentyps vor dem Hintergrund der unumkehrbaren Demokratisierung und
Skularisierung aller Lebensbereiche. Weil das so ist, htte man sich von einem Politikwissenschaftler wie Elbe eine strkere Fokussierung auf Nietzsches Politik- bzw. Staatsverstndnis gewnscht. Von Nietzsches Beobachtung etwa, dass der Staat immer strker
zum kurzfristig nutzbaren Instrument von Gruppeninteressen degradiert und angesichts
unaufhrlicher wechselnder Majoritten und Regierungen aufgerieben wird, erfhrt man
bei Elbe nichts, obwohl diese Perspektive Nietzsches Europakonzept mageblich bestimmt hat. Denn Nietzsche stilisiert die Staatenlosigkeit der neuen Europer zu Heimatlosigkeit und Ungebundenheit, da sie wiederum die notwendige Voraussetzung fr sein
radikales Verstndnis von Individualitt bilden. Der auf dieser europischen, ja kosmopolitischen Sicht basierende Individualismus entpuppt sich daher als Nietzsches eigentliche Sorge. So sieht er in den politischen Errungenschaften einer parlamentarischen
Demokratie, insbesondere im allgemeinen Wahlrecht, eine grundstzliche Anmaung
(immer auch) moralischer Urteile von Mehrheiten, denen eine solche Macht gar nicht zu-

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439

komme: Denn der Mehrheit geht es in seiner Analyse keineswegs um eine Radikalisierung ihrer gewonnenen Freiheiten zu noch mehr Autonomie. Nietzsche beobachtet
hier im Gegenteil nur ein Streben nach einem unbeschwerten Leben, nach materieller und
moralischer Sicherheit. Er konstatiert das Heranwachsen einer Gesellschaft, in der Konformismus, Opportunismus und Intoleranz gegenber Andersdenkenden und der Hass
auf das Individuelle und Vornehme unter dem Vorwand ethischer Gleichwertigkeit zunehmen und sich dank des demokratischen Systems die Herrschaft der Mittelmigen
etabliert. Staat und Wirtschaft tragen zur Beschleunigung dieses Prozesses bei, haben sie
doch spezifische konomische und ordnungspolitische Interessen an der Nivellierung
des Menschen.
Aber hinter Nietzsches neuem Menschen, dem guten Europer, da ist Elbe Recht zu
geben, steckt nicht einfach ein besserer idealer Mensch, sondern ein synthetischer
Mensch, der sich dadurch auszeichnet, da er die Widersprche seiner Zeit in sich versammelt, statt wie der mittelmige Mensch die Realitt nach Magabe seiner Wnsche zu verkennen und das Gefhrliche und Fragwrdige in ihr dementsprechend zu verdrngen. Nietzsches hherer Mensch ist eher, auch in seiner Fundamentalopposition zur
nationalen Demokratie, ein Produkt der ihr zugrunde liegenden Demokratisierung. Die
Konzeption vom guten Europer ist demnach, so knnte man es nun im Blick auf Elbes
Analyse sagen, der Versuch, dieses Ideal vom hheren Menschen in die Praxis umzusetzen. Der hhere Menschentypus des guten Europers ist ausschlielich einem einfachen
Leben in hchster ethischer und sthetischer Verantwortlichkeit im Schaffen neuer Werte
verpflichtet. Dass dies aber eine durchaus problematische Konzeption ist, davon erfhrt
man bei Elbe wiederum nichts. Wo seine Analyse des guten Europers mit dem Verweis
auf die radikale Autonomie und Verantwortlichkeit endet, beginnt erst das eigentliche
Problem: Da es Nietzsche nicht um die Steigerung der konomie oder um Fragen der sozialen Gerechtigkeit geht, sondern um die (etwas opake) Vorstellung der kulturellen Steigerung der Menschheit, bleiben auch die autonomen, europischen Individuen merkwrdig funktionslos und ihre Verantwortlichkeit inhaltsleer. Der politischen Gemeinschaft
wenden sie ihre Aufmerksamkeit nicht zu. Die Distanz zum gleichberechtigten Anderen
scheint unberwindlich, und ffentlichkeit als Sphre der Freiheit kommt bei Nietzsche
nicht mehr in den Blick.
Entgegen der Ansicht Elbes bin ich der Meinung, dass in den guten Europern, den
hheren Menschen, die zur ethischen Leitung berufen, aber faktisch ohne Aufgaben sind,
ein Bild fr die Weltabkehr der Intellektuellen, wie es Urs Marti genannt hat,2 zu sehen
ist. Nietzsche selbst gehrt in die Reihe jener Denker, welche die politische Welt gering
achten und ihr die Radikalitt einer privaten Revolte entgegensetzen. In dieser Perspektive kann Nietzsche die faktische Ohnmacht der entwurzelten Intellektuellen zum berlegenen Pathos der Distanz umdeuten: Die knftige europische Elite, zu deren Bildung
Nietzsche beitragen will, wei um den Tod Gottes und um die Unaufhaltsamkeit der Demokratisierung. Sie teilt mit ihrer Zeit indessen weder den konomischen Optimismus
noch den positivistischen Wissenschaftsglauben. Der Begriff des guten Europers erhlt
hier seine spezifische Bedeutung: gemeint ist der kritische Intellektuelle, der sich nicht
mit den Werten seiner Gesellschaft identifiziert und sie mit dem distanzierten Blick eines
Ethnologen der eigenen Kultur wahrnimmt. Elbes Untersuchung leistet im Blick darauf
wohl eine wertvolle Grundlagenarbeit, indem sie die gegenwrtige Debatte ber einen

Marti, Urs: Der groe Pbel- und Sklavenaufstand. Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit Revolution und Demokratie. Stuttgart, Weimar 1993. S. 290.

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mglichen gemeinsamen ideellen Nenner Europas in ihrem kulturhistorischen Kontext

und insbesondere in Nietzsches kritischen berlegungen zu den Folgen des europischen
Nihilismus deutet. Doch lassen sich an die von ihm aufgeworfenen Gedanken zur europischen Perspektive Nietzsches noch zahlreiche weitere Aspekte anschlieen, die auf
eine anregende Forschungsdiskussion hoffen lassen.
Einen Ansatz dazu findet man denn auch in den Tagungsakten eines Kolloquiums
ber Nietzsches Spuren in Europa, das im Jahr 2000 in Paris stattgefunden hat und die
2004 unter dem Titel Le rayonnement europen de Nietzsche dokumentiert wurde. Hier geht es
allerdings weniger um Nietzsches Beitrag zu einer gegenwrtigen Diskussion des europischen Gedankens, sondern vielmehr um die europische Rezeption Nietzsches im ausgehenden 19. und im 20. Jahrhundert. An einzelnen paradigmatischen Beispielen wird der
interkulturelle und intellektuelle Austausch, den Nietzsches Schriften angeregt haben,
nachvollzogen: seine Spuren in der franzsischen Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Pierre Brunel) sowie Andr Gides Rezeption des europischen Denkers ( Jean-Louis Backs). Geht
es in diesen Beitrgen wie auch in denen zu Yeats et Nietzsche und zu den konzeptionellen und poetologischen Parallelen zu Rilke oder der polnischen Rezeption weitgehend um literarische Rezeptionsmuster, so verfolgt Domenico M. Fazio die philosophischen Linien, welche sich in Italien bis heute nachzeichnen lassen und die auf eine
rege, ebenso kontroverse wie konstruktive, Auseinandersetzung schlieen lassen. Nietzsche als intellektueller, philosophischer und literarischer Impulsgeber in Europa: Das ist
die eine Seite dieser Aufsatzsammlung, die teilweise bekannte Zusammenhnge neu aufgreift, aber durchaus auch berraschende und bislang unbekannte Verweise erkennen
lsst. Die andere Perspektive auf den europischen Nietzsche beleuchtet wiederum die
kosmopolitische und grenzberschreitende Position, die Nietzsche zu seinen Lebzeiten
vorgefhrt hat. Der wegweisende Essay des dnischen Weltbrgers und Kulturvermittlers Georg Brandes ber den Aristokratischen Radikalismus von 1890, den Nietzsche
selbst als die beste Charakterisierung seiner Schriften berhaupt bezeichnet hat, hat diese
Richtung vorgegeben, wie der franzsische Skandinavist Rgis Boyer noch einmal hervorhebt. Die weitverzweigte, interdisziplinre und interkulturelle Wirkungsmacht Nietzsches wird in diesem Sammelband auf eindrucksvolle Weise vorgefhrt. Allerdings mssen auch diese Tagungsakten mit dem Vorwurf leben, dass die Ansammlung von
Fachperspektiven recht heterogen bleibt. Beeindruckend ist und bleibt freilich der weite
internationale, europische Horizont, in dem sich Nietzsche aufgrund seiner Leseerfahrungen bereits zu Lebzeiten bewegte und der sich in seiner Rezeption in Europa bis heute
erkennen lsst. Will man den Tagungsband auf die Untersuchung Elbes beziehen, so
knnte man urteilen, dass Nietzsche selbst als Leser eine europische Existenz par excellence darstellte.

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KONRAD OTT
ON TAMING NIETZSCHE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Del Caro, Adrian: Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth. Berlin, New
York (Walter de Gruyter) 2004. (Monographien und Texte zur NietzscheForschung 48). X + 460 Seiten. ISBN 3-11-018038-3.
1. In recent years, there have been many attempts to read great philosophers
as forerunners of contemporary environmental ethics. Paradigm cases are Arne Naess
deep ecological reading of Spinoza, John Cobbs ecological reading of Whitehead, and
Bruce Foltzs deep ecological reading of late Heidegger.1 Since Nietzsche, despite his
bad reputation which was due to the Nazi-readings of Der Wille zur Macht, had become
popular in the Western hemisphere, it was just a matter of time until Nietzsches writings
were read with an environmental lens.
Before addressing the literature, I wish to start with a confession: Nietzsches philosophy does not play an important role in my own lectures and tutorials on environmental
ethics. In contrast to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Henry David
Thoreau, and Albert Schweitzer,2 I do not put Nietzsche down on my list of forerunners
of environmental ethics. In the history of bioethical ideas, Nietzsche belongs to the forerunners of metaethical naturalism. His impact on naturalistic doctrines cant be denied
and it remains doubtful at least whether all this impact had been based on erroneous reading only. Since I draw a sharp distinction between metaethical naturalism and environmental ethics, and since my own approach in environmental ethics is anti-naturalistic and
discourse-oriented, I can not make much use of Nietzsche. Analyzing the reasoning space
of environmental ethics,3 I mention Nietzsche in a certain pattern of argumentation
in which the conservation of more natural environments is justified with regard to the
1

Naess, Arne: Spinoza and Ecology. In: Hessing, Siegfried (ed.): Speculum Spinozanum
1677 1977. London 1977, pp. 418 425; Cobb, John: Whiteheads Theory of Value. Lecture delivered at Beijing, June 2002. www.religiononline.org, March 10 2005; Foltz, Bruce: Inhabiting
the Earth. New Jersey 1995.
The relationship between Nietzsche and Schweitzer cannot be addressed here, but it is worth
mentioning that in Albert Schweitzers Kultur und Ethik (Mnchen 1926) the ethics of reverence
for life presupposes a sharp critique of Nietzsches concept of affirming life. Although
Schweitzer held a high opinion of Nietzsches challenge of morality (Sein Platz [ist] in der ersten
Reihe der Ethiker der Menschheit, ibid., p. 171), he concluded that Nietzsches affirmation of
life remained a Theorie des Sichauslebens (ibid., p. 174). In his later writings, Schweitzer rejected Nietzsches philosophy harshly. Schweitzers biocentric ethics can be read as a response to
Nietzsches challenge. Cf. now Meurer, Gabriele: Die Ethik Albert Schweitzers vor dem Hintergrund der Nietzscheschen Moralkritik. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York 2004.
The notion of reasoning space will be explained below.

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health and the comprehensive well-being of living human bodies (Leib). With reference
to Del Caros book, I will come back to this point later (section V, VI). But, perhaps,
I might be biased against Nietzsche4 and, thus, do underestimate the importance of
Nietzsches philosophy for environmental ethics. This possibility deserves a closer look at
the topic.
Thinking about how to conceive this review, I once imagined Nietzsche writing
scornful and disdained comments against contemporary environmentalists for their naive
and misleading ideas of taking moral attitudes towards a non-moral nature and for all
their rhetoric of nature knows best, ecosystem integrity, harmony between humans
and nature, objective and inherent values in nature, environmental justice, and the
like. Perhaps,5 Nietzsche would have argued that the very idea to attribute inherent moral
value onto non-humans which has shaped many debates in environmental ethics (demarcation problem) rests on a mistake since it still supposes the very concept of morality
which Nietzsche fights against. In environmental ethics, the Christian-Kantian concept
of morality is enlarged to human-nature-relations. This enlargement is often dubbed
moral evolution. Indeed, environmental ethicists which attribute inherent moral value
to all subjects of a life,6 to all living beings,7 or to all natural beings,8 rely on a Kantian
idea of inherent moral value (dignity).9 Nietzsche, however, clearly did not wish to enlarge Kantian morality onto mans relationship with nature. In my pre-analytic vision,
I saw Nietzsche looking from a distance onto environmental philosophy, not running
in its mainstream. Clearly, such vision lacks any argumentative force, but, perhaps, it can
be backed and warranted by argument. This requires a closer look at the best-available
literature on the topic. Adrian Del Caros recently published Grounding Nietzsche Rhetoric
of Earth10 is an important contribution. Del Caro claims that Nietzsche envisioned, first,
a partnership between humans and the earth and, second, a vision of humans dwelling
on earth in ways of embodied life which establish such close partnership (p. 49). Before
I take a closer look on Del Caros inspiring book (V), I wish to present the state of the art
in reading Nietzsche with respect to environmentalism (II), explain the meaning of
holding an environmental ethics (III), and enjoy the opportunity to make some remarks on Nietzsches philosophy (IV). In the last section I check some of Nietzsches
notes on human-nature-relations against the reasoning space of environmental ethics and
draw a conclusion which might be surprising to some readers (VI).

6
7
8
9

10

My first academic readings of Nietzsche took place in the context of lectures about theory of
modernity, as presented by Jrgen Habermas in Frankfurt in 1983. See, as a result of those lectures, Habermas, Jrgen: Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwlf Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main 1985.
There are as many perhaps in the problem of how to understand Nietzsche correctly as inside
of Nietzsches notes. Thus, there are several perhaps in this paper, too.
Regan, Tom: All That Dwell Therein. Los Angeles 1982.
Taylor, Paul: Respect for Nature. Princeton NJ 1986.
Gorke, Martin: The Death of our Planets Species. Washington 2003.
Gorke: The Death, loc. cit., holds the thesis that the moral point of view (sic! ) implies that
we should attribute inherent moral value to all natural beings and, as a consequence, all human
interference with nature has to be justified on purely moral grounds. It is, at least I hope so, not
unfair against Gorke to assume that Nietzsche would regard this Kantian-holistic ethics as an attack of morality against human life as such.
If not stated otherwise all references to certain pages are related to this book.

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2. Some attempts to read Nietzsche as a deep ecologist11 are to be rejected. Ralph

Acampora12 was right in rejecting Max Hallmans superficial and uncritical reading. Hallman did neither give a clear account about deep ecology13 nor a sound reading of
Nietzsche. Martin Drenthen interprets Nietzsches ethics as a modern version of Stoic
ethics14 but didnt make reference to Nietzsches note against modern Stoics.15 Viewing
the papers on Nietzsche which have been published in Environmental Ethics and in New
Nietzsche Studies, I can hardly see much progress compared to Lwiths cosmological interpretation of Nietzsche.16
Following Acamporas caveat, one should resist some temptations in reading Nietzsche with respect to environmentalism. One should withstand the first temptation to
argue ad hominem with Nietzsches preferences for natural Alpine and Mediterranean landscapes, for living in the outdoors and for a simple but decent diet. There are, of course,
splendid confessional notes in Morgenrthe about a drive for mild sun, southern plants,
the breath of the sea, and other natural features which Nietzsche enjoyed and took as conditions for his great health. One should neither make use of Zarathustras animal companions nor on the many animal metaphors.17 In the end, it would be highly disrespectful
to make Nietzsche a pathocentric only because he kissed the horse in Turino, weeping.18
This first temptation is huge since hardly any philosopher beside Nietzsche has intertwined his individual life so deeply with his philosophy. Nevertheless, searching a systematic account on the topic Nietzsche and environmental ethics, one should not rely
too much on biographical and narrative evidence.
A second temptation is to pick some fitting notes out of Nietzsches overall opus
which seem to make him an environmentalist. Of course, one can find such prima facie
fitting notes which are quoted in Hallman, Acampora, and Drenthen. Its good to see
them on the table: Nietzsche argues that any animal species is as perfect as the human
species, that there would be nothing missing on earth if the human species should go ex-

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Hallman, Max: Nietzsches Environmental Ethics. In: Environmental Ethics 13.2 (1991),
pp. 99 125.
Acampora, Ralph R.: Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics. In: Environmental Ethics 16.2 (1994), pp. 187 194.
In regard to deep ecology, Hallman did not present the apron-model, not the deep-ecology
platform, not Naess Ecosophy. Thus, he was superficial on both sides of the relationship
Nietzsche and deep ecology.
Drenthen, Martin: The Paradox of Environmental Ethics. Nietzsches View of Nature and the
Wild. In: Environmental Ethics 21.2 (1999), pp. 163 175, see p. 171.
Cf. BGE 9: O ihr edlen Stoiker, welche Betrgerei der Worte! Nature is described in this
aphorism with the following words: verschwenderisch ohne Mass, gleichgltig ohne Mass, ohne
Absichten und Rcksichten, ohne Erbarmen und Gerechtigkeit, fruchtbar und de und ungewiss zugleich. The wording fits well to the notion of life as given in BGE 259 to which we turn
later (section V).
Lwith, Karl: Nietzsches Versuch zur Wiedergewinnung der Welt. In: Ders.: Gott, Mensch und
Welt in der Metaphysik von Descartes bis zu Nietzsche. Gttingen 1967, pp. 156 196.
Cf. now Acampora, Christa Davis / Acampora, Ralph R. (eds.): A Nietzschean Bestiary.
Becoming Animal Beyond Docile and Brutal. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford
2004.
Im not sure whether Schmid really wishes to make this argument. See Schmid, Wilhelm: Did He
Not Kiss the Horse? Nietzsche as Ecological Philosopher. In: New Nietzsche Studies 5.1 2
(2002), pp. 1 11, p. 4.

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tinct19 and he puts humans among the animals. All these are tropes of the more misanthropic variants in environmental rhetoric. Of course, Zarathustras b l e i b t d e r Er d e
t re u und Redlicher redet und reiner der gesunde Leib, der vollkommene und rechtwinklige: und er redet vom Sinn der Erde20 are quoted in almost any article on our topic.
This second temptation is as huge as the first one since there is nothing but notes after the
Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen and no interpretation can avoid relying on notes. Therefore, it
is hard to decide who among the many interpreters is just picking notes and who is
drawing notes out of a deeper reading.21 To estimate the meaning of single notes, one has
to assume what Nietzsches philosophy is all about. If so, one should resist this second
temptation also and should better proceed in a more systematic way of reasoning.
The last temptation is, as always, adoration which comes in rather rough or more
nuanced ways. I leave this last temptation aside.
3. Any systematic approach toward the topic Nietzsche and environmental ethics is
about a relationship A
B which comprehends two highly complex and contested
matters which should be related to each other in a way which is acceptable both to experts
on Nietzsche and to experts in environmental ethics. This relationship has also to bridge
the gap of time between late 19th century and today.
With regard to recent debates about the requirements of holding an environmental
ethics,22 a person can be said to hold an environmental ethics, if she either
1. adopts a certain conception of inherent moral value for (some or all) natural beings
(or a conception of objective values in nature,23
2. shares some concern for environmental destruction and pleas for more environmental protection and nature conservation,
3. holds a comprehensive ethical theory which goes all the way down from ontology,
metaethics, general ethical theory, the reasoning space of environmental ethics, to different areas of public environmental policy in a systematic and coherent fashion,
4. reflects upon basic attitudes and habits of humans toward nature,
5. argues for a re-orientation of such attitudes and habits,
6. articulates and adopts at least one of the many arguments in the overall reasoning
space of environmental ethics.
Obviously, Nietzsche does not fulfil the requirement mentioned in No. 1, but this is
not a failure at all, since No. 1 is simply begging the question of how to resolve the demarcation problem (Which entity has moral standing?) in favour of physiocentrism.

19

20
21

22

23

One could, first, quoting Callicott, Baird: Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair. In: Environmental Ethics 2.4 (1980), pp. 311 338, p. 326, see a certain degree of misanthropy as an indicator for a true environmental ethics and then, second, grasp the following note: Es sind schon
viele Thierarten verschwunden; gesetzt da auch der Mensch verschwnde, so wrde nichts in
der Welt fehlen. (Nachla 1887/88, KSA 13, 11[103], p. 50), and, third, draw a (misleading) conclusion that Nietzsche is a forerunner of deeper forms of bio- or ecocentrism.
Za, Vorrede 3, KSA 4, p. 15, und Za I, Von den Hinterweltlern, KSA 4, p. 38.
Respect for Nietzsche as a philosopher requires to make this distinction. Cf. the remarks Zur
aktuellen Forschung und Forschungsmethodik in the review of Stegmaier, Werner: Nietzsches
Philosophie der Kunst und seine Kunst der Philosophie (in the present volume).
Cf. Michael, Michael: Whats in a Name? Pragmatism, Essentialism, and Environmental Ethics.
In: Environmental Values 12 (2003), pp. 361 379.
Sensu Rolston, Holmes: Environmental Ethics. Philadelphia PA 1988.

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Nietzsches perspectivism leaves no room for a metaethical realism which defends the
existence of objective values in nature which are seen as real properties of natural entities.24 To me, Nietzsche is right against Rolston.
No. 2 is too modest to be constitutive for an environmental ethics, since ethics,
taken in a more demanding meaning, is not required. Concerns as such will do the job.
Notice, that No. 2 is not completely irrelevant for our topic. In Germany, there had been a
critical discourse about the impacts of industrialization, modern agriculture, rational forestry, railways, and growing of cities onto the pre-modern German natural landscapes between 1860 and 1888. But, as far as I can see, Nietzsche did not take any notice of authors
like Ernst Rudorff or Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl.25 If so, Nietzsche did not take much interest in the environmental debate of his lifetime.
No. 3 is a very demanding condition. It cant be fulfilled by forerunners since forerunners wouldnt be forerunners any more if they could match No. 3. Perhaps, one must
be a latecomer (and a Nietzschean camel for years) if one wishes to address No. 3 in ones
own career.
For our topic, it is sufficient to rely on the requirements as mentioned in No. 4, 5 and 6.
As we shall see, Del Caros reading of Nietzsche is directed toward them. If so, Nietzsche
would have been a forerunner of environmental ethics in a broader sense, if No. 4 and No. 5
are fulfilled in his philosophy and he would be such forerunner in a more specific sense if he
had also contributed some pattern of argument to the overall reasoning space. As we shall
see in more detail, Nietzsche can fulfil these three requirements. Thus, he can be said to be
a forerunner of environmental ethics. But, as it will turn out in the final section, one can
also keep Nietzsche in a (noble) distance to mainstream environmental ethics.
The concept of reasoning space has to be made explicit here: There is a finite set of
arguments which can be used in order to back and warrant claims as: We better should
protect the environment and should conserve nature (to a certain extent), because p (q, r, s). The following presuppositions must be made: There is a we of moral agents which share some
concern about environmental destruction, there is a prescriptive should with binding
force to such agents, there are natural entities out there and there are arguments which
presume to be convincing to moral agents.26 The reasoning space comprehends such ar24

25

26

Like a careful reader of Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, Nietzsche writes in 1881: Meine Aufgabe:
alle die Schnheit und Erhabenheit, die wir den Dingen und den Einbildungen geliehen, zurckfordern als E i g ent u m u nd Er zeu gn i des Menschen und als schnsten Schmuck,
schnste Apologie desselben (Nachla 1881, KSA 9, 12[34], p. 582). And with regard to nature
he wrote: Diese Schnheit und Erhabenheit der Nat u r, vor der jeder Mensch klein erschien,
haben wir erst in die Natur hinein g et r ag en und folglich um diesen Theil die Menschheit
beraubt. Sie mu es ben. (ibid., 12[37], p. 583). I can not see which kind of inference
Nietzsche wishes to make by the folglich, but I feel safe to assume that Nietzsches philosophy
is opposed to Rolstons. For a more detailed comparison of Nietzsche and Rolston see Acampora, Ralph R.: The Joyful Wisdom of Ecology. In: New Nietzsche Studies 5/6 (2003/2004),
pp. 22 34.
Cf. Rudorff, Ernst: Ueber das Verhltni des modernen Lebens zur Natur. In: Preuische Jahrbcher 45 (1880), pp. 261 276, and Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich: Die Naturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Social-Politik. Erster Band: Land und Leute. Stuttgart 1854. For a brief overview see Ott, Konrad: Geistesgeschichtliche Ursprnge des deutschen
Naturschutzes zwischen 1850 und 1914. In: Handbuch Naturschutz und Landespflege.
12. Lieferung. Landsberg 2004, pp. 1 15, with further references.
Obviously, one has to be more specific about these presuppositions, but this is clearly beyond
the scope of this essay.

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guments as obligations towards future generations,27 meeting basic human needs,

aesthetic appreciation of nature, body-related eudaimonistic arguments, otherness
of nature, transformative value, biophilia values, human rights to a decent natural
environment, moral duties toward sentient beings, reverence for life, and some ecocentric and holistic arguments which I leave aside here. Such arguments must be made explicit which can be done best in the general framework of a discourse ethical theory.28 In
the very first step of explication, such arguments are collected and clarified. In a second
step, the variants, presuppositions and implications are analysed in more detail. In a third
and final step, the ethicist should explain why she does or does not subscribe to a certain
argument. The set of arguments one subscribes to constitutes the concept of environmental ethics one has adopted in theory.29
4. Any systematic interpretation should be explicit about ones own interpretation
of Nietzsches philosophy. Following Wolfgang Mller-Lauter and other authors, Nietzsches later philosophy comprehends a deep and threefold divide between, first, a naturalistic perspectivism, and, second, a strong longing to present a far-reaching doctrine,30 and,
third, a conflict between a radical affirmation of all life and a sharp criticism of certain forms
of degenerating (and, perhaps, even wrongful) life which is part of the doctrine. A
tragic reading of Nietzsche could regard this divide as an inescapable trilemma. I feel
sympathetic with such tragic reading but it seems safer to argue that there is some divide
which is constitutive for strong tensions and, perhaps, paradoxes.
If, as Nietzsche tells us, there is nothing but interpretation (Auslegung) and if such
interpretation is ruled (governed, determined) by physiologically given affects and instincts, and if, moreover, soul (Seele) is nothing but a word for something at ones
body,31 it follows that all reasons, claims, doctrines and belief-systems are embodied in a
radical fashion. As Drenthen says rightly, instincts are to Nietzsche both interpretative
entities and physical forces. If so, physiological perspectivism comes close to a naturalistic
nothing-but-ism. A living being L must hold a certain doctrine D since D is part and
parcel of physiological Erhaltungsbedingungen which L stands in need of. If so, doctrines are never true (in a strong sense) or justified (in a modest sense) but are to be
27

28

29

30

31

Having published some articles about obligations toward future generation (cf. Ott, Konrad: Essential Components of Future Ethics. In: Dring, Ralf / Rhs, Michael (eds.): konomische
Rationalitt und praktische Vernunft. FS Hampicke. Wrzburg 2004, pp. 83 108, with further
references), I feel safe to argue that the concerns about posterity as they have been articulated in
environmental ethics are very different from Nietzsches idea of creating some bermenschen
in some remote future.
My own approach in environmental ethics is grounded in discourse-ethics. See Ott, Konrad:
Noch einmal: Diskursethik. In: Gottschalk-Mazouz, Niels (ed.): Perspektiven der Diskursethik.
Wrzburg 2004, pp. 143 173; ders.: Umweltethik zwischen Grundlagenreflexion und Politikberatung. In: Friesen, Hans / Berr, Karsten (eds.): Angewandte Ethik im Spannungsfeld von Begrndung und Anwendung. Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 173 195.
If a person denies that any such arguments are sound and also denies that they really can be supportive to some environmental-friendly claims, but nevertheless wishes to dub this both claims
his (negative) environmental ethics, the case will be similar as dubbing egoism as ones
ethics.
There are superabundant notes on: Philosoph als Gesetzgeber, ich lehre:, Es bedarf einer
Lehre, and the like.
Cf. Za I, Von den Verchtern des Leibes, KSA 4, p. 39 (Seele ist nur ein Wort fr ein Etwas am
Leibe).

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analyzed physio-psychologically. This would be true for certain concepts in environmental ethics, too. Some naturalists and conservationists would, by instinct, grasp some
inherent-value-doctrine.
As many authors have argued, this perspectivism must, in principle, be applied to
Nietzsches writings as well.32 It is hard to deny that Nietzsche makes strong ontological,
ethical and psychological claims all the way down to his latest writings and that his many
claims form a doctrine with highly axiological and prescriptive force. If so, why shouldnt
we perceive Nietzsches doctrine under Nietzsches physio-psychological lens?33 From
the point of Nietzsches perspectivism, his claims are nothing but symptoms of a certain system of physiologically determined instincts and affects. If so, there are no reasons
why any other living human being having different instincts should adopt Nietzsches doctrine if he/she can better get along (live) with other doctrines. Moreover, one can hardly
adopt a doctrine which remains foreign to ones instincts (ones Self ).
The third aspect of Nietzsches divide is between his unconstrained Yes to Life!34
and his metaphysics of life being Wille zur Macht, which, as Lwith said, is beyond good
und evil (in a moral sense) but not beyond good and bad (in a vitalistic sense). An unconstrained Yes to all forms of life would not allow for polemical attacks on certain forms of
life. Lwith argued that this Dionysian Yes must leave some room for the difference between good and bad, if Nietzsches philosophy should remain coherent at all.
This threefold divide can be resolved in several ways:
1. One can argue that the person who is presenting the doctrine is healthy in a unusual
and great sense of the word (grosse Gesundheit). Nietzsche presents himself as
healthy at the opening of Ecce Homo. This single living being is as healthy that his
healthy instincts tell matters which come close to the truth about Christian religion,
modern man, and the like. (This argument comes close to say: Believe in me!)
2. One can argue that the divide produces an inspiring and creative tension with different aspects. To focus on certain aspects is not to grasp a lemma. Nietzsche himself intended paradoxes and liked to play with them. The three aspects correct and restrain
each other.35
3. To argue that one aspect in Nietzsches philosophy is the decisive or essential one.36

32

33

34

35
36

As Drenthen: The Paradox of Environmental Ethics, loc. cit., argues, we have only interpretations of nature, but never nature as it is in itself. If so, no interpretation is closer to nature than
any other interpretation and this is true, too, for the interpretation of nature as will to power.
Sometimes, Nietzsche only gives us the claim itself, but sometimes he reflects upon his method
of interpreting: Mein Versuch, die moralischen Urtheile als Symptome und Zeichensprachen
zu verstehen, in denen sich Vorgnge des physiologischen Gedeihens oder Mirathens, ebenso
das Bewutsein von Erhaltungs- und Wachsthumsbedingungen verrathen: eine InterpretationsWeise vom Werthe der Astrologie. Vorurtheile, denen Instinkte souffliren (Nachla 1885/86,
KSA 12, 2[165], p. 149). Nietzsche, as I wish to read this note, was well aware about the problem
that his perspectivism could (or even must) be applied to his own ways to interpret Plato, Socrates, Kant, the New Testament, the priests, the contemporary Europeans, and so on.
Cf. Za III, Vor Sonnen-Aufgang, KSA 4, p. 209: in alle Abgrnde trage ich da noch mein segnendes Ja-sagen, und Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 16[32], p. 492: diony sische [s] Jasag e n zur
Welt, wie sie ist, ohne Abzug, Ausnahme und Auswahl.
Cf. Drenthen: The Paradox of Environmental Ethics, loc. cit., p. 170.
To regard Nietzsches perspectivism as essential will be also an essentialist reading, not a perspectivist one.

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To sum up this section with some belief-statements: Nietzsches Yes was not unconstrained. It did not comprehend all forms of life. If Nietzsche didnt misunderstand
his writings after Also sprach Zarathustra, they all were part of a second half of one comprehensive task.37 In his latest writings, Nietzsche changes his rhetoric from the more
fine-grained one which can be found at its best in Morgenrthe und Frhliche Wissenschaft
to the more grim, hard, and hammering rhetoric of Gtzendmmerung and Antichrist. Since
he really38 believed in his own great health, he thought himself physiologically wellequipped to perform his task to present a doctrine which divides the history of mankind
into two parts. Madness has left us a question mark.
5. Turning now to Adrian Del Caros book and, thus, returning to our topic, one has
to check its ambitions. In presenting some coherent picture of what the environment
meant to Nietzsche [] I am not attempting a comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche on
environment let my entire book represent that attempt, and only modestly (p. 104).
Thus, the ambitions are modest. The book is written by a scholar who has published
about Nietzsche for more than twenty years. Del Caro himself is not a devoted environmentalist but he argues that in our age this is becoming less and less a matter of choice
(p. VII). Del Caro is not very familiar with environmental philosophy, as his use of concepts as ecosystem or biodiversity indicates. There is hardly any literature on environmental ethics in the references. Throughout the book, the level of concrete environmental policy making is not addressed.
In general, Del Caro wishes to present us a real-world oriented, naturalistic, postpostmodern39 Nietzsche which is examining physical, environmental, natural conditions
of human and nonhuman life on earth in order to establish a grounded relationship between human and earth (p. 52). Del Caro claims that Nietzsches sense of immanence is
of partnership with the earth. This claim is to be taken as the yardstick Del Caro has
adopted. As far as I know, Nietzsche himself does not use the term partnership with respect to human-nature-relations. Thus, the burden of interpretation is on Del Caro.40
This crucial concept of partnership with the earth is not defined sharply. In ordinary
language, the concept of partnership means that there are at least two partners which cooperate within a common project. Often, such cooperation is seen as one among equals.
Partnership, then, means, as in business affairs, prudent cooperation among equals and
for mutual benefit. Maybe, Del Caro would reply that this ordinary language meaning
is too demanding or that it distorts his meaning of partnership with earth. As I guess,
partnership to Del Caro means something like reciprocity and mutual enhancement whereby enhancement of partner earth comprehends its conservation and preservation (p. 334). One effect of partnering with the earth is to enhance human beings
by means of embodying and empowering (p. 334).
37

38

39

40

Cf. EH BGE 1, KSA 6, p. 350: Die Aufgabe fr die nunmehr folgenden Jahre war so streng als
mglich vorgezeichnet. Nachdem der jasagende Theil meiner Aufgabe gelst war, kam die neinsagende, n eint h u end eHlfte derselben an die Reihe: die Umwerthung der bisherigen Werthe
selbst, der grosse Krieg.
Perhaps, Nietzsche did not feel as sure as he claimed trying to make a proof (sic!) that he is not
only a dcadent but also its opposite: Abgerechnet nmlich, dass ich ein dcadent bin, bin ich
auch dessen Gegensatz. (EH, Warum ich so weise bin 2, KSA 6, p. 266).
Del Caro rejects French postmodernism for being a highly artificial philosophy which detracts
us from the more real terrestrial, ecological and bodily conditions of life on earth.
Surprisingly, the index of the book doesnt entail partnership.

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Following Del Caro, the concept of partnership between humans and earth is to be
understood if one takes into close account Nietzsches different reorientation strategies
which are the nucleus of Nietzsches grounding work (p. 67). In other words: Nietzsches
different reorientation strategies shall terminate into the concept of partnership between (super)humans
and earth. To see that the partnership-claim is justified one has to view several reorientation strategies in conjunction. One single reorientation strategy, in isolation, wont do the
job. If the concept of partnership will be specified on this line of reasoning we will see
outlines of how humans should dwell on earth in modes by which both earth and humans
could be mutually enhanced.
To justify this claim, Del Caro chooses as his starting point the well-known claim of
Zarathustra:
Der bermensch ist der Sinn der Erde. Euer Wille sage: der bermensch se i der
Sinn der Erde! Ich beschwre euch, meine Brder, b l e i b t d e r Er d e tr e u und
glaubt Denen nicht, welche euch von berirdischen Hoffnungen reden. [] Verchter des Lebens sind es, Absterbende und selber Vergiftete, deren die Erde mde
ist: so mgen sie dahinfahren! Einst war der Frevel an Gott der grsste Frevel, aber
Gott starb []. An der Erde zu freveln ist jetzt das Furchtbarste und die Eingeweide
des Unerforschlichen hher zu achten als den Sinn der Erde!41
To Del Caro, this speech of Zarathustra expresses the idea of partnership between humans and earth. Later in his book meaning of the earth means to embark on an affirmative habitation on earth (p. 333) which is grounded in this very idea of partnership. On a
semantic level, however, Nietzsches call (ich beschwre euch) to remain trustful to the
earth (der Erde treu bleiben) hasnt much to do with the usual meaning of partnership.
In German, Treue indicates a strong bondage, as in marriage, friendship, and religious
or political affairs (kirchentreu, verfassungstreu, heimattreu). Thus, I cant see the
idea of partnership being expressed in this speech.
According to Del Caro, the very meaning of superhuman (bermensch) cant be
explained without making reference to partnership between humans and the earth.
Nietzsches bermensch is clearly nothing beyond the human being but rather the
embodiment of human perfectibility in particular human beings which might exist in
some future.42 Superhumans are earthlings partnering with the earth (p. 351). They are
modelled by Del Caro as humans which are free spirits thinking globally (ecumenically),
are highly interested in the life sciences, have an undistorted and non-oppressive relation
to their living bodies, including sexuality, like to be in the outdoors,43 are, on the average,
healthy and sportive, enjoy life truly, and, last not least, feel responsible for the natural environment. They are not scholars in a traditional sense, not reading and talking heads, but
rather embodied and wise, even beautiful earthlings. They represent a higher humanity
41

42

43

Za, Vorrede 3, KSA 4, p. 15. Nietzsche uses at the crucial point of this speech a normative concept
of Frevel. Such thick moral concepts make only sense with reference to an ethical doctrine.
Nietzsche says there has been no bermensch on earth yet and there is a difference between
greatest men which really have lived on earth and superhumans which are about to come.
Niemals noch gab es einen bermenschen. (Za II, Von den Priestern). But this has been said
in 1883. To Del Caro, we are now in the process crossing over from human to superhuman
(p. 351).
Nietzsche opposed the Sitzfleisch as a sin against the spirit. According to Nietzsche, one
should not believe in a thought der nicht im Freien geboren ist und bei freier Bewegung, in
dem nicht auch die Muskeln ein Fest feiern (EH, Warum ich so klug bin 1, KSA 6, p. 281).

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which embraces the creation of life affirming values (p. 67).44 They share new values
which dont need a metaphysical foundation but are rooted in the idea of partnership with
the earth. Del Caro:
Humans will have a different relationship with the earth, an enhanced relationship such
that dwelling here on earth will be fuller, and there will be more of the human presence.
By more of the human presence I mean: humans who learn pride in their humanbuilding work, in their earth-building work will look upon themselves and earth as part
of the same, they will see more of the human reflected in nature, and vice versa (p. 67).
Thats a noble vision, but it remains doubtful whether this vision is to be found in
Nietzsche.
Partnership with the earth is grounded in a philosophy of immanence, in an affirmation of life, in a global (ecumenical) perspective, in a sympathy for the closest things, in
some empathy with higher animals, and, last but not least, in a posthumanism grounded
in the body. This is the songline of Del Caros entire book. In the first, hermeneutical
chapter Del Caro clarifies his way of dealing with Nietzsches highly sophisticated rhetoric.
The second chapter is about Nietzsches philosophy of immanence. The third chapter
takes a closer look on Nietzsches life affirming Dionysian religiousness. The fourth
chapter accounts the doctrine (if there is any) of the eternal recurrence of the same.45 The
fifth chapter analyses the ecumenical Nietzsche who envisions great politics.46 The
sixth chapter is about dwelling on earth, touching issues which are also present in deep
ecologists reading late Heidegger.47 The seventh and last chapter is about an environmental ethos which is grounded in the living body. The following chapters are of special
interest: Immanence (ch. II), The Ecumenical Nietzsche (ch. V), and Nietzsche and the Environmental Ethos (ch. VII). I concentrate myself on these chapters.
In his famous note Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde. Geschichte eines
Irrthums, Nietzsche describes the crucial steps by which the true world of Platonism
and Christian metaphysics has been abandoned. Having abandoned the true world, we
have to reflect its implications and consequences.48 One bundle of consequences is about
a recovery and re-affirmation of our earthly and temporal modes of existence.
44

45

46

47
48

Del Caros superhumans look a bit like field ecologists and ideal activists of the contemporary
environmental movement.
Taken as an ontology, the idea of recurrence is incompatible with the biological concept of evolution. One can understand this idea as a measure against which ones own life can be measured.
A great human being would say: Again and again. Wir wollen ein Kunstwerk immer wieder
erleben! So soll man sein Leben gestalten, da man vor seinen einzelnen Theilen denselben
Wunsch hat! (Nachla 1881, KSA 9, 11[164], p. 505). See also Stegmaier, Werner: Von Nizza
nach Sils-Maria. Nietzsches Abweg vom Gedanken der Ewigen Wiederkehr. In: Schirmer, Andreas / Schmidt, Rdiger (eds.): Entdecken und Verraten. Zu Leben und Werk Friedrich
Nietzsches. Weimar 1999, pp. 295 309, who argues the idea of recurrence of the same has become questionable to Nietzsche himself.
One has to keep in mind that gross and Grsse has a certain meaning in Nietzsches
thought. Grsse means to be able to encompass differences and contradictions. Grosse Gesundheit, grosse Politik are to be understood in this way. I am grateful Werner Stegmaier for
this conceptual clarification.
As, among others, Foltz: Inhabiting the Earth, loc. cit.
Die wahre Welt haben wir abgeschafft: welche Welt blieb brig? Die scheinbare vielleicht?
A b e r n ein! Mit d er wah r en Welt habe n wir auch die sche inbare abg e schafft!
(TI, Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde, KSA 6, p. 81).

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Anti-Platonism is not, by itself, environmentalism, nor is the latter logically implied by

the former. A philosophy of immanence, taken in isolation, is neither necessary nor sufficient for holding an environmental ethics. Neither necessary, since there are religious
(Christian, Buddhist, Taoist) variants of environmental ethics, nor sufficient, since there are
variants of immanentism (as Marxism, neoclassical economics, and sociobiology) whose
relationship to environmental ethics is, to say the least, questionable.49 If so, having abandoned the true world doesnt make us environmentalists by implication. It aint that easy.
Despite this logical remark, I agree with Del Caro that a Nietzschean philosophy of
immanence can be helpful in reflecting the deeper values and attitudes which drive our
mundane and quotidian practices towards nature and natural resources. It cant be denied
that Platonism and dogmatic Christianity have detracted much intellectual attention away
from life on earth. Christianity almost always has directed such attention (a scarce resource, indeed!) towards immortal soul, the beyond, heaven and hell, the day of
final judgement, the eternal life, Gods grace, sinful thoughts and deeds, revelation, and the like. Far too long, humans regarded themselves as eternal souls which are
imprisoned in bodies being parcels of a sinful realm of nature. Life on earth, as such, was
of minor value and the earth itself was a place of opprobrium (p. 74). In consequence,
humans tended to behave as paranoid strangers on this planet (p. 67). According to
Nietzsche, it is not the task of our earthly existence to prepare for eternity.50 It would be
better a task to learn how to enjoy life on earth as a gift (p. 386).51
I agree with Del Caro that overcoming Platonism and mainstream Christian dogmatism is of great help for feeling more at home here on earth (p. 67). Del Caro argues that
as long as the earth is seen as an inferior place only few humans will be willing to come to
the earths defense when the physical earth is violated this is the ecological upshot of
Nietzsches pleadings in favor of the quotidian (p. 109). There is some psychological
truth in the argument. It is also worth asking the question how would human life on earth
look like, if our home planet (earth) will be taken seriously as the only real and livable
world we know of. Thus, the reorientation towards life on earth is part and parcel of
Nietzsches teachings.
This implies a new estimation of all the things which really surround as, making up
our environment, as food, clothing, rooms and furniture, modes of heating and hygiene,
paved streets and gardens, parks and, sometimes, more natural surroundings. After
Nietzsche, we can and should turn our eye onto the closest things, viewing them as important gifts which contribute to our lives.52 This is a Nietzschean reorientation strategy which is

49

50

51

52

As Del Caro sees clearly at the end of chapter II, there are dangers of immanence, as racist
doctrines clearly show.
On the other hand, humans should rule the earth (Genesis 1, 26 ff.). Seen in conjunction, the
mastery of nature which has driven the modern project and the devaluation of terrestrial,
earthly living are like two sides of the same coin. This conjunction has shaped, as Lynn White
has argued in 1967, the basic attitudes of the Western culture which are, as our historical roots,
responsible for the ecological crisis. There is a huge bundle of literature to the LynnWhite-problem which cant be addressed here. Most scholars nowadays agree that Genesis 1,
26 ff. is by no means a licence to destroy nature.
As a consequence, Nietzsche has liberated our moral thinking at large from the focus on sexual
behaviour.
Cf. HH II, Der Wanderer und sein Schatten 6, KSA 2, p. 542: nicht zu wissen, was uns frderlich, was uns schdlich ist [] das ist es, was die Erde fr so Viele zu einer Wiese des Unheils
macht.

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clearly akin to but not identical with contemporary environmentalism. Akin, because environmentalism is not indifferent to the equipment and consumption goods of daily life, not identical, because environmentalism is more critical than Nietzsche could ever have been in the
1880ies about the underlying modes of production by which such close things have
come into existence (resource-base, energy-input, trade, labour). But these more critical
aspects can be added easily to Nietzsches reorientation towards the closest things. I
feel highly comfortable with this reorientation strategy but it remains doubtful how much
it contributes to the partnership-claim.
According to Del Caro, Nietzsche has elaborated this earthly approach toward his
Dionysian doctrine of life-affirmation. The term Dionysian becomes synonymous to a
general view of life as superabundant, inexhaustible, amoral and to an attitude of greatest affirmation of life. Nietzsches idea of affirmation of life should, of course, not be
confused with the contemporary idea that we should preserve all species or all biodiversity for some prudent or moral reasons. In mainstream environmental ethics, life affirming values are regarded as values which are nice to have. Traditional moral principles
and new life affirmation values would, in this view, complement each other. Morality
would remain intact but would be enriched by new nature-related values. This reading
of life affirming values would underestimate the dynamite in Nietzsches concept of
life.53
To Nietzsche, life is not just struggle for life and not just self-preservation (Selbsterhaltung). Jedes Lebendige greift so weit um sich mit seiner Kraft, als es kann und unterwirft sich das Schwchere: so hat es seinen Genu an sich.54 Life, as Wille zur
Macht, is always and necessarily subjugation of other life. As Acampora did, Del Caro
quotes BGE 259: Hier muss man grndlich auf den Grund denken und sich aller empfindsamen Schwchlichkeit erwehren: Leben selbst ist we s e n tl i ch Aneignung, Verletzung, berwltigung des Fremden und Schwcheren, Unterdrckung, Hrte, Aufzwngung eigner Formen, Einverleibung und mindestens, mildestens, Ausbeutung. After
having made this statement, Nietzsche reflects about his use of words because such terms
still sound devaluating for many ears since their meaning has been defined inside of the
horizon of traditional morals.55 The affirmation of life which is essentially Wille zur
Macht und nichts ausserdem (BGE 36) implies the affirmation of such features.
I agree with Del Caro that the term will to power might be nothing more than a shorthand for organic self-activity (p. 327). More decisive are the features which are attributed to life, as, for instance, wachsen, um sich greifen, an sich ziehn, bergewicht gewinnen wollen (BGE 259).
This bullet, as Nietzsche knew,56 is hard to bite. This concept of life does not fit in environmentalists attitudes to protect and to conserve nature, to leave nature untouched, to
be careful and wise in using nature, to take hands off as often as possible. But one can not
simply shy away from the harsher side of Nietzsche, taming his concept of life in order to
make him a good (sic!) member in the moral community of environmental ethicists. This
53

54

55

56

Nietzsches life affirming values are clearly not identical with, say, the biophilic values or lifeedifying values (sensu E. O. Wilson or Holmes Rolston).
Nachla 1883, KSA 10, 16[26], p. 507. Nietzsche adds to this an interesting note about the Vermenschlichung of this basic tendency of life.
In many other notes, the specific features of life are denoted with terms which indicate immorality to our ears: exploitation, injustice, cruelty, slavery, deception, robbing and killing, and the like.
In keinem Punkt ist aber das gemeine Bewusstsein der Europer widerwilliger gegen Belehrung
als hier (BGE 259).

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is a critical point for Del Caro (pp. 137 ff.). On the one hand, Del Caro rejects the line of
interpretation stating that Nietzsche always speaks in metaphors when he says evil
things and always speaks literally when he says, in a fine-grained and nuanced fashion
clever thinks we like to hear. It is wrong to spiritualize Nietzsches rhetoric when he
speaks of Krieg,57 Herrschaft, Zchtung einer neuen Kaste, Herrscher der Erde,
and the like (p. 132).58 One can and should neither ignore nor spiritualize, neither downplay nor tame this side of Nietzsche.
On the other hand, Del Caro tries hard to build on some common ground between
Nietzsches doctrine of life affirmation and basic components of a moral belief-system
which most environmentalists would not like to quit. If I understand Del Caro right,
he argues that Nietzsche is immediately interested when something is condemned on
moral grounds and he becomes suspicious if something is affirmed on the same grounds
(pp. 180 f.). But such interest does not imply to condemn anything which has been affirmed by traditional morals. If so, there is some room left for prudent judgements why
some components of morals and law should survive the transvaluation of all values.
Moral and legal norms can have functions for a flourishing and enhanced life. Probably,
even prudent superhumans could adopt Hobbes caveat59 and, as a consequence, would
like to own some basic rights, or would like to be protected by law in everyday life. Del
Caro argues that Nietzsche did not oppose principles of justice, of the common good,
and of social norms that apply to all (p. 103).
Del Caro opens chapter V with Zarathustra saying that he could not find any greater
power on earth than good and evil. Good and evil have been dependent on certain cultures and nations. Thus, there is a twofold task. One has, first, to explain why certain
nations have adopted certain tablets of moral values.60 More interesting is the second task.
Tausend Ziele gab es bisher, denn tausend Vlker gab es. Nur die Fessel der tausend
Nacken fehlt noch, es fehlt das Eine Ziel. Noch hat die Menschheit kein Ziel.61 In mainstream interpretation, Nietzsche determines this objective in the following note: Nicht
Menschheit, sondern ber men sch ist das Ziel! (Nachla 1884, KSA 11, 26[232],
p. 210). Del Caro offers a slightly different interpretation (p. 259). Beyond the many
national tablets of god and evil there could be a more global, more experimental, more
environmental tablet of values which is to be created by free spirits thinking beyond the
good and evil of their fatherland (p. 259).62 As often, Del Caro gives his interpretation a
certain shift into moral correctness. His ecumenical free spirits are able to control and
regulated their passions and their own behaviour will be a self-overcoming guaranteeing

57

58

59
60

61
62

Nietzsche favors wirkliche[.] Kriege[.], bei denen der Spaa aufhrt (Nachla 1887, KSA 12,
9[165], p. 433).
Del Caro doesnt wish to turn his eyes away from the Nietzsche who, preluding Himmlers Posen
speech, calls it great not to perish from inner distress when he inflicts great suffering and hears
the cries of the suffering: jene ungeheure En er gie de r Gre zu gewinnen, um, durch
Zchtung und anderseits durch Vernichtung von Millionen Mirathener, den zuknftigen Menschen zu gestalten und n ich t zu Gr unde zu gehen an dem Leid, das man schafft, und dessen
Gleichen noch nie da war! (Nachla 1884, KSA 11, 25[335], p. 98).
Many small man could form a successful coalition against few superhumans.
This explanation can be given by recurrence of earthly (natural, climatic) conditions. This idea
has been always present in German philosophy since the writings of Mser, Herder, and Arndt.
Za I, Von tausend und Einem Ziele, KSA 4, p. 76.
Speaking in the language of moral psychology, such person are on a post-conventional level of
moral judgement (sensu Kohlberg).

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the openness and self-renewal of nature (p. 329). Moreover, their new tablet of good and
evil should be one to which all of humanity could subscribe (p. 259). This should be
true also for Nietzsches far-reaching vision of ecumenical goals spanning the entire inhabitated earth (p. 265). Del Caros interpretation fits much better into contemporary
ethical theories which focus on universal moral agreements than it fits into Nietzsches
doctrine. To me, Nietzsche was not interested in general agreements of all of humanity.
In contrast, he would have been highly suspicious about the contents of such general
agreement. Del Caros has no fitting note which could give some support for his interpretation. Yes, we need such general agreement in global environmental policy making, be
it climate change, protection and sustainable use of biodiversity, transboundary freshwater resources, and the like if we wish to make progress in international regime
formation. But this is a Habermasian, not a Nietzschean approach.
Del Caro entertains the hypothesis that Nietzsches ecumenical goals are, in the
longer run, directed to the partnership between humans and nature and are to be formulated in the spirit of sustainability (p. 328, italics in the original). He sees a geographical
conception of the species (p. 265) and a geocentric ethos (p. 401) at the heart of
Nietzsches thoughts on great politics. To Del Caro, Nietzsches ecumenical vision is directed against self-destructiveness, against warfare, hostility, religious fanatism, class
struggle, and the like (p. 282). Again, this is a rather modest and nice Nietzsche who
comes close to a Weltethos (sensu Kng63) with strong environmental content. Relying
on notes 1880 and 1881, Del Caro conceives a loosely knit community of free spirits
who could preside over an ecumenical shift in values.64
Del Caro presents the famous note in the Lenzer-Heide-Entwurf (Nachla 1887,
KSA 12, 5[71], p. 217) about the most moderate persons who do not need extreme articles of faith (p. 303). Relying on that note, there is good news in the end. We see a rather
unthreatening, quotidian, reasonable [] and well-tuned (p. 303) Nietzsche. Now,
Wille zur Macht can serve as a model of global species empowerment (p. 320) which we
do not have to be afraid of. Other notes, in which great politics should be based on physiology, should measure the rank of races, and should make an end to all that is degenerate and parasitical, notes about Erdherrschaft and Herrenrasse are mentioned, but
downplayed.65
Del Caros final chapter is disappointing. There is no more detailed analysis of
Nietzsches philosophy of the living body and no synoptic judgement of the different reorientation strategies of partnering with the earth but mere repetitions of what has
been said in former chapters. There are some rather strange arguments in the final
chapter.
Del Caros definition of biocentrism as placing highest value on vitality per se is
highly unusual (p. 417). Very strange are the parts about tropical humans (p. 404). I
cant see at all why Nietzsche should address the problem of biodiversity as he highlights
Cesare Borgia in BGE 197 (p. 404). Nietzsches tropical humans have nothing to do
with real tropical forests and regions.
By making assertions about superfluous human Nietzsche is by no means implying
that there can be non superfluous tokens in other animal species. I cant see this impli63
64

65

Kng, Hans: Global Responsibility. In Search of a New World Ethics. London 1991.
Even today, some persons envision a body of wise ecosophers who shall counsel policy-makers
in matters of global environmental interest. Some see the bearers of the so-called alternative
noble-prize as such community.
This holds true for all the notes on Napoleon, Cesare Borgia, and Caesar.

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cation (p. 406). Moreover, I cant see that Nietzsche serves as the advocate of endangered
species just because he is sympathetic with the predatory humans (p. 408). I cant see why
Nietzsche advocates that we should extend our human capacity of proper feeling to other
life-forms and to earth (p. 415). Surprisingly, Del Caro exploits even the plot of Nietzsche weeping at the horses neck (p. 416).
To sum up: Nietzsches immanentism is a pathway to (re)direct our attention to life on
earth. The different reorientation strategies can change some of our basic attitudes towards such life on earth. We can overcome the devaluation of the earth. We can appreciate
our embodied presence as mortals and should learn to take the bodily related aspects of
our lifestyle more serious. I think Del Caro has made this point very well. He gives as a
clear account of some of Nietzsches reorientation strategies. Thus, Nietzsches philosophy fulfils the conditions No. 4 and 5, as mentioned in section III. If so, Nietzsche has to
be seen as an environmental philosopher in a broad sense of the term. Del Caro could
not, however, justify his partnership-claim well. This does not mean that the partnership claim is flawed in itself. I entertain the hypothesis that such partnership of mutual enhancement would turn out to be a concept of environmentalism which is different from
todays preserving and conserving strategies. Del Caro should have been more explicit
and more precise when he states that the reciprocity of superhuman is the meaning of
the earth, and earth is the venue of superhuman (p. 114).
6. One question remains open: Did Nietzsche contribute to the reasoning space of
environmental ethics? Did he fulfil the requirement given in No. 6?
One can regard Nietzsche as a forerunner of human ecology (Humankologie)
who addresses topics which are directed to the overall metabolism of living bodies with
a natural and culturally shaped environment. Since we are interested in the health and
well-being of our living bodies we must be interested in environmental protection and,
to some extent, nature conservation. We should clean our environment from pollutants
and we should not hesitate to listen to the all too often downplayed voices of our bodies.
There is some human ecology in Nietzsche and there is some critical force against
the modern way of life in this argument.66 Perhaps, in the end, we would not only appreciate the Greek philosophy but a more Greek way of embodied life, as Nietzsche wished
dearly.
If superhuman is the meaning of the earth, Nietzsches ethics is both future-oriented
and, lets say, super-anthropo-centric.67 Nietzsche clearly opposes metaphysical anthropocentrism which puts humans at the center of the world. Instead, he holds that humans
have emerged in the history of a small planet by coincidence but the natural evolution from
animal to the clever human animal is to Nietzsche of a completely different kind than the
overcoming of humans by superhumans. This overcoming (berwindung) is intended by
free will and it will be the result of Zchtung (whatever this might mean to Nietzsche).
If so, Nietzsche is a question mark against both mainstream anthropocentric and physiocentric approaches in environmental ethics.
According to Del Caro, Nietzsche favours environmental conditions which should be
more harsh and uncontrolled in order to be real obstacles to human aims. A similar idea is

66

67

Similar arguments have been made by Schfer, Lothar: Das Bacon Projekt. Frankfurt am Main
1993, especially chapter 6. Schfer, as a Kantian, sees no problem to ground his environmental
ethics, on the two principles of Autonomie and Leiblichkeit.
Perhaps, this centrism should be better termed projective.

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to be found in Williams68 who argued that respect for nature is akin to the respect one has
for a mighty old enemy. If so, we should not take nature easy. Mountains, mires, deserts
and oceans can be real and, sometimes, deadly obstacles to humans. While it remains unclear whether Williams promethean fear is an argument for environmental protection
at all, Del Caro argues that human enhancement stands in need of such natural obstacles.
The reciprocity of earth and superhuman requires that nature should be kept intact to
keep its obstacles [], to keep its naturalness (p. 114). Perfect control over nature would
imply that humans become more tamed. Untamed, wild nature would be functionally
good for human enhancement. To Del Caro, this idea would make Nietzsche a conservationist. When humans can no longer develop and grow over and against the obstacles
of nature [] humans regress, or degenerate (p. 114). Regretfully, I do not find this
(queer) argument in Nietzsche but rather the opposite:
Entwicklung der Menschheit. A. Macht ber die Natur zu gewinnen und dazu
eine gewisse Macht ber sich. Die Moral war nthig, u m den Menschen durchzusetzen im Kampf mit Natur und wildem Thier.
B. Ist die Macht ber die Natur errungen, so kann man diese Macht benutzen, um
si ch selb st frei weiterzubilden: Wille zur Macht als Selbsterhhung und Verstrkung. (Nachla 1886/87, KSA 12, 5[63], p. 208)
Nietzsche seems to argue that domination over nature is a requirement which makes a
higher human being possible. Thus, I can not subscribe to the argument which Del Caro
presents us at p. 114 without reference to a certain note of Nietzsche himself.
Del Caro argues that earth is even a dialogue-partner of Zarathustra, speaking a language of its own which humans have not learned yet (p. 52). Humans have spent too
much time and effort trying to communicate with God. After Gods death, human accountability [] will have to learn the language of the earth (p. 53). This presupposes
that earth is more than an inert and silent matter which can only be an object. There
is something on Earth which can be understood as language and such understanding is
analogous to communicative understanding. If nature can be a partner in dialogue and
not just something we speak about, there might be reasons to respect nature analogous to
co-subjects we are engaged with in discourse. There have several attempts to make such
kind of language-of-nature-arguments in environmental ethics69 but they are, to say the
least, highly contested. Communication with single natural beings, as higher animals
(apes, dolphins), might be possible. But the argument that earth as such owns a language
is much more demanding. I can not find this kind of argument in Nietzsche.70 Unfortunately, Del Caro makes no attempt to warrant this reading with some quotations.
According to Drenthen, Nietzsche has made us aware that nature is completely
different a world as compared to the world of culture. Natures otherness is a feature
which can (not must) give reasons to appreciate and even can give us a sense of awe
(Drenthen). Thus, Nietzsche would have been a supporter of the so-called otherness-ar68

69

70

Williams, Bernard: Mu Sorge um die Umwelt vom Menschen ausgehen? In: Krebs, Angelika
(ed.): Naturethik. Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 296 306.
See, for instance, Dryzek, John: Green Reason: Communicative Ethics for the Biosphere. In:
Environmental Ethics 12.3 (1990), pp. 195 210, and Ott, Konrad: kologie und Ethik. Tbingen 1993, especially chapter IV.4. Both are the authors early writings in environmental ethics.
The line of reasoning has been dropped by Dryzek and Ott.
The Romantic philosophers of nature, as Novalis, have been the forerunners of this nature-asyou-argument.

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gument, as defended by Hailwood.71 The otherness-argument says that humans stand

in need to encounter something which is not made by humans. Such encounter is valuable
both intrinsically (as eudaimonistic experience) and functional for a sound mind (as a kind
of therapy). Otherness of nature, then, is seen as second-order feature of nature which is
not objective in nature but has been derived from a comparison with the cultural and
moral world. Perhaps, one can see Nietzsche as a supporter of such a kind of argument.
Sometimes, the otherness-argument is seen close to the transformative-value-argument.72 To Norton, nature is a transformative value in as far as experiencing unmodified
nature transforms the value-standards and lifestyles of persons. Such transformation
makes humans more virtuous in moral respect and it brings about a lifestyle of voluntary
simplicity which, according to Norton, is objectively better than a lifestyle of unlimited
consumption and of greedy habits. Roughly spoken, nature transforms in a moralizing
way.
But Nietzsche puts a question mark against the transformative-value-argument:
Natrlicher ist unsere Stellung zur Na t u r : wir lieben sie nicht mehr um ihrer
Unschuld Vernunft Schnheit willen, wir haben sie hbsch verteufelt und
verdummt. Aber statt sie darum zu verachten, fhlen wir uns seitdem verwandter
und heimischer in ihr. Sie aspirirt nicht zur Tugend: wir achten sie deshalb. (Nachla
1887, KSA 12, 10[53], p. 483)
This is an inverted and transvaluated transformative-value-argument. Nature does
not, as Nietzsche insists of, aspire to (moral) virtues and Nietzsches respect to nature is
close to gratefulness for nature not doing so. Experiencing the otherness of nature is not,
by itself, a catalyst of moralizing, as Norton hopes, but rather a question mark against our
aspirations of being moral.
To sum up: Nietzsche, as he knew, is very often a question mark. This is true for environmental ethics also. He must be tamed to some degree to make him a proper member
of the community of contemporary environmental ethicists. I doubt whether Nietzsche
would have valued such membership at all. Perhaps (and this is my perhaps!), Nietzsche
can serve environmental ethics better as question mark than as a companion.

71

72

Hailwood, Simons: The Value of Natures Otherness. In: Environmental Values 9 (2000),
pp. 353 372.
Norton, Bryan: Why Preserve Natural Variety. Princeton NJ 1987.

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PATRICK WOTLING
NIETZSCHE ET HEGEL. QUATRE TENTATIVES POUR FAIRE
DIALOGUER DEUX FRRES ENNEMIS

Sil est frquent, presque banal, de comparer la pense nietzschenne celle de Platon,
de Kant, et bien sr de Schopenhauer, pour lopposer ou la rapprocher, en revanche Hegel ne fait pas partie, en rgle gnrale, des philosophes auxquels les commentateurs sont
ports confronter Nietzsche. La position commune au sujet de ces deux penseurs est
bien celle qui les considre comme des opposs irrconciliables, des auteurs que tout divise et entre lesquels il serait naf desprer voir natre un semblant de dialogue tant les
clivages doctrinaux sont profonds.
Chez les commentateurs de Nietzsche a longtemps prvalu une comprhension exclusivement critique du rapport de Nietzsche Hegel: la prpondrance des rcusations,
dans le corpus nietzschen, appuye sans doute par lide de la proximit de Nietzsche
lgard de Schopenhauer dont on infre un commun mpris du hglianisme, a de fait incit minimiser, parfois ignorer, les textes o Nietzsche se montre plus accueillant,
voire curieusement logieux, lgard du penseur du systme.
Du ct hglien, les tudes nont longtemps rencontr la confrontation avec Nietzsche que fugitivement, donnant lieu le plus souvent des remarques aussi brves que
condamnatrices dnonant la superficialit des jugements de Nietzsche au sujet de lauteur de lEncyclopdie, sa mconnaissance des textes, voire soulignant ses contresens
(un exemple significatif en serait fourni par le ton du texte de D. Souche-Dagues: Le cercle
hglien. Paris 1986, par exemple p. 102, propos du jugement sur Hegel dans la seconde
Considration inactuelle: Il est inutile de dnoncer ici la mauvaise foi, et labsurdit, du
propos de Nietzsche ). Autant dire quil ny eut que peu despace qui ft dvolu une
confrontation vritablement philosophique. Ainsi tendit simposer lavis dfinitif que
lon avait affaire des antipodes, quil tait absurde de tenter de rapprocher. Et sil est
frquent de rencontrer le catalogue minutieusement tabli des points dopposition
assimilation de la vrit au systme / position antisystmatique et critique de la notion de
vrit, dfense de la dialectique / condamnation sans appel de la dialectique, identification du vrai labsolu / disqualification de toute forme dabsoluit, promotion de la raison / rduction de la rationalit au pulsionnel, identification de la philosophie lidalisme / viction de lidalisme, etc , il est rare de voir un commentateur chapper la
fascination de ces antagonismes de doctrine pour sinterroger sur une ventuelle connivence plus profonde, plus secrte aussi.
Rare mais non pas sans exemple toutefois. Car simultanment, on trouve de loin en
loin des signes de cette salutaire inquitude, ne du sentiment dalliances peut-tre passagres, peut-tre simplement tactiques, mais en tout cas constatables, face des adversaires
communs penseurs, modes de pense ou concepts. Tout connaisseur de la pense nietzschenne se rappelle que le problme des rapports entre Hegel et Nietzsche avait dj
t voqu par Walter A. Kaufmann (Nietzsche. Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton

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459

1950), commentateur de lun et lautre philosophe, et en outre lun des rares spcialistes
de Nietzsche dfendre lide dune authentique proximit entre les deux penseurs. Parmi
les tudes marquantes plus rcentes, on se doit dvoquer encore larticle de D. Breazeale
The Hegel-Nietzsche Problem (in: Nietzsche-Studien 4 (1975), p. 146 164), de mme que
les travaux de W. Stegmaier, notamment Leib und Leben. Zum Hegel-Nietzsche Problem (in: Hegel-Studien 20 (1985), p. 173 198), ainsi que Nietzsches Hegel-Bild (in: Hegel-Studien 25 (1990), p. 99 110), et plus rcemment encore, louvrage de Y. Yovel: Dark
Riddle. Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (University Park, PA 1998), qui aborde la question du
statut du judasme dans le corpus des deux penseurs.
Mais il semble quune des tendances actuelles de la recherche tant hglienne que
nietzschenne soit prcisment lamplification de ce souci de revenir sur cette vision traditionnelle du partage entre les deux philosophes. Trois ouvrages rcents, auxquels vient
de sajouter la rdition dune tude plus ancienne ouvrent nouveau le dossier des relations entre Nietzsche et Hegel. Il sagit des livres suivants:

1. Dudley, Will: Hegel, Nietzsche, and Philosophy. Thinking Freedom. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2002. XVII et 326 pages. ISBN
0-521-81250-X.
2. Jurist, Elliot T.: Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche. Philosophy, Culture, Agency.
Cambridge, Mass., London (MIT Press) 2000. XII et 355 pages. ISBN
0-262-10087-8.
3. Houlgate, Stephen: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Criticism of Metaphysics.
Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) first published 1986, paperback
edition 2004. XVIII et 300 pages. ISBN 0-521-89279-1.
4. Lebrun, Grard: Lenvers de la dialectique. Hegel la lumire de Nietzsche.
Paris (ditions du Seuil) 2004. 376 pages. ISBN 2-02-07797-6.
Cest un fait digne dtre not, ces efforts pour reconsidrer de manire plus ouverte
et informe les lments de dialogue prsents chez les deux philosophes sont dus pour
lessentiel des spcialistes de Hegel. Ce qui nempche nullement les mthodologies
dapproche de couvrir un spectre assez large, et rserve mme quelques surprises quant
la varit des perspectives conclusives, ainsi que les montreront les lignes qui suivent.
Ajoutons, pour le regretter, quun autre trait est partag par ces quatre textes, savoir
lutilisation systmatique de lune ou lautre version de la Volont de puissance pour les textes posthumes de Nietzsche trait qui surprend aujourdhui, qui surtout limite invitablement la qualit de linformation relative au corpus nietzschen, et qui nest pas toujours dnu de rpercussions sur la valeur des conclusions nonces. A tout le moins le
spcialiste des textes de Nietzsche prouvera-t-il quelque difficult partager ltrange
optimisme des diteurs franais de ltude de Grard Lebrun, qui nhsitent pas affirmer que ce dernier a eu la main heureuse et que son flair lgendaire la conduit ne
prlever aucun des chantillons trafiqus par Peter Gast et lisabeth Frster-Nietzsche
(p. 16) reconnaissons, pour le dire modrment, que ce lyrisme risque fort de laisser
perplexe le chercheur habitu la frquentation de la remarquable Konkordanz tablie
par M.-L. Haase et J. Salaquarda entre les versions de la Volont de puissance et le Nachla
nietzschen tel que le restitue ldition Colli-Montinari daprs les manuscrits (NietzscheStudien 9 (1980))

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1. Louvrage de Will Dudley suit un plan simple dans son principe: deux grandes parties symtriques, consacres lune la libert dans et par la philosophie de Hegel, lautre
la libert dans et par la philosophie de Nietzsche, sachvent dans la prsentation dune
conclusion ouverte indiquant un cheminement de rconciliation entre le penseur du systme et son plus farouche adversaire, et appelant les commentateurs sengager dans la
voie de ce dialogue. Mais toute loriginalit du propos tient ce quil se justifie non pas par
la thorisation de tel aspect de la rflexion de Hegel ou de Nietzsche, mais plus profondment par lidentification du problme gnral que pose la pense de la libert en philosophie. Lindtermination de cette notion conduit en effet demble lauteur sinterroger
sur le reprage dun critre pertinent pour juger des diffrentes thories de la libert: cest
dans la comprehensiveness, elle-mme donnant lieu deux caractrisations drives (p. 3),
que lauteur dcouvre ce critre, ce qui justifie alors lintroduction parallle de Hegel et de
Nietzsche: la proximit, et simultanment la rivalit, entre les deux philosophes se rvle
si lon admet quil faut parvenir la vision la plus englobante de la libert, ambition qui caractriserait tant lauteur de lEncyclopdie que celui dAinsi parlait Zarathoustra. Pour tayer
ce point capital, lauteur commence par introduire deux interprtations majeures de la notion: sa comprhension librale, dont il trouve un exemple reprsentatif chez Hobbes la
libert ntant pense que ngativement comme absence de contrainte extrieure; et sa
comprhension kantienne, qui lassimile lautonomie.
Selon lauteur, cest le rejet commun de ces deux comprhensions de la libert qui fait
apparatre la paradoxale mais profonde affinit entre Hegel et Nietzsche, lesquels soutiendraient tous deux, sur des registres certes varis, la thse que la libert nest vritablement,
cest--dire ne se ralise, que par la pratique de la philosophie: the liberating activity that
Hegel and Nietzsche identify as the condition of free willing is the practice of philosophy
itself (p. 7). Lun des rsultats inattendus de cette analyse, en termes dhistoire de la philosophie, est alors que Nietzsche poursuivrait les efforts de lidalisme allemand (particulirement de Hegel) pour dpasser Kant et dterminer les conditions effectives de la libert (p. 9).
Chacune des deux parties de louvrage se dveloppe en quatre temps. Dans le cas de
Hegel, lauteur examine dabord la place de la libert dans sa philosophie. Il rappelle la
structure gnrale du systme, avant didentifier lentre en scne de la libert dans llment logique, larticulation de la doctrine de lessence et de celle du concept; il se penche
sur la signification de cette approche logique de la libert, pour indiquer ensuite en quoi la
philosophie de lesprit tout entire doit tre lue comme un expos de la libert. Les traits
essentiels de la caractrisation hglienne de la libert sont donc demble identifis, et
lauteur montrera dans toute la suite de cette premire partie comment ces caractristiques invariantes se trouvent, chaque tape du progrs de lesprit vers son auto-ralisation, rinvesties dans un lment nouveau. Laxe fondamental de cette dlimitation
conceptuelle est expos avec fermet: For Hegel, freedom results from the transfiguration of the finite into the infinite, and this transfiguration takes place through an internalization of the external (p. 21). Cest donc bien sur ce schme du dpassement et de la rduction de lextriorit que lauteur fait reposer tout le poids de la comprhension
spculative de la libert. Sur cette base, lensemble de la premire partie de louvrage offre
une description dtaille des principales tapes du cheminement dialectique conduisant
de la logique la philosophie comme accomplissement de lesprit absolu en lequel la libert se ralise effectivement. Il sagira donc chaque fois de saisir quel est le type dextriorit qui se prsente et doit se trouver finalement rsorb.
Le deuxime chapitre porte sur la libert du vouloir telle que lexpose la philosophie
du droit hglienne. Aprs une analyse de la conception logique du jugement, lauteur ex-

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461

pose de manire dtaille les moments essentiels de la progression: la volont apparat

dabord comme facult du choix, et en tant que telle, abstraite, pour en venir revendiquer, dans le droit abstrait, une partie du monde extrieur comme sienne. Lauteur aborde
la question de lalination et de la reconnaissance mutuelle des volonts, lanalyse du
contrat, du chtiment: As long as the will locates its freedom in an object external to itself, which is what characterizes abstract right, there is always the possibility that the
content of the will, its own particular drives, may be at odds with its own freedom, its own
universality (p. 39). W. Dudley considre alors le mouvement qui porte le dploiement de
la volont la moralit, puis lthicit, la libert thique tant tudie dans ses moments
de la famille, de la socit civile et de ltat. Il reste comprendre pourquoi le sujet voulant, mme dans ltat rationnel, demeure affect par lextriorit et natteint pas la pleine
incarnation de la libert.
Cest pourquoi le troisime temps tudie quant lui le passage de la philosophie du
droit lesprit absolu, en rappelant juste titre que la pense hglienne de la libert ne se
rduit pas aux analyses des Principes de la philosophie du droit. Au terme de ce nouvel examen,
si la libert du sujet spirituel suppose la fois quil la produise et en soit conscient, il est
tabli que the most complete freedom of that spiritual subject thus resides not in willing,
but in the activities that result from the willing subjects self-overcoming (p. 100).
Le quatrime et dernier chapitre de cette partie prsente un bilan et une interprtation
gnrale du sens de la mditation hglienne de la libert. Lauteur y souligne dabord le
dpassement de la comprhension subjective du vouloir dans lart, la religion et la philosophie, puis aborde la question du privilge reconnu cette dernire en tudiant la
confrontation de la libert avec lorganisation systmatique de la philosophie: dans lart, la
religion et la philosophie en effet, les tres spirituels ne sont plus opposs un matriau
tranger dans lequel ils devraient faire effort pour parvenir se manifester. On peut en ce
sens parler dun dpassement effectif de lextriorit, pleinement ralis dans la philosophie, prsentation absolue de labsolu: Philosophy is absolute absolute spirit because in it
spiritual beings are absolved from the externality that persists in art and religion between
their content and the media of its recognition and expression (p. 108). Elle apparat ainsi
comme la forme la plus englobante de libert, requrant certes la transformation pratique
du monde, mais galement la conscience thorique du fait que nous sommes effectivement libres. Dans cette perspective, il faut dire alors que cest bien par lactivit philosophique quadvient la libert.
La partie consacre Nietzsche (p. 121 226) suit une logique de dveloppement parallle la prcdente. Aprs stre interrog pareillement sur la place de la libert dans
cette pense anti-systmatique (chapitre 5), lauteur examine successivement la mtaphysique de la faiblesse et la volont dcadente, ainsi que son dpassement par la noblesse et
la forme plus consistante quy prend la libert (chapitre 6: The Freedom of Willing: Decadence and Nobility), avant de se pencher sur les limites affectant encore cette figure
noble de la libert et dindiquer en quoi elle est elle-mme dpasse par la grande sant
tragique, qui offrirait la seule figure vritablement accomplie de la libert (chapitre 7:
Freedom beyond Willing: From Nobility to Tragedy). La trajectoire sachve sur une
tude du langage tragique, en tant quil conditionne laccs la libert ralise, et en tant
quil dcoule de lexercice philosophique (chapitre 8: Freedom through Nietzsches Philosophy), chapitre qui constitue incontestablement lapport le plus original du livre. La
particularit principale de ce parcours est de prtendre engendrer ncessairement ces figures les unes partir des autres, donc de suivre une logique de dpassement conduisant
de la forme la plus inadquate de la libert des figures de plus en plus accomplies, selon
une logique qui voque de trs prs celle de lautodploiement hglien de la libert.

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Lauteur ouvre cette partie par quelques remarques mthodologiques, prcisant quil
ne sintressera pas au dveloppement de la pense nietzschenne, quil prendra en
compte la totalit du corpus, mais en ngligeant toute thmatique qui ne serait pas directement lie au problme des conditions de la dtermination de la libert choix mthodologique que contrebalance certes laffirmation que having read all of Nietzsches corpus, I am convinced that freedom is at issue throughout (p. 125).
Dcadence, noblesse et esprit tragique sont donc prsents tel est bien le prsuppos initial comme trois stades de la libert, que relierait une logique de dveloppement quil sagit de rechercher. Si le dcadent est celui qui prouve dans ses pulsions
une force indpendante contre laquelle il doit lutter, la situation peut prendre deux
formes: la dsagrgation de la volont tout dabord, le dsintressement dautre part.
La dsagrgation caractrise une pathologie de la faiblesse qui revient lincapacit
organiser son propre systme pulsionnel, accompagne de lincapacit supporter
la souffrance. La consquence en est, selon lauteur, la fuite face la ralit et la cration
dun vrai monde. Sagissant du second type, savoir le dsintressement, le sacrifice
de soi altruiste, lauteur en souligne principalement la coloration thorique, savoir
la tendance instaurer une mtaphysique entranant la perte progressive de laptitude
la connaissance, cette dernire tant caractrise spcifiquement par la recherche causale de lexplication des phnomnes (caractrisation rfre notamment au paragraphe 49 de LAntchrist). Toutefois, lauteur y insiste, cette dsastreuse mtaphysique
de la dcadence reprsente tout de mme un progrs en ce quelle permet de sauver
la volont, quand bien mme il ne sagit plus que dune volont voulant le nant
(p. 138 139).
En quoi la figure du type noble constitue-t-elle une avance par rapport cette situation? En ce que la libert exigerait selon lauteur que lon forge sa propre volont ce qui
ne caractrise pas la volont donne au faible par la moralit (p. 142). Laccs la libert
suppose donc que chacun se constitue comme un tout vivant, et matrise, en lorganisant,
le chaos produit par la destruction de la volont morale opration qui implique son
tour la promotion de lgosme, ainsi que la mobilisation adquate de laptitude loubli et
de la mmoire (p. 165 sq.). Avec la position de tables de valeurs nobles se trouverait donc
ralise la libration de la volont, ou la constitution dune volont indpendante, exprimant le caractre souverain de lindividu qui se donne ainsi une mesure, intgrant la diversit qui le constitue jusquau point o lincorporation reste possible, et excluant dun
mme geste ce qui ne peut tre assimil. Cest ce qui explique aussi que lindividu se spare
dsormais du troupeau, dont il refuse les moeurs et les opinions au profit de nouvelles
moeurs et de nouveaux jugements: The internal tyrannies of noble moralities are liberating because the virtues they codify and instill in people are invented out of personnal
needs, out of the conditions of the lives of their adherents, rather than [] out of respect
for the abstract concept of virtue itself (p. 172).
Nietzsche nen affirmerait pas moins quune telle libration demeure incomplte, en
croire lauteur, qui relve particulirement lindice suivant: si libre quelle soit par rapport la volont morale, la volont noble reste malgr tout prise dans une logique de fixit
du fait de la mesure quelle impose, et surtout, demeure dtermine par ce quelle exclut ce
faisant. Dtermine encore et toujours par une part dextriorit quelle ne saurait rsorber, la libert du noble reste donc incomplte. Cette inflexion montre bien le style de
lanalyse propose par W. Dudley dans louvrage. Ainsi quil laffirme de manire tout
fait explicite pour caractriser la limitation que nous venons de rapporter: The lesson to
be learned is a Hegelian one: independence cannot be won outside an other, but must be
won in the other (p. 176).

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Cest donc dans une combinaison de noblesse et de modernit, damnsie et de mmoire, de courage et de scepticisme, que lacte de se donner pleinement forme soimme, et donc la vritable libert, doit tre recherch. Ceci conduit lauteur la notion de
grande sant, qui organise llucidation de cette troisime figure, celle de lme tragique,
celle qui saura dire oui au monde par plnitude et saimera assez elle-mme pour tre capable daffirmer lternel retour du chaos. Lauteur relit la lumire de ce schme les notions desprit libre, damor fati et sefforce dinterprter lternel retour en un sens hybride, la fois mtaphysique et psychologique (p. 202). Le point le plus novateur est
toutefois offert par les pages sur lesquelles se referme le dernier temps de cette seconde
partie, o lauteur aborde la question des implications de la libert au sens tragique pour le
langage. La libert ne saurait se raliser sans la constitution dun langage qui permette de
faire lexprience du tragique, et en cela dpasse le langage communicationnel ordinaire:
The ultimate condition of freedom is therefore the practice of these activities that enable
tragic language to emerge (p. 213). Sur les transformations opres ici par Nietzsche, la
pratique de son criture et la construction dune gnalogie tragique (p. 226), lauteur
voque des pistes qui rencontrent parfois les analyses dsormais classiques consacres par
ric Blondel au statut du texte nietzschen (Nietzsche. Le corps et la culture. Paris 1986), bien
quil ne se rfre pas cet ouvrage. Il est certain que ces aperus sur le langage et son rle
dans la pratique de la philosophie mriteraient dtre plus gnreusement dveloppes,
mais en dpit de leur caractre conomique, ils sont coup sr lapport le plus stimulant
de louvrage.
Laccord de Hegel et de Nietzsche tiendrait ainsi leur commun refus de la comprhension librale de la libert, ainsi qu son interprtation la manire kantienne comme
autonomie: tre libre, ce serait bien se dterminer intgralement soi-mme, sans que subsiste de conditionnement partir dune extriorit non rsorbe. Cest pourquoi, selon W.
Dudley, Hegel et Nietzsche communient dans lassimilation de la vraie libert la pratique
de la philosophie (p. 230). La diffrence opposant encore Hegel et Nietzsche tient dans
ces conditions la manire dont ils comprennent la pratique philosophique, mais cest
justement ce qui permet lauteur daffirmer leur complmentarit: la compltude systmatique exige par la pense spculative et lincompltude perptuelle affirme par Nietzsche sont rconciliables si lon restreint le champ de la premire aux catgories, et celui du
second aux concepts non-catgoriaux (p. 236). Cest sur lindication de cette possibilit de
synthse, assortie dun appel aux hgliens et aux nietzschens se considrer mutuellement avec plus de srieux que se clt ltude.
Nous avons dit en quoi cette lecture comparative nous semblait stimulante. Elle dcle de fait des points de rapprochement ou des analogies intressantes au sujet de la libert. Nous voudrions pour finir mettre quelques rserves: de manire gnrale, lauteur
nous semble trop aligner largumentation nietzschenne sur celle de Hegel sagissant de
lincompltude de la libert. On ne voit pas, dans le corpus nietzschen, que dcadence,
noblesse et tragique soient prsents comme les trois temps exclusifs dun dveloppement ncessaire la typologie que constitue Nietzsche est dans les faits infiniment plus
diffrencie (nous renverrons sur ce point notre propre tude: P. Wotling: Nietzsche et le
problme de la civilisation. Paris 1995, rd. 1999, quatrime partie notamment). Et surtout,
louvrage nous parat souffrir dune lacune; car il faut reconnatre que ltude noffre pas la
confrontation qui simposerait avec les textes majeurs que Nietzsche consacre de manire
directe la rinterprtation des notions de libert ou de volont: limportant 19 de Pardel bien et mal nest par exemple pas pris en compte, et lon se limite une brve allusion
aux 38 (Mein Be g r if f von Freiheit) ou encore 41 (Freiheit, die ich n i ch t
meine ) des Streifzge du Crpuscule des idoles. Ces absences limitent la porte des conclu-

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sions, laissant parfois le sentiment que lon impose Nietzsche un costume qui nest pas le
sien. Mais il faut redire que cet ouvrage ouvre simultanment des perspectives extrmement enthousiasmantes, particulirement sur les questions du rle concret du langage et
du sens de la pratique philosophique.
2. Cest dans une perspective toute diffrente que Jurist dtecte une proximit entre
Hegel et Nietzsche puisque son approche, enracine demble dans les doctrines des deux
philosophes, est centre sur la notion de culture ou plus exactement sur le rapport de la
philosophie la culture: The subject of the interdependence of philosophy and culture is
a natural starting point for the rethinking of the relationship between Hegel and Nietzsche that I undertake in this book (p. 20). Cette proximit entre les deux penseurs tiendrait avant tout leur commune condamnation de ce que lauteur nomme le mythe cartsien, cest--dire la ncessit dun isolement culturel et social pour parvenir atteindre le
vrai (chapitre 1: The Culture of Philosophy). Toute lambition de lauteur dans la suite
de louvrage sera alors dindiquer en quoi Hegel et Nietzsche se rencontrent la fois dans
la tche dexpertise de la culture contemporaine (chapitre 4: Modern Culture), mais
aussi, pralablement, dans les grandes lignes de caractrisation de la culture (chapitre 2:
The Philosophy of Culture), ainsi que dans lassignation du rle de point de repre,
voire de norme, la culture grecque antique (chapitre 3: Ancient Greek Culture). L ne
sarrtent pas les parallles selon lauteur: toute la seconde et volumineuse partie de louvrage sefforce dindiquer en quoi chez lun et lautre penseur, cest la notion dagency qui
permet de dfinir un remde aux dficiences et insatisfactions propres la culture
contemporaine. Aprs une prsentation de la notion et de ses dterminations fondamentales, appuye notamment sur la rflexion de Charles Taylor (chapitre 5: On the Concept
of Agency), E. L. Jurist consacre deux fois quatre chapitres explorer le sens que Hegel
(chapitre 6 9), puis Nietzsche (chapitres 10 13) donnent cette notion et la manire
dont elle sinvestit dans leurs analyses. Les squences danalyse strictement hgliennes
ou nietzschennes sont frquemment prolonges par des ouvertures, notamment en direction de lcole de Francfort, ou, dans le cas de Nietzsche, de la philosophie et de la psychanalyse franaises contemporaines. Le parcours obit donc une progression relativement linaire dans son principe dont la logique correspond la commune identification
dune difficult, puis la tentative de rsolution.
Lauteur indique dentre de jeu son opposition la vision classique qui rduit Hegel
et Nietzsche des opposs en rcusant toute possibilit dun rel change. Bien au
contraire, lexamen impartial met en relief un nombre important de points de consensus
ordinairement ngligs, ce qui justifie entirement la volont de lauteur de se mettre
lcoute de ce dialogue (p. 2). Bien que Hegel sinscrive plus manifestement dans la ligne
de la tradition philosophique, tous deux consacrent en fait avant tout une rupture fondamentale par rapport la comprhension des conditions de lexercice philosophique, et
cest sur le terrain de cette contestation partage du geste par lequel Descartes inaugure la
philosophie moderne que lon dsignera du nom de mythe cartsien que se rvle
une profonde proximit que masquerait le simple examen des doctrines. Les deux philosophes en appellent en effet selon lauteur la rvaluation de lpistmologie ainsi qu
lexploration pousse des motivations du connatre et de ses retombes positives pour la
vie. On note ds les premires pages du livre un accent psychologique de lanalyse qui ne
se dmentira pas par la suite, et peut certes surprendre lorsque lauteur lapplique Hegel.
Toujours est-il que pour les deux philosophes, la philosophie est bien un produit de la culture, ce qui impose dsormais lun et lautre la tche de penser la culture, et de poser
le problme de son apprciation: Nietzsche comme Hegel sont habits par lambition de

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dire lauto-apprhension de la culture moderne, et particulirement de faire prendre

conscience de ses dfauts. Lide centrale sera alors la conceptualisation de linsatisfaction
propre la modernit, tenant sa situation de division et dalination, laquelle offre un
contraste tranch par rapport la culture grecque antique, caractrise comme monde de
lintgration et du chez soi (chapitre 3). La culture grecque est en effet interprte dans les
deux cas comme une culture saine qui rflchit sur elle-mme, les deux penseurs accordant une mme importance la tragdie dont il font un rvlateur de la situation du
monde moderne.
Dans les pages quil consacre la caractrisation de la culture (chapitre 2), lauteur distingue trois strates constitutives: les moeurs, la Bildung, et lexploration de soi. Lapprciation de ces facteurs, chaque fois prsente, varie cependant selon le penseur considr.
Les moeurs seraient lobjet propre de la tragdie selon lauteur: cette dernire sattacherait
exprimer les conflits internes au monde objectif en tant quils rsultent du problme de
la validit des moeurs. Nietzsche en resterait cependant une analyse des moeurs plus ngative que Hegel, voyant essentiellement en elles des limitations illgitimes. Sur ce point, il
nest pas certain que lauteur restitue pleinement la porte de lenqute nietzschenne, ngligeant notre sens la valeur formatrice et surtout axiologiquement transformatrice que
Nietzsche leur accorde. La Bildung quant elle exprime linsatisfaction naissant de lidentification de la culture au monde objectif des moeurs. De nouveau, Nietzsche serait ici
plus critique que Hegel, dnonant dans la Bildung moderne un facteur de contamination
par le christianisme et la superficialit bourgeoise. Mais Hegel comme Nietzsche se retrouveraient en dcelant dans cette forme moderne de la paideia une premire version de
lagency. Lexploration de soi, self-fathoming, mle alors le subjectif et lobjectif, et apparat
quand le subjectif prend le pas sur lobjectif. Trait propre la situation moderne selon
lauteur, elle nous contraint penser comment nous sommes anims par la culture. Cet
tat de choses implique une rupture par rapport la tradition et la construction de rponses aux problmes poss par la culture prsente la spcificit des modes de pense qui
en rsultent, identifis par Jurist la phnomnologie et la gnalogie, tant dorganiser
une rsistance active face ltat contemporain de la culture, et de contraindre simultanment le lecteur la participation. Fondamentalement, lapprciation nietzschenne de
la culture moderne contiendrait selon Jurist certains lments hgliens (p. 104), et de
manire plus large, on peut aller jusqu affirmer que Hegel and Nietzsche might agree
that the problem of modern culture lies [in] its failure to promote a genuine subjectivity in
which the self is not subject to extreme vicissitudes of self-involvement or dependence on
others. Si lon accorde ce constat, la consquence en est selon lauteur que Both thinkers
believe that, in the absence of an adequate notion of agency, satisfaction will be missing in
modern culture (p. 106).
Telle est la question dont traite alors la seconde partie de louvrage, toujours sur la
base de cette ide que les positions de Hegel et de Nietzsche sont complmentaires plutt
quantagonistes. Les diffrences, malgr tout relles, aux solution avances pour rsoudre
le problme de la culture ainsi compris, tiendraient largement aux changements culturels
intervenus dans le cours du XIXe sicle.
Se tournant dabord vers Hegel, pour tudier de manire trs dtaille quelques moments privilgis de la Phnomnologie de lesprit, Jurist sefforce de montrer principalement
que lagency est loeuvre dans le concept de reconnaissance, quelle sexprime dans lintgration du rapport soi et du rapport autrui. Importante est cet gard lanalyse quil
consacre la distinction des trois figures du moi de la personne lgale, du moi cultiv et
du moi moral. Toute pense de la reconnaissance est absente chez Nietzsche, et il est certes beaucoup plus difficile de lui attribuer une vritable thorie de lagency, ce qui conduit

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lauteur inflchir son analyse pour soutenir que lon trouve cependant dans sa rflexion
une thorie de l integrated agency, loeuvre dans la capacit choisir ce qui promeut la
vie ou non, et que lauteur dcompose en quatre facteurs (chapitre 10, p. 219); quest galement prsente chez Nietzsche une thorie de l anti-agency (dnonciation de lide
dagent, promotion de la philosophie de Dionysos); quautrui est constitutif de lagency (ce
que montrerait limportance accorde la cruaut et lexploitation notamment), mme
si elle est contrebalance par lloge de la solitude (chapitre 12). Partout prsente mais jamais thorise (chapitre 13, p. 261), lagency nietzschenne prsente des traits qui la distinguent de lagency hglienne: son rapport la connaissance par exemple, fortement valorise par Hegel alors quelle nintresse Nietzsche que si elle permet de bien vivre; sa
limitation encore, du fait que Nietzsche dfend la ncessit de faire droit lirrationnel et
aux sources primitives qui gouvernent lagir humain. Il demeure selon lauteur quune
mme, et nouvelle, comprhension de la culture se dgage chez les deux auteurs. Les dernires pages de louvrage font le point sur les implications de lenqute. Hegel a le premier
mis en vidence la base intersubjective de lagency; Nietzsche a inaugur la pense dune
agency dcentre: deux aspect complmentaires de la notion (p. 286 287), ainsi quen a tmoign la psychanalyse. Cest sur limportance de laffectivit et de lintersubjectivit dans
lagency humaine que sachve le texte: en ce sens Hegel anticipates Nietzsche, even
though Nietzsche embarks on a new direction that is not entirely new (p. 289).
Ltude de Jurist est la fois trs riche et souvent paradoxale, cherchant dceler chez
Nietzsche la trace de notions dont il prsente la rcusation thorique rcusation que
lauteur nignore pas et mentionne plusieurs reprises. On regrette parfois que la multiplication des rfrences, ventuellement succinctes, aux commentateurs ou continuateurs
tende brouiller quelque peu le propos. Mais pour ce qui est de ses lignes essentielles, elle
vise sans doute juste lorsquelle sefforce, pour situer ce qui fait jusqu un certain point
la communaut de la pense spculative et de la rflexion nietzschenne, de pointer leur
commun dpassement dun mode de pense antrieur, caractristique dune comprhension de la philosophie que lun et lautre rcusent pour son incompltude, son caractre
jug dans un cas abstrait, dans lautre superficiel. Ltude de lagency elle-mme peut laisser
plus rserv, et lauteur ne nous semble pas accorder suffisamment de place la rflexion
nietzschenne sur les valeurs le coeur vritable du problme de la culture , ni la problmatique des conditions dun renversement des valeurs. Mais il demeure que cet ouvrage suggre des perspectives souvent novatrices qui mritent dtre suivies.
3. Ltude de Stephen Houlgate, rdition en prsentation paperback de louvrage
paru en 1986 chez le mme diteur, rpond un esprit tout fait diffrent, beaucoup plus
classique dans ses ambitions et ses modes dinterrogation, qui relvent de lhistoire de la
philosophie au sens continental du terme. Contrairement aux deux tudes prcdentes,
qui cherchent mettre en vidence la complmentarit des deux philosophes, lobjectif de
la confrontation propose ici est clairement de montrer la supriorit de la pense hglienne jusque dans les domaines o la rflexion nietzschenne semble la plus novatrice,
voire la plus rvolutionnaire (p. IX). Hegel joue donc comme rvlateur des failles de lentreprise nietzschenne.
Dans un premier chapitre (The Hegel-Nietzsche Debate), lauteur commence par
justifier le projet de comparaison en ladossant lide (dfendue par exemple par G. Deleuze) que Hegel reprsenterait la cible principale de Nietzsche. Mais lauteur rappelle
galement trois autres modes de justification plus positifs de cette entreprise. Les deux
premiers ont t formuls par W. A. Kaufmann: il sagit dabord de la prsence de convergences danalyse dont Kaufmann soulignait le caractre stupfiant, et dont il voyait no-

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tamment la trace dans la proximit de la pense hglienne de lAufhebung et de lanalyse

nietzschenne de la Vergeistigung. Le second tient ce que ces deux penseurs du XIXe sicle sont ceux qui ont exerc linfluence la plus importante sur lorientation ultrieure de
lensemble de la philosophie. Le dernier argument est emprunt cette fois D. Breazeale,
qui dtectait en effet chez les deux penseurs la volont den finir avec la mtaphysique
pour instaurer un mode de pense nouveau. Et cest bien cette perspective qui joue un
rle dcisif dans linvestigation que nous propose S. Houlgate. Mais sur cette base, la comparaison entre Hegel et Nietzsche a pris trois formes, et lauteur distingue les commentateurs soucieux de prendre la dfense de Nietzsche (parfois au prix de linfidlit la pense hglienne), les commentateurs mettant laccent sur les convergences, et enfin les
commentateurs critiquant Nietzsche avec des arguments hgliens, groupe dans lequel
S. Houlgate reconnat se classer. Lobjectif gnral de ltude est indiqu avec une grande
clart ds ces premires pages: mettre en vidence la commune critique du dualisme
considr par les deux philosophes comme caractristique de la mtaphysique, do le
titre de louvrage , mais pour montrer que Nietzsche nen respecte pas toutes les consquences: Nietzsches critique of metaphysics is based upon the opposition of life and
metaphysical understanding [], but [] within Nietzsches own terms this opposition is
itself a metaphysical one (p. 22).
Lauteur se penche dans un second temps sur la connaissance que Nietzsche possdait
de Hegel (chapitre deux: Nietzsches View of Hegel): essentiellement une connaissance
de seconde main ses yeux, dont les sources principales (prcises par lidentification
de sources secondaires) seraient Schopenhauer, Burckhardt et Lange. Parler de sources
nimplique cependant pas une reprise lidentique, et lauteur montre fort bien en quoi
Nietzsche apporte des inflexions trs nettes ces auteurs, notamment Schopenhauer, surtout dans les annes 1880 (p. 26 29). Sefforant de dessiner limage gnrale de Hegel
prsente chez Nietzsche, S. Houlgate pense reprer une certaine volution: critiquant au
dpart Hegel pour son incomprhension de la relativit de toute science, pour son langage et pour son optimisme historique (p. 32), Nietzsche en viendrait lui reconnatre le
mrite davoir introduit lide de dveloppement en philosophie (FW, 354 notamment),
tout en lui reprochant son incapacit penser la mort de Dieu (p. 36), et son inaptitude
enseigner lindpendance desprit et la responsabilit (p. 35 36). Au bout du compte,
Hegel resterait un ouvrier de la philosophie, incapable de crer et de promouvoir des
valeurs nouvelles ( JGB, 211). Lauteur considre ces critiques comme partiellement
fondes sur une mcomprhension de Hegel, qui est pourtant jusqu un certain point un
alli de Nietzsche dans sa lutte contre la mtaphysique.
Il est donc ncessaire dentreprendre une enqute sur leur position respective lgard
de la mtaphysique, ce que propose le trs ample et trs dtaill troisime chapitre dans le
cas de Nietzsche (Nietzsche and Metaphysics, p. 38 95). Il faut dabord souligner la remarquable information dont tmoigne ce chapitre, qui constitue presque une tude autonome prsentant en modle rduit les lignes organisatrices de la pense nietzschenne.
Aucun des trois autres ouvrages que nous examinons ne fait preuve dune matrise aussi
pousse de lesprit de cette philosophie, des stratgies quelle met en oeuvre et de leurs retombes sur le statut de lcriture nietzschenne, souvent dcrites avec une grande subtilit qui parvient viter les piges constamment tendus au lecteur. Lauteur examine la caractrisation de la mtaphysique et sa critique, ses liens avec la critique du langage, avant
dexposer dune part le perspectivisme la faveur duquel Nietzsche roriente linvestigation philosophique et ses objectifs, dautre part son utilisation anti-mtaphysique du langage, pour conclure de manire polmique sur une critique de la critique nietzschenne.
Sagissant de la mtaphysique, lauteur relve dabord la manire dont Nietzsche y dcle

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lhostilit lgard du changement, pour soutenir que tout est devenu; point partir duquel il restitue la critique des grandes positions communes de la mtaphysique: croyance
la substance, ltre, promotion de lide de Dieu, de lide dme, critique de la volont libre (p. 41 sq.). Se dgage alors le second trait, plus radical, de la caractrisation, la
croyance aux oppositions, dnonce notamment dans JGB, 2: In Nietzsches view, it is
this belief that there are Gegenstze in the world which constitues the most fundamental
characteristic of metaphysical thinking (p. 43). Passant ltude du langage, lauteur relve que sil nest pas la cause lui seul de la croyance aux fictions mtaphysiques (identit,
substantialit, ), il conforte cette tendance, se rvlant inapte dire le changement. La
pense mtaphysique est donc celle qui croit la ralit des idaux dfendus par le langage
(p. 45). Nietzsche ne prtendant pas remplacer les pseudo-vrits de la mtaphysique par
ses propres vrits, sachant en outre, contrairement celle-ci, que tout langage est inluctablement falsificateur, lauteur est conduit poser le problme du statut de ses affirmations. Ici apparat une thse originale, dont louvrage tirera parti pour sa critique ultrieure: Nietzsche admettrait selon lauteur une diffrence fondamentale entre connatre et
sentir sa critique du langage ne pouvant senraciner que dans une comprhension prlinguistique de la vie (p. 51). Nietzsche oppose donc un mode dinterprtation humaine
superficiel un mode dinterprtation plus complexe, articul notre monde dinstincts, de
sensations et de sentiments, constituant ce qui est rel dans notre exprience. Les vrits de Nietzsche lauteur prend garde juste titre de les placer entre guillemets sont
donc bien des mtaphorisations interprtatives, perspectivistes, qui ne sont pas plus
vraies que les thses mtaphysiques mais sen distinguent en ce quelles permettent de savoir que ce monde est falsifi, et dautre part en ce quelles sont plus appropries la description du devenir et du chaos. Lauteur, tout hostile Nietzsche quil soit sur le fond, a le
trs grand mrite de restituer lextraordinaire cohrence de sa position, qui trouble si aisment le commentateur, lincitant parfois dnoncer prmaturment des contradictions.
S. Houlgate en tire alors la consquence suivante: le critre de vrit dont use Nietzsche
se ramenant finalement son exprience personnelle, et constituant du mme coup un
appel lexprience du lecteur, toute critique rationnelle de sa position devient impossible; la seule manire de critiquer Nietzsche sera donc de montrer que la subordination du
langage et de la raison lexprience et la vie repose sur des prsupposs quil drive luimme du langage quil critique (p. 55). Avant den venir l, lauteur rappelle les grandes lignes du perspectivisme: articulation de la production des interprtations la satisfaction
dinstincts particuliers, ncessit de la production dillusions celles de la mtaphysique
supprimant la vie alors que Nietzsche laffirme (p. 58) , modification de la notion de
force (de ces analyses, remarquables en rgle gnrale, on contestera toutefois laffirmation de la p. 62, selon laquelle les forces seraient pour Nietzsche quelque chose indpendamment de leurs relations). Il prcise encore en quoi Nietzsche bouleverse la nature
mme du questionnement philosophique, soulignant juste titre le statut hypothtique de
la pense de la volont de puissance, rappelant lexceptionnelle importance de la mditation sur la mthode et ses exigences ( JGB, 36), ainsi que le critre dapprciation de la
valeur des interprtations (p. 72). La rorientation de la philosophie tient ainsi ce quelle
na plus pour tche de produire des vrits, mais de favoriser un mode dtre suprieur.
Suivent de trs belles analyses relatives au statut particulier du langage de Nietzsche, de sa
dimension anti-mtaphysique, dont lauteur souligne quelques procdures essentielles
(reprise mtaphorique du lexique philosophique classique, utilisation polmique des termes mtaphysiques, etc.). Lauteur note toutefois la persistance de certains modes dopposition, Nietzsche ne pouvant produire un dpassement immanent de la mtaphysique
du fait quil ne possde pas de pense de lAufhebung: cest bien ici que seffectue larticu-

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lation capitale de ltude, qui bascule dsormais dans la prsentation de la critique laquelle prterait selon lauteur lentreprise nietzschenne (p. 89 95). En effet, quoi quil en
soit de la profonde originalit de la pense nietzschenne, il resterait un divorce essentiel
entre tre et devenir, entre ralit et apparence, entre vie et langage. Si lon admet, comme
y invite lauteur, que ces distinctions restent dorigine linguistique, Nietzsche demeurerait
dtermin par le langage dont il a pourtant rcus les suggestions, de sorte quil se placerait lui-mme en situation de contradiction. Loriginalit de lattaque de S. Houlgate
consiste essayer dappliquer Nietzsche ses propres critres: Within his own terms,
therefore, Nietzsche remains a metaphysical thinker, because he employs a metaphysical
distinction in order to reject metaphysical categories (p. 90). La manire dont Nietzsche
a conduit son attaque tait donc contradictoire, inapte surmonter des dichotomies
quelle ne peut pas non plus justifier, de sorte que cest Hegel, et non Nietzsche, qui aux
yeux de lauteur, parvient effectivement rsoudre ces contradictions.
Il convient de signaler que le problme que rencontre ici lauteur (la prsence ou labsence dune thorie de lAufhebung chez Nietzsche et ses consquences) est justement lun
de ceux qui ont t le plus fortement renouvels par le commentarisme nietzschen
contemporain, particulirement en Allemagne; les travaux de W. Stegmaier son ouvrage
Philosophie der Fluktuanz. Dilthey und Nietzsche (Gttingen 1992, en particulier p. 299 sq.),
auquel sajoute son article Die Substanz muss Fluktuanz werden. Nietzsches Aufhebung
der Hegelschen Dialektik (in: Berliner Debatte Initial 12.4 (2001), p. 3 12) , ou encore le
livre de C. Zittel, Selbstaufhebungsfiguren bei Nietzsche (Wrzburg 1995), qui soulignent limportance de premier plan de la pense de la Selbstaufhebung dans la rflexion nietzschenne,
conduiraient nuancer considrablement la thse dfendue par S. Houlgate.
Les chapitres 4 7 se proposent alors dexposer pour elle-mme la logique de la pense hglienne et dexpertiser en particulier son rapport la mtaphysique. Aprs avoir indiqu que la proximit de Hegel et Nietzsche dans leur lutte anti-mtaphysique tient leur
commun rejet du dualisme, lauteur tudie au point de vue hglien la mtaphysique, lempirisme et le criticisme (chapitre 4: Hegel and Metaphysics): la critique de la mtaphysique dveloppe par ces deux derniers courants reste inadquate en ce quelle ne sappuie
pas sur la remise en cause des oppositions conceptuelles, qui continue donc, de fait, vicier ces trois comprhensions de la philosophie. A Nietzsche, on la vu, lauteur fait le reproche de ne critiquer la mtaphysique qu partir de rgles qui lui sont extrieures: Hegel
en revanche prsente cette spcificit de produire une critique vraiment immanente, qui
dissout le dualisme en rvlant la complexit dialectique inhrente chaque catgorie, rvlant ainsi la vie spcifique qui habite la raison. Le chapitre 5 (Speculative Thought and
Language in Hegels Philosophy prcise cette logique propre au spculatif en exposant
son caractre de philosophie sans fondation dabord, puis en se penchant sur la proposition spculative et ses implications. La conclusion quen tire S. Houlgate est que Hegel,
contrairement Nietzsche, ne critique pas la mtaphysique partir dune exprience prlinguistique, celle que prtendait dceler le chapitre 3. Les chapitres 6 et 7 se penchent
alors sur le statut spculatif du jugement, son rapport la proposition spculative et ses
consquences pour le discours hglien, dpassement du discours ordinaire, puis sur le
caractre social de la notion hglienne de sujet, dans le but de montrer limmanence de la
rationalit dialectique la conscience: ce qui dsamorce la critique que, selon lauteur,
Nietzsche adresse Hegel, celle de rester un philosophe de lIde transcendante.
Ltude se clt, de manire un peu surprenante, sur un chapitre consacr comparer
lanalyse de la tragdie chez lun et lautre penseur. Lauteur voit dans cette question, en effet, le meilleur indicateur des diffrences entre les deux conceptions de la vie qui sopposent travers les deux philosophes (p. 184). Si pour Hegel la tragdie rvle, sur un mode

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esthtique, la vrit dialectique de lhomme et de la nature, que le christianisme et surtout

la pense spculative exprimeront avec plus dadquation, pour Nietzsche, en revanche,
elle clbre la vitalit naturelle et instinctive de lhomme, glorifiant the heroism of
confrontation (p. 218), vcue par le hros et transfigure par lartiste tragique.
Lanalyse de la tragdie ainsi prsente laisse coup sr un got dinachev, pour ne
pas dire dinfidlit, qui contraste avec les chapitres antrieurs. La logique de la transfiguration dionysiaque semble quelque peu oublie, et quant faire de Nietzsche un chantre
de lhrosme, on sait quel point Ecce Homo suggre de sen garder (Warum ich so gute
Bcher schreibe, 1). Pour ce qui est de la thse centrale de louvrage, de fait trs hglienne dans son orientation puisquelle revient reprocher une soumission lextriorit,
on peut certes se demander si elle pouse bien la logique suivie par Nietzsche: ce nest
sans doute pas en effet au nom dune opposition plus fondamentale que celui-ci critique
les oppositions du dualisme mtaphysique, mais bien davantage au nom de la diffrence
de valeur entre les diverses productions dont est susceptible le jeu interprtatif quest la
ralit, de leur aptitude perdurer et sintensifier, ou de leur logique dauto-annihilation:
cest donc bien plutt lhomognit de toute ralit qu un clivage originaire que reconduit lexprience de pense nietzschenne. Mais quoi quil en soit de la pertinence prte in fine la thse avance, on doit reconnatre que sur le fond, la tentative de confrontation est vraiment mene dans un esprit philosophique et ne peut que stimuler la
rflexion et le dbat.
4. La dernire tentative dinstauration dun dialogue est due Grard Lebrun, lminent commentateur rcemment disparu, qui lon doit notamment deux ouvrages majeurs, lun sur Hegel (La patience du concept. Essai sur le discours hglien. Paris 1972), et lautre
sur Kant (Kant et la fin de la mtaphysique. Paris 1970, rd. Paris 2003). Cette publication
posthume dun texte paru uniquement au Brsil en traduction portugaise, mais rdig en
franais, sinscrit dans la suite du projet mis en oeuvre dans le premier texte mentionn cidessus, le projet dinterroger le hglianisme non comme une doctrine, mais comme un
langage, perspective assez proche, on le voit, de celle quadopte frquemment Nietzsche
dans dautres contextes, et qui explique le parti que tire cette tude de la philologie philosophique labore par celui-ci: il ne sagit pas dexposer doctrinalement la structure de la
dialectique, mas de dterminer certaines des options quelle implique (p. 17). Lauteur
prcise son angle dinvestigation en indiquant que la dialectique part de lide que les lves sont dans lignorance du sens des mots quils emploient, do lide d analyser quelques thmes hgliens, simplement pour montrer que la dialectique demeure, invitablement, prise certains choix smantiques (p. 21). On saperoit alors que la radicalit de la
pense spculative est peut-tre plus apparente quil ne semble, que la raison hglienne
pourrait bien tre expose au mme type de critique que celles quelle adresse sans cesse
lentendement. Peut-tre occulte-t-elle, elle aussi, ses prsupposs: Nietzsche joue donc
ici comme un rvlateur de cet envers de la dialectique, de sorte que le projet de G. Lebrun constitue linversion quasi-parfaite de celui de S. Houlgate! Prcisons avant den examiner le dtail que lon retrouve avec motion dans ce texte les qualits stimulantes de
lauteur, tout particulirement son art de mobiliser, en un style vif et captivant, lessentiel
des grands relais de la tradition philosophique pour interroger le sens des dplacements
oprs par tel ou tel mode de pense ou mettre en relief des continuits insouponnes.
Louvrage, divis en six chapitres, souvre sur une partie intitule la vritable thodice, qui prend pour objet la philosophie de lhistoire de Hegel. Lobjectif en est dinterroger le type de logique qui sy exprime, et de rvler que celle-ci est lauto-abolition de la
finitude, labstraction du fini qui se supprime (p. 29). Dire lhistoire revient ainsi com-

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prendre lvnementiel comme une dissolution ncessaire (p. 33). Or, cest justement le
sens de cette promotion du devenir qui doit tre interrog selon lauteur, et cest ici que la
mditation nietzschenne ouvre des perspectives clairantes. En sappuyant sur la seconde Considration inactuelle et les textes de la priode de Ble, lauteur entreprend une
enqute sur le pessimisme quest susceptible dengendrer la connaissance historique.
Nietzsche remarque en effet quil tient au droit reconnu cette dernire de dominer
intgralement le devenir, de le traiter comme intgralement intelligible, tel le vieillard recueillant le sens de sa vie tout entire: De mme que le vieillard, lIde nattend plus rien
(p. 53). Cette complaisance au crpusculaire (p. 53) est bien ce qui fait problme et mrite dtre analys: le sentiment dtre au soir de quelque chose, sans attente daucune
aube, est la transposition moderne de la vieille obsession du Jugement dernier (p. 53).
Lauteur montre trs bien, ce point, en quoi se modifie profondment le type de reproche que lon est en droit dadresser Hegel: on ne lui reproche plus dsormais, comme le
faisait encore Schopenhauer, de prsenter le devenir comme souverain et de nous dtourner de lternel, mais tout linverse, sous couvert de dfendre le devenir, de le ravaler
sournoisement la dissolution du devenu: A y mieux regarder, on saperoit que la
fonction du Werden hglien est de rpudier ce qui est en devenir (p. 54). voquant lautre comprhension de la thodice, la vritable justification du devenir quavance par
exemple La philosophie lpoque tragique des Grecs dans les paragraphes consacrs Hraclite, lauteur rappelle trs pertinemment quaux yeux de Nietzsche, si le devenir est justice,
ce nest nullement parce que tout fait accompli serait automatiquement la meilleure occurrence possible [], mais au contraire parce quil ny a aucune justice institue dont il
serait la duplication qui viendrait sinscrire en lui comme dans les thodices classiques
[] (p. 70). Cette justice identifie linnocence, source du pessimisme des forts, montre
quel point la critique que Nietzsche rend possible est plus puissante que celle de Feuerbach ou de Marx, qui revient toujours reprocher au systme hglien un excs dabstraction. Ce que Nietzsche a en effet su dceler, cest quavant dtre une idologie, la pense
hglienne est un indicateur smantique qui fait en sorte que le sens de certains mots
ici devenir demeure inflexiblement marqu (p. 72), et maintienne ou radicalise une
dcision ancienne ici la dcision chrtienne concernant lessence du devenir.
Nietzsche est rest tout fait extrieur lunivers hglien et aux querelles de chapelles qui lanimrent, souligne G. Lebrun: mais cette distance est bien ce qui lui a permis de
tenter une lecture vraiment philologique, exigeant une interrogation sur le sens des mots, et
cest en cela, selon lauteur, que sa critique est plus puissante que celle des pro- ou antihgliens de profession.
Dans la seconde partie, la puissance sans la force, cest la thorie hglienne de
ltat qui retient lattention; la continuit du propos est toutefois parfaite puisquil sagit
pour lauteur de se demander si la situation releve dans le chapitre prcdent propos de
lhistoire et de sa critique philologique se vrifie encore dans le cas de lanalyse hglienne
du pouvoir. Il est inutile de souligner limportance de ce champ dans le hglianisme; il est
essentiel en revanche dabandonner une vision volutive courante mais rductrice pour
reconnatre que lvolution politique de Hegel nest pas le reniement de sa jeunesse (p. 73).
Quelques traits fondamentaux de la manire de penser le pouvoir et la force demeurent en
effet, quel que soit leur champ dinvestissement particulier: perdurent ainsi, en dpit des
volutions doctrinales, la critique de la soumission une autorit extrieure, mais aussi la
mfiance du philosophe lgard de la force et de la domination, aussi bien que linterprtation de linstitution politique comme annulation du rapport de force. Le vrai triomphe de la puissance est bien dtre dispens de contraindre (p. 101). On rencontre l selon Lebrun une articulation de pense caractristique du hglianisme, dont on imagine

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sans peine que ses implications dpassent de loin le champ de la seule politique et informent par exemple la comprhension mme de la dialectique. Pour Hegel [] les diverses
formes de la puissance (espacement hirarchique, commandement et obissance, droit de
punir ) doivent pouvoir tre comprises sous la forme apaisante dune communication
entre semblables communication dont la violence signifie laberrante interruption
(p. 101). Si la plus haute puissance est pense comme effacement de la force, il tait invitable que Hegel voie dans la philosophie authentique laptitude mettre fin au polemos
(p. 106). Cest bien pourquoi la dialectique nest pas agonale on remarquera au passage
que lanalyse dfendue ici par G. Lebrun, dans le but de souligner la puissance de la rflexion de Nietzsche, entre paradoxalement en conflit avec la thse que soutient explicitement ce dernier dans le 8 du Problme de Socrate (Gtzen-Dmmerung), le succs du
procd socratique en Grce sexpliquant justement selon ce texte en ce quil promeut
une rsurgence originale de lagn: la dialectique a dcidment lart des retours inattendus!
Toujours est-il que cette position gnrale a de nouveau de quoi veiller la curiosit philologique: ainsi que le montre lauteur, cette conception prte en effet le flanc la critique
nietzschenne lorsquelle sinterroge sur le sens que peut avoir la notion de pouvoir pour
quil soit lgitime dexiger que lon en rende raison. Nietzsche rappelle de fait quil y a l
une dcision et non une vidence puisquil en allait bien autrement dans la Grce davant
le triomphe de la dialectique, celle qui bannissait lhomme suprieur parce qu il te la
comptition tout intrt (p. 103), et non parce quil est potentiellement un oppresseur.
Comment sexplique, depuis, cette connivence de tous, y compris des ennemis jurs (le libralisme et le socialisme par exemple, que Nietzsche critique galement), cet accord relativement au mythe (p. 93) dune puissance qui pourrait tre dmunie de tout appareil
oppressif ? Cette comprhension est bien celle qui est loeuvre dans les Principes de la philosophie du droit, et lauteur peut ainsi affirmer que Hegel a su retrouver le langage commun
dans lequel convergent toutes les penses politiques: de sorte que cest bien la topique,
la smantique de Hegel qui fait problme (p. 116) et cest cela que Nietzsche sattaque en substituant cette puissance la notion de jeu, qui demeurera lun des traits de la volont de puissance: Le jeu nous oblige remonter en de de loption inavoue qui substitua au rgime du simple dploiement de la force celui de la juste rpartition de la puissance (p. 120
sq.). Critiquant ainsi la rationalit, cest bien, selon lauteur, une mentalit globale que
Nietzsche permet de dmanteler: celle qui orienta lensemble de la philosophie dAristote
Hegel, la rglant sur un prjug fondamental, actif aussi bien sur le plan pratique que sur
le plan thorique, qui acclimata lide que bien-vivre est le contraire de dominer, et que
penser revient toujours arbitrer le jeu des forces. Nietzsche naura pas eu tort dans ces
conditions de souponner la philosophie de stre laisse guider par un besoin de scurit;
toutefois, ainsi que le souligne lauteur, plus importante que son contenu est loriginalit
du soupon nietzschen, quil interprte comme lenqute recherchant sous les mots les
interdits qui spcifient insidieusement un certain type de domination.
Cest cette ide que prolonge du reste le chapitre 3, intitul Le grand soupon.
G. Lebrun radicalise dsormais le propos: le soupon a dabord affaire ce qui va sans dire
dans un texte (ou un langage); il se propose toujours didentifier linterprtation dtermine que confirme sa manire de nommer les choses. Le soupon ne critique donc pas
demble: il commence par questionner, sur un mode philologique, de sorte que Nietzsche vise bien plutt une neutralisation (p. 139) quune destruction. Et cest bien en cela
que la rflexion nietzschenne est, aux yeux de lauteur, fconde quand il sagit dinterroger lhistoire de la philosophie. Souponner, en effet, cest mettre en vidence un rseau
interprtatif l o lon pensait quil ny avait quun contenu positif inquestionnable, quun
principe dune vidence inattaquable. Lexemple de la comprhension du savoir est ici

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473

clairante: elle dvoile lomniprsence du rgne de la crainte en philosophie, savoir la

crainte du chaos, de labsence de rgularit; le savoir ainsi souponn rvle quil tait
une interprtation destine bloquer la possibilit mme de craindre, dissiper la crainte
de la crainte (p. 161). Cette vision trs fine du soupon permet du mme coup de saisir
loriginalit foncire de lambition nietzschenne, par exemple de comprendre en quoi il
est aberrant de prter lide de volont de puissance un sens dogmatique, de la rduire
par exemple un nouveau principe (biologique, ou mtaphysique, etc.), et cest l un point
admirablement expos dans louvrage: on voit combien lanalyseur volont de puissance sert moins enraciner la connaissance dans le biologique qu dmonter les
impostures en loccurrence, limposture mtaphysique, commise au profit de certains
vivants [] (p. 161). Brisant le rgime ordinaire de la rfutation, le soupon doit ainsi se
comprendre comme linvitation faite lhomme de redevenir le matre de sa propre force
dinterprter.
Nous ne ferons quvoquer les trois dernires parties de ltude: en effet, si la rfrence Nietzsche sestompe fortement dans le chapitre 4, elle disparat totalement des
chapitres 5 et 6, qui suivent une autre inflexion, toujours aussi passionnante au demeurant. Le quatrime chapitre (La douceur de craindre) interroge le statut de la bonne
contrainte chez Hegel, dans le cadre de lducation du sujet dans sa singularit, et de son
lvation la libert. Lauteur y indique que cette contrainte nen est jamais vraiment une,
et surtout que la dialectique sest faite linterprte dun choix vital, celui qui oppose la
ngation abstraite une autre faon de mourir: mourir au fini. Les chapitres 5 (Le thme
du cercle) et 6 (Le cercle des cercles), se proposent quant eux de rechercher []
quelles sont les flexions originaires (presque toutes aristotliciennes []) avec lesquelles
travailla la dialectique pour monter la plus belle pice de sa collection: lHistoire (p. 232).
Incontestablement, ltude de G. Lebrun est particulirement brillante et se distingue
par un souci intransigeant dinterrogation qui en fait une rflexion authentiquement philosophique. A bien des gards, quoique les styles (et les conclusions) en soient aussi opposs que possible, elle partage avec louvrage de S. Houlgate les mmes qualits de rigueur et de dmonstrativit. On peut certes objecter G. Lebrun, contrairement ce
dernier auteur, de ne mobiliser que bien peu, en fin de compte, le riche contenu de la pense nietzschenne. Il ne sagit, de fait, pas dun livre sur Nietzsche, moins encore dune
nime exposition prtention exhaustive de la philosophie de Nietzsche. En revanche,
cest un livre qui montre admirablement lirrductible singularit de la position de celui-ci
parmi les philosophes point si rarement saisi, hlas, par nombre de commentateurs
presss , et indique fort prcisment que la spcificit de Nietzsche tient au dplacement
quil impose au mode dinterrogation philosophique, et, simultanment, son langage.

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WENCHE MARIT QUIST

NIETZSCHE AND KIERKEGAARD TRACING COMMON THEMES

The Danish religious writer Sren Kierkegaard (1813 1855) is often mentioned
when Nietzsches focus on the individual is called to attention. Several publications show
that this connection not only can be drawn in order to make a formal connection between
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; it also leads to a richer understanding of the different concepts that set the connection. In this review I will take a look of some of the (more or less)
recent reading of Nietzsche and/or Kierkegaard which can be seen as opening their similarity of thoughts and themes.

1. Brandes, Georg: Nietzsche. Eine Abhandlung ber aristokratischen Radikalismus. Mit einer Einleitung von Klaus Bohnen. Berlin (Berenberg Verlag)
2004. 126 pages. ISBN 3-937834-03-6.
2. Brobjer, Thomas H.: Notes and Discussions. Nietzsches Knowledge of
Kierkegaard. In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 41/2 (2003),
pp. 251 263. ISSN 00225053.
3. Guignon, Charles (ed.): The Existentialists. Critical Essays on Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Oxford (Rawman & Rittlefield) 2004. VIII
+ 182 pages. ISBN 0-7425-1413-7.
4. Kellenberger, James: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Faith and Eternal Acceptance. Basingstoke, New York (Macmillan Press / St. Martin Press) 1997. IX
+ 150 pages. ISBN 0-333-67656-4 / 0-312-17347-4.
5. Grau, Gerd-Gnther: Zwei Glaubensstreiter. Kierkegaard und Nietzsche.
Hamburg (Katholische Akademie) 2000. (Vortrge in der Katholischen Akademie Hamburg). 38 Seiten. ISBN 3-928750-58-5.1
1. The first one to make the Nietzsche-Kierkegaard connection was the Dane Georg
Brandes, the most influential cultural personality in Denmark from 1870 to the First
World War. He was responsible for the breakthrough of Naturalism in Denmark. In his
youth he had been preoccupied with the reading of Kierkegaards works but was left with
1

To mention only two further books on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in Hungarian language:
Csejtei, Dezs: Filozfiai et dk a vgessegre. Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard s Nietzsche a Halrl. Veszprm (Veszprmi Humn Tudomnyokrt Alaptvny) 2001. (Carmen saeculare 10).
343 Seiten. ISBN 963-00-4523-0; Thiel, Katalin: Maszkjtk. Hamvas Bla Kierkegaard s
Nietzsche tkrben. Veszprm (Veszprmi Humn Tudomnyokrt Alaptvny) 2002. (Carmen
saeculare 16). 152 Seiten. ISBN 963-00-9288-3 (editors remark).

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475

mixed emotions about the religious writer. He repeatedly rejected several of the Kierkegaardian main points and expressed his criticism in 1877, when he wrote a biography on
Kierkegaard, which according to Brandes words to Nietzsche was meant as eine Art von
Streitschrift, geschrieben um seinen Einfluss zu hemmen.2 And in his book on Kierkegaard, Brandes critically commented on Kierkegaards personal inwardness and the way
suffering plays a crucial role in his religious thinking: two themes which were not combinable with Brandes own non-religious and political interests. But the rejection of Kierkegaard wasnt a rejection of the Kierkegaardian thoughts altogether. The emphasis on
the role of the individual and Kierkegaards rich elaboration on subjectivity stayed with
Brandes and grew deeper and deeper into his own ideals of human life.
In the late 1880s Brandes became acquainted with the yet unknown Nietzsche and
through a powerful introduction of his philosophical friend to the European literary and
philosophical scene he made Nietzsches name known by the European audience in
1888 an audience that amongst other literary personalities included the Swedish writer
August Strindberg, who became highly influenced by Nietzsche. In Nietzsche Brandes
saw a companion whose ideas and mine agree so completely that I find him excellent,
the only philosopher alive that I have any use for.3 Brandes enthusiasm for Nietzsche
was laid down in a series of lectures delivered in Copenhagen in 1888, which were published in a slightly renewed form in 1889 under the title Aristokratisk Radikalisme [aristocratic radicalism]. They were published in German in 1890 under the title Aristokratischer
Radicalismus. Eine Abhandlung ber Friedrich Nietzsche and we currently see a revised reprint
of Brandes Nietzsche-presentation and -reception titled Nietzsche. Eine Abhandlung ber
aristokratischen Radikalismus with an introduction by Klaus Bohnen. In the book we find
a presentation of some of Nietzsches central themes and ideas, and as the Danish title,
of which Nietzsche expressed his appreciation, indicates Brandes is eager to give a presentation of the corpus of Nietzsches philosophy. Although the book cant be recommended as the introduction to Nietzsches philosophy it was indented to be, it focuses on
some of the main concepts in his writings and bears witness to the common ground for
Nietzsche and Brandes: the scorn for the Christian slave mentality, the praise of independence and the autonomous morality is stated again and again, but also the contrast: the
admiration of the individual, whose free spirit and creativity cannot be fought by modern
societys limiting of personal freedom.
Brandes book calls into attention how these themes are found in an either similar or
contrasting way in the writings of Kierkegaard. He mentions Nietzsches and Kierkegaards common disrespect for the multitude, which cant have any understanding of the
highest and noble values, and emphasizes how Nietzsche could sympathize which Kierkegaards call to the individual asking to find subjective truth, but under no circumstances
could follow Kierkegaards link between subjective truth and Christianity. These crossroads between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are nowadays well known, but so are others,
which Brandes is not stating, and therefore the focus on Nietzsches key concepts in
Brandes book opens up for an understanding of some of the interesting topics in the
Kierkegaard-Nietzsche relationship, but it stays silent about others. What I have in mind
is: The idea of the singled-out human being, who is by fate or will separated from ordinary
life, the connection between Nietzsches hypothesis of eternal recurrence and the Kierkegaardian theme of repetition, the criticism and uncovering of the status of the general

2
3

Brandes letter to Nietzsche, January 11, 1888, KGB III/6, p. 143.

See Brandes letter to Sophus Schandorph, April 1888.

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and leading moral values in society and, in relation to this, Kierkegaards and Nietzsches
common roles as criticisers of the status of religion and the rejection of a philosophical or
religious understanding of life, which in the favour of a higher or truer life neglects or renounces earthly life.
2. Although Brandes had mixed emotions about Kierkegaards writings and, as mentioned, tried to prevent their further influence, he recommended to Nietzsche a reading
of Kierkegaard. As often stated, Nietzsche planned to follow this recommendation,4 but
he received it in 1888 and his collapse the year after made an end to all plans of reading. In
his article Notes and Discussions. Nietzsches Knowledge of Kierkegaard Thomas H. Brobjer
wishes to show that the correspondence in 1888 with Brandes doesnt resemble the only
knowledge Nietzsche had of Kierkegaard. Brobjer shows that the international discovery
of Kierkegaard did not, as normally seen, first take place after the turn of the century. All
thought the importance of Kierkegaards thinking first became influential in the 20th century he had already been introduced to the European intellectual audience and this by no
one less than Georg Brandes. In his Main Currents in 19th-century Literature more than
20 pages are spent on the presentation and analysis of Kierkegaards thoughts. Brobjer
shows that Nietzsche had high thoughts of Brandes book and that the chapters on Kierkegaard might have had influence on several of Nietzsches main concepts.
However, Brandes wasnt the only source through which Nietzsche could gain knowledge of Kierkegaard. Brobjer also draws attention to the Danish theologian and Bishop
Hans Lassen Martensen, who among others can be seen as the target of Kierkegaards attack on the Danish state church in 1855. Martensen was a well known and respected
Hegelian, and his two volumes of Die christliche Ethik included a strong criticism of Kierkegaard. The Danish edition of the two volumes from 1871 and 1878 was soon translated
into German. Brobjer shows how Martensens work entails a discussion of Kierkegaards
strong form of individualism in ethics and religion, and he indicates a link to Nietzsches
own emphasis on the individual. Kierkegaard is, according to Martensen, an advocate of
individualism and praises the role of the individual and the subjective truth over the objective speculation which he saw growing in his own time. Martensen sees an outcome of
this in what he calls Kierkegaards anti-social tendency. Martensen also mentions how
Kierkegaard draws a strong link between the absurd and the absolute paradox (Kierkegaard saw the absolute paradox God in time as the main expression of Christianity)
and Martensen sees how this relation between the absurd and faith leads to a crucial separation between faith and knowledge, a separation that can be found in Nietzsches writings as well. But there is another important issue that also serves as a link to Nietzsche and
which remains unnoticed by Martensen.
This is the concept of repetition and Brobjer calls attention to it by referring to the
Danish philosopher and psychologist Harald Hffdings Psychologie in Umrissen auf Grundlage der Erfahrung (first German edition in 1887; orginal title: Psykologi i Omrids paa Grundlag
af Erfaring [1882]). Here Kierkegaards concept of repetition is presented, and Brobjer
shows that Nietzsche not only owned and read this book, but also underlined a formulation addressing Kierkegaardian repetition Deshalb ist fr S. Kierkegaard die Mglichkeit der Wiederholung das ethische Grundproblem and added a NB to it followed by a
remark on the margin, where some main sentences from Kierkegaards work The Repetition

See Nietzsches letter to Brandes, February 19, 1888, KGB 8, no. 997. It is a response to Brandes
letter of January 11, 1888, where the recommendation of Kierkegaards writing is stated.

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477

are quoted. As Brobjer states, it is difficult here not to see the relation to Nietzsches idea
of eternal recurrence.
The indications of these different sources from which Nietzsche could gain knowledge of the Kierkegaardian main themes not only highlight how a common line of
thought is found but also benefit further analysis of their both common and contrasting
views on humanity, ethics, religion etc. As shown, Brobjer presents a strong background
of sources from which such analysis could take their beginning and thus this Quellenforschung can be seen an important contribution to the ongoing debate and analysis of the
common philosophical ground of two of the most interesting and influential of nineteenth-century thinkers (p. 251), as Brobjer puts it.
3. We find strong examples of such analysis in the collection of articles in The Existentialists. Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, edited by Charles
Guignon. In his preface Guignon states that Nietzsches suggestion that the belief in
Absolutes is no longer tenable, together with Kierkegaards claim that it is up to each individual to decide where he or she stands in defining his or her life, are two of the core assumptions of existentialist philosophy (p. 2). With such core assumptions in mind it is
not surprising to find that in the first article we are presented with a reading of Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling .
In his article The Knight of Faith Roberts Merrihew Adams shows how the Kierkegaardian pseudonym Johannes de Silentio here identifies faith with a belief in the absurd
which, according to Adams, is carried out in three steps: 1. The wholeheartness by which
a focus on one single point in the world is made. Abrahams focus on his son Isaac is of
course the model for this movement. 2. The infinite resignation, where the willingness to
give up the most beloved in this world is at stake, and finally 3. the movement of faith,
where everything lost is regained through the inference by God. A main point in Adams
reading of the Abraham-figure is how the attachment to earthly life is a necessary element
in faith. As Adams shows, resignation is not indifference but is carried out in a loving relation to earthly life Abrahams love of Isaac is central for the understanding of his resignation. However, faith is also in opposition to the earthly life, since the ethical standards
in society are dethroned by the remark in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which demands
that a true faith is defined by making the relationship to the absolute telos [God] absolute,
and the relationship to the relative ends relative. Faith, therefore, leads to an understanding of the ethical and social life as something relative that the human being at one and the
same time must belong to and give up in an infinite resignation. The return of the earthly
and finite lifes relative end is not caused by the human being herself, but by God, and it is
only returned when it is seen as relative. Thus the faithful relationship to God not only
sets a perspective on the finite life which sees it as secondary to the devotion to God, but
it also makes the finite life possible.
According to Fear and Trembling and, in Adams reading, also to the Postscript and central themes in Sickness unto Death life in faith is exemplified not by the knight of infinite resignation, but by the knight of faith, Abraham, who willingly depends on God for something outside the control of his own will. But if he depends thus on God for it, he must
surely accept it, when it is given, and must be prepared to accept it (p. 29). Adams
stresses that in faith one must resign from the world and want it back at the very same
time. Thus it is infinite resignation and not faith which shuts the eye for the worldly life.
In Fear and Trembling faith is described as a faith for this life and the need of it arises from
the lack in human capacity to gain and maintain this life through its own effort. However,
according to not only Johannes de Silentio, but also Kierkegaard more generally the

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human being cannot become who she is on her own. This is only possible with the help of
God, and Adams therefore shows the religious life as having an interesting resemblance
to the aesthetic life, since this is precisely defined by being determined by the outside.
This connection should not be overemphasized, but it does lead to a questioning of the
traditional stage-theory, which in its narrower forms finds it difficult to see any link between the aesthetic and religious lives.
The emphasis on the individual human being and her relationship to God is also the
main theme in Louis Duprs article The Sickness unto Death. Critique of a Modern Age. Here
the religious life is clearly stated as something that involves an encounter the human being
has and must have with herself in order to become herself. This is old news to Kierkegaard-scholars, but when Dupr links this understanding of the human being as a being
before God to Kierkegaards critique of the mass culture and its modern conditions an
important theme is opened. Dupr quotes Kierkegaards remark on modern age: What
the age needs in the deepest sense can be said fully and completely with one single word: it
needs eternity and unfolds how the reflections behind this statement can be found in The
Sickness unto Death. Here we find the definition of the self as a synthesis of the temporal
and the eternal, and thus when eternity is missing the result is a lack of identity. The modern age has covered the loss by replacing identity with a multitude of role and social
masks, due to which the human being is identified with her social persona.
This results in a loss of personal involvement in ones one life and the passions that
are stake in this life. In order to be herself again the human being needs to be singled out,
or rather, she needs to become aware that as a human being she is always already singled
out as a self for God. The loss of this awareness leads directly into a life in despair, and as
Dupr mentions that Kierkegaard considered it his first task to bring the reality of despair to the surface of the consciousness (p. 40). Such a life is a life in sin, and the understanding of the self as a self for God therefore takes the form of seeing oneself as a sinner
for God. Dupr shows how the consciousness of sin is needed if a person is to see herself
as an individual person. Individualism and sin are linked together and Dupr therefore
sees the God-relationship as setting an isolated selfhood, where the only other the human
being is relating to is the absolute Other, God, and this relationship is due to sin, i. e. the
human beings lack of willingness to be herself, most of all characterized by an alienation
from God. In other to become oneself the human being must therefore not only see how
the roles given to her in the social life covers up any genuine self-relationship. She must
also see herself as facing a God and thus standing in a relation to eternity, which matches
the spiritual life in her. Dupr sees critical consequences of this view: Above all, the primary task of the developing self consists not in social integration, but rather in becoming
an individual (p. 45) and Kierkegaard emphatically declares the duty to others essential
in a persons relationship to God, but he fails to provide the social obligation with any
concrete determination of its own (p. 47).
Considering the recent attention called to Kierkegaards Christian Ethics in Works of
Love 5 I find it hard to follow Duprs criticism on this point. If we follow a line, which can
be traced also in the Postscript and which is not contradicting the more psychological
5

See e. g. Ferreira, Jamie: Loves Grateful Striving. A Commentary on Kierkegaards Works of Love.
Oxford, New York (Oxford University Press) 2001; Hall, Amy Laura: Kierkegaard and the
Treachery of Love. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2002; Cappelrn, Niels J. / Deuser,
Hermann (eds.): Kierkegaard Studies. Yearbook 1998. Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter)
1998; Dalferth, Ingolf U. (ed.): Ethik der Liebe. Studien zu Kierkegaards Taten der Liebe.
Tbingen (Mohr Siebeck) 2002.

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works The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death or the upbuilding Works of Love, it
can be seen how the double demand Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and Love your neighbour
as yourself (Mark 12:30 31) sets an understanding of selfhood that makes it impossible
to separate the self-relationship, the relationship to God and the relationship to the concrete other human being. When Dupr criticizes Kierkegaard for not subscribing the
social sphere a determination of its own and thereby leaving the individual in a sphere of
egoism, he fails to see that Kierkegaard, in order to secure the life of the other person as
an individual of her own, links the ethical demand to the God-relationship. Due to this
link the other person is set free from the social roles in order to become first of all not a
self for another person, but a self for God and thereby the neighbour whom I must meet
with a neighbour-love that is acted out in the present world. This opens for a religious
understanding of selfhood, which by no means can be called egoistic.
Nevertheless, this critical command does not change the fact that Duprs article puts
an important focus on some of the main thoughts in Kierkegaards understanding of the
category of the individual and, most interesting, he thereby points to a common theme in
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
The reflection on the limits and character of the ethical can be followed in Robert C.
Solomons article A More Severe Morality. Nietzsches Affirmative Ethics. By unfolding Aristotelian elements in Nietzsches understanding of humanity, Solomon inscribes Nietzsche
in a tradition of philosophical ethics which has a strong critical approach to the Kantian
idea of an ethics combined with rationalism. As Solomon sees it, Nietzsche wants to call
attention to the shift from moral to morality and his nihilism is to be understood as a reaction to the morality and incomplete nihilism that has captured all ethical or moral consideration. Not being a thesis, nihilism must be understood as a reaction, which following Nietzsches perspectivism is a result of Nietzsches understanding of a specific
situation in a specific time. In this respect we can see a common guiding idea in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: They both saw the present situation as one, where the rationality of
thought was praised at the cost of the individuals personal way to her own values and they
both unfolded their philosophy as a diagnosis opening a way for the individuals cure,
which didnt depend on intellectual skills or degree of Bildung, but solely on the personal
choice.
As mentioned, Nietzsches ethics is the result of a strong rejection of Kant and the
Judeo-Christian morality that can be linked to his understanding of moral principles as
something that can and must be justified according to a categorical principle. This idea of
justification is setting a unity in moral theory, which makes one theory fit all societies at all
times. Such an ideal morality cannot be combined with Nietzsches perspectivism. Furthermore Solomon points to the connection between Aristotle and Nietzsche, which in a
certain respect also involves Hegel. Their common ground is the view on moral as a practice. It is a doing, not willing, that is of moral significance, an expression of character
rather than a display of practical reasons (p. 62). Solomons further remark shows the
link to Nietzsches perspectivism: A practice has local significance; it requires and sets
up a context. It is not a matter of universal rule (ibid.). Solomon emphasizes how any
formulation of a Nietzschean ethics is bound to perspectivism and he convincingly argues for Nietzsches ethics as a key point in the kind of self-realization we find in the slogan Become who you are. However, the autonomy connected with this slogan consists
mainly in a freedom from, i. e. the ethics located in Nietzsches understanding of the
human being as the bermensch is a freedom from a slave-moral and its limitations on
the free spirit in man. Nietzsche argues for nobility as the virtue of the new moral and it of

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course finds its way through the will to power. Despite these characteristics, Solomon argues that the problem is how the creation of values follows from this kind of ethics. On
the one hand the bermensch might be as moral as anybody else as long as the required
duty fits his character and his telos (p. 67), but on the other hand [t]he problem, however, is that Nietzsches affirmative instructions are often without substantial content
(p. 68). According to Solomon Nietzsches ethical contributions first of all consist of the
ability to tear down all values, to show us that God is dead and new values therefore are
needed. Solomon argues that Nietzsche does not suggest a single value to replace the old
ones, but maybe such a suggestion could also seem a bit strange when the decisive element in the new moral is the individuals own strength and inner, personal truth.
Solomons crisis can be linked to Duprs understanding of the Kierkegaardian ethics
as being without social substance. In one respect both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard leave
the human being asking for a specific moral guidance empty-handed, but in another they
leave her with the only thing, that can guide her, namely a direction away from the
handed-down tradition and its empty moralisms, and a direction to her very own self and
the ethical understanding connected to being a this single human being in a world
amongst others.
This ideal of selfhood is brought further into consideration by Alexander Nehamas,
who in his very interesting article How One Becomes What One Is stresses how we find a temporality of existence in Nietzsches unfolding of the bermensch. What is at stake is not
to be, but to be in the becoming. Thus the self is not created, but is being created and
therefore the rejection of unity not only concerns Nietzsches ethics, but also and in
connection to his ethical understanding as mentioned above his concept of selfhood.
The self is an ever changing self: though the I always seems to refer to the same thing,
the concept of what it refers to does not remain the same, and may constantly be in the
process of developing, sometimes toward greater unity (p. 82). This unity is not to be
understood as a final stage and reachable goal, but as something the human being can
only address in a total organization of everything that one thinks, wants and does.
The connection with Nietzsches thesis of the eternal recurrence is easy to see, and
questions such as What shall I do and How am I are therefore only to be answered by
the constant self-creation that is never completed. According to the eternal recurrence the
mark of selfhood is the eagerness to repeat life, to want it all to continue as in Zarathustras
remark to a life approaching its natural end: Well then! Once more!. As Nehamas shows
the question asked by the eternal recurrence is a question of relation to ones own past;
whether this is recognized as ones very own past: The question is only whether one
would want to do the same things all over again and thus be willing to acknowledge all
ones doings as ones own (p. 88).
This indicates that the hypothesis of eternal recurrence raises a theme of responsibility. In order to become oneself, one must wish to become the person one was with the
deeds carried out by that person. Again I must call attention to a very strong Kierkegaardconnection; this idea of taking responsibility for the past and thereby opening ones future
is precisely the leading thought in Kierkegaards category of repetition.6 In the book The
Repetition Kierkegaard under the pseudonymous name Constantin Constantius develops
6

Recent studies of Kierkegaards concept of repetition unfold the concept in ways that also serve
as guides to the Kierkegaardian anthropology and ethics. See Glckner, Dorothea: Kierkegaards
Begriff der Wiederholung. Eine Studie zu seinem Freiheitsverstndnis. Berlin, New York (Walter
de Gruyter) 1998, and Eriksen, Niels Nymann: Kierkegaards Category of Repetition. A Reconstruction. Berlin, New York (Walter de Gruyter) 2000.

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an understanding of the self as a process and not a substance. This means, that Nietzsche
and Kierkegaard both argue for a self as something that stands in the process of becoming, but the answer to the question of what this self must become in order to become herself, separates their ways. As a religious thinker Kierkegaard points to the created self, the
self before God, as the genuine self. The self is therefore not something created by the self,
but something the self acknowledges as herself and thereby takes responsibility for. According to Nietzsche the self is created as it is acknowledged. There is no real or original
character of the self that must be actualized, the aim is the inconsistency of the self s actions. Nehamas points to the weakness in such an idea of inconsistent character. We cant
imagine them in real life, but only as literary characters. Normally it is the link between
self and actions that leads to the understanding and judgement of a person that both the
person herself and other persons are trying to obtain. Thus only a literary character and
not a living human being can be understood without a focus on the content and consistency of actions.
4. The self-understanding of the existing human being and her ways of accepting life
as her life can be followed further in James Kellenbergers book Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Faith and Eternal Acceptance. Kellenberger stresses how joyful acceptance is central in the
understanding of selfhood we find in both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Joy is therefore
seen as a bridging concept in this interpretation of Nietzsches eternal recurrence and
Kierkegaards elaboration of the religious life. It is interesting to see that Kellenberger
refers to both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard as religious writers: Both are religious writers.
Both address the religion of their fathers. Their common heritage is Christianity, but,
more, however, they share Lutheran roots and upbringing. [] Each is concerned with
the connection between religious beliefs and ethics and between God and morality. (p. 2).
By drawing the direct lines between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche Kellenbergers work
stands out in comparison with the other studies referred to in this review. It therefore
serves the reader whose interest is not primarily either Nietzsche or Kierkegaard but their
common existential themes. As mentioned such themes are acknowledged by Guignon in
his introduction to The Existentialists. Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Sartre but as shown they are not explicit unfolded as themes uniting Kierkegaard and
Nietzsche (or Heidegger and Sartre) in the different articles. Each article focuses on
either one or the other existentialist, and it does so in a very interesting and clarifying way.
This indicates a different purpose than Kellenbergers, but for the interest of the joined
reading of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, which stands in the centre of this review, Kellenbergers trace of the a single theme, such as joyful acceptance, found in the writings of
both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard seems to be more fruitful.
According to Kellenberger joy stands in the centre of the Kierkegaardian concept of
faith as it is developed in Fear and Trembling. Kellenberger is in line with Roberts Merrihew
Adams The Knight of Faith when he sees Johannes de Silentio and Abraham as the
central figures in the Kierkegaardian landscape of pseudonyms and role figures. Kellenberger emphasises how Fear and Trembling characterises the Christian faith in a way that
contradicts the definition of faith found in the Postscript. In the Postscript faith is a continuing struggle to overcome ones doubts and hold fast to belief in an objective uncertainty, while for Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling doubt is a failure of faith and
the knight of faith has no doubt (p. 11). Abraham has faith in virtue of the absurd and
his action of faith is therefore in contrast with the ethical, which in Fear and Trembling is
seen as the common and understandable good that every person can relate to and must
see herself as bound to. Thus the anxiety in Abraham is not caused by any tension in faith

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itself, but by the conflict with the ethical demand and the isolation caused by the impossibility of making him understood by others. The anxiety, however, is not destructing the
joy of faith. Abrahams faith is and it remains a joyful faith no matter how absurd or criminal it seems to others. This point to the traditional understanding of Fear and Trembling:
The radical conflict between ethical demands and the life secured by these demands and
the private, undisclosed religious life.
An interesting turn is therefore made when Kellenberger shows how Abrahams faith
is in conflict with an ethical1, but in correspondence with an ethical2, that consists of
the ethical duty to God to do as He commands. By stressing the plurality of ethics found
in Fear and Trembling Kellenberger can be seen as addressing the characteristics of the first
and second ethics mentioned in the preface to The Concept of Anxiety. Although ethical2 is
not identical with the Christian ethics as Kierkegaard unfolds it is this preface and more
fully in Works of Love, these two new versions of ethics ethical2 and second ethics are
both opening an understanding of the ethical that isnt described as a common and fully
understandable or rational ethos. As Abrahams faith gains all its strength from a faith in
God, the second ethics opens for a perspective where the human being is primary a self
for God and it is as such the self is confronted with the ethical duty to love the other
human being. But the similarity mustnt be overstated: The concept of sin marks a very
important difference between ethical2 and the second ethics. In The Concept of Anxiety the
pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis states that the difference between the first and the second ethics is set by the role sin plays in the second ethics. The first ethics cant take sin
into consideration, the second sees the reality of the human life, i. e. its sinfulness, and it
therefore sees the human being is a sinner and stresses that in order to become herself she
must confront herself as sinful and thereby see her need of Gods forgiveness. The task is
not so much to become or chose oneself, but lies in the willingness to really see oneself as
a sinner and thus in the need for an identity, which cannot be gained through a personal
effort but must be given by God.
Abraham does see himself as Gods creation, but he doesnt see himself as sinner. According to Johannes de Silentio this places Abraham outside the sphere of existence and
in the Postscript Abraham is described as a rash anticipation, and the illusion was gained
by depicting him in a state of completeness, and hence in a false medium instead of the
existence-medium.7 This indicates that Fear and Tremblings position as presenting a Kierkegaardian understanding of ethics indeed must be questioned. This had consequences
for Kellenbergers focus on Fear and Trembling. If Abraham is not seen in the sphere of
existence, how can we then understand the contrast between faith and ethics presented by
the Abraham-figure as the essence of Kierkegaards ethics?
Leaving these critical remarks aside, Kellenbergers book still offers a highly interesting exploration of a resemblance between the joy characterizing Abrahams faith and the
joy connected to Nietzsches thesis of the eternal recurrence. The resemblance is set by
the focus on the doing, the practice of man, and thus Kellenberger stresses how both
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche directs the human being to the present life and not the life to
come (p. 63). Kierkegaard does so by emphasizing that Abraham faith is a faith for this
life and hence a joyful faith that believes in the return of Isaac. Kellenberger argues that
Nietzsches focus on the present life is linked to his separation of faith and religion: Religion and God is practice and as such in contradiction to the Christian faith, which

Kierkegaard, Sren: Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated by Howard V. and Edna H.

Hong. Princeton, NJ 1992. Vol. 1, p. 500.

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Nietzsche sees as a mistaken Christianity, i. e. a Christianism that is a mere phenomenon

of consciousness. Nietzsches focus on practice is a lead motive in the transvaluation. The
creation of new values is a human creation that gives meaning to the human life and must
be seen as an answer to the situation of moral vacuum, that Gods dead left us in. Here
Kellenberger is in agreement with Robert C. Solomon in A More severe Morality. Nietzsches
Affirmative Ethics: Nietzsches transvaluation must be seen as a moral vision in which the
will to power is a will to moral good that is depending upon a personal willingness to create it as a personal value. Kellenberger concludes: I mean that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
are alike in that both criticize the socially accepted understanding of the nature of ethics.
For both there is a higher ethics. But here the similarity ends. For Nietzsche, the higher
ethics is a noble morality, comprised of values consciously created by those who have rejected the old life-denying values. For Kierkegaard, or Johannes de Silentio, it is an ethics
whose overriding duties flows form an individual relationship to God (pp. 88 89).
It is in these new ethics presented by Fear and Trembling and Nietzsches will to power
joyful acceptance is found. As shown, Abrahams faith is a joyful faith that sets a relation
to the present life and is this respect Kellenberger sees a link to Nietzsches thesis of eternal recurrence. The eternal recurrence is a joyful acceptance of all there has been. The acceptance has to be joyful in order to overcome the nausea that follows from the insight in
the absurdity of existence. Kellenberger states how Zarathustra at the same time loves
and hates life. His joy is caused by his will and his willful doing that chooses life over wisdom: life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was. The choice of life, the joy of it,
is manifested by the continuous repetition, and Kellenberger therefore concludes: we
can see that the source of Zarathustras joyful acceptance of eternal recurrence is, or is continuous with, his joyful acceptance of life (p. 101) and thus Zarathustra creates his joyfulness through the resolution of his will (p. 104).
In the last section of the book, part III, Kellenberger makes the connection between
Abrahams and Nietzsches joy more explicit, but also important dissimilarities must be
taken into consideration. In contrast to Zarathustras joy, which can be described as lust
or in the words of Kellenberger: an episode a feeling or delight or elation (p. 108), Abrahams faith is not a feeling, but a state of being in which the whole person is placed. In
connection to this an even more importance difference is found if we take a look at the
foundation of the joy. Since Abrahams joy involves his whole person it is not a product of
his own will, but a joy that is caused by a trust in God in this respect Abrahams faith can
be seen as a knowledge of Gods goodness. It is not contradicting his knowledge but it
sets his knowledge of the goodness in life secured by God. As we have seen Zarathustras
joy is a joy in spite of what he knows and his joy can therefore be seen as a way of overcoming his knowledge of the lack of goodness in life.
This means that the joy of Abrahams faith is in direct contradiction to Nietzsches
emphasis on the individual will and the way he sees the human capacity of doing as a creation of a valuable life. In this respect Kellenbergers work is more an elaboration of the
relation between morality and religion found in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche than an unfolding of joy as an common theme: Joy can be seen as central to the understanding of life
that both Abrahams faith and Nietzsches eternal recurrence, but a closer look at the reason for this joy, the character of it, sends Abraham and Zarathustra off into very different
directions: Abraham to an understanding of the finite life as a life gaining all its value from
the infinite God and Zarathustra to an understanding of self-creation as the only possible
way of living a valuable life. As Kellenberger points to, such an idea of self-creation of
self-mastering would for Kierkegaard be a classical example of the demonic despair. We
therefore find a very strong opposition between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, which, as al-

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ready shown, are caused by Nietzsches and Johannes de Silentios different understandings of the relations between self and will. But this opposition is strongly questioned if we
take a closer look at other Kierkegaardian descriptions of the relationship between self
and will. Such a look will reveal that a positive understanding of the wills influence on
selfhood can not only be found in Postscript, but also in the Purity of Heart Is to Will One
Thing and in Works of Love, and most of all in The Sickness unto Death where formulations
such as the more will the more self is found. Thus, it may not primary be the understanding of the relation between will and self, but the understanding of the creation of self
that most strongly separates Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. They share the focus on the individual and the concrete life and the joy found in it, but still the self-creating bermensch is not to be mistaken for the solitary individual (hiin enkelte) who stands by
himself with the help of God.
5. In Gerd-Gnther Graus two lectures Sren Kierkegaard: Glaubensheld oder Ritter
von der unendlichen Resignation and O Zarathustra, du bist frmmer als du glaubst many of
the same themes as addressed by Kellenberger are in focus. Grau too pays attention to
Abrahams faith as a faith for this life and to the suspension of the ethical (understood as
the common morality), which grants Fear and Trembling an important role in the traditional
stage theory, according to which Kierkegaards understanding of existence is seen as a development from the aesthetic life over the ethical and to the religious life, the latter being
characterised by a Religiousness A and B.
Grau shows how Abraham is a figure that sets the relationship between the finite life
on the one side and the faith in an infinite and transcendent God on the other. Since
Abrahams faith is for this life he is the knight of faith that unlike the knight of the infinite
resignation opens the way for a human life that accepts the humanity and finiteness of
life. Grau shows how this relation between life and faith, the finite and the infinite, can be
traced at the different stages in the Kierkegaardian authorship and draws attention to the
transition from one stage to another.
More interestingly Grau emphasises the importance choice plays in Kierkegaards
understanding of faith and shows how Judge Wilhelm, personifying the ethical position in
Either Or, arent performing the religious jump onto the 70000 fathoms of water, but
due to his own strength of repentance finds himself in the God-relationship. As Grau
shows the ethical position in Either Or leaves a lot to be wished for and thus the religious
stage is rejecting Wilhelms trust in the human capacity to gain identity through repentance. This is done by showing how sin causes a break within human identity and the continuity of the self. This break, which is laid out as a break of the positive relation to God,
i. e. a rejection of oneself as the self created by God, can only be healed with the help from
God. As shown earlier, Kierkegaard speaks of identity as given to the human being
through Gods forgiveness and Grau points to the paradox-dialectic religiousness, religiousness B, as a God-relationship where faith in God cannot be carried out together with
a wish for the pleasures of the earthly life. According to Grau the specific Christian faith,
described by Kierkegaard in the Postscript, doesnt leave any room for the earthly life: Mit
dieser Wendung greift dann allerdings ein ebenso verstndliches wie bedenkliches, nachgerade unvermeidliches Glaubenskalkl Platz, vor dem letztlich das irdische Leben keine
Chance hat (p. 14). Grau therefore concludes that Kierkegaards stage theory doesnt
leave any room for die therapeutische Funktion des Glaubens (ibid.).
But nevertheless some therapeutically function is seen, when Grau takes the figure of
Hiob in consideration. Hiob rebels against the harsh distinction between the wish for
earthly goods and a faithful life. Experiencing everything taken away from him, Hiob

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dares to express his complaint to God who seems so unfair to him. Kierkegaard acknowledges that Hiob never stops believing in God. God is the aim for his complaint because
even when God has taken everything away from him his faith in God remains and therefore, as Grau quotes Kierkegaard for stressing, Hiob jedenfalls dadurch Recht bekommt, [] dass er Unrecht bekommen vor Gott (p. 15). From this Grau concludes
that Kierkegaard selbst schon einen gewissen Hinweis gegeben hat, wie die therapeutische Funktion des Glaubens bewahrt werden kann, um nicht nur die Zeitlichkeit fr den
Glauben zu gewinnen, sondern dieses fr das humane Existieren in jener einzusetzen
durch eine Ermigung des Anspruchs (ibid.).
This therapeutische Funktion des Glaubens is also central in Graus Nietzschelecture. As the title indicates Grau in O Zarathustra, du bist frmmer als du glaubst
(Za IV, Ausser Dienst, KSA 4, p. 325) shows how Nietzsches criticism of Christianity is
not an encounter with religion as such. Grau sees Nietzsche developing a therapeutische Erneuerung des Christentums (p. 19) and he points to a similarity between
Zarathustra and Hiob. As Hiob complaints about the incomprehensibility of Gods
actions, Zarathustra asks why God doesnt speak clearly. He, as Grau explains, verweist
auf die Antwortlosigkeit des Glaubens, der den Menschen auf die eigene Interpretation
seiner Folgerungen und Forderungen verweise, aber jeden Fehlgriff bedroht (p. 22) This
lack of answer is decisive and points to the emphasis on subjectivity also found in Kierkegaard. It is through the subjective interpretation values become true values for the self,
not through a direkte Mitteilung (p. 23) given by another authority. Grau shows how
Nietzsches understanding of morality is linked to this emphasis on subjectivity. Due to
the weight on the personal decision Nietzsche opens for an autonomy which is not in
contrast with, but made possible through morality. Thus the rejection of the slave morality
is making another morality possible: A new morality that sets a self-liberation through
mastery of and not as in Christianity extermination of natural instincts.
Like James Kellenberger and Alexander Nehamas, Grau sees this process of selfovercoming as the main concept of the eternal recurrence, but he does so by pointing to
the loss of transcendence that the death of God left man with. Die Ewige Wiederkehr
[muss] den Ersatz fr die verlorene Transzendenz liefern, um das wiederholbare Ideal
einer bermenschlichen Daseinsbewltigung und -erfllung zu begrnden (p. 33). An
amor fati is found in this eternal recurrence that invites the human being to a dance with
life. Stating such a yes to life is vor allem gegen den Geist der Schwere, Kierkegaards
Schwermut gewendet (p. 34). But just as Solomon in A More severe Morality. Nietzsches Affirmative Ethics argues that Nietzsche is only tearing down old values, not setting new ones,
Grau states: Was der Mensch ist und was sein Ziel sein sollte, wei Nietzsche so wenig zu
sagen wie irgend ein andern Philosoph: Was der Mensch nicht ist und nicht sein darf, har
er eindrucksvoll vorgefhrt. Sein Menschenbild bleibt hinsichtlich positiver Ergebnisse
merkwrdig unscharf, vorwiegend negativ bestimmt (ibid.). Thus, Nietzsche is not offering answers, but is maintaining an intellektuelle Redlichkeit that can protect us from
the denial of life the slave moral lead to. It is through the courage to question ones own
truths the human being can protect herself from the absolute answer, the definition of
truth, which will stop the ongoing process, the eternal recurrence, of life.

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GNTER GDDE UND RENATE MLLER-BUCK

NEUE BEITRGE ZUM FREUD-NIETZSCHE-DISKURS1

Die Geschichte des Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurses war lange Zeit von Prioritts- und
Plagiatsstreitigkeiten berschattet. Den Ausgangspunkt dieses Diskurses bilden die Protokolle der Wiener Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung, die Otto Rank im Zeitraum von
1906 bis 1918 gefhrt hat. Zwei Abende verdienen besondere Beachtung, da sie ausschlielich dem Thema Nietzsche gewidmet waren. Am 1. April 1908 referierte Eduard
Hitschmann die ersten beiden Abhandlungen der Genealogie der Moral und las Auszge aus
der dritten Abhandlung Was bedeuten asketische Ideale? vor. Bemerkenswert ist, da
es ihm dabei nicht um eine Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Verwerfung der asketischen Ideale oder etwa deren Wert fr die Psychoanalyse ging. Vielmehr stellte er einen
Widerspruch zwischen Leben und Werk des Philosophen fest: Nietzsche sei es nicht gelungen, bei sich selbst zu erkennen, da seine eigenen Ideale seinen unerreichten Wnschen entsprechen. Seine Kritik und psychologische Deutung des asketischen Ideals, sein
Eintreten fr rcksichtsloses Ausleben, sei eine Verwerfung seiner eigenen, ihm aufgezwungenen Lebensumstnde. Man msse Nietzsches Leben selbst als Askese bezeichnen; seine Neigung zur Askese und Abstinenz hnge mit seiner Verehrung Schopenhauers zusammen []. Aus der Erkenntnis, da er eigentlich das Leben und sich selbst
betrogen habe, kommt er zur Verwerfung des asketischen Ideals.2 Anschlieend wurden
verschiedene pathographische Einordnungsversuche zur Diskussion gestellt.
Auf einem zweiten Nietzsche-Abend am 28. Oktober 1908 referierte Adolf Hutler
ber Ecce Homo. Auch bei diesem Referenten ging es weniger um den philosophischen
Gehalt des Werks als um die Frage, welche Rolle die Krankheit in Nietzsches Leben gespielt habe. Freud war davon berzeugt, da Nietzsche Paralytiker gewesen sei. Auf
Grund seiner Erkrankung habe sich Nietzsche vollstndig von der Auenwelt zurckgezogen und sich seinem Ich als einzigem Forschungsobjekt zugewandt: Und da beginnt
er mit groem Scharfsinn, gleichsam in endopsychischer Wahrnehmung die Schichten
seines Selbst zu erkennen. Er macht eine Reihe glnzender Entdeckungen an seiner Person. Aber nun kommt die Krankheit. Er begngt sich nicht damit, diese Zusammenhnge
richtig zu erraten, sondern er projiziert die Erkenntnis, die er an sich gemacht hat, als Lebensanforderung nach auen. Das Lehrhafte, Pastorale, das in ihm vom Christus-Ideal
steckt, kommt zu seiner psychologischen Einsicht hinzu. Auf diese Art entstehen die verwirrenden, im Grunde aber richtigen Resultate der Nietzscheschen Anschauungen. Diese
Formel habe er sich fr Nietzsche zurechtgemacht.3 Freuds methodologische Zweifel
1
2

Die Titel 1 6 werden von Gnter Gdde, die Titel 7 9 von Renate Mller-Buck referiert.
Nunberg, Hermann / Federn, Ernst (Hg): Protokolle der Wiener psychoanalytischen Vereinigung. Bd. I, 1906 1908. Frankfurt am Main 1976. S. 335 f.
Nunberg, Hermann / Federn, Ernst (Hg): Protokolle der Wiener psychoanalytischen Vereinigung. Bd. II, 1909 1910. Frankfurt am Main 1977. S. 27 f.

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beziehen sich also auf die Verallgemeinerbarkeit der Einsichten, die in einer allzu subjektiven und durch Projektionen verzerrten Selbstanalyse gewonnen wurden.
Da Freud in seinem Denken und Streben vom Ideal des empirisch forschenden Wissenschaftlers erfllt war, war es von einiger Aussagekraft, da er seinen Gegenspieler betont in die Kategorie des Philosophen bzw. Moralisten und Theologen eingereiht hat.4
Setzt man als Beginn des Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurses das Jahr 1908 an, so kann man sagen, da Nietzsche in der Psychoanalyse von Anfang an als Nicht-Wissenschaftler betrachtet und ausgegrenzt wurde, was sich als Weichenstellung mit Langzeitfolge erwies
sehr zum Nachteil fr die Psychoanalyse selbst.
hnlich wie Nietzsche von den Analytikern wurde Freud in der Folgezeit von den
Nietzsche-Forschern in Frage gestellt. Teilweise hat man den Eindruck eines Gegenangriffs oder einer Retourkutsche. Im Kern ging es um Zweifel an der von Freud behaupteten geistigen Unabhngigkeit von Nietzsche. Diese Kritik setzte an Freuds konsequent
durchgehaltener Abgrenzung von Nietzsche an, die er auf eine fr ihn als Naturwissenschaftler charakteristische Weise vollzog. Nietzsches Ahnungen und intuitive Einsichten deckten sich zwar oft in der erstaunlichsten Weise mit den mhsam erarbeiteten Ergebnissen der Psychoanalyse. Er selbst habe aber Nietzsche nie zu studieren vermocht
(1908),5 ja sich die Nietzschelektre bewut versagt, um in der Verarbeitung der psychoanalytischen Eindrcke durch keinerlei Erwartungsvorstellung behindert zu sein (1914).6
Weitere Zweifel der Kritiker bezogen sich auf Freuds uerung, seine Distanz zu
Nietzsche erklre sich aus seinem Bedrfnis nach Unbefangenheit.7 Ausgehend vom
Situationskontext, in dem Freud seine Eigenstndigkeit betonte, hat Reinhard Gasser
darauf aufmerksam gemacht, da es sich jeweils um Situationen handelte, in denen
Freuds wissenschaftliche Geltung tangiert war. Die Trennungserfahrungen mit den Dissidenten Adler, Jung, Wittels und Rank deuteten auf eine regelhafte Verlaufsform hin, da
gerade Personen, die kurz- oder lngerfristig in einem problematischen Verhltnis zu
Freud standen, sich einige Anspielungen auf Nietzsche nicht versagen wollten. Daher
knne man in Freuds Hinweis auf seine Unbefangenheit einen Versuch zur Verharmlosung des eigentlichen Unbehagens [sehen], da Nietzsche fr ihn und die Psychoanalyse
ein [] unvermeidliches Problem bildete und eine wie immer geartete Unbefangenheit
berhaupt nicht mglich war.8
Aus dieser Problemskizze kann man einige Grnde entnehmen, weshalb der FreudNietzsche-Diskurs lange Zeit unproduktiv und unbefriedigend war:
1. Am problematischsten erscheint Nietzsches Einstufung als bloer Philosoph und
Nicht-Wissenschaftler. Damit zusammenhngende antiphilosophische Klischees
(metaphysisch, spekulativ, projektiv, weltanschaulich, rckstndig u.a.) haben die Verstndigung zwischen Psychoanalyse und Philosophie von Anfang an sehr erschwert.
2. Das berwertige Interesse an der Pathographie Nietzsches fhrte dazu, da Nietzsche fr Freud und bis in die jngste Zeit fr viele Psychoanalytiker der Andere, der
Fremde, der schwer zu Integrierende blieb.
4
5
6

7
8

Nunberg / Federn: Protokolle, Bd. II, a. a. O., S. 28.

Nunberg / Federn: Protokolle, Bd. I, a.a. O., S. 338.
Freud, Sigmund: Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung. In: Gesammelte Werke [=
G. W.]. Hg. von Anna Freud u.a. Frankfurt am Main 1952ff. Bd. 10, S. 53.
Freud: Selbstdarstellung. G. W. 14, S. 86.
Gasser, Reinhard: Nietzsche und Freud. Berlin, New York 1997. (Monographien und Texte zur
Nietzsche-Forschung. Bd. 38). S. 119 u. 173.

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3. Der weitere Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurs stand allzu sehr im Zeichen der Kontroverse

um Freuds geistige Autonomie oder Abhngigkeit. Die damit verbundenen Priorittsstreitigkeiten und Plagiatsverdchtigungen haben viele Krfte absorbiert und die Sache selbst in den Hintergrund treten lassen.
4. Zudem waren die meisten Vergleichsstudien zu Nietzsche und Freud auf bestimmte
rezeptionsgeschichtliche Episoden und eine Parallelisierung bestimmter Theoreme
und Textpassagen beschrnkt. Erst Gasser hat sich die Aufgabe eines umfassenden
Werkvergleichs gestellt und eine groe Materialflle durchgearbeitet, um die wissenschaftshistorischen und theoretisch-systematischen Bezugspunkte in ihrem jeweiligen Kontext zu erfassen.
5. Die entscheidende Voraussetzung fr eine wechselseitige ffnung zwischen den
Denkwelten Nietzsches und Freuds sehe ich darin, da man sich von den bisherigen
Klischees befreit und sich unbefangen dem Denken der anderen Seite ffnet.
Der folgende Literaturbericht knpft an frhere Besprechungen in den NietzscheStudien9 an und gibt einen berblick ber Neuerscheinungen der letzten Jahre:

1. Assoun, Paul-Laurent: Freud and Nietzsche. Translated by Richard L. Collier. London (Athlone Press) 2000. 238 Seiten. ISBN 0-485-11483-6.
Die vorliegende Studie ist bereits 1980 auf Franzsisch erschienen. Seit 2000 liegt sie
erfreulicherweise in englischer bersetzung vor, die der Autor mit einem neuen Vorwort
von 25 Seiten versehen hat. Soweit ich die Literatur zum Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurs berblicken kann, handelt es sich hier um die vor Gassers 1997 erschienenem Werk Freud und
Nietzsche herausragende Arbeit auf diesem Gebiet.
Freud et Nietzsche ist der dritte Band einer Trilogie, die Assoun 1976 mit Freud, la philosophie et les philosophes begann und die 1978 ihre Fortsetzung in Marx et la rptition historique
fand. Marx, Nietzsche und Freud waren fr Assoun in den spten 1970er Jahren diejenigen, die das Universum des zeitgenssischen westlichen Denkens mageblich bestimmt
haben. Nietzsche wird zugleich als vierter Philosoph auf einer Traditionslinie von Plato
ber Kant und Schopenhauer zu Freud gesehen, wobei Schopenhauer die zentrale Position in Freuds philosophischer Gedankenwelt, Nietzsche nur die eines ersten Satelliten
zuerkannt wird.
Aus der Einleitung mchte ich nur einen Punkt aufgreifen: Auch Assoun nimmt kritisch auf die Protokolle der Mittwoch-Gesellschaft Bezug und hlt Hitschmanns Einschtzung, die subjektiven Ideen eines Philosophen knnten aus seinen persnlichen
Eigenschaften und Erlebnissen abgeleitet werden, fr einen Fall von psychologischem
Reduktionismus: an exercise in pathology, to which the philosophical text serves to support as a document (S. 7). Auch Freuds Anmerkungen zur Psychographie Nietzsches
seinem Vaterkomplex, seiner Christusphantasie in der Adoleszenz und seiner Homosexualitt htten von der eigentlichen Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Werk
abgelenkt. Nietzsche selbst habe diese Art Entwertungsstrategie, wie sie ihm zu seinen
Lebzeiten des fteren widerfuhr, auf den Punkt gebracht: Nicht, wa s man sagt, sondern
9

Gdde, Gnter: Eine neue Interpretation von Freuds Verhltnis zu Nietzsche. In: NietzscheStudien 26 (1998). S. 463 480; Stierlin, Helm: Nietzsche als Tiefenpsychologe. In: NietzscheStudien 29 (2000). S. 327 331; Liebscher, Martin: Wiener Kreise. Freud, Nietzsche und Schopenhauer. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002). S. 423 431.

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489

da ich es sag e und inwiefern gerade ich dazu gekommen sein mag, dies zu sagen
das scheint ihr [der Kritiker] einziges Interesse []. Man beurtheilt mich, um nichts mit
meinem Werke zu thun zu haben: man erklrt dessen Genesis damit gilt es hinreichend
fr abg et han (Nachla 1887, KSA 12, 10[20]).
In Teil I geht es um die Frage, inwieweit Nietzsche in Freuds Denken prsent war. Zunchst wird untersucht, ber welche Vermittler Freud mit Nietzsche in Berhrung gekommen war. In den Anfngen war Freuds Jugendfreund Josef Paneth ein persnliches
Bindeglied zu Nietzsche; dem Einflu des Lesevereins der deutschen Studenten Wiens
(Siegfried Lipiner, Heinrich Braun, Victor Adler, Otto Pernerstorfer u.a.) konnte Assoun
dann erst in seinem neuen Vorwort Rechnung tragen. Zu den weiteren Vermittlern gehren Arnold Zweig, Lou Salom, Alfred Adler, C. G. Jung, Thomas Mann und vor allem
Otto Rank, dem allerdings erst nach seiner Loslsung von Freud die wichtigste Systematisierung des Nietzsche-Freudianismus zu verdanken sei; leider steht eine sorgfltige
Untersuchung des Dreiecksverhltnisses Nietzsche-Freud-Rank noch aus. Freuds explizite Bezugnahmen auf Nietzsche, sei es in Form wrtlicher Zitate, philosophischer
Schlagworte, indirekter Anspielungen oder namentlicher Erwhnungen seien sprlich
und jeweils knapp gehalten dies gelte aber generell fr seine Bezugnahmen auf Philosophen. In thematischer Hinsicht sei Nietzsche prsent, wenn es um basic themes wie
Trume, Konflikt, Neurose, Kriminalitt und Schuld, bermensch und Vater, Triebe und
Es gehe. Zusammenfassend lt sich zu diesem ersten Teil sagen, da er pointiert geschrieben ist und wichtige Details enthlt. Das Fehlende sucht der Autor durch das aktualisierte Vorwort zu ergnzen, ohne jedoch den Erkenntnisstand Gassers und neuerer
Autoren zu erreichen.
Anders steht es um den sehr viel umfangreicheren Teil II, der zeigt, da Nietzsche
und Freud zwar in parallelen Denkwelten, aber mit wesentlichen Berhrungspunkten gelebt haben. Er wird m.E. auch lngerfristig gesehen von bleibendem Erkenntnis- und
Anregungswert sein.
Ein Vergleich der beiden theoretischen Konzeptionen bringt, wie Assoun nachdrcklich betont, betrchtliche methodologische Probleme mit sich. Weder drfe Nietzsche
einseitig aus der Perspektive und mit den Mastben Freuds noch umgekehrt Freud
aus dem Blickwinkel und mit den Kriterien Nietzsches beurteilt werden. Es komme auf
eine dialektische Bewegung vom einen Denker zum andern an, damit ein bergreifender
Denkraum entstehen knne. Um die bereinstimmungen und Divergenzen beider Denker hinreichend erfassen zu knnen, msse der Kontext der jeweiligen Stellungnahmen
bercksichtigt werden.
Im ersten Abschnitt ber Grundlagen (foundations) werden die Triebtheorien
Nietzsches und Freuds einem Vergleich unterzogen. Beide messen der menschlichen
Triebnatur und Triebdynamik einen hohen anthropologischen und psychologischen
Stellenwert bei. Nietzsches Ausgangspunkt ist allerdings die Denktradition der griechischen Antike, Schopenhauers und Richard Wagners, in welcher der Instinkt (bzw.
deren mannigfache Ausformungen in Kunst, Ethik, Wissenschaften) als kreative
Grundkraft fungiert. Seine Hinwendung zur Physiologie, Neurologie, Psychiatrie und
Psychologie in der mittleren Schaffensperiode fhrte zwar zu einer Thematisierung
von Triebkonflikten und pathologischer Triebentwicklung, ohne da dabei jedoch eine
streng wissenschaftliche Theoriebildung im Sinne Freuds angestrebt worden wre.
Nietzsches metaphorische Rede, da wir in der Philosophie und in den Wissenschaften
eine Chemie der moralischen, religisen, sthetischen Vorstellungen und Empfindungen (MA I 1, KSA 2, S. 24) brauchen, hat ein Pendant in der Analogie, die Freud
zwischen der Analyse psychischer Vorgnge und der Arbeit des Chemikers gezogen

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hat.10 Nietzsche hat damit das Startzeichen zu seinem Projekt einer entlarvenden Psychologie gegeben (und das ist sehr verdienstvoll), ohne aber eine wissenschaftliche Forschungsthematik im engeren Sinne ins Auge zu fassen. Greift er bei der Motiverhellung
von Mitleid und Altruismus als Formen versteckter Eigenliebe auf Beobachtungen und
Reflexionen im Stile La Rochefoucaulds und der Moralisten zurck, so widmet sich Freud
der Analyse unbewuter Vorstellungen als Triebreprsentanzen, die eine indirekte, aber
objektive Erkenntnis der Triebvorgnge ermglichen soll. Auch im Hinblick auf die
Konzeptualisierung von Grundtrieben gibt es erhebliche Unterschiede zwischen Nietzsche und Freud. Seit der Mitte der 1870er Jahre ist Nietzsche bestrebt, eine Art Elementartrieb zu finden, der allem menschlichen Tun und Lassen zugrunde liege. Als erstes
rckt er die Eitelkeit bzw. Eigenliebe ins Blickfeld. Eine zweite Hypothese bezieht sich
auf die Selbsterhaltung als grundlegende Motivation. Im weiteren knpft Nietzsche mit
dem Dualismus von Macht als bsem und Vernunft als gutem Prinzip an die Tradition des
Machtbegriffs im 19. Jahrhundert an, um dann aber im Zarathustra zu einer monistischen
Auffassung vom Willen zur Macht vorzudringen. Das Besondere des Willens zur Macht
besteht darin, da er die Vielfalt teils zusammenwirkender, teils gegenstzlicher Triebe zu
integrieren sucht und die einmal erlangte Einheit immer wieder gegen widerstrebende
Tendenzen im eigenen Inneren, aber auch gegen uere Gegner verteidigen mu. Auch
Freud hat seine Triebtheorien ausgehend vom Dualismus zwischen Sexual- und Ichtrieben ber den Dualismus zwischen narzitischer und Objektlibido bis hin zur ErosTodestrieb-Hypothese einer stndigen Bearbeitung unterzogen. Den Hauptunterschied
sieht Assoun zwischen dem zwar abgewandelten, im wesentlichen aber aufrecht erhaltenen Lustprinzip bei Freud und dem in der eigenen Denkentwicklung immer strker pointierten Machtprinzip bei Nietzsche.11
Im zweiten Abschnitt werden die mit den triebtheoretischen Grundlagen in enger Verbindung stehenden Schlsselthemen von Liebe und Sexualitt, Unbewutem und Bewutsein sowie Trumen und Symbolismus behandelt. Der Sexualitt und dem Eros werden sowohl in den Libidotheorien Freuds als auch in Nietzsches Konzeptionen des Dionysischen
und des Willens zur Macht ein hoher Stellenwert eingerumt. In diesem Zusammenhang sei
auf die weiterfhrende Arbeit von Ulrich Irion verwiesen, die Nietzsche und Freud von
einem gemeinsamen antichristlichen Grundzug her erschlossen hat dem Anliegen, die
leib- und lebensfeindlichen Wurzeln der christlichen Anthropologie, Kosmologie, Moral-,
Kultur- und Geschichtsauffassung systematisch aufzudecken und zu bekmpfen.12 Hin10

11

12

Freud schreibt in Wege der psychoanalytischen Therapie: Wir [] fhren die Symptome auf
die sie motivierenden Triebregungen zurck, weisen diese dem Kranken bisher unbekannten
Triebmotive in den Symptomen nach, wie der Chemiker den Grundstoff, das chemische Element, aus dem Salz ausscheidet, in dem es in Verbindung mit anderen Elementen unkenntlich
geworden war (G. W. 12, S. 184).
Nietzsche hat dem Lustprinzip nur eine untergeordnete Stellung im Verhltnis zum Machtprinzip eingerumt: Der Mensch sucht n i cht die Lust und vermeidet nicht die Unlust: man versteht, welchem berhmten Vorurtheile ich hiermit widerspreche. Lust und Unlust sind bloe
Folge, bloe Begleiterscheinung, was der Mensch will, was jeder kleinste Theil eines lebenden
Organismus will, das ist ein plus von Macht. Im Streben danach folgt sowohl Lust als Unlust; aus
jenem Willen heraus sucht er nach Widerstand, braucht er etwas, das sich entgegenstellt [] jeder Sieg, jedes Lustgefhl, jedes Geschehen setzt einen berwundenen Widerstand voraus
(Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 14[174], S. 360).
Irion, Ulrich: Eros und Thanatos in der Moderne. Nietzsche und Freud als Vollender eines antichristlichen Grundzugs im europischen Denken. Wrzburg 1992; siehe dazu meine Besprechung in: Psyche 47 (1993). S. 903 907.

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491

sichtlich des Eros-Problems waren sich Nietzsche und Freud zwar ber die kulturpathologische Tragweite der christlichen Sexualunterdrckung einig, tendierten aber zu sehr verschiedenartigen Problemlsungsstrategien: Whrend Nietzsche Auswege vornehmlich in
knstlerischer und philosophischer Neuorientierung (anhand der Mythen von Dionysos
und Zarathustra) suchte, setzte Freud seine Hoffnungen auf die wissenschaftliche und therapeutische Analyse unbewuter Motivationen (unter Heranziehung der Mythen von dipus und Narzi). Verglichen mit Nietzsches romantisierendem Lebensbegriff, so Irion,
ist der Eros Freuds entschieden subversiver in seinem materialistisch-rebellischen Gehalt.13 Das Unbewute ist bei Nietzsche weniger eine formale Kategorie (wie der Instinkt
oder der Wille zur Macht), als der Schatten, der von dionysischen Phnomenen geworfen
wird. Da er Eduard von Hartmanns metaphysische Verwendung des Begriffs des Unbewuten vermeiden wollte, hat er eine ganze Reihe synonymer Begriffe entwickelt und mit
dem Adjektiv unbewut verbunden. Sie verweisen auf eine oberste Instanz im Menschen,
der das bewute Ich als Werkzeug oder Organ der Leitung untergeordnet wird. Zu diesen
Konzeptionen gehren: der unbewute Wille und das Dionysische als zentrale Orientierungspunkte des Frhwerks; die regulierenden, unbewut sicherfhrenden Triebe, der
Leib und das Selbst als Leitfaden der mittleren Schaffensperiode; und der vielschichtige
Wille zur Macht im Sptwerk. In dieser Denkentwicklung hat sich Nietzsche zunehmend als
Anti-Metaphysiker verstanden. Fr ihn hat das Unbewute zwar eine leibliche Grundlage
und ist damit etwas real Existierendes; epistemologisch gesehen ist es aber letztlich eine
Konstruktion, die nur mittels einer Vielfalt von Perspektiven interpretiert werden kann.14
Fr Freud hingegen ist das Unbewute auf Prozesse der Abwehr und Verdrngung zurckzufhren und bildet ein eigenes vom Vorbewuten und Bewuten getrenntes System. Assoun sieht allerdings eine bemerkenswerte hnlichkeit zwischen Nietzsches Selbst und
Freuds Es. Bei Nietzsche heit es: Hinter deinen Gedanken und Gefhlen [] steht
ein mchtiger Gebieter, ein unbekannter Weiser der heisst Selbst. In deinem Leibe wohnt
er, dein Leib ist er (Za I, Von den Verchtern des Leibes, KSA 4, S. 40). Als Freud 1923 das
Es einfhrte, wies er ausdrcklich auf Nietzsche hin, bei dem dieser grammatikalische
Ausdruck fr das Unpersnliche und sozusagen Naturnotwendige in unserem Wesen
durchaus gebruchlich ist.15 Wenn Freud dann weiter ausfhrt, das Ich pflege den Willen
des Es in Handlung umzusetzen, als ob es der eigene wre, so deutet diese Formulierung
explizit auf jene Denktradition hin, in der der Wille als steuernde Macht hinter den seelischen Erscheinungen betrachtet wird.
Im dritten Abschnitt finden sich bei Assoun zunchst hochinteressante Ausfhrungen zu Neurose und Moralitt. Nietzsche habe die traditionelle Hochschtzung des Mitleids und die damit einhergehende Geringschtzung der Grausamkeit stark relativiert und
fr eine Umwertung pldiert, da er das Mitleid auch und gerade unter dem Aspekt einer
Reaktionsbildung gegen aggressive Tendenzen und die Grausamkeit auch und gerade als
Zeichen von Machtgefhl und persnlicher Gre betrachtete. Diese Deutungsmglichkeiten seien auch in Freuds Werk angelegt; er sei aber von einer ethischen Verdammung
des Mitleids und einer Apologie guter Grausamkeit weit entfernt gewesen. Hinzu
kommt, da der von Freud konzeptualisierte Bemchtigungstrieb ungleich schwcher
erscheint als Nietzsches Wille zur Macht. In diesem Kontext fllt besonders ins Auge,

13
14

15

Irion: Eros und Thanatos, a. a. O., S. 250.

Vgl. Gdde, Gnter: Nietzsches Perspektivierung des Unbewuten. In: Nietzsche-Studien 31
(2002). S. 154 194.
Freud: Das Ich und das Es. G. W. 13, S. 251 Rn. 2.

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da sich Freud jeglicher Stellungnahme zum Problem der Moralitt enthlt und bezeichnenderweise einen Ausspruch von Friedrich Theodor Vischer zitiert: Das Moralische
versteht sich immer von selbst.16 Hier zeigt sich fr Assoun eine grundlegende Divergenz zwischen Freud und Nietzsche: For Freud, morality is not problematic, and whoever speaks of morality resembles a preacher, and comprises a moralist; at the limits, all
discourse, either of morality or on morality, is suspect. For Nietzsche, the true negation of
morality consists in a critique of morality of which the moralist, for whom morality is the
problem, is the authentic instrument (S. 155 f.).
Deutliche Unterschiede zeigen sich auch bei einem Vergleich der Kulturtheorien. In
Freuds spten kulturtheoretischen Schriften ist Nietzsche sehr prsent, Assoun spricht
sogar von berprsent. Beide Denker sprechen ber kulturelle Phnomene in Begriffen von Krankheit; beide bringen die kulturelle Pathologie mit der Unterdrckung vitaler
Triebkrfte in Verbindung; fr beide haben Religionen illusionren Charakter. Nietzsche
erhofft sich eine kulturelle Erneuerung in erster Linie von der Kunst und einer neuen
trieb- und leibfreundlichen Kulturmoral (whrend er der Wissenschaft skeptisch gegenbersteht und sie als Verbndete des asketischen Ideals letztlich radikal in Frage stellt);
Freud vertraut hingegen eher auf den wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt (whrend er die
Kunst teils als bloe Beschwichtigungsstrategie, als Ersatzbefriedigung bzw. Illusionsbildung betrachtet). In therapeutischer Hinsicht schwebt Nietzsche und Freud eine vergleichbare Ditetik der Triebe im Sinne freierer Befriedigungsmglichkeiten bzw. einer
Sublimierung der eigenen Triebe und Affekte vor. Freuds therapeutische berlegungen
bewegen sich nach Assoun jedoch im Bezugsrahmen eines paternalen Modells von
Gesetz, Schuld und ber-Ich, whrend Nietzsche von einem maternalen Modell der
Unschuld des Werdens ausgegangen sei: For Freud, neurosis is a bad relation between
the Law and the paternal complex, which the cure functions to readjust; for Nietzsche,
moral illness is the illness of life consecutive to the accession of a point of view of the Law
that is lethal to life, of which it is a question of transcending, by a radical transvaluation,
on the side of becoming-being symbolized by the camel and the lion, a return to infancy
(S. 177).
In einer abschlieenden Conclusion greift Assoun nochmals eine Stellungnahme
Freuds aus der Wiener Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung auf, die den Hauptunterschied
zu Nietzsche erkennen lasse: Was uns [an Nietzsche] strt ist, da er das ist in ein soll
verwandelt hat. Der Wissenschaft ist aber ein Soll fremd. Er ist da doch noch Moralist
geblieben, ist den Theologen nicht losgeworden.17 Hier stoen wir an die Grenze von
Freuds Szientismus; bei aller Bemhung um eine Bemutmachung des Unbewuten blieb
die moralische Problematik ein blinder Fleck in seiner Selbst- und Kulturanalyse. In
dieser Hinsicht erscheint Nietzsche insofern hellsichtiger, als er die ganze unbewute
Seite unserer Moralitt ins Auge zu fassen suchte (Nachla 1884/85, KSA 11, 29[35]).
Im ganzen ist Assouns Studie nach wie vor eines sehr sorgfltigen Studiums wert. Der
Autor ist tief in die Theorien Nietzsches und Freuds eingedrungen, ja man mchte fast
sagen: er hat sie durchdrungen und in glnzender Weise transparent gemacht. Auf diesem Fundament kann man weiter bauen.

16

17

Freud, Sigmund: Briefe 1873 1939. 3. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main 1980. S. 321; Brief v. 8. Juli 1915
an James J. Putnam.
Nunberg / Federn: Protokolle, Bd. II, a. a. O., S. 28.

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493

2. Haberkamp, Gnter: Triebgeschehen und Wille zur Macht: Nietzsche zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie. Wrzburg (Knigshausen & Neumann)
2000. (Nietzsche in der Diskussion). 214 Seiten. ISBN 3-8260-1869-9.
Haberkamps Anliegen ist es, die triebtheoretischen Grundannahmen in Nietzsches
Werk systematisierend zu behandeln, wobei dem Nachla besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet wird. Dabei stt der Autor auf eine ganze Reihe von Parallelen zur Psychoanalyse und Tiefenpsychologie wie z.B. die Konzeptionen des Unbewuten, der Traumdeutung, der Abwehrmechanismen, des Gewissens, der Aggressivitt, der Sublimierung u. a.
Von groem Interesse auch fr einen Vergleich zu Freud ist die Frage nach den
philosophischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Traditionsvorgaben, auf die Nietzsche bei
der Konzeptualisierung seiner Triebtheorie zurckgegriffen hat. Haberkamp verweist
noch einmal auf Schopenhauers Metaphysik des Willens und die Denker der griechischen
Antike, vor allem Heraklits Philosophie des Werdens, auf Paul Re in der mittleren Schaffensperiode und ber ihn auf Montaigne und die franzsischen Moralisten La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Vauvenargues u.a. (die dem Geist der griechischen Antike nahestanden), schlielich auf Nietzsches Bemhungen um die Naturwissenschaften in dieser
Phase, insbesondere auf Darwin (ber die Entstehung der Arten, 1859), Robert Mayer (ber
Auflsung, 1876) und Wilhelm Roux (Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus, 1881) sowie den
Naturphilosophen Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich (Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis [],
1759). In dieser Entwicklung seines Denkens kristallisierten sich bei Nietzsche mehrere
Tendenzen heraus:
die Interpretation des Lebens von der Binnenperspektive des Organismus aus,
die Abwendung von der christlichen Leibfeindlichkeit und Schopenhauers pessimistischer Verneinung des Willens zugunsten einer radikal diesseitigen und leibbejahenden Lebenseinstellung im Sinne Heraklits und Montaignes,
die Abkehr von der vorherrschenden Ausrichtung am Bewutsein zugunsten des
Primats unbewuter Triebkonflikte im Seelenleben und
die Ablsung von Konzeptionen, die Selbstliebe (Eitelkeit, Stolz), Egoismus,
Selbstbehauptung oder Kampf ums Dasein als bestimmenden Grundantrieb im Menschen betrachten, zugunsten einer Anthropologie des Willens zur Macht.
Nicht Erlsung von der Dranghaftigkeit des Willens, sondern dessen Strkung im
Sinne einer mglichst weitgehenden Triebgestaltung war Nietzsches Anliegen. Dazu bedrfe es, wie Nachlanotizen erkennen lassen, einer berwindung der Affekte, bei der die
groen Kraftquellen der Triebe und Leidenschaften aber nicht geschwcht werden,
sondern in Dienst zu nehmen und zu konomisiren seien (Nachla 1888, KSA 13,
14[163]). In Dienst nehmen mag zeitweise bedeuten, sie zu tyrannisiren, um ihnen
dann aber eine vertrauensvolle Freiheit wiederzugeben: sie lieben uns wie gute Diener und gehen freiwillig dorthin, wo unser Bestes hin will (Nachla 1885/86, KSA 12,
1[122]).
Nietzsches Devise Wollen befreit, denn Wollen ist Schaffen und seine berhmte
Formel von der Unschuld des Werdens lassen sich gleichermaen auf den Vorsokratiker Heraklit wie auf Montaignes Bewunderung fr die Natur als Lehrmeisterin beziehen. Erwhnenswert ist in diesem Kontext, da auch Freud auf die vorsokratische Naturphilosophie zurckgriff. Seine dritte Triebtheorie ist durch das von Empedokles
stammende Gegensatzpaar von Liebe (Philia) und Streit (Neikos) geprgt.
Von der Anthropologie des Willens zur Macht fhrt ein direkter Weg zu Nietzsches
epistemologischem Perspektivismus und Konstruktivismus. Denn jeder Trieb und die
mit ihm verbundene Machttendenz erfordert eine lebenspraktische (und notwendig ideo-

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logische) Perspektive. ber den unauflslichen Zusammenhang von Trieb und Erkenntnis heit es in einem Nachlafragment: Der Intellekt ist das Werkzeug unserer Triebe
und nichts mehr, er wird nie frei. Er schrft sich im Kampf der verschiedenen Triebe, und
verfeinert die Thtigkeit jedes einzelnen Triebes dadurch. In unserer grten Gerechtigkeit und Redlichkeit ist der Wille nach Macht, nach Unfehlbarkeit unserer Person (Nachla 1880, KSA 9, 6[130]). Dementsprechend ist jeder fr sich in Anspruch genommene
Wille zur Wahrheit auf seine Machtambitionen hin zu hinterfragen. Immer wenn der
Wille zur Wahrheit ins Spiel komme, gehe es um ein Fest-ma ch e n, ein Wahr-DauerhaftM achen, aber Wahrheit sei etwas, das zu schaffen ist und das den Namen fr
einen Pro z e abgiebt, [] ein a kt ives B e s ti m m e n , n i ch t ein Bewutwerden von etwas, das an sich fest und bestimmt wre (Nachla 1887, KSA 12, 9[91]).
Problematisch erscheint mir bei Haberkamp, da mehrmals von Nietzsches Metaphysik und metaphysischer Sichtweise die Rede ist (S. 5, 12, 15, 69), ohne da auf die
dazu gefhrte Diskussion eingegangen wrde. Nietzsche selbst hat aber in einer Nachlanotiz formuliert, da es keine dauerhaften letzten Einheiten gebe, sondern nur
Willenspunktationen, die bestndig ihre Macht mehr oder weniger verlieren (Nachla
1887/88, KSA 13, 11[73]). Wenn man in diesem Zusammenhang von Einheit spreche, so
htte dies nur fiktiven Charakter. In Wirklichkeit sei der Wille zur Macht nur denkbar als
Org anisa t ion u n d Z u sa mmen spie l bzw. als He r r s ch a fts - G e b i l d e, das Eins
bedeutet, aber nicht eins ist (Nachla 1885/86, KSA 12, 2[87]). Demnach darf der
Wille zur Macht nicht als Konzeption einer den Erscheinungen zugrunde liegenden
wahren Welt miverstanden werden.
Haberkamp hat eine auch fr interessierte Laien gut verstndliche Einfhrung in
Nietzsches Triebpsychologie und -philosophie geschrieben. Auf sie lt sich aufbauen,
wo eine detailliertere Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Vordenkern und deren Texten
sowie ein Vergleich mit Freuds und anderen tiefenpsychologischen Triebkonzepten gesucht wird.

3. Yalom, Irvin D.: Und Nietzsche weinte. Roman. Aus dem Amerikanischen von
Uda Strtling. Mit einem neuen Nachwort des Autors. [bers. des neuen Nachworts des Autors von Anja Urban]. Sonderausgabe. Mnchen, Zrich (Piper)
2003. 463 Seiten. ISBN 3-492-04559-6. Taschenbuchausgabe Mnchen, Zrich (Piper) 2005. (Serie Piper 4328). 463 Seiten. ISBN 3-492-24328-2.
Kann Yaloms in Deutschland sehr beliebter und vielgelesener Roman Und Nietzsche
weinte allen Ernstes als ein Beitrag zum Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurs betrachtet werden?
Im Brennpunkt des 1992 erstverffentlichten und 1994 zuerst auf Deutsch erschienenen
Romans steht die von Lou Salom eingefdelte Begegnung zwischen Josef Breuer und
Friedrich Nietzsche, zu der es tatschlich jedoch nie gekommen ist; es handelt sich um
eine bloe Fiktion. Breuer und Nietzsche leiden im Roman, der im Jahre 1882 spielt, unter Liebeskonflikten: Breuer der langjhrige Begleiter Sigmund Freuds, der im Roman
auch eine wichtige Beraterrolle bernimmt noch unter den Nachwirkungen der bertragungsliebe seiner berhmten Patientin Anna O. und der dadurch ausgelsten Ehekrise
(wenn die von Freud an Jones bermittelte Legende denn stimmt), Nietzsche unter der
schmerzlichen Trennung von Lou Salom, der geistesverwandten Russin, in die er sich
heftig verliebt hatte. Die fiktiven Therapiegesprche geben Einblick in die entlarvende
Psychologie Nietzsches, v. a. wie subtil er die in jedem Gesprchsabschnitt auftretenden
Machttendenzen transparent zu machen vermag.

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495

Im Nachwort zur Erstauflage hatte Yalom selbst einiges zum Verhltnis von Fakten
und Fiktion in seinem als teaching novel bezeichneten Roman geschrieben. Nietzsche und
Breuer seien sich im Leben nie begegnet. Doch die im Roman skizzierten Lebensumstnde der Hauptfiguren beruhen auf Tatsachen, und die Hauptfden der Romanerzhlung Breuers Seelenqual, Nietzsches tiefe Depression, Anna O., Lou Salom, die enge
freundschaftliche Verbindung zwischen Breuer und Freud; die aufdmmernde Psychotherapie brauchten aus dem Lebensstoff des Jahres 1882 nur herausgelst und neu verknpft zu werden (S. 439). Yalom hielt es schon damals fr keineswegs abwegig, da
Nietzsche empfohlen worden sein knnte, sich auch an den namhaften Wiener Internisten Josef Breuer zu wenden. Dagegen wre es fr Lou Salom eher untypisch gewesen,
sich voller Sorge bei Breuer fr Nietzsche zu verwenden (S. 442). Einige Jahre spter
stie Yalom auf eine treffende Bemerkung von Andr Gide, die sich auf seinen Roman
beziehen lie: Dichtung ist Geschichte, die htte stattfinden knnen. Perfekt. Das ist genau die Art von Literatur, die ich verfassen wollte. Mein Roman Und Nietzsche weinte htte
tatschlich in der Realitt passiert sein knnen. Wenn man bedenkt, wie unwahrscheinlich
die Geschichte der Psychotherapie verlief, dann htten all die Ereignisse in diesem Roman wirklich stattfinden knnen, falls der historische Verlauf nur ein klein wenig von seiner Bahn abgewichen wre.18
Beide Male klingt eine leise Vermutung an, die sich im nachhinein dank der Recherchen von Renate Mller-Buck tatschlich besttigt hat. Sie fand im Goethe- und SchillerArchiv in Weimar einen bislang unbekannten Briefwechsel zwischen dem Wiener Dichter
Siegfried Lipiner und Nietzsches Freund und engem Mitarbeiter Heinrich Kselitz (Peter
Gast), der eine berraschende Pointe ergibt:

4. Mller-Buck, Renate: Ach dass doch alle Schranken zwischen uns fielen.
Siegfried Lipiner und der Nietzsche-Kult in Wien. In: Barbera, Sandro /
DIorio, Paolo / Ulbricht, Justus H. (Hg.): Friedrich Nietzsche. Rezeption
und Kultus. Pisa (Edizioni ETS) 2004. ISBN 88-467-0920-9. S. 33 75.
Der junge Lipiner, der die treibende Kraft im damaligen Wiener Nietzscheverein
(Rohde) war und auch mit Breuer und Freud19 in freundschaftlicher Verbindung stand,
hat sich in einem Brief vom 22. Februar 1878 an Kselitz dafr eingesetzt, Nietzsche
nach Wien in die Therapie Breuers zu bringen. Im Brief Lipiners heit es wrtlich: Eins
ist sicher: Nietzsche mu veranlasst werden, die nchsten Monate ausschlielich seiner Cur
zu widmen. Ich habe nun folgenden Plan: Er soll nach Wien kommen; [] ein hchst

18

19

In: The Yalom Reader. Selections from the Work of a Master Therapist and Storyteller. New
York 1998; deutsch: Yalom, Irvin: Was Hemingway von Freud htte lernen knnen. Mnchen
2003. S. 167.
Bemerkenswert ist, da sich Freud in einem Brief vom 7. September 1877 an seinen Jugendfreund Silberstein ber Lipiner uert, wenige Tage bevor der Wiener Nietzscheverein auf Initiative Lipiners einen verehrungsvollen Brief an Nietzsche schreibt. In diesem Brief heit es.
Lipiner ist hier [], ich habe ein lngeres Gesprch mit ihm gehabt und habe weder das
Ma seines Geistes genommen, noch das Gewicht seiner Persnlichkeit bestimmt: Im allgemeinen neige ich aber [] zu einer sehr gnstigen Ansicht ber ihn (Freud, Sigmund: Jugendbriefe
an Eduard Silberstein 1871 1881. Frankfurt am Main 1989. S. 190; vgl. Gdde, Gnter: Freuds
philosophische Diskussionskreise in der Studentenzeit. In. Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse 27
(1991). S. 98 ff.).

496

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tchtiger Nervenpathologe, Dr. Breuer, ist mir persnlich befreundet und wird sich seiner mit grsster Aufmerksamkeit annehmen; [] die ntigen Geldmittel, um N. mehrere
Monate hier ohne jegliche andere Sorge, als die um seine Gesundheit, leben zu lassen,
sind mir zur Verfgung gestellt in einer Weise, die N. nicht die geringste Unannehmlichkeit machen, ihm nicht das geringste Bedenken erwecken kann und darf. (S. 52 f.) Kselitz scheint diesen Plan zunchst sehr verlockend gefunden zu haben, um dem damals an
schweren Migrneanfllen leidenden Nietzsche zu helfen. Franz Overbeck und Nietzsches Schwester Elisabeth wandten aber ein, da Nietzsche zu krank sei, um den Anstrengungen eines greren Umzugs gewachsen zu sein. Dagegen sprach auch, da Nietzsche
nicht schon wieder einem rztewechsel ausgesetzt werden sollte. Kselitz sah sich daher
in seinem Antwortbrief vom 2. Mrz 1878 veranlat, Lipiners Vorschlag zurckzuweisen.
Mglicherweise wollte Nietzsche auch selber aus Stolz (und weil er sich von Lipiner bedrngt und bevormundet fhlte) das auch finanziell grozgige Angebot seiner Wiener
Freunde nicht annehmen.
Yalom hat den Hinweis von Renate Mller-Buck im Nachwort zur Neuauflage von
2003 explizit aufgenommen und die beiden Briefe von Lipiner und Kselitz, dessen Antwortbrief allerdings nur als Entwurf erhalten ist, als Faksimile mit Transkription abgedruckt. Es htte also nicht viel gefehlt, und Nietzsche wre tatschlich Patient Josef Breuers geworden. Vielleicht htte dann auch nicht mehr viel gefehlt, und Nietzsche und
Freud wren sich im Wiener Umfeld Breuers und des Wiener Nietzsche-Vereins begegnet. Dann wre der Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurs sicherlich in anderen Bahnen verlaufen.

5. Bruder-Bezzel, Almuth / Bruder, Klaus-Jrgen: Kreativitt und Determination. Studien zu Nietzsche, Freud und Adler. Gttingen (Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht) 2004. 206 Seiten. ISBN 3-525-46207-7.
Die erste Abspaltung innerhalb der psychoanalytischen Bewegung traf bekanntlich
Alfred Adler, der ein knappes Jahrzehnt lang mit Sigmund Freud in der Wiener MittwochGesellschaft eng zusammengearbeitet hatte. Die Grnde, die zur Trennung beider fhrten, sind komplex und vielschichtig. Freud ging vom damals vorherrschenden positivistischen Wissenschaftsmodell aus. Dementsprechend suchte er nach einer spezifischen
tiologie der Neurosen und zugleich nach einer allgemeinen Theorie fr seine Psychologie des Unbewuten. Mit anderen Worten: Fr ihn gab es in der Psychoanalyse wie in
allen Naturwissenschaften nur eine Wahrheit, und sie sah er in erster Linie durch seine
Libidotheorie die Lehre vom Sexualtrieb und seinen Schicksalen verbrgt. Adlers Abweichungen bezogen sich gerade auf den mit der Libidotheorie geltend gemachten Wahrheitsanspruch, wobei er sich explizit auf Nietzsche und dessen Leitidee vom Willen zur
Macht berief. Die Polarisierung von Lustprinzip, Libido, Verdrngung und Sublimierung
(Freud) versus Machtprinzip, Zrtlichkeitsbedrfnis, mnnlicher Protest und Kompensation (Adler) fhrte im Rahmen einer einheitswissenschaftlichen Sichtweise zu einer unertrglichen Spannung in der Wiener Mittwoch-Gesellschaft und letztlich zu einer Unvereinbarkeitserklrung von Seiten Freuds.
Mit Adlers Relativierung der Libidotheorie wurde das Herzstck der Freudschen
Metapsychologie in Frage gestellt, und auch dessen Klinische Theorie erhielt dadurch eine
andere Akzentuierung. Nicht weniger einschneidend war die erkenntnistheoretische Neuorientierung Adlers, fr die wiederum Nietzsche neben Kant und dem Neukantianer
Vaihinger (mit seiner Philosophie des Als ob) Pate stand. Mit dem bezeichnenden Titel Kreativitt und Determination spielen Almuth Bruder-Bezzel und Klaus-Jrgen Bruder auf die

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Differenz zwischen Nietzsche/Adler und Freud an. Sie erkennen bei Adler einen Konstruktivismus, der in seinen Kategorien der schpferischen Kraft, der Fiktionalitt bzw.
Finalitt (Zielgerichtetheit) des Seelenlebens und des Geltungs- und Machtstrebens zutage
tritt, und ziehen von da aus Verbindungslinien zur neueren Psychoanalyse, in der die konstruktivistische Epistemologie eine bedeutsame Rolle spielt, insbesondere bei so namhaften Analytikern wie Merton Gill, Roy Schafer, Robert Stolorow und Stephen Mitchell.
In dem sehr klar und pointiert geschriebenen Buch geht es sicher auch um eine Rehabilitierung Adlers, dem in der Geschichte der Psychoanalyse lange Zeit die unrhmliche Rolle eines bloen Ich-Psychologen und Rationalisten zugespielt worden war. Die
AutorInnen rhren damit aber auch an eine epistemologische Thematik, die innerhalb
der Psychoanalyse und Tiefenpsychologie noch keineswegs ausdiskutiert worden ist und
weiterer Klrung bedarf. Wie der Untertitel Nietzsche, Freud und Adler erkennen lt, steht
hierbei das unterschiedliche Verhltnis Adlers und Freuds zu Nietzsche, dem ein unterschiedliches Verhltnis sowohl zur Philosophie und zur (Natur-) Wissenschaft als auch
zum Phnomen der Macht in der Gesellschaft und in ihrer Widerspiegelung in psychischen Prozessen zugrunde lag (S. 8), im Brennpunkt.
Im ersten Kapitel wird die Auseinandersetzung um die Triebpsychologie skizziert, die
in der Psychoanalyse lange Zeit wie ein Glaubenskrieg gefhrt wurde. Heute sehe man
diese Kontroverse gelassener. Die Trennungslinien zwischen den standhaften Verteidigern der Freudschen Triebtheorie und den Revisionisten sei nicht mehr so unvershnlich; ja der Hauptstrom der heutigen Psychoanalyse, angefangen von verschiedenen
Objektbeziehungstheorien ber die Selbstpsychologie bis hin zur intersubjektiven Psychoanalyse, stehe in unausgesprochener bereinstimmung mit Adler (S. 51). Im
zweiten Kapitel wird Adlers Konzept der schpferischen Kraft, das gegen Freuds Betonung der lckenlosen psychischen Determinierung gerichtet war, einerseits auf die vitalistische Anthropologie der Lebenskraft zurckbezogen,20 die von 1780 bis zur Mitte des
19. Jahrhunderts in Blte stand. Andererseits lassen sich Verbindungslinien zur neueren
Suglingsforschung, die den Blick fr die gestaltende, organisierende Aktivitt des Individuums geffnet habe, und zu den postmodernen Theorieentwrfen mit ihrer Kritik an
den groen Metaerzhlungen ziehen. Adler sei jedoch kein Indeterminist gewesen. Er
habe mit einem festen Kern gerechnet, der durch die schpferische Kraft zwar aufgeweicht werde, aber nicht in Widerspruch trete: Schpferische Kraft ist das Unbewusste,
aber es gehorcht nicht Naturgesetzen (S. 77). Den Ausgangspunkt des dritten Kapitels
bildet Nietzsches radikale Infragestellung der herkmmlichen Vorstellungen von Wahrheit und Realitt. Sie seien nicht etwas, das faktisch da und aufzufinden, sondern etwas,
das erst zu schaffen und zu erfinden wre. Nach Nietzsches berhmter Formulierung in WL ist die Wahrheit ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen, kurz eine Summe von menschliche Relationen, die, poetisch und
rhetorisch gesteigert, bertragen, geschmckt wurden, und die nach langem Gebrauche
einem Volk fest, canonisch und verbindlich dnken: die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von
denen man vergessen hat, dass sie welche sind (KSA 1, S. 880 f.). Wenn die Wahrheit
keine Eigenschaft der Realitt ist, dann gibt es keine allgemeingltigen Erklrungen, sondern nur perspektivische Deutungen und Konstruktionen der Realitt. Ein solcher Perspektivismus war auch fr Adler mageblich: Der Einzelne schaffe sich mittels seelischer

20

Vgl. Goldmann, Stefan: Von der Lebenskraft zum Unbewussten Stationen eines Konzeptwandels der Anthropologie. In: Buchholz, Michael B. / Gdde, Gnter (Hg.): Macht und
Dynamik des Unbewussten. Gieen 2005. S. 125 152.

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Kunstgriffe Fiktionen und sehe all seine Probleme aus einer Perspektive, die seine
eigene Schpfung sei. Adlers Konstruktivismus war nach Meinung von Klaus-Jrgen
Bruder aufs Engste mit dem Primat verbunden, den er dem Willen zur Macht zuerkannte, und diese Verbindung sei auch fr Adler nach seinen zwei zentralen Begriffen,
der Fiktion und dem Ziel, konstitutiv. Der heutige Konstruktivismus innerhalb der Psychoanalyse gehe hingegen in der Analyse von Machtphnomenen lngst nicht so weit wie
der Nietzsches und Adlers, wenngleich er das Machtgeflle in der analytischen Beziehung
kritisch beleuchte und damit die Alleinherrschaft der Freudschen Theorie und Therapie
antaste (S. 111 ff.).
Im vierten Kapitel, das sicherlich fr die Nietzsche-Forschung am relevantesten ist,
geht Almuth Bruder-Bezzel von der Leitfrage aus, ob der Einfluss Nietzsches auf Freud
nicht eher unterschtzt und der Einfluss Nietzsches auf Adler nicht eher berschtzt
wird (S. 123). Beide Fragen lassen sich letztlich bejahen:
1. Freud hat sich zwar als strenger Naturwissenschaftler gesehen und vom Philosophen und Moralisten Nietzsche abgegrenzt. Er hat auch den Machtbegriff Nietzsches
anthropologische Leitidee ausgeblendet. Und dennoch gibt es eine Reihe grundlegender bereinstimmungen zwischen beiden: die Annahme eines triebhaften Unbewuten,
die Unterscheidung verschiedener Triebschicksale und Abwehrmechanismen, den Antagonismus zwischen Trieb und Kultur, die Sublimierung und damit die Nhe und Zugehrigkeit zur Tradition der entlarvenden Psychologien. Zudem hat Freud die anfngliche Verleugnung des Einflusses Nietzsches und dessen Erziehers Schopenhauer in
spteren Jahren gelockert, was bis vor wenigen Jahren unfruchtbare Prioritts- und Plagiatsstreitigkeiten nicht verhindert hat.
2. Im Unterschied zu Freud hat sich Adler nach seiner Trennung von Freud ausdrcklich zu seiner Identifizierung mit Nietzsche bekannt: Wenn ich den Namen Nietzsche nenne, so ist eine der ragenden Sulen unserer Kunst enthllt. Adler hat sich auch
explizit auf Nietzsches Willen zur Macht bezogen. Er hat ihn aber einseitig im Sinne
eines neurotischen Machtstrebens zur Kompensation von Minderwertigkeitsgefhlen
aufgefat. Mans Sperber hat, wie Bruder-Bezzel anfhrt, zu Recht eingewandt, da der
Wille zur Macht im Sinne Nietzsches durchaus verschieden von jenem krankhaften
Machtstreben sei, dem Adler in seiner Neurosenlehre und auch in seiner Anthropologie
einen so hohen Stellenwert einrumte. Wenn Sperber weiter behauptet, man knne sich
nichts Gegenstzlicheres denken (S. 155), so unterstellt er allerdings zu Unrecht, da
Nietzsche dem menschlichen Machtstreben unkritisch gegenbergestanden habe und zudem ein Triebverherrlicher gewesen sei. Wesentlich fr ein adquates Verstndnis des
Machtwillens bei Nietzsche ist, da es sich um eine anthropologische Grundbestimmung
handelt, nmlich die ber die bloe Selbst- und Arterhaltung hinausgehende Tendenz
alles Lebendigen, die eigene Machtsphre nach allen Seiten zu erweitern. Bruder-Bezzel
weist auch darauf hin, da Adler sich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg am zentralen Kriterium
des Gemeinschaftsgefhls orientierte und damit von der Machtpsychologie la Nietzsche verabschiedete. Er habe es 1931 sogar als Miverstndnis bezeichnet, da man die
Individualpsychologie in die Nhe Nietzsches versetzt hat (S. 163). Das fnfte und
letzte Kapitel ist der Verleugnung des Machtthemas allgemein und speziell in der Psychoanalyse gewidmet, wobei das Thema Krieg im Vordergrund steht. Mit dem Argument der Unaufhebbarkeit von Triebkonflikten habe Freud seinen Teil zur Unbewutmachung von Herrschaftsverhltnissen und zum Zirkelschlu der Affirmation der
Macht beigetragen (S. 190).
Almuth Bruder-Bezzel und Klaus-Jrgen Bruder ist es in hchst anregender Weise
gelungen, eine konstruktivistische Linie von Nietzsche ber Adler zur modernen Psycho-

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499

analyse zu ziehen und Adler damit als nach wie vor aktuellen und in der Psychoanalyse
und Tiefenpsychologie noch gar nicht eingeholten Philosophen und Psychologen wieder
ins Gesprch zu bringen. Insoweit haben sie auch einen wertvollen Beitrag zum FreudNietzsche-Diskurs geleistet.

6. Le Rider, Jacques: Freud von der Akropolis zum Sinai. Die Rckwendung
zur Antike in der Wiener Moderne. Wien (Passagen Verlag) 2004. 366 Seiten.
ISBN 3-85165-636-9.
Wie Le Riders Titel erkennen lt, geht es ihm um Freuds Hinwendung zur Antike
zunchst hauptschlich zur altgriechischen Kultur, die im Sptwerk, insbesondere in
Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion, vom Interesse am jdischen Erbe abgelst
wurde. Dabei bezieht sich Le Rider immer wieder auf Freuds oft indirekte Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche, da sie fr dessen Standortbestimmung im Verhltnis zum
Griechentum, Christentum und Judentum durchgngig eine wesentliche Rolle gespielt
habe.21
Der junge Freud kam sowohl auf dem Leopoldstdter Realgymnasium als auch an der
Wiener Universitt mit zwei Kulturen in Berhrung: der streng wissenschaftlichen Ausrichtung am empirisch Gegebenen, wie sie prototypisch von Darwin, Ernst Mach und Freuds
Lehrer, dem Physiologen Ernst Brcke verkrpert wurde, und der literarisch-philosophischen
Kultur, die ihre Reprsentanten beispielsweise in Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt, dem
Wiener Grzisten Theodor Gomperz und nicht zuletzt in Nietzsche hatte. Nietzsche
wandte sich insbesondere gegen die ihm verknchert erscheinende Altphilologie, die sich
am Ideal des Historismus und Positivismus orientierte, und trat fr das Humboldtsche
Ideal einer lebendigen und kreativen Bildung und damit fr eine kulturelle Erneuerung im
Geiste der griechischen Antike ein. Sein Enthusiasmus fr Literatur, Kunst und Denken
der griechischen Antike war als Kritik der Moderne zu verstehen. Freud hingegen schlug
sich weder auf die eine noch die andere Seite. Er war und blieb zugleich Humanist in der
langen Tradition der Rckwendung zum klassischen Griechenland und ein um wissenschaftliche Exaktheit bemhter Theoretiker (S. 64).
Le Riders Werk bietet eine Flle von Anregungen fr den Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurs,
das ausfhrlicher Errterungen bedrfte. Ich mchte hier nur auf ein grundstzliches Interpretationsproblem eingehen. Whrend Freud seine Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche
sehr diskret gefhrt hat und es kaum Quellen darber gibt, wie er zu Nietzsche gestanden
hat, bringt Le Rider wie schon in frheren Verffentlichungen22 Freud fast durchgngig in pointierten Gegensatz zu Nietzsche. In methodischer Hinsicht beruft sich Le Rider
dabei nicht in erster Linie auf historische Quellen wie Selbstaussagen Freuds oder Zeugnisse seiner Mitarbeiter oder anderer Zeitzeugen, sondern denkt von theoretischen und

21

22

Auch in der Studie von Traverso, Paola: Psyche ist ein griechisches Wort . Rezeption und
Wirkung der Antike im Werk von Sigmund Freud. Frankfurt am Main 2003, geht es, wie der Untertitel zeigt, um Rezeption der Antike, allerdings nur im Zeitraum von der Ausarbeitung der
Hysterietheorie bis zur Abfassung der Traumdeutung. Bemerkenswert ist, da in dieser Studie der
Nietzsche-Bezug nur eine untergeordnete Rolle spielt.
Z. B. in: Le Rider, Jacques: Freud zwischen Aufklrung und Gegenaufklrung. In: Schmidt, Joachim (Hg.): Aufklrung und Gegenaufklrung in der europischen Literatur, Philosophie und
Politik von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Darmstadt 1989. S. 475 496; Ders.: Das Ende der Illusion. Die Wiener Moderne und die Krisen der Identitt. Wien 1990.

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ideengeschichtlichen Zusammenhngen her. Ein charakteristisches Beispiel dafr ist die

folgende Stellungnahme: Wie fr alle jdischen Intellektuellen mit deutschem Kulturhintergrund war die Beschftigung mit Griechenland gleichbedeutend mit einer Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche. Die Beziehung Freud/Nietzsche wird verstndlicher, wenn
man von der Annahme ausgeht, dass Freud eine systematische Dekonstruktion der beiden groen Figuren des nietzscheanischen Griechenland, Dionysos und Prometheus,
unternahm. Freuds Beschftigung mit der Mythologie und der griechischen Tragdie
sollte vielmehr einen entgegengesetzten Weg einschlagen (S. 33). Alle uerungen zu
Griechenland, Athen, dipus, Dionysos, Prometheus mten danach stets auf Nietzsche
bezogen und hufig als gegen ihn gerichtet interpretiert werden. Ist damit nicht die Gefahr einer berinterpretation verbunden?
Als Jugendlicher gehrte Freud einer Generation an, die sich in ihren Hoffnungen auf
eine aufgeklrte, gerechte und tolerante Gesellschaftsordnung getuscht sah und sich
deshalb v. a. im Leseverein der deutschen Studenten Wiens den neuen Vorbildern Schopenhauer, Wagner und Nietzsche zuwandte, die fr eine kulturelle und nationale Erneuerung eintraten. Dennoch scheint er auf Abstand zum Wiener Nietzscheverein geblieben zu sein, jedenfalls hat er sich in dieser Hinsicht immer sehr bedeckt gehalten. In
seinem Artikel Freud zwischen Aufklrung und Gegenaufklrung (1989) behauptete
Le Rider, der damals an der Wiener Universitt und im Leseverein zutage tretende Antisemitismus habe sich fr den jungen Freud als unzertrennlich verbunden mit dem Wagnerismus und dem Nietzscheismus entpuppt, wobei er den Nietzscheismus ausdrcklich
als Entstellung von Nietzsches Denken betrachtet. Hierin sehe er eine tiefe Ursache
der Abneigung von Sigmund Freud gegen alle Vergleiche und Parallelen, die spter zwischen ihm und Nietzsche gezogen wurden.23 In diesem Kontext zitiert Le Rider auch den
bekannten Satz Freuds, in seiner Jugend habe ihm Nietzsche eine ihm unzugngliche
Vornehmheit bedeutet,24 um dann die Frage anzuschlieen: Wie soll man den Ausdruck eine mir unzugngliche Vornehmheit verstehen? Meinte Freud nicht: eine mir
durch den Antisemitismus verweigerte Vornehmheit?25 Bei Le Rider schwingt hier ein
deutliches Evidenzgefhl mit. Lassen wir dahingestellt sein, ob er damit in der Sache
recht gehabt haben knnte, so kann er doch einen serisen Zeitzeugen anfhren, nmlich
Franz Overbeck: Nietzsche ist ein herzlicher Gegner des Antisemitismus []. Das hindert nicht, da, wo er ehrlich spricht, seine Urteile ber die Juden allen Antisemitismus an
Schrfe weit hinter sich lassen. Sein Anti-Christentum ist vornehmlich antisemitisch begrndet.26 Aber msste nicht auch diese Textstelle erst in dem Kontext, in dem sie steht,
betrachtet werden, bevor sie eventuell vorschnell als Argumentationshilfe zu Rate gezogen wird?
In Das Ende der Illusion (1990) uerte Le Rider die weitere Vermutung, Freuds Philosophie-Lehrer Franz Brentano, der im Leseverein einen kritischen Vortrag ber Nietzsche gehalten hat, habe entschieden dazu beigetragen, den jungen Freud von der nietzscheanischen Weltanschauung abzubringen und zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung
hinzufhren.27 Doch Belege dafr blieb er schuldig. Im vorliegenden Buch setzt Le Ri23
24

25
26

27

Le Rider: Freud zwischen Aufklrung und Gegenaufklrung, a.a. O., S. 480.

Brief an Arnold Zweig, 12. Mai 1934. In: Freud, Sigmund / Zweig, Arnold: Briefwechsel. Hg. v.
Ernst Freud. Frankfurt am Main 1968. S. 89.
Le Rider: Freud zwischen Aufklrung und Gegenaufklrung, a.a. O., S. 481.
Zit. nach Gilman, Sander L.: Begegnungen mit Nietzsche. Bonn 1981. Dok. Nr. 255. S. 470 473,
S. 473.
Le Rider: Das Ende der Illusion, a.a. O., S. 291 f.

Rezensionen

501

der nun seine Neigung zu gewagten Pointierungen fort. So vertritt er die These, da sich
Freud seit der Traumdeutung als ein Anti-Nietzsche bestimmt habe, der die Hauptziele
des Zarathustra fr gefhrlich und illusorisch gehalten habe: Weder die Suche nach einer
Vershnung des Eros mit der Zivilisation um den Preis einer Kulturrevolution, welche
die Umwertung aller Werte erforderte, noch die berwindung der Religion als Grundlage
der Ethik noch die Heraufkunft eines neuen Menschen, der den Nihilismus berwunden
hat (S. 148), seien fr Freud annehmbar gewesen. Man fragt sich wiederum, wie Le Rider
zu diesen Freud unterstellten Bezugnahmen auf Nietzsche gelangt ist. Belege fehlen wiederum. Der Denkentwicklung Freuds weiter folgend konstatiert Le Rider bei Freud nach
dem Zweiten Weltkrieg einen Bruch mit dem Nietzscheanismus, der ihm nur noch als
trgerischer Prophetismus erschienen und mit einer Abwendung von der griechischen
Antike sowie der neuhumanistischen Bildungskonzeption einhergegangen sei (S. 151).
Aber gerade im Sptwerk Freuds, gerade im Rahmen der erst jetzt ausgearbeiteten Kultur-, Moral- und ber-Ich-Konzeptionen gibt es, diesmal nachweislich, starke Bezugnahmen Freuds auf Nietzsche. Dies kann sowohl fr seine Strukturtheorie in Das Ich und das
Es als auch fr seine kulturtheoretischen Errterungen in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur gelten. Freuds Anthropologie und insbesondere seine Konzeption des Unbewuten nhern
sich Schopenhauers und Nietzsches Positionen stark an. So bleiben viele vom Autor angesprochene Fragen offen. Dennoch: Der Anregungswert von Le Riders Werk ist beachtlich.

7. Golomb, Jacob / Santaniello, Weaver / Lehrer, Ronald (Hg.): Nietzsche and

Depth Psychology. Albany, NY (State University of New York Press) 1999.
XIII + 364 Seiten. ISBN 0-7914-4140-7.
Der Sammelband liefert in insgesamt 17 Beitrgen einen guten berblick ber die aktuelle, breitgefcherte Diskussion zum Thema Nietzsche und die Tiefenpsychologie im
angelschsischen Sprachraum sowie zu dem generellen Verhltnis von Philosophie und
Psychologie. Er gliedert sich in drei Teile: Psychology in Nietzsche; Nietzsche and Psychology;
The Psychology of Nietzsche and his Readers (Psychobiography). Der Hauptherausgeber Jacob Golomb von der Hebrew University in Jerusalem (auch Verfasser von Nietzsches Enticing Psychology of Power, 1989, und Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, 1997) hebt in seinem einleitenden
Essay Nietzsches entscheidenden Beitrag zur Tiefenpsychologie hervor. Als Psychologe
sei Nietzsche jedoch Philosoph, wobei er das Gewicht von der Philosophie auf die Philosophen verlagere, von der Wahrheit auf die Wahrhaftigkeit bzw. Authentizitt des Einzelnen. Nietzsches Umwerthung aller Werthe interpretiert Golomb somit als graduelle Annherung an die Authentizitt jedes Einzelnen. Nietzsches Methode beschreibt er als eine
entlarvende, den Inhalt seiner Psychologie als bestimmt durch den Willen zur Macht.
Wichtigstes operatives Element von Nietzsches neuer Psychologie sei, ganz im Sinne
Freuds, die Bewutmachung des Unbewuten. Golomb schliet mit einer interessanten
berlegung zu Nietzsches Stil, indem er den selbstanalytischen Zug seiner Psychologie
fr seinen persnlichen und aphoristischen Stil verantwortlich macht und mit der Assoziationstechnik der Psychoanalyse in Verbindung bringt.
Der erste Teil Psychology in Nietzsche versammelt die Beitrge von James P. Cadello, Daniel Chapelle, Daniel W. Conway, Rochelle L. Millen, Weaver Santaniello, Ofelia Schutte
und Robert Solomon. Cadello geht von Nietzsches Beschreibung der Psychologie als
einer grossen Jagd im Bereich der noch unausgetrunkenen Mglichkeiten ( JGB 45,
KSA 5, S. 65) der menschlichen Seele aus und betont den experimentellen Charakter dieser Psychologie. Dabei riskiere er die Umwertung von Psychologie und Philosophie sel-

502

Rezensionen

ber, indem er Aspekte innerer Erfahrung erforsche, die bis dahin als unzugnglich galten.
Bei Chapelle, dem Verfasser von Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis (1993), einem Psychologen
und Therapeuten in der Tradition C. G. Jungs, geht es um den Gedanken der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen im Hinblick auf den unbewuten Wiederholungszwang. Zarathustras Aufgabe, das Leben noch in seinen schwrzesten Momenten zu rechtfertigen und ja
zu sagen bis zur Erlsung auch alles Vergangenen knne, so der Verfasser, durchaus als
Programm der Psychoanalyse verstanden werden, Erlsung im therapeutischen Sinn von
Heilung.
Der Philosoph Conway, ebenfalls Verfasser zweier Werke ber Nietzsche and the Political (1996) und Nietzsches Dangerous Game (1997), untersucht Nietzsches Psychophysiologie der dcadence als Disgregation der Instinkte. Nietzsches Auffassung der Instinkte
(Conway unterscheidet nicht zwischen Trieb und Instinkt) werde nur verstndlich, so der
Autor, wenn man sie im Rahmen eines tiefenpsychologischen Modells der Seele auffasse.
Der moderne Mensch knne sich nicht mehr auf seine regulirenden unbewusst-sicherfhrenden Triebe verlassen, sondern sei auf sein Bewutsein reduziert, d. h. auf sein
rmlichstes und fehlgreifendstes Organ (GM II, 16, KSA 5, S. 322). Nietzsche beschreibe die Seele, ganz im Gegensatz zur christlichen Auffassung, als etwas von Anfang
an Krankes und Fragmentiertes, als einen naturhaften, amoralischen Energiekreislauf undifferenzierter Willen zur Macht und reduziere damit den ehemals freien Willen auf ein
bloes Machtgefhl. Die Religionswissenschaftlerin R. L. Millen beschftigt sich mit
Nietzsches Psychology of Women und stellt fest, da Nietzsches Frauenbild vor 1883 berwiegend von seinem Ideal geprgt gewesen sei (Frauen verkrperten die dionysische, instinkthafte, kreative und kreatrliche Seite des Lebens), whrend er sich nach 1883 zunehmend mit den realen Frauen seiner Umgebung (Lou von Salom, Mutter und
Schwester u.a.) auseinandersetzte und somit zu sehr viel kritischeren Ansichten kam. Die
Philosophin W. Santaniello, Verfasserin von Nietzsche, God and the Jews (1994), befat sich
mit Nietzsches Psychogenealogy of Religion and Racism. Nietzsches fundamentale Einsicht als
Religionspsychologe liege in der Feststellung, da alle Gtter endopsychische Projektionen seien, womit er einen wichtigen Punkt Sigmund Freuds vorweggenommen habe. Die
Philosophin O. Schutte, Verfasserin von Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks (1984),
schreibt ber Zeit, Schmerz, Lust und Gedchtnis und der Philosoph R. C. Solomon
(Reading Nietzsche, 1988) setzt sich mit Nietzsche and the Emotions auseinander. Nach einem
berblick ber Nietzsches Metaphorik der Gefhle geht er vor allem zwei Gefhlen
nach: Mitleid und Ressentiment, die er gegen Nietzsches Verdikt als positive und im Falle
des Ressentiment sogar hchst kreative Gefhle zu verteidigen sucht. Es gebe in Nietzsche zwar keine Theorie der Gefhle, dafr aber etwas viel Wertvolleres: eine Verteidigung des leidenschaftlichen Lebens. Es bleibe Nietzsches herausragendes Verdienst, den
Gefhlen wieder zu ihrem Recht verholfen, sie in den Mittelpunkt seines Denkens gerckt zu haben, auch wenn es bei ihm mehr um die negativen als um die positiven Gefhlen gehe.
Teil II beschftigt sich mit Nietzsche and Psychology. In seiner kurzen Abhandlung ber
Nietzsche and Freud geht E. Blondel der Frage nach: wie philosophisch war die antiphilosophische Anthropologie Nietzsches und Freuds? Beide waren, so Blondel, zweifellos
Psychologen und beide waren rzte der Kultur. Die Krankheiten, die sie behandelten,
waren Neurose und dcadence und fr beide war das Mittel der Therapie die Sprache. Die
Mastbe fr ihr Handeln waren jedoch philosophische, auch wenn beide der Philosophie grndlich mitrauten. Nietzsche und Freud gaben der Philosophie ihre interpretativen Qualitten zurck. R. Lehrer, der Autor des Buches Nietzsches Presence in Freuds Life
and Thought (1995), behauptet in seinem Beitrag Freud and Nietzsche 1892 1895, wir htten

Rezensionen

503

gerade erst damit begonnen, Nietzsches Einflu auf die Psychologie und Psychiatrie unserer Zeit in all ihren Verzweigungen zu erforschen. G. Parkes setzt sich in seinem Beitrag
Nietzsche and Jung sehr kritisch mit C. G. Jungs Nietzsche-Interpretation auseinander, dem
er vorwirft, sowohl Nietzsches Philosophie als auch seine Biographie und seinen Charakter vllig miverstanden zu haben. In Beitrgen zu Nietzsche und Adler gehen R. Lehrer
und C. Barbre Nietzsches gewaltigem Einflu auf Alfred Adler und Otto Rank nach und
der wichtigen Rolle, die er bei deren Ablsung von Freud gespielt hat.
Der abschlieende dritte Teil versucht Nietzsches psychologische Einsichten im
Sinne der Psychographie auf ihn selber anzuwenden und ist fr den hier zur Diskussion
stehenden Freud-Nietzsche Diskurs weniger relevant. Insgesamt spiegelt das Buch sehr
anschaulich die ganze Bandbreite und Intensitt der Freud-Nietzsche-Debatte der letzten
Jahre, ohne jedoch aus der Perspektive des Forschers neues Material beizutragen. Diesbezglich bleiben die Schriften von W. J. McGrath (Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in
Austria, 1974), P.-L. Assoun (Freud et Nietzsche, 1980, s. o.) und R. Gasser (Nietzsche und
Freud, 1998) unbertroffen.

8. Lickint, Klaus Gerhard: Nietzsches Kunst des Psychoanalysierens. Eine

Schule fr kultur- und geschichtsbewute Analytiker der Zukunft. Wrzburg
(Knigshausen & Neumann) 2000. 613 Seiten. ISBN 3-8260-1926-1.
Lickints Buch ist vor allem als umfangreiche Materialsammlung und Zusammenstellung von Zitaten zum Thema Nietzsche und die Psychoanalyse zu gebrauchen. Auf ber
500 Seiten reiht er Stellen aus Nietzsches Werk und Nachlass aneinander, die er unter verschiedenen berschriften zusammenfat: Das Unbewute und sein Verhltnis zum Bewutsein, ber die Natur der Triebe, Liebe, Eros, Sexualitt, Die rzte, die Neurose und das Irrenhaus unserer Kultur, Die Macht und das Machtgefhl, Das Leiden
und das Mitleiden etc. Diese Zusammenstellung knnte als solche durchaus sinnvoll
sein, wre sie nicht mit dem Anspruch des Kulturhygienikers verbunden, welcher
furchtlosen Auges in die ungeheure Tiefe der offenen Zukunft blickt, um ber die Zukunft der Menschheit zu befinden (S. 553). Der Psychoanalytiker Lickint preist Nietzsches Psychoanalytik als den ber Freud hinaus wahrscheinlich wirksamsten psychohygienischen Weg fr Psychoanalytiker und letztlich fr jeden, so gesund als mglich zu
werden und zu bleiben (S. 15). Leider fehlt dem Autor jegliche Distanz zu seinem Gegenstand, seine Identifikation mit Nietzsche geht stellenweise bis in die Diktion hinein.
Vor allem der Zukunftsphilosoph Nietzsche hat es ihm angetan, und so will Lickint
unter Fhrung wachgewordener psychoanalytischer Berufsverbnde [] gemeinsam
mit den Volksvertretern und den Regierungen den generationenlangen Versuch einer
Kulturrenaissance anpacken (S. 554). Psychohygienik, Kulturhygienik und die
Assanierung der Massenneurotik nennt er als die entscheidenden Aufgaben der Psychoanalytiker der Zukunft. Lickints Buch ist hchstens als Steinbruch zu gebrauchen,
weshalb auf eine ausfhrliche Rezension hier verzichtet werden kann.28

28

Vgl. stattdessen die Rezension von Mller-Buck, Renate, in: Nietzscheforschung 10 (2003).
S. 346 348.

504

Rezensionen

9. Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor: Inside/Outside Nietzsche. Psychoanalytic Explorations. Ithaca, NY (Cornell University Press) 2000. XI + 267 Seiten.
ISBN 0-8014-3703-2.
Wolfensteins Ausgangsfrage lautet: Kann die Psychoanalyse der Herausforderung
durch Nietzsche standhalten, oder ist eine Umwertung der psychoanalytischen Werte ntig? Der Titel Inside/Outside Nietzsche bezieht sich auf Nietzsches Theoreme des Willens
zur Macht (inside) und des Perspektivismus (outside) sowie deren Anwendung auf die
Psychoanalyse. Der Sozialwissenschaftler und praktizierende Analytiker Wolfenstein versucht diese beiden Konzepte Nietzsches fr die psychoanalytische Theoriebildung und
Praxis fruchtbar zu machen. Dabei geht er zunchst von der Annahme aus, da Nietzsches Wille zur Macht und Freuds Lustprinzip zwei entgegengesetzte Konzepte seien. Ziel
des Lebens, so Freud in Jenseits des Lustprinzips, sei die Vermeidung von Schmerz und d.h.
das Streben nach anorganischer Ruhe, ein aus Nietzsches Sicht zutiefst nihilistisches Ziel.
Umgekehrt gleiche Nietzsches Konzeption des Willens zur Macht aus Freuds Perspektive
einer Wiederholung des fort da Spiels seines Enkels Ernst (in Jenseits des Lustprinzips), in dem
die schmerzhafte Erfahrung des Verlassenseins durch die geliebte Mutter aktiv wiederholt werde, um sie so beherrschbar zu machen. Wolfenstein kommt jedoch zu dem Ergebnis, da Aggression, Ha und Destruktivitt lediglich Funktionen des Willens zur
Macht und nicht, wie Freud annahm, Derivate des Todestriebs seien. Der Todestrieb selber, so Wolfenstein, sei nur die Kehrseite des Lebenstriebs. Da sich fr Nietzsche der
Wille zur Macht nur an Widerstnden manifestieren kann, die es permanent zu berwinden gilt, lautet Wolfensteins kritische Frage: Sind wir wirklich gewillt, wie Nietzsche das
Fehlen von Widerstnden mit Lebensverneinung gleichzusetzen? Seine psychoanalytische Neuformulierung des Willens zur Macht, die Freuds und Nietzsches Positionen verbindet, lautet daher: es geht beim Willen zur Macht um die berwindung von Schmerz
zur Gewinnung von Lust, einschlielich der Lust, den Schmerz zu berwinden. In einem
weiteren Abschnitt untersucht der Autor Nietzsches Perspektivismus als eine Voraussetzung fr den psychoanalytischen Proze. Auch der Analytiker msse in hohem Mae in
der Lage sein, die Perspektive zu wechseln. Darberhinaus versucht er eine Art Psychobiographie Nietzsches unter Verwendung von Winnicotts Konzept des transitional
space, indem er behauptet, Nietzsche habe aus diesem geschlechtlich instabilen Raum
zwischen dem mtterlichen und vterlichen Extrem heraus philosophiert und so seine
Konzepte der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen und des Weiblichen entwickelt. In einem
abschlieenden Kapitel interpretiert Wolfenstein Nietzsches Geschichte bzw. Genealogie
der Moral aus psychoanalytischer Sicht und stellt fest, da in der daraus resultierenden
Forderung nach einer Umwertung aller Werte fr Liebe und Mitleid kein Platz ist.
Alles in allem ein sehr anregendes und subjektives Buch, in welchem der Autor auf
originelle Weise versucht, die tragenden Sulen seines intellektuellen Kosmos (dazu gehren neben Nietzsche und Freud auch Foucault, Marx und Hegel) zu einer eigenstndigen
Theorie zu verbinden. Dies ist ihm auf eine kluge und sehr individuelle Weise gelungen.
Da die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Nietzsche und Freud auch heute noch gengend Stoff fr fruchtbare und spannende Debatten liefert, belegen die hier besprochenen
Arbeiten zur Genge. Vor allem die amerikanische Diskussion zeigt, da Nietzsches Philosophie durchaus eine Herausforderung fr den aktuellen psychoanalytischen Diskurs
darstellt, sich aber umgekehrt auch an den Ergebnissen psychologischer und psychoanalytischer Erkenntnisse messen lassen mu und kann.

Rezensionen

505

Um die Diskussion im deutschen Sprachraum anzuregen, wre es wnschenswert,

wenn die hervorragende Arbeit von Assoun Freud et Nietzsche endlich auch in deutscher
bersetzung erschiene. Ferner wren Forschungen zu begren, die einzelne Aspekte
des Freud-Nietzsche-Diskurses zum Inhalt haben wie: empiristische vs. konstruktivistische Erkenntnistheorie; Metaphysik vs. Metapsychologie; Ethik vs. Wertfreiheit; entlarvende Psychologie vs. Tiefenpsychologie; Vergleich der beiden Kulturtheorien; Unterschiede hinsichtlich der Konzeptionen von Therapeutik und Lebenskunst. Gerade aus
der Gegenberstellung beider Richtungen knnten sich sehr fruchtbare Denkanste ergeben: fr die Nietzsche-Forschung, weil sie den Psychologen Nietzsche in den letzten
Jahren etwas aus dem Blickfeld verloren hat, und fr die Psychoanalyse, weil sie sich mit
einer Reihe grundlegender Fragen von neuem konfrontieren mte: wo die Grenzen der
Selbsterkenntnis liegen und inwieweit sie ein wnschenswertes Therapieziel ist; ob die
von Nietzsche aufgeworfene Sinnfrage nicht doch berechtigt und vielleicht sogar notwendig ist; und nicht zuletzt, ob der Machtaspekt, der dem wissenschaftlichen Objektivitts- und Neutralittsanspruch der Psychoanalyse zugrunde liegt, weiterhin verleugnet
oder transparent gemacht wird.

506

Siglen

Siglen

507

508

Siglen

(Erstellt von Stefan Tolksdorf und Andrea Weigt)

Literatur-Register

509

Literatur-Register
1. Nietzsche
GT:

7. 9. 60. 106. 109. 112f. 115 f. 118. 126f. 133. 201. 242. 246f. 249. 251. 253ff.
277 294. 297f. 350. 355. 361ff. 369. 372. 405. 432
Versuch einer Selbstkritik: 126; 2: 77; 6: 127; 7: 101
1: 88. 101. 104. 108. 116. 128. 277. 290. 354; 3: 105. 107f. 392. 404; 2: 123. 128f.
277; 3: 277; 4: 277. 405; 5: 139. 162. 277. 354f; 6: 131. 135. 277; 7: 112. 135f. 139.
202. 277. 355. 361; 8: 91. 99. 135ff. 354; 8 10: 277; 1115: 277; 12: 101. 140; 14:
140; 15: 140; 16: 281. 288; 17: 113; 18: 139; 19: 139. 354; 20: 70. 80. 250; 21: 109.
135. 252; 22: 133 136. 138. 354; 24: 253. 354

UB:

294. 313. 444. 471

2. HL: 286; 10: 300
3. SE: 88 f.
4. WB: 88. 291. 366; 3: 354

MA:

202. 300. 310ff. 314. 319. 332. 354. 362

MA I: 1. Hauptstck: 1: 489; 16: 12; 2. Hauptstck: 37: 313; 56: 194; 60: 192; 61: 194 f. 199;
3. Hauptstck: 137: 204; 141: 206. 355; 151: 355; 160: 202; 162: 94; 164: 200; 165:
86; 178: 352; 185: 353; 212: 157; 213: 202; 4. Hauptstck: 221: 258; 223: 358;
5. Hauptstck: 282285: 391; 6. Hauptstck: 370: 197; 9. Hauptstck: 624: 200; 637:
187
MA II: Erste Abtheilung: Vermischte Meinungen und Sprche: 46: 192; 52: 198; 54: 188; 153:
353; 174: 355; 217: 203; 219: 258; 221: 87; 365: 365
Zweite Abtheilung: Der Wanderer und sein Schatten: 6: 451; 46: 199; 73: 370; 123: 354;
266: 365
M:

12. 29f. 149. 310. 312. 324. 332f. 362. 387. 420f. 443. 448
1. Buch: 9: 263. 324; 10: 317; 14: 92 f. 263. 324; 16: 323; 19: 324; 23: 324; 26: 325;
30: 322; 33: 317; 34: 321; 35: 321; 38: 320; 52: 193; 60: 320; 2. Buch:104: 322; 106:
316; 108: 316; 111: 322; 112: 327; 114: 215 f.; 116: 263; 117: 29; 119: 319; 120:
208; 124: 208; 132: 320. 326; 146: 320; 3. Buch: 157: 195; 168: 262 f. 265; 174: 326.
422; 175: 326; 4. Buch: 221: 323; 248: 325; 272: 431; 309: 325; 310: 322; 312: 322;
380: 214; 381: 186; 5. Buch: 423: 1; 440: 391; 496: 263; 532: 325; 553: 362

FW:

12. 29f. 76. 82f. 97. 268f. 310. 320f. 332. 355. 362ff. 370. 372. 399. 432. 448
Vorrede: 2: 364
Scherz, List und Rache: 7: 224; 62: 93
1. Buch: 1: 321; 36: 197; 43: 315; 49: 206; 54: 30; 2. Buch: 69: 333; 78: 93; 80: 355;
106: 359; 107: 355; 3. Buch: 108: 378. 399; 109: 21. 111. 268; 124: 399 f. 405; 125:

510

Literatur-Register

377. 379f. 382. 399f. 437; 135: 194; 152: 373; 200: 203; 201: 200; 255: 84; 258:
200; 261: 86; 4. Buch: 280: 370; 290: 116; 299: 373; 335: 88. 268; 341:118. 406;
5. Buch: 343: 380. 383. 399. 401; 344: 404; 346: 268; 351: 262. 264. 434; 354: 34.
467; 356: 93. 374; 357: 34. 403; 365: 81. 97; 366: 84; 367: 350. 374; 370: 102. 359.
364; 371: 367; 372: 350. 374; 373: 311; 374: 366; 381: 367 f. 374; 383: 358
Za:

107. 109. 113f. 116 f. 119. 122. 149. 184. 218f. 232. 242f. 250. 287. 333f. 356.
361 ff. 372. 424. 448. 460. 490
Za I
Zarathustras Vorrede: 3: 444. 449; 4: 234
Von den Hinterweltlern: 444
Von den Verchtern des Leibes: 446. 491
Von tausend und Einem Ziele: 453
Von der Nchstenliebe: 170
Vom Biss der Natter: 393
Von der schenkenden Tugend: 3: 184
Za II
Auf den glckseligen Inseln: 226
Von den Priestern: 449
Das Nachtlied: 370
Von der Selbst-Ueberwindung: 109
Der Wahrsager: 106
Von der Erlsung: 79
Za III
Vom Wanderer: 119
Vor Sonnen-Aufgang: 447
Vom Geist der Schwere: 2: 89
Von alten und neuen Tafeln: 13: 107; 29: 88
Der Genesende: 2: 114
Das andere Tanzlied: 1: 227
Die sieben Siegel: 113. 373
Za IV
Vom hheren Menschen: 18: 109

JGB:

9. 12. 29f. 49. 62. 67. 119. 184f. 219. 342. 434
Vorrede: 434
1. Hauptstck: 2: 468; 3: 268; 4: 356; 7: 434; 9: 443; 13: 138; 16: 302. 307f. 341 f.;
17: 307; 19: 3. 51f. 198; 22: 366. 409; 23: 328; 2. Hauptstck: 24: 31; 27: 353. 367;
28: 434; 30: 434; 31: 371; 34: 415; 36: 50. 452. 468; 40: 84. 99; 3. Hauptstck: 45:
501; 54: 307; 56: 113; 4. Hauptstck: 75: 150; 78: 206; 5. Hauptstck: 190: 434; 191:
434; 192: 28; 194: 336; 197: 454; 6. Hauptstck: 207: 422; 208: 63. 65f.; 211: 313.
327. 434. 467; 7. Hauptstck: 224: 64; 239: 66; 9. Hauptstck: 257: 119; 259: 443.
452; 260: 105; 281: 341; 295: 81. 84 ff. 355 f.

GM:

9. 150. 166 169. 174. 176 185. 197. 219. 310. 328. 424. 427f. 486. 504
Vorrede: 4: 310; 5: 167; 6: 167; 7: 166. 425f. 429
1. Abhandlung: Gut und Bse, Gut und Schlecht: 1: 425; 2: 425; 3: 321. 425; 4: 425;
5: 425; 13: 45. 50. 425;

Literatur-Register

511

2. Abhandlung: Schuld, schlechtes Gewissen und Verwandtes: 1: 169. 426; 2: 169 f.

174. 426; 3: 169. 336; 4: 170. 336; 5: 171. 336; 6: 172. 178; 7: 407; 8: 170 f. 178.
426 f.; 9: 179. 336. 426f.; 10: 181. 336. 426f.; 11: 103. 412. 426f.; 12: 328. 352.
412. 417. 425. 427; 13: 336. 352. 426f.; 14: 173. 179. 336. 426f.; 15: 426 f.; 16: 172.
502; 17: 164. 171. 173. 336; 18: 173; 19: 174. 336; 20: 175; 21: 175. 385; 22: 175.
425; 24: 183. 393; 25: 183
3. Abhandlung: Was bedeuten asketische Ideale?: 486; 4: 146. 162; 6: 149. 352; 7: 391;
8: 354; 9: 180. 336; 14: 336; 24: 428 f.; 27: 378. 403; 28: 428 f.
WA:

67 f. 121. 242
Vorwort: 70. 121
Turiner Brief vom Mai 1888: 5: 68. 70; 6: 69 f. 144; 7: 68. 70f. 73. 354; 8: 68 ff. 144;
9: 68 f. 144; 11: 69. 144
Nachschrift: 69. 84. 144. 249
Zweite Nachschrift: 72
Epilog: 71

GD:

12. 126. 146. 155. 256. 262. 433. 448

Sprche und Pfeile: 26: 353
Das Problem des Sokrates: 2: 269; 8: 472; 10: 60; 12: 60
Die Vernunft in der Philosophie: 1: 101; 5: 161. 307. 378. 401
Wie die wahre Welt endlich zur Fabel wurde: 450
Moral als Widernatur: 2: 59
Die vier groen Irrtmer: 2: 53
Die Verbesserer der Menschheit: 5: 434
Streifzge eines Unzeitgemen: 5: 377; 8: 146 f. 153; 10: 135. 146 148. 374; 19: 463;
33: 364; 35: 60; 37: 311 f.; 38: 463; 41: 463
Was ich den Alten verdanke: 85; 2: 256; 4: 113. 162; 5: 126. 128. 134. 140f.

AC:

378. 380. 384 388. 395. 399. 404. 448

Der Antichrist: 8: 407; 16: 402. 404; 18: 399. 406; 24: 384. 405; 25: 404; 26: 401;
28 35: 384; 29: 405; 30: 385; 32: 387. 405; 35: 378; 37: 378. 385; 39: 378 ff.; 40:
378; 41: 385; 42: 388; 43: 64. 400. 406; 49: 385. 462; 52: 354; 54: 385 f.; 55: 386

EH:

79. 83. 86. 88. 102. 104f. 137. 200. 364. 372. 447. 486
Vorwort: 2: 92; 100
Warum ich so weise bin: 2: 448; 7: 367
Warum ich so klug bin: 85; 1: 81. 98. 449; 10: 103. 118
Warum ich so gute Bcher schreibe: 1: 470; 3: 367; 5: 353
Die Geburt der Tragdie: 2: 151. 162; 3: 126. 141. 148
Die Unzeitgemssen: 3: 88 f.
Morgenrthe: 1: 310
Also sprach Zarathustra: 76; 1: 121; 4: 370. 373; 5: 76 ff.; 7: 370
Jenseits von Gut und Bse: 1: 448
Genealogie der Moral: 428
Der Fall Wagner: 4: 371

512

Literatur-Register

Gtzendmmerung: 3: 371
Warum ich ein Schicksal bin: 1: 165; 4: 311. 327; 9: 100
NW:

Wo ich Einwnde mache: 144. 146

Wagner als Gefahr: 1: 144 f.
Wir Antipoden: 144

DD:

80

Nachla und philologische Schriften:

KGW I 1
4[77]: 294
KGW I 4
35[1]: 337; 36[1]: 338; 60[1]: 295; 62[3 58]: 269
BAW 2
S. 64 66: 297; S. 89: 297; S. 114: 295. 297; S. 171: 297; S. 334: 283; S. 364: 284;
S. 364 399: 278; S. 368: 285; S. 370: 283; S. 371: 284; S. 374 f.: 279. 284; S. 376:
297; S. 380 382: 279; S. 398: 279; S. 441: 297
Altera commentarii pars:[I] Gedanken ber die chorische Musik in der Tragoedie, mit Anwendung auf dieses Chorlied: 283
[II.]Das Schema des Chorliedes nach musikalischen Perioden: 283
[III.] Die Wirkung der Tragdie und ihr Plan: 283
[IV.] Ueber den Prolog der Tragdie: 283
BAW 3
S. 125 128: 337; S. 128 130: 338; S. 371 394: 313; S. 376 f.: 308; S. 379: 308;
S. 381 383: 308; S. 387 390: 308; S. 392: 308; S. 458 f.: 300; S. 460 462: 308;
S. 461: 300; S. 463 f.: 300
GW II 15
Encyclopdie der klassischen Philologie, 3: KGW II 3, S. 357 363: 339; 4 und 5: 339;
18: 272
Einfhrung in das Studium der platonischen Dialoge: S. 119 122: 269; S. 131 134: 269;
S. 150 151: 269; S. 171: 270
Die vorplatonischen Philosophen: KGW II 4, S. 357 f.: 272; S. 360 f.: 257
Geschichte der griechischen Beredsamkeit: KGW II 4, S. 363 411: 258
KGW III 2 KSA 1
Das griechische Musikdrama (GMD): 277. 281. 290
Sokrates und die Tragdie: 277
Die dionysische Weltanschauung: 128. 137f. 289
Die Geburt des tragischen Gedankens: 128. 138
Sokrates und die griechische Tragoedie: 128. 138. 156. 159
ber die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten (BA): 268
Fnf Vorreden zu fnf ungeschriebenen Bchern (CV): 156

Literatur-Register

513

Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen (PHG): 257. 268. 471; 11: 305
ber Wahrheit und Lge im auermoralischen Sinne (WL): 9. 119. 267f. 497
KGW III 3/4 KSA 7
1[7]: 159; 1[8]: 354; 1[18]: 354; 1[19]: 281; 1[21]: 281; 1[43]: 157; 1[64]: 159;
1[78]: 281; 1[106]: 354; 2[24]: 354; 3[1 95]: 289; 3[36]: 157; 3[66]: 126; 3[95]:
355; 5[30]: 335; 5[31]: 335; 5[37]: 335; 5[40]: 335; 5[50]: 335; 5[65]: 335; 5[71]:
335; 7[1]: 150; 7[27]: 139; 7[58]: 353; 7[62]: 137; 7[113]: 156; 7[123]: 136; 7[125]:
134. 138; 7[127]: 135; 7[174]: 127; 9[9]: 136; 9[36]: 354; 9[102]: 137; 9[151]: 354;
11[1]: 250; 12[1]: 253; 15[1]: 248; 16[6]: 354. 374; 16[18]: 289; 19[62]: 366;
19[152]: 150; 26[1]: 300; 28[1]: 354; 29[87]: 355; 29[149]: 320; 29[223]: 272
KGW IV KSA 8
5[58]: 335; 5[198]: 335; 11[32]: 354; 19[72]: 265; 19[86]: 265; 20[1]: 354; 23[110]:
262; 23[150]: 268; 24[1]: 157; 31[4]: 265; 39[5]: 265; 39[8]: 335
Wir Philologen (KGW IV 1, S. 87): 286
KGW V KSA 9
1[4]: 316; 1[54]: 318; 1[56]: 318; 1[73]: 332; 1[76]: 317; 1[96]: 325; 1[98]: 311.
327; 1[106]: 317; 1[107]: 323; 1[110]: 318; 3[23]: 324; 3[24]: 325; 3[33]: 325;
3[83]: 325; 3[84]: 325; 3[85]: 318; 3[98]: 332. 326; 3[119]: 322; 3[171]: 316; 4[12]:
316; 4[50]: 324; 4[52]: 332. 336; 4[53]: 336; 4[57]: 336; 4[121]: 336; 4[130]: 336;
4[133]: 336; 4[274]: 336; 4[280]: 325; 6[18]: 319; 6[56]: 336; 6[75]: 316; 6[105]:
316; 6[108]: 320; 6[123]: 316. 320; 6[130]: 494; 6[144]: 320; 6[145]: 318; 6[163]:
326; 6[343]: 336; 6[344]: 321; 6[366]: 319; 6[429]: 26; 6[441]: 22; 6[455]: 317;
6[456]: 311. 317; 7[131]: 265; 7[218]: 319; 7[226]: 355; 7[242]: 159; 7[247]: 311;
7[290]: 363; 8[12]: 311; 8[35]: 311; 10[60]: 311; 11[2]: 319; 11[5]: 318; 11[20]:
320; 11[37]: 311; 11[43]: 311. 316; 11[73]: 311; 11[75]: 26; 11[119]: 272; 11[124]:
159; 11[164]: 450; 11[193]: 308; 11[195]: 332. 336; 11[197]: 268; 11[238]: 268;
11[267]: 336; 11[293]: 28; 11[299]: 336; 11[303]: 326; 11[330]: 302. 305; 12[34]:
445; 12[37]: 445; 12[158]: 317; 14[7]: 369; 14[8]: 407;
NV 1,156, 3[85] (KGW V 3, S. 363): 318
KGW VII KSA 10/11
4[204]: 333; 5[1] 266: 1; 7[18]: 149; 7[154]: 149; 7[247 248]: 336; 8[1]: 323; 8[5]:
336; 8[6]: 336; 8[7]: 336; 8[8]: 336; 8[9]: 336; 12[30]: 146; 13[1]: 161; 13[3]: 373;
16[26]: 452; 16[73]: 423; 17[73]: 272; 25[94]: 373; 25[95]: 126; 25[101]: 149;
25[163]: 263; 25[318]: 272; 25[335]: 453; 25[424]: 272; 25[437]: 327; 25[454]:
257; 26[3]: 257; 26[232]: 453; 28[65]: 373; 29[35]: 492; 34[1]: 82; 34[99]: 272;
34[162]: 428; 34[177]: 63; 34[181]: 355; 34[203]: 237; 34[249]: 32; 35[31]: 311;
35[35]: 342; 36[53]: 84; 38[3]: 342; 38[12]: 406; 40[12]: 340; 40[20]: 307; 40[22]:
299. 303; 40[23]: 302. 307; 40[24]: 305. 307. 340; 40[25]: 307; 40[30]: 340 f.;
41[2]: 145. 428; 43[2]: 52
KGW VII 4/2: S. 492: 340
KGW VIII KSA 12/13
1[29]: 3; 1[122]: 493; 2[70]: 46; 2[77]: 20; 2[78]: 45; 2[83]: 44; 2[84]: 45 f.; 2[87]:
62. 494; 2[93]: 268; 2[100]: 334; 2[108]: 24; 2[110]: 77; 2[151]: 43; 2[165]: 447;
5[7]: 401; 5[22]: 366; 5[63]: 456; 5[71]: 454; 5[110]: 334; 6[14]: 20; 6[123]: 138;

514

Literatur-Register

7[2]: 141; 7[20]: 264; 7[49]: 23; 7[63]: 307; 8[1]: 149 f. 320; 8[6]: 336; 9[8]: 62;
9[60]: 10; 9[64]: 370; 9[91]: 494; 9[106]: 23. 36. 43; 9[112]: 412; 9[165]: 453;
9[169]: 59; 10[20]: 489; 10[42]: 437; 10[53]: 457; 10[57]: 328; 10[111]: 412;
10[118]: 311; 10[146]: 353; 10[158]: 299. 303. 307; 11[31]: 65; 11[48]: 61; 11[73]:
161 f. 494; 11[103]: 444; 11[228]: 58; 11[321]: 145; 11[322]: 144; 11[323]: 145;
11[375]: 263; 11[410]: 353; 14[11]: 162; 14[14]: 137; 14[23]: 139; 14[26]: 138.
141; 14[33]: 137; 14[34]: 162; 14[36]: 136. 141; 14[47]: 136; 14[61]: 141. 144;
14[74]: 63; 14[79]: 161; 14[81]: 138; 14[83]: 61; 14[85]: 276; 14[92]: 62; 14[93]:
18; 14[97]: 276; 14[98]: 146. 161; 14[99]: 276; 14[100]: 276; 14[103]: 10; 14[113]:
57; 14[116]: 153. 274ff.; 14[117]: 146. 368; 14[119]: 124. 138. 162; 14[120]: 147.
162. 368; 14[121]: 3. 138; 14[124]: 147; 14[127]: 134. 147; 14[128]: 162; 14[141]:
276; 14[147]: 276; 14[148]: 276; 14[149]: 276; 14[150]: 276; 14[153]: 413;
14[157]: 61. 162; 14[163]: 493; 14[174]: 490; 14[182]: 64. 67; 14[219]: 60; 15[6]:
68; 15[10]: 134. 145; 15[46]: 11; 15[58]: 11; 15[82]: 9; 15[106]: 61; 15[118]: 353;
16[32]: 349. 397. 447; 16[37]: 154; 16[40]: 156; 16[48]: 145; 16[49]: 144. 154;
16[75]: 145; 16[79]: 144; 16[89]: 72. 145. 147; 17[3]: 138; 17[5]: 162. 368; 17[6]:
58; 17[9]: 146. 150; 18[4]: 353; 18[17]: 414; 24[1]: 127. 403
KSA 14:
S. 547: 300; S. 646: 308
WM: 11f. 17. 19. 105. 197. 256. 351. 363. 412. 441. 504
55: 111 f. 118; 435: 112; 482: 3; 516: 42; 550: 22; 569: 36; 616: 4; 864: 163; 1050:
101; 1052: 103; 1067: 19. 110
Briefe und Briefentwrfe:
An Georg Brandes
19. Februar 1888: 476
An Theodor Fritsch
23. Mrz 1887: 240; 29. Mrz 1887: 240
An Carl von Gersdorff
11. Oktober 1866: 295; 2. Mrz 1873: 246
An Heinrich Kselitz
18. Juli 1880: 310. 312
An Oswald Marbach
14. Juni 1874: 291
An Malwida von Meysenbug
Mitte Mrz 1875: 370
An Franziska Nietzsche
27. Mrz 1880: 315; 7. November 1885: 219
An Franziska und Elisabeth Nietzsche
12. November 1865: 295
An Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche
21. August 1885: 334; 7. November 1885: 219
An Wilhelm Pinder und Gustav Krug
14. Januar 1861: 295

Literatur-Register

515

An Friedrich Ritschl
12. Mai 1868: 127; 6. April 1872: 345
An Erwin Rohde
3. oder 4. Mai 1868: 127; 16. Juli 1872: 280; 7. Dezember 1872: 133. 290; 28. Januar
1873: 246
An Ernst Schmeitzner
22. November 1879: 315; 28. Dezember 1879: 315

2. Zu und ber Nietzsche

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Logik und sthetik. In: Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987). S. 112 148: 366
Nietzsche. Die Dynamik des Willens zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr. Berlin,
New York 1998: 3f. 25
Bewutsein Sprache Natur. Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes. In: NietzscheStudien 30 (2001). S. 1 43: 13
Acampora, Christa Davis: Demos Agonistes Redux. Reflections of the Streit of Political
Antagonism. In: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). S. 374 390: 164
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The Joyful Wisdom of Ecology. In: New Nietzsche Studies 5/6 (2003/2004).
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Acampora, Christa Davis / Acampora, Ralph R. (Hg.): A Nietzschean Bestiary. Becoming
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Bayerische Akademie der Schnen Knste: Im Namen des Dionysos: Friedrich Nietzsche Philosophie als Kunst. Beitrge von Heinz Friedrich u. a. Waakirchen 1995:
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Friedrich Schlegels Rede ber die Mythologie im Hinblick auf Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche-Studien 8 (1979). S. 182 209: 283
Die Auffassung des Dionysischen durch die Brder Schlegel und Friedrich Nietzsche.
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A.W. Schlegel and the Nineteenth-Century Damnatio of Euripides. In: Greek, Roman
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Bishop, Paul (Hg.): Nietzsche and Antiquity. His Reaction and Response to the Classical
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Biuso, Alberto Giovanni: Lantropologia di Nietzsche. Neapel 1995: 421
Blondel, ric: Nietzsche. Le corps et la culture. Paris 1986: 463
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Bourget, Paul: Essais de psychologie contemporaine. Paris 1883: 73f.
Braatz, Kurt: Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine Studie zur Theorie der ffentlichen Meinung.
Berlin, New York 1988: 428
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Breitschmid, Markus: Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur.
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del Caro, Adrian: Dionysian Aesthetics. The Role of Destruction and Creation as Reflected in the Life and Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Frankfurt, Bern, Cirencester
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Nietzsches Bayreuther Passion. Freiburg/Br. 2001: 254
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Faguet, mile: En lisant Nietzsche. Paris 1904: 222
Fink, Eugen: Nietzsches Philosophie. Stuttgart, Berlin 1960: 14. 23. 42
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531

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355
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Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor: Inside/Outside Nietzsche. Psychoanalytic Explorations.
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Wotling, Patrick: Nietzsche et le problme de la civilisation. Paris 1995: 463
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La Pense du sous-sol. Paris 1999: 328
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Und Nietzsche weinte. Roman. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Uda Strtling. Mit einem
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Was Hemingway von Freud htte lernen knnen. Mnchen 2003: 495
Young, Julian: Nietzsches Philosophy of Art. Cambridge 1992: 117. 362f.
Yovel, Yirmiyahu: Dark Riddle. Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. University Park, PA 1998:
459
Hegel, Nietzsche und die Juden. Ein dunkles Rtsel. Bukarest 2000: 244
Zittel, Claus: Selbstaufhebungsfiguren bei Nietzsche. Wrzburg 1995: 469
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Personen-Register

533

Personen-Register
Abbey, Ruth 421
Abel, Gnter 3f. 13. 25. 366
Abraham 477. 481 484
Acampora, Christa Davis 164f. 443
Acampora, Ralph R. 443. 445. 452
Adams, Roberts Merrihew 477f. 481
Adler, Alfred 487. 489. 496 499. 503
Adler, Victor 489
Adorno, Theodor 165. 361. 365
Aeschylos 137. 284f. 287. 290ff.
Alberti, Conrad 297
Alkidamas 257
Allison, David B. 360
Altizer, Thomas J.J. 390
Ambros, August Wilhelm 293
Anaxagoras 256. 264
Anders, Anni 300
Anderson, Benedict 437
Andler, Charles 238
Ansell-Pearson, Keith 200f. 365
Anselm von Canterbury 377
Antemireanu, Alexandra 222
Antonelli, Alessandro 370
Archiloque 76. 78
Archimedes 301
Arndt, Ernst Moritz 453
Arghezi, Tudor 222
Aristophanes 260. 434
Aristoteles 127. 131 134. 141. 202. 257.
272. 277. 280f. 304. 344. 354. 411. 424.
426. 472. 479
Arrowsmith, William 200
Asher, David 296
Assoun, Paul-Lauren 488ff.
Audi, Paul 360. 368
Augustinus 302
Augustus 197. 315
Babich, Babette E. 16. 359f.
Babillus 197
Bach, Johann Sebastian 115. 294. 344

Bachelard, Gaston 93
Bachofen, Johann Jakob 282
Backs, Jean-Louis 440
Bacon, Francis 10
Bahr, Hermann 70
Bain, Alexander 315
Baldacci, Paolo 371
Bann, Stephen 357
Barbat, Virgile J. 220
Barber, Rowland 206
Barbre, C. 503
Barbu, Ion 233
Barrs, Maurice 65. 219
Barth, Karl 390
Barzellotti, Giacomo 313
Bataille, Goerges 214. 365. 368. 422
Baudelaire, Charles 67f. 73. 368
Baumann 279
Baumann, Johann Julius 316. 332. 336
Baumgartner, Maria 331
Bumler, Alfred 351
Beckett, Samuel 368
Beethoven, Ludwig van 115. 253. 294. 298
Behler, Ernst 191. 282. 357
Benjamin, Walter 125. 361
Benn, Gottfried 248. 359
Bergius, Hanne 371
Bergson, Henri 57. 237
Berkeley, George 2. 22. 26
Berlioz, Hector 291. 295f.
Bernays, Jacob 127. 129 136. 280. 287
Bernhardt, Sara 69
Bernhardy, Gottfried 280. 283
Bernini, Lorenzo 370
Berrios, Ruben 365
Bertram, Ernst 244. 369
Beuy, Joseph 371f.
Bianco, Franco 422
Bidez, Fernand 81
Biser, Eugen 376 380. 395. 397
Bishop, Paul 258. 430. 435

534

Personen-Register

Biuso, Alberto Giovanni 421

Blaga, Lucian 217. 226. 231f.
Blake, William 24
Blanchot, Maurice 365
Blass, Friedrich 257
Blondel, Eric 463. 502
Boccioni, Umberto 372
Bohnen, Klaus 475
Bohr, Nils 10
Boissier, Gaston 219
Bondage 193
Borchmeyer, Dieter 252. 254. 358
Borgia, Cesare 454
Boscovich, Ruggero Giuseppe 493
Botez, George Emil 222
Bourget, Paul 73 f. 358
Bouwsma, William 212
Boyer, Rgis 440
Braatz, Kurt 428
Brandes, Georg 220. 440. 474ff.
Brands, Hartmut 304
Braniste, Andrei 222
Braun, Helmut Walter 238
Braun, Hermann 395. 489
Breazeale, Daniel 6. 459. 467
Breitschmid, Markus 373
Bremer, Dieter 141. 148. 159
Brendel, Franz 283ff. 294 298
Brentano, Franz 500
Bretz, Martina 356ff.
Breuer, Josef 35. 132. 494ff.
Brezuleanu, Maria 236
Briand, Aristide 218
Brinkmann, Malte 358
Brobjer, Thomas H. 163ff. 187. 287. 315.
333. 421. 433. 474. 476f.
Brochard, Victor 259. 261. 270. 274f.
Brodsky Lacour, Claudia 371
Broisson, Ivan 377. 391
Brose, Karl 312
Brcke, Ernst 499
Bruder, Klaus-Jrgen 496. 498
Bruder-Bezzel, Almuth 496. 498
Brunel, Pierre 440
Brunelleschis, Filippo 370
Bruse, Klaus-Detlef 360
Brusotti, Marco 149. 275
Bucci, Stefano 312
Buber, Martin 422

Buchheim, Iris 143

Bchner, Louis 296
Bchner, Alexander 296
Buchta, Alexander 345f.
Bucur, Septimiu 226
Buddha 103. 385
Buddensieg, Robert 346
Buddensieg, Tilmann 361. 371. 373
Bullough, Edward 115f. 118
Bultmann, Rudolf Karl 383
Burckhardt, Jacob 282. 350. 370f. 431. 467
Burkert, Walter 432
Cadello, James P. 501
Caillois, Roger 75 f. 79
Callicles 258
Callicott, Baird 444
Campioni, Giuliano 275. 342. 350. 422
Camus, Albert 114
Cancik, Hubert 127
Canis, Paul 117
Cappelrn, Niels J. 478
Carargiale, I. L. 220
Caro, Adrian del 357
Carol I, von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen,
Knig: 217. 220
Carvalho, John 357
Csar, Gaius Iuluis 54
Czanne, Paul 368
Challaye, Felicien 238
Chamberlain, Lesley 244
Chamfort (Roch, Nikolas Sebastian) 493
Chapelle, Daniel 501f.
Charcot, Jean-Martin 72
Cherlonneix, Laurent 360. 364
Chreau, Patrice 75
Cheung, Chiu-Yee 329ff. 334
Chirico, Giorgio de 372
Christians, Ingo 350
Christus 236. 240
Cicero 95
Cioran, Emil 223. 225 230
Clark, Maudemarie 7 13. 17. 409
Cobbs, John 441
Cocteau, Jean 219
Cohen, Jean-Louis 371
Colli, Georgio 248. 348. 459
Comte, Auguste 2
Confuzius, Ta-Hio 329 332. 335

Personen-Register

Connolly, William 164

Constantius, Constantin 480
Conway, Daniel 163. 165. 185. 200. 356ff.
501 f.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish 329
Corbusier, le (Charles Jeanneret) 371
Cosma, Octavian Lazar 223
Cowan, Michael 71
Crawford, Claudia 357
Creuzer, Friedrich 283
Csejtei, Deszs 474
Critchley, Simon 188. 194. 204ff. 209 ff.
214 f.
Cupitt, Don 390
Curtius, Georg 281
DAnnunzio, Gabriele 219
DIorio, Paolo 275. 305. 332. 342. 436
Daechsel, Bernhard 346
Daechsel, Friederike 346
Dahlhaus, Carl 253
Dalferth, Ingolf 478
Damasio, Antonio 13
Dennett, Daniel 13
Darwin, Charles 312ff. 322. 415ff. 493.
499
David, Pascal 359
de Roberty, Eugne 222
Decher, Friedhelm 139
Del Caro, Adrian 441f. 445. 448 456
Deleuze, Gilles 156. 173f. 206. 244. 365.
369. 428. 466
Demokrit 256f. 262. 264. 270. 274
Dennett, Daniel 415
Derrida, Jacques 6. 28. 82. 94f. 124 f. 365.
367 f. 409. 422. 425. 428
Descartes, Ren 2. 26. 85. 299 308. 371.
464
Dtienne, Marcel 81
Deuser, Hermann 478
Deussen, Paul 346
Diderot, Denis 87
Didi-Huberman, Georges 72
Dietzsch, Steffen 357
Dilthey, Wilhelm 469
Diogenes Laertes 257. 274
Dix, Otto 372
Doctorow, Edgar Lawrence 206
Dodds, Eric Robertson 81. 92

535

Dolto, Franoise 97
Dombowsky, Don 164f. 185
Dnicke, Kerstin 358. 372
Dostojewski, Fjodor 344. 388
Dragomirescu, Mihail 234
Draper, John William 331. 335
Draser, Bernd 358
Drenthen, Martin 443. 446f. 456
Dronke, Gustav 283 ff.
Drossbach, Maximilian 307. 341
Dryzek, John 456
Duckworth, George 202
Dudley, Will 459 463
Dufour, ric 360
Dhring, Eugen 275. 299. 305ff.
Du Mont, Emerich 313
Dumont, Magaret 206
Dupr, Louis 478ff.
Drer, Albrecht 249. 370
Duse, Eleonora 69
Dyck, Anthonis van 370
Eagleton, Terry 212
Eberlein, Hermann-Peter 395
Eckermann, Johann Peter 131
Eger, Manfred 253. 295
Einstein, Albert 19
Elbe, Stefan 436 440
Eliade, Mircea 223. 229ff.
Elisabeth, Knigin 220
Emerson, Joan P. 120
Eminescu, Mihai 217
Empedokles 81. 256. 493
Epictetus 187. 194
Epikur 236. 256. 273. 434
Erbsmehl, Hans-Dieter 372
Eriksen, Niels Nymann 480
Ernst, Max 372
Espinas, Alfred 313. 318 322. 326
Eucken, Rudolf 277
Euklid 339
Euripides 137. 159. 260. 264. 277. 282.
284. 287. 292. 298
Faguet, mile 222
Fazio, Domenico M. 440
Federn, Ernst 492
Fehr, Istvan M 359
Ferdinand 218

536

Personen-Register

Fer, Charles 48
Ferriera, Jamie 478
Feuerbach, Anselm 290
Feuerbach, Ludwig 2. 394. 471
Feyerabend, Paul Karl 10
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 22. 110. 225. 260.
398
Fink, Eugen 14. 23. 42f. 422
Fischer, Kuno 299. 307ff.
Flashar, Hellmut 132
Flaubert, Gustave 75
Fleischer, Margot 139
Fliess, Wilhelm 149
Foltz, Bruce 441. 450
Fundoianu, Benjamin 235f.
Forget, Philippe 367
Fornari, Maria Cristina 315. 342. 423
Frster, Artur 347
Frster, Bernhard 347
Frster, Paul 347
Frster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth 197. 294.
334. 346. 351. 459
Frster-Nietzsche, Therese Elisabeth
Alexandra 346
Foucault, Michel 10. 313. 365. 426. 428f.
504
Fouille, Alfred 57. 222. 313. 326
Frank, Manfred 134. 367
Frenzel, Ivo 244
Freud, Martha 132
Freud, Sigmund 14. 20. 35. 40. 42. 91. 132.
138. 187 191. 198. 202 215. 365. 428.
486 505
Freytag, Gustav 283 ff.
Friedrich, Heinz 361
Fritsch, Theodor 240
Fronterotta, Francesco 342
Frchtl, Josef 365
Fzesi, Nicolas 348
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 358. 367
Galli, Eugenie 345
Gana, George 233
Gary, Peter 360
Gaskell, Ivan 356f.
Gassendi, Petrus 308
Gasser, Reinhard 150. 187. 487f. 503
Gast, Peter (s. Heinrich Kselitz) 90. 140.
351. 459. 495

Gaster, Moses 231

Gaultier, Jules de 222. 238
Geisenhanslcke, Achim 359. 361
Gennep, Arnold van 137
Gerber, Gustav 352
Gerhardt, Volker 184. 424. 426
Gerlach, Hans Martin 422
Gersdorff, Carl von 245. 295. 357
Gervinus 283
Geulincx, Arnold 300
Gheran, Niculae 234
Gherea, Ion 239
Gide, Andr 440. 495
Gill, Merton 497
Gilman, Sander L. 500
Giovanola, Benedetta 420 423
Gladigow, Burkhard 133
Gleiter, Jrg 356f.
Glckner, Dorothea 480
Gluck, Christoph Willibald 296
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur 431
Gdde, Gnter 188. 486. 488. 491. 495
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 76. 89.
130 f. 133. 232. 256. 279. 281f. 358.
364. 371. 441. 499
Gogh, Vincent van 4. 368
Goldmann, Stefan 497
Golomb, Jacob 501
Gomperz, Theodor 499
Goncourt, Edmond Huot 67f.
Goncourt, Jules Huot 67f.
Gorgias 256f.
Gorgoi, Lucia 224. 229f. 232. 243
Grner, Rdiger 360. 366f.
Gorke, Martin 442
Grant, Michael 197
Grau, Gerd-Gnter 395. 474. 484f.
Green, Martin Steven 7
Greisch, Jean 367
Grply, va 357
Grimm, Rdiger H. 6. 14. 24f.
Groddek, Wolfram 245
Grondin, Jean 358
Grote, George 256, 272
Grnder, Karlfried 126f. 288
Gsell-Fels, Theodor 369
Gury, Francois 427
Guignon, Charles 474. 477. 481
Gnzel, Stephan 350

Personen-Register

Guyau, Henri 57
Gysarz, Herbert 234
Haase, Marie-Luise 348. 459
Haaz, Ignace 48f. 51. 53. 56f.
Haberkamp, Gnter 493f.
Habermas, Jrgen 10. 23. 165. 363. 422.
442
Haeckel, Ernst 333
Hafis 364
Hailwood, Simons: 457
Halbfa, Wilhelm 299. 304
Hall, Amy Laura 478
Hallman, Max 443
Hammans, Richard 71
Handoca, Mircea 231
Hanslick, Eduard 295. 252f.
Harries, Karsten 359. 371
Hartmann, Eduard von 289. 313. 491
Hartmann Cavalcanti, Anna 295
Hatab, Lawrence J. 163 f.
Hutler, Adolf 486
Havas, Randall 357
Havemann, Daniel 377. 387ff. 401 f. 405
Haydn, Joseph 294
Heftrich, Eckhard 129
Heftrich, Ulrich 150
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 2. 116.
143. 193. 211f. 225. 256. 260. 272.
277 f. 281. 363. 366. 369. 425. 458ff.
463 467. 469 473. 479. 504
Heidegger, Martin 4. 6. 13f. 34 f. 43. 80.
112. 124. 126. 128f. 140 162. 177. 351.
359. 363. 365. 368f. 380 f. 383 f. 392.
409. 420. 441. 450. 481
Heimer, Falko 345f. 348
Heine, Heinrich 377
Heinrich, Elisabeth 393
Heinz, Marion 140
Heinze, Max 256
Hellwald, Friedrich Anton von 330.
332 336
Henrich, Albert 432
Henrich, Dieter 398
Heraklit 256. 269. 278. 412. 471. 493
Herder, Johann Gottfried 58. 425. 453
Heredia, Jos-Maria de 219
Hermann, Albert 331. 333
Herzen, Alexander 48

537

Heyne, Christoph Gottlob 338

Higgins, Kathleen 115. 200
Hiles, Timothy W. 357
Hillard, Derek 165f. 171
Hillebrand, Bruno 349
Hippokrates 262. 264
Hirsch, Emmanuel 390
Hitschmann, Eduard 486. 488
Hjelmslev, Louis 37f. 44
Hobbes, Thomas 165. 308. 327. 424f. 453.
459
Hdl, Hans Gerald 373
Hoff, Ansgar Maria 358. 365
Hffe, Otfried 424ff.
Hffding, Harald 476
Hofmann, Doris Vera 357
Hofmann, Werner 371
Hofmiller, Josef 253
Hlderlin, Friedrich 126. 141. 145f. 155.
279. 281. 287ff. 294. 359
Hollingdale, R. J. 117
Holsten, Carl 387
Hlty, Ludwig Christoph Heinrich 248
Homer 361
Horkheimer, Max 165
Horn, Anette 48. 57f.
Horn 73
Houlgate, Stephen 459. 466 470. 473
Howald, Ernst 126
Hsia, Adrian 329ff. 334
Hbner, Hans 376. 382f.
Hudek, Franz-Peter 360
Hugo, Victor 67ff.
Hffer, Franz 295
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 425. 441. 499
Hume, David 2. 22. 45
Husserl, Edmund 18. 151. 225
Ionescu, Constantin A. 222
Ionescu, Nae 223ff.
Iorga, Nocolae 220
Irigaray, Luce 77
Irion, Ulrich 490 f.
Isaac 477. 482
Isac, Emil 222
Isailovici, Dusan 222
Jackson, John Hughling 54
Jacobsen, Roman 37

538

Personen-Register

Jahn, Otto 294f. 338

James, William 56
Jamblich 134
Janet, Paul 219
Janet, Pierre 56 f. 61
Janover, Michael 212
Janz, Curt Paul 78f. 220. 254. 263. 279. 360
Jaspers, Karl 379. 420. 422
Jenkins, Fiona 357
Jesinghaus, Walter 344
Jesus von Nazareth 385
Jianu, Ionel 237
Jimnez, Juan Ramn 232
Jones, Ernest 494
Jora, Mihail 223
Jung, Carl Gustav 487. 489. 502f.
Jurist, Elliot T. 459. 464ff.
Kandinsky, Wassily 368
Kang, Yong-Soo 360. 365
Kant, Immanuel 2. 6. 9. 12. 16. 23. 30. 35.
37. 94ff. 115. 125. 143. 146f. 149 ff.
153. 225. 256. 268. 271. 281. 302. 304f.
308. 340. 361ff. 366. 369. 377. 379.
396 f. 424 ff. 428. 442. 445. 447. 458.
460. 470. 479. 488. 496
Kanz, Kai Torsten 302
Karl der Groe 315
Katscher, Leopold 333f. 336
Kaufmann, Walter 160. 351. 369. 433. 458.
466
Keith, Ansel-Pearson 415
Kellenberger, James 474. 481 484
Kelly, Alfred 314
Kemal, Salim 356ff.
Kessler, Harry Graf 344. 371
Kessler, Mathieu 365
Kierkegaard, Sren (Johannes de Silentio)
226. 265. 368. 383f. 391. 402. 474 485
Kiesiel, Theodore 140
Kiss, Endre 223
Klages, Ludwig 225
Klein, Wayne 7
Klette, Anton 287
Klibansky, Raymond 203
Klimt, Gustav 357. 371
Klinger, Max 223. 372
Klossowski, Pierre 365. 368
Kneser, Jacob 358

Kofman, Sarah 98. 365

Kohlenbach, Michael 348
Khler, Joachim 249f. 254
Kohler, Joseph 329. 334. 336
Kohut, Heinz 211
Koll, Matthias 358
Kppen, Carl Friedrich 329
Kselitz, Heinrich (s. Peter Gast) 310. 312.
343. 346. 495f.
Kster, Peter 376. 380ff. 389 f.
Kostka, Alexandre 371
Kouba, Pavel 392
Krell, David Farell 126
Krings, Hermann 398
Krochmalnik, Daniel 431
Kropfinger, Klaus 253
Krug, Gustav 294 ff.
Kruse, Bernhard Arnold 247f. 250. 254
Kuhn, Thomas Samuel 10
Krummel, Richard Frank 298
Kng, Hans 454
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 91f. 127. 157f.
363
Lampl, Hans Erich 48 f. 53 f. 56 f.
Lampert, Laurence 183f. 200. 203. 433f.
Lamprecht, Karl 71
Landerer, Christoph 253. 295
Lang, H. 337
Lange, Albert 313
Lange, Friedrich Albert 259. 261f. 266.
270 276
Lao-tse, Tao-te-king 329ff. 335
Laplanche, Jean 138
Large, Duncan 261
Larmore, Charles 428f.
La Rochefoucauld, Franois 424. 490. 493
Laruelle, Franois 367
Lasconi, Elisabeta 234
Latacz, Joachim 279f.
Lautramont 357
Lawrence, David Herbert 368
Lawrence, Frederrick 165
Le Rider, Jacques 499f. 501
Lebrun, Grad 459. 470 473
Lecky, William Edward H. 315. 331
Lehrer, Ronald 187. 501ff.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 2. 33f. 40. 42.
299

Personen-Register

Leiter, Brian 11. 163f. 171. 176f.

Lemco, Gary 360
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 240
Leonardo da Vinci 370
Leopardi 422
Leo Strauss 422
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 130. 276. 282
Levinas, Emmanuel 182. 428
Lewes, George H. 256. 272
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 302
Lichtenberger, Henri 222
Lickint, Klaus Gerhard 503
Libert, Georges 349
Liebscher, Martin 488
Lipiner, Siegfried 489. 495f.
Lippitt, John 200
Liiceanu, Gabriel 225. 230. 242
Liszt, Franz 291. 293ff.
Littr, Maximilien Paul mile 318
Lorrain, Claude 364. 370f.
Lotringer, Sylvere 214
Love, Frederick R. 360
Lwith, Karl 161. 351. 420. 443. 447
Lubbock, John 315
Lucretius 273
Ldemann, Hermann 387
Luhmann, Niklas 428
Luther, Martin 236
Lyon, Alexander 330
Lyotard, Jean-Franois 361
Lypp, Bernhard 355. 361
Mach, Ernst 499
Machiavelli, Niccolo 165
MacIntyre, Alasdair 365
Magnus, Bernd 115
Mahler, Margaret 189
Maiorescu, Titu 221
Malebranche, Nicole 300
Mallarm, Stphane 368
Man, Paul de 363
Mandeville, Bernard 165
Mann, Heinrich 238
Mann, Joel E. 258 271. 273 276. 433
Mann, Thomas 244. 489
Marbach, Oswald 291ff.
Marc, David 349
Marinetti, Emilio 372
Martensen, Hans Lassen 476

539

Marti, Urs 312. 439

Martin, Nicholas 431
Marx, Groucho 206
Marx, Harpo 206
Marx, Karl 116. 239. 471. 488. 504
Masson, Andr 372
Maudsley, Henry 321
Maulnier, Thierry 238
Mayer, Robert 493
Mazzarella, Eugenio 359. 422
McGrath, William J. 503
McNeill, David N. 433
McNeil, Will 360
Meidner, Ludwig 372
Meijers, Antonie 352
Memmolo, Pasquale 358
Mendelssohn, Moses 130
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 294
Mentz, Paul 219
Merle, Jean-Christophe 426f.
Merlio, Gilbert 436
Meurer, Gabriele 441
Meyer, Theo 349. 369
Meysenburg, Malwida von 346. 370
Michael, Michael 444
Mihaila, Ileana 236
Michelangelo 54. 370
Mill, John Stuart 310. 312f. 326
Millen, Rochelle L. 501f.
Mistry, Freny 329
Mitchell, Stephen 497
Mohr, J. 288
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de 76. 186
Montinari, Mazzino 248. 275. 310. 339.
348. 351. 459. 493
Moore, Gregory 312. 330. 415
Morrison, Robert 329. 415
Mser, Justus 453
Mourkojannis, Daniel 377. 389f. 392.
395
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 294
Mller, Enrico 126. 128. 160. 435
Mller, Karl Otfried 281
Mller, Lucian 338
Mller, Matthias 373
Mller, Max 329f. 332. 335
Mller, Ulrich 251
Mller-Buck, Renate 344. 486. 494. 496.
503

540

Personen-Register

Mller-Lauter, Wolfgang 3. 12. 14. 46. 129.

144. 172. 359. 420. 446
Munch, Edvard 372
Mnsterberg, Hugo 50 f.
Naess, Arne 441
Nake, B. 288
Nancy, Jean-Luc 98. 127
Nauk, A. 288
Napoleon III. 454
Negru, Mihail 221f.
Nehamas, Alexander 7. 25f. 101. 200f.
363. 365f. 480 f.
Neininger, Johannes 348
Nero 197
Nerval, Gerard de 75. 77. 87
Neschke-Hentschke, Ada B. 131
Neumann,William 288f.
Neumann, Volker 358
Neumeyer, Fritz 371. 373
Nicolai, Friedrich 130
Niehues-Prbsting, Heinrich 159
Nietzsche, Carl Ludwig 346f.
Nietzsche, Elisabeth 295. 496
Nietzsche, Erdmuthe 346
Nietzsche, Franziska (Ernestine Rosaura)
295. 315. 347
Nietzsche, Friedrich August Engelbert 346
Nietzsche, Friedrich August Ludwig 346
Nietzsche, Johanne Friederike 346
Nietzsche, Therese Elisabeth 346
Niscov, Viorica 236
Nodier, Charles 87
Noica, Constantin 223
Norton, Bryan 457
Novalis 456
Nunberg, Herman 492
Nussbaum, Martha 192f. 197. 357. 365
Occam, Wilhelm von 302
Oehler 346
Oehler, Edmund 346f.
Oehler, Oscar 346f.
Oldenberg, Hermann 329
Orsucci, Andrea 275. 316. 322f. 333. 342.
423
Ott, Konrad 445f. 456
Ottmann, Henning 312. 349f. 431
Oudemans, Th. C. W. 358

Overbeck, Franz 346f. 387. 395. 496. 500

Ovid 196
Owen, David 172
Pacuvius, Marcus 212
Pajak, Frdric 368
Paneth, Josef 489
Panofsky, Erwin 203
Papini, Giovanni 244
Papu, Edgar 233
Paraschiv, Angelescu 239
Parkes, Graham 198. 360. 503
Parmenides 256. 304
Paris, Gaston 219
Pascal, Blaise 236
Paul, Vincent de 54
Paulus 387f.
Pautrat, Bernard 98
Penzo, Giorgio 423
Perikles 262. 264. 272
Pernerstorfer, Otto 489
Peschel, Otto 333. 335
Petru, Martu 220 f.
Pfotenhauer, Hans 355
Phidias 370
Philonenko, Alexis 247
Picasso, Pablo 368. 372
Pickus, David 351
Pieper, Annemarie 424
Pinder, Margarethe 346
Pinder, Wilhelm 285. 294f. 346
Pippin, Robert 425
Platon 17. 30. 90ff. 124 f. 134. 141f.
155 159. 195. 198. 255ff. 259.
262 265. 268ff. 272 f. 275 f. 281. 298.
361. 404. 412. 424. 428. 430. 432ff.
447. 458. 488
Ploegaerts, Lon 371
Plutarch 186
Podach, Erich 238
Poellner, Peter 26. 415
Pggeler, Otto 148
Phlmann, Horst Georg 395
Poincar, Henri 10
Popper, Josef 332. 335
Popper, Karl 10
Porter, James I. 160
Post, August Hermann 334
Poten, Philip 359. 363f.

Personen-Register

Proklos 132
Protagoras 256f. 264 269. 271f. 274
Proust, Marcel 219
Prudhomme, Sully 219
Putnam, James J. 492
Ptz, Peter 358
Pyrrho 211. 275
Pythagoras 263. 332
Quintilian, Marcus 95
Quist, Wenche Marit 384
Radulescu-Motru, Constantin 219 223.
233
Raffael (Santi, Raffaelo) 364
Rahden, Wolfert von 348
Ramplex, Matthew 360
Rampley 368f.
Rank, Otto 486f. 489. 503
Rapp, Moritz 281. 293
Rattner, Josef 251
Rawls, John 425
Rebreanu, Liviu 234
Reckermann, Alfons 349. 351. 365
Re, Paul 311. 314. 328. 346. 493
Regan, Tom 442
Regina, Umberto 422 f.
Regius, Henricus 300
Reibnitz, Barbara 126f. 135. 279. 282. 290
Reich, Hauke 343
Reger, Max 223
Relgis, Eugen 237
Renan, Ernest 219. 388. 422
Reschke, Renate 360
Rethy, Robert A. 300
Reuber, Rudolf 365
Reuter, Gabriele 345
Ribbeck, Otto 288
Ribot, Thodule 48f. 51. 53 61. 71 74
Ries, Wiebrecht 279
Richardson, John 112. 409 419
Ricur, Paul 210. 213
Richepin, Jean 219
Richter, Charles 312
Richter, Paul 72
Richter, Raoul 345. 423
Ridley, Aaron 172f.
Riebe, Thomas 348
Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich 445

541

Rilke, Rainer Maria 440

Ritschl, Friedrich 287
Ritschl, Friedrich 127. 345
Robin, Leon 92
Robins, Elizabeth 336
Rochefoucauld (La Rochefoucauld) 493
Rd, Wolfgang 301
Rohde, Erwin 126. 133. 245. 271. 357
Rllin, Beat 348
Rolston, Holmes 444f. 452
Romundt, Heinrich 272. 279
Rorty, Richard 1. 10
Roskoff, Gustav 323
Rossbach, August 281
Rose 257
Rosmiarek, Ralf 345f.
Rothko, Mark 368
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 82. 368
Roux, Paul 51
Roux, Wilhem 493
Rubens, Peter Paul 364. 370
Rudorff, Ernst 445
Ruehl, Martin A. 431f.
Sade, Marquise de 122
S a ineanu, Lazar 231
Salaquarda, Jrg 126. 252. 254. 273. 392.
394. 459
Salom, Lou von 346. 489. 494f. 502
Samosate, Lucien de 87
Santaniello, Wever 501 f.
Sarasin, Philip 58
Sartre, Jean-Paul 96. 160. 214. 481
Saussure, Ferdinand de 37ff. 44
Schaarschmidt, Siegfried 341
Schacht, Richard 362f. 427
Schadewaldt, Wolfgang 130. 132. 281. 298
Schfer, Lothar 455
Schafer, Roy 497
Schandorph, Sophus 475
Schank, Gerhard 431
Scharenbroich, Heinrich 311 f.
Scheler, Max 422
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 232.
260. 281. 368
Schellong, Dieter 360
Silberstein, Eduard 495
Schiller, Friedrich 148. 277. 281. 288. 354
Schings, Hans-Jrgen 130

542

Personen-Register

S chiopu, Michaela 236

Schlechta, Karl 300. 351
Schlegel, August Wilhelm 91. 282
Schlegel, Friedrich 91. 277. 281f. 365
Schmeitzner, Ernst 315
Schmid, Holger 140. 162. 344. 359f. 365
Schmid, Wilhelm 443
Schmidt, L. 288
Schmidt-Grply, Rdiger 357
Schmied, Wieland 371f.
Schmitt, Rdiger 342
Schneider, Georg Heinrich 318
Schneider, Michael 76. 78f. 87
Schll, Adolf 285
Scholz, Heinrich 304
Schopenhauer, Arthur 2 f. 6. 22. 58ff. 89 f.
115. 148. 150. 185f. 225. 249. 253. 256.
260. 267. 272. 277f. 281 f. 288. 294.
296. 299. 304f. 307. 329f. 362 f. 368.
394. 427. 458. 467. 471. 486. 488f. 493.
500 f.
Spengel, Leonhard 132
Schraber, H. 288
Schrift, Alan 163f.
Schubert, Franz 294
Schle, Christian 350
Schulze, Ingrid 371
Schuster, Marc-Oliver 253. 295. 360
Schutte, Ofelia 501f.
Schweitzer, Albert 441
Schweppenhuser, Gerhard 356
Sebastian, Mihail 223
S eicaru, Pamfil 237
Selle, Carl Friedrich 311 f.
Semerari, Furio 421
Semper, Gottfried 281
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 186f. 194. 202.
211 f.
Sequeri, Pierangelo 422
Setton, Dirk 348
Seubert, Harald 356ff.
Seubold, Gnter 356f.
Seydlitz, Reinhart von 334
Seyffert, M. 288
Shakespeare, William 279. 291
Shapiro, Gary 370 f.
Shklar, Judith 193
Siemens, Herman 163. 357
Simmel, Georg 225. 436

Simon, Josef 126. 359. 392f.

Small, Robin 48
Sokrates 60. 79. 118. 124. 156. 158ff.
255 ff. 259 f. 262 ff. 269. 272f. 277.
281 f. 392. 422. 430. 432ff. 447
Solomon, Robert C. 123. 479f. 483. 501f.
Solms, Mark 13
Somls, Bdog 223
Sommer, Andreas Urs 48. 350. 362. 376.
385 f. 395. 401. 403f.
Sommerbrodt, Julius 288. 293
Sontag, Susan 225
Sophokles 137. 145. 194ff. 262. 264. 278.
283 ff. 287. 291f.
Sring, Jrgen 359
Souche-Dagues, D. 458
Souday, Paul 238
Spencer, Herbert 310 327
Spengler, Oswald 232. 241. 423
Sperber, Mans 498
Spinoza, Baruch de 2. 13. 138. 256. 276.
299. 308. 424. 441
Spir, African 305. 307
Stack, George J. 415
Stahr, Alfred 130
Stalin, Josef W. 240
Stanislavski, Konstantin 75
Staten, Henry 190. 201. 357
Stavarus, Ton 218
S tefanescu, Cornelia 236
Stegmaier, Werner 16. 32. 46. 167. 174.
184. 301. 304. 350. 352f. 356. 388.
394 f. 400. 402. 415. 427f. 431. 444.
450. 459. 469
Stendhal 149
Sterne, Laurence 87
Stierlin, Holm 488
Stifter, Adalbert 371
Stingelin, Martin 302. 331. 350
Stirner, Max 239
Stolorow, Robert 497
Strauss, Botho 358
Strauss, David 313
Strauss, Richard 294
Striet, Magnus 377. 395f. 397
Strindberg, August 232. 475
Strong, Tracy B. 360
Strung, Mervyn 329
Suars, Andr 235

Personen-Register

Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus)

187. 197. 212
Sumi, Geoffrey S. 212
Sweet, Dennis 282
Taminaux, Jaques 359
Tarski, Alfred 31
Tartler, Grete 238
Taylor, Charles 193. 212. 425. 464
Taylor, Mark C. 390
Taylor, Paul 442
Teichmann, Christian Gotthilf 345
Teichmller, Gustav 277. 339f.
Thales 300f.
Thatcher, David S. 349
Thiel, Katalin 474
Thiele, Leslie Paul 198
Thoreau, Henry David 441
Thrasymachos 258
Thukydides 258. 261 264
Tiberius 197
Tietz, Udo 349
Tiktin, Hariton 231
Tille, Alexander 312
Timon 275
Tocqueville, Alexis de 326
Todoran, Eugen 233
Tolstoi, Leo Nikolajewitsch 388
Tongeren, Paul van 421. 423
Totaro, Francesco 420 423
Traverso, Paola 499
Treiber, Hubert 311
Troeltsch, Ernst 390. 436
Trotzki, Leo D. 240
Trcke, Christoph 393
Tyndall, John 315
berweg, Friedrich 299 304. 307
Ugolini, Gherardo 350
Ure, Michael 188
Vaas, Rdiger 302
Vacaresco, Hlne 218f.
Vaihinger, Hans 496
Valbert, Georges 238
Valcanescu, Mircea 223
Valry, Paul 219
Vattimo, Gianni 244. 390
Vauvenargues, Luc de 493

543

Velde, Henry van de 345. 371

Vianu, Tudor 233f.
Vidler, Anthony 371
Villiers, Emilie Sirieyse de 238
Virgil 212
Vischer, Friedrich Theodor 492
Vogel, Beatrix 391f.
Vogel, Juliane 69
Vogel, Martin 248ff.
Volker, Gerhard 138
Vlker, Ludwig 248. 251
Voltaire (Arouet, Franois-Marie) 332
Wagner, Cosima 249. 251f. 254. 281. 291.
432
Wagner, Richard 67 72. 74. 84. 87. 90.
126. 128. 143f. 146. 158. 160. 245f.
248 254. 277ff. 281 f. 284 f. 290 f.
293 298. 354. 358. 361. 363f. 366. 370.
427. 431. 489. 500
Wahrig-Schmidt, Bettina 48
Wapnewski, Peter 251
Warren, Mark 163f.
Wartenburg, York von 280. 290
Watling, E. F. 195
Weber, Max 311. 436
Weeks, Mark 187
Weininger, Otto 66. 232
Welcker, Friedrich Gottlieb 281. 283. 288
Weniger, Kay 345
Westermann 257
Westphal, Rudolf 281
White, Lynn 451
Whitebook, Joel 187. 189
Whitehead, Alfred N. 441
Whitlock, Greg 351
Wilamowitz-Mllendorff, Ulrich von 126.
280. 282. 288. 294
Willer, Ulrich 395 f.
Williams, Bernard 456
Wilson, E.O. 452
Winckelmann, Johannes Joachim 127.
281 f.
Windgtter, Christof 365. 370
Winnicott, Donald W. 198. 504
Wittels, Fritz 487
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 366. 368
Wittmann, Philipp 358
Witzler, Ralf 393

544

Personen-Register

Wohlfahrt, Gnther 128. 136. 355. 422

Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor 504
Wolf, Jean-Claude 425
Wlfflin, Heinrich 225
Wolzogen, Hans von 294
Worringer, Wilhelm 225
Wotling, Patrick 463
Wundt, Wilhelm 50ff. 219

Yalom, Irvin D. 494 ff.

Young, Julian 117. 362f.
Yovel, Yrmiyahu 244
Zabel, Frank 358
Zittel, Claus 350. 371. 469
Zweig, Arnold 489. 500
Zweig, Stefan 237

Hinweise zur Gestaltung von Manuskripten fr die Nietzsche-Studien

545

HINWEISE ZUR GESTALTUNG VON MANUSKRIPTEN

FR DIE NIETZSCHE-STUDIEN
Die bisher mageblichen Zitationsrichtlinien der Nietzsche-Studien werden vom Band 35
(2006) an vereinfacht und modernen Standards angepat. Die neuen Richtlinien werden zunchst an einem Beispieltext dargestellt, dann explizit aufgelistet.
Beispieltext
Darauf hat schon 1950 Walter Kaufmann aufmerksam gemacht,1 gegen Karl
Jaspers' Drngen auf Widersprche, an denen das Denken existenzerhellend
scheitern sollte.2 Gerade im Aufsuchen des Problematische[n] des Daseins,
der grosse[n] Fragezeichen und der intellektuelle[n] Vorneigung dafr unter
den modernen Menschen und Europern (GT, Versuch einer Selbstkritik 1,
KSA 1, S. 12) wollte Nietzsche selbst unzweideutig sein.3 Im Bewutsein,
da Verstehen unter Individuen nur in einem mehr oder weniger groen Spielraum und Tummelplatz des Missverstndnisses mglich ist ( JGB 27), hat er das
Unzweideutige geschtzt, ja verehrt und sich unentwegt darum bemht. Die
Schriftsprache msse, wie er zur Zeit von Menschliches, Allzumenschliches notiert,
bersichtlicher krzer unzweideutiger (Nachla 1876, KSA 8, 15[27]) sein als
die gesprochene Rede, und wenn es ein proprium [s]eines Lebens gebe, so dies,
mit sich unzweideutig zu verkehren und jeden daraufhin anzusehen, ob er
sich e r t r g t oder ein Ideal nthig <hat> (Nachla 1888, KSA 13, 21[8]):
die Unwissenheit in physiologicis der verfluchte Idealismus ist das eigentliche
Verhngniss in meinem [sc. Nietzsches] Leben [...]. Aus den Folgen dieses Idealismus, erklre ich mir alle Fehlgriffe, alle grossen Instinkt-Abirrungen und Bescheidenheiten abseits der Au f g a be meines Lebens, zum Beispiel, dass ich Philologe
wurde (EH, Warum ich so klug bin 2)4
1

Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche. Philosoph Psychologe Antichrist. Aus dem Amerikanischen

(4. Aufl., New York 1974) bers. v. Jrg Salaquarda, Darmstadt 1982, S. 1317 und 84111. Siehe
zur Bedeutung von Kaufmanns Werk David Pickus, The Walter Kaufmann Myth. A Study in
Academic Judgement, in: Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003), S. 226258.
Zu Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche. Einfhrung in das Verstndnis seines Philosophierens, Berlin 1936,
vgl. Kaufmann, Nietzsche, S. 86 f. Aufschlussreich auch Mazzino Montinari, Aufgaben der
Nietzsche-Forschung heute. Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit der franzsischen Literatur des
19. Jahrhunderts, in: Sigrid Bauschinger / Susan L. Cocalis / Sara Lennox (Hg.), Nietzsche
heute. Die Rezeption seines Werkes nach 1968, Bern / Stuttgart 1988, S. 137148, S. 138 ff.
Siehe auch Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 381; Aristoteles, Politik. bers. v. Olof
Gigon, Mnchen 1972, 1255a 20, ferner Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium,
VII 69,1.
Vgl. auch Nietzsche an Franz Overbeck, 30. Juli 1881, KSB 6, Nr. 135, S. 111.

546

Hinweise zur Gestaltung von Manuskripten fr die Nietzsche-Studien

Schrift und Formatierung

Normaltext 12 Punkt Times New Roman, Funoten und eingerckte
Abstze 10 Punkt Times New Roman
Blocksatz
nach allen Interpunktionszeichen (.,;:) ein Leerschlag, ebenso vor f. und
ff.
Zitate allgemein
Zitate von Wrtern, Wendungen und Stzen in doppelten Anfhrungszeichen
Zitate von lngeren Textpassagen ohne Anfhrungszeichen, eingerckt
und petit 10 Punkt
Auslassungen durch drei Punkte in eckigen Klammern kennzeichnen
Zustze des Verfassers ebenfalls in eckigen Klammern
Werktitel im laufenden Text kursivieren, nicht jedoch in bibliographischen
Angaben
keine K APITLCHEN
ausschlielich die Siglen nach dem Siglenverzeichnis verwenden (angefhrt in jedem Band der Nietzsche-Studien vor den Registern)
zustzlich eingefhrte Siglen in einer Funote ausweisen
Zitate aus Nietzsches Schriften
Zitate aus Nietzsches Schriften nach KGW oder KSA bzw. KGB oder KSB;
Textstellen zeichengetreu wiedergeben
Hervorhebungen Nietzsches getreu KGW/ KSA bzw. KGB/ KSB als
Sper r ung en, nicht als Kursive wiedergeben. Sperrungen durch die Funktion
Zeichenabstand, nicht durch Leerschlge formatieren
Verweise auf Nietzsches verffentlichte und zur Verffentlichung
vorgesehene Werke im laufenden Text nach KGW/ KSA mit Werksigle und
Abschnitt-/Aphorismusnummer angeben
Bei Zitaten aus lngeren Abschnitten oder Aphorismen (mehr als drei
Seiten) auer Werksigle und Abschnittnummer den jeweiligen Band der
KGW/ KSA und die Seite angeben
Verweise auf Nietzsches Nachla im laufenden Text nach KGW/ KSA
mit Nachlassjahr, KGW-/ KSA-Band und Notatnummer, bei lngeren
Notaten (mehr als drei Seiten) die Seite angeben
Verweise auf Briefe von und an Nietzsche im laufenden Text nach KGB/
KSB mit Angabe von Absender und Empfnger, Datum, KGB/ KSB-Band
und Briefnummer angeben

Hinweise zur Gestaltung von Manuskripten fr die Nietzsche-Studien

547

bei lngeren Briefen (mehr als drei Seiten) auch die Seite angeben
bei wiederholter Nennung desselben Briefes KGB-/KSB-Band mit Briefnummer angeben
bei Zitaten aus bersetzungen von Nietzsches Schriften hinter die Stellenangabe auch die entsprechende Stellenangabe gem KGW/ KSA bzw.
KGB/ KSB setzen (nur wenn nicht die englischen Siglen gem dem Siglenverzeichnis angegeben werden)
Zitate aus antiken Texten und Klassikern
Verweise auf antike Texte und philosophische Klassiker nach Standardeditionen, ggf. unter Angabe des bersetzers und des Herausgebers, mit
Angabe von Buch und Abschnitt oder der Seiten
Zitate aus und Angabe von Forschungsliteratur
(Bei franzsischen und englischen Manuskripten gelten die nachfolgenden
Hinweise sinngem. Abkrzungen in der jeweiligen Landessprache.)
bei erstem Zitat eines Buches in der Funote: Vorname Nachname, Titel.
Untertitel, ggf. Auflage, Ort Jahr, S. Seite (keine Anfhrungszeichen und
keine Kursivierungen)
bei erstem Zitat eines Beitrags aus einem Sammelband in der Funote:
Vorname Nachname, Aufsatztitel, in: Vorname Nachname des/der Herausgeber (Hg.), Buchtitel, ggf. Auflage, Ort Jahr, S. Seitenumfang, S. Zitatseite
(keine Anfhrungszeichen und keine Kursivierungen)
bei erstem Zitat eines Beitrags aus einer Zeitschrift in der Funote:
Vorname Nachname, Aufsatztitel, in: Zeitschriftentitel Bandnummer ( Jahr),
S. Seitenumfang, S. Zitatseite (keine Anfhrungszeichen und keine Kursivierungen)
wiederholte Zitate in der Funote: Nachname, Kurztitel, S. Seite, in der
unmittelbar folgenden Fussnote: Ebd., S. Seite.
mehrere Autoren-, Herausgeber- oder Erscheinungsortnamen durch
Virgeln trennen: Ortsname / Ortsname
Bibliographische Angaben in Buchbesprechungen
wie bei Forschungsliteratur, jedoch ergnzt um Verlags-, Seiten- und ISBNAngabe: Vorname Name, Haupttitel. Untertitel, ggf. Auflage, Ort ( Verlag )
Jahr, Umfang Seiten, ISBN.
Die Redaktionen danken fr die genaue Befolgung der Hinweise.

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