Please listen along to this chronological playlist as your read:
The historical narrative I adopted for The Beach Boys from my teens on was simple and entirely misguided, even if it contained a few nuggets of truth. It went like this: The Beach Boys came to fame and were primarily known for popularizing tedious, irritating pop music in the early 1960s by promoting a highly desirous “endless summer” lifestyle. They had one true genius, Brian Wilson, who produced one brilliant album, Pet Sounds (1966). But, crippled by the weight of creating a follow-up, Smile (1967, but never released), Brian Wilson succumbed to drugs and led a reclusive life. Left to their own devices, the talentless asshole Mike Love spent the next several decades repackaging the band’s pre-Pet Sounds songs into a stream of Greatest Hits albums, while creating the now ubiquitous revival/reunion tour. As it happens, I was an early teen when I cringed to hear the sickly, repetitive nonsense of “I Get Around” wafting through the Summer air as The Beach Boys played Royal Athletic Park in Victoria.
An interesting set list to say the least, one which, as it happens confirms the rough sketch I have of The Beach Boys above. A mix of early surf tunes, the Pet Sounds hits, and a trio of one offs that deserve mention. “Heroes and Villains” stands as the “what might have been” song. The song that emerged from the Smile Sessions to get something like a proper release in Smilely Smile and found an audience. “Good Vibrations,” a song (with Sloop John B) I don’t particularly like from this creative period, was a castoff from the Pet Sounds sessions and also found its way onto Smilely. The other is the one true hit the band enjoyed post-Pet Sounds, the one we’ve all been trying to escape since 1988, and which has surely bolstered the financial argument for reunion/revival tours: Kokomo:
Kokomo somehow takes all the bland, awful, cheery nonsense of the early 60s Beach Boys sounds and layers on the rich textures of 80s sound production if Jimmy Buffet was on ambien.
In many respects this set list is analogous to the songs clipped for the upcoming Disney+ Beach Boys documentary:
You won’t find a trace of a song from the band after Pet Sounds. The cultural memory of the band goes: surf fantasy pop, genius ascends/declines, revival tour.
With the emergence of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (2004), I’ve been undergoing a very slow reappraisal of this historical narrative and now 20 years later find myself middle aged and a full-blown advocate for the band’s post-Smile Sessions output.
It’s not that “surf fantasy pop, genius ascends/declines, revival tour” is wrong. It’s that the third act needs to be supplemented by a pair of critical periods neglected by the cultural memory: 1967-1974 and 1976-1980.
1967-1974
The Beach Boys released 7 albums over this span, all of which are good, two of which are exceptional (1970’s Sunflower and 1971’s Surf’s Up).
This period represents a couple of things to me.
First, we see a real blossoming in the song writing talents of Carl and Dennis.
For Carl, consider the pair of big pop rockers that kick off the A and B sides of 1967’s Wild Honey (the Title Track and Darlin’), or Long Promised Road and Feel Flows from Surf’s Up (1971), and The Trader from Holland (1973).
Dennis, the Ringo of the group, comes out of his shell first with Little Bird from 1968’s Friends, which works as a promissory note of his song writing talents, to be paid in full by the time 1977’s Pacific Ocean Blue comes out.
Second, we still an incredible profusion of genres and sounds during this period. It’s a period of experimentation. There’s no patience during this period. The second an idea, or a melody, emerges it’s punched out and we move onto the next one with little interest in whether they hang together well. The early Beach Boys surf pop sound is characterized by an overbearing coherence. And, the “genius” period of Pet Sounds/Smile is characterized by an obsessive perfectionism, where each song demands exacting care. Against these models, 1967-1974 period offers something very different. It has, perhaps, an analogue in Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles output, where he seems to cranking out ideas a mile a minute, never bothering to see anything through.
Perhaps this is why listening to the haphazard mess of musical wonder that is The Beach Boys in this period and you find every branch of indie rock in its latent form. For example, I can hear Grizzly Bear in “All This is That” from Carl & the Passions – So Tough (1972), or Animal Collective in “At My Window” from Sunflower (1970).
1976-1980
The big event of this period was the re-emergence of Brian properly helming an albums again, starting with 1976’s 15 Big Ones, an extremely subpar album of originals and covers. It’s importance is limited to the idea that Brian was fully involved and back in business. Brian’s follow up, 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You is a truly exceptional album in the band’s catalog. Said to be his personal favorite and something of a cult classic, it’s an odd duck for sure, with pounding organ/synth melodies, and often childish lyrics. An acquired taste to be sure:
But the crown jewel of the period is Dennis’ solo album Pacific Ocean Blue (1977) and his unfinished follow up Bambu. His voice is shot to shit from drinking, but it doesn’t hurt the songs. If anything it improves them like in this beautiful ballad “Thoughts of You,” which begins with a simple piano melody and Dennis’ broken voice only to launch into a darkly orchestrated bridge:
The other surprise of the period is Carl’s criminally underrated, new wave influenced, 1980 self-titled solo album.
These weren’t the only solo projects on the go during this period. Mike Love is noted for not only being the asshole of the group but also the least talented. Primarily a singer, but with an off-putting nasally voice and buffoon’s delivery, you can always find Love mugging for the camera like a dated children’s entertainer. Take, for instance, the single of the Love-helmed solo effort dubbed Celebration (1979), Almost Summer:
The two other proper Beach Boys albums of the period, 1978’s M.I.U. Album, and 1979’s L.A. (Light Album), are uneven works gathering up strains from earlier periods, but feature some genuinely great “they’ve still got it!” moments.
After the L.A. album, the band goes predictably downhill. Brian’s last creative fervor wanes (at least until he starts working on 2004’s Smile), Dennis dies by drunken drowning in 1983, and Mike Love takes over the run of things.
The Beach Boys Hit Perfection and Somehow Got More Interesting When It All Fell Apart.
None of which takes away from the excitement and experimentation of the 1967-1974 and 1976-1980 periods. For a band that saw the rise of a genius-level talent, produce a song like “God Only Knows,” to then see him collapse, leaving the band in creative and personal disarray, but still thrive and in completely new ways is remarkable.
All Summer long I’ll be posting Beach Boys songs to my Twitter account, pissing off my followers. You can follow along here: https://twitter.com/romulusnotnuma.
If you enjoyed this, please check out my previous Summer Of… blogs:
The Wave is good. The Wave is fun. The Wave is communitarian.
The Wave is not a taunt. The Wave is not a game state celebration. The Wave is not directed at anything.
I regularly get into it with anti-Wave curmudgeons on twitter. They have no understanding of the Wave or its history. Oilers’ fans should be particularly partial to the Wave as it traces its roots back to the glory days when Pocklington would pony up a small wad of cash to fly in Krazy George Henderson to “whoop up the crowd” as Peter Gzowski documents in his iconic The Game of Our Lives (1981):
Northlands Coliseum, Edmonton, Friday, February 13: The Quebec Nordiques are here, and so is Krazy George. He wears rolled up jeans, an Oiler sweater with Krazy George written across the back, and a rubber mask that makes him look bald and wild. Underneath he is bald. His name is Henderson; the George is real, if not the Krazy. He lives in Colorado. The Oilers, along with other professional sports teams around the continent, bring him in at $500 a night to whoop up their crowds. He carries a drum and a stick, and sprints around the upper rows of seats, leading cheers. He has some theatrical tricks: He will start a cheer in one corner and then roll it around the arena, with each section rising from its seats as it yells. The players find it more distracting than encouraging.
I wrote about Krazy George years and years ago in a piece on enforcers and mascots (this site has completely stripped my authorship but happily maintains the article so I’m not complaining, but I want to make clear that I am not the dude listed as the author, which is me), likening his performance, and orchestration of the wave to the work of the team mascot:
A mascot’s performance, by definition, is peripheral to the action of a competitive game. It’s a supplement that adds value (of dubious purpose and quality) to a perfectly sufficient exercise of competition. It takes place at the margins of the game – not on the arena of play or during the game’s course. It is superfluous and that’s just fine. The audience experience of competition doesn’t exclude the fun of stadium music, hot dogs, and visions of a silly, little man running about.
A host of things happen in parallel to attended sporting events that don’t directly relate to the matter at hand (the sporting contest itself). Some of them happen before, or after, or outside the venue. And some of them happen in the venue itself. Most big, modern sports arenas now operate a huge array of parallel entertainment opportunities (kids activities, prize giveaways/contests, restaurants/bars, etc.). There’s a general and pervasive argument by sports curmudgeon’s that these things are, as Gzowski notes above, “distracting” from the game itself, maybe even tainting the purity of the turf. Or, maybe you’ll hear that they are simply cynical time and money-suckers. That they overwhelm the senses with noises, lights, activity, etc.
All of which brings me to the Wave. It’s detractors generally advance two arguments against it:
1. The Wave is Antagonistic; It’s Tempting Fate
On this wise, the Wave is considered a taunt, or hubristic celebration of a goal or lead targeted at the opposing team. It’s a classic “planning the parade route in Spring Training” kind of deal. This would put the Wave in league with the racist and outmoded “Tomahawk Chop,” or the “knee slap, knee slap, clap” of We Will Rock You, or the monotone, duo-syllabic taunt, in hockey almost always targeted at the opposing goaltender, where a name is broken into two parts and repeated in unison, like this famous Simpsons’ scene:
But this completely misunderstands the Wave, its purpose, and target. As a letter to the editor of the New York Times wrote in 1983 (quoted in the Wave’s wiki)
“There are three reasons why the wave caught on at Michigan Wolverine games: It gave the fans something to do when the team was leading its opponent by 40 points, it was thrilling and exciting to see 105,000 people in the stands moving and cheering, and Bo Schembechler asked us not to do it.”
Echoing Gzowski’s contention above that Krazy George was brought in to “whoop up the crowd,” the Wave is properly understood as “crowd-oriented” and not “game-oriented.” Now, we can certainly argue that there are some intangible knock-on effects (for good or ill) for game play stemming from an energized crowd. But, it’s clear that the whole point is for the crowd to relate to itself as a community, to participate in something, to get up and stretch for a moment, and be rejuvenated from the mostly passive experience of watching something seated. As any desk job hack will tell you, sitting very evidently depresses the animating spirits. It sucks the energy right out of you and in turn the crowd.
The proper analogy for the Wave is the 7th Inning Stretch. Like the Wave, the 7th Inning Stretch has no relation to the game state, doesn’t target the opposition, or even reference the game directly. The 7th Inning Stretch is a communitarian tradition, complete with a silly song, where the crowd is compelled to snap out of the stupor of sitting, stand up, take a breath, and participate in the community. It’s an opportunity to remind the isolated, seated individual that they are part of a community, brought together to share in an experience. Without these contrived moments, we can very easily slip into our own little world. We may as well be watching at home on TV.
But more to the point, the Wave is decidedly not about taunting the opposition, or celebrating prematurely. The very mechanics of the Wave dictate that it is not about the game, or its competitors, or its outcome. In order to catch the Wave, fans need to concentrate on the crowd as the Wave moves around the stands toward their spot. You have to ignore the game in order to participate in the Wave.
2. The Wave is for Kids; It’s Silly and Unserious; It’s Distracting
Now, the detractors have me dead to rights on this one. And, as a self-described inveterate crank, who loathes crowds, craft fairs, noise, bright lights, etc., I should, by rights, be on their side on this one. I don’t like, for example, zany music. I harbor a strong disaffection for the outlandish, theatrical, and earnest.
The Wave, like the 7th Inning Stretch, isn’t simply running in parallel to the event. These are disruptive, invading practices. Even if you choose not to participate they will overwhelm you, and you will feel a soft pressure to join in. They are annoying.
So, what makes them worthwhile?
Well, let’s note that the disruption is distinctly different from the typical disruptions you encounter at sporting events: the drunk guys, the guys that will never sit down, the guys that get up and leave their seat crossing in front of you constantly, the guys that bang on the glass, or blow a horn/noisemaker, etc. This is self-centered asshole behavior. The Wave is essentially communitarian. It’s not an isolated individual, or small group, stealing the show and/or ignoring the community around them. The Wave is a staged community practice and tradition. Just like the 7th Inning Stretch, it is an expected, repeated event. I honestly can’t recall a hockey, or baseball game I’ve attended where the Wave hasn’t taken place. And, crucially, the Wave is a limited event. The Wave doesn’t last forever, or drone on and on, or pop up repeatedly. It happens once for a short period of time and then it’s over.
Now, tradition isn’t an argument in and of itself. Just because we have a habit of doing something, doesn’t make it good. However, and particularly in the case of things that are trivial and communitarian, tradition seems like a good to be argued against. That is, the onus is on the detractors to argue its harms outweigh the status quo.
But, I also want to suggest that the trivial, frivolous nature of the practice, something that might suggest it is bad or unserious, is actually one of its winning features. Families know this very well. Observe a family over the course of the year and you’ll find they participate in all manner of trivial practices (Friday is family movie night!) that are fun, create meaning and opportunity for regular engagement. One of the most rewarding parts of family life is the ability to transform isolated, mundane tasks and practices into rich, meaningful traditions: “we have to go get flu shots” turns into “burger night at A&W!”; “we have to rake the leaves” turns into “who wants to jump in the leaf pile!” and “it’s time to put the kids in the giant leaf bags for our annual pictures!” etc. There’s a stump on the way to/from my son’s swimming lessons. For years now, as we pass it, we give it a little pat, quick to rebuke one another if we’ve forgotten: “you forgot to pat the little guy!” It’s a completely trivial tradition, but it adds a wealth of meaning and fun to our otherwise everyday experience.
The Wave doesn’t have the emotional closeness, or resonance of family traditions, obviously. But it does have the spirit of turning the mundane need to stand up and take a stretch into a meaningful tradition. Moreover, as a properly communitarian activity, rather than intimately closed within the family circle, the Wave gestures at the larger community one inhabits but rarely engages directly. As social scientists have argued, at least since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), our modern, autonomous lives have separated the individual from the community leading to any number of harms both individual and collective. This isn’t, of course, to say that the Wave is some panacea to our social ills. But it is to recognize that the value of engaging the community around you in a participatory manner, even in silly and trivial ways, is a kind of personal and public good.
Final Quibble
What I would say, however, is that the detractors have a point about timing. As a best practice, the Wave should, much like the 7th Inning Stretch, take place in the final act of the game, when spirits are flagging, and not during game play and/or not during a tense competitive moment. In my experience, however, this is not generally a live concern. Fans are heavily attuned to the game state and not prone to break off from tense competitive moments to start or join in a silly, communitarian ritual. It just isn’t a thing that happens. That said, the best time to start the Wave is early in the 3rd Period during a break in play.
Dodds sees even greater significance in ‘the powerful and disturbing eloquence that Plato has bestowed on Callicles’… This eloquence, adds Dodds, convinced the young Nietzsche, while Socrates’ reasoning left him cold. That is not surprising, but scarcely relevant. The apostle of the Herrenmoral, the Wille zur Macht, and Umwertung aller Werte did not need much convincing, for he was blood-brother to Callicles, whereas Socrates became for him, to quote Dodds again, ‘a fountain-head of false morality.’
When folks want to talk shit about the 5th century BCE Sophists, they usual do so under one of three avatars: Protagoras and his relativism; Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus for their tedious, tendentious arguments (eristic); and/or Callicles and his amoralist challenge to conventional morality. Nietzsche has routinely been accused of all three elements.[1] In particular, Callicles, the exemplar of a particular kind of aristocratic, amoral, hedonism from Plato’s Gorgias, is frequently considered to be strongly influential on Nietzsche. This is, despite the fact that Nietzsche, not one to shy away from name-dropping, never once mentions Callicles in his published works, his unpublished notes, or even his letters. In fact, Nietzsche rarely mentions any Sophist by name, or the Sophists in general. And, his most interesting remarks on the Sophists all speak to the culture or age of the Sophists and align as much with Thucydides and Pericles as Protagoras or any other Sophist (cf., D 168, TI Ancients 2, KSA 13:14[116]).
In this essay, I’ll review the arguments and evidence put forward to support Callicles’ influence on Nietzsche.
A Brief History of the Callicles-Nietzsche Affinity Claim
As early as the time of the First World War[2] it had become fashionable to link Nietzsche to Callicles. John Burnet in 1914, writes:
the doctrine upheld by Callicles, namely, that Might is Right, was current at Athens towards the close of the fifth century… In modern times Carlyle and Nietzsche represent the same point of view.
Ernest Barker, in 1917, can also be found playing up the reputed relation, remarking
It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the affinities between this old Greek doctrine of ‘the will to power’ and the teaching of Nietzsche… Like Nietzsche, Callicles is not so much an iconoclast of morals as a moral revolutionary. He does not fling aside morality: he flings aside a conventional or herd-morality to make way for a natural or mastery-morality.
Since then, it has become something of a commonplace for scholars to argue for a Callicles-Nietzsche Affinity Claim (which is often expanded more broadly to the Sophists as a group). Gilles Deleuze, in his own philosophy, repeatedly calls upon “the Sophists” as part of his general “reversal of Platonism.”[3] Deleuze engages Nietzsche to the same end. In Nietzsche and Philosophy – an extremely influential, if esoteric, book – he explicitly ties Nietzsche to Callicles. He notes, “[t]he resemblance is so striking that it seems to us that Nietzsche is close to Callicles and that Callicles is immediately completed by Nietzsche” (54). He goes on to offer an intriguing interpretation of Socrates and Callicles’ tête-à-tête claiming Socrates has misunderstood the basis of the nomos/phusis distinction (cf. 54-55).
Domenico Losurdo’s Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel provides a common refrain, claiming Nietzsche’s “comparison with Callicles” is “especially illuminating” (442).[4]
This assumption is warranted insofar as one notes a series of areas in which the philosophical affinities of Nietzsche and the Sophists, if not Callicles, appear to overlap. Particularly in 1888, Nietzsche makes a number of affirming statements about the Sophists in Twilight of the Idols and in some contemporaneous notes.[5] Thomas Brobjer has offered a reasonable summary of these areas, which include:
relativism 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…; skepticism in general and especially about morality; subjectivism; skepticism about religion; an interest in language and rhetoric; and an emphasis on the importance of power.
These affinities sanction any number of limited claims asserting an affinity shared by Nietzsche and the Sophists (and perhaps Callicles) and validate the import of a thorough-going comparative analysis. However, the scholarly literature referencing this affinity tends to either make or assert the likelihood of the much stronger claim of philosophical influence.
This essay asks: was Nietzsche influenced by Callicles, i.e., whether and to what extent Nietzsche refers to or borrows directly from Callicles?
A Brief History of the Callicles-Nietzsche Influence Claim
The Callicles-Nietzsche Influence Claim is much stronger than the Affinity Claim. It argues that Nietzsche was influenced by Callicles. As such, we should expect some textual evidence to support the claim, i.e., a quotation, a reference, a literary illusion, etc. As mentioned, however, there is not a single direct reference to Callicles throughout Nietzsche’s works. Despite this, the Influence Claim is remarkably prevalent and persistent among scholars.
Of particular note is A.H.J. Knight’s book with the inexplicably long title, Some Aspects of the Life and Work of Nietzsche, and particularly of his Connection with Greek Literature and Thought from 1933. Outdated and filled with scholarly errors,[6] Knight’s book takes Nietzsche’s relation to the Sophists seriously, noting “that his favorite figures in Greek literature were the Sophists, the early philosophers…” (134). And, he directly cites Callicles’ long speech (Gorgias, 483a-484a) noting, “in more than one other passage from the same work we observe a Nietzschean enthusiasm for that form of heroic greatness which would disdain all conventional moral restraints, and impose its own will upon ordinary people” (147-8). Despite making a number of strident scholarly and interpretative errors, Knight in 1933 is cautious enough to note “it would be a mistake to insist upon too close a connection or too great an influence [of the Sophists on Nietzsche]” (148).
Less cautious is E.R. Dodds, who as early as a 1937 lecture titled “The Sophistic Movement and the Failure of Greek Liberalism” argued “Nietzsche himself recognized the affiliation of his immoralism to the sophistic movement… He was thinking, no doubt, rather of Plato’s Callicles than of the true Sophists… his doctrine, which is practically a restatement of Callicles’ position” (105). It is, however, Dodds’ short essay, which serves as an appendix to his 1959 critical edition of Gorgias, titled “Socrates, Callicles, and Nietzsche,” wherein he attempts to “set forth the evidence for [the historical link between Callicles and Nietzsche]” (387).[7]
Since Dodds’ effort, critical editions of the Gorgias routinely make some reference to Nietzsche when discussing Callicles. Pointing to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals I, 13,Terence Irwin’s edition notes, “Callicles’ attack may have directly influenced Nietzsche” (177). And, Robin Waterfield’s edition refers, without further explanation, to “Callicles’ Nietzschean individualism” (70).
Dodds’ 1959 attempt remains the most thoroughgoing effort to expound and defend the Influence Claim. Indeed, I am unaware of any scholarly attempt since Dodds’ to seriously review the evidence for the Influence Claim. Dodds’ short 5-page appendix has largely been canonized. It is routinely cited, occasionally with some reservation, as the definitive statement on the question of Callicles’ influence on Nietzsche.[8]
The Evidence for the Influence Claim
“There can, I think,” Dodds writes, “be little doubt that certain of the most notorious of [Nietzsche’s] own doctrines were in some measure inspired by Plato… by the anti-Plato in Plato whose persona is Callicles” (387). Noting that, while Nietzsche “seems not to have referred to him by name outside the lectures on Plato,” Dodds nevertheless claims “[t]here is also evidence that Callicles’ speeches in the Gorgias had deeply impressed [Nietzsche’s] imagination,” (389) and that the purpose of his essay is “to set forth the evidence for [the historical link between Callicles and Nietzsche]” (387).
In his short essay, Dodds is able to produce a single direct reference, albeit found in Nietzsche’s lecture notes. After a brief review of Nietzsche’s attitude to Socrates and Plato, Dodds argues
Against Socrates and Plato Nietzsche set ‘the Sophists.’ In a Basel lecture he had referred with approval to Grote’s defense of them (iv. 361 Mus.). But he later condemned Grote for representing them as ‘respectable men and models of morality’; on the contrary, ‘their glory was that they refused to cheat with big words and phrases,’ but ‘had the courage, which all strong spirits have, to recognize their own unmorality’ (Will to Power, 429). It seems evident that in this large generalization Nietzsche had in mind men of the stamp of Callicles or Thrasymachus. His words recall the passage where Socrates praises Callicles’ frankness in ‘saying plainly what others think but do not care to say’ (Gorg. 492d); and that Nietzsche in fact considered Callicles a spokesman for ‘the Sophists’ is made clear in his lectures on Plato (iv. 422 Mus.).[9] (388-9)
Before reviewing the argument Dodds makes here, I want to say a few words about his philological approach.
In this passage, Dodds references 3 separate Nietzsche texts:
Lectures on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers given at Basel in 1872 and again in 1876.
An unpublished note from 1888.
Lectures on Plato given at Basel between 1871 and 1879.
I want to note 3 key philological matters:
All 3 texts we not published by Nietzsche.
2 of the texts are derived from lecture notes during Nietzsche’s time as a professional philologist at Basel.
The one unpublished note from Nietzsche’s philosophical notebooks was written some 16 years after the other two.
Now, what are we to make of an argument that stretches across the better part of 16 odd years of Nietzsche’s thought? Dodds makes no attempt to account for his textual references, either their source or their period. He doesn’t seem to have considered this might be an issue at all.
Nietzsche’s active literary life (roughly 1868-1888) presents both the stark change from professional scholar to nomadic philosopher, and the more subtle shifts in philosophical position that attend a life of thought. The extant texts referring to the Sophists fall into more-or-less distinct periods occasioned by Nietzsche’s shifting interests.
1869-1875: a period of high engagement as a statistical matter. There are a great number of references, particularly driven by Nietzsche’s philological interests at the time. Philosophically, Nietzsche’s engagement is cursory at best and generally pivots on the Sophists’ relationship to Socrates/Plato, entangling them to the detriment of all parties. This period will also see Nietzsche explore the association of the Sophists with the idea of contest, or agon. Generally, this period reflects Nietzsche’s ambivalence and cursory philosophical engagement with the Sophists.
1876-1881: a period of modest engagement, but with a richer philosophical import. Of particular interest is Nietzsche’s association of the Sophists with Thucydides, and his references to a “Sophistic culture.”
1886-1888: Following a gap in engagement from Daybreak in 1881 and 1886, Nietzsche begins his most serious and enthusiastic engagement with the Sophists in 1887, again identifying them with Thucydides and praising them for their moral realism.
This periodization provides a helpful proxy for contextualization of Nietzsche’s views. Reading the entirety of Nietzsche’s remarks on the Sophists, particularly in concert with his general thinking at a given time, shows up any reading that would uncritically mash references together across a 16 year span.
Also, Contra Dodds, I argue Nietzsche’s texts must be weighed differently. Lectures, letters, unpublished notes, and manuscripts should not be uncritically read alongside published material. Nietzsche’s early philological work, including his lecture notes, should be distinguished from his mature philosophical works—the context of the source should be considered. Particularly in the case of Nietzsche’s lectures given as a professional philologist in the 1870s, an account ought to be provided.
By not contextualizing his references properly, Dodds ends up hiding, surely unintentionally, a series of flaws in his argument. Let’s take a look.
Dodd’s argument runs like this:
Nietzsche consistently set the Sophists against Socrates/Plato
It is simply not the case that Nietzsche consistently set Socrates and Plato against the Sophists. At various times, particularly in the 1870s when the two key lectures on which Dodds’ argument hinges, Nietzsche figures Socrates and/or Plato among the Sophists. In the Birth of Tragedy [1872], the Sophists are aligned with Euripides and Socrates as “those moderns” and their “dubious enlightenment” (BT 13); whereas in “Homer’s Contest” [1872], they figure as “the advanced teacher of antiquity.” Echoing his view in Birth of Tragedy, in a number of unpublished contemporaneous notes Nietzsche will link Socrates/Plato with the Sophists, rather than set them against one another (see: KSA 7:1[7, 44], 8[69, 90] 16[21, 27, 30, 46].
In the 1870s Nietzsche shared Grote’s view that the Sophists were “regular teachers of customs,” rather than morally corruptive figures.
As this is not an ordinary text, not even an unpublished note, but rather a lecture, we need to ask: does a lecture represent Nietzsche’s own views, the views of the philosopher he is lecturing on, the views of the scholarly field he’s citing at the time, or some mix? And, how might you test your philological approach when attributing a view to Nietzsche based on his lecture notes? Some contextual reference point is needed, surely. For example: do the views articulated in the lectures get taken up elsewhere, in his contemporaneous letters, notes, or published works? For example, in the case of Nietzsche’s lectures on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers, much of the material is duplicated in his unpublished 1873 essay Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. This would seem to grant special standing to the lecture notes as, at least, operating in parallel with Nietzsche’s own views. However, in the passage Dodds quotes from the Pre-Platonic lectures, Nietzsche simply defers to Grote’s scholarship on the Sophists in passing in a chapter devoted to Socrates. Nietzsche offers no independent view of his own.
In 1888 Nietzsche changed his mind and argued, contra Grote, that the Sophists were “strong spirits” able “to recognize their own umorality.”
That the moral frankness, or unmorality, Nietzsche praises of the Sophists recalls Socrates’ description of Callicles as “saying plainly what others think but do not care to say.”
In the 1870s Nietzsche had referred to Callicles as the spokesman of the Sophists, therefore, though unnamed, Nietzsche is likely referring to Callicles in 4 above.
These final 3 points run together and serve as the crux of Dodds’ argument for the Influence Claim, not least because they provide the only direct reference Dodds’ can find of Nietzsche mentioning Callicles. Now, this in itself (that Dodds can only find one direct reference) should grant us pause. Surely, if it were the case that Callicles had “inspired” certain of Nietzsche’s doctrines and had “deeply impressed [Nietzsche’s] imagination,” Nietzsche would have seen fit to mention him. Throughout Nietzsche’s writing there is a continuous engagement with ancient Greek thinkers. There are for example, dozens of named references to Epicurus from every period of Nietzsche’s active writing. It is frustrating for Dodd’s argument then, that Nietzsche does not directly engage Callicles.
To resolve this issue, Dodds needs to establish that Nietzsche’s positive references to the Sophists’ moral frankness in 1888 refer to Callicles. He believes he’s found the key to unlock his interpretation in the form of Nietzsche’s lectures on Plato from the 1870s, in particular on a section titled “Plato as Moralist.” These lectures were given four times between 1871 and 1879 and comprise pages 1-188 in KGW 2.4. On the basis of these notes, Dodds claims, “Nietzsche in fact considered Callicles a spokesman for ‘the Sophists.’” (389). The passage from Nietzsche’s lectures reads:
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 Callicles 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.
Dodds cites but does not quote this passage. In essence, Dodds’ is saying: “look, in 1888 Nietzsche valued the Sophists very highly for their ‘moral frankness,’ where could he have got this from? Funny enough, it reminds me of what old Socrates says about Callicles, and gosh darn wouldn’t you know it, here in a lecture on Plato from the early 1870s Nietzsche says Callicles is the spokesman of the Sophists, so he must have Callicles in mind!”
Reading the key passage from Nietzsche’s lecture, however, immediately tears Dodds’ argument to shreds. Let’s go through some of the issues.
What Happened to Grote?
For starters, it is worth noting that while Dodds acknowledges Nietzsche’s change in view on the Sophists from the 1870s to 1888 re: Grote, he assumes (without bothering to argue his case, or marshal some textual support) that Nietzsche’s view of Callicles as the spokesman of the Sophists (more to come on this) from the 1870s can be shoehorned into the background of his notes from 1888.
To make this work, Dodds should, at the very least, supply some argument about what Nietzsche believed when, why he changed one view of the Sophists and not another.
Callicles as Spokesman?
Moreover, note Nietzsche does not actually refer to Callicles as “a spokesman for ‘the Sophists.’” Rather, he notes that Callicles provides “an especially clear” example of “the cardinal claim of the Sophists.” This may seem like nitpicking, but it’s an important distinction. It’s not even clear from the passage whether Nietzsche considers Callicles part of the Sophists, or simply someone making arguments in a Sophistic vein, which leads to a secondary issue.
Was Callicles a Sophist, or Even a Real Person?[11]
Now, Nietzsche never mentions Callicles, let alone provides an argument that he’s a Sophist. He does, as the lecture quoted above shows, suggest that Callicles was making “Sophistic claims.” While this certainly doesn’t rule out Nietzsche having Callicles in mind in his 1888 references to the Sophists, it surely makes the mountain that much higher to climb, i.e., if Callicles isn’t a Sophist to begin with, how can he be their unmentioned representative? That Dodds is sensitive to this question is evident in his 1937 essay, quoted above, where he argues, “[Nietzsche] was thinking, no doubt, rather of Plato’s Callicles than of the true Sophists.” Or, consider his remarks in his edition of Gorgias: “Callicles’ opinions are often thought of as typically ‘sophistic,’ but he is certainly not a sophist—on the contrary, his contempt for such ‘worthless persons’ (520a 1) is as outspoken as that of Anytus or Laches” (13). It seems likely that Dodds takes the above passage to resolve the issue, as he reads Nietzsche calling Callicles the “spokesman” for the Sophist, a misreading of the passage.
Bait and Switch: From the Identity of Pleasure and the Good to Moral Frankness
More troubling for Dodds, however, is the fact that Nietzsche’s lecture makes “the identity of pleasure and the good” the cardinal claim of the Sophists. What happened to moral frankness? Dodds’ argument is circuitous enough by taking a lecture from the 1870s and using it to justify a claim about Nietzsche’s views in 1888, but now we need to note it’s also rather underhanded, switching moral frankness in for the identity of pleasure and the good. Dodd’s argument to suggest a direct philosophical influence surely fails at this point. But, for the sake of argument, let’s see what happens if we test the claim about pleasure/goodness.
Nietzsche Sides with Socrates Against Callicles
Reading the full passage, we see that Nietzsche sides with Socrates and does not seek to defend the identification of pleasure and the good. “The evidence against the identity [of pleasure and the good] can be found in Gorgias, Philebus, and the Republic,” Nietzsche says in his lecture. So, even accepting Dodds’ case of bait and switch here, when we look closer at the passage from Nietzsche’s lecture, Dodds’ argument falters even further
(We might pause here to remind the reader that Nietzsche here is acting in a pedagogical capacity and while it’s certainly possible he’s articulating his true views circa 1870s, it’s just as, if not more, likely he’s simply articulating the received view on the matter. The subsequent passages make this very clear as Nietzsche goes on to rehearse Plato’s arguments against the identity of pleasure and the good.)
Nietzsche’s Rejection of Hedonism
Stepping back, we should also note, both here and throughout his mature philosophy Nietzsche will reject various forms of hedonism as decadent and slavish.[12]
Let’s look at a few quotes from Nietzsche in the late 1880s to get a sense of his mature position on hedonism and pleasure as a guiding moral principle:
Whether it be hedonism or pessimism or utilitarianism or eudaemonism: all these modes of thought which assess the value of things according to pleasure and pain, that is to say according to attendant and secondary phenomena, are foreground modes of thought and naivetes which anyone conscious of creative powers and an artist’s conscience will look down on with derision, though not without pity… You want if possible – and there is no madder ‘if possible’ – to abolish suffering; and we? – it really does seem that we would rather increase it and make it worse than it has ever been!
There are two types of sufferers: first those who suffer from a superabundance of life – they want a Dionysian art as well as a tragic outlook and insight into life – then, those who suffer from an impoverishment of life and demand quiet, stillness, calm seas or else intoxication, paroxysm, stupor from art and philosophy… Thus I gradually came to understand Epicurus, the antithesis of a Dionysian Greek, and equally the ‘Christian,’ who really is simply a kind of Epicurean who follows the principle of hedonism as far as possible with his ‘faith makes blessed’ – over and above every principle of intellectual integrity.
The instinct of hatred for reality: the consequences of an extreme over-sensitivity and capacity for suffering that does not want to be ‘touched’ at all because it feels every contact too acutely. The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all boundaries and distances in feelings: the consequence of an extreme over-sensitivity and capacity for suffering… and only experiences bliss (pleasure) when it stops resisting everyone and anything, including evil, – love as the only, the final possibility of life… These are the two physiological realities on which, out of which, the doctrine of redemption has grown. I call it a subsequent and refined development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid foundation. Its closest relation is Epicureanism… The fear of pain, even of infinitesimal amounts of pain – this could end up only as a religion of love…
The ‘predominance of suffering over pleasure’ or the opposite (hedonism): these two doctrines are already signposts to nihilism. For in both of these cases no ultimate meaning is posited except the appearance of pleasure of displeasure.
Toward a critique of the philosopher. — It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it… These great philosophers [of Greece] represent one after the other the typical forms of decadence: the moral-religious idiosyncrasy, anarchism, nihilism (adiaphora), cynicism, obduracy, hedonism, reaction. The question of “happiness,” of “virtue,” of “salvation of the soul” is the expression of physiological contradictoriness in these types of decline: their instincts lack a center of gravity, a purpose.
As these quotes make clear, not only did Nietzsche take a dim view of pleasure as an animating moral principle, but he also juxtaposed it to the very quality he embraced as representative of the Sophists: a kind of moral and political realism, a moral frankness that won’t be swindled by, for example, sweet words about a life without suffering. Ironically, then, Dodds’ by putting, albeit underhandedly, these ideas of hedonism and moral frankness together unwinds his argument even further.
Perhaps at this point, it would be good to take a closer look at what Nietzsche actually says about the Sophists.
Nietzsche’s Remarks on the Sophists, Particularly from 1888
With the exception of his last active year (1888), Nietzsche shows little interest in the Sophists. He reads little about them and writes even less. He offers no sustained treatment of either the Sophists as a group or of any individual Sophist. He does not include them in his writings on the Pre-Platonic philosophers (cf., particularly the unpublish manuscript from 1873, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks and the lecture notes for his course on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers). Of Nietzsche’s references in 1888, Protagoras is the only Sophist mentioned by name (cf. KSA 13:14[100] =WTP 437, and [116] =WTP 428). In both cases, Protagoras figures as largely incidental, but it certainly worth noting as Dodds’ makes no mention of Protagoras—he doesn’t appear to have considered that Nietzsche’s references to the Sophists might be to him rather than Callicles.
Thomas Brobjer (2001, 2005) has forcefully argued that Nietzsche references to the Sophists from 1888 are largely the result of his having read Victor Brochard’s Les sceptiques grecs that year. Indeed, Nietzsche makes two explicit references to Brochard’s book in 1888 (EH, “Clever” 3, and KSA 13:21[1]). Brochard’s book, particularly pages 12-19, offers a discussion of the relationship between the Sophists Protagoras and Gorgias to the development of Ancient Skepticism. Brochard’s book makes no mention of Callicles. Nor does it mention Thrasymachus or Antiphon (a pair of Sophists often linked with Callicles for their political realism). If the context in which Nietzsche engaged the Sophists in 1888 was primarily linked to a scholarly work on Ancient Skepticism at the time, it certainly would put the lie to the idea that Nietzsche was under the continuous and thoroughgoing influence of a single Sophist.
In passing it is worth noting, Nietzsche does make a substantial number of references to the Ancient Skeptics Pyrrho and Timon, particularly in 1888, and particularly in a passages where he is ostensibly referring to the Sophists (cf., KSA 13:14[100] =WTP 437); KSA 13:14[116] =WTP 428); KSA 13:14[141] =WTP 442). We might ask whether THEY are closer to Nietzsche’s understanding of the Sophists than Callicles.
This ambiguity has left scholars with a puzzle: to whom is Nietzsche referring when he speaks of the Sophists? This puzzle is further complicated by Nietzsche’s invocation of the “Greek culture of the Sophists,” which he claims “belongs to the culture of the Periclean age” (KSA 13:14[116] =WTP 428). This broadening of perspective, by speaking of a “culture,” or an “age,” has two consequences. First, it implicates more than any particular individual, i.e., it potentially challenges any privileged claims Callicles might make upon Nietzsche’s thought. Second, it implicates potentially more than any group identified purely as “the Sophists.” In speaking of the Sophists, or rather the culture of the Sophists, Nietzsche refers to Thucydides, Euripides, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Pericles, Anaxagoras, ‘the great Ionians,’ and Hippocrates. This is a list so expansive as to defy any meaningful definition. Indeed, looking at Nietzsche’s references to the Sophists in 1888, not only is it doubtful that he had Callicles in mind, but it is also becoming increasingly doubtful that he had the Sophists in mind (at least as the somewhat coherent group generally we take them to be).
Could Nietzsche have Thucydides (and/or numerous others) in mind? Indeed, it is Thucydides that Nietzsche mentions repeatedly whenever the question of a Sophistic Culture comes up (cf. D 168; TI, “Ancients, 2; KSA 8:19[72, 86], 31[4], 39[5]; 9:7[131]; 13:14[116, 147]). This passage from Twilight of the Idols is particularly representative as it ties together the Sophists with Thucydides under the sign of the same moral frankness that Dodds assures us must only come from Callicles:
My vacation, my preference, my cure for all things Platonic has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps Machiavelli’s Principe, are most closely related to me in terms of their unconditional will not to be fooled and to see reason in reality – not in ‘reason,’ and even less in ‘morality’… [Thucydides] represents the most perfect expression of the sophists’ culture, by which I mean the realists’ culture.[14]
These complications only heighten the ambiguity of Nietzsche’s references to “the Sophists” and thus raise the stakes for any strong claim of influence. To be sure, Dodds does note Nietzsche “was certainly influenced by his reading of Thucydides, whom he regarded as the supreme exponent of ‘the sophistic culture,'” before insisting “there is also evidence that Callicles speeches in the Gorgias had deeply impressed his imagination” (389).
As we have seen, however, the evidence Dodds marshals is thin at best. In the one case in which Nietzsche invokes Callicles as a Sophist under the sign of the identity of pleasure/the good, both him and Sophism appear to be rejected rather than embraced.
What’s Left to Argue About?
With this one substantive reference to Callicles in doubt, Dodds’ argument hinges on the strength of a series of philosophical affinities. In order for Dodds to claim an “influence” in any meaningful sense he should be able to show 1) a serious affinity in the thought of both Nietzsche and Callicles; and 2) that what Nietzsche and Callicles share remains their exclusive domain. Or, at least, that it is unlikely to have derived from alternative sources. To this end, Dodds elaborates four cases in which Nietzsche is said to have been influenced by Callicles. These cases amount to the status of literary allusions, what Dodds calls “evidence that Callicles’ speeches in the Gorgias had deeply impressed [Nietzsche’s] imagination” (389).
The Image of the Lion
“Callicles’ vivid image of the lion whom society vainly seeks to tame (483e-484a) may fairly be said to haunt the pages of Nietzsche” (389). The texts Dodds marshals to this claim are Z III, 12, 1; IV 11; 20; GM, I, 11; TI ‘Improving,’ 2; KSA 13:15[62] = WTP 237; 13:11[153] = WTP 871. Dodds is certainly on to something here in terms of both theme and image. Nietzsche does repeatedly evoke the theme of domestication, or taming, of the human animal. And, he also frequently deploys the image of the lion.
In Nietzsche’s famous discussion of the “blonde beast of prey” at Genealogy of Morality, I, 11, which Dodds cites, it is, of course, Thucydides that is quoted, not Callicles. Speaking of the innocent daring of nobility, Nietzsche writes, “for example, when Pericles, in that famous funeral oration, tells his Athenians, ‘Our daring has forced a path to every land and sea, erecting timeless memorials to itself everywhere for good and ill.’”
It is also worth nothing an equally famous passage from the Genealogy about domesticating the human animal by cunning also makes liberal use of animals, but makes no mention of lions and instead pits large birds of prey against little lambs:
– But let us return: the problem of the other origin of ‘good,’ of good as thought up by the man of ressentiment, demands its solution. – There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of pretty for carrying off the little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, ‘These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like its opposite, a lamb, – is good, isn’t he?’… When the oppressed, the downtrodden, the violated say to each other with the vindictive cunning of powerlessness: ‘Let us be different from evil people, let us be good! And a good person is anyone who does not rape, does not harm anyone’… but this grim state of affairs, this cleverness of the lowest rank which even insects possess (which play dead, in order not to ‘do too much’ when in great danger), has thanks to the counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, clothed itself in the finery of self-denying, quiet, patient virtue, as though the weakness of the weak were itself… a voluntary achievement, something wanted, chosen, a deed, an accomplishment.
But pointing this out isn’t to dismiss Dodds’ claim of literary influence entirely. Rather, it is just meant to trouble it by noting Nietzsche drew from and cited historical examples like Thucydides and was by no means beholden to the image of the lion when discussing metaphors for domestication.
Returning to the figure of the lion and the question of domestication by cunning, there remain other problems with Dodds’ analysis.
Thematically, the affinity is not as clear as it might be. While Nietzsche decries any domestication that would seek to extricate the animal, or natural, from humanity in toto as both impossible and undesirable, he does not decry cultural practices of mutual restriction. In fact, he deems them essential so as to mitigate “a hideous succession of murder, arson, rape and torture” and notes “[w]e may be quite justified in retaining our fear of the blond beast… and remain on our guard” (GM I 11). See our above discussion of hedonism and note Nietzsche’s argument on the importance of “protracted unfreedom”:
The essential thing ‘in heaven and upon earth’ seems, to say it again, to be a protracted obedience in one direction: from out of that there always emerges and has always emerged in the long run something for the sake of which it is worthwhile to live on earth, for example virtue, art, music dance, reason, spirituality – something transfiguring, refined, mad and divine.
Regarding the image of the lion, moreover, we would do well to recall the “Three Transformations” of Zarathustra’s first speech, wherein the lion follows the camel but precedes the child.
[t]o create new values—that even the lion cannot yet do… But say, my brothers, what can the child yet do that even the lion could not do? Why must the predatory lion yet become a child? Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yea-saying. Yes, for the play of creating, my brothers, a sacred Yea-saying is needed.[15]
Finally, Callicles’ exclusive claim to the image of the lion in moral and political thought should be challenged.
The Book of Daniel has something to say about escaping from the clutches of lions in the Hebrew Bible. And, of course, lions will act as symbols of a corrupt state power in the persecution of Christians in Tertullian among other places.[16]
Aesop’s Fables include a number that center on lions cheating and being cheated out of their share through strength and/or cunning. We might simply quote from two:
A lion who had fallen in love with a young woman went to the woman’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. The father was afraid to refuse the lion’s offer, but asked him first to have his teeth and claws taken out; otherwise the lion could only arouse his daughter’s terror. The lion was so in love with the woman that he agreed to the bargain. When the lion came back and approached the farmer, now naked and defenseless, the farmer clubbed him to death.
A cow and a she-goat and a long-suffering sheep decided to become the lion’s companions. They went into the forest together and there they caught an extremely large stag which they divided into four portions. Then the lion said, ‘I claim the first portion by right of my title, since I am called the king; the second portion you will give me as your partner; then, because I am strongest, the third portion is mine … and woe betide anyone who dares to touch the fourth!’ In this way the wicked lion carried off all the spoils for himself.
Picking up on the themes of Aesop and Christian persecution, we might mention the fable of Androcles and the Lion, whereby a slave’s compassion for a lion later saves his life, made famous in the 20th century by George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play.
Plato ends Book 9 of The Republic with a curious metaphor for his tri-partite soul (see Books 3 and 4 for an earlier description), whereby we are asked to imagine 3 figures: a many-headed beast (the appetitive), a lion (the passionate), and a human (the rational). Plato has Socrates describe:
to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to stave and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another—he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another.
[Whereas]
To him the supporter of justice makes answer that he should ever so speak and act as to give the man within him in some way or other the most complete mastery over the entire human creature. He should watch over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and cultivating the gentile qualities, and preventing the wild ones from growing; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in common care of them all should be uniting the several parts with one another and with himself.
Perhaps closer to the mark, we find Aristotle recalling “the fable of Antisthenes”:
Anyone would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for [one deemed a God among men]: they would probably retort what, in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the hares [‘where are your claws and teeth?’], when in the council of the beasts the latter began haranguing and claiming equality for all.
Or, consider Cicero’s juxtaposition of the cunning of the fox and the force of the lion;
There are two ways in which injustice may be done, either through force or through deceit; and deceit seems to belong to a little fox, force to a lion. Both of them seem most alien to a human being; but deceit deserves greater hatred.
Or, even Machiavelli’s revaluation of Cicero, reanimating humanity as it were
Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves. Those who stay simply with the lion do not understand this.
Or, perhaps consider Locke who claims that the criminal having “by the unjust Violence and Slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared War against all Mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a Lyon or a Tyger, one of those wild Savage Beasts with whom Men can have no Society or Security” (Second Treatise §11).
This hardly exhaustive list should point out how utterly commonplace the image of the lion is within the history of moral and political thought, and therefore challenge any claim that Callicles’ imagery “deeply impressed [Nietzsche’s] imagination” rather than some other reference point, or even the totality of the historical imagination on the topic.
The Remaining Claims
Dodds’ remaining 3 claims of literary allusion (nomos/phusis; slave morality as resentful, disguised self-interest; and the positing of an alternative ethics on the basis of good/bad rather than good/evil) all gain and suffer in the same measure. The chief problem here is that while Dodds has certainly unearthed some passages where Callicles and Nietzsche appear to be humming the same tune, they hardly function as literary allusions in the way symbols, allegories, tropes, and idiomatic phrases work. That is, other than the image of the lion dealt with above, nothing Dodds presents by way of evidence functions in a way that would obviously suggest to the reader an allusion to some mythical, or historical, idea, person, event, etc. Remember, the task here isn’t just to unfold some philosophical affinities, but to provide some concrete evidence of philosophical influence.
To take one representative example, Dodds writes: “there are certainly places where he seems to use the language of Callicles… In The Will to Power Nietzsche comes at times even closer to Callicles, as when he defines the Will to Power in terms of πλεονεξία [pleonexia = greediness, assumption, arrogance] as a ‘Haben- und Mehrhabenwollen [to want to have and have more],’ or when he declares that ‘the great man is great through giving his desires free play’ (933), which looks very like Callicles’ prescription τὰς ἐπιθυμίας μὴ κολάζειν [to leave one’s desires unchecked] (491e).”
For Nietzsche’s general case against this kind of unbridled hedonism see above, to which we might add Twilight of the Idols, “Morality” 2: “the inability not to react to a stimulus, is itself just another form of degeneration.”
But, let’s tackle these passages from Nietzsche head on.
Nietzsche uses Mehr-haben-wollen in two places. In neither is he discussing the Sophists, or the concept of pleonexia. Now, Dodds doesn’t provide a citation so it’s impossible to check, and he may have a passage in mind that I’m unaware of. However, it seems clear he’s relying on Wilhelm Nestle here who cites KSA 13:14[65] (1888) = WTP 47 (though he cribs the citation) linking the will to power to the will to have and to have more before asking “who does not hear the Greek ‘pleonexia,’ the catchphrase of the Sophistic debates?” (284). But, absent a citation or a known passage, at the very least Dodds’ claim that Nietzsche “defines the Will to Power in terms of pleonexia,” should be discarded. More likely, Dodds’ meant something like “Nietzsche’s definition of the will to power sounds a lot like pleonexia” and got ahead of himself in the telling. Certainly, it appears the impact of Dodds’ roughshod telling here rubbed off poorly on at least one scholar. For we see Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, almost certainly with Dodds’ essay in mind, write, “Nietzsche translated pleonexia with insight as well as precision: haben und mehrwollhaben [ed. the transcription error here, substituting the non-word mehrwollhaben for mehr-haben-wollen, is MacIntyre’s. I’ve left it in as a general reminder to check your sources when you see scholars citing Nietzsche].”
Again, the passages in which Nietzsche uses this phrasing make no mention of pleonexia.
At any rate, it is certainly true that they evoke the idea of pleonexia. So, let’s have a look at them.
Speaking of socialism and making no mention of the will to power, Nietzsche writes,
But there will always be too many who have possessions for socialism to signify more than an attack of sickness—and those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: ‘one must possess something in order to be something.’ But this is oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, ‘one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.’ For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more—growth, in one word—that is life itself.
This first passage is not cited by Dodds, though it provides a stronger case for his argument as Nietzsche clearly here identifies the “life” with a “morality of development” and “growth,” that is a “wanting to have more.”
N.B. One wants weakness: why? Usually because one is necessarily weak. –Weakness as a task: weakening the desires, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, the will to power, to a sense of pride, to want to have and have more; weakening as meekness; weakening as faith; weakening as aversion and shame in the face of everything natural, as negation of life, as sickness and habitual weakness—weakening as the renunciation of revenge, of resistance, of enmity and wrath. The error in treatment: one does not want to fight weakness with a système fortifiant [strengthening methods], but rather with a kind of justification and moralization; i.e., with an interpretation.—
This passage, while not defining the will to power as wanting to have and have more, at least places the idea alongside the will to power among the things weakness sets itself the task of weakening, including also the will to a sense of pride. But, it’s not a particularly strong passage on which to draw an Influence Claim from Callicles… the will to power and the will to want to have and have more are here secondary to the point Nietzsche is trying to make about weakness. It’s certainly not Nietzsche’s aim in this passage to elaborate on his own twist on pleonexia.
All this may read like quibbling though, as Nietzsche surely does in many places identify both life and the will to power with growth, appropriation, wanting to have more, etc. Take for example
life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation… the will to power incarnate, it will want to grow, expand, draw to itself, gain ascendancy – not out of any morality of immorality, but because it lives, and because life is will to power.
To this end, a philosophical affinity between Nietzsche and Callicles is surely justified. Though there are a number of arguments to be made about the strength of the affinity: Nietzsche rejects the hedonism of Callicles’ position, and we should add that a number of scholars (particularly Richardson and Reginster) have provided important interpretations of the will to power that are much more complex than a simple drive for more allows.
Let’s also ask whether Nietzsche could not have gotten this from elsewhere. Consider the one published reference Nietzsche’s makes to the Sophists in 1888, quoted above, from Twilight of the Idols Ancients 2, where he highlights his interest in Thucydides and Machiavelli.
Hmmm… Thucydides and Machiavelli? Do you think we might be able to find the idea of pleonexia there?
Consider the Speech of the Athenians:
We have not done anything in this that should cause surprise, and we have not deviated from normal human behavior… If we have been overcome by three of the strongest motives—ambition, fear, and our own advantage—we have not been the first to do this. It has always been established that the weaker are held down by the stronger… When people follow their natural inclination to rule over others, they deserve to be praised if they use more justice than they have to…
Or, consider Thucydides use of pleonexia at III.82: “For such gatherings were made not with the benefit that derives from the laws laid down, but contrary to the existing laws, with a desire to get more [πλεονεξίᾳ].”[17]
Or consider Machiavelli’s Prince, which states,
another natural and ordinary necessity which requires that one must always offend those over whom he becomes a new prince, both with men-at-arms and with infinite other injuries that the new acquisition brings in its wake… it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lie the error and the blame.
On the assumption that we insisted upon the necessity of literary influences for Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power as acquisition, growth, and the desire to have more… surely these examples, from figures Nietzsche actually cited and held in high esteem, should suffice!
Let’s look at the other passage Dodds cites as a potential point of influence.
Callicles at 491e says: “he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest, he should have courage and intelligence to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings.”
In Summa: domination of the passions, not their weakening or extirpation! — The greater the dominating power of a will, the more freedom may the passions be allowed. The ‘great man’ is great owing to the free play and scope of his desires and to the yet greater power that knows how to press these magnificent monsters into service.
This is certainly the closest Dodds comes to a hit, a palpable hit. Both argue against ascetic denial, for allowing the liberation of desire, and for a kind of governance of one’s desires. The terms here are different as we’ve noted. Callicles is dealing with pleasure, Nietzsche with power. But the basic structure and language is remarkably similar.
As I mentioned at the beginning, there are a number of points of philosophical affinity between Callicles and Nietzsche. And, Dodds’ essay is a fine starting point in drawing some of these points of affinity out. What it does not provide, however, it any evidence for its chief claim that Nietzsche was directly influenced by Callicles.
Conclusion
Nietzsche certainly knew Plato’s Gorgias well. He certainly knew Callicles and was familiar with the arguments he makes. This isn’t in doubt. So, it’s plausible that Callicles made an impression on Nietzsche and influenced his philosophical thought. There are enough philosophical affinities between the two to justify the suspicion. What there is not, however, is any evidence that this happened. Even assuming one required a literary precedent and influence for Nietzsche’s thought that echoes Callicles, there are stronger philological possibilities, in particular Thucydides.
So, we might ask ourselves… why have decades of scholars been so insistent about the strength of the connection? One suspects it may have something to do with the tainted legacy of the Sophists, and Callicles in particular.
[4] In the same context, Losurdo also mentions Thrasymachus, arguing “to clarify Nietzsche’s attitude, one would have to go much further back. One could even go as far back as Thrasymachus” (441-2). In both the case of Callicles and Thrasymachus, Losurdo offers no citations from Nietzsche, or secondary literature to support a direct connection. He does offer a curiously botched citation Volume 1 of Werner Jaeger’s Paideia (443) to support a claim that Callicles represented the Athenian aristocracy. For more on this citation, see my twitter thread.
Note: KSA 13:14[115-116] comprise WTP 428. Fragments 14[115-116] are joined without so much as a paragraph break. It is unclear why the editors of WTP conjoined these fragments and in the manner they did. At any rate, the fragments are consistent thematically. However, regarding the Sophists the two fragments and their jointure create an interpretative dilemma. Fragment 14[115] contains a brief reference to the “sophistries [Sophismen]” entailed by the “entire evolution of morality.” In this instance, Nietzsche clearly deploys the term in its pejorative sense. Juxtaposed with fragment 14[116], however, this reading becomes somewhat complicated. At 14[116], Nietzsche speaks directly to “[t]he Greek culture of the Sophists [die griechische Cultur der Sophisten],” which he credits with “the first critique of morality.” In part, the Sophists deserve this credit insofar as “they let it be known that every morality can be dialectically justified, i.e., they divine that all attempts to give reasons for morality are necessarily sophistical [sophistisch].” On this reading, Nietzsche appears to accept much of the standard critique to the sophists as immoralists, or at least as upsetting traditional morality. However, Nietzsche lauds rather than decries their efforts.
[7] Curiously Dodds neglects Burnet, Barker, and Knight (among others) in his literature review where he claims that the “historical link” between Nietzsche and Callicles “has received little attention either from the exponents of Nietzsche… or from writers on Plato” (387). He does acknowledge “[t]he connexion has, however, been emphasized by two Greek Scholars, W. Nestle and A. Menzel—the former in a paper on ‘Fr. Nietzsche und die griechische Philosophie’ (1912, 255ff.), the latter in his pamphlet Kallikles (1922, pp. 80-84). Much of the material for this appendix is borrowed from these two writers, but I have tried to check and supplement it with the help of the excellent indexes now available in vols. xxi-xxiii of the Musarion edition of Nietzsche Gesammelte Werke” (387). Menzel notes ‘[t]he resemblance of the statements made by Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias to some of the fundamental theses of Fr. Nietzsche is so striking that it could not have gone unnoticed’ (80). And, goes on to cite Fouillée (1902) as an early reference point before bemoaning “a detailed comparison has so far been lacking” and taking Oehler to task for “den[ying] any influence of Callicles on the grounds that Nietzsche never expressly mentions him.” For his efforts, Menzel comes up with a number of plausible literary allusions to Callicles, but nothing direct and definitive.
Leo Strauss in his published 1963 Gorgias course notes argues, “the position of Callicles was apparently restored by Nietzsche. There is an appendix in Dodds’ commentary on the relation between Nietzsche and Callicles, and there are some passages in Nietzsche which seem to be of the same effect” (185-6);
Citing Dodds, W.K.C. Guthrie in 1969 calls Nietzsche “blood-brother to Callicles” (107). See epigram for a fuller quote;
In 1981, citing Dodds, G.B. Kerferd talks of Nietzsche using “[Callicles’] doctrine as to some degree a model for his own vision of the man who is above other men” (119).
In 1997, Christopher Rocco argues “Callicles elaborates a genealogy of morals worthy of (perhaps inspiration for) Nietzsche himself” and provides the following citation: “On Nietzsche’s relation to the dialogue, see Gorgias, ed. Dodds, appendix, “Socrates, Callicles, and Nietzsche,” pp. 387–91, where Dodds gathers a wealth of references in Nietzsche’s corpus relating to Callicles, Socrates, Plato, and the Sophists.”
Rachel Barney has pursued the claim in several publications:
In 2004[revised 2017], she writes “Nietzsche, for instance, discusses the sophists—with immense admiration—in a way that is hard to make sense of unless we take Callicles as a principal source (1968, 232–4{my note: this is a reference to KSA 13:14[115, 116] (115+116 =WTP 428), 147 =WTP 429}; and see Dodds 1958, 386–91, on Callicles’ influence on Nietzsche’s own thought).
In 2006, she asks, “Is Callicles in the Gorgias a canonical representative of sophistic thought, as Nietzsche clearly assumed” (78) [In this text, Barney does not cite a source for the claim that Nietzsche was influenced by Callicles, though given her other texts from the period it is reasonable to assume she is relying upon Dodds here.].
In 2010, she argues, “Callicles in the Gorgias has had his defenders, most notoriously Nietzsche” citing Dodds (95-6).
In 2010, Kristian Urstad argued, “[a]lthough there is no mention of him in his published works, there is little doubt that some of Nietzsche’s most famous doctrines were inspired by the views expressed by the character Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias” (133). Urstad offers no textual support for this claim, which opens his essay, though he does approvingly cite from Dodds later.
In 2015, Matthew Meyer defers to William Nestle and Dodds in connecting Callicles’ discussion of pleonexia to Nietzsche’s idea of the will to power (cf. Gorgias 483c)
In 2016, Greg Whitlock notes,
Plato’s character Callicles argued a position intriguingly similar to Nietzsche’s. Is it not possible that Nietzsche modeled his revaluation of Plato from the perspective of the character Callicles?… Dodds wrote,
‘…certain of the most notorious of [Nietzsche’s] own doctrines were in some measure inspired by Plato—not, however, by the philosopher who speaks to us through the mouth of Socrates, but by the anti-Plato in Plato whose personae is Callicles.’ (Dodds 387)
I would, then, agree with Professor Dodds that ‘Nietzsche thus came to see in the ‘Sophists’ forerunners of his own radical moral skepticism’ (Dodds 389). Yet nowhere in the published works (or notes other than one lecture note) did Nietzsche mention Callicles by name. In my opinion, Dodds seems correct to point to a note from March-June 1888 as alluding to Callicles. ‘The Sophists are no more than realists … They possess the courage of all strong spirits to know their own immorality’ (WP 429). If this note still appears too broad to suggest Callicles, I would mention that in Nietzsche’s lectures on Plato, he nominated Callicles as the spokesman of the Sophists. This note, importantly, came from the notes prepared for Twilight, and many more of the notes in Will to Power grouped as ‘Critique of Greek Philosophy’ seem based on the discussion of honesty and shame found in the Gorgias.
[9] Dodds is referencing Nietzsche’s lectures on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers given at Basel in 1872 and 1876, (Urbana: 2006). In Chapter 17, devoted to Socrates, Nietzsche mentions the Sophists in general (he doesn’t mention any Sophist by name). Nietzsche appears to accept Grote’s revaluation of the Sophists: “Grote has clarified the Sophists… According to the standard view they disperse morally corruptive teachings, ‘sophistical propositions.’ They were regular teachers of customs, neither above nor below the level of the times, according to Grote… The Sophists were the clergy, and Plato [was] the alternative thinker” (148). Nietzsche also appears to follow Grote in interpreting the Sophists simply as educators for hire: “they deliver what they promise. In contrast no one could say why Socrates taught.” It is Socrates that disturbs the moral equilibrium of the polis.
As Dodds notes, Nietzsche will indeed upend his position on Grote’s interpretation of the Sophists. See KSA 13:14[147] (1888) = WTP 429: “Grote’s tactics in defense of the Sophists are false: he wants to raise them to the rank of men of honor and ensigns of morality—but it was their honor not to indulge in any swindle with big words and virtues—.”
[10] Brobjer (2001) has argued for four periods of Nietzsche’s engagement with the Sophists. He argues for an additional period (1881-1886) to mark Nietzsche’s absence of engagement during this period. This period contains only an indirect reference to the Sophists in the fifth book of The Gay Science, written at the end of 1886 and published in 1887. I prefer to simply note the lack of engagement during the 1881-1886 period and absorb this lone reference into the final 1886-1888 period. This approach also has the benefit of capturing Nietzsche’s only other reference to the Sophists from 1886, an unpublished note KSA 12:7[20]. Contra Brobjer’s argument (based on the GS 351 alone) that Nietzsche viewed the Sophists in 1886 with “critical disinterest,” KSA 12:7[20] raises the question of Socrates relation to the Sophists as a “competition for the youth.” This reference to Socrates, the Sophists, and the role of the agon, recalls Nietzsche’s positive references to the Sophists in the early 1870s.
[13] KSA 12:9[107] was unceremoniously chopped up in WTP into 3 separate notes: WTP, 26, 35, and 37.
[14] There is an early, near identical, draft version of this section from a note under the header “Ecce Homo, Or: Why I Know More” KSA 13:24[1]8 (1888). For comparison’s sake, see GS, 57, where Nietzsche takes a dim view of “realists.”
[15] The theme of the innocent, creative child has a long history, one which Nietzsche was particularly interested in in the early 1870s. See, for example, his lectures on Heraclitus, where he quotes from Lucian and Homer: “The Buyer [a character in Lucian’s Philosophies for Sale] inquires, ‘And what is eternity?’ The Heraclitean answers, ‘A child playing a game, moving counters, in discord, in concord.’ In his world-creating capacity, Zeus is compared to a child (as is Apollo) who builds and destroys sand castles on the beach at the sea.” Cf., Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 6; and, “On the Pathos of Truth,” both from the same period. For an interesting discussion see Deleuze’s comments on “Zarathustra and the Lion” in his essay “Nietzsche” from Pure Immanence.
[16] The practice of damnatio ad bestias [condemnation to the beasts] is also discussed in Nietzsche’s favorite Tacitus (Annuls 15. 44), though in that case it is Christians being forced to don the furs of animals, not necessarily lions, and being thrown to dogs.
[17] I’ve used the translation from A. Sebastian Anderson in his essay “Party Politics: Thucydides, the hetaireia, and the Cup of Pericles,” collected in the Thucydides the Athenian.
Curiously, Dodds cites this passage when noting “the idea of the ‘transvaluation of values’ may well have been suggested to [Nietzsche] by the famous reflections on Corcyra (Thuc. 3. 82)” (389). But, he appears to miss the use of pleonexia in the bargain. At any rate, this passage from Thucydides is really more akin to an “inversion of values” as “reckless audacity” becomes “courage,” “prudence” becomes “cowardice,” etc. For an interesting discussion of this passage in Thucydides see, Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness, 404.
My general sense is that Brazilian music exists in the North American imagination almost purely by way of caricatures. Most prominently we think of Carmen Miranda in the 1940s and her tutti frutti hat
or take the famous elevator music (muzak) scene from “The Blues Brothers” (John Landis, 1980), featuring Jobim and Moraes’ near ubiquitous 1964 hit “The Girl from Ipanema”
Both of these caricatures function to create a myth of Brazil as a land of plenitude and pleasure: they have so many bananas they wear them as hats! It’s so relaxed there, the music will lull you sweetly into a tranquil midday nap on the beach!
The drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira leaned into this caricature for his track “The Happy People,” featured on the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s album celebrating Brazilian music of the same name from 1972:
The caricature reaches its full flowering by way of Terry Gilliam’s bitingly dark, dystopian 1985 film “Brazil”
Gilliam’s “Brazil” prominently features Ary Barroso’s 1939 hit composition “Aquarela do Brasil [Watercolor of Brazil],” popularly known in the English-speaking world simply as “Brazil.” Stuck in an ugly dystopian, techno-bureaucratic surveillance state, Jonathan Pryce’s character Sam Lowry fantasizes about a life of easy pleasures: beautiful vistas, cheap heroism, and the readily available girl of his dreams.
The song plays two ways in the film, overdetermining the caricature: first, as a kind of call to an alternative life, one of plenitude and pleasure, with the happy people. Second, however, the song itself, with its light, happy, propulsive melody and constant melodic repetition (both within itself and in the film) recalls the thin, happy veneer muzak paints on the modern working life: the cheerful, but idiotic co-worker; the tedium of repetitive, mundane tasks.
Suffice to say, the caricature, misses the mark. (We need hardly mention here that this colonial exoticization is hardly exclusive to Brazil and pervades the English-speaking engagement with most Latin and/or World music.) The cultural touchstone for most rock fans, is Brazil’s Tropicalia movement (roughly 1967-1972), which tracks alongside the cultural revolutions in the late 1960s in North America and Europe. In the context of Brazil, the cultural revolution functioned as a reaction to the political and cultural realities of the day (Brazil’s leftist democratically elected government was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup d’état in 1964; from 1959-1967 Brazilian pop music was dominated by the sweet, tranquil sounds of Bossa Nova). The explosion of Tropicalia, with its vibrant, complex, and avant-garde melodies, is evident from the start as a rejection of the contemporary political/cultural order. Compare two Caetano Veloso tracks from the period by way of example to dramatize the shift in sensibilities.
First, from his 1967 Bossa Nova album Domingo, released with Gal Costa
Second, from his 1968 self-titled album, announcing the birth of Tropicalia
Brazilian pop music is incredibly diverse. Its musicians, bursting with talent and experimentation, relentlessly borrow from and reinterpret the past. This can most clearly be seen in the Música popular brasileira (MPB) movement of the late 1960s through the 1970s. Rather than tunneling in one direction to create a unique, easily identifiable, and easily repeatable sound (like Samba, Bossa Nova, or Tropicalia), MPB incorporates bits and pieces of everything into a new whole. The pinnacle achievement in this regard is the 1972 collaboration album by Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges “Clube da Esquina”
The album cover itself tells something of the complicated colonial and cultural history of Brazil, two boys (one white, one black) sit together on a dirt road outside Rio, barbed wire noticeably in picture. The album is a sprawling work of creativity, a masterpiece.
The Breakdown
What follows is not intended to be a canonical, or authoritative history of Brazilian music. Far from it. Rather, it is a highly idiosyncratic look at a fairly broad cross-section of Brazilian music that I really like.
I owe my love of Brazilian music to the influence of an old high school friend, who now makes violins in France (true story!), who himself found it, if I remember correctly, by way of David Byrne’s Luaka Bop releases. I dedicate this Summer to him, and hope he finds something new and interesting to listen to in one of the many playlists that follow.
As a way of orienting ourselves, I’ll be breaking down Brazilian pop music into 4 broad categories:
The Guitar Folks (for our purposes, 1940s through 1980s)
Bossa Nova (1959-1967 and beyond)
Tropicalia (1967-1972)
Música popular brasileira (MPB) (late 60s onward)
Because I’m lousy at editing myself… I’ve created 6 playlists for this Summer (one for each section above and a master list containing everything). For those looking for an easy introduction, here’s a broad overview of the hits:
In what follows, each section will have its own playlist for those looking to dive deeper, and one playlist combining everything, for those, like me, wanting it all.
The Guitar Folks
Perhaps it’s because I play guitar (badly), but for me the anchor instrument for all Brazilian music is the guitar. Starting early in the 20th Century, we can trace the development of Brazilian music through the guitar in figures like
Pick a genre, or era of Brazilian pop music, and you’ll find a guitar-based melody. There are exceptions, of course. One thinks of the piano-based Bossa Nova of João Donato and Sérgio Mendes, the lite Bossa Nova organ of Walter Wanderley, and the jazz percussionists like Airto Moreiro, and Dom Um Romão. But it is the guitar that dominates the music.
Here’s a live performance of Bossa Nova’s guitar king, Baden Powell
As an introduction of the world of Brazilian guitar, I’ve created a playlist featuring Cartola’s Samba, Garoto’s Choro, the Bossa Nova of Luiz Bonfá, Baden Powell, and Rosinha De Valença, Waltel Branco’s funk, Arthur Verocai’s experimental pop, and Egberto Gismonti’s jazz.
Bossa Nova
If there is a key figure and year around which Bosso Nova pivots, it’s Antônio Carlos Jobim (aka “Tom,” “Jobim”), and 1959. Jobim is responsible for at least a half-dozen of the world’s most recognizable pop tunes (with his frequent lyricist Vinicius de Moraes)
You may have never once owned any Jobim music, or even tried to consciously listen to Jobim on any format, in any context, and yet you will know these songs. They are surely ingrained in your melodic memory.
In 1959, two musical events changed the course of pop music in Brazil. Jobim figured prominently in both events:
Marcel Camus’ film Black Orpheus featuring compositions by Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, particularly Jobim’s “A felicidade,” and Bonfá’s “Manha de Carnaval.”
João Gilberto releases his debut album “Chega de Saudade” featuring several important Jobim compositions, particularly the title track and Desfinado.
For the next 8 years Bossa Nova will dominate Brazilian, and indeed international, pop music. The American musician Gary McFarland in his 1965 album “Soft Samba” perfectly describes the genre with its tranquil, soft, simplified Samba melodies and arrangements, and its repetitive “zhzzz, zhzzz, zhzzz…” and “bah, bah, bah…” vocalizations.
But, Bossa Nova is more than simply the chill Latin sounds of the 1960s wafting sweet dreams of endless beaches, Summer nights and beautiful, girls purring “bah, bah, dubba da, bah, bah…” sounds.
Starting from the beginning, Bossa Nova has always been more radical than cultural memory allows. The opening scene of Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, which introduces Jobim’s “A felicidade,” juxtaposes the soft, plaintive Bossa Nova melody against a backdrop of vibrant Samba rhythms as scenes of everyday life in Rio play out. In this context, the song works less as an invitation to a life of plenitude and easy pleasure, than to show up the reality undergirding the vibrant party life of the Samba, the Carnival. The song is contemplative, morose. A song called “happiness,” that is about anything but. The lyrics run: “Tristeza não tem fim. Felicidade sim” [“Sadness has no ending. Happiness does”] and laments the fading pleasures of the poor, who work all year, at carnival’s end, when the illusion subsides and reality returns.
The longevity of Bossa Nova is attested to by the fact that arguably two of its best album’s, João Gilberto’s 1973 self-titled, and Jobim and Elis Regina’s 1974 “Elis & Tom,” were released at the eclipse of Tropicalia.
I’ve created an introductory playlist for Bossa Nova that straddles the classics of the genre, particularly Jobim, Joao and Astrud Gilberto and their various collaborators (Stan Getz, Walter Wanderley), Sérgio Mendes, Joao Donato, Marcos Valle… but also more experimental figures like Edu Lobo, and Tamba 4. Finally the playlist ends with the ultimate crossover figure Jorge Ben Jor, a guitarist that straddles Bossa Nova, Tropicalia, and MPB with aplomb.
Tropicalia
By 1967, living under a military dictatorship since 1964, the tranquil sounds of Bossa Nova hit different. Brazilian musicians, in part taking inspiration from the psych-, garage-, prog-, etc. rock movements, looked to create something new and so launched Tropicalia.
The keystone of Tropicalia, released in 1968, is the unique collaboration album “Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis.” “Tropicalia, or Bread and Circuses,” an illusion to the Roman spectacles, offers another revolutionary take on the Carnival. Arranged by Rogerio Duprat, the album features Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé, Gal Costa, and Os Mutantes.
Like all Tropicalia albums, this album features melodies that refuse to stabilize. There’s a certain creative anarchy to Tropicalia that puts it closer to the Marx Brothers than the Bossa Nova of earlier Brazilian pop or the rock n’ roll of the Rolling Stones.
Appropriately, I’ve started my introductory Tropicalia playlist with Jorge Ben to help dramatize both the continuity and change from Bossa Nova, even within a single artist. Unfortunately, Ben’s 1970 album “Fôrça Bruta” is missing from Spotify, but you can find it here
The playlist surely stretches Tropicalia beyond the tastes of strict disciplinarians. I don’t provide a firm cutoff between Tropicalia and MPB for a few of artists, particularly Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, and Caetano Veloso. Somewhere in the mid-1970s all steer away from Tropicalia and embrace the broad pop sensibility of MPB.
Música popular brasileira (MPB)
MPB gets a bad rap for being yet another 1970s national music that unironically blends the softer edges of popular AM radio friendly music together. Take the lavishly produced song “Davy” from Sérgio Mendes’ 1974 album “Sérgio Mendes (AKA I Believe).” Listen closely and you can hear the cuíca (a Brazilian percussion instrument that creates a funny little laughing monkey sound) chime in at 3:15 mark as a nice nod to the past.
Or, take a listen to former Bossa Nova star Marcos Valle’s lite-disco infused 1983 hit “Estrelar”
But, as mentioned in the intro above, MPB, while certainly broad enough of a genre to incorporate this kind of radio-ready pop, is incredibly eclectic and creative.
Again, I’ve started my introduction to MPB with Jorge Ben to anchor the continuity and transition of the genres. You’ll find a wide range of musical styles here, from the Soul Rock of Tim Maia, to the Jazz Funk of Azymuth, and everything in between.
Thanks for reading and listening!
Here’s a giant playlist consisting of all the tunes from the 4 focused playlists above:
I’ll be further exploring Brazilian pop music all Summer on my Twitter account: @RomulusNotNuma
I would also encourage you to check out last year’s Summer entry on Krautrock
PDO is a quick, easy way to get a bird’s eye view of luck in hockey. It adds on ice save percentage and on ice shooting percentage, both of which are subject to random, luck-induced swings. Theoretically, a team hitting 1.000 is at break even, while a team under 1.000 is having bad luck with their goaltending, shooting, or both, and a team above 1.000 is in the pink.
There are a number of things PDO doesn’t account for (such as talent level, injury, etc), but that’s not a problem unless you are a dullard unable to take in more than one piece of information. PDO works best when compared over time and in conjunction with a number of other factors. And, even then, it’s function is really to provide an indicator, rather than a judgment.
The Conversion Gap
In November of last year, I started tracking what I’m calling “the conversion gap.” That is, the gap between a team’s 5×5 Goals For Percentage (GF%) and their 5×5 Expected Goals For Percentage (xGF%).
GF% is simply the percentage of goals a team scores (i.e., are they outscoring their opponents?).
xGF% is the percentage of goals a team is expected to score based on a model that evaluates the shot location, among other things, of unblocked shots (I’m using Natural Stat Trick’s data here).
The calculation here is pretty simple.
Based on their shots and shot share, a team is expected to score so many goals. The conversion gap measures the gap between that expected goal share and their actual goal share.
This gap tracks with PDO remarkably well and provides a nice supplement to PDO as a catchall, quick reference point for who’s getting lucky and who’s getting jobbed.
2021-22
Here’s a breakdown of last year’s results sorted by their negative conversion gap:
As you can see, no one got jobbed worse than the New Jersey Devils last year, and their 51.45 xGF% helps to explain their seemingly sudden success this year.
Even bad teams can get jobbed. Have a look at Seattle. Last year they were only expected to score a middling 48.36% of the goals at 5×5… but they dramatically underperformed that mark, indicating that they were in fact getting jobbed. Again, their success this year is less surprising in light of their conversion gap.
2022-23
With a much smaller sample size for 2022-23, there’s a lot more volatility here, but the conversion gap continues to track PDO very closely. Look at sad sack Chicago here. Completely hopeless with an xGF% of around 40 and still getting jobbed on a historic scale. Good for her. Fuck those guys.
Now, to a non-trivial degree note how “good” teams generally track with a healthy positive gap and 1+ PDO, which we generally say accounts for their talent level.
But this isn’t always the case. Look at Colorado. A dominant team and among the luck darlings last year. This where’s it all gone?
PS. no one in this league gets jobbed harder than Jesse Puljujarvi!
In an accompanying essay, later printed in the Spring 1972 edition of Film Comment, titled “Notes on Film Noir,” Schrader writes, “[t]he masterpiece of film noir was a straggler, Kiss Me Deadly.”
In this post, I’ll provide something of a primer on film noir, while reviewing some of the key themes from Kiss Me Deadly.
Mickey Spillane
Aldrich’s 1955 film adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly is based on Mickey Spillane’s 1952 novel of the same name. Spillane was an extremely popular American writer of pulp fiction in the post-war, patriotic, red-baiting baby-boom era. He’s most closely associated with his recurring character, Mike Hammer, who follows a long line of pulp fiction’s “private dicks” (think Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe). But, where the pulp universe of Spade and Marlowe still owe some allegiance to Arthur Conan Doyle’s methodical, witty and intelligent Sherlock Holmes, Spillane’s Hammer is noticeably sleazier. As fast-paced as the action of Spillane’s novels are, so Mike Hammer is unrelentingly stupid, unwaveringly righteous and patriotic, quick-tempered, and violent. Eddie Muller puts it this way: “Hammer’s not exactly a textbook investigator. He meanders around, indiscriminately intimidating people. His efforts spin threads of a plot, but he’s too thick-skulled to stitch any of them together.” Dead end leads to dead end. As a film reference point, Mike Hammer is the ultimate pre-cursor to the fascistic, misogyny-filled role-playing as vigilante that you see in Dirty Harry, and Death Wish. As a testament to Spillane’s identification with Hammer, consider that he played Mike Hammer in the 1962 film The Girl Hunters.
A good window into Mickey Spillane and how he was viewed at the time Kiss Me Deadly came out is provided by Delbert Mann’s 1955 Academy Award winning film Marty. Marty is straightforwardly a film about toxic masculinity and, in that regard, pairs incredibly well with Kiss Me Deadly. The basic plot is that an affable, but rather socially awkward 30-something butcher, Marty, meets a nice, but homely, woman, and encounters incredible pressure from his circle of loser friends to be an asshole about the whole thing. He eventually choses happiness and companionship, but not before we are treated to a discourse from his friends on how Mickey Spillane “sure knows how to handle women”:
Like Marty, Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, functions as a critique of Mike Hammer and the toxic masculinity that he celebrates, in this case by turning him into an anti-hero, or as Alain Silver names him an “anti-Galahad.” Like the courtly romance hero Galahad, Hammer is on a quest for the ever elusive “holy grail,” in Kiss Me Deadly dubbed, with characteristic pulp flare, the “great whatsit.” However, along the way Spillane’s Hammer lacks any sense of chivalry, and any charisma he may have is bought entirely with a smug, self-assured brute force. Muller highlights a PR quote attributed to the actor Biff Elliot promoting another Spillane adaptation, I, The Jury (1953): “Women readers go for Mike Hammer because they like the way he handles girls. He’d as soon hit them as kiss them, and somehow that sort of treatment appeals to the latent atavism in women.”
In Aldrich’s hands, Hammer loses any sense of righteousness. He’s sneering, loutish, loathsome, with a disdain for near everything and a crass “what’s in it for me” cynicism.
Aldrich doesn’t waste any time showing his cards. The opening sequence is a firecracker. Against a forced diegetic soundscape of footfalls and heavy breathing, we see a lone woman, naked and barefoot but for a trench coat, running down a remote road at night trying to flag down cars. Hammer (Ralph Meeker) emerges at lightning speed driving a convertible sports car. Swerving barely out of her way he comes to a violent stop, and while trying repeatedly to turn over the engine he barks his first words of dialogue at the terrified woman: “you almost wrecked my car!”
Aldrich retains all of Spillane’s glorious, dizzying action, but immediately undercuts and exposes his protagonist. The rescued woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman), despite her many disadvantages at this point in the film (she’s nearly naked, on the run from institutional confinement, and entirely reliant upon a stranger for help), sizes him up and cuts him to the core:
Christina: You’re angry with me aren’t you? Sorry I nearly wrecked your pretty little car. I was just thinking how much you can tell about a person from such simple things. Your car, for instance.
Hammer: Now what kind of message does it send you?
Christina: You have only one real lasting love.
Hammer: Now who could that be?
Christina: You. You’re one of those self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing but his clothes, his car, himself. Bet you do push-ups every morning just to keep your belly hard.
Hammer: You against good health or something?
Christina: I could tolerate flabby muscles in a man, if it’d make him more friendly. You’re the kind of person who never gives in a relationship, who only takes. (assuming his perspective, in mocking voice) Ah, woman, the incomplete sex. And what does she need to complete her? One man, wonderful man!
Hammer: All right, all right. Let it go.
Aldrich and the writer A.I. Bezzerides use this scene to strip Hammer down to a caricature. If Spillane’s Mike Hammer is a blunt instrument for which every problem appears as a nail, Aldrich/Bezzerides’ critique must be equally as direct: this character is self-involved, stupid and without any depth.
This scene also establishes some key elements of film noir, in particular the theme of the fragmented, post-war subject. Disillusioned and cynical toward authority, institutions, and moral goodness, the film noir subject is also constantly frustrated by any effort to assert mastery over the self, others, and its environment. The quests and projects that give film noir subjects their meaning and purpose are a horrifying mix of illusion (MacGuffins), and apocalypse. Film noir subjects, even and particularly when, like Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, they are in the heat of a great quest, are not in control. They are fated, trapped, and nearly always the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Kiss Me Deadly dramatizes this chaotic sensibility by beginning the film in the heat of action. Mike Hammer and the audience begin in media res.
Film Noir, A Rough Primer
Starting in 1946, French critics Nino Frank and Jean-Pierre Chartier separately began discussing the “noir” character of recent American films, particularly in reference to Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944). The first thoroughgoing study of the subject also belongs to French critics in the form of Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton’s 1955 book A Panorama of American Film Noir: 1941-1953, which noted a new “series” of American films “shared a strange and violent tone, tinged with a unique kind of eroticism.”
As Raymond Durgnat famously argued in 1970, “[t]he film noir is not a genre, as the Western and gangster film, and takes us into the realm of classification by motif and tone.” As much as film noir is a style or mood then, it is also a period. Despite whatever one might say about proto-noirs (typically the gangster films of the 20s and 30s), and neo-noirs, film noir proper is tied to a very contingent time and place. At its outmost reaches, one can say that it starts with Huston’s Maltese Falcon (1941) and ends with Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958).
Film noir is also characterized by its realism: it’s preference for location shooting and diegetic sound, violence, and sex. But, film noir’s realism is leavened with a heavy dose of German expressionism, in no small part due to the influx of German filmmakers fleeing the war (Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Douglas Sirk to name a few).
It is this combination of a disillusioned, sense of over-whelming helplessness in the face of the war/post-war/cold-war period, and a realistic yet expressionistic style that defines film noir.
Realist-Expressionism: Element’s of Aldrich’s Style
A hallmark example of German Expressionist film is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with its sharp oblique angles and claustrophobically narrowing alleyways. The universe of Dr. Caligari is so off-kilter and menacing that the subject can find no purchase there.
Let’s do a scene analysis to take a closer look at Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo’s realistic expressionism in action. In this scene, Mike Hammer meets Lily Carver who claims to be Christina’s roommate.
Kiss Me Deadly was famously relocated by Bezzerides from the novel’s New York to the Bunker Hill district of LA. Shot almost exclusively on location, this particular scene was shot (both exteriors and interiors) at the Jalisco Hotel, 616 North Spring Street. The location shooting and natural sound design ground the scene in a heady realism, particularly when accounting for the themes of threatening violence and sexual innuendo.
But, note how it was shot: the way the shots are framed and in particular lit.
The first cut (a fade from the exterior to the interior) swaps perspective. We go from an objective view of the exterior, to Hammer’s view inside the building. We/he sees a darkly lit, narrowing stairwell. The space he occupies is cramped and opaque. There’s only one source of light and it lays out the only direction he can travel. Even the entrance (now exit) he just came through is out of sight. We get the feeling we are trapped and/or being pulled along.
Then, there’s a sharp cut, the light source is off-screen as Hammer’s shadow steps out on the landing and the camera jumps up a floor. From this perspective, we get sense of two things happening at once: 1) Laszlo is using deep focus, keeping the entire depth of field sharp. And, the space has greatly expanded, giving the illusion that Hammer has options, that he’s gained some room to move around. But, another thing has also happened. 2) we are now viewing Hammer from above, as if we were a hidden threat, pinning him down. More menacing still, Hammer is centered in the shot, while surrounded by a tangle of the oblique angles and sharp shadows of the stairwell, the bars of which suggesting that he’s imprisoned.
Once he enters Carver’s room, it goes even worse for him. The camera is set low, behind Carver’s foregrounded bedposts which repeat the theme of prison bars. It’s as if the camera represents a figure crouched behind and below the bed. The lone light source is visible, but in a cruel joke it’s so low that it masks Hammer’s face at the same time that it makes a mockery of the idea that a figurative lightbulb has gone off in his head. Adding to the menace is Carver’s gun pointed right at Hammer’s manhood.
Even when Hammer relaxes into the room, sitting on the bed, the gun no longer pointed at him, he remains barred in the frame.
At the conclusion of the scene, Aldrich repeats the headless/barred framing.
And finally, Aldrich lingers in the room, providing this very interesting shot as Carver, now alone, settles into the bed, herself largely out of view, obscured by furniture in the foreground.
Combined together the scene suggests a high level of realism. The location, spaces, and sounds are real, tangible. Yet, they are filled with menace. While Aldich’s style lacks the fantastical, nightmarishness of Expressionism, and remains grounded in reality, the oblique angles, shadows, and framing all suggest a threatening, uncanny space.
Thematic Analysis: The Abject
There looms, within abjections, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful—a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself.
In his seminal 1949 book, Painting with Light, the cinematographer John Alton, suggests the following scene “[t]o realize the power of light and what it can do to the mind of an audience”:
The room is dark. A strong streak of light sneaks in from the hall under the door. The sound of steps is heard. The shadows of two feet divide the light streak. A brief silence follows. There is suspense in the air. Who is it? What is going to happen?”
Kiss Me Deadly is packed with such suspenseful moments, like this scene where arch villain Dr. Soberin enters a room to interrogate a tied-up Hammer.
But what makes Kiss Me Deadly so unique is that is goes beyond the merely suspenseful, and engages the abject. The film is cluttered with grotesque, yet compelling images. “The fascinated start that leads me toward and separates me from them,” Kristeva writes about the abject in the form of loathsome food. As with the “great whatsit” of the film, an extremely dangerous, nuclear, Pandora’s box, the images fascinate and draw the viewer in, while equally repulsing them.
Take for example the framing of this shot when Hammer seeks out Ray Diker, the terrified science reporter, at his apartment:
Aldrich uses the door to frame the shot at a sharp angle, obscuring half of Diker’s face. Laszlo’s lighting draws the eye to the shadows created by Diker’s wounds (a cut obscured by a band aid, and a swollen upper cheek), which at-a-glance look worse than they are. The construction of the shot doesn’t simply convey Diker’s fear, or that he’s been roughed up. The image is disturbing and compelling, familiar but in an unexpected way. I’ve often thought Diker’s artificially arched eyebrow suggest the dramatic and frightening make-up associated with Kabuki theatre:
Or, consider the way the film treats Christina’s torture. It happens largely offscreen. Aldrich cuts to the torture right at its conclusion, sparing us both its length and practice. But, that is not to say the scene is sanitized. If anything, it is more disturbing for the way it is shot. The first thing we experience are Christina’s bloodcurdling screams, followed quickly by her bare, struggling legs and feet pinned on both sides by men in dress shoes. This is all we see and hear of the torture, which is horrifying in its own right. But, Aldrich lingers in the room as the hoods discuss their plans with Christina’s now lifeless corpse (still only her bare legs and feet) continuing to take center stage. The effect is greatly heightened by showing us only part of Christina’s body then corpse. The villains have tortured and killed her, but Aldrich has figuratively dismembered her. Of course, as the famous severed ear from David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet attests, there is something profoundly disturbing about images of dismembered body parts.
The villains here are unidentified, doubly menacing in their facelessness. The oblique lines, shadows and bars from the bed (particularly the tangle of coils that make up the mattressless frame) mirror the trapped, imprisoned imagery of Carver’s apartment. Christina’s corpse, centered in every shot, “show[s] me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live” (Kristeva on the corpse as abject).
But, the way the film works its abject magic isn’t simply to parade abject imagery. It also floods everyday reality with abjection. Notice in the last image above, the hood isn’t holding a weapon as such (a knife, gun, or club), but a common groove plier. Again we see that the reality of Kiss Me Deadly is relentlessly hostile.
Consider also the way the film repeats images to foreshadow events, but also to heighten the effect. Take for example, the way the film treats the death of Nick, the Greek car mechanic and Hammer’s seemingly only friend (perhaps so due to Nick’s fawning attitude toward the extremely self-involved Hammer).
At the beginning of the film, Hammer and Christina pull into a gas station. The attendant uses a car jack to find a tree branch is trapped under the car.
This everyday object, a car jack, will be used by Dr. Soberin later in the film to trap Nick under a car and kill him.
Take another example. Consider the way the first 2 acts of the film only reveal the shoes of the villains: they are shot from low angles, obscuring their identity, creating a sense that they could be anyone. Anyone, except for the archvillain, Dr. Soberin, who wears a distinctive set of shoes, leading to a very clever scene in a poolside changeroom, where we see Hammer checking out a lineup of shoes looking for Dr. Soberin’s.
We first meet Dr. Soberin’s shoes when he runs Hammer and Christina off the road at the beginning of the film and then steps forward to admire his work:
At Christina’s torture:
At the scene of Nick’s death:
And, of course, at Hammer’s interrogation:
The groove pliers, the car jack, Dr. Soberin and his henchmen’s shoes. All common, everyday objects filled with menace.
Hammer’s Sadism
Another theme that runs in parallel is Kiss Me Deadly’s abjection, is the way it treats Hammer’s sadism. There are innumerable scenes in the film where Hammer’s hard-headed, stupid, quick-tempered approach leads him to choose violence to get results. But, the film makes clear that for Hammer, this isn’t simply a goal-oriented approach. He derives a perverse form of sadistic pleasure from hurting others, from pushing them around.
Here he is admiring his work after tossing a hood that was tailing him down a flight of stairs:
Or, after breaking a witness’s beloved Pagliacci record:
Or see the evident pleasure he takes inflicting pain on the coroner:
But, the most compelling display of Hammer’s sadism is when he confronts a pair of henchmen at the tony mansion of Carl Evello. Off screen Hammer does something to one of the hoods, leaving him in a stupefied, lifeless state:
The other hood, confused and terrified can only back away in a daze, such are Hammer’s near-mythic powers of sadistic violence.
This scenario will repeat later in the film as Hammer breaks free from his interrogation at the beach house, once again leaving the same hood in a dazzled, lifeless state:
By making Hammer’s use of violence so explicitly sadistic, Aldrich is providing a critique of his protagonist (and, by extension the audience identifying with him) as morally corrupt. He’s also drawing our attention to the way Hammer’s quest is entirely overdetermined by abjection.
Hammer’s dumb sadism is also thematically contrasted with the pedantic intelligence of Dr. Soberin, who’s name belies a sobriety he’s can’t muster regarding his own idle, pompous chatter. Constantly dropping references to ancient mythology (Pandora Box, Lot’s wife, Medusa, “Cerberus barking with all his heads at the gates of Hell”), Dr. Soberin figures as a parodic evil genius who can’t stop telling everyone his plans (think Bond villain).
Crucifixion Motifs
One striking visual motif identified by Alain Silver is the use of X-shaped poses and framed shots. Starting with Christina flagging down Hammer’s car at the beginning of the film:
Christina is further identified with this motif by the X created by the table legs in the background of the room when her lifeless corpse is left hanging:
And, finally, by the piece of art above the bed stand in her apartment:
Silver argues this visual motif is transferred as the film passes the trapped fate from Christina to Hammer. Take for example the image immediately following Hammer’s capture at the beach house (which is repeated at the end of the scene, marking both his escape and continued entrapment). Shot from under an open foundation, you see the crisscross of beams:
And, later Hammer is laid out, in a face-down X during his interrogation:
However, I would like to argue that these images portend more than just the identity-transfer Silver suggests. These images also clearly reference the crucifixion, and as such function as a kind of cultural shortcut for triggering a sense of dreaded fate. The characters are trapped in a pre-determined universe, where all their choices draw them closer to the final trap of apocalyptic death.
The fates are finally sealed when Carver opens the great whatsit, itself a not-so-subtle apocalyptic reference to the fabled Pandora’s box, and unleashes nuclear doom, but not before the light in the box casts an X-like image in shadows on the wall:
Modern Art in Aldrich’s 1955 NoirsKiss Me Deadly and The Big Knife
Kiss Me Deadly is full of 1950s “modern” touches. Hammer’s apartment features a reel-to-reel telephone answering machine, and is chock-full of modern objects: lamps, statues, and paintings.
So too with Velda’s apartment. Note the geometric floor, the abstract painting and what appears to be an Alexander Calder sculpture:
In the final act of the film Hammer works over an art dealer, William Mist who runs a modern art gallery:
Mist’s collection includes the cubist painter Georges Braque:
Russell Meeuf argues, the “pace and abundance of these [modern art objects] make clear that they have become hollow and meaningless.” Indeed, the loutish Hammer can seemingly only have a relationship to art predicated upon the sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s idea of conspicuous consumption.
But, I think there’s something more going on here than that.
Aldrich and Laszlo collaborated on another noir in 1955, The Big Knife, starring Jack Palance and Ida Lupino. The Big Knife also prominently features works of modern art, such as George Rouault’s “The Clown,” which Palance waxes poetic about in this scene:
Rouault and Matisse, both friends and part of the Fauvist movement (les Fauves, “wild beasts”), are known for their use of color, and their abstract and simplistic representations of social outcasts (clowns, prostitutes, etc.).
In broad strokes, we can say that modern art (including impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism, futurism, etc.) is, at least in part, concerned with the disillusionment of the subject and its objective reality. People and things and the spaces they occupy are either washed out in an impressionistic haze, or broken down into formal, geometric shapes. This is not a universe in which the subject can find mastery over itself, its objects and environment.
I believe what Aldrich is doing here in these two 1955 films is using modern art to heighten the sense that the subject has lost its grip on reality, is no longer in control.
“the nameless ones who kill people for the Great Whatsit”: Cold War Hysteria, the Surveillance State and Film Noir
Filmed in 1955, Kiss Me Deadly, lives alongside The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). HUAC, led by Joseph McCarthy, in the late-1940s and 1950s investigated Hollywood for communistic activities and breed a fear of fellow citizens and social institutions. Kiss Me Deadly trades on this cultural theme in its framing, choosing to shoot scenes from below, above the action, or from behind objects. All of which contributes to an unsettling feeling that the characters are being watched by a hidden figure. Indeed, throughout the film, Hammer is being followed and watched, not only by the villains, but by the law.
Here Hammer is being surveilled by the law (note, once again, the distinct X-shape):
Here, he’s being followed by a hood in the shadows:
Or, consider the way Kiss Me Deadly treats the hospital Hammer awakes in after being run off the road at the beginning of the film. Rather than a safe, comforting environment, Hammer awakes to two unknown (at least from the perspective of the audience) women leaning over him at an oblique angle. Hammer is being pressed down by their presence.
What makes this scene particularly unsettling is the context in which the film places it. Recall that the film opens with Christina on the run from being forcibly confined in an institution, what Hammer callously refers to as the “laughing house.” Now, it’s Hammer that’s confined. Is he in a hospital? Is he safe? Is he free to leave? Has he been committed into an institution?
The shot then jumps to a low angle, crouched below a bedside table (as if someone were watching from that angle) to reveal the hospital room. Note that the framing remains oblique but also that Aldrich and Laszlo have added an interesting lighting/shadow effect using the venetian blinds. Mirrored by the stripes in Velda’s blouse, the effect is to suggest the hospital, like all the spaces Hammer inhabits has the potential to trap like a prison. One particularly interesting bit of staging here is the way Hammer is tucked into his blankets, nearly swaddled, so that his limbs aren’t free.
The entrance of the police in the form of Lt. Pat Murphy further dramatizes the scene as the shadowed “bars” paint his left side. Social institutions (health, policing) blend together as spaces of confinement and menace.
As Lt. Murphy, who’s something of an old acquaintance, interrogates Hammer notice how Aldrich returns to the original first-person oblique angle and has swapped the nurse (health) for Lt. Murphy (the Law). It is no longer the presumably nurturing face of convalescence, but the Law which is figuratively right on top of Hammer, in full control over him.
Cut to Hammer’s interrogation scene at police headquarters. Shot in deep focus, the venetian blinds and their bar-like shadows immediately recall Hammer’s hospital room (note the stripes in Hammer’s tie). Hammer is outnumbered, and the tableau of interrogators and shadows all converge to pin him down.
Cut to another series of camera angles. All slightly from above. All in deep focus. All framed around Hammer who is always off-center.
The effect of staging the scene in this manner, de-centering and pinning Hammer down, is to visually convey his lack of agency. The dialogue reinforces this to an extraordinary degree. In fairly quick succession one interrogator asks Hammer a question, and without a moment of pause a second interrogator answers on his behalf. These are rhetorical questions. This is not a true interrogation. They are not trying to gain information from Hammer. Rather, the Law is putting on a display of power and knowledge. The purpose of the meeting is to allow the State to perform its omniscience: “we know all about you and your seedy little detective racket” it says.
“Alright, you’ve convinced me, I’m a stinker” Hammer sarcastically intones in an attempt to move the interrogation along:
Immediately following Hammer’s interrogation, Lt. Murphy takes him to task for refusing to fully cooperate: “Too many people like you have contempt for anything that has to do with the law” (at the end of the film, Lt. Murphy will ultimately condemn Hammer: “let him go to Hell.”).
“What’s in it for me?” Hammer asks, recalling another famous noir police interrogation. “Are you waving the flag at me?” asks Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) in Samuel Fuller’s 1953 film Pickup on South Street:
Again, notice the use of venetian blinds to create the effect of prison bars:
Like Hammer, McCoy is deeply cynical about nationalism, authority, social institutions.
McCoy and Hammer are to a certain extent following a well-worn trope of the private dick at odds with the law (McCoy is of course a small-time hood). But, what makes these cases unique is 1) the context. This isn’t simply a matter of snitching on some minor crime. In both cases, the police argue there are higher national security and public safety stakes involved (secret government information in the case of Pickup, and a nuclear bomb of some kind in KissMe Deadly). And, 2) the level of their cynicism which goes beyond the mere frustration and distrust an honorable Sam Spade has in relation to the police, to a rejection of the apparent duties of patriotism and citizenship.
Cities of Fear
Film noir deals with city life and all its emerging post-war problems. It thrives on the tensions created by density and diversity, but also exploits them. Racial, economic, gendered tensions all come to the fore in film noir. But, other, less tangible fears, like national security threats, or public health epidemics, haunt cities in challenging new ways, particularly in the way the state and its many institutions seek to control and surveil the public.
Or, Irving Lerner’s 1959 film City of Fear, about a Cobalt-60 radiation outbreak:
In these films, the city is a picture of overcrowding and dilapidation, where citizens and neighbors blur into a depersonalized, faceless mass: a raw capacity to transmit disease, or collaborate against you with hostile powers.
The LA of Kiss Me Deadly is very much a city of fear. Not only do the objects, persons, and manner of presentation convey a menacing threat, the core plot device (which we’ve largely ignored in painting this picture of abject terror) is the quest for the “great whatsit,” simply put: nuclear destruction.
Apocalyptic Visions and the Nuclear Uncanny
Meeuf has named the mood of the film the “nuclear uncanny,” referring the manner in which noir subjects and cities have a disturbing anticipation, mixing fear and desire, for the end of all things. Or, as Carver puts it in the film, they are all on a “merry-go-round you think you can get off but it goes too fast.” The apocalyptic narrative of the nuclear uncanny functions as a powerful social critique in the form of pessimism: the world isn’t worthy of existence; on balance, it would be better if there was nothing rather than this.
The accomplished moment of nuclear uncanny in Kiss Me Deadly is the final scene, where Carver opens the box, releasing nuclear Armageddon in the form of a sharp hissing sound and an extremely bright, white light leading to flames, explosion:
However, shortly after the film was released a new, errant cut (apparently not under the supervision of Aldrich) emerged and took precedence for decades, trimming some 82 seconds from the ending: Carver opens the box, and the house is destroyed, presumably with Hammer and Velda still inside… roll credits.
It’s been suggested that the shortened version is more apocalyptic than the restored version. While it is certainly more cynical to kill off the protagonist and his moll at the end of a film, neither version is literally apocalyptic. In both cases, the destruction on screen is localized to the beach house. So, I view the question as largely a moot point. Both versions effectively convey the possibility of nuclear destruction, to say nothing of the imagination of the audience… for example, audiences in 1955, 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would surely have had radiation and fallout concerns in the back of their mind. That is, there’s nothing in the film to suggest Hammer and Velda reaching the water’s edge has provided them with any kind of safety.
This apocalyptic ending recalls the nuclear uncanny of Raoul Walsh’s 1949 film White Heat, starring James Cagney as Cody Jarrett, a gangster desperate to prove himself to his mother. Jarrett famously ends his life and the film, pinned down atop some kind of gas factory by shooting the up the giant spherical storage containers leading to its explosion, shouting “Made it, Ma! Top of the World!”
A unique entry in the canon of films with apocalyptic endings is Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ. While the film (and the Kazantzakis novel it’s based on) has no direct connection to the nuclear uncanny, it very directly engages the question of the disturbing anticipation, mixing fear and desire, for the end of all things in the highly personalized form of Christ’s quest for death. Recall the crucifixion imagery of Kiss Me Deadly, the theme of the noir subject doomed by fate, and the ending with its explosive whiteness and then consider how Scorsese handles Christ’s death on the cross.
The film’s final scene blurs in overexposure, mimicking the explosive destruction of Kiss Me Deadly and White Heat:
Film Tropes of the “great whatsit”
Since 1955 a number of films have borrowed the “glowing Pandora’s box” motif from Aldrich. Before doing a quick review, let’s return to John Alton’s book Painting with Light and his description of “Criminal Lighting”:
Years ago, when in pictures we showed Jimmy Valentine cracking a safe, he usually carried the typical flashlight in one hand, while with the other he worked on the safe combination. In some scenes the flashlight was placed beside him on the floor. In either case the light source was established as a low one. To create an authentic effect, the cameraman lit the character from a low light which illuminated the face from an unusual angle. It distorted the countenance, threw shadows seldom seen in everyday life across the face. This light, which exaggerates features, became so popular that even in our films of today, when we want to call the attention of the audience to a criminal character, we use this type of illumination.
Alton uses his very own shot as an example of criminal lighting from Anthony Mann’s 1947 film T-Men (Alton was the cinematographer).
This added layer of film language, the history of lighting criminals in this manner, adds a deep, subtextual element to Kiss Me Deadly, one that we see repeated in cinematic history, as the following examples show.
Kiss Me Deadly is noir’s masterpiece. The perfect encapsulation of the idea that trashy books make the best films, Kiss Me Deadly does so much more than just adapt Spillane’s novel for the screen. Using all the film tools available to him, Aldrich creates a profoundly cynical picture that ultimately indicts the audience as much as it does its protagonist. The film seems to say: “You want it fast, violent, stupid, and self-serving? Fine, but when I’m done with you there’ll be nothing left. Nothing.”
An unstated and unforgivable sin lies at the heart of CanRock, an appeal to the lowest, least interesting form of comedy: zaniness.
Zaniness is a distinct form of comedy, which needs to be sketched out to be properly understood. A good starting place is Tom Breihan’s review of the Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week,” as part of his Number Ones series looking at all the number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
Without clearly identifying it as such, Breihan is working toward a definition of zaniness by way of his visceral reaction to the feeling of being held hostage to this kind of comedy. What he misses, here, however is key to understanding zaniness.
Zaniness is indeed a “self-reflexive smarty-pants goofball nonsense schtick,” but it’s important to note just how self-reflexive it is. One of my core arguments about zaniness is that it is just self-reflexive enough to think it is funny, but at the barest possible level of consciousness. Put another way, zaniness screams “I’M FUNNY. I’M DOING SOMETHING FUNNY.” as if anxious the audience won’t get the joke. Zaniness doesn’t reflect beyond this bare thought. It is earnest in the extreme and without a hit of irony, cynicism, dry humor, dramatic tension, or morbidity. There is nothing behind the joke to consider. It can all be taken at face value. The pants are funny looking. That’s the joke. Ha. Ha.
Why is zaniness so prevalent in CanRock, particularly 1990s CanRock?
CanRock is lousy with zany bands. A casual review of popular CanRock band names almost tells the story itself: Doug and the Slugs, Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Odds. As if leaving no room for doubt, zany CanRock doesn’t want you to be confused about whether its supposed to be funny. But, how to explain the prevalence?
The Medium
The medium here explains a lot. Lyric poetry, particularly, for pop music, does not lend itself to comedy. Pop melodies are strict and don’t provide room for the tension created by comedic timing. Lyric poetry lends itself far better to the anthemic, or affective… that is the repetitive chorus, or the evocative language of moods. When artists attempt lyrical comedy, it typically takes one of two forms (not mutually exclusive): word play, and storytelling. Both of these forms, particularly when constrained by pop music norms, are played direct and earnest. For the former, “One Week” is an exemplar, with some of the dumbest word play imaginable:
I summon fish to the dish, although I like the Chalet Swiss I like the sushi ’cause it’s never touched a frying pan Hot like wasabi when I bust rhymes Big like LeAnn Rimes, because I’m all about value Bert Kaempfert’s got the mad hits You try to match wits, you try to hold me but I bust through …
Chickity China, the Chinese chicken You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’ Watching X-Files with no lights on We’re dans la maison I hope the Smoking Man’s in this one Like Harrison Ford, I’m getting frantic Like Sting, I’m tantric Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy Like Kurosawa, I make mad films, ‘kay, I don’t make films But if I did they’d have a Samurai
Swiss Chalet, but inverted. An endless list of cultural references with no real connection, no thesis, just because they kinda, sorta rhyme, “like LeAnn Rimes.” The appeal appears to be a mix of “I get that reference!” plus the base pleasure of the rhymed payoff.
There’s no better example of the storytelling form than the Crash Test Dummies. “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” and “Superman’s Song” are excellent examples of zany storytelling songs. Set against a kind of maudlin folk ballad, the apparent playfulness of the Dummies’ songs lies in the contrasting glibness of the content: “Superman never made any money/Savin’ the world from Solomon Grundy/And sometimes I despair/The world will never see another man like him.” Hardly the first to exploit this kind of melodic/lyrical tone contrast (The Smiths are the obvious champs in this regard), the playfulness is, in this case, entirely skin deep. The entire joke is simply: wouldn’t it be funny to sing a sad song about superman.
There’s another element to the medium at play here. Music, even lyrical music, is an obviously aural medium. Yet, even if we set aside questions of synesthesia, and other poetic devices and forms used to describe places and images, music has always to some degree crossed paths with visual culture (costume, festivals, and performance all play a role here).
CanRock in the 1980s emerged in parallel with the popularly of music videos.
There’s no clearer example of the zany turn in CanRock than Vancouver band Doug and The Slugs, which integrated zany into everything: the band name, the aesthetic, the sound, the lyrics, and the music videos/performances. Take their 1982 hit “Makin’ It Work,” where nothing’s spared. From the over-the-top “reggae” guitar riff that serves as the song’s melody, to the silly voiced, repetitive backing vocals “makin’ it work… pow wow” in a deep, slow baritone, set against the lead’s high-pitched whine, to the music video with its cuckolded husband jokes, etc., everything is painted ZANY.
The 1990s
There are other examples of zany CanRock in the 80s: The Pursuit of Happiness’ “I’m an Adult Now,” (1986) and David Wilcox’s “Layin’ Pipe,” (1987) come to mind. And, the paragon of CanRock zaniness, Kim Mitchell, is clearly a transitional figure carrying the mantel from the 1980s straight through into the 1990s. His “Go For a Soda,” (1984) is a classic of the genre. For me, however, the zany era of CanRock is properly the 1990s.
1990 is a serves as a kind of bellweather year. Nothing speaks to the appetite for and cultural power of zaniness like the Northern Pikes’ “She Ain’t Pretty” (1990). Unmistakably the worst CanRock song, “She Ain’t Pretty” is unrecognizable when set next to the promising jangle-pop of the Pikes’ 1987 hit “Teen Land.” Setting aside the misogyny, it’s a song that was clearly written to be funny. The raucous bar-band sound, the overdubbed laughing, the lead’s strained delivery, etc., all scream: “this is a bit of fun. It’s funny!”
The video, with it’s claymation gags, push the point relentlessly. This is a song written for the music video format:
From 1990 on, zany will dominate CanRock radio and particularly Much Music rotation. Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Moxy Fruvous, and Odds were inescapable. Zany was so popular that it can even be found in the era’s otherwise straightforward indie scene. How else to explain the lyrical tedium of Limblifter’s great 1996 song “Tinfoil,” “Ursula, what’s inside your jar of mayo?/Expire, cover it all up with tinfoil.”
Zaniness: A Canadian Mythology
But, why Canada? To be sure zaniness exists beyond Canada’s borders. Consider the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl,” (1988), or “They Might be Giants’ 1990 song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”:
And, yet… Canada represents a unique breeding ground for zany. A more charitable description of zany might be “good natured.” A kind of toothless comedy. This is what sets it apart from another low form of comedy: the art of physical comedy. Physical comedy, at its best, is not only stupid and available at face value. It can also be barbed, uncomfortable, anarchic, vaguely sinister and disruptive. Consider Harpo repeatedly putting his leg in Edgar Kennedy’s hand as he’s trying to punch out Chico:
Zaniness lacks this kind of frustration. It is good natured and earnest to a fault. The appeal of zaniness to Canadian audiences is that it affirms our self-conception as good natured and good humored people. “We’re a little wacky” we say to ourselves as we giggle along to lyrics written with an arched eyebrow. “Eat My Brain” indeed:
A Zany CanRock playlist for those who can stand it:
Introduction: Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Some Critical Interpretations
It is something of a truism that nihilism is central to the thought of Nietzsche.[1] What remains decidedly unclear, however, is what Nietzsche takes nihilism to be. In his published work nihilism is only mentioned a handful of times and is never the subject of a thorough-going discussion (the exception to this, which will be discussed shortly, hinges on nihilism’s relation to the ascetic ideal as laid out in Genealogy III). Nietzsche often uses nihilism as a term of abuse (cf., TI Arrows 34: “I caught you, nihilist!”), or as a way of branding something with a dismissive epithet (cf., GS 347: “Petersburg-style nihilism”; GM I 12: “administrative nihilism”; III 26: “historic nihilists”). Theoretically these polemical uses are trivial. Moreover, other instances of nihilism in the published work offer only limited, tangential glimpses at Nietzsche’s thought in this regard.[2] For something approaching a working theoretical definition one must turn to Nietzsche’s unpublished notes. Aside from mainline interpretative dilemmas surrounding Nietzsche’s notes, the case of nihilism presents unique problems.
In his unpublished notes, Nietzsche is found attempting to grapple seriously with nihilism. That is, he offers a theoretical analysis of nihilism’s origin(s), history and types. He also discusses various curative measures (including his own) available to ward off, or combat nihilism’s effects. However, as is the case with much of the unpublished material, anything like a definitive discussion is either lacking or confounded by alternative interpretations. Indeed, Nietzsche’s notes suggest a profusion of types of nihilism.[3] Left without a clear interpretative path, scholars committed to the importance of nihilism for Nietzsche have sought to untangle this interpretative dilemma. By and large, this scholarship has produced two dominant and non-mutually exclusive interpretations.
Nietzsche as Nihilist
The first interpretation claims Nietzsche as nihilist. In turn, this interpretation takes two forms regarding (1) Nietzsche’s theoretical nihilism and (2) Nietzsche’s place within the history of nihilism (i.e., western metaphysics). Danto offers a standard account of the former interpretation. After distinguishing between two “non-Nietzschean forms of Nihilism” (i.e., “the Nihilism of Emptiness” (1965:28) associated with Buddhism, Hinduism and Schopenhauer and “the Nihilism of Negativity” (29) associated with 19th century Russian thought, especially the novelist Turgenev[4]), Danto claims for Nietzsche “a metaphysical Nihilism of the most uncompromising sort” (29) – “a deep and total Nihilism” (33). This claim is based largely on Danto’s reading of Nietzsche’s apparent “highly dramatized rejection of the Correspondence Theory of Truth”[5] (33). That is, Danto ascribes to Nietzsche three claims: (i) “[t]here is neither order nor purpose, things nor facts, nothing there [i.e., in the world, the world itself] whatever to which our beliefs can correspond”; thus, (ii) the world has no intrinsic value; and subsequently, (iii) all beliefs are false (33). In one form, or another, this is a widespread claim. However, contemporary scholars in the last twenty years have substantially challenged this view.[6] Recently, Hussain (2007) has defended the claim.[7] He argues, Nietzsche endorses “theoretical nihilism” – “the belief in valuelessness, or… goallessness” – while being concerned to ward off the effects of “practical nihilism” – “the practical consequence in most agents of the belief… in valuelessness or goallessness” (2007:161). The ensuing debate between those who defend and those who challenge the Nietzsche as theoretical nihilist interpretation, however, has made the question of nihilism ancillary to a prior epistemological question: is Nietzsche a ‘fictionalist’ or a ‘naturalist?’ Because this prior question leads away from nihilism and because I address it directly in a subsequent post on Nietzsche and Naturalism, we’ll set it aside here.
Heidegger offers the second form of the Nietzsche as nihilist interpretation. On Heidegger’s view, Nietzsche’s nihilism is not so much derived from his theoretical positions vis-à-vis truth and epistemology. Rather, Nietzsche’s nihilism is said to derive from his position within the history of nihilism and metaphysics he claims to have overcome. Heidegger’s interpretation is by its nature esoteric. That is, it flows out of – and bears the markings of – Heidegger’s general philosophy and is not a straightforward scholarly interpretation of Nietzsche’s texts. As such, a brief summary of Heidegger’s philosophy is necessary in order to grasp his interpretation.
In broadstrokes we can reduce Heidegger’s thought to three basic insights: (1) metaphysics, insofar as it interprets Being in terms of the Being of beings, has forgotten about Being as such; (2) the Truth of Being consists in the historical unconcealment of Being, in which Being also withdraws from Presence, or is forgotten; and, finally, (3) the history of metaphysics is nothing other than the destiny of Being’s unconcealment/withdrawal revealed as successive epochs each governed by a dominant interpretation of this unconcealment/withdrawal. On the basis of these basic premises, how does Heidegger interpret Nietzsche?
Nihilism, on Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche, is “ambiguous… it always has two meanings from the start”[8] (2002:167-8). On the one hand, nihilism “designates the pure devaluation of the former highest values”[9] (168). On the other hand, nihilism also designates “the absolute countermovement to devaluation,” (168) which is characterized by “a new and exclusively normative dispensation of value” (167). Or, the former describes the historical process of nihilism, which culminates in a tabula rasa of values and the latter describes the counter-process by which nihilism is said to “complete itself.”[10] On this wise, nihilism tracks the devaluation and dispensation of values.
Nietzsche’s task of overcoming the nihilism that posits a ‘true world’ and the metaphysics that argues for and grounds itself upon such a ‘true world,’ remains mired in both according to Heidegger for two reasons. First, Nietzsche is said to have reduced Being to a question of value.[11] Second, Nietzsche is said to remain within the Cartesian metaphysical world picture insofar as he assigns the role of dispensing value to the human being, the subject, inaugurating humanity’s “position of dominance” (1991, vol. 4:100) and “mastery over the earth”[12] (2002:191).
I do not accept either form of this first interpretation. I reject the former because I agree with those who interpret the mature Nietzsche along naturalist and empirical lines. I reject the latter because I reject Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche as metaphysician. This dismissive gesture by me here is perhaps unwelcome without a fuller engagement. For my purposes here, however, I want to move the conversation along and merely note these dominant interpretations for the reader.
Nihilism as a Historical Event
The second interpretation takes nihilism to be solely, or primarily, a historical event. This is the event in which values are said to have devalued themselves, God is said to be dead and the authority of traditional (re: Christian) morality (its values and goals) is eroded. A standard version of this interpretation comes from Blanchot who argues, “[nihilism] is not an individual experience or a philosophical doctrine… Nihilism is an event achieved in history” (122). On this interpretation, both theoretical nihilism and nihilistic states (despair, disorientation) are discounted or marginalized. Nihilism proper is said to be a particular historical event. To this end, Solomon argues, nihilism is “a local and timely phenomenon” (2003:120). It is “a concrete cultural experience” (119).
This second interpretation, I believe, has merit. However, it is at best partial and confines itself to the emblem “God is dead.” In what follows I offer my own attempt at a comprehensive reconstruction of Nietzsche’s manifold views on nihilism.
Nihilism, a Comprehensive View
The interpretation of nihilism as a historical event is well-supported by Nietzsche’s texts. On this wise, nihilism is adequately expressed by the “pan-European event” that is the “decline in faith in the Christian god” (GS 357). It is specific to a time (the 19th century), a place (Europe) and a cultural/religious institution (Christianity). At KSA 12:2[127] (=WTP 1), Nietzsche makes this plain, noting, “it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is rooted.”[13] Without contesting this interpretation of nihilism, I wish to note how partial it remains.
Nihilism as a historical event hints at but fails to adequately account for nihilism as a historical process. Heidegger is right to argue, “[n]ihilism is a historical movement… it is not only a phenomenon of the present age nor even a product originally of the nineteenth century, when admittedly a keen eye for nihilism awoke and its name became common” (2002:163-4). That is, a whole history is signaled by the event of nihilism. Moreover, a future is announced, e.g., at KSA 13:11[411] (=WTP P): “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism.”[14]
Nihilism has a history. But more than this, nihilism is a history. It is not merely the case that nihilism is the consequence of a particular historical process. This would indeed make nihilism solely, or primarily, an event. However, it seems clear that Nietzsche understood nihilism as a historical process. This helps to make sense of Nietzsche’s consistent association of nihilism with the ascetic ideal and the will to truth. Nietzsche makes this clear at Gay Science 357: “One can see what it was that actually triumphed over the Christian God: Christian morality itself, the concept of truthfulness that was taken over more rigorously.”[15] Here, nihilism is tantamount to a historical process.[16] The long history of “the Christian conscience” interpreting “nature,” “history” and “one’s own experiences” guided by the assumption of a moral world order and the goodness and providence of God has found itself “translated and sublimated into a scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price.”[17] This process, by which Christianity dethrones itself as an unintended consequence of its alliance with the ascetic ideal and an overzealous faith in truth, is eloquently described by Nietzsche at KSA 12:9[35] (=WTP 2): “What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.” By illuminating the historical process of nihilism the interpretation of nihilism as event is both supplemented and decentered. Hence, Reginster is right to argue, Nietzsche did not take the death of God as “a revolutionary new idea in need of much support and elaboration” because he “regard[ed] it as the inevitable consequence of various well-known intellectual and cultural developments” (2006:9; cf., 39-44 for a fuller treatment). This is not to dismiss the death of God. Rather, it is to place it within the unfolding of the history of a particular interpretation of existence.
From an analytic perspective, what remains essential about the event and history of nihilism is its social and psychological effect. A historical event has such an effect insofar as a culture may hold sway, to a certain degree, over the members of that culture.[18] That is, members of a culture are said to internalize the dominant values, norms and theoretical claims of their culture. At Gay Science 380, Nietzsche provides a particularly stark image of the impression cultural norms make by noting, “European morality,” i.e., “our good and evil,” is equivalent to “the sum of commanding value judgments that have become part of our flesh and blood.”[19] Nietzsche is aware of this to a high degree and is particularly concerned that certain life-negating values (pity, altruism, happiness – i.e., a state without suffering – the ascetic ideal, etc.) will cause potentially higher types to inhibit their pursuits and restrict the potential of human flourishing.[20] We may call this the “Culture Effect.” The Culture Effect of European nihilism is the upholding of theoretical claims against this world and of life-negating values. The Culture Effect of the event of nihilism (the death of God) is a pervasive despair regarding the realizability of extraworldly values and goals. In part the effect of the latter entails a sweeping skepticism regarding moral realism and thus also the authority of persons and institutions upholding traditional morality. At Beyond Good and Evil 262, Nietzsche gives us a blueprint for what happens when, for any number of reasons, “the bond and constraint of [an] ancient discipline is broken” and a traditional, rigid and durable morality no longer holds sway. “Variation,” he writes, “whether as deviation (into the higher, rarer, more refined) or as degeneration and monstrosity, is suddenly on the scene in the greatest splendor and abundance, the individual dares to be individual and stand out.” For a period of time “individuals” express themselves unfettered by the bonds of a universal moral standard. Nietzsche describes a scene of “jungle-like growth,” which leads to “[t]he dangerous and uncanny point” wherein there is “[n]othing but new whys and wherewithalls, no longer any common formulas.” Richardson sees this phenomenon as a “decline from active ancestors,” whereby tradition is eased and “society unfolds into a richness of persons and practices aiming in diverse ways, hard to marshal together” (58). Such a situation is not unlike the effects of the death of God. The importance of this event for Nietzsche is twofold. First, it describes the immediate context in which Nietzsche operates. It constitutes a very real problem to be analyzed. Second, this context provides Nietzsche with content for analysis. Under such hothouse-like conditions a great variety of undiagnosed types rise to the fore. A crucial element of Nietzsche’s project will be to interpret various “new whys and wherewithalls” as symptoms of basic psychological types.
There are three assumptions contained in both the nihilism as event and as historical process that need to be challenged. First, it is clear that for Nietzsche nihilism represents a uniquely contemporaneous concern. He interprets and analyzes it primarily as a historical phenomenon specific to this time and place and contingent upon the metaphysical history running through Platonism-Judaism-Christianity-Modernity. However, Nietzsche repeatedly reminds us that nihilism is witnessed throughout human history.[21] It is worth noting in this respect that Nietzsche’s first mention of the death of God, at Gay Science 108, concerns Buddha not the Judeo-Christian God.[22] And, in the instance where Nietzsche makes plain that nihilism belongs to a “Christian-moral” interpretation – at KSA 12:2[127] quoted above – he also makes several references and associations to Buddhism.[23] This suggests that nihilism is contingent not merely upon historical conditions but also upon a particular human type.[24]
The second and third assumptions are well expressed by Blanchot who claims “[nihilism] is not an individual experience or a philosophical doctrine.”[25] Taking up the latter claim first, it should be noted that if nihilism is not, or is not primarily, a “philosophical doctrine,” then the theoretical nihilism often attributed to Nietzsche is problematic. Moreover, on this wise, it would appear that taking nihilism to be expressed, or represented, by a philosophical doctrine, or set of theoretical claims, is dubious. Recently, Reginster has provided a sensible challenge to this second claim. He offers the straightforward definition: “Nihilism is the conviction that life is meaningless, or not worth living” (8). And, he points us toward Nietzsche’s most evocative, if least discussed, definition of a “nihilist” at KSA 12:9[60] (=WTP 585): “A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist” (21). What this definition illuminates is a theoretical claim – a conviction and a judgment – at the heart of the nihilism. “Nihilism,” Reginster argues, “is primarily a claim about the world and our life in it” (8). By underlining the primacy of this claim, Reginster understands that he is complicating, if also complementing, our understanding of nihilism as principally “a view about our values” (8). This view, he calls “the received interpretation”[26] (8). This is not to discount values and their relation to nihilism. However, it is to acknowledge the priority of a particular claim regarding the world to any positing of values. He illustrates this priority by untangling nihilism’s relation to the death of God. He writes,
nihilism does not follow directly (or necessarily) from the death of God. The inference from the death of God to nihilism holds only if one accepts a further assumption, namely, that our life has meaning only if God, or another, metaphysical world, exists. This assumption, in turn, is a consequence of the endorsement of certain distinctive values… If the realization of our highest values requires the existence of God (or a metaphysical world), it must be because they cannot be realized under the conditions of our life in “this” world. Such values are life-negating, or nihilistic, values; that is, values from the standpoint of which this life deserves to be repudiated, since it is hopelessly inhospitable to their realization. (9)
What Reginster does here is to unfold the assumptions embedded in both the event of God’s death and in the positing of life-negating values to demonstrate that they are subtended by a particular claim made against the world. Simply put, this claim entails that life in this world is not worth living because this world does not afford the realization of our highest values be they the Good, happiness, communion with God etc. On this reading, when Nietzsche describes “a nihilistic turning-away from existence, the desire for nothingness or desire for the ‘antithesis,’ to be other, Buddhism and such like,” (GM II 21) what is essential is the implicit claim made about the world and our existence in it. This claim insists that the world is unable to sate a particular desire, which must be sought elsewhere. Nihilism, in this sense, entails, if not a clear philosophical doctrine, then at least a series of related theoretical claims: values, or goals, x, y and z are desirable for the good life; these values, or goals, are realizable only otherwise than in this world; existence in this world is not worthwhile. These claims, specifically the claim made against this world, are fruitfully understood by analogy with pessimism.[27] Pessimism, in its Schopenhauerian form, makes the primacy of a particular claim against the world plain (in a way that nihilism tends to leave ambiguous). Life-negating values (i.e., those associated by Schopenhauer with contemplation, asceticism and aesthetics) are motivated by two claims: (i) the world is terrible and offers no salvation from its torments; and (ii) it would be better, therefore, not to be (anti-natalism).[28] Thus, Nietzsche describes “a thorough-going practical nihilism,” by noting, “[a]s I understand all the phenomena of Christianity and pessimism, they say: ‘We are ripe for nonexistence; for us it is reasonable not to exist’” (KSA 13:14[9] (=WTP 247)).[29]
Finally, the third assumption – that nihilism is not an “individual experience” – excludes, or diminishes, any understanding of nihilistic psychological states.[30] To ignore these states is to ignore the importance Nietzsche places on combating what Hussain has dubbed “practical nihilism”[31] (2007:161, 166). Hussain notes, “[t]he recognition, conscious or unconscious, that nothing is valuable in itself causes certain kinds of desires and drives to lose their force” (166). The upshot of this loss is a breakdown of “psychological unity,” i.e., the unity necessary “to give an overall direction to our lives.” In brief, the ability to command oneself and others is at stake. One could argue, however, that this form of nihilism is merely consequent on a more fundamental form of nihilism and thus upholds the assumption.
Reginster, for his part, makes psychological states integral to his definition of nihilism. Indeed, he interprets the distinction between two kinds of nihilism (nihilism as a view about values and nihilism as a claim against the world) in terms of psychological states. On this wise, nihilism is distinguished by disorientation and despair. Reginster argues, “[a]ccording to nihilism as disorientation, there is nothing wrong with the world and something wrong with our values. According to nihilism as despair, by contrast, there is nothing wrong with our values but something wrong with the world” (2006:34). That is, on the assumption that nihilism is a view concerning values, one is disoriented if one no longer deems one’s goals to be valuable (they have devaluated). On the assumption that nihilism is a claim against the world, one is despairing if one no longer believes one’s goals to be realizable. Taking the claim against the world to be primary and to be Nietzsche’s chief understanding of nihilism, Reginster defines nihilism as “despair over the unrealizability of our highest values” (51). As he defines it, then, psychological states are integral to nihilism. However, by this definition nihilism is made once again consequent upon the event of nihilism. For, despair describes the “ensuing condition” following from “the conviction that our highest values cannot be realized in this world, and that there is no other world in which they can” (8).
In my view, Reginster’s argument is helpful in elucidating two key elements of nihilism – i.e., nihilism as a theoretical claim made against the world and as an ensuing psychological state of despair. However, his argument needs to be amended. As it stands, his definition of nihilism conflates these two elements, which, on my reading, ought to be disentangled. May makes a strong case against Reginster’s conflation. He argues, “despair is a late result” (2007:100n26). It results from a “more fundamental nihilism that wills nothingness, the nihilism that, as Nietzsche describes it, is at the heart of Platonism-Christianity and its secular successors and that neither takes its highest values to be unrealizable nor is in any despair over them. On the contrary.” That is, the claims made against the world by Platonism, Christianity and their secular successors are not coincident with despair. Moreover, historically Nietzsche shows that such claims greatly precede despair, which only manifests after the values and goals posited by the ascetic ideal come under sufficient scrutiny by an increasingly voracious intellectual conscience. By defining nihilism in terms of despair, Reginster downplays the role played by theoretical claims against the world in nihilism’s history.
The comprehensive view of nihilism I suggest reflects key themes marshaled by various scholars. Nihilism, on Nietzsche’s wise, is defined by various elements. It is a historical process, an event, a series of theoretical claims and psychological states. None of these definitions, in my view, holds a monopoly on nihilism. Moreover, as disparate elements, they do not offer a coherent, workable theoretical definition. For that, what is needed is something to anchor these elements and evoke what is truly nihilistic about them. For my part, I agree with May in finding the will to nothingness, which occupies Genealogy III, to satisfy as such an anchor. [32]
Nihilism’s Fundamental Characteristic: The Will to Nothingness
I argue, the various aspects of nihilism discussed so far are rooted in a psycho-physical disposition, or type. The analytic importance of such a type is that it answers the question concerning the presence and dominance of a nihilistic history of events, claims and states. That is, an analysis of the origin and descent of these aspects of nihilism is necessary. Recalling Schopenhauer’s question – “Does existence have any meaning at all?” (GS 357) – I would like to suggest a further question: in each case, what needs and interests are at work in the asking of the meaning, or value, of existence? The import of this question can be demonstrated by way of a general Nietzschean precept, which I call the “Confessional Thesis.”[33] The Confessional Thesis claims,
“every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” (BGE 6)
This thesis makes two further claims:
(i) to explain how a philosopher’s “metaphysical assertions” came to be held, “it is always well (and wise) to ask oneself first: what morality does this (does he –) aim at?” (BGE 6)
(ii) for “the philosopher… there is nothing whatever impersonal… his morality bears decided and decisive testimony to who he is,” i.e., “the innermost drives [Triebe] of his nature [Natur]” and “the order of rank [Rangordnung]” in which they “stand in relat[ion] to one another.” (BGE 6)
Two things are being suggested here. First, even taking the Culture Effect into account, metaphysical assertions (including nihilistic claims) remain largely endogenous to the confessor. Second, the confession of such cases allows for a kind of etiology of metaphysical assertions. That is, confessions allow for a method of interpreting metaphysical assertions and moral beliefs on the assumption that they are personal, yet unconscious, expressions of one’s drives.[34]
How does the Confessional Thesis impact our understanding of nihilism? Worth noting, in this respect, is that Nietzsche does actually take nihilism to be something confessed, or explicable on the terms of the Confessional Thesis. At KSA 13:17[8] (=WTP 38), after suggesting, “the name [i.e., pessimism] should be replaced by ‘nihilism,’” Nietzsche suggests it should be understood as “a symptom… a disease, a sign of decline, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is merely the expression of physiological decadence.” A variant of this explicative form is at Beyond 260 (although in the context of “pessimism”). Concerning “slave morality,” Nietzsche rhetorically asks: “Suppose the abused, oppressed, suffering, unfree, those uncertain of themselves and weary should moralize: what would their moral evaluations have in common? Probably a pessimistic mistrust of the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man together with his situation.” Nihilism, as a claim made against the world, then is explicable by way of the Confessional Thesis. Thus, if we accept Reginster’s argument that nihilism is primarily a claim made against the world (assuming we separate this claim from the state of despair), then, on the basis of the Confessional Thesis, this claim is in turn expressive of a particular person. That is, such a claim testifies to: (1) the composition (order of rank) of a person’s drives; and, in turn, (2) what that person aims at. Moreover, it is assumed that (1) and (2) enjoy a particularly strong relation. On this basis, I argue, in all cases where a theoretical claim is advanced a psycho-physical type is operative. If this is the case, the question becomes: by what criteria can a composition of drives and/or an aim be said to be nihilistic? Nietzsche provides the beginnings of an answer while discussing those philosophies that take pity to be a virtue, if not “the virtue, the foundation and source of all virtues” (AC 7). He suggests one “keep in mind that this [is] the perspective of a nihilistic philosophy that inscribed the negation of life on its shield.” The morality of pity, a nihilistic philosophy, is said to champion, perhaps unconsciously, the negation of life. Elaborating, Nietzsche argues,
Schopenhauer was right here: pity negates life, it makes life worthy of negation,— pity is the practice of nihilism. Once more: this depressive and contagious instinct runs counter to the instincts that preserve and enhance the value of life: by multiplying misery just as much as by conserving everything miserable, pity is one of the main tools used to increase decadence – pity wins people over to nothingness!… You do not say ‘nothingness’: instead you say ‘the beyond’; or ‘God’; or ‘the true life’; or nirvana, salvation, blessedness… This innocent rhetoric from the realm of religious-moral idiosyncrasy suddenly appears much less innocent when you see precisely which tendencies are wrapped up inside these sublime words: tendencies hostile to life.
Several things are worth noting here. (1) the practice of nihilism entails the negation of life. However, (2) this practice grows out of a life-negating “instinct.” It represents “tendencies” that are hostile to life. (3) its danger lies not merely in its own decadence but in its ability to “increase decadence.” That is, instincts and tendencies hostile to life are “contagious.”[35] They “win people over.” And, (4) part of the success of this contagion is attributed to the seemingly “innocent rhetoric,” by which the aim of nothingness in the virtue of pity is masked. In this, Nietzsche provides a blueprint for the operation of the Culture Effect. But more than this, he offers a criteria by which aims may be said to be nihilistic, i.e., if they set nothingness as a goal. Nothingness, here, is defined as the subtext of “the beyond,” “God,” “the true life,” etc.[36] That is, nothingness, on Nietzsche’s wise, is identified with the extraworldly and extratemporal.
What remains to be explained, however, is the criteria by which a composition of drives may be said to be nihilistic and the connection between such a composition and an nihilistic aim. At Anti-Christ 15 a passage offers such a criteria and also connects the dots between (1) nihilistic aims, (2) nihilistic claims about the world and (3) the psychological type that confesses such aims and claims. In the case of Christianity, Nietzsche argues “(1) that whole fictitious world [of imaginary causes, effects, science, psychology and teleology] is rooted in (2) a hatred of the natural (— of reality! —), it is the expression of a profound sense of unease concerning reality… But thisexplains everything. Who are the only people motivated to lie their way out of reality? (3) People who suffer from it.”[37] The suffering that motivates the claims against this world and the positing of life-negating values is particular to an unhealthy psychological type. Nietzsche’s treatment of Saint Paul nicely encapsulates the development of such a type.[38] At Daybreak 68 Nietzsche describes Paul, “this epileptic,” as one who is “very tormented” and “suffered from a fixed idea” concerning the fulfillment of Jewish law – “there were moments when he said to himself: ‘It is all in vain! The torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.’” Paul’s nihilism rests on the claim that the world does not admit the fulfillment of God’s law. With the figure of Christ on the Cross, Paul recognized a communion outside the law. That is, he recognized the life-negating values of immortality and transcendent communion beyond the world. Paul, Nietzsche writes at Anti-Christ 58, “needed the belief in immortality to devalue ‘the world’… [he understood] that the ‘beyond’ could be used to kill life… Nihilist and Christian.”[39] It should be noted, the particular suffering of this type – i.e., from reality itself – should not be confused with suffering in general. What, then, do we mean by suffering in this instance?
Suffering, Truth, the Ascetic Ideal
The concept of ‘truth’ receives a wide-range of treatment by Nietzsche across his works. Leiter offers a careful parsing of the divergent interpretations offered in light of the “terrible truth” of reality:
Nietzsche’s general view, put somewhat crudely, is something like this: (i) the truth about the world is ‘terrible’; (ii) only certain sorts of people can tolerate knowing this truth—call them the ‘strong’; (iii) the vast majority—call them the ‘weak’—prefer various and sundry lies and falsifications (though they persist in calling these ‘truths’); (iv) the strong and weak differ, in part in terms of their respective interests and needs; (v) the strong can know (at least some aspects of) the ‘terrible truth’ precisely because they possess the right sort of constitutive interests and affects; (vi) that is, (at least some of) the interpretive interest of the strong will not distort reality, while those of the weak will and do.[40] (1994: 346)
The positing of nothingness – an extraworldly and extratemporal “truth” – is, then, a particular reaction to the “terrible truth,” i.e., particular to a type of person. This reaction entails two things: (1) a kind of turning away from the “terrible truth” of reality; and (2) an insistence upon calling an alternative, ideal and metaphysical world – those “sundry lies and falsifications” – the “truth.” This latter insistence inaugurates a nihilistic history under sign of the ascetic ideal.
The third essay of the Genealogy – “what do ascetic ideals mean?” – deals exclusively with the province of the ascetic ideal, however it never offers a straightforward definition. The question of the essay’s title repeats at sections 1, 2 and 5. And, at 1 Nietzsche describes the meaning of the ascetic ideal in the case of a variety of vocations (artists, philosophers, women, priests and saints). Indeed, much of the essay is divided into treating the ascetic ideal in the case of several of these vocations: artists (2-5); philosophers (5-10); priests (10-13, 15); and those described in 1 as “physiological causalities and the disgruntled… the majority of mortals” (13-22).[41] This suggests, perhaps, that the ascetic ideal affords no definition, or rather many definitions. However, Clark notes, “all talk of ‘ascetic ideals’ soon drops out and he refers only to ‘the ascetic ideal.’ The conclusions formulated in the essay’s final paragraph concern the ascetic ideal” (1990: 160). And, Leiter points to 8, wherein Nietzsche states, “the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal are: poverty, humility, chastity.” On this basis, Leiter claims, “[a]scetic ideals are those norms… which valorize all states of self-denial in which we forgo satisfaction of desires, not only the rapacious and sensual desires” (2002: 246). The upshot is that the ascetic ideal entails the valorization of self-denial in all cases, i.e., this ideal may manifest itself differently according to vocation and circumstance. Denial, in this case, is not merely a disciplinary command over one’s drives (self-mastery). Rather, it is akin to a Buddhistic, or Schopenhauerian, quieting of the will.[42] It is in this sense, then, that Nietzsche writes, “[a]nd to come back to our first question, ‘what does it mean if a philosopher pays homage to ascetic ideals?’ we get our first hint: he wants to escape from torture!–” (GM III 6). That is, from the torture of suffering as a willful being in the world. As Clark has pointed out, however, this is not the kernel of the ascetic ideal. Nor, is Nietzsche strictly speaking opposed to regimes of denial – even extreme ones. Indeed, the “saving grace” of the ascetic ideal is its self-denial (1990: 161). The kernel of the ascetic ideal – and, what causes Nietzsche to decry it[43] – is “its valuation of human life” (161).
The idea we are fighting over here is the valuation of our lives by the ascetic priest: he relates this (together with all that belongs to it, ‘nature,’ ‘the world,’ the whole sphere of what becomes and passes away), to a quite different kind of existence which is opposed to it and excludes it unless it should turn against itself and deny itself: in this case, the case of the ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong path which he has to walk along backward, till he reaches the point where he starts; or, like a mistake which can only be set right by action – ought to be set right: he demands that we should accompany him, and when he can, he imposes his valuation on existence. (GM III 11)
The kernel of the ascetic ideal is a claim made against the world. Only by denying itself is this worldly existence said to be valuable. And, this ideal is posited so as to impose itself upon others, to enjoy the Culture Effect. The key curiosity of the ascetic ideal, however, stems from the thorny issue of what Nietzsche calls “paradoxical and paralogical concepts” such as “‘guilt,’ ‘sin,’ ‘sinfulness,’ corruption,’ ‘damnation’” (GM III 16). Such concepts are paradoxical and paralogical because they are simultaneously life-affirming and life-negating. This needs to be unpacked.
Nietzsche suggests there “must be a necessity of the first rank which makes this species continually grow and prosper when it is hostile to life, – life itself must have an interest in preserving such a self-contradictory type” (GM III 11). In order to explain this, Nietzsche first suggests, the “self-contradiction” of “‘life against life,’” is “simply nonsense” (GM III 13). That is, the self-contradiction “can only be apparent; it has to be a sort of provisional expression.” The “real nature” of the ascetic ideal lies elsewhere. The “real state of affairs,” Nietzsche argues is “the precise opposite of what the worshippers of this ideal imagine”: “the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life… the ascetic ideal is a trick for the preservation of life.” This brings the ascetic ideal – despite its apparent negation of life – in line with the “Thesis of the Will to Power.” At Genealogy III 7, Nietzsche offers a succinct expression of the Thesis of the Will to Power.[44]
Every animal… instinctively strives for an optimum of favorable conditions in which fully to release his power and achieve his maximum of power-sensation; every animal abhors equally instinctively… any kind of disturbance and hindrance which blocks or could block his path to the optimum (– it is not his path to ‘happiness’ I am talking about, but the path to power, action, the mightiest deeds, and in most cases, actually, his path to misery).
This thesis offers an explanatory principle for behavior. More than this, its explanations are in line with the interests of life itself. And, as Clark notes, “Nietzsche indicates in [Beyond] that he adopts as his measure of value what benefits life in general” (1990:163). She points to Beyond 4 in this regard, where Nietzsche offers his “new language,” which no longer takes the falseness of a judgment as an objection against a judgment. Rather, “[t]he question is to what extent it is life-enhancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding.” The following interpretative constraints, then, are imposed: the ascetic ideal must be (1) understood on the basis of the measure of life (i.e., what value does the ascetic ideal hold for life); and (2) explained in terms of the will to power (i.e., how is a person’s path to power explained by their adherence to the ascetic ideal).
How does the ascetic ideal serve as an inducement to life? The answer Nietzsche proposes is contextualized by the threat of “suicidal nihilism” (GM III 28). That is, Nietzsche argues,
[e]xcept for the ascetic ideal: man, the animal man, had no meaning up to now… he himself could think of no justification or explanation or affirmation, he suffered from the problem of what he meant. Other things made him suffer too, in the main he was a sickly animal: but suffering itself was not his problem, but the fact that there was no answer to the question he screamed, ‘Suffering for what?’… and the ascetic ideal offered man a meaning! Up to now it was the only meaning, but any meaning at all is better than no meaning at all… Within [the ascetic ideal], suffering was given an interpretation; the enormous emptiness seemed filled; the door was shut on all suicidal nihilism. The interpretation – without a doubt – brought new suffering with it, deeper, more internal, more poisonous suffering, suffering that gnawed away more intensely at life: it brought all suffering within the perspective of guilt… But in spite of all that – man was saved, he had a meaning… It is absolutely impossible for us to conceal what was actually expressed by that whole willing, which was given its direction by the ascetic ideal… a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, but it is and remains a will!… And, to conclude by saying what I said at the beginning: man still prefers to will nothingness, than not will… (Cf. GM III 1)
Several things need to made clear: (1) like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche takes suffering to be largely coincident with existing in the world; (2) the suffering from whence the ascetic ideal stems, however, is a particular suffering. To wit, it is a suffering from a lack of meaning. At Genealogy III 1, Nietzsche puts it like so: “That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui [horror of a vacuum]; it needs an aim –, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will.” (3) the ascetic ideal grants suffering a meaning; (4) the effect of the ascetic ideal’s interpretation of suffering is twofold: one form of nothingness, an extinguishing nothingness,[45] is warded off and another form of nothingness, a preservative nothingness, is posited;[46] and, yet, (5) the course set by the ascetic ideal purchases its affirmation of life at an extreme and unsustainable price. It is extreme because it, in ennobling humanity with a meaning, burdens humanity with guilt, sin, etc.[47] It is unsustainable because the ascetic ideal inaugurates the history of nihilism by way of the inception of “the thousand year old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine” (GS 344; quoted at GM III 24). It is this faith in truth, which ultimately breeds the intellectual conscience, which two thousand years hence, “finally forbids itself the lie entailed in the belief in God” (GM III 27; cf., GS 357).
The modern expression of this conscience takes the form of an “unconditional will to truth [unbedingte Wille zur Wahrheit]” (GS 344). Such a relationship to truth occupies a unique position vis-à-vis the ascetic ideal. At first blush it, perhaps, appears to be “the natural antagonist” of the ascetic ideal’s counterfeiting of reality. However, Nietzsche argues, science, insofar as it embodies the will to truth as a “faith in science,” (GS 344) “still represents the driving force in the inner evolution of that ideal. Its contradiction and struggle are, on closer inspection, directed not at the ideal itself but at its outerworks, its apparel and disguise… it liberates what life is in it by denying what is exoteric in this ideal” (GM III 25). He elaborates, noting, today one has an abiding “faith in science” (GS 344; quoted in GM III 24) meaning,
[e]verywhere else where spirit is at work in a rigorous, powerful and honest way, it now completely lacks an ideal – the popular expression for this abstinence is ‘atheism’ –: except for its will to truth. But this will, this remnant of an ideal… is that ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, completely esoteric, totally stripped of externals, and thus not so much its remnant as its kernel. (GM III 27)
Science, in this sense, is merely a highly evolved form of the “faith in truth” at the heart of the ascetic ideal.[48] What it accomplishes is to strip away from the ascetic ideal all that is “exoteric,” leaving solely the “esoteric… kernel.” Clark provides a straightforward summary of this development, i.e., of “why Nietzsche considered [the will to truth] not so much the remnant of that ideal as its kernel” (1990:192-3). She writes,
[t]he core of the ascetic ideal… is a will directed against life. This will is acted out initially by devaluing life… In this phase, the will expressed by the ascetic ideal actually serves a life-enhancing function. But when this will directed against life becomes the will to truth, it destroys ‘what is exoteric in this ideal’ (III 25), not the life-devaluing ideal of self-denial, but only the aspects of it that conflicted with this core, its satisfying, comforting, and therefore life-enhancing exteriors. (193)
Hence, the threat the will to nothingness was meant to avert – suicidal nihilism – returns albeit via the curious path of a preservative nothingness.
Nihilism in nuce
Nihilism is a central concept for Nietzsche. Though the concept torments critics for lack of a tidy definition, it remains a lynchpin of many Nietzschean precepts and his philosophy in general. It has numerous aspects. However, on my reading, nihilism ultimately stems from a particular type of sufferer, suffering a particular pain, i.e., the suicidal nihilism associated with living without a meaning. Out of this suffering is born the ascetic ideal, which is both a claim against this world and an aim denying this world in favor of an alternative. This aim in hand serves as a kind of poisonous cure, seducing one to life only on the pretense of its negation. The apparent success of this ideal inaugurates a history and wins adherents to itself via the Culture Effect. However, this history, accepting the “faith in truth,” witnesses its own monstrous culmination as it sheds its life-enhancing elements and leaves solely its life-denying kernel.
Works Cited
Blanchot, Maurice, “The Limits of Experience: Nihilism,” in Allison (ed.).
Clark, Maudemarie, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Danto, Arthur C., Nietzsche as Philosopher, (New York: Macmillan, 1965).
Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, (New York: Continuum, 2005 [1962]).
Heidegger, Martin, “The Age of World Picture,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
—–. Nietzsche, 4 vols., ed. David Farrell Krell, trans., David Farrell Krell, Joan Stambaugh, Frank A. Capuzzi, (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).
—–. “Nietzsche’s Word: ‘God is Dead,’” in Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Hussain, Nadeem J.Z., “Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits,” in Leiter and Sinhababu (eds.) (2007).
Leiter, Brian, Nietzsche on Morality, (London: Routledge, 2002).
May, Simon, “Nihilism and the Free Self,” in Gemes and May (eds.) (2009).
Reginster, Bernard, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilisim, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
—–. “The Will to Power and the Ethics of Creativity,” in Leiter and Sinhababu (eds.) (2007).
Richardson, John, Nietzsche’s System, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Schutte, Ofelia, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
Solomon, Robert C., Living with Nietzsche: What the Great ‘Immoralist’ has to Teach Us, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
[1] I take this to be an uncontroversial claim, or truism. While Heidegger (1991, 2002) is perhaps the standard bearer of understanding nihilism as central to Nietzsche, he is not alone is this view. Danto (1965), Schutte, Reginster (2006), Hussain (2007) and May (2009) and many others concur.
[2] As a representative sample, cf., GS 346; GM P 5; I 6, 12; II 21, 24; III 1, 4, 14, 24, 26, 28; AC 7, 58; EH BT 2.
[4] Nietzsche, of course, discusses both of these forms of nihilism, although not in the terms Danto uses. On the former, cf., GS P 3, GM I 6. On the latter, cf., GS 347; EH Wise 6.
[5] Clark (1990), among others, has challenged the claim that Nietzsche rejected the Correspondence Theory of Truth.
[6] I take Clark (1990) to be a kind of watershed moment in the history of contemporary Anglo-American Nietzsche scholarship. On her wise, Nietzsche’s final, mature positions on truth, reality and epistemology preclude attributing to him theoretical nihilism. Solomon takes a different tack in challenging Nietzsche’s reputed theoretical nihilism. He argues, “[f]or Nietzsche, nihilism is a concrete cultural experience, not an abstract metaphysical hypothesis” (2003:119). Thus, what Nietzsche is describing in nihilism is “a ‘widespread sensibility’ and not a metaphysical truth” (120). And, conceding that Nietzsche promotes a “complete nihilism,” Solomon claims, this is merely “Nietzschean hyperbole” (119). Simply put, “Nietzsche describes nihilism as a concrete cultural phenomenon rather than endorsing it as a philosophy.”
[7] Hussain references Danto in this regard (2007:157n1).
[8] Here Heidegger extrapolates from KSA 12:9[35] (=WTP 22): “Nihilism. It is ambiguous.” Nietzsche goes on to distinguish between “active” and “passive” nihilism.
[9] Here Heidegger extrapolates from KSA 12:9[35] (=WTP 2): “What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer.”
[10] Here Heidegger extrapolates from KSA 12:10[42] (=WTP 28), wherein Nietzsche distinguishes “incomplete” from “complete” nihilism. Much of Heidegger’s analysis relies upon his reading of this note (Cf. 1991, vol. 4:9-11, 47-57; 2002:167-9). However, it should be noted, this distinction – between incomplete and complete nihilism – is barely fleshed out by Nietzsche and Heidegger’s reading is highly tendentious, if interesting and rewarding. Curiously though, he erroneously quotes Nietzsche, writing, “[t]his normative phase of nihilism Nietzsche calls “fulfilled,” i.e., classic nihilism” (2002:167); and “we can ponder more essentially what Nietzsche was thinking in using this word [nihilism] if we grasp his ‘classical nihilism’” (1991 vol. 4:11). Heidegger offers no citation and I have been unable to discover the syntagms “fulfilled nihilism” or “classic/classical nihilism” anywhere in Nietzsche’s published and unpublished material. Why Heidegger supplements his reading of “complete nihilism” in this way is unclear. Presumably, he is trying to associate the distinction he fashions – between a nihilism of devaluation and a nihilism of dispensation – with Nietzsche’s distinction between “der romantische Pessimismus” and “einen ganz anderen Pessimismus… einen klassischen” (GS 370; Cf. KSA 13:14[25, 26]). However, in making the distinction between “romantic” and “classical” pessimism, Nietzsche goes on to note, “the word ‘classical’ offends my ears; it has become far too trite, round, and indistinct. I call this pessimism of the future – for it is coming! I see it coming! – Dionysian pessimism” (GS 370). Even on this assumption, then, it makes for a curious appellation to attribute to Nietzsche.
[11] Cf. 2002:192-4: “Being has become value… [B]y being appreciated as a value, Being is deprecated as a mere condition set by the will to power itself… When the Being of beings is stamped as value and its essence is thereby sealed, then within this metaphysics… every path toward the experience of Being itself is obliterated… If, however, value does not let Being be Being, be that which it is as Being itself, then what was supposed to be the overcoming is but the completion of nihilism. For metaphysics now not only fails to think Being itself, but this failure is veiled under the guise of appearing to think Being in the most worthy way, by esteeming it as value, with the result that all questions about Being become and remain superfluous. If, however, the thinking that thinks everything according to values is nihilism when thought in relation to Being itself, then even Nietzsche’s experience of nihilism as the devaluation of the highest values is still nihilistic.” [Note: I have altered the translations of das Sein from “being” to “Being.” This change reflects a common convention in Heidegger translations, which Young and Haynes ignore, but I endorse.]
[12] Heidegger is well aware of Nietzsche’s rejections of the Cartesian subject and dualism. Nevertheless, he advances the claim, “behind Nietzsche’s exceedingly sharp rejection of the Cartesian cogito stands an even more rigorous commitment to the subjectivity posited by Descartes” (1991, vol. 4:123). Also, it is interesting to note Heidegger’s discussion of the “statement of Protagoras” in this regard (Cf., 85-122 passim; 1977:143-147; Plato, Theaetetus, 152a: “man is the measure of all things – of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not.”). Those interested in the question of Nietzsche and the Sophists should check out my Reference Guide, here I merely wish to flag the connection Heidegger establishes.
[13] In a letter, written to Overbeck on March 24, 1887, Nietzsche makes nihilism typical of the 19th century Zeitgeist by its inclusion in a list he makes concerning the “comic fact” that “[he] enjoy[s] a strange and almost mysterious respect among all radical parties (Socialists, Nihilists, anti-Semites, Orthodox Christians, Wagnerians).” Nihilism’s inclusion in this list connotes two things. First, Nietzsche did indeed takes nihilism to represent a unique aspect of his time, i.e., following from the death of God. And, second, this manifestly partisan form of nihilism is at once banal and marginal.
[14] The futurity of nihilism is also signaled by the famous line at KSA 12:2[127] (=WTP 1): “Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of guests?”
[15] Put more directly, if crudely, at GS 125: “The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll tell you! We have killed him – you and I!’”
[16] At GM III 27, Nietzsche announces that he intends to address “the problem of the meaning of the ascetic ideal in another connection (with the title ‘On the History of European Nihilism’; for which I refer you to a work I am writing, The Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of Values).” Nietzsche, of course, never finished such a work – and actually abandoned, or substantially modified, the project – while alive. However, several notes remain dealing with nihilism and its historical sense. These were in fact collected posthumously into Book I of the pseudo-book The Will To Power.
[17] The historical process of European nihilism unfolded in GS 357, entailing as it does the sublimation of “Christian conscience” should be understood in concert with Nietzsche’s various discussion of “the will to truth.” Cf., BGE 1; GS P 4, 344; GM III 24, 27.
[18] I am borrowing, in part, from Leiter’s “empirical claim” regarding “the real nature of culture” (2010:1.3; 2002:132-3).
[19] In context, it is clear that the first-person plural used here refers to a shared European moral heritage of which Nietzsche inescapably takes part (to some degree). That is, this is not the first-person plural that characterizes the “free spirits” and other “higher types” Nietzsche often invokes with these pronouns. Incidentally, GS 380 poses the intriguing question of how one caught in the grip of cultural norms can find sufficient distance from those norms to allow for criticism. Nietzsche offers two non-mutually exclusive answers. The first is empirical. That is, to challenge the cultural norms of which one takes part, one must look at them “from a distance… like a wanderer who wants to know how high the towers in a town are: he leaves the town.” This recalls the point made by the Sophists, following the explosion of travel and cultural exchange of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E., that there is no universal nomos [law] governing human behavior, but rather a plurality of culturally specific nomoi [laws]. The second answer relates to psycho-physical dispositions. That is, “[o]ne has to be very light to drive one’s will to knowledge into such a distance and, as it were, beyond one’s time.” Implied here, is that only a particular disposition of person will have the “strength” to be able to “‘overcome’ this time in himself.”
[20] Perhaps the most well-known rendering of this effect is found at GM I 13, wherein Nietzsche, through the metaphor of the “birds of prey” and the “little lambs,” describes how “popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength.” Deleuze has made this a cornerstone of his treatment of Nietzsche. In his own terminology, Deleuze asks and answers Nietzsche’s reputed question: “how do reactive forces triumph?… they separate active force from what it can do” (53).
[21] Indeed, Nietzsche notes, “how regularly and universally the ascetic priest makes his appearance in almost any age; he does not belong to any race in particular; he thrives everywhere; he comes from every social class” (GM III 11). As I endeavor to show, the ascetic ideal and priest are essentially tied to nihilism.
[22] Cf., Nietzsche’s reference to “Christians and other nihilists” at EH BT 2.
[23] Other references, associations and comparisons to Buddhism concerning nihilism can be found at GS P 3; GM P 5; II 21; III 17, 27; KSA 13:11[373] (=WTP 220).
[24] In a subsequent post, I’ll deal more fully with the question of Nietzsche and types. But it is worth noting here that a kind of “essentialism” is proposed regarding human types. This, however, is not to be confused with a metaphysical, i.e., “non-empirical or non-naturalistic,” essentialism (Leiter 2002:26).
[25] Heidegger has a more limited version of the same assumptions. He too claims, “[nihilism is] not just any view or doctrine held by just anyone” (2002:163). He goes on to note, it would be a serious “misstep” to fail to “experience nihilism as a historical movement which is already of long duration and whose essential ground lies in metaphysics itself” (166). Such a misstep entails “fall[ing] victim to the pernicious desire to take the phenomena, which are in fact only the consequences of nihilism, for nihilism itself.” On this wise, nihilism as a theoretical position, or a psychological state, are “consequences” and it is a matter of primacy concerning how one treats these matters. However, he is clearly dismissive of taking nihilism to suggest anything other than a historical process.
[26] In this, Reginster argues against the primacy of the definition of nihilism offered at KSA 12:9[35] (=WTP 2) (8). It is the case, however, that most critics treat nihilism solely as a question concerning values and their historical, or cultural, devaluation. The archetypal reading in this respect is Heidegger who concentrates his reading around KSA 12:9[35] and claims, “[t]he allusion to different stages and forms of nihilism demonstrates that in Nietzsche’s interpretation nihilism is always a history dealing with values” (2002:169). It is the reputed primacy of values to nihilism that Reginster means to challenge. In turn, he challenges the assumption that nihilism does not involve a philosophical doctrine, or theoretical claims.
[27] Nietzsche explicitly ties nihilism to pessimism at GS 346. Also, see GM III 4, where Nietzsche ties nihilism to Wagner and Schopenhauer – two paradigms of pessimism. Several notes also make the connection: cf. KSA 12:9[107] (=WTP 37), 10[58] (=WTP 9), [192] (=WTP 11), all of which suggest a psychological and historical transition from pessimism to nihilism akin to stages. KSA 13:17[8] (=WTP 38), however, suggests the clearest relation: “pessimism is not a problem but a symptom… the name should be replaced by ‘nihilism’… the question whether not-to-be is better than to be is itself a disease, a sign of decline, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is merely the expression of physiological decadence.” On its face, KSA 13:17[8] appears to be contradicted by KSA 12:2[127] (=WTP 1): “it is an error to consider ‘social distress’ or ‘physiological degeneration’ or, worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism… Distress, whether of the soul, body, or intellect, cannot of itself give birth to nihilism (i.e., the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability)… it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is rooted.” The context, however, makes plain that Nietzsche is here speaking of the pan-European event of nihilism and its consequence, despair, not of nihilism as a theoreticalclaim expressed by a psycho-physical type. This is clear insofar as Nietzsche goes on, in the same note, to mention “Buddhism” several times. On my reading, KSA 13:17[8] accurately represents nihilism as a claim against the world symptomatic of a particular psychological type. KSA 12:2[127], however, avails itself solely of the event of nihilism and its ensuing condition of despair in acknowledging their roots in the death of the Christian God.
[28] Reginster notes, however, that pessimism and nihilism part ways insofar as pessimism remains, ironically, optimistic about the possibility of realizing one’s goals in a ‘true,’ or ‘metaphysical,’ world. Cf. 28-33.
[29] Cf., GM I 12: “what is nihilism today if it is not that?… We are tired of man…”; III 14: “What is to be feared… is… great nausea at man.”; Z II 14, referring to “you men of the present… you unfruitful men,” Nietzsche has Zarathustra say, “this is your actuality: ‘Everything is worthy of perishing’ [‘Alles ist werth, dass es zu Grunde geht’].” This is a literary allusion to a speech by Mephistopheles in Goethe’s FaustI, 1339-40: “all that gains existence/is only fit to be destroyed [alles, was entsteht/Ist wert, dass nichts entstüde]./That’s why it would be best if nothing ever got created.” At any rate, the anti-natalism is palpable.
[30] As a general point of reference one should see KSA 13:11[99] (=WTP 12), which discusses different stages of “[n]ihilism as a psychological state.”
[31] On practical nihilism, cf., AC 7; KSA 12:5[71] (=WTP 4), 13:14[9] (=WTP 247)
[32] Deleuze’s reading of nihilism follows similar lines (139-40). He argues, “in its primary and basic sense, nihilism signifies the value of nil taken on by life, the fiction of a higher values [i.e., God] which give it this value and the will to nothingness which is expressed in these higher values” (139). And, that nihilism as the devaluation of these higher values is a “second sense,” which “would be familiar if no less incomprehensible if we did not see how it derives from and presupposes the first” (140). Note, however, that Deleuze’s reading conforms to the received view that nihilism is a view about values.
[33] This section should be read in conjunction with BGE 187: “Quite apart from the value of such assertions as ‘there exists in us a categorical imperative’ one can still ask: what does such an assertion say of the man who asserts it?”; and, 268: “A human being’s evaluations betray something of the structure of his soul [Aufbau seiner Seele] and where it sees its conditions of life, its real needs.”
[34] Much of this argument will be fleshed out in a subsequent post on Nietzsche and Naturalism dealing with his conception of psychic drives.
[35] Cf., KSA 13:14[9] (=WTP 247) on “contagious nihilism.”
[36] Cf., GM III 17: “the hypnotic feeling of nothingness… absence of suffering… nothingness is called God in all pessimistic religions.”; EH D 2: “What do those deceitful concepts mean, the supporting concepts of morality – ‘soul,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘free will,’ ‘God’ – if no the physiological ruin of humanity?”
[37] I have inserted numbers into Nietzsche’s text in order to illustrate my point.
[38] Nietzsche deals with Paul extensively in two texts Daybreak (cf. 68, 72 and 94) and Anti-Christ (ostensibly passim but especially cf. 24, 42, 44-7, 51, 58).
[39] This passage should be read in concert with GM II 24, which glosses an alternative type, “this Antichrist and anti-nihilist.”
[40] On the “terrible truth,” Leiter points to EH Destiny 1. I would also point the reader to BT 7, where “insight into the terrible truth” leads to “a longing for a world beyond death”; and P 1, where Nietzsche questions whether “Socratism” and “the origin of all science” might not be “[a] subtle defense against—truth?”
[41] I borrow this helpful division from Leiter (2002:247).
[42] For Schopenhauer the will functions as an insatiable desire from which all suffering stems. He suggests, however, that the will may be quieted by way of aesthetic beauty, contemplation, or asceticism. That is, that one may, so to speak, opt-out of the reality of the will, suffering and the world.
[43] There is some debate concerning whether Nietzsche actually opposed or endorsed the ascetic ideal. Kaufmann argues, insofar as Nietzsche sees himself as “a devotee of truth,” he too remains “pious” and upholds the ascetic ideal (361; Kaufmann references GS 344; GM III 24). It is the case that Nietzsche claims the ascetic ideal outlives Christianity and that he understands himself as a devotee of truth. However, as Clark points out, this does not mean that he endorses the ascetic ideal (1990:159-167). The best case against Nietzsche upholding the ascetic ideal is made by Nietzsche himself at EH GM: “The third essay gives the answer to the question of how the ascetic ideal, the priestly ideal, acquired such incredible power despite the fact that it is the detrimental ideal par excellence, a will to the end, a decadence ideal.”
[44] I follow Leiter (2002:8) in taking this expression as definitive.
[45] Cf. GS P 3, where Nietzsche describes the possibility that one might “withdraw before pain into the Oriental Nothingness, self-extinction.” Nietzsche’s occasional definition “nihilism (adiaphora [indifference]),” also seems to imply extinguishing nothingness, i.e., insofar as it fails to muster the meager life preservative forces of self-denial.
[46] The, so to speak, positive aspects of the ascetic ideal are glossed at KSA 12:5[71] (=WTP 4): “What were the advantages of the Christian moral hypothesis?… It prevented man from despising himself as man from taking sides against life; from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of preservation. In sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism.”
[47] At times Nietzsche’s disdain for the extreme price paid in taking up this preservative nothingness clouds his argument, making it equally extreme. In many cases, Nietzsche councils extinguishing nothingness (for those prone to it). Cf., Z I 9: to the preachers of death: “‘Life is only suffering’–thus say others and do not lie: so see to it that you cease living! So see to it that the life that is only suffering ceases!”; III 12:17: “World-weary! And you have not even parted from the earth yet! I have always found you still lusting for the earth, still in love with your own earth-weariness!… And if you will not run merrily again, then you shall—pass away! For one who is incurable should not want to be a physician: thus Zarathustra teaches:– so you shall pass away!”; GS 373: “a human race that adopts as its ultimate perspective such a Spencerian perspective [i.e., Herbert Spencer] would strike us as deserving of contempt, of annihilation!” This position culminates in KSA 13:14[9] (=WTP 247), where Nietzsche suggests, “[n]othing would be more useful or more to be encouraged than a thoroughgoing practical nihilism… One cannot sufficiently condemn Christianity for having devaluated the value of such a great and purifying nihilistic movement… through continual deterrence from the deed of nihilism, which is suicide— It substituted slow suicide: gradually a petty, poor, but durable life; gradually a quite ordinary, bourgeois, mediocre life, etc.” Here, one appreciates the analytic clarity of distinguishing between an extinguishing nothingness and a preservative nothingness as between “suicide” and “slow suicide.” However, this clarity is troubled by Nietzsche’s disdain that longs for a “purifying” mass suicide of the weak. No doubt, in his more strident moments, Nietzsche convinced himself (somewhat) that this would sufficiently ward off “contagious nihilism.”
[48] This is not, per se, an indictment of science. If it were, it would make a muddle of Nietzsche’s rich praise and practice of science, i.e., his empiricism. On this point, cf. Clark (1990:180-193).
Are the Laws of Manu a Political Ideal for Nietzsche?
Nietzsche is commonly understood by political theorists as advocating a caste system, not unlike that found in Plato’s Republic, whereby each caste represents a distinct psychological type. This widespread interpretation places a psychological and political typology at the forefront of Nietzsche’s mature thinking. Importantly, this typology is understood to be an “ideal” for Nietzsche, i.e., the “good” or “end” toward which society ought to tend, rather than as a diagnostic or empirical method. In part, this interpretation adduces from Nietzsche’s apparent endorsement of the Laws of Manu at Anti-Christ 57. Let us call this interpretation the Received View, hereafter RV. In a number of articles, Thomas Brobjer (1998; 2001; 2004a; 2004b), has placed the RV into question. The central tenet of Brobjer’s objection is that the RV is philologically unsound insofar as it ignores the context and limited nature of Nietzsche’s affirmation. Brobjer’s arguments, while shifting the landscape of the discussion, have not won scholarly consensus. The RV remains and has found new champions.
In the following paper, I offer a brief glance at the each of the following topics:
what is the Laws of Manu?
what was Nietzsche’s knowledge of the Laws of Manu?
what is the connection between the Laws of Manu and Plato’s Republic and how did Nietzsche understand such a connection?
what is the textual basis of the RV?
what is the basis of Brobjer’s objection to the RV?
Following a summary of each of these topics, I offer an elaboration of the arguments both for and against the RV, ultimately siding with Brobjer in deeming the RV unsound.
§1 What is the Manusmrti, or the Laws of Manu?
The Manusmrti, or as it is commonly referred to in English, the Laws of Manu, is a vibrant Sanskrit record of the lived customs of ancient Hinduism in the guise of a legal text.[1] Though subject to textual revision at various points in its long history, the Laws of Manu are canonically divided into twelve chapters (Olivelle 7-18). Scholars generally agree that the text can be dated from sometime c. second century BCE to c. second century CE, however, Patrick Olivelle, on the basis of archeological and numismatical information, argues the date is likely at the latter end of the spectrum (20-25). The scope of the text is massive. It deals with religious rites, social institutions, dietary restrictions, gender relations and myriad other aspects of daily life. It is best known, however, for
elaborating a caste-system, by which “different rights, prohibitions and punishments [were allotted] to different classes of people”; and for
articulating a “legal philosophy and directive principle for how people should conduct themselves in society and how rulers should organize it” (Elst 549).
It is worth noting, however, although Manu is undoubtedly a “legal text,” which proscribes customary relations and actions, the familiar English title Laws of Manu, or in German, Gesetzbuch des Manu, is something of a misnomer. Nietzsche consistently refers to the text as a “law book [Gesetzbuch].” He contends, Manu stands as a “codification [Codification]” of “experiments in morality” expressed in an “imperative tone” (AC 57). Koenraad Elst notes, however, when “the British East India Company made the Manusmrti the basis of the Code of Hindu Law in its domains [in the late eighteenth century]… this was the first time in history that the book had any force of law” (548; Olivelle 62). Manu, then, was “not law books stricto sensu” (549; Olivelle 66). Rather, Manu is better described as “a peculiarly Indian record of local social norms and traditional standards of behavior… [it] can be viewed as a record of custom” (Olivelle 62, quoting Lariviere in agreement). This record of custom, Olivelle notes, however, is contextualized by “an expert tradition… a jurisprudential… reflection on custom” (62).
§2 Nietzsche’s Knowledge of the Laws of Manu
However seriously Nietzsche may have intended to take Manu and Indian religion and philosophy in general, his efforts were stymied by limited access to translations and the poor scholarship of those that existed (Parkes 1996: 357). Nietzsche did not have at his fingertips the wealth and quality of scholarship we possess today. That said, he was not without resources. The three key sources[2] of Nietzsche’s knowledge of Indian religion and philosophy are:
Schopenhauer who saw an attempt to “quiet the will” at work in Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Nietzsche read him extensively and repeatedly;
his friend Paul Deussen, the noted Sanskritist and scholar of Indian thought. Nietzsche benefited from his wisdom in conversation, letters and his translations and scholarly works, especially his Die Elemente der Metaphysik (1877), Das System des Vedânta (1883) and Die Sutra’s des Vedanta (1887). Nietzsche also quotes “[his] friend Paul Deussen” at GM III 17.
his reading in May of 1888 of Louis Jacolliot’s Les législateurs religieux Manou, Moïse, Mahomet (1876),[3] which provided a translation of the The Laws of Manu in French.
Nietzsche held a fairly evident interest in Indian thought. Indeed, though he never made any serious, thoroughgoing attempts at comparative philosophical analysis, he clearly imaged himself transcending the limited scope of his European contemporaries. He writes to Deussen on January 3, 1888, of his “freedom from prejudice ([his] ‘trans-European eye’),” which is able to recognize Indian philosophy as “the one great parallel to our European philosophy” (quoted in Parkes 1996: 358). And yet, scholars today agree that Nietzsche essentially had a very limited and shaky understanding of Indian philosophy.[4] Parkes sums up the matter well. He writes, “[w]hile Nietzsche’s intuition granted him some insight into certain aspects of Indian culture, his views were conditioned to a large extent by his own projections” (357).
Concerning Nietzsche’s reading of Manu itself a word or two is necessary. While Nietzsche had encountered discussions of Manu previously, it appears he had neither read the text, nor understood its potential as a counterpoint to Christianity until he had read it in Jacolliot’s French translation, Les législateurs religieux (Smith 38; Brobjer 2004b 17).[5] In a letter to Peter Gast, written on May 31, 1888,[6] Nietzsche writes, “I owe to these last weeks a very important lesson: I found Manu’s book of laws in a French translation done in India under strict supervision from the most eminent priests and scholars there.” The problem for Nietzsche here is simply one of relying uncritically on extremely poor source material.[7] Jacolliot was not a trained philologist and had a very limited and highly imaginative understanding of Indian philosophy.[8] Indeed, one of Jacolliot’s most critical errors Nietzsche not only accepts but manages to expand in scope. For reasons that remain uncertain, Jacolliot speculates that the Chandala [the “untouchable ones” at the base of Manu’s caste-pyramid] emigrated from India and became the Semitic peoples. Nietzsche not only accepts this premise,[9] but extends it by suggesting that Manu is the fount of all “moral lawgiving” to the point that “[t]he Chinese also seem to have produced their Confucius and Lao-Tse under the influence of this ancient classic of laws” (BVN 1041). According to Smith, the implications of Nietzsche’s reliance upon Jacolliot are “devastating to any claim to merit in Nietzsche’s understanding of Hinduism” (39).
It is important for contemporary critics of Nietzsche to mark both the failures of his source material and his interpretations of that material. However, in this case, we are ultimately only interested in what Parkes calls Nietzsche’s “projections.”
§3 Plato’s Republic and the Laws of Manu
It has not been lost on scholars that the caste system in Manu resembles Plato’s Republic. Indeed, Nietzsche himself has made the connection.[10] Nietzsche outlines three basic points of affinity between Manu and Plato:
both rest upon the so-called “holy lie.” At KSA 13:15[45] (1888) = WTP 142, which Nietzsche titled “Toward a critique of the law-book of Manu,” he writes, “[t]he whole book is founded on the holy lie… The most cold-blooded reflection was at work here; the same kind of reflection as a Plato applied when he imagined his ‘Republic.’” Moreover, in two separate lists concerning the “holy lie” he places Plato alongside Manu (TI Improvers 5; AC 55. See also KSA 13:14[42]).
Plato has been influenced by Manu. On this score, Nietzsche was no doubt influenced by Jacolliot’s hyperbolic assertions. Jacolliot believed Manu to be far older and of much greater influence than any evidence allows. Absurdly, he dated the text to 13,300 BCE and contended it was the source for all law codes (Smith 39; Elst 562). At KSA 13:14[204] (1888) = WTP 143, Nietzsche asserts an explicit genetic relation between Plato and “this oldest of the great cultural products of Asia,” i.e., the “pattern” of the “Aryan order of castes” as developed “in Manu.” He argues that the consistency and longevity of “[t]he pattern of an unchanging community with priests at its head [as represented in Manu and beyond]… was bound to invite reflection and imitation in every respect.” He goes further at KSA 13:14[191] (1888), arguing, “Plato is entirely in the spirit of Manu [Plato ist ganz im Geiste Manu’s]” having “copied [copirt]” from Manu everything from “the caste-morality, the God of the Good, the ‘eternal solitary soul’… [to] the type of the philosopher.” Finally, at KSA 13:15[45] = WTP 142, while discussing the shared heritage of “all lawgivers” following Manu in the “holy lie,” including Plato, Nietzsche declares, “[t]hat lie has been copied [nachgemacht] almost everywhere: Aryan influence has corrupted all the world.”
Plato resembles a Brahman and both figure as “priestly.” Continuing the theme of Manu’s influence on Plato, Nietzsche claims at BVN 1041, “[e]ven Plato appears to me in all the main points only to have been well educated by a Brahman.” BVN 1041, recall, is the text in which Nietzsche, following Jacolliot, stakes out a massive range of influence for Manu, whereby “the Jews,” “the Chinese,” “Plato,” etc., are all “merely [its] transmitters [Vermittler].” The connection Nietzsche wishes to draw here is not merely one of apparent historical influence. Rather, he is invested in associating Plato together with Manu insofar as both deploy a holy lie to justify a caste system in which priests are given pride of place (cf., KSA 13:14[204]). He drives the association home by constructing the epithet: “Plato, the Brahmanist” (KSA 13:14[191].[11]
Nietzsche makes a final, more general argument in favor of the Manu/Plato affinity. This argument is worth noting insofar as it can be, to some degree, validated by contemporary scholarship.
Nietzsche was aware of the “language affinity” shared by the Indo-European languages, which he claimed was the basis of “[t]he singular family resemblance between all Indian, Greek and German philosophizing” (BGE 20).[12] He goes on to argue that groups sharing a “common philosophy of grammar” will in turn share “a similar evolution and succession of philosophical systems.” He elaborates his point by noting, “[p]hilosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (in which the concept of the subject is least developed) will in all probability look ‘into the world’ differently and be found on different paths from the Indo-Germans and Moslems.”[13] Nietzsche is arguing, “philosophical concepts” are conditioned by their linguistic environment and as such “belong just as much to a system as to the members of the fauna of a continent.” That is, ideals, such as a caste system, are not merely the free creation of an autonomous “genius” figure.[14] They are contingent upon a time, a place, a linguistic environment, a cultural heritage, etc. On this wise, Nietzsche proposes a shared Indo-European philosophy subtended by a shared linguistic heritage. This insight has Nietzsche anticipating somewhat Georges Dumézil’s life-long project of unearthing the shared ideology of the Indo-European peoples.
Dumézil’s grand hypothesis claims for the Indo-European peoples a tripartite ideology that organizes society hierarchically into three distinct yet complementary functions: sovereignty, martial, and fecundity. This schema has obvious resonances with Plato’s Republic. Indeed, Dumézil himself points to “Plato’s Republic, which contains at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth book such remarkable expositions of the tripartite ideology” (1973: 134n.21; Cf. 91, 105-6; 1968: 493-96). Dumézil is obviously referring broadly to Republic 414a-448e, whereby Plato advocates the use of a “noble lie” (414a) to construct a tripartite caste system of “gold,” “silver” and “iron and bronze” persons (415a-c) distinguished by the psychological traits of “reason,” “passion” and “appetite” (438a-448e). Glancing forward for reference, we can easily see the correspondence between Nietzsche’s reprise of Manu (at AC 57) and the Republic.
Ultimately, however, the question of affinity, or even genetic heritage, between the Republic and Manu is secondary to our study. It seems fairly evident that Nietzsche considered the political ideals of the Republic and Manu as non-trivially consonant. And, it appears, that assumption is, at least superficially, validated by Dumézil’s scholarship. Our interest, however, lies in assessing whether the political ideals of the Republic and Manu are shared by Nietzsche.
§4 Textual Basis of the Received View
We are interested in addressing the RV amongst scholars that Nietzsche’s holds a political ideal influenced or expressed by Manu. Without unfolding all the lines of thought entangled in the RV, we can summarize it by simply excerpting from the central Nietzschean text and presenting its straightforward, decontextualized reading.
The basis of this RV lies primarily in one aphorism from Anti-Christ. At Anti-Christ 57, Nietzsche writes,
Caste-order, the most supreme, domineering law, is just the sanction of a natural order, natural lawfulness par excellence – chance and ‘modern ideas’ have no sway over it. In every healthy society, three mutually conditioning physiological types separate out and gravitate in different directions… Nature, not Manu, separates out predominantly spiritual people from people characterized by muscular and temperamental strength from a third group of people who are not distinguished in either way, the mediocre, – the latter being the great number, the first being the exceptions… Caste-order, order of rank, is just a formula for the supreme law of life itself, splitting off into three types is necessary for the preservation of society, to make the higher and highest types possible, – unequal rights are the condition for any rights at all.
A straightforward reading of this passage would surely conclude, Nietzsche, having been impressed, or triggered, by Manu, offers his political ideal along similar lines. Such an ideal would apparently understand the making possible of “higher and highest types” as the “good” of political life. This making possible would include pegging all human beings to a specific “function” and “happiness.”[15] Moreover, such a good would apparently be “natural” in some way. That is, nature separates out an order of rank among physiological types into social castes. This order is said to maintain an inequality of rights among the castes – “[e]veryone finds his privilege in his own type of being” – as both the means for society’s preservation and the means by which higher types are made possible.
What is immediately evident in this passage is that Nietzsche, though apparently interpolating Manu, has diverged from the caste-system of Manu right off the bat. In his reprise at Anti-Christ 57, Nietzsche restricts himself to three castes, rather than the four (plus the Chandala) of Manu. It is clear from his other discussions that Nietzsche was fully aware of Manu’s actual caste structure. For example, at Twilight Improvers 3, Nietzsche proclaims, “the ‘law of Manu’… sets the task of breeding no fewer than four races at once” as well as making provisions for “the unbred people, the human hodgepodge, the Chandala.” No doubt this disjunction, combined with the correlation of psychological types to political castes, has led to scholars associating Nietzsche with Plato’s political ideal by way of Manu. At any rate, the RV among scholars follows the straightforward reading of Anti-Christ 57 in attributing to Nietzsche a political ideal not unlike that of Manu and/or Plato.
§5 Basis of Brobjer’s Objection to the RV
With the exception of Brobjer and Leiter (2002), who follows Brobjer’s interpretation, the vast majority of scholars to take up the question of Nietzsche and Manu/Plato adopt the RV. Brobjer (1998 301-2; 2004a 250) provides a list of the scholars who broadly accept the RV. Dodds (1959),[16] Schutte (1984),[17] Ottmann (1987),[18] Warren (1988),[19] Detwiler (1990),[20] and Hunt (1991),[21] among others, all more or less accede to the RV that Nietzsche endorsed a political ideal along the lines of Manu/Republic. To this list we can add the names of several scholars whom Brobjer either missed, or whom took up the question later: Richardson (1996), Conway (1997), Dombowsky (2001; 2004), Figueira (2002), Berkowitz (2003), Young (2006), Cameron and Dombowsky (2008), Losurdo (2020). Most of these scholars merely assert the RV and cite as evidence Anti-Christ 57. Before engaging the more thoroughgoing arguments for and against the RV, it is important to note the fraught philological grounds upon which those who rely upon a straightforward and decontextualized reading of Anti-Christ 57 rest.
The RV typically ignores the context within which Anti-Christ 57 operates, i.e., the argument of Anti-Christ as a whole, which is primarily an argument against Christianity, rather than for any alternative. The final aphorism of the text, appended to §62, is given the title, “Law against Christianity [Gesetz wider das Christenthum].” This argument is central to Brobjer’s objection to the RV. He argues, Nietzsche’s
purpose… is to make the contrast with Christianity as strong as possible, to provoke the reader, to make the reader ‘realize’ that even the laws of Manu – about which he in Twilight of the Idols had said: ‘perhaps there is nothing which outrages our feelings more than these protective measures of Indian morality’ – is higher and more human than Christianity (1998 312).
Indeed, though Brobjer does not argue the point, by taking this assumption seriously – that Nietzsche’s discussion of Manu primarily serves as a critical point of contrast against Christianity rather than as an endorsement of Manu – one can make better sense of Nietzsche’s curious excursus on women in Manu. At Anti-Christ 56, Nietzsche writes,
All the things that Christianity treated with its unfathomable meanness, procreation for instance, woman, marriage, are treated [in Manu] with seriousness, with respect, with love and trust… I do not know of any book that says as many kind and delicate things to females as the law book of Manu.
Wendy Doniger has noted, however, that in his treatment of Manu and women, Nietzsche badly misreads a section (Elst attributes this to Jacolliot’s mistranslation (561)),[22] and selectively mines the text for passages flattering to women (15-16).[23] These philological errors on Nietzsche’s part, his lack of care in reading Manu, do not suggest one who is taking Manu seriously as an ideal. Under the assumption, however, that Nietzsche sees in Manu a cipher through which he can hold up Christianity to scorn these errors are easily accommodated.[24]
Moreover, within the text of Anti-Christ itself, discussions of Manu are not limited to §57. Indeed, §57 is the culmination of a series of sections (55-58) dealing explicitly with Manu, which emerge out of a discussion concerning “priestly organizations” founded upon a “holy lie.”[25] Contemporaneous with Anti-Christ are several sections from Twilight (Improvers 3-5), which deal with Manu in a far less favorable light.[26] Finally, there are also numerous notes from the same period in which Nietzsche takes up Manu, often in a highly critical manner.[27] Indeed, three such notes carry some version of the title, “Toward a critique of the law-book of Manu” (KSA 13:15[45] = WTP 142).[28] The failure of the majority of the scholars endorsing the RV to take up these relevant texts is itself a kind of argument against the RV.
Setting aside these basic philological concerns, Brobjer offers a series of arguments challenging the supremacy of the RV. They can be quickly reviewed.
1. Manu is based upon a “holy lie.” The chief texts in which Nietzsche makes this claim are Anti-Christ 55 and Twilight Improvers 5.[29] For Nietzsche, the holy lie testifies to an essential insight into the “psychology of the ‘improvers’ of humanity” (TI Improvers 5). The insight reads: “to make morality you must have the unconditional will to its opposite.” Moral improvers, Nietzsche claims, have all relied upon “methods” that are “thoroughly immoral.”[30] The “immorality” at issue here is not a judgement Nietzsche is rendering on the basis of his own morality. Rather, he is suggesting methods of moral improvement contradict themselves, or are “immoral” on their own terms when subjected to criticism. The nature of this immorality is exposed when the transcendent/transcendental claims of moral improvers are subjected to skepticism. In this regard, it is worth noting that the section of Anti-Christ that precedes Nietzsche’s discussion of Manu, i.e., §54, praises skeptics, claims Zarathustra as a skeptic and characterizes skepticism as being free from the kind of “convictions” espoused by priests.[31] At §55 Nietzsche makes this point clear:
The ‘law,’ the ‘will of God,’ the ‘holy book,’ ‘inspiration’ – All these are just words for the conditions under which priests come to power and maintain their power, – these concepts can be found at the bottom of all priestly organizations, all structures of priestly or philosophical-priestly control… ‘The truth is there’: wherever you hear this, it means that the priest is lying…
The immorality, the holy lie, at stake here is the artifice involved in propagating a social structure based on transcendent/transcendental claims (the ‘law,’ the ‘Truth,’ the ‘beyond,’ etc.). Indeed, this is precisely how Nietzsche understands Manu in the very same text which forms the basis of the RV. At Anti-Christ 57, Nietzsche refers to Manu as a “codification” that “draws a conclusion [and] creates nothing more.”[32] Indeed, implied in the “codification” of customs and practices represented by Manu is the idea that “what now needs to be prevented at all cost is any further experimentation.”
Regarding this artifice, it is worth noting Nietzsche’s discussion of the holy lie at AC 44. Though not directly related to Manu, Nietzsche discusses the “holy lie” referring to it as the “pretense at ‘holiness’… this counterfeiting of words and gestures as an art form.” He continues this line of thought at AC 54, the section on skepticism which precedes the discussion of Manu, by noting the effectiveness of priestly communication. The priest, armed with convictions, appears as a “fanatic” who is “picturesque, humanity would rather see gestures than listen to reasons…”
Brobjer’s arguments regarding the holy lie are not extensive. However, he offers four arguments that are worth mentioning. First, he suggests, “[o]ne would normally not expect” Nietzsche to endorse something he understood to be based on a lie (1998 305). I concur with Dombowsky (2001, 2004) in not finding this argument terribly compelling. Second, he suggests, Nietzsche offers an “implicit critique” of Manu insofar as it rests upon a lie, which is understood as “an ‘inconsistency,’ or paradox” embedded in the system (305). Third, Brobjer argues, Manu, in bringing experimentation to an end, i.e., the instance of the lie in Manu’s case, does not jibe with Nietzsche’s professed interest in overcoming and experimentation. As we shall see this argument leads to a knotty series of counter-arguments. Finally, he suggests that Nietzsche’s praise of skepticism in the face of holy lies undermines any claim to Nietzsche endorsing Manu.
2. Manu is hardly alone in receiving some measure of admiration from Nietzsche. In Anti-Christ alone Buddhism (20-23, 42), Ancient Rome (58-60), Ancient Greece (59), Islam (42, 60) and Renaissance Italy (61) all compare favorably against Christianity. Why does the RV assume these alternative points of contrast to Christianity fail in becoming Nietzsche’s ideal? Indeed, how can the caste system of Manu be Nietzsche’s ideal when, in the same text, he calls “the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization ever to be achieved” (58).
Moreover, what are we to make of the fact that Nietzsche attacks all caste systems comparable to Manu (Brobjer 1998 308-9)? Here, Brobjer notes, read out of context Nietzsche often appears to endorse a philosophy (307). If we take Buddhism as an example, we find passages in the Anti-Christ that read highly laudatory, e.g., “[i]n sharp contrast to Christianity, [Buddhism] has left the self-deception of moral concepts behind, – it stands, as I put it, beyond good and evil” (AC 20). Read straightforwardly and without context a reader would surely conclude Nietzsche’s own thought, which he marks as “beyond good and evil,” bares a striking affinity to Buddhism. And yet, earlier in the same section of Anti-Christ one reads: “[Buddhism and Christianity] belong together as nihilistic religions – are religions of decadence.” On this basis, it seems clear that the argument Nietzsche is developing in Anti-Christ relies upon a rhetorical strategy of amplifying those elements of alternatives to Christianity which he can affirm in the limited context of a juxtaposition with Christianity. Indeed, again at Anti-Christ 20, we read: “Critics of Christianity owe scholars of India an enormous debt of gratitude for the fact that these two can now be compared.” While the reference here is exclusive to Buddhism, Smith is not doubt correct to argue, “[i]t may fairly be assumed that Nietzsche felt a similar gratitude in respect of the availability of Hinduism” (38).
3. From his earliest writings to his last, Nietzsche is near universally critical of Plato.[33] When Nietzsche does praise Plato, it is always contextually limited.[34] Though Nietzsche does discuss Plato fairly often, he rarely discusses his political thinking, or the Republic. Typically Nietzsche’s interests lie in Plato’s aesthetic, moral and metaphysical thought. His two most consistent complaints revolve around Plato’s attack on art[35] and what Nietzsche calls “Plato’s ideomania, his nearly religious lunacy about forms” (GS 357). In his lecture notes for his course on the Platonic dialogues (taught at Basel four times between 1871 and 1879), Nietzsche refers to the Republic as a “fundamental text” of Plato’s. However, Brobjer notes, Nietzsche appears to have lost interest in the Republic at some point in the mid 1870s (2004a: 248, 252).[36] When Nietzsche does address the political aspects of Plato’s Republic in his writings, he is decidedly critical. Crucial to this study is Nietzsche’s criticism of the Republic as derivative of a corrupting and priestly source, i.e., Manu.[37] However, in sections from Human, All Too Human (1878) and The Wanderer and his Shadow (1880), Nietzsche criticizes Plato’s “ideal state.” He claims, Plato’s state
is reactionary against the individual in its desire for “an abundance of state power” (HA 473)
seeks to “paralyze and inhibit” the growth of culture (HA 474)
“rests upon a defective knowledge of man” insofar as it seeks to abolish private property (WS 285)
The context of Nietzsche’s well-worn antipathy to Platonic thought, particularly his political thought, applies a considerable amount of interpretive pressure to the RV.
§6 Objections Replied to and further Elaborated upon
Brobjer’s scholarship is important insofar as it contests the orthodoxy of the RV on a number of levels (as detailed above). However, it is not without its challengers. In what follows, I will take up some of the attempts to re-entrench the RV and elaborate upon the arguments against it. I will be dealing primarily with the holy lie, Nietzsche’s critique of caste-based systems and experimentation.
The Holy Lie
Dombowsky has challenged the import of the ‘holy lie’ objection by noting, “Nietzsche recognizes that the law-book of Manu is founded on a ‘holy lie’ but is not critical of this fact as such” (2001 389). That is, Dombowsky challenges the validity of two of Brobjer’s arguments discussed above, i.e., the assertion that Nietzsche could not uphold Manu as an ideal insofar as it is based on a lie and/or is inconsistent with itself. Dombowsky is right to challenge Brobjer on this point. He argues, “[i]t is not true… as Brobjer claims, that Nietzsche rejects [Manu’s] foundation in the holy lie or in immoralism” (389). Dombowsky challenges the holy lie objection by noting Nietzsche’s argument at Anti-Christ 56, “it comes down to the purpose the lie is supposed to serve.” That is, Nietzsche does not object to the “immorality” of the “holy lie” as such.[38] According to Dombowsky, Nietzsche accepts the ends of Manu and on this basis Dombowsky presumes the issue of the holy lie is thereby resolved. I remain, however, unconvinced and hope to demonstrate Nietzsche’s rejection of Manu on the terms of the holy lie. However, the shape of my argument does not rely upon the objections of Brobjer. That is, I agree with Dombowsky that Nietzsche does not object to the mere fact of a holy lie per se. Nietzsche’s primary concern in this regard rests neither with the immorality nor the inconsistency of the holy lie but rather with the purpose served by the holy lie. There is one sense, however, in which Nietzsche does reject both that which is “holy” and “counterfeit” about the holy lie. This sense, we shall see shortly, is not taken up by either Brobjer, or Dombowsky.
I concur with Dombowsky that Nietzsche’s interest is in the purpose, or end, of a given lie. Why? Because Nietzsche believes he has wrestled out “the defining characteristic of a wise man,” i.e., “[t]ruth and the faith that something is true: these sets of interests belong to entirely different, almost opposite worlds” (AC 23). To put this distinction in a familiar philosophical register, we might say the contemplative interest in the truth belongs to a different order from the practical interest in having faith in a truth. That is, Nietzsche recognizes the apparent psychological fact that one can have a practical interest in believing something to be true – let us say, for example, the hedonic benefit one gains from believing they are destined to an afterlife of happiness – quite apart from whether or not that belief is merited by any standard of truth whatsoever. Nietzsche offers an example: “you do not need to presuppose that people are sinful in order to understand the happiness caused by faith in redemption from sin” (AC 23). The interest served by this faith functions regardless of whether this belief is justified, or true. In fact, Nietzsche suggests, this faith only functions on the assumption that “the path to truth becomes the forbidden path.” That is, the truth of the matter may in fact scuttle one’s faith and therefore one’s happiness and ultimately one’s “stimulus to life.” It is on this basis that Nietzsche pours his evaluative energies upon the “purpose” a lie is meant to serve. This position is entirely appropriate when we consider the moral anti-realism of Twilight Improvers 1: “there are absolutely no moral facts.” Under this rubric, all methods of moral improvement operate without the benefit of an objective, or rational, foundation. What makes them interesting for Nietzsche, then, is not their veridical, or even their moral, status. Rather, Nietzsche is interested in the semiotic and symptomatological nature of morality. “[M]oral judgements,” he writes, “reveal the most valuable realities of the cultures and interiorities” under observation.[39] As a concrete example, Nietzsche, at Anti-Christ 44, suggests, “[t]he Gospels are invaluable testimony” of a “psychological corruption” that inaugurates a “process of decline” that finds its “complet[ion]” in the Pauline Epistles.
On this wise, what is essential for Nietzsche, to borrow a phrase from Genealogy P 6, is “the value of these values.” Or, concerning Manu/Republic, the issue for Nietzsche is whether such a caste-order is “good,” or “bad.” This question can be elaborated by way of P 3: “what value do [the ideals of Manu/Republic] have? Have they up to now obstructed or promoted human flourishing?” The distinction impoverishment/flourishing runs throughout Nietzsche’s mature works. Nietzsche presumes that this distinction corresponds to two “basic types [Grundtypen]” of morality, the noble, and the slave (BGE 260). These two types are not strictly speaking persons, social functions/castes, or structural positions. That is, while Nietzsche certainly orients these types in a mythical social past distinguished by class, he writes, “the concept of political superiority always resolves itself into the concept of psychological superiority” (GM I 6). As such, Nietzsche describes them as “conflicting moral-standpoints” (GM I 17) and as “opposing forms in the optics of value… they are ways of seeing” (CW E). What distinguishes these two types, then, is their psychological perspectives on the world. Two fundamental experiences shape these divergent perspectives: 1) the manner in which suffering is experienced; and, 2) the manner in which social distance is experienced. On the assumption that suffering is merely a fact of life, Nietzsche supposes that the noble has the strength to affirm reality in the face of suffering, whereas the slave through weakness negates reality in order to escape suffering. Moreover, on the assumption that inequality is merely a fact of life, Nietzsche supposes that the noble is one who enjoys a pathos of distance and affirms the value of hierarchy, whereas the slave is one who both bares the brunt of this hierarchal distance and, suffering from ressentiment, seeks to level any hierarchal order. With this in mind, we can ask whether Manu/Republicaffirms or negates reality and/or provides for hierarchy.
Returning to Manu, then, we find that compared to Christianity, Nietzsche praises it as “an incomparably spiritual and superior work” (AC 56) that offers a “healthier, higher, more expansive world” (TI Improvers 3). The “central point” and “fundamental difference” that attracts Nietzsche to Manu is the fact that “it lets the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors, stand above the crowd; noble values everywhere” (AC 56). Indeed, it is uncontroversial that Nietzsche prefers Manu to Christianity. It offers a plurality of types and a social hierarchy, where Christianity offers only “[t]he poisonous doctrine ‘equal rights for everyone’” (AC 43). Indeed, at KSA 13:14[223] = WTP 184, Nietzsche argues, Christianity’s “instincts are against caste.” The relevant question, however, is whether Nietzsche’s preference amounts to an endorsement of Manu as a political ideal and concomitantly whether such a preference can make castes out of his types?
Dombowsky correctly notes, “Nietzsche clearly opposes the society of Manu to Christianity” (389-90). However, he unjustifiably goes on to add, “but particularly insofar as the noble orders of this society – unlike the priests of Christianity – were able to keep the ‘mob’ [der Pöbel] under control” (AC 56).[40] What is at stake here is the suggestion that Nietzsche endorsed the treatment of the “masses” under Manu. In what follows, I argue Nietzsche does not.
At Twilight Improvers 3, Nietzsche, after praising Manu, writes, “[b]ut even this system found it necessary to be terrible” to the Chandala and “[p]erhaps nothing is more opposed to our sensibility than these protective measures [i.e., “to render these people harmless, to make them weak… to make them sick”].”[41] This terrible treatment of the Chandala causes Nietzsche to note, at Improvers 4, that in the “decrees” of Manu, “we learn that the concept of ‘pure blood’ is anything but harmless.”[42] In a curious addendum to the Improvers chapter, Nietzsche returns to the Chandala figure in section entitled, “The criminal and what is related to him” (Skirmishes 45), that offers an intriguing perspective. The first thing one notices is that Nietzsche has appropriated the term Chandala from its native context and begins to deploy it as a sign-post for “the lowest type,” i.e., “beings who… lack public approval, who know that they are not seen as beneficial or useful, – that Chandala feeling that you are not seen as equal but as excluded, unworthy, polluted.”[43] When Nietzsche writes of the “Chandala feeling,” one immediately conjures the sense of ressentiment. The Chandala feeling arises when the Chandala “themselves felt a terrible gap separating them from everything conventional and honorable.” This “terrible gap” describes the extreme affect associated with the social exclusion of the “criminal” and the Chandala – “[h]is virtues are ostracized by society.” This is not merely the structural pair of the pathos of distance. The pathos of distance signals both an actual social relation and a feeling – an “aristocraticism of the mind” (AC 43). The “terrible gap” of the Chandala signals a relation of absence from society and the feeling of “hatred” and “ressentiment.”
Nietzsche is making a curious argument here, which has been missed by his commentators. One typically expects Nietzsche to value the higher type and its noble pathos of distance and devalue the lower type and its resentful Chandala feeling. Indeed, this is the interpretation Dombowsky follows when he notes “Nietzsche’s appropriation of the Indian-Aryan term Chandala, as code for ‘Christian’… socialist and anarchist,” i.e., all categories Nietzsche treats with contempt (2004: 62). Dombowsky goes on to suggest Nietzsche’s “conception of the masses… as ‘criminal,’” i.e., in the mold of the Chandala, makes of them merely “passive material for manipulation and command” (182). What this interpretation does, however, is disrupt and hold fast the fluidity with which Nietzsche is treating his concepts. A brief review of Nietzsche’s discussion of the Chandala, especially insofar as it is associated with the “criminal,” reveals that Nietzsche is far from 1) constituting the Chandala as a fixed social class, or 2) holding them in contempt.
The complexity with which Nietzsche treats the Chandala is evident in his discussion of the criminal. After describing the terrible feeling of social exclusion, Nietzsche notes,
almost all forms of existence that we think well of today used to live in this half-funereal atmosphere: the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer… All innovators of the spirit have at some point had that pale and fatalistic sign of the Chandala on their foreheads… Almost every genius has experienced the ‘Catilinarian[44] existence’ as one aspect of his development: a hateful, vengeful, rebellious feeling against everything that already is, that has stopped becoming (TI Skirmishes 45).
In this case, the Chandala Nietzsche has in mind are quite different from the “socialist rabble, the Chandala-apostles” (AC 57) he associates with Christianity and the slave revolt in morality.[45] Let us call these two Chandala types the Christian Chandala and the Free Spirit Chandala. What is shared by these two types of Chandala is a social relation (in this case an exclusion, or the absence of a social relation), and an affect of ressentiment (in this case a desire to overturn the status quo). However, the affinity ends there. They are distinguished by two crucial factors: 1) their “basic type” or psychological disposition; and 2) their contingent place in time, space and social order. Nietzsche imagines the Christian Chandala simply as an avatar of his narrative of the slave revolt in morality from the Genealogy. He makes this association clear at Anti-Christ 45, where he writes: “Read the first section of my Genealogy of Morality if you want to see this as a first rate testimony of the psychology of every Chandala morality: here for the first time, the contrast is made clear between a noble morality and a Chandala morality born of ressentiment and impotent revenge.” This Chandala belongs to a mythical social past living under the rule of an ancient nobility. The Free Spirit Chandala are typified by those “nascent Goethes” (to borrow a phrase from Leiter), particularly those who are Nietzsche’s contemporaries, living under the burden of Christian morality. The situation of this Chandala is made clear at Anti-Christ 13:
we ourselves, we free spirits, already constitute a ‘revaluation of values,’ a living declaration of war on and victory over all old concepts of ‘true’ and ‘untrue’… all the presuppositions of our present scientific spirit have been regarded with the greatest contempt for thousands of years, they barred certain people from the company of ‘decent’ men, – these people were considered ‘enemies of God,’ despisers of the truth, or ‘possessed.’ As scientific characters, they were Chandala… We have had the whole pathos of humanity against us.
Even without the first person plural pronoun, it is obvious that Nietzsche is here identifying with this type of Chandala, as he did at Twilight Skirmishes 45. He identifies with those “criminals” and “free spirits” who are “barred” from society and frustrated in their efforts to express alternative modes of life. What, then, is Nietzsche doing with the figure of the Chandala he borrows from Manu?
The figure of the Chandala is used by Nietzsche in two distinct yet indissoluble ways. First, it is used to express a “terrible” social relation that Nietzsche abhors. The radical exclusion typified by the Chandala (recall that they do not even form a caste within the system of Manu, they are the outcasts) leads to two possible outcomes. On the one hand, this exclusion corrupts people as mean, weak, sickly and resentful (i.e., the Christian Chandala). On the other hand, this exclusion severely curtails the capacity of persons to flourish individually, contribute to the growth of culture, and to contest the dominance of a universal morality (i.e., the Free Spirit Chandala). In both cases Nietzsche stands against this form of radical social exclusion. Second, Nietzsche uses the Chandala figure to dramatize the contingency of social relations and the experiences they engender. This is never more apparent than at KSA 13:15[44] = WTP 116. In this note, given the apt title “The inversion of the order of rank,” Nietzsche discusses how the concept of the Chandala has been “transferred” from group to group. Writing from the perspective of a contemporary revaluation of values, wherein erstwhile free spirits have thrown off the burdens of Christian morality, Nietzsche claims, “the Chandala of former times is at the top.” Among these former Chandala Nietzsche lists “those who blaspheme God, the immoralists [etc.]”. Once again, siding with this a type of Chandala, Nietzsche writes, “[w]e have raised ourselves to the level of honorable thoughts… All of us are today advocates of life.” Moreover, “[t]he pious counterfeiters, the priests, among us become Chandalas… we consider them corrupters of the will, great slanderers of life on which they wish to revenge themselves.” Here we can clearly see Nietzsche’s two types of Chandala explicitly reflect his two basic types: noble and slave. And yet, this distinction remains complicated, or at the very least fluid and contingent. This should not come as a surprise, however. After introducing his basic types at Beyond 260, Nietzsche is at pains to “add immediately that in all the higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities, and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at times they occur directly alongside each other – even within the same human being, within a single soul.”[46] This sentiment also tracks with the multiplicity of self and Nietzsche’s interrogations into his own “decadence” which persists despite the fact that he is “basically healthy” (EH BC 1-2).
On my reading, the supposition that Nietzsche endorses the ends of Manu, including its treatment of the masses cannot be supported for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason is simply that Nietzsche decries “systems of oppression” “copied” from the “classical model in especially Aryan form,” i.e., Manu (KSA 13:15[45]). This includes, of course, the “cold-blooded reflection… Plato applied when he imagined his ‘Republic,’” leading Nietzsche to proclaim: “Aryan influence has corrupted all the world.” For Nietzsche, then, the treatment of the masses is simply “terrible” such that “nothing is more opposed to our sensibility” (TI Improvers 3). The second reason we ought to challenge the supposition that Nietzsche endorses the exclusionary treatment of the masses relies on Nietzsche’s complicated treatment of them. As I have demonstrated, the figure of the Chandala for Nietzsche does not evoke a simple, discrete, and fixed group of persons. Rather, a careful parsing of his treatment of the Chandala shows the Chandala to be a highly contingent figure wrapped up in a time, place, and social order, who is not essentially, or simply, contemptible and who is never worthy of radical, terrible exclusions. On the evidence of Twilight, then, it is quite clear that Nietzsche, pace Dombowsky, does not credit Manu with its handling of the masses.
Dombowsky offers another argument that merits attention. Quoting in agreement with Conway, he suggests that Nietzsche “is a ‘type of Christian priest’ who ‘intends to reproduce the priestly stratagems of St. Paul” (2004: 157). That is, in endorsing Manu/Republic Nietzsche not only champions its end, i.e., a caste system based on a radical exclusion, but also the means deployed by Christian priests. The means in question here revolve around the holy lie and its use to gain power.[47] What is essential is that the priest be counted as “the highest type of man” (KSA 13:14[199]). In order to achieve this result the priest must make of himself the source of knowledge, truth, divinity and morality such that “[e]verything good in society, in nature, in tradition, is to be traced back to the wisdom of the priests.” Essential to the holy lie is the contention that a priest’s command is sanctioned by a “power whose control eludes the eyes of its subjects: power of punishment in the beyond, in the ‘after death’ – and of course the means of discovering the way to bliss” (KSA 13:15[42]). Part of the effectiveness of the priest’s command lies in the fact that “[t]he priest has taught one kind of morality” (KSA 13:14[199]). In essence the effect of these means is to use “the ‘beyond’… to kill life,” to “devalue of ‘the world’” and to “suck[] the seriousness for true things, the instinct for reality in general right out of every individual” (AC 58; cf. 62: “the beyond as the will to negate every reality”). This leaves everyone depleted, weak, sickly, decadent, dependent and without avenues for either convalescence or critical public engagement. “As long as priests are considered the highest type,” Nietzsche writes, “every valuable type of person was devalued” (TI Skirmishes 45). Such are the means of the Christian priest.
Dombowsky claims Nietzsche endorses these Christian means toward the ends of a Manu-like caste system. Returning to the decisive statement at Anti-Christ 56 – “it comes down to the purpose the lie is supposed to serve” – Dombowsky argues, Nietzsche “condemns Christian means because of the ends they serve, but not the means he finds in the noble Hindu Laws of Manu, because he supports its ends; namely, its caste model of social organization, its conception of society as a pyramid” (2004: 158). The argument here is that Christian means toward Christian ends are bad, whereas Christian means toward noble ends are good. This argument raises several questions: does Nietzsche consider Christian ends to be radically distinct from the ends in the “noble Hindu Laws of Manu?” and does this distinction make enough of a difference for Nietzsche to endorse Manu?
As mentioned above Manu differs from Christianity in two crucial ways. Manu offers a plurality of types and a social hierarchy where Christianity offers only “[t]he poisonous doctrine of ‘equal rights for everyone’” (AC 43). And yet, the similarities are striking and trouble any interpretation that would over-value Manu in Nietzsche’s eyes. Just as Nietzsche found Manu to replicate many of the faults he discovers in the Republic (and vice-versa), so does he find Manu to replicate those of Christianity. The following is a brief review of the essential points of convergence between Manu/Republic and Christianity, followed by a direct engagement with Dombowsky’s two points of Nietzschean endorsement, re: caste and pyramid.
Are the priests of Christianity substantially different from the nobles of Manu? Immediately, one must note, the nobles of Manu are in fact priests as well and that Nietzsche understood the noble priests of Manu/Republic to be consonant with Christian priests if not worse. At Twilight Improvers 3, Nietzsche writes, “the ‘law of Manu’… sets the task of breeding no fewer than four races at once: a priestly race, [etc.]…”[48] In several notes Nietzsche is even more explicit.[49] At KSA 13:14[204] = WTP 143 Nietzsche argues, “the spirit of the priest” found “in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu… is worse than anywhere else. The development of the Jewish priestly state is not original: they learned the pattern in Babylon: the pattern is Aryan.” Also, at KSA 13:15[45] = WTP 142, Nietzsche avers, in Manu “[w]e find a species of man, the priestly, which feels itself to be the norm… to this end, the rule of those concepts that place a non plus ultra of power with the priesthood.”[50] At Genealogy I 6, while discussing “Brahminism” and other priestly orders, Nietzsche argues, “[f]rom the very beginning there has been something unhealthy about these priestly aristocracies and in the customs dominant there, which are turned away from action and which are partly brooding and partly emotionally explosive.” It is clear from Nietzsche’s published and unpublished remarks, he equated Manu with a “priest-ridden society.” Moreover, he appears to have believed that the “spirit of the priest” both finds its origin and its worst example in the “Aryan law-book, in Manu.” That would make the priests of Christianity actually less harmful, derivative versions of the priests of Manu.
Finally, by parsing two texts concerning the nobles (Brahmins) from Manu we can see how strong the connection Nietzsche intends with Christian priests. At Genealogy I 6, written in 1887, a year before his reading of Manu in 1888, Nietzsche claims,
the whole metaphysics of the clergy, which is antagonistic towards the senses, making men lazy and refined, think, too, of their Fakir-like and Brahmin-like self-hypnotizing— Brahminism as crystal ball and fixed idea – and the final, all-too-comprehensible general disenchantment with its radical cure, nothingness (or God): — the yearning for a unio mystica with God is the Buddhist yearning for nothingness, Nirvana – and no more!
And, in a note musing on Manu (KSA 13:14[199]), Nietzsche suggests,
Consequence: if the priest has to be the highest type… Study, emancipation from the senses, the non-active, the impassible, absence of affects, the solemn; antithesis: the lowest order of man. The priest has taught one kind of morality: in order that he shall be considered the highest type of man. He conceives an antithetical type: the chandala. To make these contemptible by every means provides a foil to the order of castes.— The Priest’s extreme fear of sensuality is also conditioned by the insight that this is the most serious threat to the order of castes (that is, to order in general).
Several lines of thought are evident here. The nobility of Manu share with Christian priests a rejection of the senses and empiricism;[51] a powerful desire to preserve the order of the status quo (be it a caste system or a system of equality), to halt becoming in a fixed idea;[52] and, as the basic driver of each, a “yearning” for the beyond,[53] which Nietzsche characterizes as nihilism.[54]
It is this last point, Manu’s association with nihilism, which ought to give us the most pause in suggesting it represents Nietzsche’s ideal. Indeed, it is this point which brings me back to a subject I left dangling above: pace Dombowsky, there is in fact a sense in which Nietzsche rejects the holy lie in and of itself, which has not been addressed in the scholarship. While it is true that Nietzsche has a long and complicated epistemological history with “truth,”[55] he is unwavering in his animus for a particular kind of “lying.” The kind of liar Nietzsche is concerned about is a “counterfeiter” and a “slanderer” concerning reality. “All church concepts,” Nietzsche writes, “are known for what they are, the most malicious counterfeits that exist to devalue nature and natural values; the priests… the most dangerous type of parasite, the true poisonous spiders of life” (AC 38).[56] The essential framework of this counterfeiting is the propagation of a “Truth” that stands over and above reality, which only a select few, priests, have access and indeed control over. At Gay Science 344, written in 1887 (a year before Nietzsche’s engagement with Manu), Nietzsche points to “the Christian faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.” For Nietzsche, this faith, which is the bedrock of the holy lie, is contemptible insofar as leads directly from slandering reality to nihilism.[57]
So far I have placed a considerable amount of stress upon the contention that neither the holy lie, nor Nietzsche’s relating Manu to Christianity confounds the RV. Returning to Dombowsky’s contention that Nietzsche’s endorsement is primarily concerned with Manu’s caste society and a pyramid structure, here too I take issue. Regarding the question of caste societies, I follow Brobjer’s lead (1998: 308-9).
Assuming Nietzsche took an interest in caste-orders, why do we not see this reflected in the rest of his writings beyond Anti-Christ 57? Why, for example, do we not hear of Sparta, rather than Athens, or of the Middle Ages? Sparta is rarely mentioned by Nietzsche and is hardly praised when it is. At KSA 8:5[91] (1875), for example, Nietzsche writes, “[t]o be a philhellene means to be the enemy of raw power and muddled thinking. Sparta was the ruin of Hellas in the sense that if forced Athens into a league of city-states and to concern itself exclusively with politics” (quoted in Brobjer 1998: 309).[58] Moreover, we find Nietzsche explicitly critical of Manu, by virtue of its caste structure, at Twilight Improvers 3; KSA 13:14[199], 15[42, 62].
Concerning the caste system of the Middle Ages Nietzsche has almost universal scorn.[59] At KSA 13:14[204] = WTP 143, for example, Nietzsche claims that “the spirit of the priest” found in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu… is worse than anywhere else… When later on, the same thing became dominant in a Europe with a preponderance of Germanic blood, this was in accordance with the spirit of the ruling race: a great atavism. The Germanic Middle Ages aimed at a revival of the Aryan order of castes. He also traces the caste system of the Middle Ages back to Manu at BVN 1041. Concerning the pyramid structure of the Middle Ages, Nietzsche writes, “[w]ith the help of this faith [i.e., a confusion of oneself with one’s social “role,” or “profession,” as if it “has actually become character”], estates, guilds, and inherited trade privileges were able to establish those monsters, the broad-based social pyramids that distinguished the middle ages” (GS 356). Written a year before Anti-Christ, this passage applies a great deal of pressure upon the straightforward reading of Anti-Christ 57, where Nietzsche seems to endorse the view, “[a] high culture is a pyramid: it needs a broad base, its first presupposition is a strongly and healthily consolidated mediocrity.”
A Natural Order?
Though I ultimately reject it, Julian Young offers an interesting argument against the “holy lie” counting against Manu. Based on Anti-Christ 57 and a near identical note (KSA 13:14[221]), Young argues insofar as the caste-order of Manu is simply the sanction of a natural-order “the ‘holy lie’ is unnecessary. It is unnecessary because a society allowed to develop without ideology will naturally fall into a hierarchy of classes” (187). It is certainly the case for Nietzsche that psychic drives, persons, cultures, etc., find themselves embroiled in a contest that structures them in a hierarchal fashion. This basic contest is simply a fact of life, reality, or nature as Nietzsche has it. However, it is not the case that Nietzsche imagines this process as operating in a vacuum, or without the impress of culture, or as Nietzsche sometimes calls it “second nature” (cf., UO II 3; D 38; GS 290). Indeed, as Ridley had shown in his study of conscience, even Nietzsche’s reputedly most natural, animalistic figures, i.e., the “pack of blonde beasts of prey” (GM II 17), are always already “custom-governed” (1998: 15-22). Moreover, Nietzsche argues against the “noble stoics” in their desire “to live ‘according to nature.’” Nature, being indifferent, makes this impossible. Life involves “valuating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different” (BGE 9; Cf., 188). All of these living processes are party to a public contest, which partakes of a history. This history avails itself to both the processes of “codification” that seek to conserve and erase the past and the genealogical processes that seek to denude ideas, moralities, institutions, etc., of any transcendent/transcendental privilege and place them back within the ambit of the public contest. In the terms of Anti-Christ 57, the processes of codification would seek to erase the “prehistory of a law,” whereas genealogical processes would seek to uncover that prehistory.
On my reading, there are three reasons why what Nietzsche describes at Anti-Christ 57 is not a “natural-order.” First, even a literal reading of the text vitiates against a natural-order. Manu is presented as a “codification” of a history of “experiments in morality” that have been “draw[n] to a conclusion” and “made unconscious” per the “holy lie.”[60] This history, made unconscious or not, is not indifferent to the social pressures of experimentation, contest and domination. Indeed, this has lead Leiter to suggest “the ‘holy lie’… being, in this case, the claim that ‘nature, not Manu’ distinguishes the castes” (2002: 294). Though he neither supports this claim, nor argues for it, I believe Leiter has struck the truth of the thing. In his notes, Nietzsche makes this clear. Concerning the manner in which the priest becomes the sole criterion of truth, Nietzsche writes, “[t]he holy book is their work. The whole of nature is only a fulfillment of the dogmas contained in it” (KSA 13:14[199] = WTP 139). An essential part of the holy lie is the ability to make all truth, all reality, all natural processes appear as if following a course eternally laid out by the dogmas accessible only through priestly texts and knowledge. Nietzsche elaborates in another note. He contends, a key “dogma” used to establish a priest’s power is that the priests “must have the whole course of nature in their hands, so that everything that affects the individual seems to be conditioned by their laws” (KSA 13:15[42] = WTP 141).
Second, insofar as Anti-Christ 57 shows us precisely the kinds of operations Nietzsche’s genealogical method is meant to uncover and expose to contest, i.e., attempts to translate a historically determined value into an “idol,” should we not presume to take Nietzsche’s appeal to “nature” here as perhaps for rhetorical, or ironic, effect?
Finally, third, while section 57 outlines the authority of Manu’s revelation and tradition for the sake of “achiev[ing] a perfect automatism of the instinct,” section 44 outlines the authority of the “priests” of the Gospels, which “is not only tradition, it is endowment: only as endowment would it act like nature.” Ironically, by highlighting the “art form,” – i.e., the “holy lie,” the “counterfeiting of words and gestures” – involved in the endowment behind the Christian Gospels as “act[ing] like nature,” the natural-order of Manu is itself contested. That is, Manu’s own “art of life” by which one “achieve[s] a perfect automatism of the instinct” – “the goal of every holy lie” – is by juxtaposition put on display as well as an “act[ing] like nature.”
Rangordnung as Problem (Experimentation)
As Kaufman noted in his landmark 1950 study, “Nietzsche is, like Plato, not a system-thinker but a problem-thinker” (82). Kaufman contrasts system and problem-oriented thinkers as between “deducing a system from a set of unquestioned assumptions” a la Spinoza and “a search for hidden presuppositions rather than a quest for solutions.” Richard Schacht offers a similar interpretation and goes on to characterize Nietzsche’s basic approach,
Nietzsche’s perspectivist approach is connected with the ‘experimental’ character he ascribes to his kind of philosophical thinking. His treatment of problems is avowedly merely provisional and open-ended. The upshot of what he has to say about specific problems in any of these works is never complete and final; for it always remains open to revision when subsequent investigations are undertake, involving yet other approaches that may shed further light upon them (154).
Nietzsche consistently poses the order of rank [Rangordnung] as a “problem.”[61] Interestingly, he poses certain problems, the order of rank among them, as the privileged domain of those higher types Nietzsche sometimes calls “free spirits” or “philosophers.” These higher types, by virtue of their psychical strength, which is itself subject to an ordering of psychical drives[62] are able to endure the suffering[63] and responsibility[64] that comes with having an instinct for rank[65] and an ability to take rank for a problem.[66]
In his updated Preface to Human, All Too Human 6 [1886], Nietzsche elaborates on his process of “learn[ing] to grasp the sense of perspective in every value judgement” and coming to see “the problem of order of rank [das Problem der Rangordnung].” At 7 he continues along the same theme, “it is the problem of order of rank [das Problem der Rangordnung] of which we may say it is our problem, we free spirits: it is only now, that the midday of our life, that we understand what preparations, bypaths, experiments, temptations, disguises the problem had need of before it was allowed to rise up before us.”[67]
Crucially, at Anti-Christ 57, Nietzsche introduces the caste-order of Manu by noting the erasure of “the prehistory of the law” by way of the so-called ‘holy lie.’ The importance of the erasure lies in ensuring the force of the imperative structure of the law. Speaking of how a “book of law never describes the uses, the reasons, and the casuistry in the prehistory of the law,” Nietzsche writes, “[t]his is precisely where the problem is.” For a genealogical thinker such as Nietzsche, the “problem” lies in the law’s erasure of its own slow and painstaking development through “experiments in morality.” Indeed, discussing the use of the holy lie by “Aryan philosophers of the Vedanta” among others, Nietzsche asks: “What is the price of moral improvement?” (KSA 13:15[42] = WTP 141). In part, his answer is the setting up of “a false knowing in place of testing and experiment: as if what should be done and what left undone had already been determined—a kind of castration of the seeking and forward-striving spirit.” Here we see the opposite goal from Manu: where Manu makes use of experiments only to codify results and to erase a history, Nietzsche sees problems acting as explosive ciphers of other problems, partial and temporary solutions each teeming with alternatives and forking paths.
By way of a conclusion then, we can without great strain easily claim Nietzsche endorses Manu in comparison with Christianity. He values its plurality of types and hierarchal structure. Noting, however, his rejection of any fixed social order, Nietzsche rejects Manu’s ends, its terrible exclusions, and its codification of reality’s conditional history.
Works Cited
Berkowitz, Roger, “Friedrich Nietzsche, the Code of Manu, and the Art of Legislation.” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 24, no. 3, March 2003, pp. 1131-1150.
Brobjer, Thomas (1998), “The Absense of Political Ideals in Nietzsche’s Writings: The Case of the Laws of Manu and the Associated Caste-Society,” Nietzsche-Studien 27: 300-318.
—–. (2001) “Nietzsche as Political Thinker: A Response to Don Dombowsky,” Nietzsche-Studien 30: 394-396.
—–. (2004a), “Nietzsche’s Wrestling with Plato and Platonism,” in Bishop (ed.).
—–. (2004b), “Nietzsche’s Reading About Eastern Philosophy,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 28:3-32
Cameron, Frank and Dombowsky, Don, Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: An EditedAnthology, (New York: Palgrave, 2008).
Detwiler, Bruce, Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Dodds, E.R., “Socrates, Callicles, and Nietzsche,” in Plato’s Gorgias, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
Doniger, Wendy, Smith, Brian K., The Laws of Manu, (London: Penguin, 1991).
Dombowsky, Don (2001), “A Response to Thomas H. Brobjer’s ‘The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsche’s Writings,’” Nietzsche-Studien 30: 387-393.
Dumézil, George, Mythe et épopée 1, (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).
—–. The Destiny of a King, trans. Alf Hiltebeitel, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1971).
Elst, Koenraad, “Manu as a Weapon against Egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu Political Philosophy,” in Siemens and Roodt (eds.) (2008).
Figueira, Dorothy M., Aryans, Jews, Brahims: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, (New York: SUNY: 2002).
Hulin Michel, “Nietzsche and the Suffering of the Indian Ascetic,” trans. Graham Parkes, in Parkes (ed.) (1991).
Hunt, Lester H., Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue, (London: Routledge, 1991).
Magnus, Bernd, and Higgins, Kathleen M. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Olivelle, Patrick, Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Ottmann, Henning, Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987).
Parkes, Graham (ed.), Nietzsche and Asian Thought, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).
—–. “Nietzsche and East Asian Thought: Influences, Impacts and Resonances,” in Magnus and Higgins (eds.) (1996).
Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom, (BasicBooks, 1968).
Ridley, Aaron, Nietzsche’s Conscience: Six Character Studies from the “Genealogy,” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Schutte, Ofelia, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
Siemens, Herman W. and Roodt, Vasti (eds.), Nietzsche, Power and Politics: RethinkingNietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008).
Smith, David (2004), “Nietzsche’s Hinduism, Nietzsche’s India: Another Look,” Journal ofNietzsche Studies, 28: 37-58.
Sprung, Mervyn, “Nietzsche Trans-European Eye,” in Parkes (ed.) (1991).
Warren, Mark (1985), “Nietzsche and Political Philosophy,” Political Theory 13, 2: 183-212.
—–. Nietzsche and Political Thought, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
Young, Julian, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
[1] Philological criticism of the Laws of Manu lies beyond the impetus of this paper (not to mention the competence of its author). I rely upon the critical edition of Patrick Olivelle (2005), for details concerning Manu’s authorship, date, structure, textual history and transmission, purpose and influence.
[2] There are, of course, other important and marginal sources. For fuller treatments of Nietzsche’s reading about Indian philosophy in general and Manu in particular, see the scholarship of Sprung; Large; Brobjer 2004b; Smith; and Elst.
[3] Jacolliot’s text is not without serious problems. Smith (2004) illustrates this by noting, “[s]ymptomatic of Jacolliot’s inherent unreliability is the inaccuracy of the title of the book: the contents refer only to Manu, not Moses or Muhammad. Similar inaccuracies can be found in some of his other book titles” (53n3). See also, Elst 560-567.
[4] Prior to Sprung (1991), it was commonly assumed that Nietzsche had a firm grasp on Indian thought (76-7). Reappraising Nietzsche’s oeuvre and personal library, Sprung concludes “ideas from India penetrated Nietzsche as little drops of water penetrate a goose’s feathers” (89). While broadly agreeing with Sprung’s conclusions, Brobjer (2004b) argues Sprung “overreacted” against his precursors and “underestimated Nietzsche’s reading and knowledge of Indian thought” (4). See also, Parkes (1996) and Smith. Thus, while scholars continue to negotiate the degree to which Nietzsche was in the dark concerning Indian thought, we can feel secure in asserting that he was indeed in the dark.
[5] Brobjer notes that Nietzsche’s copy of Jacolliot’s translation is marked and annotated (1998 303; 2004b 17, 33). Additionally, passages from the book are quoted by Nietzsche in Twilight, Anti-Christ and several notes.
[6] Hereafter “BVN 1041.” The translation is Middleton’s, pp., 297-8.
[7] While it is certainly the case that in 1888 there was a paucity of Sanskrit translations relative to today, Smith notes that Nietzsche was not without alternative resources: “No less than four other European translations were available at the time Nietzsche read Jacolliot” (40).
[8] On the many textual and interpretative errors made by Jacolliot, see Elst 560-6 and Smith 37-46.
[9] On the relation between Manu and the Semitic peoples, see: KSA 13:14[195, 204]; BVN 1041.
[10] Nietzsche links Plato to Manu in some form or another at: TI Improvers 5; AC 55; KSA 13:14[175, 191, 204], 15[42, 45]
[11] See also, Anti-Christ 23: discussing the knowledge of the difference between “[t]ruth and the faith that something is true,” Nietzsche writes, “the Brahmins understand this, Plato understands this.”
[12] On Nietzsche’s sense of “Indo-European philosophy” and how it may have affected his reading of Manu, see Elst 561.
[13] Parkes (1996) notes, “Japanese is generally counted among the Ural-Altaic languages” and “the lack of a well developed concept of the subject in Japanese syntax does appear to conduce to styles of philosophy from which the metaphysical subject is absent” (359-60). Nietzsche, Parkes concludes, was “remarkably apropos with respect to Japanese” (359). See also, Leiter (2002) on the “grammatical subject” as a feature of “Indo-Germanic languages” famously being critiqued by Nietzsche in the image of “birds of prey” and “little lambs” at GM I 13 (215-6).
[14] See Nietzsche’s contemporary critiques of the “cult of the hero” (EH Books 1) and the “mistake” that is the “genius” (EH HA 1). See also, TI Skirmishes 12.
[15] Insofar as she accepts the literal reading of this passage, Schutte is correct that it constitutes a critique of Manu, which marks the Chandala as outcastes (156).
[16] Dodds writes, “[Nietzsche] doubtless viewed with sympathy the proposals of the Republic for the establishment of a caste society (cf. Anti-Christ 57)” (388).
[17] Schutte, noting Nietzsche’s “object[ion]” to the “exclusion” of the Chandalas from the formal caste order of Manu, argues, “Nietzsche would want to see all human beings bred for a specific function – as in the castes celebrated by him” (156, referencing TI Improvers 3). She also takes Nietzsche to have “selected the law of Manu rather than Plato’s Republic for his authority” (156). Her argument for this assertion relies upon the unsubstantiated premise that Nietzsche’s interest in Manu is racially motivated. She argues, “[t]he emphasis on the celebration of racial privilege cannot be missed” (156). However, the only evidence she offers is Nietzsche’s interest in “the breeding of a particular race or type,” under Manu’s schema. As Brobjer has shown, however, it is far from clear that Nietzsche, in his critique of the improvers of mankind via morality, chooses “breeding” over “taming,” rather than dismissing both (1998: 304-5). Nietzsche ends his discussion of the moral improvers with this sentiment: “the morality of breeding and the morality of domestication are fully worthy of each other” (TI Improvers 5). Moreover, even on the assumption that Nietzsche accepts a morality of breeding, Brobjer argues, it is far from clear that he understands breeding in a racial or biological sense (304n7). Finally, Schutte offers a quote from Twilight that reads like a non sequitur: “What a miserable book the New Testament is in comparison to Manu, how bad it smells!” (156, quoting TI Improvers 3). It in unclear how Schutte intends this quote to serve her argument. At any rate, the most obvious clue that Nietzsche did not advocate “race” in terms that Schutte intimates is found in the very next aphorism, i.e., TI Improvers 4: “These decrees [i.e., Manu’s] are instructive enough: they present us with Aryan humanity for once, in its pure and primordial form, – we learn that the concept of ‘pure blood’ is anything from harmless.” Dombowsky writes, “[Nietzsche] rejects [Manu] for its racist aspect and considers corrupt its hereditary transmission of rule” (388). See also, Kaufmann 225-6, 284-306; Ottmann 276-77; and Elst 571-3 for a nuanced view.
[18] Discussing the similarity between “the ancient Indian caste-order” and the caste-order of Plato’s Republic, Ottmann argues, “the older Nietzsche” turned toward the “political Platonism” of the Republic. However, Ottmann goes on to note, only once did Nietzsche (i.e., at Anti-Christ 57) depict the tripartite caste division of Plato, his “political and moral philosophy” typically being expressed as a “dualism” (276-8).
[19] Warren writes of “Nietzsche’s praise of the Hindu’s Law of Manu, with its order of castes sanctioned by God” as well as “Nietzsche[’s] defen[se] [of] this conception of political culture” (69). Moreover, he goes on to argue, “Nietzsche develops this model of political culture in later works to the extent that he could be charged with advocating a culturally totalitarian model of society – one not so different from the one that emerges from a literal reading of Plato’s Republic” (69).
[20] Detwiler claims, Nietzsche’s “ideal order appears to resemble Plato’s” (111; see also 63 for a discussion of Manu and Nietzsche’s politics).
[21] Hunt writes, “in The Anti-Christ… [Nietzsche] describes his ideal of a ‘healthy society,’ which embodies ‘the order of castes’” (98).
[22] The misattributed quote is also from AC 56. It reads: “Only in girls is the whole body pure.” This statement is actually a reprise of Manu’s position on women performed by Jacolliot.
[23] Doniger points, as an example, to this passage from Manu ignored by Nietzsche: “The bed and the seat, jewellery, lust, anger, crookedness, a malicious nature and bad conduct are what Manu assigned to women.”
[24] For more on Nietzsche, Manu and women, see Elst: 566-7 and Leiter 294-5.
[25] These sections (55-58) are supplemented by various other sections of the text in which Nietzsche makes relevant comments. See: 13, 27, 45-6, 60 and the “Law” appended to 62 for references to the “Chandala”; 20 and 32 for references to Indian and Hindu thought; and 23 for a reference to the “Brahmins.”
[27] Brobjer has collected all the notes in which Nietzsche reflects on Manu (1998 311n21). See: KSA 13:14[106, 175–78, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 198–204, 212–18, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225], 15[21, 24, 42, 44, 45, 47, 62, 109], 16[53, 60], 18[3] and 22[10].
[28] See also: KSA 13:14[203] reads, “Critique of Manu,” [216] reads, “Critique of the laws.”
[29] See also the contemporaneous notes dealing with the “holy lie”: KSA 12:9[50], 10[191], 13:14[213], and 15[42, 44, 45]. Aside from the period of Nietzsche’s reading of Manu, one can also find Nietzsche expressing interest in the concept of the holy lie throughout his texts. For example, see: AOM 299; D 27; and BGE 105.
[30] This section should be read in context with the entire chapter of Twilight titled “‘Improving’ Humanity.” See also: EH UO 2
[31] On conviction vs. skepticism see also: AC 12 and KSA 13:15[28].
[32] Norman’s translation curiously omits the word “creates [schafft]” and reads simply as: “it draws a conclusion, nothing more.”
[33] In a note from 1870-71, Nietzsche spells out what will be the course of his position on Plato: “My philosophy, inverted Platonism: the further away from true being, the more pure, beautiful, better it is. The life of appearance as the goal” (KSA 7:7[156], quoted in Brobjer 2004a: 244). Looking toward his last writings one consistently finds Nietzsche taking sides against Plato. See, for example, Genealogy III 25: “Plato versus Homer: that is the complete, genuine antagonism – on the one hand, the sincerest ‘transcendentalist,’ the great slanderer of life, on the other hand, its involuntary idolater, the sunny nature.” Indeed, in writings contemporary with his interest in Manu, Nietzsche expresses serious misgivings regarding Plato. “My vacation,” he writes, “my preference, my cure for all things Platonic has always been Thucydides” (TI Ancients 2). See also, D 168; KSA 13:14[115, 116] =WTP 428; EH BT 2.
[34] At both BGE 14 and GS 372 Plato’s idealism is favorably contrasted with crude “modern” forms of “popular sensualism.”
[35] This is a persistent theme in Nietzsche’s notes around the time of Birth of Tragedy. See, for example: KSA 7:5[43], 19[138], 23[16] 28[6]. See also, GM III 25: “Plato, the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced.” And, see Brobjer 2004a: 244.
[36] While studying at Schulpforta in the mid 1860s Nietzsche began reading Plato in earnest, the Symposium being his early favorite. He wrote an essay in the Summer of 1864 titled: “The Relation of Alcibiades’ Speech to the Other Speeches of Plato’s Symposium.” And, in his short, early biography, “My life,” he writes, “I remember with the greatest pleasure the first impressions of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Plato, especially in my favorite piece, the Symposium” (quoted from Brobjer 2004a: 242). Throughout his time at Basel, Nietzsche primarily took the Republic to be Plato’s “fundamental text.” However, in 1878 he took up reading the Apology and offered a course on it that Summer . According to his lecture notes, he had come to see the Apology as Plato’s pivotal text (Brobjer 2004a 244-5, 249).
[37] See KSA 13:15[45] = WTP 142: “The most cold-blooded reflection was at work here; the same kind of reflection as a Plato applied when he imagined his ‘Republic’” He goes on to suggest the Republic is “copied” from Manu and notes, “Aryan influence has corrupted all the world”
[38] At Twilight Improvers 5, Nietzsche presents what he calls “the great, uncanny problem,” whereby “all the methods that have been used so far to try to make humanity moral have been thoroughly immoral [i.e., based on a lie].”
[39] “A condemnation of life on the part of the living is, in the end, only the symptom of a certain type of life, and has no bearing on the question of whether or not the condemnation is justified” (TI Morality 5).
[40] Curiously, Dombowsky misquotes Nietzsche here. Nietzsche uses the word “mass, or crowd [der Menge], not “mob [der Pöbel].” The difference here is negligible.
[41] See also KSA 13:15[62] = WTP 237: “The struggle with the canaille and the cattle. If a certain taming and order is to be achieved, the chasm between these purified [i.e., the Brahman priests who have “emancipated from the senses”] and reborn people and the remainder must be made as fearful as possible—. This chasm increases in the higher castes their self-regard, their faith in that which they represent—hence the chandala.” And, KSA 13:14[199]: “The priest has taught one kind of morality: in order that he shall be considered the highest type of man. He conceives an antithetical type: the chandala. To make these contemptible by every means provides a foil to the order of castes.”
[42] At GM I 11 Nietzsche, after decrying the “hideous succession of murder, arson, rape and torture” of the “blond beast of prey,” goes on to note Europe’s collective “inextinguishable horror” at the “raging of the blond Germanic beast” and asserts “between the old Germanic peoples and us Germans there is scarcely an idea in common, let alone a blood relationship.” The importance of this passage is twofold. First, Nietzsche clearly divines the political danger at work in the concept of “blood,” especially insofar as it asserts a racial heritage in Indo-Europe. Second, it is important to note Nietzsche’s refusal to grant his contemporary Germans the racial heritage they so desperately sought.
[43] In his writings and notes c. his 1888 reading of Manu Nietzsche often makes use of the Chandala figure in de-contextualized ways. See: AC 13, 27, 45-6, 60 and the “Law” appended to 62; KSA 13:14[199, 223], 15[44], 16[53]
[44] Lucius Sergius Catilina (c. 108-62 BCE) was a Roman nobleman who conspired against the Republican Senate.
[45] Nietzsche associates the Chandala with Christianity variously against Rome, nobility, existence itself at AC 45, 46, 51 and 58.
[46] I’ve opted for Kaufmann’s translation here. Hollingdale’s version is uncharacteristically tortuous.
[47] See: AC 55: “The ‘law,’ the ‘will of God,’ the ‘holy book,’ ‘inspiration’ – All these are just words for the conditions under which priests come to power and maintain their power.” KSA 13:15 [45]: “Establishment of rule: to this end, the rule of those concepts that place a non plus ultra of power with the priesthood. Power through the lie—in the knowledge that one does not possess it physically, militarily—the lie as a supplement to power, a concept of ‘truth.’” See also: KSA 13:14[199], 15[42].
[48] See also, BVN 1041: “I found Manu’s book of laws… This absolutely Aryan work, a priestly codex of morality.”
[49] Young attempts an argument similar to Dombowsky, namely that the priests of Manu are in some substantial way different from Christian priests for Nietzsche, but with a twist. He argues, Nietzsche’s objections to “Manu [as] as priest-ridden society” are limited to the Nachlass and therefore Nietzsche “chose to suppress his private critique of Manu” (186-7). Young offers a reasonable suggestion as to why Nietzsche may have done so: to “‘idealize’ Manu (and Plato’s Republic at the same time)” in order to “point his audience of potential ‘creators of the future’ towards a certain kind of hierarchical society and away from the leveled society of ‘democratic’ modernity” (187). This is undoubtedly why we find in Nietzsche the limited affirmation of Manu that we do. However, it still misses the mark. As pointed out, Nietzsche clearly links Manu with a “priest-ridden society” in Twilight. Moreover, even if we restrict ourselves to Anti-Christ, we still find Nietzsche making the Manu/priest connection. At Anti-Christ 55, Nietzsche lists Plato alongside Manu and the Christian Church as examples of “priestly organizations” founded upon the holy lie.
[50] See also KSA 13:14[199] = WTP 139, 15[42] = WTP 14; TI Skirmishes 45 for a discussion of priests in relation to the Chandala.
[51] See KSA 13:15[42] = WTP 141: “morality as denial of all natural processes” in relation to the “Aryan philosophers of the Vedanta”; KSA 13:15[62] = WTP 237 on “emancipation from the senses on the part of the Brahmins.” See also, on the priestly rejection of sexuality: TI Ancients 4; AC 62; EH Books 5; KSA 13:15[62].
[52] Compare this desire to bring to an end against the Free Spirit Chandala’s “Catilinarian existence… a hateful, vengeful, rebellious feeling against everything that already is, that has stopped becoming” (TI Skirmishes 45).
[53] See KSA 13:14[216]: Manu places “the whole of life is set in the perspective of a beyond [Jenseits-Perspektive]” (Brobjer’s translation 1998: 312).
[54] In a note from 1885-6, KSA 12:2[100], which describes an outline for the abandoned book The Will to Power, Nietzsche 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 as any meaning” (Brobjer’s translation 1998: 311).
[55] This is not the place to review Nietzsche’s position(s), nor those of his critics. However, it is worth pointing the reader to a few seminal texts: TI How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable; Clark (1990); Cox (1999); Leiter (2002); Hussein 2004.
[56] See also, KSA 13:15[44] = WTP 116: “The pious counterfeiters, the priests, we consider them corrupters of the will, great slanderers of life on which they wish to revenge themselves.” At KSA 13:15[91] = WTP 453, Nietzsche challenges the “lack of ‘philology’” that leads to the “narcotics” of counterfeit causes, e.g., God.
[57] Nihilism requires a much fuller treatment than I can offer here. For the moment, it suffices to note point to the basic argument: “two thousand years of discipline for truth that in the end forbids itself the lie of faith in God” (GS 357; cf. GM III 24, 27).
[59] See, HA 476; GS 134; KSA 12:10[176] (1887-88) = WTP 747, 13:11[153] = WTP 871 (1887-88).
[60] See also: KSA 13:15[45], titled “Toward a Critique of the Law-Book of Manu,” where Nietzsche discusses “[p]ower through the lie” and notes, “[i]t is a mistake to suppose an unconscious and naive development here, a kind of self-deception… The most cold-blooded reflection was a work here; the same kind of reflection as a Plato applied when he imagined his ‘Republic.’”
[61] A good introduction to the “problem” of the Rangordnung can be found at GM P 3. There, Nietzsche discusses his “characteristic skepticism” that led him to his childhood “question of what origin our terms good and evil actually have.” That same skepticism brought him to “transform[] [his] problem into another” concerning the “conditions” that fostered the invention for value judgements, their value in themselves and their relation to human flourishing. To these subsequent problems, Nietzsche “ventured all kinds of answers” and managed to distinguish “epochs, peoples, grades of rank [Ranggrade] between individuals.” And yet, “out of the answers there developed new questions, investigations, conjectures, probabilities until I had my own territory, my own soil, a whole silently growing and blossoming world.”
[62] See, especially, BGE 6: “the philosopher… his morality bears decided and decisive testimony to who he is–that is to say, to the order of rank [Rangordnung] the innermost drives of his nature stand in relative to one another.” See also, BGE 187, 257, 268.
[63] See BGE 270 (repeated with minor changes at NCW Psych 3): “how deeply human beings can suffer almost determines their order of rank [Rangordnung]… Profound suffering ennobles; it separates.”
[64] See AC 57: “Life becomes increasingly difficult the higher up you go, – it gets colder, there are more responsibilities.”
[65] See BGE 263: “There is an instinct for rank which is more than anything else already the sign of a high rank.”
[66] BGE 213 Speaking of the philosopher, Nietzsche writes, “[i]n the last resort there exists an order of rank of states of soul with which the order of rank of problems accords.”
GS 373 [1887] “It follows from the laws that govern rank-ordering [Rangordnung] that scholars, insofar as they belong to the intellectual middle class, are not even allowed to catch sight of the truly great problems and question marks.”
GM I 17 “All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: this work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the problem of values and that he has to decide on the hierarchy [Rangordnung] of values. –”
[67] Nietzsche ends HH P 7 (1886): “Here – a new problem!… Here a higher, a deeper, a beneath-us, a tremendous long ordering, an order of rank [Rangordnung], which we see: here – our problem!”
Repetition is not generality… generality expresses a point of view according to which one term may be exchanged or substituted for another. By contrast, we can see that repetition is a necessary and justified conduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced. Repetition as a conduct and as a point of view concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities. Repetitions, echoes, doubles and souls do not belong to the domain of resemblance or equivalence; and it is no more possible to exchange one’s soul than it is to substitute real twins for one another. If exchange is the criterion of generality, theft and gift are those of repetition. ~ Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1968)
In the cultural imagination (the Anglo one at any rate), Krautrock conjures up one of two things.
Brian Eno, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop’s 1976 sojourn to Germany and the resulting albums:
Of particular note here is Bowie’s nod to Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk) on “V-2 Schneider,” and to Neu! In his homage to their song “Hero” with his own “Heroes.”
Or, a kind of crude electro-bohemian aesthetic, perhaps best captured/parodied in Mike Myers’ famous SNL sketches called Sprockets, which used the Kraftwerk song “Electric Café” as the theme.
These, however, offer little more than gestures toward what Krautrock is.
In this essay, and accompanying playlist, I attempt a definition and introduction to Krautrock.
First and foremost Krautrock names a national music: German. To this degree, then, it shares so much with Fado (Portuguese), Samba/Bossa Nova/Tropicalia (Brazil), Flamenco (Spain), etc. Allowing for all manner of “but these are sub-state nationalities with specific regional/temporal contingencies!” provisos, we submit that this is the case for Krautrock too. Krautrock names not simply German music, but a particular kind of music (electronically-infused rock), which developed at a particular time (late 1960s through early 80s—that is, post-war Germany, but a full generation after the war), and in a very particular Germany (the partitioned, “free” West Germany).
Very much, then, of its time and place, Krautrock tracks alongside and ever-so-slightly behind New German Cinema; the new German wave of filmmaking that began following the signing of the Oberhausener Manifesto in 1962 pushing for more independent, creative, and avant-garde voices in film. German filmakers of the era Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta and many others shared, if not a stylistically cohesive genre, a collective spirit of creativity. This spirit of creativity, somewhat ironically, was greatly supported and enabled by the West German state. West Germany of the 60s/70s, a “new” and ever-rebuilding/re-branding state, pinched by the guilt and horrors of its recent martial past, and by the contemporary proximity of the “Iron Curtain,” made extensive use of cultural endowments to burnish a new sense of civic identity. This culminated in the 1974 Film and Television Accord which subsidizes the production and broadcast of German films on national TV.
Krautrock, however, had no state benefactor. Though it does maintain a strong relation with film. Popol Voh is featured prominently in many Herzog films, and Tangerine Dream’s electro soundscapes found their way into innumerable Hollywood films, famously William Friedkin’s remake of The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer (1977) and Michael Mann’s Thief (1981). Can’s second album Soundtracks (1970) is a compilation featuring songs they contributed to films, including one of their best known songs, “Mother Sky”:
Also, like New German Cinema, Krautrock is not particularly “Germanic.” Krautrock’s participants are by and large German. It performs largely via the German language. It is unquestionably tethered to the contingencies of 60s-70s West Germany. Even the name “Krautrock” appears to insist upon the “Germanness” of the genre. And yet, Krautrock does not provide a reliable genre/stylistic cohesion comparable with typical “national” or “folk” musics. Take Germany’s other recognizable national music, Alpine Folk Music with its familiar yodels as an example. In such cases, there’s a clear and well-defined sound, dance, and costume.
My spouse is Greek and since a young age has participated in Greek Dancing—this is a very specific style of dance, accompanied by set gestures, sounds, costumes, etc. And, while this or that national music has its own complications and overlappings with other cultures [I am very definitely NOT making a claim to any authentic, true, or closed conception of culture here], there’s a kind of cohesion that one imagines when presented with the idea of a national music.
Krautrock is not this. Even its status as German is blurry. The Kraut-Prog band Nektar, though formed and based in Germany was made up of ex-pat Englishmen. For all intents and purposes the French band Heldon may as well have been a Krautrock band. The contemporary Japanese band Minami Deutsch openly identifies as a Krautrock-inspired band, see their self-description on bandcamp:
We seem to be slipping away from something like a useful understanding of Krautrock. Let’s return to the name for help, it certainly seems German enough! Here, however, we discover “Krautrock” is not a self-conscious description made by those within the movement.
“Kraut,” as any fan of American WWII films will tell you, is a derogatory name for a “German,” derived from sauerkraut [sour cabbage]. “Krautrock” was coined in 1972 by English music critics to deride the esoteric blend of electronic and progressive rock coming out of West Germany. The German bands making “Krautrock” music at the time preferred their own appellation, Kosmische Musik [cosmic music], which evokes the spacey, electro prog that typifies the Krautrock of the late 60s/early 70s. For better or worse, the name Krautrock has stuck. Faust, in surely one of the greatest artistic “fuck you” gestures directed at a critic, named the opening track on their vital album Faust IV “Krautrock,” a song which exemplifies the genre as much as it appears to parody it – it’s nearly twelve minutes of repetitive noise, beeps and bops.
So, what then is Krautrock? What does it sound like?
In terms of musical genre, Krautrock remains as defiant of categorization as ever. Over Krautrock’s 12 odd years you’ll find traces of progressive rock, space rock, stoner rock, fusion rock, southern rock, electronic music, synth pop, ambient, new age, post-punk, experimental, and eastern-tinged music. This is a large ensemble of sounds that doesn’t fit neatly together.
Let’s start over then. What isn’t Krautrock?
German rock music of the era is perhaps the best way to illustrate what Krautrock is by negative example. Consider Scorpions, easily the most famous German rock band. Despite being very much German, and contemporaries of the Krautrock movement, no one would confuse Scorpions for a Krautrock band.
So, again, Krautrock isn’t simply “German Rock Music.” Though it clearly also is, to some degree “German” and “Rock Music.”
Another way to come at the problem is to consider Krautrock’s development as a sub-category of prog.
Just as in England, the music scene in Germany in the late 60s through early 70s was lousy with prog bands – let’s just say there was a lot of flute. So, what separates garden-variety German prog bands like Guru Guru, Wallenstein, Brainticket, Gomorrha, Rufus Zuphall, Mythos, Out of Focus, etc. from Krautrock?
The experimentation of prog finds a home in Krautrock. The complexity of the compositions and arrangements (borrowing now from classical, now from fusion and free jazz); the ever-increasing expansion of instruments, band members/contributors, and song length are all present in the earliest iterations of Krautrock (Amon Düül II, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, and the first Tangerine Dream albums).
But, as with all our previous attempts at defining Krautrock… “Prog” simply won’t cut it. Krautrock is overdetermined and we need something to separate the staid German prog bands from Krautrock.
To my mind, Krautrock has two essential components: a total, bordering on excessive, commitment to repetition; and the use of electronics.
1. Repetition. Music relishes in repetition. Here’s the contemporary French philosopher Clément Rosset talking about repetition in music:
Interviewer.: Can you explain why Ravel’s Bolero struck you in this way, as a kind of summary of the very essence of life?
Clément Rosset.: At the time, of course, I was incapable of explaining it. Today, I believe that it’s linked to what Schopenhauer describes very well in his two chapters on music in The World as Will and Representation, namely the feeling provoked by the continual repetition of something that remains essentially the same. At the same time, in Bolero what repeats is a very rich melodic theme. Ravel himself was a little offhand about it – “I know it’s rubbish,” he said, “but I had to come up with something.” Repetition isn’t everything, but something still has to be repeated. “Don’t you think the theme has a certain insistence?,” Ravel would ask. It is insistent, it has a sort of authority, and it recounts, to quote Debussy on the subject of the wind, “the history of the world.”
Having said that, I feel the same way about all music in general; music makes me feel as I’ve been given a kind of adequate knowledge of the aims, origins and raison d’être of all things. That is my metaphysical, ontological, materialist principle. Music is not a metaphor for life, it is life in its purest form, the quintessence of life.
If music in general participates in repetition, Krautrock does so to the nth degree.
What makes Krautrock unique is the extent to which it will go. Not satisfied to merely repeat a chorus, or instrumental phrase, Krautrock songs are built almost exclusively around the concept of repetition to the point of exhaustion.
The beat is pure repetition in Krautrock. Eliminating drum rolls, splashes and other flourishes, Krautrock is famously associated with the steady, palpitating drive of the Motorik 4/4 beat. Here’s a classic example from Neu!’s 1972 S/T album:
It’s not simply the rhythm section that repeats in Krautrock. The melodies are also excessively repetitive, often sounding like a tape droning on a loop:
Indeed, what links groups as diverse as the electro-noise of Cluster to the Eastern-influenced progressive rock of Popol Vuh is the commitment to extremes of repetition. Where the former relies on looped, electro-melodic sounds over a simple repetitive drum machine beat, the latter, while using more traditional instruments, layers in echoed guitars, playing simple riffs in repetition alongside droning chants. Using very different elements, both groups work to create a kind of pulsing drone that is at the core of the Krautrock movement.
Check them out:
2. Electronics. By electronics, I don’t simply mean “electronic music” as in some variety of electro/synth-based pop/dance music, though, Krautrock will overlap with these genres at some points.
Electronics here means the “sound” of the music, which from early on will borrow from and emulate the beeps, blips, and boops of electronic machines. In this sense, we can trace the pre-history of Krautrock back as far as the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and his experimental electronic compositions from the early 1950s:
This kind of electronic sound is present in Krautrock from the very beginning. Check out the album Tone Float (1970) by Ralf and Florian’s pre-Kraftwerk band Organization:
The integration of the ever-increasing electronic hum of daily living into music speaks to both the optimism of the post-war era (the “Golden Age” of low unemployment, incredible growth, and the baby boom), but also the increasing sense of alienation and cynicism as capitalism grinds everyone into a drone-like worker surrounded by the ever-present droning hum of machines. It is entirely unsurprising that Krautrock, which hits its peak just as the economies of the Western capitalist nations were faced with massive recessions from 1973-5, would play to this tension of optimism/cynicism.
But electronics in this case doesn’t just mean electronic beeps. It also speaks to the increasing use of electronic instruments and means of recording music (drum machines, moogs and other forms of synthesizers, tape recorders and other effect devices to loop and alter sounds, etc).
And, of course, these electronic elements are used in Krautrock to enhance the experience of repetition.
Please enjoy this playlist by way of an introduction to Krautrock, have a great summer.
Thanks for reading and hopefully listening and enjoying some great Krautrock music. I’ll be further exploring Krautrock all Summer on my Twitter account: @RomulusNotNuma
I would also encourage you to check out last year’s Summer entry on Hard Bop:
romtable 