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LESLIE P A U L T HI ELE

LOVE AND JUDGEMENT: NIETZSCHE'S DILEMMA

"Dionysus is &judge \ — Have I been understood?" Nietzsche asked his

readers. Many seem to have understood. Nietzsche bears infamy äs the

philosopher of ruthless judgement in whose scale§ modern man was found

wanting. But Nietzsche is also the self-proclaimed philosopher of love, ofamor fati^ love of fate. And it is this love, he declared, that certified his

credentials äs an apostle of Dionysus. This article examines the hitherto

unexplored relationship between love and judgement in Nietzsche's writings.

I argue that for Nietzsche love and judgement were interdependent faculties.

An analysis of their dynamics goes to the core of Nietzsche's understanding

of the human condition. With reference to these same concerns, the paper

also offers an account of Nietzsche's darker side. I submit that his aristocratic

chauvinism m ay best be criticized in these terms.

Love and judgement: the words appear to be contradictory. For is lovenot the capacity to accept, to desire what is to be äs it is? Is love not

affirmation, a declaration that what is need not, should not, perhaps must

not, be different? To judge, on the other hand, is to criticize. Judgement

entails the capacity to reject, to administer justice and therefore to condemn

that which receives more than its due. Judgement is an evaluation of what

is by Standards that may indict its inadequacy. Nietzsche's dilemma is that he

wished to love and to judge, to be capable of affirmation and denial. Like

Zarathustra, his alter ego, Nietzsche proclaimed himself a no-sayer who also

wanted to be a yes-sayer. Affirmation, he claimed, must go hand in handwith denial. For judgement without love is but another word for ressentiment.

And without judgement, love is reduced to infatuation or pity. Indeed,

Nietzsche insisted that ultimately the object of judgement is the capacity for

love. Judgement is passed upon one's love of life, its intensity, purity, and

strength. He who judges, therefore, must partake of this love lest his words

prove hollow.

Nietzsche held that the greatest love is always that which has äs its object

the ideal which exists within the beloved. "To love man for the sake ofGod

— that has been th e noblest an d most remote feeling attained to among m en

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Love and Judgement: Nietzschc's Dilemma 89

up till now," he wrote (BGE 67)1. With the death of God other imperatives

and possibilities arise. Human love can be raised to a new level of nobility:

to love man for the sake of that which is most noble in man. Friendship, the

relation between two people in which the craving for mutual possession gives

w ay to "a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them" (GS 89), was considered

the highest form of love.

Because love is effectively a yearning and struggling for perfection, it is

inseparable from contempt, from the distaste for what inhibits growth and

development. This contempt, Zarathustra explains, is not like its priestly

kind: the "gnawing of a worm" äs guilt eats away at self-esteem. It is rather

"the great, the loving contempt which loves most where it despises most"

(Z 239). The more the object of love approaches its ideal, the greater the

enmity for that which inhibits its complete realization. For each kilo of love,

Nietesche recommended, one ought to add a grain of contempt (M 20—132).

This applies to self-love äs well äs love of others. "He who can wholly,

purely love himself," Nietesche maintained, "[...] would be he who at the

same time despised himself' (M 7—393). Self-love must elevate. The drive

for perfection employs contempt of baser elements äs a means to this end,

much äs an ascetic employs disdain and denial of his base instincts so äs to

develop his higher instincts.2

Self-contempt, however, is not tantamount to a desire to eradicate deca-

dent tendencies. One wishes only to overcome them, realizing that the

dynamics of ascending and declining drives define life. The seif must be

affirmed äs a whole. Self-love must counteract the gnawing guilt of the

religious man. He who is godless must be his own pardoner. Self-forgiveness

becomes the joyful acceptance of one's decadence äs an opportunity for

growth: "love yourselves äs an act of clemency — then you will no longer

have any need of your god, and the whole drama of Fall and Redemption

will be played out to the end in you yourselves!" (D 48) One must love

oneself, the plurality one is, enough to want to see the drama of life played

out. Nietesche attempted to beat the priestly ascetic at his own game by

accusing him of taking the easy road. The "supreme heroic feat of morality"

is not the straightforward extirpation of the passions and the consequent

reduction of the multiple soul to a tyranny. The ongoing battle of a soul rieh

1All references to Nietzsche's writings will be given parenthetically within the text by

abbreviated title an d page number. References to the Musar ionausgabe are given by abbreviated

title, volume and page number; those to the Nietzsche Briefwechsel are given by abbreviated

title and date.2

Zarathustra asserts that the most contemptible man is he who can no longer despise himself(Z 46). In the same vein, George Santayana remarked that perhaps man's only dignity is thathe may despise himself.




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90 Leslie Paul Thiele

in contradictions demands "a lot more spirit and reflection" (HH 75). True

self-love "presupposes an unblendable duality (or multiplicity) in one person"

(HH 230). It is within the multiple soul that the interplay of self-love and

self-contempt occurs.

Love of others follows the same formula äs love of seif. Plurality is to

be cultivated and embraced: "What is love but understanding and rejoicing

at the fact that another lives, feels and acts in a way different ffom and

opposite to ours? If love is to bridge these antitheses through joy it may not

deny or seek to abolish them." (HH 229 f.) The ideals the lover stimulates

his beloved to realize are not the lover's but the beloved's. Indeed, they are

unique to the beloved. Love, in short, is a fbrce which elicits the other's

individuality.3 '

To love is to idealize, to desire the birth of that which rests in a state of

pregnancy. It marks an active, participatory relationship. Love become deca-

dent is pity. The sharing of ideals is replaced by the sharing of suffering.

The capacity of love for the raising of man is replaced by ä passive state of

commiseration. "All great love is above pity:" Zaräthustra says, "for it wants

— to create what is loved!" (Z 114) Creators^ äs Zaräthustra also reminds us,

must be hard. Nietzsche's conception of love is far from romantic. The lover

must be severe, for the realization of ideals is not without ofdeal. Love is

above pity because it delights in the overcoming of suffering, and thus

promotes the engagement in, not the avoidance of struggle. If änything, love

is cruel.

Nietzsche's infamoüs admonitions to cruelty are not justifications of the

feelingless affliction of pain for its own sake. Cruelty is one of the forms

love takes in the struggle to realize ideals. It is actually a form of co-mpassion

that uses suffering äs a means to the elevation of man: "The cruelty of the

feelingless is the contrary of pity; the cruelty of those füll of feeling is the

higher potency of pity." (M 14—54) The kind of compassion Nietzsche

advocated was that which hid under a hard shell. In other words, it is a love

which is strong enough to suffer with someone and yet not succumb to the

temptation to alleviate the suffering. For agony is known to serve growth.

Nietzsche did not desire the extirpation of fellow-feeling, but the vanquishing

of its decadent form. To be without pity or compassipn "means to be sick

in spirit and love. But one ought to have much spirit to be permitted to be

compassionate" (M 14—54). Love must be strong enough to carry out its

One has, of course, no guaräntee that the ideals we perceive in others actually exist for

them. Nietzsche's radical scepticism problematizes the Situation. The individual remains a

world to himself, never really loving others, but only an idealized image of them: "When

we love we create men in the image of our God" (M 14—38). The question Nietzsche„asked

himself, "What doyou l o v e in otAers", wa s answered: "My hopes" (G S 220).,




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Love and Judgement: Nietzsche's Dilemma 91

harsh task in the transformation of suffering, for only then will its compassion

not be an aid and abetment to cowardice and Stagnation.

Were pity unsuppressed it would disable the philosopher from propagating

his thought. His path is one of transformed suffering. The prophet always

requires hardness and a sort of cruelty to deliver his message. His teachings

are known to be the catalyst of strife. When Nietzsche spoke approvingly of

cruelty, he was reflecting on the only cruelty he himself had demonstrated:

that involved in disturbing the souls of his readers and friends.

Every profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being

misunderstood. The latter m ay perhaps wound his vanity; but the formerwill wound his heart, his sympathy, which says always: 'alas, w hy do you

want to have äs hard a time of it äs I had?'. (BGE 197)4

Thus pity is held to be the greatest danger. The threat of falling prey to

its debilitating forces remains ever present. Zarathustra first quits his solitude

fo r the love of mankind. His love, however, becomes a near-fatal pity for

the lower man who does not, and cannot, share Zarathustra's aspirations and

flights of spirit. After much struggle and learning, a wiser Zarathustra

overcomes this pity. But another form of it awaits him äs his final test, his

"ultimate sin". After overcoming his pity for those who could not know the

"pleasures of the spirit" he must confront his pity for those who do, those

higher men whose Spiritual pleasures are necessarily the product of a long

and deep suffering.5

Nietzsche condemned pity äs the most seductive allurement to the depre-

ciation of life. Life is suffering. To the extent pity reflects a desire that things

were otherwise, that suffering were not necessary, it serves to devalue life:

"life is denied, made more wo r thy of denial by pity — pity is pract ical nihilism"

4In 1884 Nietzsche speculated in ä letter: "// is possible that 7 will be a destiny, the destiny

for all men to come * * - and consequently it is v e r y possible that one day I will become dumb,out of love of man" (KGB, 3—1884). Within five years of writing this Nietzsche slipped

into insanity, marking the begintiing of more than a decade of muteness before he died.5

The protagonist* s final victory over pity in Thus Spoke Zarathustra^ Nietzsche's allegorical

autobiography, does not appear to have been granted to its author. His one-time acolyte,

Paul Lanzky, described Nietzsche's own suffering from pity:

"Become hard! says his Zarathustra, the ideal äfter which he strived, before which he kneeled,äs he said to me; but he himself could not be hard, or only appeared so in his writings [...].And he, the strong spirit who thought little of pity, which for him only meant weakness,

suffered too much from his weakness." ( B e g e g n u n g e n m it Nietzsche, ed . Sander L. Gilman with

Ingeborg Reichenbach [Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1981], p. 509)

Of this weakness Nietzsche admitted: "I bhly need to expose myself to the sight of somegenuine distress and I am lost." (GS 270) As is well-known, his lapse into insanity in the

winter of 1888—89 was marked by a breakdown in the streets of Turin, where upon seeing

a märe being severely beaten he embraced it and cried. This is not to suggest that pity (for

an animal) proved Nietzsche's ultimate undoing, but the symbolism is too striking to bediscounted.




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Love and Judgcmcnt: Nietzsche's Dilemma 93

aspiration: the power to transform being is produced by the feeling of power

one receives through the Illusion of a perfected world. Better said, the struggle

for perfectioti produces power, and the illusory glimpse of perfection allowed

us in love is the necessary stimulant to struggle: "Love is the state in whichman sees things most of all äs they are not.The illusion-creating force is there

at its height, likewise the sweetening and transforming force." (A 133).

Nietzsche further observed: "one lies well when one loves, about oneself and

to oneself: one seems to oneself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect,

one is more perfect" (WP 426). The Illusion of growing power is necessary

for one who wishes to grow more powerful. In the realm of love, the line

between illusion and reality is not thin: it simply does not exist. One must

transgress the borders of reality during the subtle and intricate gymnastics

of realizing ideals and transforming potential into actuality.To the extent one remains tied to ideals — however useful they have

been in elevating the spirit — one lives in a state of self-depreciation: "All

ideals are dangerous: because they debase and brand the actual; all are poisons,

but indispensable äs temporary cures." (WP 130) If the struggle for perfection

is not to become a means of taking revenge upon life one must not become

overly infected with its poison. One must demonstrate continually that

struggle is the greatest joy, that self-despising is only part of a greater self-

love, that destruction and no-saying are the prerequisites for creation and

yes-saying, in short, that the desire for change is an affirmation of the stateof becoming.

We are confronted with a paradox. The lover negates ^Waffirms. Through

endless change and growth one seeks to become that which may be accepted

äs it is. Indeed the struggle is to become a person who can truly love himself.

The link to amor fati is clear. To love fate means fully to affirm one's life,

not resentfully to struggle that it be otherwise. Yet Nietzsche's point is that

it is the most difficult of struggles to love fate, Only through the strength

gained by constant self-overcoming does one find the power necessary to

embrace destiny.For Nietzsche, the sign of the highest morality was a füll affirmation of

life äs it unfolded. Citing Emerson, Nietzsche was wont to say that each day

was holy, that is, each day could be consecrated by fully exercising one's

powers. Already äs a philology Student in Leipzig Nietzsche had expounded

this view in a letter: *Indeed it remains within our power to use each event, small and large

accidents for our improvement and fitness, and äs it were to exhaust it. [...]It rests upon our disposition: the worth we attribute to an event has that

value for us. Thoughtless and immoral people do not know of such anintentionality of fate. (KGB, 2 0—2—1867 )




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Fate is not a providential distribution of meaning and justice; it is simply

what befalls us. However, one must be of the disposition and have the power

literally to make the best of it. The aim is to become like those "masters of

musical Improvisation7

' who are capable of "breathing a beautiful meaningand a soul into an accident" (GS 243). One then ceases to have "wishes",

Nietzsche wrote, because one learns to harvest the best fruits of knowledge

from whatever land one passes through (KGB, 18 — 10 — 1875). Indeed, man

is the "soil" upon which the "seedcorn" fate is scattered: it is the quality of

soil that determines if anything of beauty or use will grow (HH 293).

Amor fati is not fatalism. The latter takes hold of a person äs the wind

of a leaf: the forces of nature, of history, of chance, are simply too great to

be affected or combatted. Resignation yields rest and comfort. Amor fati is

a struggle with these forces. Fate is not merely what happens to one, butwhat happens äs a result of one's active involvement with life. The love of

fate is the love of this involvement and of its outcome.

The fatalist actually resents fate. He has not learned how he might joyfully

partake äs the "iron hands of necessity [...] shake the dice-box of chance"

(D 81). The lover of fate, on the other hand, makes everything that comes

his way a cause for celebration. Temporary defeats are welcomed äs prepa-

rations for greater victories. Pain and privation are seen äs tools in the

workshop of wisdom. These tools must be honed &ga.inst forfuna's stone, the

better to achieve tomorrow what has eluded one today. Those practiced in

this trade are rewarded for their efforts.8They ride the waves of destiny to

win their prize: the opportunity to create from their haphazard voyage

something of meaning and beauty. Fate becomes a sort of providence for

those capable of breathing soul into accident. Love of fate, like love of

another person, is not a resigned acceptance of what is, but the active

engagement in the realization of potential, the joyful vision of being in a

state of pregnancy.

In The Gay Science Nietzsche first introduced the term amo r fati äs some-

thing yet unachieved: "I want to learn more and more to see äs beautiful

what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things

beautiful. Amor fa t i : Let that be my love henceforth! [...] some day I wish

to be only a Yes-sayer." (GS 223) To wish is not to be. Indeed, one mustbe

a no-sayer, a destroyer and struggler, if one is to become something different,

namely, a yes-sayer. The ideal that drives one to grow and change must, if

one is to embrace fate, eventually Sublimate into the love of what is. '

8Nietzsche interpreted'his numerous and chronic physical ailments in this light. In 1884 he

wrote: "each step on the w ay of my task demands dreadful payment an d now, äs I understand

my life more, it seems to me that all my bodily misery of the last 12 years falls unter the

category of such installments" (KGB, 14— 11— 1884).




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The demonstration of this love is the revelation of greatness:

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants

nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not

merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is menda-

ciousness in the face of what is necessary — but love it (EH 258).

Amor fati is the "highest state" attainable to man, constituting a "Dio-

nysian relationship to existence" (WP 536). An abundance of strength and

jo y allows one to affirm all — past, present, and future. The affirmation of

the present and fu ture may be facilitated through hope. Trials may be greeted

jpyfully with the belief that their hardships will yield greater strength, that

the toil will prove worth the trouble. But what of the past? To want nothing

to be different in the past is the true measure of amor fati. Here acceptance

is not enough. It cannot be mixed with hope to yield a higher grade ofsatisfaction. One must indeed love one's fate to desire that it be äs it was

without the slightest modification. Otherwise the will, impotent regarding

the past, will be wrathful and füll of vengeance. "To redeem the past and to

transform every 'It was' into an "I wanted it thus!' — that alone do I call

redemption!," Zarathustra proclaims (Z 161, 162). Fate is loved when one is

consumed by living it, not when one merely justifies the experiences of life

äs the means to some other end, even if that end is growth. Qne's fate, past

and present, is not to be seen äs a stepping-stone to a preferred state in the

present or future: "Becoming must be explained without recourse to finalintentions; becoming must appear justified at every moment [...] the present

must absolutely not be justified by reference to a future, nor the past by

reference to the present." (WP 377) Living must be its own reward äs it is

lived.

The eternal recurrence is best understood äs the test of one's amor fati

and thus of one's greatness. For the most part Nietzsche made no attempt

to prove his proposition that all things repeat themselves endlessly, like the

rotation of an infinitely large circle through all eternity. Rather, acceptance

of the eternal recurrence was considered the means of separating the chafff rom the wheat. It was proposed äs the criterion of selection (WP 255).

Dionysus, we remember, is a judge. He whose affirmation of Hfe is not strong

enough or complete enough for him to desire nothing more than to repeat

the same life, endlessly, without the slightest alteration, is considered unfit

fo r the new faith. However, the eternal recurrence is not something simply

to be conceptually grasped and subsequently accepted. It must be lived,

experienced in a moment of rapturous affirmation. From the torments of

nihilism it must emerge, providing the ultimate redemption from the greatest

affliction. Nietzsche was not anxious to convert.




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Are you prepared now? You must have lived through every degree of

scepticism and with lust bathed in ice-cold streams, — otherwise you have

no right to this thought [of the eternal recurrence]; I want to protect myselfwell from the credulous and enthusiastic. (M 11 —188)

Preparation, however, is not an intellectual exercise. The eternal recurrerice

is not so much an experiment in thought äs an ecstatic experience. A position

of honour must be earned by living one's heaven and hell on earth.

The criteria of Nietzschean judgement are based on the juxtaposition of

the Dionysian and the decadent man, of him who jöyfülly would embrace

the eternal return and of him who would abhor it. Everybody who does not

fully affirm life, including its terrifying mystery, is decadent. Passive nihilism,

Nietzsche's epithet for the modern disease, exhibits this incapacity for affir-

mation. But so do all forms of life undistijnguished by a Dionysian disposition.

Everybody who cannot affirm life äs it is imagines after-lives and redemptive

gods in compensation and thus betrays an inability or unwillingness to

participate in the tragic celebration of existence. Schopenhauerian pessimism,

Wagnerian romanticism, Socratic rationalism, religious thought in general

(with Christianitysingled out for particular abuse), all fail the test of Dionysus.

They are nihilistic, cried Nietzsche, not 7. For in their weakness they reject

life ... and for what? There is nothing eise. Thus they reject life for nothingl

They deserve to be called nihilistic "because they allhave glorified the coricept

contrary to life, notbing(ness) , äs end,äs highest good, äs 'God"' (M 14—328).

Thus does Nietzsche turn the tables on the metaphysicians and theologians.

The charge of nihilism is leveled against all those who, by Nietzsche's

reckoning, are too weak to celebrate life in all its meaninglessness. Their lack

of strength forces them to grasp at illusions. Their efforts constitute a new

form of impiety and idolatry. Zarathustra encourages his listeners to "remain

true to the earth" and forego the temptation of metaphysics and theology,

of "superterrestrial hopes". Such hopes are a devaluation of life, a form of

blasphemy against life: "Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blas-

phemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blas-

pheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence" (Z 42).Every movement

towards gods and transcendent ideals is a movement away from the here and

now, a dissipation of the hope for a higher, this-worldly life: "The concept

of 'God' invented äs a counterconcept of life [...]. The concept of the

'beyond', the 'true worid' invented in order to devaluate the only world there

is — in order to retain no goal, no reason, no täsk for our earthly reality!"

(EH 334)No doubt the theologians and metaphysicians, the propagators of

a belief in gods, a beyond, or transcendent ideals, would refuse to accept

Nietzsche's charge, thrusting the accusation of nihilism back at him who

attemps to destroy the only things which could give life meaning. But that




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Man is a semiological puzzle. There exist no ultimate truths, judgements,

or values. Therefore Nietzsche asked in each case why such and such truths,

judgements, and values were adopted, what purpose they served, what sort

of man, in short, needed to have them. Nietzsche prided himself on his abilityto infer the order of a soul using the "most difficult and captious form of

backward in ference [...] from the work to the maker, from the deed to the doer,

from the ideal to those who ne ed it, from every way of thinking and valuing

to the commanding need behind it" (GS 329). He saw himself äs equipped

with "psychological antennae", which allowed a sensitivity to the rank of the

objects of his study: "the innermost parts, the 'entraüs' of every soul are

physiologically perceived by me — smelled." (EH 233)

What is perceived during Nietzsche's "vivisect[ion]" of souls (GM 113)

is the level of decadence or ascending power within the individual. Thequestion posed to all aesthetic phenomenä — "is it the hatred against life or

the excess of life which has here become creative?" — may also serve äs the

criterion for categorizing philosophical, moral, and religious phenomenä

(NCW 67l).9

This interpretive dualism gives rise to much of the ambiguity

and outright contradiction in Nietzsche's writings. Philosophy, art, morality,

even pessimism and nihilism, all have their higher, ascending, and lower,

declining forms. The internal state of the doer or thinker must be perceived

before any deed or thought may be judged.

Nowhere is thedualistic Interpretation

ofphenomenä more

pronouncedthan in Nietzsche's evaluation of nihilism. Does a hatred of life or an excess

of joy predominantly characterize the individual? The value of nihilism rests \

9This formulation was'altered in Nietzsche contra Wagn e r from its original appearance in TheGaj Science (p. 329), where "hunger", not "hatred of life" served äs the antipode to excess

of life. Presurnably Nietzsche made the change because hunger, while denoting a lack, also

connoted a desire (to consume) that could be mistaken äs a desire for life.

on the answer to this question. Nihilism tout court^ Nietzsche declared, is j

ambiguous. Active nihilism is a sign of "increased power of the spirit";pass ive |nihilism is a "decline and recession of the power of the spirit" (WP 17). \

Nihilism may be a "divine way of thinking" or an invitation to Spiritual j

anarchy (W P 15). It depends on why and how one is a nihilist. There are, at j

base, two possibilities. One may deny God and other worlds out of a reverence j

for the seif, a love of this life, and a desire to be creative. Or one may deny

God out of an irreverence for the seif, and a desire to escape all evaluation,

judgement and responsibility. The former nihilist approaches the overman.

The latter nihilist is the last man. Zarathustra accuses him thus: "You could

not endure him who saw jou — who saw you unblinking and through and

through, you ugliest man! You took revenge upon this witness!" (Z 276) The




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last man is the "murderer of God". Zarathustra, for his part, announced the

death, identified and judged the culprit, and suggested how one might

celebrate the wake.10

The theoretic assumptions of the passive and active nihilist are the same:

no ultimate values, no God, radical individualism. Yet the practical and

Spiritual ramifications of these assumptions are vastly divergent. On the one

hand, a denial of the worth of life and Spiritual torpor develops; on the other,

an affirmation of life and creative will. The 'facts' of nihilism can be united

just äs easily with its noxious potentiality äs its practical celebration (HH 27).

Nietzsche claimed that his "overall insighf* was "the ambiguous character of our

modern world — the very same Symptoms could point to decline and to s trength"

(WP 69). Those who are strong enough will be able to transform into a

higher pleasure what for others remains a bane. Most importantly, this applies

to the fundamental character of life: "The thousand mysteries around us

would only interest us, not torture us, if we were healthy and happy enoügh

in our hearts." (M 16 — 55)n

One man's meat is another man's poison. What

is beneficial and what is dangerous to health depends upon who is doing the

eating. It is the consumer who determines the value of life — for himself.

From Th e Gay Science we learn that "the poison of which weaker natures

perish strengthens the strong — nor do they call it poison" (GS 92). That

poison is not always called poison presented certain problems for Nietzsche,

an d more so for his readers. Language never fully communicates the subtletiesof spirit. Depending upon the context and his imagined audience, Nietzsche's

words bear different valences and meanings: "Each written word is ambig-

uous, misunderstandable, in need of a commentary through glances and

handshakes." (KGB, 5 —7 —1885) Language is always tactically employed.

"My words," wrote Nietzsche, "have other colours than the same words in

other people" (KGB, 2 0 — 5 —1885). Correctly perceiving these colours goes

a long way to making the apparent contradictions in Nietzsche's writing lesstroublesome. What has been called a dualism in Nietzsche's work appears

contrary to his disavowal of absolute opposites and transcendent categories.It is, in fact, better labelled a pluralism. The hard and fast dichotomy of

decadence or growth, strength or weakness, noble or plebeian, gpod or bad12

,

10More correctly, Zarathustra himself is a mix of the last man and the overman; he knowsabout decadence first-hand. Thus he denies God both put of a need to be creative and owingto an inability to endure an ultimate overseer and judge (Z 110, 111).

11The paradigm for this achievement appears to have been Heraclitus, whose "blessed aston-ishment" was the transformation of the "terrible, paralyzing thought" of a world in constant

flux (PTG 54).12

Bad, äs distinguished from evil, connotes for Nietzsche a decadent, sick, atrophied drive.Evil has to do with a great passion, which, from a certain perspective, has gone awry.




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• f100 Leslie Paul Thiele

is a heuristic device which allows one to talk about a virtual infinity of ranks,

Orders, and spiritual regimes (cf. M l-422 and KGB, 3-8-1883). Just äs

there are no actual antipodes of good and evil, but only differences of degree,

so are the categories of decadence and growth but a shorthand to describe amyriad of divergent states of the soul. Any attempt to venture into this

plethora of ambiguities is bound to place a premium on nuance. The mark

of a higher thinker was held to be his ability to do without Manichean

conceptualizations, in a word, to do without opposites (WP 70, 490). It

follows that "the best thing we gain from life" is the "art of nuance" (BGE

44), the capacity for judgement.

The capacity for judgement is gained through experience, and in partic-

ular, the experience of one's own decadence. The psychological antennae

must be tuned in on oneself. Nietzsche's critiques of decadence were basedon his own experience of its debilitätions. His personal encounter with

infirmity, convalescence, and well-being are the substance of his writing.

"Apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the opposite," he claimed,

"I turned my will to health, to lift, into a philosophy." (EH 224)

Nietzsche's philosophy is a sustained attäck on the decadence found within

and without his soul. Indeed, he could assail decadence only to the extent he

himself suffered from its incorporation. His diatribes, therefore, are effectively

self-critiques, or better said, self-congratulations for decadence overcome.

Nietzsche's frequentad

hominem arguments demonstrate the point. Shortlyafter publishing The Birth o f Tragedy, wherein Socrates is attacked äs the

rationalist denier of life, Nietzsche wrote: "Socrates, just to acknowledge it,

Stands so close to me that I am almost always fighting with him." (M 6 —

101) If Nietzsche's explorations into the psyche of Socrates are extraordinarily

insightful, it is because he had experienced the same threat of a fall into

decadence. Nietzsche acknowledged the "long war" waged with himself

"against the pessimism of weariness with life" (HH 213), and his personal

letters contain many references to his life äs a long sickness he would be

anxious to end. His reason for attacking Socrates was not that Socrates was

wrong in his evaluation of life äs a sickness, but that he failed to overcome

this truth (cf. GS 272). Similarly, Nietzsche's later diatribes against Wagner

were the advertisements of decadence overcome by the philosopher but

embraced by the composer: "I am, no less than Wagner, a child of this time;

that is, a decadent: but I comprehended this, I resisted it. The philosopher

in me resisted." (CW 155)

Nietzsche displayed and lauded the overcoming of decadence, not its

absence. Health is always a victory over illness, and Nietzsche maintained

that his own greatest and truest experiences were recoveries (CW 155.and

EH 222, 223). The "eure" for nihilism, pessimism, or boredom, is "to remain




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sick for a long time and then, slowly, slowly, to become healthy, by which I

mean 'healthier'" (HH 9). The difference between health and sickness, power

and impotence, is always a question of degree. Health is not an end-point to

be reached but an increase in strength, an increasing strength.

Decadence, then, is not so much to be avoided äs combatted: Sickness,

Nietzsche averred, is a stimulant to life; but one must be healthy enough for

it (CW 165). The distinguishing feature of greatness is the ability to transform

sickness into health, to grow stronger after a draught of poison. Only by

allowing oneself to experience decadence can it truly be understood, and

subsequently overcome.

Decadence is inherent to the human condition. We are all, in part, at

times, to a certain degree, decadent. The "last man" lives in all of us. The

opportunityfor

overcoming him allowsfor

greatness,for the

emergenceand

rule of the higher seif. This opportunity, it would then appear, must also be

intrinsic to human being. All men have a higher seif lying in wait of

realization. According to Nietzsche:

Everyone has his good days where he discovers his higher seif; and true

humanity demands that everyone be evaluated only in the light of this

condition and not in that of his working-day unfreedom and servitude. [...]

Many live in awe of and abasement before their ideal and would like to

deny it: they are afraid of their higher seif because when it speaks it speaks

imperiously. It possesses, moveover, a spectral freedom to come or to stay

away äs it wishes; on this account it is often called a gift of the gods,whereas in reality it is everything eise that is a gift of the gods (of chance):

this however is man himself. (HH 197)

Nietzsche, then, was receptive to the principle that all were capable of

participating in a higher morality. But he never brought himself wholeheart-

edly to adopt this belief, and he intimated his rejection of it more often than

not.

By virtue of being human, Nietzsche speculated, everybody is given the

opportunity of a higher life, a life of self-overcoming. Few, however, are to

experience its elevated mood regularly, and some not at all.

Life consists of rare individual moments of the highest significance and

countless intervals in which at best the phantoms of those moments hover

about us. [...] many people never experience these moments at all but are

themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of real life. (HH 189)

The higher seif, Nietzsche admitted, exists for all, äs a latency awaiting

occasion. But it is denied actualization by most. It demands a Dionysian

relationship to existence. The horror of a meaningless life first must be

embraced before the innocence of a Nietzschean morality is attained. The

rapture of amor fati is derivative of a nihilistic terror which never ceases to




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haunt. And there are few, Nietzsche insisted, that are strong enough to

transform suffering into joy, terror into rapture, and anxious uncertainty into

wonder. Only with reluctance did Nietzsche concede that such transformation

was possible for all; and this concession, he could not refrain from empha-sizing, was made against his better judgement.

But to stand in the midst of this rerum concord ia discors and of this whole

marvelous uncertaintyand rieh ambiguity of existence without questioning,

without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning

[...] that is what I feel to be con tempt ib le , and this is the feeling for which I

look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human

being has this feeling, simply because he is human. This is my type ofinjustice. (GS 76 f.)

This type of injustice, however, is seldom perpetrated by Nietzsche.

We are hard pressed to find instances of its charity in his writings. In anycase, it did not hinder Nietzsche from ranking men äccording to their

perceived Spiritual powers. For he indicated that the measure of greatness

was not the mere presence or absence of such an "elevated feeling" but

one's capacity to deepen it, extend it in time, and increase its frequency

(GS 231; and cf. M 6— 2 6 ) . Whatever the innate capacities of man, the

rareness of the ability to develop them ensures the exclusivity of the

Spiritual aristocracy.

Who then, äccording to Nietzsche, will actualize their potential for the

greatness of a higher life, and why only they? Nietzsche's answer is thatwhile all bear potential for development, all potential and hence all devel-

opment is not equal. There are, in short, individuals predestined from

birth to realize the füll potential of human life. The order of rank of men

is by and large a product of birth or inheritance (cf. BGE 184). One may

discover in oneself noble drives, but one cannot create them. The "con-

stellation" of a man's personality is äs fixed äs that of the stars, even if

different lights will shine more brightly in the course of its years (HH

227). A good education and upbringing are merely the means of nurturing

the greatness that in rare individuals already lies in seed: "There is an

ethical aristocracy, on the other hand, just äs there is a Spiritual one. [...]

The immutable character becomes influenced by its environment and edu-

cation in its expressions, not in its essence." ( M l— 4 04 ) Proper environ-

ment provides the soil in which youth may strike root and achieve maxi-

m um growth; but to produce an oak tree one must start with an acorn,

not a mustard seed.

W e do not believe that a man will become another if he is not that other

already; i. e., if he is not, äs is often the case, a multiplicity of persons, at

least the embryos of persons. In this case, one can bring a different role




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into the foreground and draw "the Former man" back — The aspect is

changed, not the essence — (WP 21l)13

Environment, in short, is not so much a determining force on the

individual äs a force to be determined and exploited by the individual.14

One

must become what one is, Nietzsche repeatedly remarked, indicating his beliefin the predetermined potentiality of each individual: "Against the doctrine of

the influence of the milieu and external causes: the force within is infinitely

superior; much that looks like external influence is merely adaptation from

within." (WP 47)

Complacency, however, is not the complementary attitude to such an

aristocratic philosophy. For the higher man's potential is forever in need of

discovery, and the actualization of potentialities remains a struggle, a constant

self-overcoming. The disciplined Stimulation of strong passions or drives that

they may dominate over decadent tendencies is the recipe for greatness. The

will to power is always nourished by a state of hierarchy, a "pathos of

distance", and this, according to Nietzsche, äs much within äs without the

seif. To stand above one's fellow man, Nietzsche held, was to know a strife-

filled soul, and to achieve those temporary and elusive victories wherein one

Stands above oneself. Whoever demands greatness from himself is subject to

unending inner struggle, "continuous work, war, victory, by day and night":

thus, his "distance" is established from those who are happily Ignorant of

13 A remark in Human, All Human qualifies, though far from contradicting them aetuallyreinforces, Nietzsche's frequent prpnouncements äs to the innate determination of man andthe practical unalterability of character:

That the character is unalterable is not in the strict sense true; this favourite propositionmeans rather no mpre than that, during the brief lifetime of a man, the effective motivesare unable to scrateh deeply enough to erase the imprinted script of many millennia. Ifone imagines a man of eighty-thousand years, however, one would have in him a charactertotally alterable: so that an abundance of different individuals w ould evolve out of himone after the other. (HH 35)

* 4 The almost universal categorization of Nietzsche äs a historicist or cultural relativist, thatis, someone who maintains that one's historical or cultural environment determines one's

thought, values and capacities, is quite false. Even those who display a sophisticatedunderstanding of Nietzsche's pathos and project generally fail to recognize or reflect uponhis ahistoricist and non-relativist tendencies. Allan Bloom, for example, falsely wrote thatNietzsche held man to have "no other mode of support than a particular culture. The

actuality of plants and other animals is contained in their potentialities; but this is not trueof man [...]. Nietzsche's contribution was to draw withperfect intransigence the consequencesofthat idea and try to live with them" (The Ciosing o f the American Mind [New Y ork: Simonand Schuster, 1987], p. 203). In fact, Nietzsche maintained that great men conversed witheach other throughout the ages from their mountain peaks, for they found few if anyreceptive ears and recognizable voices in their own time and culture. A strong cul ture isheld to be founded necessarily on an ahistorical understanding of greatness. The "exaltedspirit-dialogue" within the transcultural "republic of genius" is possible because history

allows great individuals of all ages to live "contemporaneously" (UM 111 and cf. M 4—142).




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·


such an unrelenting agony (M 14—240). In short, the lifelong struggle against

decadence is the patent of greatness, and few evideiice the "heroic disposition"

necessary for such a project. All men have multiple souls. Unlike the lower

animals, man is a battleground for warring instincts. But Nietzsche believedthat only a select few would engage valiantly in the struggle to order their

souls. All men have the same number of passions, he maintained, but not all

have the same capacity to stimulate their development. And only strong

passions, tempered in battle, allow for the füll affirmation of life. Order of

rank, then, is the placement of men along a manifold hierarchy of Spiritual

attainments according to Dionysian Standards (cf. KGB, 3 — 8 — 1883).

The last dictum of morality that remained for him, Nietzsche wrote in a

letter, was that each after his own way should do his best for himself (KGB,

7—1882). The precept accords with Nietzsche's belief in man's capacity to

realize his higher seif. It is also consistent with his belief that this capacity is

unequally distributed by inheritance or birth. Moreover, neither conviction

is at odds with Nietzsche's understanding of the preeminent importance of

man's capacities for love and judgement. Judgement is necessary to identify

shortcomings, the unrealized potential that lies dormant in oneself and others,

thus stimulating growth. Judgement allows one to keep in hand the grain of

contempt that inoculates love from stultifying infatuation or pity. And love,

by means of its vision of perfection, remains the greatest force in the

realization of ideals. In the form of amor fati., love serves äs the mark of one's

Spiritual rank.

However, Nietzsche provides few if any reasons to suspect that the

capacity for self-development is genetically determined. Indeed, he neglected

to offer any arguments to establish that inheritance is even a predominant

force over the environment. In short, the question of the relative influeftce

of nature and nurture remains very unsatisfactorily addressed by Nietzsche.

Nietzsche should not be faulted for failing to resolve this question. Quite

probably it will never be answeräble with any certainty. But Nietzsche may

be censured for his conviction that he had indeed arrived at the answer. I

am suggesting that Nietzsche's sceptical probity lapsed in this matter. His

retreat to a belief in predestination appears äs a desperate attempt to escape

the uncertainty and ambiguity of existence through the adoption of a facile

dichotomization of mankind.15

Nietzsche, who knew of the inexhaustible

multiplicity of the regimes of the soul and who claimed that freedom from

the belief in opposites was the mark of an elevated spirit, betrayed his

intellectual integrity. And it would seem that this betrayal may be attributed

to Nietzsche's own mcapacity for the love he himself deemed necessary for

15 Raised äs a pious Lutheran, Nietzsche's belief in predestination had childhood roots.




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Lovc and Judgcmcnt: Nietfcsche's Dilemma 105

the f ü l l af f i rmat ion of life. "Grand passion uses and uses up convictions, it

does not submit to them — it knows itself sovereign," he asserted (A 114).

Nietzsche touted himself äs a master of his convictions. Yet in this matter he

showed himself their slave.

If one does not see beauty in man, Nietzsche wrote, the problem is not

with man, but with one's eyes (M 9 —4 1 5 ) . It would seem that Nietzsche's

eyes often failed him. Too often did he find it necessary to raise himself by

lowering others, expostulating on their depraved states. Too often did

Nietzsche relish in demonstrating the ugliness about him while extolling his

own beauty. One feels that he found it imperative to accentuate the incapacities

of men, and particularly of women, so that he might tolerate himself. In

order to live with himself, Nietzsche wrote, he had to live above himself.

Y et Nietzsche ultimately proved incapable of living with himself without

resorting to the belief that he did not partake in the limitations of human

existence. W e must ask if Nietzsche's methods of self-aggrandizement are

indulgences unbecoming a warrior of knowledge. Does not the acceptance

of a dichotomy of the predestined select few and the unredeemable herd,

unexamined when once announced, represent a complacency of thought that

is contrary to Nietzsche's sceptical rigour? If each soul is truly obscure and

its regimes manifold, äs Nietzsche himself admitted, only an unjust pro-

nouncement m ay evaluate and condemn en masse . Does such condemnation

not reflect a tiredness, a form of decadence and snobbism, an unwillingness

continually to practice the art of nuance, the judgement which keeps love

f rom blinding itself, and in this case might have kept contempt f rom feeding

on pride and fear? There is, Nietzsche said in his most abhorrent Statement,

a greater distance between the higher man and the common man than between

the common man and the ape. Nietzsche's greatest fear, it appears, was that

of his affinity to his fellow man.

Once again: we may censure Nietzsche on grounds whose sanctity he

himself established: the imperative of sceptical probity. For Nietzsche system-

atically excluded the vast majority f rom consideration of Spiritual worth on

the basis of an unaccountable conviction. Nietzsche's male chauvinism is a

case in point. Nietzsche portrayed his unwillingness to challenge his misog-

ynist tendencies äs an incapacity. His "truths about 'woman äs such'" were

acknowledged äs "signposts to the problem which we are — more correctly,

to the great stupidity which we are, to our Spiritual fate, to the unteachable

'right down deep'." With regard to his scurrilous pronouncements on women,

Nietzsche admitted that "it is now understood f r om the outset to how great

an extent these are only — my truths" (BGE 144). Arguing for one's prejudices

is, however, quite the opposite of the sceptical freedom of mind and perpetual

self-overcoming Nietzsche lauded. His "truths" about women give evidence




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of a failure on bis part to challenge his own biases and thus to exercise

judgement rather than submit to prejudice, whatever its underlying causes.

The outcome of this shortcoming is clear. Nietzsche often found himself

unable to add even a grain of love to the contempt he held in such abundance.Such contempt, moreover, amounted to a retreat from perspectivism. The

plurality of human being is reflected in the plurality of the soul. Each, said

Nietzsche, is many. The means to "see ing things äs they are" he mäintained,

was "to be able to see them out of a hundred eyes, out of m a n y persons"

(M 11—138). Nietzsche's love of life, his greed for experience, was to be

sated through perspectivism: "Oh, my greed! There is no selflessness in my

soul but only an all-coveting seif that would like to appropriate many

individuals äs so many additional pairs of eyes and hands [..,] Oh, that I

might be reborn in ä hundred beings!" (GS 215) Perspectivism, thöughtNietzsche, would allow him to live one life äs many lives.16

Yet to refuse to

love is to disallow oneself the experience of another's life, of life seen through

another's eyes. For our fellow men and women hold up a mirror to our

souls. They offer us a kaleidoscopic vision of our own Spiritual plurality. He

who judges without love restricts his soul.l7

"We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their

ideal," Nietzsche wrote (HH 248). Such has been my attempt in this paper.

Its title might well have been "Of the Uses and Disadvantages of Nietzsche

for Life", a Variation of the title of Nietzsche's third Untimely Meditation.

No-one before or after Nietzsche has so forcefully demonstrated the imper-

ative of fostering our capacity for judgement lest we succumb to nihilism,

the spectre haunting modern man. No one has so clearly marked out our

choice: to embrace life despite the threat of its meaninglessness, or perish,

spiritually if not physically. No-one, in short, has given us a better description

of our need and capacity fülly to love our worldly existence. But whät does

it mean to aspire to such affirmation if so many, womankind included, must

be denied the opportunity to make this world their home? Must we not pluck

at Nietzsche's laureis, äs Zarathustra counsels us, if we are not to remain

solely his pupils? Does his ideal not evidence a grotesque indulgence in a

tired, intransigent belief, a relapse into faith that marks an unwillingness to

16This thesis is developed in my book Friedrich Nietz sche a n d t h e Polit ics of th e Soul: A Studj ofHeroic Individualist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), which lays the groundwork

for much of this paper.17

Emerson explained:

For there is somewhat spheral and infinite in every man, especially in every genius, which,

if you can come vefy near him, Sports with all your limitations. For rightly every man is

a channel through which heaven floweth, and whilst I fancied I was criticising him, lwas

censuring or rather terminating my own soul. (Selected Wri t ings of E m e r s o n , ed. Donald

McQuade [New York: Modern Library, 1881), p. 428)




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A TheAnti-Christ [1888], tr. R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin,

1968.

EH Ecce Homo [1888], tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage,1967.

NCW Nietzsche contra Wagner: Out ofthe Files ofa Psychologist, in The Portable

Nietzsche [1888], tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking,1968.

WP TheWill to Power [1882-88], tr. Walter Kaufmann and R. j:Hol-

lingdale. New York: Vintage, 1968.

M Gesammelte Werke , Musarionausgabe, 23 vols. Munich: MusarionVer^

lag, 1920—1929. (Dates of composition follow by volume number:

1:1857-68; 2:1869-74; 3:1869-71; 4:1872-76; 5:1872-76;

6:1872-76; 7:1872-76; 8:1876-78, 1886; 9:1875-80, 1886;

10:1880-81; 11:1880-82; 12:1881-87; 13:1883-85; 14:1882-88;

15:1885-87; 16:1882-88; 17:1888; 18:1884-88; 19:1884-88;

20:1859— 88 [poetry]; 21:1844—88 [autobiography]; 22, 23:Indexes)

KGB Nietzsche Briefwechsel, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 22 vols. Eds.Giorgio

Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter

1975-1984.

ü l

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