Nietzsche at the Jena Psychiatric Clinic for the Care and Cureof the Insane: A Case of Misunderstood Evolutionary

Development

by Thomas Steinbuch

The patient records from the Jena Psychiatric Clinic

report that Nietzsche requested a nightshirt for his

”thoroughgoing redemption” and stated that twenty-four

prostitutes had been with him during that night. This was

nothing new. The records at Basal report that he would

ceaselessly demand women.” Anacelto Verrecchia reports

that Nietzsche was satyr dancing in his room when Overbeck

found him. He further reports that Overbeck formed a death

wish against his friend as to be preferred to so degrading a

state of sexual mania. On January 9, 1889 Overbeck took

Nietzsche to Dr. Ludwig Wille’s clinic near Basel, Tranquil

Meadows, where he spent a week before being transferred to

Jena. The commentators say nothing about Nietzsche’s final

redemption. I suggest that his final redemption was

evolutionary development, and in this context, his hyper-

eroticism was not an erotomania but an affirming exercise of

will to power that mastered renunciation and that meant

admission to the mystery rites of Dionysius, as per theteaching of Zarathustra. We can bring Nietzsche’s philosophy

into focus by asking what he uncovered that led to the

reactions in his breakdown

Julian Young concludes that the etiology of Nietzsche’s

breakdown was psychological. He states that calling for

women and similar behaviours of Nietzsche’s “later

Dionysianism” were symptoms of clinical mania.i And

Montinari states that Nietzsche’s Dankbarkeit, which hedeclared in the epigraph to Ecce Homo, gradually becamemegalomania. But modern developments in evolutionary

biology offer a different perspective. Nietzsche inherited a

mood disorder of feelings of compulsive renunciation and

retaliation from his father. This inheritance occurred as

epigenetic regulation. Nietzsche reversed this inherited

pattern of epigenetic regulation and realized ein Mehr of life,and this was an evolutionary development. The cited

instances of mania in Turin and later at Jena are a

misunderstanding of this. ii It is worth nothing that the reports

of exaggerated over-politeness towards his doctors at Basal

and Jena were apparently quite pointed, so much so that

Köselitz and Overbeck concluded that Nietzsche was feigning

his madness.

Evolutionary biology is undergoing a revolution. The

Modern Synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics is

now seen by most evolutionary biologists as too restrictive

and it is being replaced by The Extended Synthesis. Arguably,

Lamarckism is recognized in the Extended Synthesis, and

Nietzsche was a Lamarckian. The hallmarks of the Modern

Synthesis have been externalism, gene centrism and

gradualism, and all have been challenged. It is these

challenges that open the way for my reading of Nietzsche final

redemption at Jena as evolution. But, that Nietzsche reversed

a “bad” epigenetic code inherited from his father can only be

meaningful for the rest of us given that he had a theory of the

role of the individual in human evolution. Let me take a

moment to review Nietzsche’s theory of human evolution and

then I will return to my reading of his full redemption at Jena.

Nietzsche observed resentment around him and inquired

into its meaning and origin, leading him to think about the

evolution of resentment. His basic ideas about human

evolution appear in two sections from Thus Spoke Zarathustra,“The Truth-Seer” and “On Redemption.” In the “Truth Seer”

Zarathustra looks into the past and sees glass coffins in which,

generation after generation, life has been overcome. He sees

only limbs and fragments, as if on a battle field or butchers

table, but no human beings, not now nor in all the past.

Humanity is in shambles. The image signifies that the door on

future development is closing and that as a species we are

converging on the last human. How has this happened?

To be human is to be a creator from out of fragments, a

guesser of riddles and a redeemer of accidents, says

Zarathustra. But this implies that we are the heirs of trauma

that have left us fragmented, coiled in riddles, and

shipwrecked by accidentally, just as Nietzsche was the heir of

the riddle of being dead as his father yet still living as his

mother. As human beings we inherit life-weakening from past

trauma, carried in our epigenome. The text of The Truth- Seer

suggests that we are carrying weakening from the distant past.

Because it is inherited weakening it is fait accompli, an eventof the past, and because the will to power cannot strengthen

life against it, it renounces itself as a failed agent of the

development of life. Resentment is overcoming life in every

generation, and we are converging on the last human after

whom we will not evolve further. As I reconstruct the text, we

are declining because inherited trauma from our ancestral

past has left us weakened. We resent our inherited weakness

but are helpless to strengthen ourselves against it because the

trauma that occasioned it is past. We are reduced to the

futility of wanting a different past. This leaves us now unable

to will power over contemporary trauma, and so we are

passing it on instead of passing on strengthening of life

against it by will to power, and so the next generation is even

more fragmented and more resentful. Thus the last human

looms ahead. Nietzsche uses the language of redemption in

relating how we can make the suffering of which we are the

heirs an opportunity to take the next step in our evolution. We

redeem the suffering we carry as heirs of the past by

collectively mastering the resentment it causes. We master

resentment by willing recurrence because it undermines the

feeling of wanting things to be different. Collectively, we must

will the recurrence of all of our past as far as we can access it.

Zarathustra believes that in this way humanity can be an

occasion for us to evolve Over-Humanity, thus redeeming our

human condition as inheritors of the effects of trauma. Allow

me to shift to Ecce Homo because there we can get a clearidea how the individual participates in the project of evolving

the human he or she is into Over-Humanity.

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says that he realized ein Mehrof life by overcoming feelings of renunciation and retaliation.

These were resistances to life occasioned in him by everyday

experiences, and his susceptibility to such feelings came to

him as an inheritance from his father. His will to power

engaged them and ein Mehr of life was the result. His criticscount his claim to have realized ein Mehr of life as Dionysianmania, but it was evolutionary development as I shall argue

below. Zarathustra addresses all, and says to all that they can

recreate themselves into forbears of Over-Humanity. Those

who master resentment pass on the Mehr of life they create inthemselves. Each one’s Mehr of life passes forward along acommon inheritance channel and binds together into one

consolidation, in Eins Dichte, and that is Over-Humanity, a

new species. iii The suffering of each human life is redeemed

in Over-Humanity as occasioning the good fortune of

providing resentment as a resistance for us to master by

willing its recurrence and reaching this outcome.

Nietzsche’s starting point that we are not evolving would

seem to be false since in fact, evolution has not stopped in

human beings. His point though is about species evolution:

“higher types appear” he writes, “but the level of the species

is not raised.” But Nietzsche based his case that we are not

evolving on the observation of resentment culture in which he

saw a psychology of renouncing power. In particular, he saw

that the morality of equality seeks to vengefully hurt and

cripple life by opposing privileged rights for those wills

capable of developing power. iv v He claimed that a “second

consciousness,” his second face from his father opened up in

him enabling him to see decline in the evolution of power.

Let’s look at this in a contemporary perspective. Although in

Neo-Darwinism, species level non-evolution is hardly ever

addressed, this is not so much so in the Extended

Evolutionary Synthesis. Neo-Darwinism treats the concept of

adaptation in terms of fitness of individual members which it

defines extensionally in population genetics, and does not

raise the question of species level evolution. But there are

other ways to analyse the meaning of adaptation that do raise

this question. For Nietzsche, adaptation means the success

of life in developing power against resistances in the

environment. The will to power seeks a resistance,

interpreting whether a resistance is equal, as is necessary.

Engaging a resistance above or below equal cannot evolve

power. In Nietzsche’s theory of evolution, we should be

developing the feeling of power growing, the feeling ofresistance overcome. We can therefore assess whether we

are evolving by observing whether we are developing a

psychology of power. Nietzsche’s Kulturkritik comprises hisextensive observation to the contrary, the observation of a

psychology of renunciation of power and species level

evolutionary decline. This is the leading idea of The Antichrist.If we analyse adaptation to mean the growth of life in power

over a resistance in the environment, it is a ready conclusion

that the psychology of renunciation of power signifies that

human evolution has stopped. We are the exception in nature,

the ebb of the great flood of life in becoming more. To sum

up, Nietzsche believed that the will to power of life that drives

life to become more has become vengeful because it cannot

strengthen itself against life-weakening inherited trauma from

the past that has left us beings of “fragment, riddle and

dreadful accident.” Because it cannot strengthen itself

against inherited weakening, the will to power has renounced

itself as a failed agent of the development of life. The

adaptation that Nature selects for is the growth of life as an

exercise of power over equal resistances becoming

progressively more difficult. The will’s renunciation of power

means that species-level evolution has stopped. But by

willing the recurrence of the past, we can control the feelings

of renunciation and retaliation. Nietzsche was not just a

“higher man” but a forbear of Over-Humanity because he

progressively engaged the psychology of renunciation that

has become the mechanism of our decline as a species. This

is the meaning of his final redemption at Jena.

But how did compulsive feelings of renunciation and

retaliation come to be Nietzsche’s inner life to begin with?

Nietzsche makes extraordinary statements about his paternal

inheritance in Ecce Homo, bearing out his Lamarckism. Theybelong to his ethos appeal to be in the position to make the

most difficult demand on us of a values revaluation, as he

traces his being in this position back this inheritance. EcceHomo was to be the introduction to his Hauptwerke, TheRevaluation of All Values, that would have been drawn fromthe material of the notebooks once planned under the title TheWill to Power. One subtitle of the The Will to Power was: “AnAttempt at a New Interpretation of Evolution.” It should be

noted that the main theory of the will to power as an internal

force of evolution appears in Ecce Homo/Wise/7. Nietzsche’s

inheritance statements about his father are a riddle he

unravelled to become the guesser of riddles that man is, as

we here in Ecce Homo “behold man” on route to Over-Humanity. Nietzsche states that he inherited decadence from

his father, that he did not inherit life from him but inherited

being dead instead, that as an inheritance from his father he

has a second face, he is a Doppelgänger who walks with afoot beyond life, so much so that despite his rootedness in

German culture on his mother’s side, Germaness can seem to

have been merely “sprinkled on” him. “My father” he writes,

“was more of a reminder of life than life itself.” This ghost

became him, neither touching the world nor touched by it.

Still in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche, says that he inherited hismood disorder of compulsive renunciation and retaliation from

his father and that this mood disorder was inversely related to

how alive he was: more resentful meant less alive, and vice

versa. We know that early childhood adversity can lead to

regulation of gene expression that elevates levels of stress

hormones, and some have been implicated in

resentment/embitterment disorder. Unlike mutations to the

gene sequences in the DNA itself, transcriptional gene

silencing can be reversed, as can over-expression.

Nietzsche’s statement of not having inherited life from his

father but having inherited being dead instead refers to this

psycho-biological mood disorder. By controlling it, as we see

him doing in Ecce Homo Wise 4 and 5, he reversed hisinherited epigenetic regulation and realized ein Mehr of life.Possibly, this configuration of epigenetic regulation was

induced by the stress his father suffered because of his brain

disease. Karl Nietzsche suffered a sudden mental collapse

when Nietzsche was 3 years 10 months old, so it is likely that

he was suffering stress at the time of Nietzsche’s conception.

The role of the father in inducing epigenetic regulation in utero

is not well understood but it is being studied. It is also

possible that a transgenerational epigenetic inheritance

occurred of a regulatory pattern that was in his father’s

epigenome before his brain disease and that was its

underlying cause. In either case, Nietzsche’s reversal of this

epigenetically inherited psycho-biological disorder was

evolutionary development to ein Mehr of life by will to power,

not to survival by chance variation.

In the Jena records Nietzsche is reported to have said

that he achieved a thoroughgoing redemption. This implies

that until then he regarded himself as having fallen short of his

full redemption. What was that shortfall? Among the final

revisions to Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote a vitriolic paragraphabout his mother and sister: they are canaille, they are pre-established disharmony to each point of his welfare andbetterment, a “hellish machine” working against him.

Commenting on the passage, Montinari noted that it is out of

touch with any reality in the treatment Nietzsche received at

their hands to that point. But Montinari did not read far

enough. Nietzsche actual point in the passage begins: “but I

confess that my mother and sister have always been my

deepest objection to my doctrine of the eternal recurrence.”

Confess? What was the transgression? It was the

disproportionality of his anger towards them to anything they

had done, of course, but not as transgressing the line of

fairness to them. Why would he knowingly say something

unfair? The context of confession makes sense only as a

lapse of self-mastery in his feelings about them. In the

passage, Nietzsche gives us a glimpse into the inner world of

resentment that he struggled to overcome. vi vii Three months

later at Jena, he faced the wrongdoing of his involuntary

commitment authorized by his mother. En route to the Jenaclinic Nietzsche went into a rage against his mother and had

to be sedated upon arrival. In one instance, the patient

records report his mention of his mother and the “horrific

machinery” being brought against him, which is the same

language he used about her in Ecce Homo. At Jena,Nietzsche’s resentment against his mother, never in his

control, became the most extreme challenge to his project of

individual evolutionary development, but he met it and willed

her and his sister’s recurrence up to and including the point of

his incarceration. That was his full redemption. In Ecce Homo,Nietzsche tells us that being wronged can be a good fortune,

and perhaps that is how he saw matters at Jena. Nietzsche is

grateful for the “good fortune” of being wronged because it

was a resistance of resentment that gave him the chance to

grow in life. His Dankbarkeit in Turin, and later at Jena, wasnot a form of megalomania as Montinari has it, but the

expression of ein Mehr of life that resulted from facing near

overwhelming resentment against his mother and stepping up

to it by willing her recurrence.

In the same patient report in which he announces his full

redemption, Nietzsche states that twenty-four prostitutes had

been with him during the night. We do have reports of

Nietzsche frequenting prostitutes; Wagner sent a letter to his

doctor that this was the case. But in the ancient world,

prostitution was associated with the Dionysian revel, and

perhaps this was what was on Nietzsche’s mind that night in

Jena. There are several ways he could have become aware of

this. He might have been aware of the Floralia, an annual

festival of prostitutes in honor of the goddess Flora that

involved large numbers of prostitutes miming before an

audience in a revel. It is referenced in Ovid, and Nietzsche

was a classics scholar. Also, Nietzsche visited Pompeii in

1877. Although the most glaring evidence for prostitution

would have been restricted at that time, off-the-street

bordellos are everywhere to be seen.viii Widespread in the

erotic art in Pompeii is the iconography of an arm crooked

over the head, a symbol of sexual readiness, both male and

female. Again, while most of the examples of this were off

limits for his visit in the Gabinetto Segrato, some were on

display at the time. The arm crooked over the head is

Dionysian iconography.ix Nietzsche used this image in ThusSpoke Zarathustra, and he was probably aware in 1877 that itwas Dionysian iconography in the wall paintings in Pompeii

that depict prostitutes and clients, if he saw them. Also, he

would have seen the statue of the dancing satyr from of the

House of the Faun. On the night of his thoroughgoing

redemption, Nietzsche was Dionysus and the imaginary

twenty-four prostitutes who celebrated with him were

maenads. But pace Young, his fantasy revel was not sexualmania.

Zarathustra classifies several meanings of sexual love as

constructed by different typological classes. The highest

class is made up of those who are “lion willed.” For members

of this class, sexual love is the “great invigoration of the heart,”

and “the reverently reserved wine of wines,” the Dionysian.

Only the greatest exertion of the will to power that creates a

further Mehr of life can open up to the revel under this Idea ofthe Sacred. For the rest who are lower in rank-order of life, it

is swinishness. At Jena, Nietzsche faced his greatest stress of

willing the eternal recurrence of his mother and sister,

mastering his resentment against them for authorizing his

commitment, and he joined in a sacred revel as entitled to him.

Because the imaginary revel was connected to a

developmental exercise of will to power, it was evolutionary

and not aberrant as erotomania or megalomania.

But what is the meaning of the number of twenty-four

encounters? Recall that when Siegfried wooed Brunhilda he

wore the Cloak of Darkness which gave him the strength of

twelve men, suggesting that he proved his manhood to her

twelve times in one night.x Did Nietzsche double Siegfried’s

number to thumb his nose at the ever lurking spirit of Wagner,

so as to say: “See, I’m twice your Siegfried!”

To sum up: At Jena, Nietzsche was still following

Zarathustra’s program of self-overcoming. He mastered his

resentment against his mother and sister for authorizing his

commitment by willing their recurrence, and created a further

Mehr of life in himself that redeemed the suffering theyoccasioned, not per se but as per hisresentment/embitterment disorder, as we said. This mood

disorder could have formed in utero as his father’sdeteriorating condition could have caused environmental

stress that induced up or down regulation of gene expression

for the relevant hormones. This means rethinking Ecce Homoand the late letters and Nachlaß in terms of evolutionarydevelopment instead of in terms of clinical psychiatry, such as

of a polarity of mania on one end and depression on another.

The reality behind the myth of mental illness is transcriptional

regulation of genetic information by chemical management of

the enzymes that condense or uncoil gene bearing DNA.

What we used to call mental illness is just the up-regulation or

down-regulation of genes that results in creating a behavioural

phenotype that is not adaptive in the long run. By the

cognitive discipline of willing recurrence over resentment,

Nietzsche reversed the gene regulation he inherited from his

father that gave rise to his phenomenology about not being

alive but being dead instead, and it explodes the myth of his

mental illness that he did so. Of course, he did have a

breakdown. Human species level evolution as he understood

it of more life as power over progressively more difficult

resistances has stopped, and seeing this nightmare as acutely

as he did, Nietzsche committed intellectual suicide. He bangs

his elbows on the piano discordantly out of tune in protest of

humanity out of tune. But the beginning and ending points of

Nietzsche’s narrative of our evolution are very unclear at this

time. I have attempted to reconstruct his insight into our

species level stasis as having begun with ancestral trauma

dating from when our population was small in number that has

been conserved in our epigenome to the present. Certainly,

occasions for trauma were everywhere when most of our

evolution took place at the height of the Pleistocene Era. Was

Nietzsche an evolutionary anomaly in having evolving a

“second consciousness” to see that we are carrying inherited

trauma and are resentful over it? This is a problematic

speculation, but not ruled out in the Extended Synthesis. And

as for his idea of Over-Humanity as a consolidation of each

ones’ Mehr of life, the Extended Synthesis offers somesupport, but it is very little. Epigenetic reversals we make in

our lifetimes are heritable, but there is nothing to support

Nietzsche’s idea of each one’s Mehr of life passing forwardalong a common inheritance channel to create Over-Humanity

in which life cannot be overcome by resentment. Still, we are

inspired by Zarathustra’s aphorism: “In my children I want to

make up for being the child of my fathers, and to all the future,

for this today.”

««««««»»»»

Addendum, from Thomas Steinbuch, “Commanding the Will

to Power,” in Questions Vitale, edited by FrançoiseMonnoyeur, Éditions Kime, Paris, 2009.

Is the Effect of Selection Survival or Power?

It is worthwhile to formulate the rival hypotheses of

Nietzsche and Darwin with some precision. Let (C1....,Cn-1,

Cn) represent the change history of organism O. Furthermore,

for each Ci let there be an associated Ei representing the total

environment to which O is responsive. What is Darwin’s

thesis? Let’s say that Ci is a survival adaptation of O in its

associated Ei if and only if O exists in Ei and, in O’s possible

alternative change history where Ci = Ci -1, that is, when there

is no adaptation of O at Ei, O does not exist at Ei. In other

words, Ci is a survival adaptation of O at Ei if and only if O

does not survive otherwise than by developing the Ci change.

Clearly, if every Ci in O’s change history is a survival

adaptation, then all of O’s Ci’s are such that O fails to survive

without them. Hence, what organisms become is identical

with the history of their changes necessary for survival, and in

that sense life is will to survival. We get the same result if

some Ci’s in O’s change history are survival adaptive changes

and some are growth of life changes and none of the survival

adaptive change Ci’s are also growth of life change Ci’s. But

it is not Darwin’s thesis that every Ci is a survival adaptation.

Some Ci’s in the change history of the organism occur without

being adaptions for its survival and are variations brought

about as changes to C by the environment, what he called

“definite variations”. Indeed, if all changes in O’s change

history were survival adaptations, he would have a problem

indeed in distinguishing his position from the teleological one,

saying that O changed in order to survive. So, some Ci’s exist

such that O does not exist otherwise, and so they are survival

adaptive Ci’s, and some other Ci’s are such that O continues

to exist in its possible alternative change history in which

those Ci’s do not occur and these are “definite variations” or,

or variations resulting from some environmental cause.

From here, Darwin has two ways to go to argue that the

will of life is the will to survive and refute Nietzsche. One

argument is quantitative and says that no matter what we

might want to say about the meaning of definite variations,

whether or not they are growth of life changes, the

overwhelming number of Ci’s in Nature are survival adaptive,

that is, they are such that O perishes without them. If this is

true, then the will of life is the will to survive. This is the sense

we identified above of saying that the will of life is the will to

survive, that is, in the sense that the history of changes

without which organisms would not survive is the history of

the changes that make organisms to be what they

(predominately) are, namely, the fittest to survive. Nietzsche

seems to think that the issue is a quantitative one, for he says

that survival adaptive changes are the exception. We will

consider the qualitative interpretation of what is rule and what

is exception as well. Given this quantitative framework, the

issue between Nietzsche and Darwin is undecidable. Darwin

has no refutation of Nietzsche because, in the first place, he

has no way to show that his survival adaptive changes are not

also Nietzsche’s growth of life changes by the exercise of will

to power. Nietzsche thinks that everything that happens in an

organism is a growth of life change by will to power and that

survival changes are just a special case of these. It is hard to

see how Darwin would make the case that growth of life

changes by will to power do not occur, or that fewer of them

occur than survival adaptive changes. The ambiguity of what

is a growth of life changes works here in Nietzsche’s favour.

A survival adaptive change is an external occurrence: Ci is a

survival adaptive change just in case the organisms of that

species in the same environment that do not develop the Ci

change perish. Growth of life changes are internal. Nietzsche

speaks of two growth of life changes in Ecce Homo, non-renunciation and non-retaliation. It is meaningless to apply a

quantitative analysis to these: an act of non-renunciation

might be identified with a certain circumstance, but surely it

has an infinite inward dimension making it impossible to count

how many distinct occurrence of growth of life take place in it.

Nietzsche can thus counter to Darwin that the statement:

there are more survival adaptive changes than growth of life

changes by will to power is meaningless, and so the

quantitative analysis of what is a rule and what is an exception

cannot be applied.

Another argument Darwin might have made against

Nietzsche is that even assuming that some Ci’s are growth of

life changes by will to power against a resistance and even

granting that there is an inherent drive in life to grow and

become more, the major life-energy of the organism is vested

in survival adaptive changes, not growth of life changes. This

then is the qualitative interpretation of what is rule and what is

exception: a change type is a rule change if and only if the

major life energy of an organism is vested in it. Suppose the

survival adaptive Ci’s in O’s history are major changes in

relation to the growth of life Ci’s. Let “On-1” represent On

before the Ci’s that are survival adaptive changes, and “On+1”

represent On after the survival adaptive Ci’s. We can say that

survival adaptive changes predominated over growth of life

changes in On just in case the degree of change between On-

1 and On+1 is greater than the degree of change between any

two states of On resulting from growth of life changes. So, in

the sense in which it could be said that what an organism is

should be identified by the quality of the type of change in its

change history, the will of life can be said to be the will to

survive because more of its life energy is vested in this type of

change. But again, while it is not meaningless to compare

survival adaptive changes to growth of life changes in respect

of their quality, Darwin simply has no way to verify this. Just

because survival becomes an issue for an organism, it does

not follow that the change that ensured its survival is vested

with more of the organism’s life energy than changes under

conditions in which its survival was not an issue.

While Darwin cannot produce a verifiable hypothesis

against Nietzsche, so neither can Nietzsche produce one

against Darwin. How can Nietzsche show that his growth of

life changes are not causally relevant to Darwin survival

changes? To show that there is a growth of life change in O

that is not related to a survival adaptive change in O Nietzsche

would have to show that the occurrence of the growth of life

change in the other organisms of the species in the same

environment did not ensure survival and that they perished.

And Darwin can simply reverse Nietzsche’s argument against

him at this point and counter that since we cannot know that

growth of life changes were not the causal ancestors of

survival changes, it can just as well be said that life is will to

survive in the sense that the changes that made us become

who we are as survivors were survival changes.

If Darwin grants to Nietzsche that there is a drive of life to

grow and become more by the exercise of power against a

resistance, then the argument between them as to what in fact

occurs as rule and exception in Nature is undecidable. It

becomes a problem of scope. A condition may appear to be

a condition of distress but in a larger context, perhaps it is

merely a period of building up of life-energy in an overall

pattern of growth. Alternatively, what appears to be a period

of growth may be a temporary relief from overall conditions of

distress. But Nietzsche no more knows what is exception

and what is rule than does Darwin. To know which of these is

happening in Nature it would be necessary to have before us

the entire change history of all organisms in all their

environments “ the God’s-eye” view.

The Case of Nietzsche. Although the argument in Twilight ofthe Idols is inconclusive, I believe that we can reconstruct anargument on behalf of Nietzsche that goes a long way against

Darwin. Even if Nietzsche’s intentionalist arguments in the

Nachlaß are more compelling than the published arguments,as I think they are, the question is not finally about what in fact

predominates in Nature. We have already stated the

argument in brief: for Nietzsche, growth of life changes by

exercising power against a resistance should be chosen over

declining life even if growth of life changes are so selected

against that we do not survive because of choosing them.

That is a value judgment.

Abbreviations

KSA = Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke. KritischeStudienausgabe in 15 Bände, Giorgio Colli et MazzinoMontinari, éditeurs. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York et dtv,

Munich 1980; Nietzsche Werke, Historisch-kritische Ausgabesur CD ROM, 1994, Walter de Gruyter et InteLex.

KSB = Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Briefe. KritischeStudienausgabe in 8 Bände, edited by Giorgio Coli andMazzino Montinari, éditeurs. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New

York et dtv, Munich 1986, print.

CM = Christopher Middleton, Selected Letters of Friedrich

Nietzsche, Edited and Translated by Christopher Middleton,

Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company,

Inc. 1969.

JY = Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical

Biography, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

DFK = David Farrell Krell, Nietzsche: A Novel, Albany, State

University of New York Press, 1996

SK Sarah Kofman, Explosions I: De l’« Ecce Homo » deNietzsche, Explosions II, Les enfants de Nietzsche, ÉditionsGalilée, 1992, 1993.

TH = Thomas Harrison, Nietzsche in Italy, ed. Thomas

Harrison, Saratoga, CA, ANMA Libri, 1988.

i Also recently, Key Redfield Jamison has advanced the view

that the ancient myth and cult of Dionysus was manic-

depressive. Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and

the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison, New York,

Simon and Schuster, 1993 chapter 3

Young marks off the later, ‘mad’ Dionysianism from the earlier

philosophical Dionysianism as being characterized by

Nietzsche’s (putative) belief that he could control the world at

will, which is manic thinking.

ii I would like to try to take the eroticism of this time frame

seriously and read it in light of things Nietzsche formulated

about Dionysian eroticism in contexts that are clearly

evolutionary. His statement that he realized his

“thoroughgoing redemption” is a statement of evolutionary

development. I know of no other text in which his Dionysian

eroticism is set in an evolutionary context. The other

manifestations of the period that have been cited as Dionysian

and manic or insane in some way, have been megalomania,

aggressiveness, and omnipersohood. But in fact, we really do

not know what we are reading about when we read the texts

purported to show this, but we do what sexual mania is and

by putting in this evolutionary context I hope remove or

complicate the argument against sanity in the period. If it

belongs in an evolutionary context, then it is not mania, and

we do not really know what the other things are, and that

leaves Nietzsche’s detractors having to directly argue down

what I think are evolutionary statements, which is not easy to

do. So my point is to force Nietzsche’s detractors into

denying that the statement of thoroughgoing redemptions is

evolutionary.

iv Resentment socialization is a symptom of the loss of

evolutionary potential. The will to power has turned against

itself to become an counter-evolutionary force. We can see

that he same thing has happened in another area as well.

Many writers have pointed to the fear of autonomy that gives

rise to authoritarian culture, the self-loathing that craves being

clean, white, and good enough. Behind that craving is a

terrible fear of the freedom of life, and this too must represent

a loss of evolutionary potential. I think we can probably figure

out the bio-chemistry behind the vengeful hatred of life arising

from inherited trauma. We can also hope understand the bio-

chemistry behind as the fearful hatred of the freedom of life

and ask how this distortion of the developmental path of life

came to be in the first place.

v Nietzsche writes from within a crisis consciousness of the

anti-evolutionary socialization. The socialization of the good

and the just is based on a vengeful hatred of life. It disguises

its vengeful hatted of life as goodness and justice. Nietzsche

sees this as profound mendacity and satirically ridiculing the

culture of the good and the just because he sees it lying. That

is good reason to be aggressive against it.

vi Nietzsche uses the term Einwand, an objection. They are an

objection to the eternal recurrence. This is a technical term in

Nietzsche’s lexicon, appearing in well composed sections of

Ecce Homo, always to mean his shortfall in self-overcoming.

vii That he confesses that his attacks on them imply a

shortcoming shows that the text is well-composed and so it

cannot be adduced in evidence of a mental breakdown as

does Montinari.

viii He remarks on the vulgarity of Pompeii in Fröhliche

Wissenschaft.

ix John R. Clark, Looking at Lovemaking, p 68, also,

Encyclopedia of

Mythological Iconography.

x Nieblunglied, Ch 6).