the culture of myth and the myth of culture
TRANSCRIPT
1
The Culture of Myth and the Myth of Culture
Ken Gemes and Chris Sykes
A version of this appears in Individual and Community in Nietzsche’s Philosophy, ed. J. Young, Cambridge University Press 2014
2
Culture [Bildung] is a continuous
replacement of illusions
[Wahnvorstellungen] with more noble
ones. (NF 1870 5[91]2)
1. Introduction
Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy(hereafter BT) promotes the claim that illusion is necessary for
“existence and the world to appear justified” (BT 24: p.113). This claim from the early
Nietzsche resonates with the claim of the later Nietzsche of Genealogy of Morals(GM) that
the key function of the religious ascetic ideal, itself clearly an illusion by Nietzsche’s light, is
that it serves to give meaning to existence and thus makes existence bearable (see GM III
28):
[H]e [man] did not know how to justify, explain, affirm himself: he suffered from the
problem of his meaning. He suffered otherwise as ill, he was for the most part a
diseased animal; but the suffering itself was not his problem, rather that the answer
was missing to the scream of his question: “to what end suffering?” Man, the bravest
of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not negate suffering, he
wants it, he even seeks it out, provided one shows him a meaning for it, a to-this-end
of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse
2 Nietzsche’s notebook entries (Nachgelassene Fragmente [NF] are taken from the Kritische
Gesamtausagabe (ed. G.Colli and M. Montinari 1967-77). Translations are our own, guided
by L.Loeb’s translations in Writings from the Early Notebooks 2009.
3
thus far stretched over humanity. (GM III 28 - italics indicates Nietzsche’ emphasis,
bold indicates our emphasis).
A central claim of this paper is that for Nietzsche it is the question of meaning rather than
the question of suffering that is paramount. This suggests that the recent trend of analysing
Nietzsche through the prism of his relationship to Schopenhauer should be tempered by a
perspective that gives more emphasis to his relationship with Wagner; it is from Wagner,
more than Schopenhauer, that Nietzsche takes the theme that the problem of
meaninglessness is THE problem of modernity.
Another central claim of this paper is that the very values Nietzsche seems to promote as
secular replacements for previous meaning-giving religious values, namely culture and the
cultivation of great individuals or genius, are by the lights of Nietzsche’s BT already
recognized as illusions. Above Nietzsche tells us that culture replaces old illusions with new
ones; this allows that culture itself is one of those very illusions. In subsequent works,
where Nietzsche valorises culture and the great individuals who are the engines of cultural
development, there is little, if any, explicit register that these values are newly minted
illusions. This can give rise to the idea that Nietzsche is positing culture and genius as
objective values or as (his own) subjective values. But if we focus on what is said in BT we
allow the perspective that these values are not naively posited and endorsed but are
consciously deployed as illusions useful for the modern age. From this perspective his key
objection to previous illusions, explicitly the Socratic illusion of rationalism, and, implicitly,
the illusions of Christianity, is not that they are illusions (that are false) but they are no
longer useful illusions for the modern world. The BT of 1872 does not explicitly point the
finger at Christianity, though Nietzsche in his new Preface to BT of 1886 somewhat
4
questionably claims that BT has implicit reference to the illusions of Christianity through “its
consistently cautious and hostile silence about Christianity” (BT, ASC, 5).Nevertheless
Nietzsche is right that the critique of BT can equally be applied to and Christianity and
Socratism, even if BT only explicitly targets the latter. What Nietzsche does not say in ASC is
that his subsequent critiques of Christianity place less emphasis on the claim that
Christianity is no longer a useful illusion (but see Gay Science 125 for a more ambivalent
rendition of this claim) and more on the claim that it is an illusion that is hostile to life (see
GM III passim and Antichrist 56). But this important difference in the emphasis of his later
attack on Christianity should not lead us to lose focus on the claim made explicitly in BT that
the new values of culture and genius are themselves illusions.
Whether the later Nietzsche stills see the newly posited values of culture and genius as
illusions but, perhaps, for motivational and rhetorical reasons, no longer explicitly
emphasises this point, or has come to a new conception of values that would no longer
render them as illusions, or has simply by-passed the whole question of the metaphysical
status of values, is an important question we shall here leave for another day. What we do
want to argue here is that as Nietzsche develops he moves from an optimistic, what Julian
Young (this volume) has called a communitarian view, which sees culture as a value to which
all may aspire, to a more pessimistic view that sees culture as the provenance of a very
restricted elite. From the perspective of BT we might say that the notions of culture and
genius become illusions Nietzsche develops in order to help cultivate the gifted few.
2. Mythical Narratives and Narratives of Myth
5
Nietzsche’s early project of the period 1870-1876 is best viewed as a project of
understanding the ways in which cultures are able to perpetuate myths which allow their
members to affirm life despite its horrors. Specifically, in order for life to be worth living, it
must be meaningful, but man “now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of
existence ... now he understands the wisdom of Silenus” (BT 7). This ‘wisdom of Silenus’ is a
placeholder for existential nihilism: life has no meaning, and it is only thanks to culture,
itself a form of illusion, that existence has the semblance of meaning, and is thereby made
bearable.3 Nietzsche’s notebook entries of the time repeatedly make the point;
“Illusions [Wahnvorstellungen]: for those who see through them, art [Kunst] is
the only solace [Trost].” (NF 1870 5[26]).
“Culture [Kultur] – the rule of art over life.” (NF 1872 19[310]). “This proposition
must be established: we live only through illusions [Illusionen]” (NF 1872
19[49]).
“Every kind of culture [Kultur] begins by veiling [verschleiert] many things.”
(19[50]).
3 Nietzsche can be read as holding the substantive thesis that life is meaningless, or
alternatively as claiming that life appears to be meaningless to those ‘nobler natures’ raised
on a diet of Schopenhauerian Weltschmerz and Wagner. On the second reading he is
advancing a psychological thesis that life must appear to have meaning for us, if we are to
be able to live it. In his later philosophy Nietzsche’s focus shifts increasingly towards
psychological questions of the latter kind, to the exclusion of substantive metaphysics. In BT
he often appears to hold both a metaphysical and a psychological thesis.
6
“All that lives, lives on illusion [Schein].” (NF 1870 7[167]).
“Pain, contradiction, is the true being [Sein]. Joy, harmony is illusion [Schein]”
(NF 1870 7[165]).
If existential nihilism is an objective, mind-independent metaphysical fact, it appears that
culture cannot demonstrate to us that life is not absurd; it can merely distract us from the
fact that it is absurd, imposing a semblance of meaning on the chaos. This beautiful
semblance stops short of giving life genuine meaningfulness; existential nihilism is not
defeated but merely taken from view, papered over as it were. As discussed below, when
Nietzsche proposes that “[t]he individual must be consecrated to something higher than
himself…” (Untimely Meditations IV, hereafter Untimely Meditations are referred to as UM),
(this something being ‘culture’), this proposition can be read as Nietzsche’s new illusion.
Culture is not in fact ‘higher’ than the individual in a metaphysical sense; it is higher in an
affective, hence psychologically motivating and existentially consoling, sense.
Both the “artiste’s metaphysics” (BT ASC 2) of BT and the narrative of culture in the UM are
self-consciously written as mythic narratives which aim to make existence bearable. These
works move between the perspectives of a meta-narrative which outlines the overarching
framework of illusion required in order to find life meaningful, and various first-order
narratives which seek to provide such illusions.4 In the first eighteen sections of BT there is
a first order narrative of metaphysical redemption as experienced by the Attic Greeks. In
the later sections of BT and in UM there is a first order narrative of culture and genius,
4 For more on the different levels of narrative see the excellent discussion in Poellner
(1998).
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conceived of as an analogue of the myths of Attic Greece useful for contemporary culture.
Both of these first order narratives offer the “metaphysical solace” which Nietzsche in the
early works takes to be necessary for the affirmation of existence. Myth is not only that
which can seduce us back to life in spite of its horrors, it is a pre-requisite for cultural
flourishing since
without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity: only a
horizon defined by myths completes and unifies a whole cultural movement. (BT 24)
While Nietzsche never actually gives an account of what he means by myth his usage
suggests the following as a serviceable definition of his core notion: Myth is a literally fictive
narrative encompassing symbolical archetypes that help provide a structural unity to
experience and life.6
The need for solace provided by myth is contingent on a pessimistic understanding of
(phenomenal) reality as comprised of instrumental, self-serving desire; an endless ‘flux’
devoid of ‘higher ideals’. The natural world does not contain the kind of values which we
take to be necessary to give meaning to our lives, and this leads Nietzsche to the conclusion
6Poellner (1998) identifies three senses of ‘myth’ which are operative in the early Nietzsche:
Myth as a narrative which connects day to day reality with an underlying a-temporal
metaphysical ground in an oblique fashion not fully discursively interrogable; myth as a
narrative that juxtaposes transient human life to this ground in a manner which allows this
life to be viewed “in a certain sense, sub specie aeterni” (Poellner 1998: 64); and, finally,
myth as a false story.
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that illusion (in the texts variously Illusionen, Wahn and Schein), and specifically myth, are
necessary to make bearable one’s experience of the world. The pessimism of BT is
manifested in the claim that philosophical theodicy – the enterprise of offering a rational
justification for existence, is impossible.7 This pessimism is to be overcome through artistic
illusion:
The only possibility of life: art. Otherwise a turning away from life. The complete
annihilation of illusion [Illusion] is the drive of the sciences: it would be followed by
quietism – were it not for art.” (NF 1869 3[60]);
My philosophy is an inverted Platonism: the further something is from true being,
the purer, the more beautiful, the better it is. Living in illusion [Schein] as the goal.”
(NF 1870 7[156])
3. Nietzsche and Wagner versus Schopenhauer on the Problem of Pessimism
Nietzsche’s early admiration for Schopenhauer is well known, and is clearly demonstrated
by the “Schopenhauerian formulations” (BT ASC 6) in which much of BT is couched. This has
7 There is a distinction to be made between an epistemically rational justification and the
kind of prudential justification predicated on the necessity of illusion that Nietzsche
recommends. Deliberate use of illusion can only be part of a prudential, not epistemic,
justification. We may be prudentially justified in accepting illusions which are evidentially
unwarranted but we cannot be epistemically justified in accepting such illusions.
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led some to claim that in BT Nietzsche helps himself to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics.8 It
appears that the ‘wisdom of Silenus’ is Schopenhauer’s pessimistic conception of reality as a
manifestation of a raging and unquenchable will expressed in terms of ‘folk wisdom’, rather
than in terms of transcendental metaphysics. Schopenhauer conceives of phenomenal
reality as the expression of the metaphysical Will’s endless ‘blind striving’. To will is to
suffer; so, being essentially creatures of will, we necessarily suffer. Satisfaction can only be
conceived of negatively, as the absence of such striving. Although the diagnosis that life
appears to be meaningless looks like a direct borrowing from Schopenhauer, we should
note two qualifications. On the one hand, the claim that life has no value might be made,
not from the perspective of a metaphysician, but from the perspective of a cultural critic.
Our modern predicament, is that we now no longer view life as having meaning, and it is
8 See, for example, Young (1992: 26), Soll (1988: 109). However Chris Janaway’s essay
“Nietzsche as Schopenhauer’s Educator” in Janaway (1998) and Appendix I of Janaway
(1998), being Janaway’s translation of Nietzsche’ unpunished essay of 1868, “On
Schopenhauer”, also published in Writings from the Early Notebooks (WEN: 1-9), clearly
demonstrate Nietzsche’s early skepticism towards Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will
as thing-in-itself. A similar claim is made in Staten (1990). Indeed, we would argue that in
BT Nietzsche disingenuously peddles this Schopenhauerian metaphysics primarily as a way
of elevating Wagner. Schopenhauer claims music is the highest art form as it allows the
most direct access possible to the Will. So Wagner, in Nietzsche’s BT is presented as the
modern musician par excellence; a conduit to the allegedly most profound knowledge. This
is part of Nietzsche’s deliberate Wagner mythology.
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this Weltanshauung that needs to be addressed, rather than any alleged metaphysical fact
about the meaninglessness of existence. Secondly, there is an important difference in
emphasis between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s respective accounts of the
meaninglessness of life. Life is meaningless, for Schopenhauer, because desire cannot
achieve final satisfaction. Life would have meaning, conversely, if we could attain whatever
it is that we fundamentally desire. For Schopenhauer there is not a qualitative distinction
between the will’s different potential ends. The various different ends individuals may have
are, in effect, legitimated by the individuals’ desire for them. This meaninglessness would
indeed be overcome if in fact those desires could be satisfied. In the final analysis, though,
this is impossible, according to Schopenhauer, and so life cannot have meaning. Any
illusions we might have to the contrary are pernicious, as they give us false hope that our
endeavours can be justified.
Nietzsche differs importantly in how he understands the existential problem of meaning.
Already in the early works, there is an implicit qualitative distinction in the kinds of goals
that we might pursue. What makes life objectively meaningless, is the lack of the kinds of
goals that would give it true significance. He champions myth as the means of overcoming
nihilistic feelings because myth offers a way of addressing this existential need. Myth
provides narratives which links up an otherwise insignificant life to an overarching
metaphysical worldview. Hence, as observed above, it is not the suffering (the unquenched
desires) which human beings have to endure which causes people to despair of life but its
insignificance:
…a people – or for that matter, a human being – only has value to the extent
that it is able to put the stamp of the eternal on its experiences; for in doing so it
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sheds, one might say, its worldliness and reveals its unconscious, inner
conviction that time is relative and that the true meaning of life is metaphysical.
(BT 23)
Note, Nietzsche does not here assert that the meaning of life is metaphysical. He
merely highlights the function of the conviction that the meaning of life is
metaphysical. The Greeks are Nietzsche’s paradigm of a people saturated in myth
who were “compelled to connect everything they experienced, immediately and
involuntarily, to their myths…thereby even the most immediate present was bound to
appear to them straight away sub specie aeterni and, in a certain sense, as timeless.”
(BT 23). This paean to myth is certainly not limited to BT. It occurs repeatedly in the
early works. Only by internalizing a narrative, which gives one a sense of significance
over and above everyday reality, can the individual succeed in overcoming their
existential malaise:
All living things require an atmosphere around them, a mysterious misty vapor;
if they are deprived of this envelope, if a religion, an art, a genius is condemned
to revolve as a star without an atmosphere, we should no longer be surprised if
they quickly wither and grow unfruitful. It is the same with all great things,
‘which never succeed without illusion [Wahn]’, as Hans Sachs says in the
Meistersinger. (UM II, Section 7)
This reference to Wagner’s opera is revealing. The slant that Nietzsche places on
Schopenhauerian pessimism can plausibly be seen as owing much to Wagner’s own
idiosyncratic interpretation of Schopenhauer the philosopher. As we discuss below,
Wagner’s mythologies can be seen as attempting to imbue the all-too-human with a
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magnificence and grandeur that life viewed outside of the aesthetic experience of the
theatre appeared to lack. Myth similarly occupies the central role in early Nietzsche for
fulfilling this distinctive role. In his discussion of Schopenhauer in UM III, Nietzsche himself
indicates that what he learned from Schopenhauer was precisely this feeling of the
meaninglessness of existence as the genuine pessimistic challenge, rather than the lack of
hedonic satisfaction which life provides;
[Schopenhauer]…teaches us to distinguish between those things that really
promote human happiness and those that only appear to do so: how neither
riches nor honors nor erudition can lift the individual out of the profound
depression he feels at the valuelessness of his existence, and how striving after
these valued things acquires meaning only through an exalted and
transfiguring overall goal: to acquire power so as to aid the evolution of the
physis and to be for a while the corrector of its follies and ineptitudes. At first
only for yourself, to be sure; but through yourself in the end for everyone… (UM
III p.142, bold added).
Think of the case of Sisyphus’s goal of pushing his boulder up to the top of a hill, which is
doomed to fail in perpetuity as it is cursed always to roll down again before it can reach the
top. If Sisyphus could reach the top, on Schopenhauer’s understanding, then the boulder
rolling would be meaningful. In contrast to this, Nietzsche tends towards seeing the boulder
rolling as meaningless because the goal itself is meaningless, and reaching the goal would
not change this fact. Enduring the suffering that addends boulder-rolling is possible, only if
the rolling is set in the context of an “exalted and transfiguring overall goal”. Suffering is a
problem for modern culture, according to Nietzsche, because, unlike the Attic Greeks, we
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lack a compelling narrative in which to contextualise suffering, and give the suffering
meaning. His proposed ideal of working towards culture and the genius can be seen as a
narrative that can provide us with a sense of meaningfulness that we lack.
“For the question is this: how can your life, the individual life, receive the highest
value, the deepest significance? How can it least be squandered? Certainly only
by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable exemplars, and not
for the good of the majority, that is to say those who, taken individually, are the
least valuable exemplars.” (UM III:6).
4. Three Types of Comforting Illusion
Nietzsche analyses three distinct types of illusion which work at the level of culture as
“exquisite stimulants” (BT 18), by which the individual is “tricked” into believing life has
meaning, and is thus worth living. He concludes “[e]verything we call culture consists in
such stimulants” (BT 18):
It is an eternal phenomenon: by means of an illusion [Illusion] spread over
things, the greedy Will always finds some way of detaining its creatures in life
and forcing them to carry on living. One person is held fast by the Socratic
pleasure in understanding and by the illusion [Wahn] that he can thereby heal
the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art’s seductive veil of
beauty fluttering before his eyes; a third by the metaphysical solace that eternal
life flows on indestructibly beneath the turmoil of appearances - to say nothing
of the commoner and almost more powerful illusions [Illusionen] which the Will
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constantly holds in readiness. Indeed, these three levels of illusion
[Illusionenstufen] are only for those equipped with nobler natures, who
generally feel the burden and heaviness of being with more profound aversion
and who have been tricked by exquisite stimulants into ignoring their aversion.
Everything we call culture consists of such stimulants; depending on the
proportion of the mixture, we have a culture which is predominately Socratic or
artistic or tragic; or, if historical illustrations are permitted, a culture is either
Alexandrian or Hellenic or Buddhistic. (BT 18, emphasis ours)
The Socratic illusion is the illusion most pertinent to the hyper-rationalism and scientism of
modernity. It works by propagating the false belief that “the depths of nature can be
fathomed and knowledge can heal all ills.” (BT 17). An artistic (or Apollonian) culture diverts
our attention away from the objectionable nature of life by focussing our energies on the
adoration of beautiful form. The tragic works by the illusion of a “metaphysical solace”. It
fosters the belief in a unity which underlies the apparent world, and offers the myth that in
death, the individual will find redemption and reunification with the reality beneath
appearance.
Socratic man in his nobler mode does not view knowledge and science instrumentally, as
the means of getting what he wants. Socratism in its higher manifestations (e.g. as in the
case of Socrates himself) is a ‘faith’ [glaube] in the ultimate value of knowledge. In Kantian
terminology, for the noble Socratic man, the pursuit of knowledge is an end in itself.
Science and knowledge are not venerated in noble Socratic culture simply for their
perceived instrumental utility, but for their being constitutive of what is truly valuable. It is
for this reason that Nietzsche describes Socrates as the “mystagogue of wisdom
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[Mystagogen der Wissenschaft] (BT 15). He is the high priest of a new kind of quasi-religious
‘ideal’. As mystagogue, he is the initiator into what is effectively a new mystery cult, one
premised on the intrinsic value of Wissenschaft. Socrates is
“the first man who was capable, not just of living by the instinct of science, but
also, and this is much more, of dying by it. This is why the image of the dying
Socrates, of a man liberated from fear of death by reasons and knowledge, is the
heraldic shield over the portals of wisdom, reminding everyone of its purpose,
which is to make existence appear comprehensible and thus justified; and if
reasons are insufficient to achieve that end, then it must ultimately be served by
myth – which I have just defined as the necessary consequence, indeed
intention, of science.” (BT 15)
To the extent that we are ‘held fast by our faith in science’ and ‘the Socratic pleasure in
understanding’, our life takes on the appearance of meaningfulness.Socrates is
the teacher of an altogether new form of ‘Greek cheerfulness’ and blissful affirmation
of existence [„griechischen Heiterkeit“ und Daseinsseligkeit] that seeks to discharge
itself in actions – most often in maieutic and educational influences on noble youths,
with a view to eventually producing a genius. (BT 15)
Noble Socratism is clearly a form of mystification, a false narrative which nevertheless gives
a sense of meaning and purpose to existence: “Even then that metaphysical drive still
attempts to create for itself a kind of transfiguration [Verklärung], albeit in a much weaker
form, in the Socratism of wisdom…” (BT 23)
16
Late Socratic culture, as manifested in the modern world, rests less on noble Socratics claim
that truth is valuable in itself and more on the belief that reality is correctable through the
application of knowledge.12 Suffering is interpreted as the result of a contingent state of
ignorance which reason has the power to overcome. It expresses “a profound illusion
[Wahnvorstellung]… that thought … is capable not simply of understanding existence, but
even of correcting it.” (BT 15). As Nietzsche describes,
…it puts in the place of a metaphysical solace a form of earthly harmony, indeed
its very own deus ex machine, namely the god of machines and smelting
furnaces, i.e. the energies of the spirit of nature, understood and applied in the
service of higher egotism; it believes in correcting the world through knowledge,
in life led by science. (BT 17).
Nietzsche offers two main reasons why late Socratism is declining, and why any new myth
which would replace it cannot be parasitic on its central elements. Socratism valorises the
pursuit of truth as life’s most valuable activity. But pursuing truth has the side-effect of
uncovering the falsity of the very presuppositions on which the Socratic high estimation of
truth is built. As we come to understand the true nature of life we realize the inevitability of
suffering and thus uncover the lie of Socratic optimism.14 Nietzsche also claims that late
12Nietzsche does not explicitly distinguish between noble Socratism in its vital, healthy form,
and Socratism in its late, degenerate or decadent manifestation. Nevertheless the
distinction is implicit.
14 This foreshadows Nietzsche’s later understanding of the will to truth as a sublimated form
of self-cruelty. “Has not man’s self-deprecation, his will to self-deprecation, been
17
Socratism is socially and politically unstable. Its ‘optimism’ gives rise to unrealistic social
aspirations on the part of the disaffected members of society, or ‘slave’ class. Socratism’s
characteristic ‘optimism’ – the belief that earthly harmony and happiness are attainable
goals – expresses belief in a worldly ‘deus ex machina’. Whereas religion typically consoles
through the belief that a god will right wrongs in a life to come, the Socratic worldview
hopes for restitution and justice in the here and now. The empirical world is felt to operate
according to moral principles, such that through the passage of time and the application of
human endeavour, ‘things will turn out for the best.’ This widely held belief, when
manifested at the local level of the socially disaffected and politically ostracised ‘slave class’,
breeds the false belief that “earthly happiness for all” (BT 18) is a viable political goal. This,
however, is false since society requires, according to Nietzsche’s draconian view, a slave
class for its continuation. This class has until now been held in check by ideological false
beliefs which reinforce the existing social order; for example the belief in the ‘dignity of
work’. As this illusion collapses, the slave class demands a reconfiguration of society, which
is in fact impossible.
…[T]he fruits of this optimism ripen, when the acid of this kind of culture trickles
down to the very lowest levels of our society, so that it gradually beings to
tremble from burgeoning surges and desires, when the belief in the earthly
happiness of all, when the belief that such a general culture of knowledge is
unstoppably on the increase since Copernicus?” (GM III 25). The will to truth eventually
uncovers its own mendacious roots, for while it presents itself as a will to objectively
understand it is eventually exposed as a highly subjective manifestation of the life denying
ascetic ideal.
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possible, gradually transforms itself into the menacing demand for such
Alexandrian happiness on earth, into the invocation of a Euripidean deus ex
machina! It should be noted that Alexandrian culture needs a slave-class in
order to exist in the long term; as it views existence optimistically however, it
denies the necessity of such a class and is therefore heading towards horrifying
extinction when the effects of its fire words of seduction and pacification, such
as ‘human dignity’ and ‘the dignity of labour’, are exhausted. (BT 18)
This early foray of Nietzsche’s into social commentary may strike the reader as somewhat
naive. He does not sufficiently explain why such a slave class is necessary for the
continuation of modern culture, or, indeed, why the demands of this class are irreconcilable
with the interests of the wider culture, though it is worth noting here that by Nietzsche’s
expansive notion of the slave modern workers who enjoy various nominal freedoms would
still count as the proverbial wage salves. In an unpublished work of 1871, “The Greek State:
Preface” he partially fleshes this out, intimating that a slave class is required in order to
provide for men of culture.15 Here Nietzsche, probably intentionally, fails to distinguish
between society’s goal by his lights (the propagation of geniuses), and the goals internal to
late Socratic culture (broad based general felicity –what the later Nietzsche disparagingly
calls “herd happiness”). Socratism need not fall apart from internal contradictions and
political strife. Indeed, the realization of the deep robustness of modern philistine, Socratic,
that is, scientific, “culture” is a fundamental source of the later Nietzsche’s profound
pessimism about the possibility of a general cultural renewal.
15 This essay fragment is in KSA, 1:765-777; KGW CV-CV3
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Nietzsche’s central argument against Socratism is not that it is false, or that it possesses any
intrinsic defect (e.g. it being ‘anti-myth’). Socratism is attacked because it is no longer a
viable illusion around which to base a future German culture. Late Socratism loses its faith
because the notion of general felicity is allegedly exposed as a myth and more noble forms
of Socratism fail because the goal of truth as valuable in itself no longer has any traction as
an ideal which suffices to make existence meaningful. The Nietzsche of BT is not so clear on
why this noble Socraticsm is no longer viable, explaining metaphorically that “science,
spurred by its powerful illusion, speeds irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism, concealed
in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck” (BT 15). The later Nietzsche of GM is more explicit in
arguing that the will to truth turns on itself and comes to see that the supreme exhalation
of truth is itself ungrounded and hence an illusion (see GM III, 23).16
16 In fact, it is not at all clear that the late Socratism of modernity, the belief that knowledge
is of great instrumental value because it paves the way to general felicity, is not a viable
notion. One gets a sense of Nietzsche’s awareness of this from his repeated expressions of
disgust with, and fear of, the triumph of the ideals of herd happiness and the prevalence of
the last man. If Nietzsche were seriously wedded to Schopenhauer account of desire and its
consequent dismissal of the possibility of any real felicity then perhaps he would have an
argument against late Socratism. But his acknowledgment that the last man achieves his
desired pedestrian herd happiness suggests that he was not totally wedded to
Schopenhauer’s account. One suspects that Nietzsche is aware that he has no ultimate
argument against the last man and is simply disgusted at his lack of ambition. In fact , the
last man is someone who has evaded Nietzsche’s dictum that man seeks meaning over
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Nietzsche’s argument prefigures his later critique of Christianity, which is not that
Christianity is false, but that it is spent. To be ‘in the service of life’, to ‘seduce us to life,’ an
value or ideal has to have affective grip on us, and in both BT and GM Nietzsche takes
himself to have identified signs of enervation and exhaustion in contemporary culture owing
to the degeneration of hitherto hegemonic ideals. In GM Nietzsche claims that
All great things bring about their own self destruction through an act of self-
overcoming [Selbstaufhebung]: thus the law of life will have it, the law of the
necessity of ‘self-overcoming’ [Selbstüberwindung] in the nature of life – the
lawgiver himself eventually receives the call: ‘paterelegem, quam ipse tulisti’
[submit to the law you yourself proposed] (GM III 27)
Christianity, by fostering the spirit of truthfulness, creates the conditions for its overcoming,
as this truthfulness, deployed against its presuppositions,undermines belief in itself.By 1887,
Nietzsche understands such late Christian culture as an example of ‘degeneration’, or
‘decadence’. Although many of the outward trappings, institutions and manners remain in
place, the spirit which previously animated them has gone. By the time of GM, Nietzsche
has of course developed further arguments, most notably that Christianity may be especially
‘hostile to life’, but in BT his equivalent problem with Socratism is that it is enervated. It is
clear from Nietzsche’s description of Socratism that it has fulfilled a vital cultural role up
until the present day. Whereas a philosophe (and later Nietzsche) would take issue with
Socratic culture’s covert religiosity, its existentially grounding ‘faith’ in science and the
‘quest for truth’, BT’s sole criterion is ‘to what extent does this allow us to keep living and
happiness and exposes it to be as much a normative claim than a descriptive claim. We
might say it is Nietzsche’s own ultimate illusion.
21
ward off pessimism?’ It seems abundantly clear that Socratism has been highly successful at
this, for much of Western history. To criticise an ideal solely in terms of its falsity clearly
runs counter to the spirit of BT, since BT, as we have seen champions the need for illusions.
If it was not for Socratism’s re-direction of the will towards the attainment of knowledge
universal wars of annihilation and continual migrations of peoples would probably have
weakened the instinctive lust for life to such an extent that suicide would have become a
general custom […] a practical pessimism […] which incidentally is, and was, present in the
world wherever art did not appear in some form – especially as religion and science – as a
remedy and a preventive for this breath of pestilence. (BT 15, emphasis added)
Religion and science are both forms of myth which have prevented the enervation of the
will. Socratic faith was for a long time a very successful means by which the ‘will’ has
compelled us to continue to live.
5. Schopenhauer, Wagner and Nietzsche on the Function of Illusions
In order to grasp the role which Nietzsche envisions for art, in providing illusions which
sustain the individual it is helpful to isolate Schopenhauer’s notion of ‘illusion’ (Wahn) as
developed in the section titled ‘On the Metaphysics of Sexual Love’ (WWR II). The sex drive
is the most direct presentation of the will-to-live; “…the ultimate goal of almost all human
effort.” (WWR II p.533). Furthermore, ‘instinct’ is the means by which the ‘will of the
species’ succeeds in subverting the individual’s own egotistically driven ends, towards the
end of the species:
…nature can attain her end only by implanting in the individual a certain illusion
[Wahn], and by virtue of this, that which in truth is merely a good thing for the species
22
seems to him to be a good thing for himself, so that he serves the species, whereas he
is under the illusion that he is serving himself. In this process a mere chimera, which
vanishes immediately afterwards, floats before him, and, as motive, takes the place of
a reality. This illusion is instinct. In the great majority of cases, instinct is to be
regarded as the sense of the species which presents to the will what is useful to it.
(WWR II p.538).
This instinct is “an illusion that conceals the service of the species under the mask of an
egotistical end.” (WWR II p.541). Putting aside the question of how a ‘blind striving’ such as
the Will could manifest such seeming intentionality, the interesting import of this is the
notion that the species acts through the individual, deluding him into acts which serve its
perpetuation. The species’ ‘interest’ is straightforwardly its continuation.18 This is a
repeated theme in Schopenhauer. It is built into our nature as creatures with desires that
we are not simply deluded about the possibility of the satisfaction of desire, we are also
deluded about the relation between our desires and our interests. Our genuine interests,
claims Schopenhauer, are not served by pursuing our desires; in fact, they only achieved
through the cessation of desire.
Wagner was clearly struck by Schopenhauer’s use of the concept of Wahn, most famously in
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The ‘Wahn monologue’ of the protagonist Hans Sachs
18 Nietzsche seems to allude to a mechanism similar to this in numerous places both in BT
and UM. Similarly, in his late work as well there is the repeated notion that “[the Will]
would rather will nothingness than not will” (GM III 1). What appear to be life denying
actions are in fact deeply sublimated forms of willing that allow individuals to go on living.
23
declares that life is permeated by Wahn. Sachs’s challenge as expressed in the libretto of Die
Meistersinger is to attempt to “guide illusion [Wahn] to subtly to perform a nobler task.”
(Warrack 1994:156, our translation) The crucial difference between Wagner’s and
Schopenhauer’s conception of Wahn is that for Wagner Wahn is not unambiguously
pernicious. 20Indeed Wagner, in extolling the redemptive power of illusion, even goes so far
as to coin the striking expression ‘wahrster Wahn’ [truest illusion].21 In the theoretical work
‘On State and Religion’, which Nietzsche read at the time of writing BT, Wagner attempts to
explain this strange notion of useful Wahn. He draws distinctions both between creative
and destructive forms of Wahn (in particular in the political sphere), and between two forms
of Wahn which differ in the scope of their mystification. On the one hand there is ‘worldly’
Wahn. In the example of patriotism, the individual sacrifices himself for an object over and
above his immediate interests. He is deluded into identifying his egoistic ends with the ends
of the state. His illusion is twofold: First, he believes that his real interests are identical
with those of the state, second he shares the general illusion that a final satisfaction of
desire is possible. Wagner identifies a different kind of Wahn which he associates with
religion. Unlike worldly Wahn, which remains entirely submerged in desires concerning
20 This perversion of Schopenhauer is perhaps most conspicuous in Tristan and Isolde.
There, the lovers find redemption precisely through the Wahn of sexual love, whereas King
Marke, in resisting this illusion, is denied the possibility of metaphysical redemption. See
Borchmeyer (1991:365-366)
21 In BT 1 Nietzsche gives a full quotation of the passage from Die Meistersinger which
contains this unusual phrase. For more on Wagner, Nietzsche, and Wahn, see the
interesting account in Shaw (1960).
24
everyday reality, religion attains a perspective from which it sees the fleeting, and ultimately
futile, nature of earthly desires. Religion displays an awareness that all such goals cannot
touch on the problem of existence:
[Religion’s]…basis is a feeling of the unblessedness of human being, of the
State’s profound inadequacy to still the purely-human need. Its inmost kernel is
denial of the world – i.e. recognition of the world as a fleeting and dreamlike
state reposing merely on illusion (auf einerTäuschung) – and struggle for
Redemption from it, prepared-for by renunciation, attained by Faith. (AP: 23-24)
This seems to be simply an iteration of Schopenhauer’s assessment of revelation; the
capacity to pierce the veil of individuation, and see the nature of reality as Will. The
‘religious eye’ (der religiösenVorstellung) comprehends that satisfaction cannot be attained
in this world “…and hence requires another world for its redemption.” (AP: 24). Just as the
more simple individual’s existence requires the consolations of religion or patriotism, so the
noble individual needs an illusion worthy of his powers. It is thus the
…work of that man-redeeming Wahn which spreads its wonders wherever the
individual’s normal mode of view can help itself no farther. But in this instance
the Wahn must be entirely candid; it must confess itself in advance for an
illusion, if it is to be willingly embraced by the man who really longs for
distraction and illusion in the high and correct sense we mean. The Wahn-
picture brought before him must never afford a loop-hole for re-summoning the
earnestness of life through any possible dispute about its actuality and provable
foundation upon fact, as religious Dogma does: no, it must exercise its specific
virtue through its very setting of the conscious Wahn in place of the reality. This
25
office is fulfilled by Art; and in conclusion…Art [is] the kindly life-saviour who
does not really and wholly lead us out beyond this life, but, within it, lifts us up
above it and shows it as itself a game of play, a game that, take it ne’er so
terrible and earnest an appearance, yet here again is shown us as a mere Wahn-
picture, as which it comforts us and wafts us from the common truth of our
distress (Noth) (AP: 33)
It is art’s job to provide the illusions by which we are able to find the world bearable.
Despite the ‘common truth of our distress’ we perceive life as a ‘game of play’. We thus still
recognise the nature of life, but apprehend this fact in a fashion which somehow makes it
bearable.22 For Wagner, and Nietzsche following him, art has the role of offering solace to
the individual who has grasped a ‘terrible truth’. This solace is not through any putative
knowledge of a metaphysical reality. Our strivings in the phenomenal world ultimately
appear insignificant, lacking the necessary gravitas we desire. We need metaphysical
illusion, as this is a supplement which lends the phenomenal world the necessary
‘colouring’. Nietzsche uses Schopenhauerian language to engage with Wagner, rather than
Schopenhauer. The immediate significance of Wagner’s piece for BT is Wagner’s idea that
art affords the most sophisticated ‘illusion of the will’, which seduces us back to life even
22 Wagner highlights the paradoxical nature of the claim that a certain kind of illusion
actually enables us to grasp an otherwise unbearable truth; “The nothingness of the world,
here it is harmless, avowed as though in smiling: for our willing purpose to deceive
ourselves had led us on to recognise the world’s real state without a shadow of illusion.”
(AP: 34)
26
when we are fully cognisant of the world’s lack of fit with our desires.23 A metaphysical
illusion, not metaphysical knowledge as per Schopenhauer, enables us to cope with the
nature of phenomenal reality. This is exactly the stance of Nietzsche’s BT as expressed in BT
18 (see above) and here:24
The Hellene, by nature profound and uniquely capable of the most exquisite and
most severe suffering…has gazed with keen eye into the midst of the fearful,
destructive havoc of so-called world history, and has seen the cruelty of nature,
and is in danger of longing to deny the will as the Buddhist does. Art saves him,
and through art life saves him – for itself. (BT 7)
When comparing Wagner to Schopenhauer on the value of art and illusion one is struck by
the affirmative character which Wagner gives them. Schopenhauer takes art to provide a
means to a, at least temporary, release one from the bondage of the Will, and he takes this
to be good. For Wagner art and illusion leads one to affirm life and hence willing, and he
takes this to be good. In this essential point Nietzsche is a follower of Wagner, not
Schopenhauer. Relatedly, Nietzsche’s idiosyncratic use of the term ‘Wahn’ follows that of
Wagner rather than Schopenhauer. For Nietzsche and Wagner there is a positive sense of
Wahn. For Nietzsche, following Wagner, it is through Wahn that art performs the positive
23
BT similarly reflects Wagner’s thoughts on art’s essentially affirmative nature. For
instance, Wagner claims: “…Art is pleasure in itself, in existence, in community…” (RA: 36).
See also (OP:155-156, 161) and (RA:32, 34-35).
24See also NF 1870 7[121]
27
task of wooing us back to life, In ordinary German and in Schopenhauer’s usage ‘Wahn’ has
strongly negative connotations of falsity thus it is most aptly translated as ‘delusion’. 25
Where Schopenhauer is in a sense an ahistorical, and, hence, global thinker, Nietzsche and
Wagner are, in a certain sense, local thinkers. While Schopenhauer was concerned with the
eternal problem of suffering, Wagner and Nietzsche were very much concerned with a
cultural malaise they took to be endemic to their current time.26 This was part of their
shared romantic inheritance. Nietzsche took over Wagner’s obsession with the perceived
degeneration of current culture and followed Wagner in attempting to revitalize that culture
through the deliberate constructions of new life affirming myths. However Nietzsche
eventually came to see Wagner as a sign of, rather than answer to, degenerate culture.
Wagner sought in his operas, especially his Ring cycle, to provide a new mythology which
25 English editions of BT consistently translate ‘Wahn’ as ‘illusion’ rather than ‘delusion ’. In
keeping with what is said above regarding the positive nature of Wahn for Nietzsche this
translation is perfectly justified. However this means that the English text fails to duplicate
the full oddity that Nietzsche’s use of ‘Wahn’ presents to German readers. More generally,
in this essay we have translated “Wahn”, Illusion”, “Schein” and “Wahnvorstellungen” as
they occur in Nietzsche’s texts as “illusion”. In fact one might argue that different
translations, for instance “delusion”, are appropriate in some cases. But this would involve a
whole essay in itself; in particular it would involve trying to untangle the ordinary valences
attending such terms from Nietzsche’s somewhat idiosyncratic valences.
26 Of course Nietzsche does make claims about past cultures, for instance in BT, UM and
GM. But his primary purpose in doing so is to sharpen the focus on what he perceives to be
our current cultural malaise. For more on this theme see Gemes (2006).
28
could lead to cultural renewal. However Nietzsche, after initially endorsing Wagner in BT as
the elect agent of cultural renewal, came to see Wagner, especially the Wagner of Parsifal,
as falling into the life denying solace of religious consolation. This goes some way to
explaining Nietzsche’s puzzling insistence that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is his key work and
that those of us who are not touched by it (including the present authors) have not
understood him.27 Nietzsche well before that book had already dismissed Wagner as a
possible provider of a new mythology that would allow for a Dionysian revival of high
culture. We may surmise that Nietzsche himself took up this task with his Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.28 One gets a sense of his trajectory from the last the last lines of Twilight of
the Idols:
27
It is pertinent to bear in mind here that for Nietzsche even the objectivity-prizing scholar,
say a Professor of Philosophy, is basically an under-labourer he is “only an instrument. Let
us say: He is a mirror - he is no ‘end in himself’” (BGE 207). For more on the theme of the
scholar as a passive mirror see Gemes 2006, especially pages 194-5.
28 Here we are interpreting both Wagner’s Ring opera cycle and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in
light of Schelling’s claim that “the modern world has no real epic, and that, since mythology
becomes established only in the epic as such, it also has no self-enclosed mythology”
(Schelling 1989, p. 71). This is not to say that Nietzsche was directly aware of Schelling’s
claim. Nietzsche’s understanding of the need for a modern epic came from his engagement
with Wagner and Hölderlin. In 1861 while still at high school Nietzsche had written an essay
in praise of Hölderlin. Defining his mission Zarathustra’s says
when my eyes flee from the present to the past, it always discovers the same thing:
fragments and limbs and dreadful chances - but no men! … I walk among men as
29
I again return to the place from which I set out - the Birth of Tragedy was my first
revaluation of all values ... I again plant myself in the soil out of which I draw all that I
will and can – I, the last disciple of Dionysus – I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence.
The eternal recurrence is of course the means by which Zarathustra hopes to reinvigorate
his followers and ward of the threat of suicidal nihilism; as such it functions as Nietzsche’s
grand attempt at a final life affirming myth.
6. The value of culture
The idea that the current age needs a deliberate, constructed myth as a means of self-
affirmation was integral to a romantic strain of thought expressed in thinkers such as
Schelling, Schlegel, Novalis and Hölderlin. They believed that what gave integrity and centre
to Greek culture, the highest culture that man had yet achieved, was their naïve belief in the
Homeric gods. The problem confronting us moderns is that we are no longer capable of
among fragments of the future: of the future which I scan. And it is my art and aim,
to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful
chance.(Z, II, 21)
Here Nietzsche almost certainly had in mind the following passage in Hölderlin’sHyperion,
itself a self-conscious attempt at creating a mythologizing epic poem,
I can think of no people more at odds with themselves than the Germans. You see
artisans, but no men, thinkers, but no men … is this not like a battlefield on which
hacked-off hands and arms and every other limb scattered about. (Hölderlin (1952:
420) – our translation).
30
naïve belief in such unifying mythologies. They concluded that what was needed was a new
deliberately constructed mythology. Thus Schlegel wrote to Hölderlin “Perhaps you have the
choice my friend to be either the last Christian, the Brutus of the old religion, or the Christ of
a new gospel” (cited in Williamson (2004:51).29Hölderlin’s Hyperion is just such an attempt
to create a new mythology. Exactly how this could work was a deeply vexing question:
after all if one deliberately invents a mythology how is one capable of actually literally
believing it, and in the absence of such genuine belief how can that mythology provide a
meaning and centre to one’s life?30 In his unpublished early essay “The Philosopher:
29 Indeed a month earlier Schlegel in another letter to Novalis had assigned this task to
himself, thus he wrote of his desire to “write a new bible and wander in the footsteps of
Mohammed and Luther”. (Williamson 2004:55)
30 The first essay of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality tells a story of the seemingly
deliberate Jewish invention of Christian mythology. Notoriously this idea of a deliberately
invented myth brings with it the question of how the inventors of that myth could
themselves have believed it (see, for instance, Bittner (1994). Wagner’s solution to a similar
problem was that through a literal sensory bombardment rational faculties could be
bypassed. It was Wagner’s intention that the four operas of the Ring cycle, some of which
run over five hours long, are to be experienced over four consecutive nights so that his
audience would be totally overwhelmed, thereby the themes of his work could penetrate to
a level deep below their conscious rational faculties, and there take root. As Wagner himself
put it “the public, that representative of daily life, forgets the confines of the auditorium,
and lives and breathes now only in the artwork which seems to it as Life itself, and on the
31
Reflections on the Struggle Between Art and Knowledge” Nietzsche exclaims “One must
even want illusions - that is what is tragic” and goes on to ask “might not art perhaps itself
be capable of creating a religion or giving birth to a myth?”(KSA 7: 427-9) The early
Nietzsche took up the romantic idea that a new constructed mythology was the core to a
rebirth of culture. As we have seen in BT he argued that mythology is the core of any
genuine culture. There he argued that Wagner was to be the creator of a new mythology
necessary for a rebirth of German culture;
Let no one believe that the German spirit has lost its mythical homeland forever
when it still clearly understands the voice of the bird that speaks of that homeland.
One day it will awake in the morning freshness from a deep sleep. Then it will kill
the dragon, destroy the malicious dwarf, and awaken Brünhilde – and even Wotan’s
spear will not block its path. (BT 24)31
stage which seems the wide expanse of the whole World” (AF: 185). We might question
Wagner’s confidence that this state might persist outside the confines of the auditorium.
31 As Chris Raymond has pointed out to us in conversation and an e-mail correspondence;
many Nietzsche scholars follow Kaufmann (see, for instance, Kaufman 1974:394) in taking
seriously only the first fifteen sections of the Birth of Tragedy, which deal, among other
things, with the birth, death and function of Greek tragedy. Again, following Kaufmann,
they tend to dismiss the last ten sections, which deal with Wagner, as embarrassing
apologetics. Raymond makes the case that if we see the whole book as heralding the
rebirth of tragedy in Wagnerian music drama we have an understanding of why in the first
fifteen sections of the book he makes certain claims about Greek tragedians which seem
fairly ungrounded and are in marked disagreement with lectures he was giving more or less
32
By1876 when Nietzsche came to the inaugural Bayreuth Festival his hopes of a rebirth of
high culture through Wagner, hopes to which he had made great sacrifices, possibly
including that of his academic career, had been completely dashed. Thus by the time of the
first of his so-called middle period works Human, All too Human Nietzsche found himself
devoid of any grand normative project. In his 1886 preface to the second volume of HAH he
writes
My task – where had it gone? What? Was it now not as if my task had withdrawn from
me, as though I would for a long time come to cease to have any right to it?” (HAH II,
Preface 3)
Indeed HAH is suffused with a strong awareness of the inevitable continuing triumph of
philistine culture:
contemporaneously (cf. KGW, II, 3, pp. 1-57). According to Raymond, Nietzsche “constructs
a narrative of the birth and decline of Greek tragedy that makes music essential to tragedy -
to persuade his reader that true tragedy can only be reborn once its musical ground has
been re-established (hence 'The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music')”. To this end,
Nietzsche pictures a decline from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides, because Aeschylus is
the earliest and most musical of the tragedians, and hence closest to its Dionysian origins”
(private communication). The suggestion, then, is that with BT Nietzsche is attempting to
create a kind of inspirational Wagner mythology, or what Nietzsche in the second essay of
his Untimely Meditations refers to as a “monumental” historical narrative (see UM, 2,
especially section 2) about tragedy which places Wagner as its heir.
33
The demagogic character and the intention to appeal to the masses is at present
common to all political parties: on account of this intention they are all competing to
transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities and thus to paint them on
the wall. This is no longer alterable (HAH I 438).
When in his later works he takes up a normative project it is of a much more limited scope.
7. Affirmation and Zarathustra
If this narrative of Nietzsche’s development is to be accepted one must explain the position
of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed masterwork Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his cannon. For if by
HAH he had already despaired of the project of inaugurating a rebirth of high culture, and
thus presumably given up on the idea of the need for a new mythology to instigate such a
rebirth, why then does he create his own mythological narrative with Zarathustra, a work
which post-dates HAH? First, it is worth noting that after he had given up on the idea of
Wagner as the herald of a new mythology he seems to have implicitly nominated himself as
the new champion of something like this task. Thus in 1883 upon first hearing of Wagner’s
death he wrote
Ultimately, it was against the aged Wagner I had to defend myself; as regards the
authentic Wagner, I will to a good extent become his heir. (Sämtliche Briefe 6:333-4)
The aged Wagner is the Wagner who in Nietzsche’s eyes had “sunk down helpless and
shattered before the cross” (HAH II, Preface, 3). Is then Zarathustra Nietzsche’s attempt to
become the heir of the authentic Wagner? And heir of what exactly? Surely not, given the
recognition of the inevitable triumph of democratic, bourgeois, philistine culture, the
34
romantic project of instigating a new elevated general culture? We believe the answer is
that Nietzsche now had redefined the project: He now aimed not for an elevated general
culture but an elite culture open to only an initiate few. Indeed, while the early German
romantics typically extolled the idea of a rebirth of a general German culture through myths,
there was a strain that claimed that a cultural revival was only possible for an enlightened
elite. As Williamson nicely puts it:
The notion that the chosen few constituted a “pure” or “invisible church” found
heightened expression among the early Romantics… In their private writings they
often referred to the Elysian mysteries as a model of religious-philosophical education
that could be confined to a few adepts. (2004:50-51).
The realization that the road to a higher culture can only be travelled by a very select few is
one of the great realizations of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra; he quickly comes to see that he is
mistaken in trying to instruct the rabble. In the Prologue to Zarathustra, after leaving his
cave Zarathustra comes to the town and attempts to instruct the “people assembled in the
market-place”. They of course are oblivious to his message and laugh at his discourse on
the need to go beyond man to the superman. Thereupon Zarathustra comes to a great
revelation:
A light has dawned for me: Zarathustra shall not speak to the people but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be herdsman and dog to the herd!
. . .
To lure many from the herd — that is why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: the herdsmen shall call Zarathustra a robber.
The creator seeks companions not corpses or herds or believers. The creator seeks fellow creators, those who inscribe new values on new tables.
35
. . .
I will not be a herdsman or gravedigger. I will not speak again to the people: I have spoken to a dead man for the last time. (Z, Prologue, 9)
Zarathustra, then, is not a work which Nietzsche hoped would pave the way for a general
cultural renewal through inspiration of the citizenry in general. For Nietzsche the aspiration
to such a general culture died with Wagner’s Bayreuth fiasco. Zarathustra is aimed at
inspiring a select few to genuine and full life-affirmation. That is why Nietzsche can only
aspire to be “to a good extent” Wagner’s heir. As to the mechanics of that inspiration, it is
not aimed at inspiring through arguing for particular theses, even theses of a revolutionary
content, (theses concerning the superman, the eternal recurrence, the primacy of will to
power, etc). Nor is it aiming to provide a new mythology that is, per impossible, to be
literally believed. Rather, it takes off from Wagner’s notion of a deep poetic inspiration. For
Nietzsche, Zarathustra with its rhythmic incantations and its repeated chorus like refrain
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” constituted a kind of music. In Ecce Homo in his summary of
Zarathustra he says “[p]erhaps the whole of Zarathustra may be reckoned as music” (EH,
‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, 1). Indeed, Nietzsche’s claim to have become Wagner’s heir was
made just after he had finished the first three parts of Zarathustra.33 He took Zarathustra to
be his most important work. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche says
Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself. With that I have
given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far. This book,
with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the highest book there is, the book that is
33 The letter where Nietzsche makes that claim was written on February 18, 1883 and,
indeed, in that very letter he also refers to “the ten gay and fresh January days in which my
Zarathustra came into being”.
36
truly characterized by the air of the heights—the whole fact of man lies beneath it at
a tremendous distance—, it is also the deepest, born out of the innermost wealth of
truth, an inexhaustible well to which no pail descends without coming up again filled
with gold and goodness. Here no "prophet" is speaking, none of those gruesome
hybrids of sickness and will to power whom people call founders of religions. Above
all, one must hear aright the tone that comes from this mouth, the halcyon tone, lest
one should do wretched injustice to the meaning of its wisdom. (EH, Preface 4).
Nietzsche believed that those who could hear rightly would thereby find an inspiration that
could unlock their deepest longings. Those who are so inspired would now express,
presumably through sublimated forms, those creative drives that they had formerly
repressed under the influence of the dominant ascetic ideal.34 Indeed, this kind of poetic
inspiration is exactly the influence Zarathustra had on many (Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephan
George, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, to name just a few), especially in the first 50 years
after its publication. These are, by Nietzschean lights, readers of genius who develop and
keep the flame of culture alive. Nietzsche still, in a certain sense, aspires to a general
culture, but it is one that only the elite directly participate in. For the Nietzsche of
Zarathustra, as with the earlier Nietzsche of BT high culture is what gives meaning to the
lives of both members of the elite and members of the herd. The difference is that the early
Nietzsche optimistically hoped that the common people could be educated (by Wagner or
whoever) into a position where they could appreciate and thereby in some sense participate
34 For an account of the importance of the notion of sublimation in Nietzsche’s thought and
a contrast between Nietzsche’s and Freud’s concepts and mechanics of sublimation see
Gemes (2009).
37
in higher culture; whereas the later Nietzsche saw the idea of the herd’s participation in, or
genuine appreciation of, higher culture to be a chimera. In this case the herd’s existence,
being a precondition for the higher types – wage slaves are still needed to keep society
functioning - would have a meaning, albeit one that members of the herd would, typically,
have no awareness of.36
Julian Young has argued (this volume) that Nietzsche is fundamentally a communitarian
thinker. If we are right this claim may be true of the early Nietzsche who endorsed the
Wagnerian project. But of the later Nietzsche it is only true if we take the relevant
community to be defined, not synchronically in terms of Nietzsche’s contemporary society,
but diachronically in terms of the geniuses, who talk to each other, “each giant calling to his
brother through the desolate intervals of time”, and who are real the engines of genuine
cultural renewal and development. (KSA 1:804) As Nietzsche himself puts it: “There is an
invisible bridge from genius to genius which constitutes the genuinely real “history” of a
people”. (KSA 7:417) Even here we must be cautious and recognise the possibility that this
very notion of the diachronically defined culture of genius, this “history”, is, by Nietzsche’s
refracted lights, itself just one more inspirational myth, or in Nietzsche’s own words a
“beautiful illusion”.
36 These last paragraphs owes a lot to conversations with Gudrun von Tevenar, and to a
reading of her essay “Zarathustra: ‘That Malicious Dionysian’” in Gemes and Richardson
(2013) and to conversations with Andrew Huddleston and a reading of his "Nietzsche's
Cultural Perfectionism" in Nietzsche’s Values, eds. K. Gemes and C. Janaway (forthcoming).
38
Bibliography of Works Cited
Borchmeyer, Dieter. Richard Wagner: Theory and Theatre, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991.
Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John, The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013
Gemes, Ken and Janaway, Christopher, Nietzsche’s Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming.
Gemes, Ken, “Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 38: 38-59,
2009
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