4
Nathalie Lachance
The Nietzsche reader cannot help but notice a tension in the philosopher’s work between his concern for education and his postulate of the constructedness of all truths. What becomes of education if we accept this postulate? What is one to teach? How should one teach it? Nietzsche grappled with these questions – as did Zarathustra, whose tale can be interpreted as the therapeutic journey of an educator who has much to (un) learn. The chapter “The Convalescent” suggests that Zarathustra’s journey is a kind of therapy.1 How could one define the illness from which Zarathustra must recover? Without going into a detailed interpretation of the text, it is safe to say that it is as educator that he suffers: his convalescence is coined by a transformation of his task as educator, as it appears that he must relinquish or at least reassess his teaching of the Overman. As teacher of the Overman, he was mocked by men on the marketplace: what authority could Zarathustra and his teaching possibly possess in the eyes of those men who live in a world in which God is dead – in a world in which every discourse is but another construct? Zarathustra’s illness originates from this crisis, as does Nietzsche’s project.
This crisis of authority led, in philosophy of education, to the debate between liberal education and constructivism. Those who promote liberal education and the transmission of an existing body of knowledge are accused of indoctrinating pupils with the narratives of the established order. Those who champion constructivism – the construction of knowledge by pupils – are accused of indoctrinating these pupils with a dangerous relativism. This very tension permeates Nietzsche’s work. The death of God may result in the emancipation of humankind, but if this means the emancipation from all that gives weight and meaning to the human experience, from all that has enabled it to survive thus far, humankind will perish. Survival is inextricably linked, as one reads in the chapter “On the Thousand Goals and One” of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to the steadfast belief in certain values: “Man alone assigned values to things, to preserve himself.”2 A humankind confronted by the thought that its values are only constructs might very well find itself in a pedagogical impasse: why value anything, why transmit anything, why learn anything? The crisis of authority arises from the devaluation of the concept of value itself and is a potentially fatal illness. How does Nietzsche, as an author who shuns authority, address this? What does he suggest to the reader—and how?
Inspired by Keith Ansell Pearson’s suggestion that an ethics of reading lies at the center of Nietzsche’s pedagogy,3 I will explore the points of intersection, in Nietzsche’s work, between education and reading, to show that Nietzsche devises an ethics of reading coined by agonistics and which functions as therapy for a culture suffering from the pedagogical impasse produced by the death of God. In his study The Ethics of Reading, J. Hillis Miller defines the ethical moment in the act of reading as follows: “On the one hand it is a response to something, responsible to it, responsive of it. . . . On the other hand, the ethical moment in reading leads to an act.”4 This definition has been interpreted as a response to attacks on deconstruction, which its detractors deem nihilistic and relativist.5 Postmodern theory, with its deconstructive approach revealing the unstable foundations of language, has indeed insisted upon the unreadability of texts – on textual indeterminacy, on the impossibility to determine anything at all that is definitive in texts, including Nietzsche’s.6 Confronted to this unreadability, the reader has a great textual response-ability, to use a coinage by Alan D. Schrift.7 In Nietzsche’s work, as I will show, the reader is constantly reminded of this textual response-ability.
For Nietzsche, the act of reading is an agon, a contest with and against philosophical, cultural, and literary traditions, a process which does not consist in a systematic deconstruction for deconstruction’s sake but which seeks to educate and emancipate readers by means of a rigorous confrontation with worthy opponents. Nietzsche’s whole philosophical project itself can be interpreted as his own education and emancipation—and those of the reader—through and against the great opponents that are Socrates, Jesus, Schopenhauer, Kant, and Wagner, to name a few. As Hutter puts it: “We cannot begin to understand Nietzsche if we do not see his writings as expressions of a personal quest for autonomy and wisdom that call on readers to engage in a similar struggle.”8 Nietzsche’s utterances regarding reading suggest that his reader himself must enter in a contest and educate and emancipate himself through and against the texts of his worthy opponents, including Nietzsche’s. Nietzsche’s pedagogical project, his ethics of reading, consists in an incessant agonistic movement between transmission, deconstruction, and creation. Nietzsche would not side with those who transmit knowledge like a faded hand-me-down, robbing their pupils of the joys of discovery and experimentation, but he would not side with the proponents of constructivism either, whose pupils are meant to create their reality ex nihilo, robbing them of the chance—and of the responsibility—to engage with history. This agonistic movement between transmission, deconstruction, and creation is the contest, which Nietzsche proposes to his reader. In order to explore this contest, I will present Nietzsche’s early texts On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, and Homer’s Contest. These will serve as theoretical framework, enabling me to interpret other passages from Nietzsche’s work in which he engages with Socrates and Kant, criticizing their pedagogical methods and developing, in opposition to these, his own style and ethics of reading. I will end with a reading of Ecce Homo, in which Nietzsche’s thoughts on education and health converge, revealing the relationship between reading, agonistics, and health.
Nietzsche’s preoccupation with agonistics has received much attention, in the last decade or so, in the works of Acampora, Appel, Hatab, and Siemens, in Lungstrum’s and Sauer’s collection of essays Agonistics: Arenas of Creative Contest, and in Schrift’s Why Nietzsche Still? These studies have looked at the agonal problematic in Nietzsche’s work in existential, aesthetic, and political terms, yielding enlightening results. As for the signification of agonistics for education in Nietzsche’s thought, Murphy, in his study Nietzsche as Educator, identified the contest as “the pivotal element of educational practice.”9 Murphy also wrote that Nietzsche’s books “beautifully exemplify the spirit of the contest between master and student, between author and reader.”10 This is what I propose to explore in this paper, namely: the implications of the agonal problematic for Nietzsche’s writing itself and for the act of reading Nietzsche, a problematic which Nietzsche scholarship has neglected thus far but which is vital to our understanding not only of Nietzsche’s thoughts on education but of his contribution to what Keith Ansell Pearson calls modernity’s “project of developing and securing humankind’s intellectual maturity.”11
Intellectual maturity requires, according to Nietzsche, that we question and challenge language itself: in his early text On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche depicts language as a supple construction, seemingly made of a “spiders’ webs,” in which we are all entangled.12 The whole structure of concept is described as a “web of concepts.”13 The acts of reading and writing necessarily rely on a plethora of terms which are not “things-in-themselves” (which are not only inconceivable but not even worth conceiving, writes Nietzsche) but rather metaphors for those “things-in-themselves,” conventions on which speakers have agreed in order to communicate with one another.14 What is truth, then, asks Nietzsche? “Truths are illusions about which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which are now worn out and without sensuous power, coins which have lost their picture and which count only as metal, no longer as coins.”15 As Lacoue-Labarthe expresses it in an essay in which he investigates Nietzsche’s early lectures and fragments (dating from 1872 to 1875) on language and rhetoric: “Language is thus originally figurative, tropical, that is originally metaphorical.”16 This metaphorical language is, however, the very tool used in the elaboration of discourses, in the writing of texts. Nietzsche’s critique of language thus reveals the unstable foundations of all discourses, of all texts, including his own—suggesting to the reader that he or she must engage, seriously and cautiously, with texts.
Nietzsche’s study of language and rhetoric transformed his relationship to writing, as Lacoue-Labarthe points out: it is after this period that one notices a certain fragmentation in his style.17 He is aware that his own work is entangled in a spider web, and that, as such, it might lull the reader into blindly accepting and believing what it suggests. Nietzsche therefore wants a vigilant reader who keeps the text at a distance, and his style after his study of language and rhetoric can be interpreted as an attempt to avoid indoctrinating such a reader. Nietzsche wishes to write as Thucydides, about whom he writes: “One must read him inside out, line by line, and read his unuttered thoughts as much as his words: there are few thinkers who are so rich in unuttered thoughts.”18 What I translate here as “unuttered thoughts” (Hintergedanken) could also be translated as “ulterior motives”: Thucydides, according to Nietzsche, hides his true message between the lines. Nietzsche believes such a strategy to be highly educational, as one of his aphorisms, titled “The Incomplete as the Effective,” indicates: here, Nietzsche insists on the educational benefits of letting a reader complete a thought, a task which would not be possible had the author exhaustively exposed his own views.19 He thus favors a fragmentary style in order to encourage his reader to be an active reader—to pause and ponder not only what is written but also upon that which is left unsaid.
Nietzsche will embrace the aphorism as narrative strategy, the aim of which is to engage the reader in a contest for meaning, a contest which can be not only highly educational and emancipatory, but therapeutic as well. Danto reminded us of the relationship between the aphorism as genre and medicine, explaining that the earliest collection of aphorisms is attributed to Hippocrates. They were maxims regarding health and well-being which were meant to be learned by heart by interns. As Marsden writes in her study of aphorisms in Nietzsche: “It seems significant that the aphoristic style should be developed in Nietzsche’s thought at a time when he is exploring the extent to which ideas can transform and redirect the energies of the body.”20 If language is a spider web in which one is entangled, then a fragmentary style that leaves much unsaid might afford the reader a greater freedom of thought and movement. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, aphorisms are described as mountain peaks: one’s task is to embark on a journey leading from one peak to the next,21 or, as Nietzsche writes elsewhere, to (re) construct a “chain of thoughts,”22 supplementing what Nietzsche writes in order to bring his narrative to completion—perhaps better, to fruition. This is undoubtedly what Nietzsche enjoyed as reader of Thucydides: the possibility to explore, develop, and challenge his own thoughts, using Thucydides as raw material and impetus. Nietzsche even claims that reading Thucydides was therapeutic in his case, curing him of all Platonism.23 Nietzsche will thus prefer writing in a fragmentary fashion, in order to elicit such a reception from his own readers: instead of systematically laying down concepts and theories, theses and arguments, he will favor that which leaves itself open, thus avoiding the exertion of (too much) authority on his reader. Nietzsche leaves these open spaces for the reader to occupy them.
Nietzsche’s early praise of Schopenhauer has much to do with such a reading experience, as one gathers from Schopenhauer as Educator. One learns very little about Schopenhauer and his philosophy in this text, in which Nietzsche reveals much about himself. In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche criticizes institutions of higher learning and the scholars who are responsible for educating the students attending these institutions. To these scholars and their methods, Nietzsche opposes Schopenhauer—or rather: his reading of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche’s portrayal of his Schopenhauer experience exemplifies his thoughts on reading and writing, acts which should aim at liberating the reader by revealing him to himself. This is a feat which universities, he claims, cannot achieve, as they transmit knowledge in the shape of tables and charts, whereas Schopenhauer is one of those educators who reveal the core of one’s self, that which cannot be educated nor shaped, that which is latent but accessible only with difficulty. Nietzsche concludes: “Your educators can be nothing else but your liberators.”24 This quote is important as it reveals what the concept of education means for the young Nietzsche: education is not the transmission of knowledge per se. It is the revelation and liberation of one’s true self, as it were. Educators ought to make this emancipation possible. Education thus appears here as the process by which one becomes what one is.
Later in his life, Nietzsche will famously reject Schopenhauer and his philosophy; this rejection, however, does not lead him to recant the views on education that he expressed in this early text. One must remark that the young Nietzsche’s relationship to Schopenhauer, as he describes it in Schopenhauer as Educator, does not seem to be coined by agonistics. He seems to blend with his educator, as the following passage reveals: “I understood him as if he had written for me.”25 Does Nietzsche just blindly accept and embrace whatever Schopenhauer wrote? A passage from Ecce Homo might provide an answer to this question. Here, Nietzsche discusses the limits of the knowledge which one can glean out of books, concluding: “In the final analysis, no one can get more out of things, including books, than one already knows.”26 Nietzsche’s reading of Schopenhauer thus helped him formulate his own thoughts on education. If there is an agon in Schopenhauer as Educator, it is thus not that between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer but rather that between Nietzsche and the academic world. Nietzsche was shaped by institutions of higher learning and was now struggling to break free from them. He found in Schopenhauer, who had had his share of problems with the academic world, a kindred spirit whom he could recuperate for his attack on this academic world, which, Nietzsche contended, did not truly serve the education of humankind.
In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche addresses problems which he had already explored in his lectures On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, written 2 years earlier and which consist in an even more vehement attack on the academic world. It is necessary to discuss these lectures briefly, as they enable Nietzsche to present his own views not only on education but also on reading. Here, Nietzsche casts a damning light upon German institutions such as high schools and universities. He identifies two drives that are seemingly contradictory but which, however, merge or coalesce in the academic world, namely: “the drive toward a greater extension of education” and “the drive toward a lessening and weakening of it.”27 On the one hand, education is no longer the stronghold of a minority: the spreading of democratic ideals in nineteenth-century Germany is transforming its educational establishments. On the other hand, the democratization of education leads not only to a lowering of academic standards, according to Nietzsche, but also to a deplorable revaluation of the very function of education and higher learning: “Every education is hated, which isolates, which sets goals beyond money and gain, which requires time.”28 These institutions, Nietzsche adds, prepare their students for the world, that is, for the world as it is: they transmit a consensual knowledge, loading onto the backs of their pupils and students—as if they were camels, Zarathustra might say—the safe weight of tradition. It is quite clear why the education system is controlled by the state, Nietzsche claims, and why the state offers such an education in its institutions: in order to instill in students values that not only do not threaten the state, but that actually reinforce its hold on them.29 Nietzsche thus envisions a time when it might become necessary, for the sake of education, to radically reform institutions of education, or even abolish them altogether,30 in order to offer a completely different kind of education, namely, one that would turn these human beings into what he defines here as truly practical human beings, “who have good and new ideas and who know that true genius and true practice must necessarily converge in one individual.”31
Against the backdrop of Nietzsche’s critique of German institutions of education, it is enlightening to analyze his preface to these lectures, a preface titled “Preface to be read before the lectures, even though it does not really relate to them.” Contrary to Nietzsche’s suggestion, this preface has much to do with his subsequent critique of the academic world: Nietzsche depicts his ideal reader in opposition to the pupil and student of German institutions of education. In this preface, Nietzsche describes the three features which characterize his ideal reader, or, as he writes, the reader from whom he expects something: “He must be calm and read without haste, he must not always bring everything back to himself and his ‘education,’ finally he must not expect results and tables as conclusion.”32 Nietzsche then unpacks this list of features, and one can readily see that his ideal reader is untimely. He is untimely first and foremost because, being a calm and slow reader, he goes against the grain of his times by making a different use of his time: “This book is intended for calm readers, for people who have not yet been seized by the dizzying haste of our fast-paced epoch.”33 A slow pace enables the untimely reader to reflect upon that which he reads: “Such a man has not yet unlearned to reflect while he reads, he can still read the secret between the lines, he is so wasteful that he still reflects about what he has read, long maybe after putting down a book.”34 Secondly, this reader is untimely because he has not been corrupted by modern educational and cultural tenets: as previously mentioned, the reader must keep texts at a critical distance but he must also keep his world at a distance when reading. This reader does not believe that his Bildung is the measure of all things, as Nietzsche writes: “We rather hope that he is educated enough to think little of his education, to even despise it.”35 Thirdly, the Nietzsche reader is untimely, because he does not expect knowledge to be fed to him, he does not want to learn by heart but is rather eager to reflect critically and creatively upon what he reads. The timely product of German institutions of education bends under the weight of tradition; Nietzsche’s untimely reader, in contrast, will stand up to it, (re) evaluating it, challenging it, supplementing it, renewing it.
On the Future of our Educational Institutions is thus a key text in Nietzsche’s early attempts to formulate an ethics of reading coined by agonistics. From the introduction to the very end, Nietzsche suggests that his text is not about transmitting knowledge as educational institutions do, and that the act of reading his text will thus be a learning experience which radically differs from what one experiences in these institutions. As Deleuze stated in his essay Pensée nomade, Nietzsche’s style enables him to decodify the world without recodifying it:36 Nietzsche’s reader is not given codes, he is given the space to decode Nietzsche’s text on his own. Already in his introduction, Nietzsche announces that he will not provide the reader with a text that contains all the answers, as his whole pedagogical endeavor opposes the very sort of knowledge that fits nicely into tables and charts. Nietzsche writes that his readers will only understand him “when they immediately guess what can only be suggested, complete what had to be withheld, when they only need to be reminded, not taught.”37 Nietzsche thus admits that his text is fragmentary, that he left gaps purposefully, challenging the reader to meet him half way, to do half the work. Nietzsche is thus seeking to educate the reader, challenging him to wage a war against—and to emancipate himself from—textual claims and assertions, including his own.
The relationship between agonistics and education is also the subject of Nietzsche’s early text Homer’s Contest, in which Nietzsche celebrates a healthy agon as pedagogical strategy, a strategy that he then recuperates for his ethics of reading. Nietzsche investigates here a text by Hesiod in which the poet explains that there are two kinds of envy, each represented by a different goddess, and each called Eris. The one Eris, whom Hesiod describes as evil, instills an envy into men that leads them to enmity, to wars of annihilation, whereas the other Eris, the good one, instills an envy which encourages men “not to a war of annihilation, but rather to a contest.”38 Nietzsche explains that the Hellenic world was coined by competitiveness: “Every talent must unfold in a struggle, as suggested by Hellenic popular pedagogy.”39 Poets envied each other and thus wanted to outdo each other; so did philosophers, politicians, singers, carpenters, and beggars. They would greatly develop their skills in their desire to surpass one another—a competition which benefited the whole community. Nietzsche then reminds the reader of the former meaning of the term ostracism. The Ephesians once banned a member of their community, justifying this ostracism, according to Nietzsche, as follows: “No one should be the best amongst us; should one be the best, then he should be elsewhere, with other people.”40 Nietzsche explains that the Ephesians thus ensured that the contest would go on: should a contestant be overwhelmingly superior to all others, the contest would lose of its relevance. Lungstrum and Sauer remark regarding the contest: “It is in the nature of the agon neither to render its participants mute nor to attain the conquering finality of telos.”41 The fight must go on, it must never end, as it is only in the agonistic movement itself that learning, surpassing, and overcoming oneself is possible. The Hellenic state needed such ongoing contests, which, as stimulant, promoted development and excellence among its citizens, in order to thrive and flourish. Ostracism was thus a way to eliminate all-too powerful individuals who could, because of their superior qualities and talents, ultimately become a threat to the state, as their superiority would bring the contest to a standstill. Nietzsche thus explains: “That is the core of the Hellenic understanding of the contest: it loathes the autocratic rule and fears its dangers, it demands, as protective measure against a genius – a second genius.”42 The Hellenic contest, as Nietzsche interprets it here, is thus a pedagogical strategy ensuring the health of the whole community.
This early text which celebrates a healthy agon as pedagogical strategy must be taken into consideration when one interprets, for instance, the martial metaphors which abound in Nietzsche’s work: Nietzsche does not promote wars of annihilation, but rather agonal education. He proclaims his admiration for this pedagogical strategy of the ancients, who put their pupils’ envy to good use, whereas modern educators “fear, above all, the unleashing of what they call ambition.”43 These modern educators, who dread the unbridling of envy in their pupils, stem from the Judeo-Christian tradition, in which envy is a deadly sin. Hellenic educators, in contrast, redeem envy, as it were, by stimulating it for what Nietzsche might call noble purposes, that is: for educational purposes. Pupils who are envious of their gifted peers feel challenged by these and work all the harder, hoping to surpass them, thus developing their own skills and talents. For the reader of Homer’s Contest, a chapter such as “On War and Warriors” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra provides examples of passages in Nietzsche’s work which have an undeniable martial tone, but which really promote agonal education:
By our best enemies, we do not want to be spared. . . . My brothers in war! I love you deeply; I am and was your equal. And I am also your best fiend. . . . I know your heart’s hatred and envy. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Be great enough, then, not to be ashamed of them! . . . I see many soldiers: I wish to see many warriors! ‘Uniform’ we call what they wear: may it not be uniform, what they hide under it! . . . You must be proud of your enemy: because your enemy’s successes are your own.44
In Homer’s Contest, when Nietzsche praises agonal education, he observes that, were one to remove the contest from the Hellenic world, what would remain would be the abyss “of a gruesome fierceness of hatred and lust for annihilation,” as envy would then be channeled into wars of annihilation. In the sentences quoted above from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche promotes enmity between equals as a healthy challenge, suggesting that we (Christians) reconcile with envy and use it not only to better ourselves but also to emancipate ourselves, breaking free from uniforms and uniformity by means of the contest. As in Homer’s Contest, the enemy here is to be admired as he reveals our own measure and as the sum of successes arising from the contest ensures the vitality of the whole community.
As writer and philosopher, Nietzsche will never cease to criticize texts or methods that, according to him, seek to foreclose the possibility of a contest, such as those of Socrates and Plato, for instance. Nietzsche criticizes Socrates as educator, because the latter seeks to impose his own views onto others instead of liberating them—which is, in Nietzsche’s view, the task of a true educator, as quoted earlier. Socrates explains, both in Phaedrus and in The Republic that the educator’s task is to give a new direction to the soul, by turning the pupil’s gaze toward the light, to enlighten the pupil, literally. In the parable of the cave, as the enlightenment process of the prisoner who ascends toward the light is described, one cannot help but notice the plethora of terms which betray the educator’s controlling attitude. About the prisoners of the cave, Socrates explains: “When one of them was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up, turn his head, walk, and look up toward the light, he’d be pained and dazzled and unable to see the things whose shadows he’d seen before.”45 Socrates goes on to describe the prisoner’s enlightenment process using terms and phrases such as “if we . . . compelled him to answer,” “if someone compelled him to look at the light itself,” “if someone dragged him away from there by force, up the rough, steep path, and didn’t let him go until he had dragged him into the sunlight,” among others.46 The educator is removing the pupil from “a sort of barbaric bog”47 in order to enlighten him; he does so, however, by “compelling” the pupil to follow him by “dragging” him along—terms that remind one of cavemen, if anything, not of educators. In Phaedrus, Socrates describes the oratory art, which he practices as educator as a way to “direct the soul.”48 Nietzsche will thus condemn Socratic pedagogical methods, dismissing dialectics as the expression of a will to power, which does not truly seek to educate and emancipate: “One chooses dialectics only when one has no other means.”49 Only he who cannot assert himself by means of force, money, or any other power makes use of this method, which enables him to rule over others. Nietzsche does recognize the fact that Socratic dialectics is a kind of contest between two interlocutors50 but this strictly logical method which Socrates masters as no one else and which negates all other kinds of knowledge ultimately fails to educate: “The dialectician disempowers the intellect of his opponent.”51 As Acampora puts it: “Nietzsche thinks Socrates’ contestants do not have even a remote chance to win.”52 And indeed: a dialogue with Socrates typically ends with a resigned nod and admission, by his interlocutor, that Socrates was absolutely right. The Socratic method is thus, in Nietzsche’s view, the opposite of a healthy agon, which calls for enmity between equals, if true education is to take place, if the contest is to go on.
Similarly, Nietzsche will criticize Kantian philosophy, in particular the categorical imperative, which disempowers the individual, in his view. It is the practicality of this absolute practical law, which Nietzsche questions. In Human, All Too Human, for instance, Nietzsche criticizes the idealism of Kant’s position. The following is a long quote but is worth quoting at length, as it reveals what it is, exactly, that Nietzsche considers to be harmful in Kantian philosophy:
The older moral, namely that of Kant, wants from the individual actions which one would want from all human beings: that was a beautiful, naive idea: as if everybody readily knew which actions would benefit the whole of humankind, and thus which actions would be desirable at all; it is a theory like that of free trade, which assumes that universal harmony would necessarily unfold on its own, according to innate laws of improvement. Maybe a future perspective on the needs of humanity will show that it is not desirable at all that all human beings act in the same way, but rather that in the interest of ecumenical goals, special tasks, maybe even evil tasks, under certain circumstances, will be required of whole stretches of humankind.53
Nietzsche insists here upon the fact that it is impossible to know whether one’s actions are propitious for the whole species or not, claiming that categories such as good and bad, or good and evil, are neither eternally stable nor universally valid. Beyond this, however, it is the practicality of Kant’s categorical imperative which Nietzsche questions here, suggesting that one would certainly feel disempowered by such an imperative, which endows every decision with so much meaning, with so much weight, that decisions become impossible to make. Nietzsche vehemently rejects the claim to truth and universality on which the categorical imperative is based, writing in The Antichrist:
A virtue must be our invention, our most personal self-defence and need: otherwise it is only a danger. That which does not serve our life harms it: a virtue solely out of respect for the concept of ‘virtue,’ as Kant wanted it, is harmful. ‘Virtue,’ ‘duty,’ ‘the good-in-itself,’ the good that is impersonal and universally valid – fantasies which reveal decline, the last weakening of life, and the Chinese spirit of Königsberg.54
Nietzsche cannot believe that life could ever be made fruitful by obeying a law which leaves little to no room for self-assertion, originality, invention, desire, passion, etc. After this passage, a seemingly bewildered Nietzsche exclaims: “That one has not felt that Kant’s categorical imperative is a mortal danger!”55 Elsewhere, he will go as far as claiming that Kant’s categorical imperative “smells of cruelty:”56 in Nietzsche’s view, it reeks of the cruel scent of Christian asceticism and self-mortification as it demands, just as Judeo-Christian commandments do, that one blindly obeys a moral law which reason cannot grasp, repressing or denying parts of oneself in doing so. Nietzsche will thus consider Kant to be an underhanded Christian:57 his categorical imperative being an offspring of Judeo-Christian commandments, it undermines Kant’s narrative of enlightenment and emancipation in both form and content. It is fairly evident that Nietzsche’s harsh criticism of Kant—and of Socrates—does not do justice to the works of these two philosophical giants and is not devoid of contradictions: Nietzsche’s critique is rather meant to serve a specific function, namely, to educate the reader with and against (these) texts and (their) assertions, claims to universal truths and imperatives.
Nowhere in his work, however, does Nietzsche formulate the commandment or imperative thou shalt not read but he does make the reader aware of the uses and abuses of reading, often giving philologists as examples. Philological methods—reading slowly, carefully, and closely—can only appeal to a philosopher who is so preoccupied with language. Philologists are, however, guilty of an all-too intense reading activity as well as of taking themselves and their discipline all-too seriously: they are among the “most educated and conceited of all scholars.”58 There is no doubt that Nietzsche holds philology and a philological approach to reading in high regard. He describes philology as “the art of reading well—to be able to read facts without falsifying them through interpretation, without losing, in the desire to understand, caution, patience, subtlety.”59 He claims that “science has only acquired continuity and steadiness when the art of reading well, i.e. philology, arose.”60 Philologists, just as scientists and scholars, run the risk, however, of falling prey to these virtues of circumspection and patience, of seeing their task as an end, not a means. This is typical, Nietzsche claims, of (German) scholars, who think more “about science than about humanity”61 and indeed, Nietzsche often portrays them as beings who have lost touch with humanity or humaneness. As educator, for instance, the philologist “teaches grinding”62—in German, Nietzsche uses the term ochsen, a term which reminds one of cattle (Ochs, or Ox in English) rather than of humans. A famous fellow philologist is said to be endued “with the venerable assurance of a worm dried up between books.”63 Philologists have a tendency to become obsessed with their work, Nietzsche writes, sometimes handling 200 books per day: “I have seen this with my own eyes: gifted, rich and liberal natures ruined by reading as early as in their thirties.”64 Nietzsche’s portrayal of philologists suggests that there are limits to the knowledge one can glean from books: the most knowledgeable scholar may turn out to be a very unwise human being. Nietzsche’s warning when it comes to books might read: handle with care, a warning that captures both the promise and the threat enclosed in every book.
When Nietzsche writes, in the quote above, that he has seen with his own eyes the terrible effects which reading had on certain young scholars, he hints at his own reading experience: in Ecce Homo, he will explain that he experienced pain with his own eyes, quite literally, as his own eyes were almost completely ruined by reading. Ecce Homo, more than any other text, I would argue, reveals the relationship in Nietzsche’s thought between reading, agonistics, and health. In this text, he reveals how unhealthy his relationship to reading used to be, going as far as claiming: “My eyes alone put an end to my bookworm habits, in German: philology: I was freed from the ‘book,’ for years I did not read a thing – the greatest favour which I ever did myself!”65 He seems to construct a relationship of cause and effect here (even though he warns the reader against such constructions66): the nearly complete loss of his eyesight is depicted as an eye-opening experience. This experience, according to him, led him to revaluate the value of philology and reading and to disavow his decision to study philology, calling it a mistake, an instinctual aberration, wondering why he became a philologist at all, “why not a doctor at least or something else which would have opened eyes?”67 Reading, by directing the reader’s gaze to the page, blocks everything else from his view, making him lose sight of what is going on around him. In this context, the following statement from The Case of Wagner might take on a new significance: “What is typical of all literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole.”68 Literary decadence could thus also be that of the reader blinded by books, the reader who only lives through his eyes, the reader who has become one big eye. Such a reader would be, for Zarathustra, “an inverse cripple . . ., who has too little of everything and too much of one thing.”69 By enabling him to look at reading from a different perspective, or so he claims, Nietzsche’s poor eyesight radically transformed his approach to books. Whereas he claims, in Ecce Homo, that his condition allowed him to break free from the yoke of the book, he then writes that reading has now become his main recreational activity—a statement that comes as quite a surprise in view of his harsh critique of reading. It is then most certainly his attitude toward reading, which has changed. Reading is something that he no longer takes seriously, he writes.70 Whereas the act of reading was interpreted as a sign of decadence, it is now the curative properties of reading, which now come to the fore: “Reading is my recreation from my seriousness.”71 It is thus clearly a certain usage of books, and not reading books per se, that Nietzsche condemns. He writes as much when he claims that books are absent from his surroundings when he writes, and that a reading room makes him feel ill.72 It is of utmost importance to discriminate when it comes to books: first, one must discriminate with regard to what one reads. As Nietzsche prides himself on being untimely, his attitude toward new books will not come as a surprise: he writes that, instinctively, he has always felt a certain “enmity against new books.”73 One must also discriminate in another regard: there is a time to read and a time to leave books behind. Nietzsche thus writes: “To read a book early in the morning, at daybreak, when one is fresh, in the dawn of one’s strength – I call that depraved!”74 A healthy reader who wishes to foster his vitality must know how, what, and when (not) to read.
To conclude, I would like to propose an interpretation of the title Ecce Homo: could it not be read as a statement by means of which Nietzsche yet again warns the reader against himself? It is a biblical reference, but tellingly, these are words spoken neither by the believers in Christ nor by the Jews who asked for him to be crucified. They are the words of Pontius Pilate, of whom Nietzsche writes in The Antichrist that he “has enriched the New Testament with the only word which has value,—which is its critique, its annihilation: ‘what is truth!’ . . .”75 It is thus fitting that Nietzsche, who relentlessly attacks believers, would title his autobiographical text Ecce Homo, thus quoting the one character of the New Testament depicted as a skeptic. By quoting Pilate, who exclaimed what is truth!, a phrase which subversively undermines the Bible from within, Nietzsche undermines the claims to truth which his own text could suggest. As for the expression “ecce homo,” Pilate pronounces it as he presents Christ to the crowd asking for his life. He famously washes his hands of Jesus, leaving the crowd the responsibility to sentence him. By calling a text in which he portrays himself Ecce Homo, words uttered by Pilate, Nietzsche thus, first, calls the truth of his text into question, and, second, indicates that his fate as a writer is in the hands of his readers. Confronted to what some may designate as the unreadability of the Nietzschean text, the reader has the textual response-ability not only to supplement it but also to supplant it.
Was Nietzsche trying, as Hutter argues, “to initiate a new authoritative tradition in which books had to carry readers beyond all books?”76 It is tempting to claim so, but I would argue that Nietzsche wanted to carry his readers beyond his books. To carry readers beyond all books would put an end to the agon, keeping readers from striving for what Nietzsche calls the great health, which is a health which “one does not merely have, but rather which one wins and must constantly win, because one always gives it up and must always give it up . . .”77 Nietzsche’s reader must engage with what is out there, he is not to remain (too long) in his cave, on the mountain, dwelling on lonely heights, constructing narratives ex nihilo, without confronting his thoughts with the thoughts of others. He must descend, as Zarathustra does, and this descent will be, as Lampert explains it, “a descent to the things of the earth that gives them weight and importance again.”78 With this descent, the movement between transmission, deconstruction, and creation is given a new impetus. Nietzsche arms the reader with the very weapons needed to carry out this task, taking the reader beyond Nietzsche’s books—not for the agon to end but for the agon to resume on other, newer grounds, as Nietzsche suggests in his lectures on education:
Be at least readers of this book in order to annihilate and forget it later through your deed! Think of it as being meant to be your herald: when you, in your own armor, appear on the fighting ground, who will want to turn around and look at the herald which called you?79
Notes and references
1 Pettey indicates that the first recognizable narratorial passage in Nietzsche’s notes written in preparation for what would become Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a narrative that sets the stage for this very chapter. See John Carson Pettey, Nietzsche’s Philosophical and Narrative Styles (N.Y.: Lang, 1992), p. 65.
2 Z: I “On the Thousand Goals and One” (KSA 4, p. 75). I have worked exclusively with the German text. Translations are my own.
3 Keith Ansell Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 205.
4 J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James and Benjamin (NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 4.
5 Éva Antal, “The Ethics of Reading – a Postmodern Theory?,” Pedagogy Studies (Pedagogika) 71 (2004): 16.
6 See Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1979) and Jacques Derrida, Éperons. Les Styles de Nietzsche (Paris : Flammarion, 1978).
7 Alan D. Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation. Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (NY, London: Routledge, 1990), p. 193.
8 Horst Hutter, Shaping the Future. Nietzsche’s New Regime of the Soul and Its Ascetic Practices (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006), p. xiii.
9 Timothy F. Murphy, Nietzsche as Educator (Lanham, NY, London : University Press of America, 1984), p. 4.
10 Ibid., p. 48.
11 Keith Ansell Pearson, How to Read Nietzsche (London: Granta Books, 2005), p. 115.
12 TL 1 (KSA 1, p. 882).
13 TL 2 (KSA 1, p. 887).
14 TL 1 (KSA 1, p. 879).
15 TL 1 (KSA 1, p. 880f).
16 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Le détour (Nietzsche et la rhétorique),” Poétique 5 (1971): 64. This is my translation of the French text.
17 Ibid., 57.
18 TI “Ancients” 2 (KSA 6, p. 156).
19 HH 178 (KSA 2, p. 161f).
20 Jill Marsden, “Nietzsche and the Art of the Aphorism,” in K. Ansell Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 24.
21 Z: I “On Reading and Writing” (KSA 4, p. 48).
22 KSA 8:20 [3].
23 TI “Ancients” 2 (KSA 6, p. 156).
24 SE 1 (KSA 1, p. 341).
25 SE 2 (KSA 1, p. 346).
26 EH “Books” 1 (KSA 6, p. 299f).
27 FEI “Introduction” (KSA 1, p. 647).
28 FEI I (KSA 1, p. 668).
29 FEI III (KSA 1, p. 710).
30 FEI “Preface” (KSA 1, p. 649).
31 FEI II (KSA 1, p. 673).
32 FEI “Preface” (KSA 1, p. 648).
33 FEI “Preface” (KSA 1, p. 649).
34 Ibid.
35 FEI “Preface” (KSA 1, p. 650).
36 Gilles Deleuze, “Pensée nomade,” Nietzsche aujourd’hui? Tome 1 (Paris: UGE 10/18, 1973), p. 165.
37 FEI “Introduction” (KSA 1, p. 644).
38 HC (KSA 1, p. 787).
39 HC (KSA 1, p. 789).
40 HC (KSA 1, p. 788).
41 Janet Lungstrum and Elizabeth Sauer, “Creative Agonistics: An Introduction,” in J. Lungstrum and E. Sauer eds, Agonistics: Arenas of Creative Contest (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 25.
42 HC (KSA 1, p. 789).
43 Ibid.
44 Z: I “On War and Warriors” (KSA 4, p. 58f).
45 Plato, “The Republic,” in J. M. Cooper (ed.), Complete Works, trans. G. M. A. Grube, and C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis/Cambridge : Hackett, 1997), p. 1133.
46 Ibid., 1133.
47 Ibid., 1149.
48 Plato, “Phaedrus,” in J. M. Cooper (ed.), Complete Works, trans. A. Nehamas, and P. Woodruff (Indianapolis/Cambridge : Hackett, 1997), p. 548.
49 TI: “Socrates” 6 (KSA 6, p. 70).
50 TI: “Skirmishes” 23 (KSA 6, p. 126).
51 TI: “Socrates” 7 (KSA 6, p. 70).
52 Christa Davis Acampora, “Nietzsche’s Agonal Wisdom,” International Studies in Philosophy 35, 3 (2003): 173.
53 HH 25 (KSA 2, p. 46).
54 A 11 (KSA 6, p. 177).
55 Ibid.
56 GM II 6 (KSA 5, p. 300).
57 TI: “Reason” 6 (KSA 6, p. 79).
58 BGE 204 (KSA 5, p. 130).
59 A 52 (KSA 6, p. 233).
60 HH 270 (KSA 2, p. 223).
61 SE 2 (KSA 1, p. 344).
62 TI “Skirmishes” 29 (KSA 6, p. 129).
63 TI “Ancients” 4 (KSA 6, p. 158).
64 EH “Clever” 8 (KSA 6, p. 293).
65 EH “HH” 4 (KSA 6, p. 326).
66 TI “Errors” 1 (KSA 6, p. 88).
67 EH “Clever” 2 (KSA 6, p. 283).
68 CW 7 (KSA 6, p. 27).
69 Z II: “On Redemption” (KSA 4, p. 178).
70 EH “Clever” 3 (KSA 6, p. 284).
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 EH “Clever” 3 (KSA 6, p. 285). It is also quite fitting that the only journal which he claims to read on a regular basis is called Journal des Débats, the very title of which captures the spirit of agonal writing and reading. See EH “Books” 1 (KSA 6, p. 301).
74 EH “Clever” 8 (KSA 6, p. 293).
75 A 46 (KSA 6, p. 225).
76 Hutter, 6.
77 EH “Z” 2 (KSA 6, p. 338).
78 Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching. An Interpretation of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 10.
79 FEI “Preface” (KSA 1, p. 650).
Works cited
Primary literature
Nietzsche, Friedrich. KSA. Eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari. München: DTV, 1999.
Plato. Complete Works. Ed. J. M. Cooper. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1997.
Secondary literature
Acampora, Christa Davis. “Nietzsche’s Agonal Wisdom.” International Studies in Philosophy 35(3), (2003): 163–82.
Ansell Pearson, Keith. An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
—. How to Read Nietzsche. London: Granta Books, 2005.
Antal, Éva. “The Ethics of Reading – a Postmodern Theory?” Pedagogy Studies (Pedagogika) 71 (2004): 12–17.
Carson Pettey, John. Nietzsche’s Philosophical and Narrative Styles. NY: Lang, 1992.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Pensée nomade.” Nietzsche aujourd’hui? Tome 1. Paris: UGE 10/18, 1973. 159–74.
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1979.
Derrida, Jacques. Éperons. Les Styles de Nietzsche. Paris: Flammarion, 1978.
Hillis Miller, J. The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James and Benjamin. NY: Columbia University Press, 1987.
Hutter, Horst. Shaping the Future. Nietzsche’s New Regime of the Soul and Its Ascetic Practices. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. “Le détour (Nietzsche et la rhétorique).” Poétique 5(1971): 53–76.
Lampert, Laurence. Nietzsche’s Teaching. An Interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1986.
Lungstrum, Janet and Elizabeth Sauer. “Creative Agonistics: An Introduction.” Agonistics: Arenas of Creative Contest. Eds. J. Lungstrum and E. Sauer. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997, 1–32.
Marsden, Jill. “Nietzsche and the Art of the Aphorism.” A Companion to Nietzsche. Ed. K. Ansell Pearson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 22–37.
Murphy, Timothy F. Nietzsche as Educator. Lanham, NY, London: University Press of America, 1984.
Schrift, Alan D. Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation. Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. NY, London: Routledge, 1990.