11
Vanessa Lemm
Before fate strikes us, we should lead it like a child and – show it the whip: but once it has struck us, then we should seek to love it
Friedrich Nietzsche, KSA 10: 5[1]194 10.208
1 Introduction: Small and great politics of the event
In the reception of Nietzsche’s work, his conception of the great human being is typically associated with an aristocratic politics of domination, where the majority of people sacrifice themselves for the sake of the production and flourishing of a few great men. On this view, the great human being features as the highest aim of an aristocratic politics of culture. In this chapter, I intend to question this interpretation and propose to investigate Nietzsche’s vision of the great human being from the perspective of his conception of the event. Nietzsche’s conception of the event reveals that the greatness of an event is not solely dependent on the outstanding achievements of an individual human being as in an elitist politics of culture. On the contrary, what makes a deed great is its reception by a people. Only those deeds which are received and carried forth by a people or a culture, and hence by a broad democratic basis, are deeds worthy of the name ‘event.’ Furthermore, greatness as Nietzsche conceives it de-centres the modern idea of human agency for events occur through something that goes beyond the human and it is this ‘beyond’ that allows an event to take on the features of eternity. Rather than ascribing this ‘beyond’ to a source of transcendence outside or above life, Nietzsche ascribes it to the immanent power of life as a whole. On this view, an event occurs when an individual deed reflects the whole becoming of life, or, in other words, when a deed is a ‘reflection and brief abstract of the whole world’ (SE 7).
An overview of the term Ereignis (event) shows that throughout Nietzsche’s work the great human being is inseparably tied to the dimension of the event. In Nietzsche’s published works as well as in the Nachlass, one can distinguish between several different uses of the term Ereignis. In his early work, Nietzsche refers to events mainly in the context of his analysis of music, when for example he describes ‘truly Dionysian music’ as an ‘intuitive event’ (‘anschauliches Ereigniss,’ BT 17; KSA 1.109) or, when he discusses, at times with a critical undertone, Wagnerian music as an event, the ‘Bayreuther Ereigniss’ (MD 1; KSA 1.893 and RWB 1; KSA 1.431). Furthermore, Nietzsche recurs to the term Ereignis in the context of his analysis of historiography and in relation to the historical event (HL 1 and HL 6) as well as in reference to historical turning points such as the German Reformation (SE 6), romanticism (‘romantic pessimism, the last great event in the fate (Schicksal) of our culture’) (GS 370, 3.618), the Renaissance (‘a tremendous event,’ ‘an event without meaning, a great in vain,’ A 61, 6.250), and, more importantly, the Greeks, who for him constitute the first event of culture (Kulturereigniss) in the history of humanity (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 47; see also KSA 8: 5[135], 8.86). The occurrence of these historical events is significant for Nietzsche because they gave rise to great human beings.
This use of the term event in relation to the emergence of human greatness is also reflected in Nietzsche’s description of his encounter with Schopenhauer: he claims to have experienced Schopenhauer’s writings as an event (Ereigniss) (SE 2; KSA 1.341). He also holds that what inspired Goethe to rethink the problem of the human being in Faust were neither the political events of the Wars of Liberation nor the French Revolution, but ‘Napoleon’ (BGE 244) qua great human being and event. Nietzsche praises Schopenhauer, Goethe, Hegel and Heine as European events (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 21 6.125; on Goethe see also TI ‘Skirmishes’ 49 6.151), in contrast to, e.g. Schumann, merely a German event (BGE 245; KSA 5.187). Finally, Nietzsche describes himself and his own philosophical insights, discoveries and books as events: in the Gay Science Nietzsche recalls the ‘death of God’ as a ‘tremendous (ungeheuerliches) event’ (GS 125 and 343); in On the Genealogy of Morals, he claims the rise of ‘bad conscience’ to be the ‘greatest event in the history of the sick soul’ (GM III: 20; KSA 5.387) and in Ecce Homo he refers back to his Thus spoke Zarathustra as an event (EH: ‘Destiny’ 8 6.373) as well as to Morgenröthe and his discovery of the essence of Christian morality (EH: ‘Books’ 10 6.313). The coincidence of thought and event in the figure of the philosopher culminates with his claim to be the dynamite that brings forth the beginning of a new epoch of great politics (EH: ‘Destiny’ 1). In a letter to Brandes from December 1888 he writes: ‘We have just entered into great politics, even into very great politics. . . . I am preparing an event which, in all likelihood, will break history into two halves, to the point that one will need a new calendar, with 1888 as Year One.’ Given that Nietzsche’s understanding of the great human being is intimately tied up with his conception of the event, as evidence by the textual occurrence of the terms, I suggest that in order to understand Nietzsche’s idea of greatness one must begin from an analysis of the event.
An analysis of Nietzsche’s conception of the event shows that he understands the great human being politically, provided that one also further distinguish between a small and a great politics of the event. Nietzsche’s conception of the event is political insofar as it denotes the task of cultivating great human beings. Here the question is what kind of political and social organization is required to further the cultivation of great human beings, and through them to produce events. On my account, one can distinguish between two different politics of the event in Nietzsche. On the one hand, there is what could be called a small politics (‘kleine Politik’) understood as a politics of the state or of moral and religious institutions which seek to actively intervene in the historical course of time in view of producing conditions which favour the production of human greatness. On the other hand, we can distinguish in Nietzsche what could be called a great politics (‘grobe Politik’) of the event which is not inscribed into the programme of a particular political or moral institution. Rather it is a ‘politics’ beyond politics and morality whose aim is not to change the course of time but rather to affirm the eternity of the moment. At the centre of this great ‘politics’ stands Nietzsche’s conception of amor fati: to love and embrace the great human being as a reflection of the eternal value and worth of the whole becoming of life (human and other).
This distinction between small politics and great politics as presented above also lies at the heart of Alain Badiou’s reading of Nietzsche as an event in philosophy. According to Badiou, Nietzsche distinguishes between politics and what he calls ‘archi-politics.’ The latter ‘intends to revolutionize the whole of humanity at a more radical level than that of the calculations of politics’ (Badiou 2001, p. 4). Badiou correctly argues that small and great politics reflect a different relation between philosophy and politics. For him archi-politics does not ‘designate the traditional philosophical task of finding a foundation for politics,’ rather ‘the philosophical act is itself an archi-political act’ meaning that the figure of the philosopher (or the great human being) in Nietzsche becomes inseparable from the occurrence of an event that impacts all dimensions of human life (social, moral and political).
But small and great politics do not only reflect a different relation between philosophy and politics; they are also based on two different conceptions of time and on two different conceptions of human agency. At the heart of small politics stands the belief that the rise of great human beings is inherently a historical, and thus, contingent matter; hence the task of transforming contingency into necessity, of turning the occurrence of great human beings into an inevitable event. We are here dealing with an active politics of liberation which seeks to change the course of history through the provocation of an event which gives it a new direction and a new aim. At the centre of this politics stands the belief in the freedom of the human agent and in her capacity to make history, that is, her capacity to turn contingency into an event (necessity). It should be noted that under this paradigm the idea of freedom prevails over necessity, since necessity is the outcome of human action, it is itself contingent and hence subject to future change within a conception of human action as historical through and through.
The problem with small politics is that the events it produces lack greatness and fail to have a true impact on their time. Nietzsche typically describes small politics as a noisy affair that simulates an effect where in fact ‘very little had happened’ as in Thus spoke Zarathustra’s ‘On Great Events.’ Also with respect to the question of freedom, Nietzsche rejects the view that a purely political event, such as for example the French Revolution, can resolve an existential problem of this kind (SE 4). In brief, small politics produces events that are not of eternal value and significance.
Throughout his writing career, Nietzsche seems to have been torn between the idea of eternity and the idea of history. While he confirms over and over again that life is entirely historical, he nevertheless does not want to give up on the idea of eternity. But how can we think eternity in immanent terms? Great politics and its conception of the event may provide an answer to the question of how an event inscribed in the history of the human species (immanence) can become eternal or take on the features of eternity.
In contrast to small politics, great politics is a passive-receptive politics situated beyond the historical course of time. From its perspective, the great human being qua event is a reflection of the whole becoming of life, and thus lies beyond the measure of any individual or collective human action. Here, the challenge is not that of turning contingency into necessity but rather of loving and embracing the necessity of the whole. On this account, the human being is necessary through and through, and only this knowledge of necessity can ultimately be liberating. Amor fati is liberating because it reinstalls the innocence of becoming, the fact that so called human action is no different from the growth of a plant or of a tree and hence inherently necessary and innocent in its becoming. Rather than striving towards a better future, great politics strives towards the affirmation of every moment and every being as part and parcel of the whole becoming of life in its eternity.
The perspective of the whole (which is what ‘great politics’ denotes) reveals that the idea of historical change is merely an illusion to which small politics must adhere because it is structured by the belief that human action can change the course of time. Instead, great politics reflects the knowledge that nothing ever truly changes and that all is eternally the same. According to Nietzsche, the vision of the whole is a liberating and elevating vision for it shows that as a part of the whole every being takes on eternal value and worth, or, in other words, that what seems to be historically contingent has in fact the imprint of eternity.
Finally, there is another reason why small politics fails to attain greatness and have an (eternal) impact on its time, namely, it lacks a democratic basis. Its vision of the great human being qua event is too aristocratic. Investigating Nietzsche’s conception of the great human being from the perspective of the event reveals that the latter is not based on an aristocratic politics of domination, for, on the contrary, Nietzsche considers the deeds of the great human being to be entirely dependent on their reception (by a people or a time). Accordingly, it is noteworthy that Nietzsche’s great politics of the event, rather than being merely elitist – as what one might expect at first sight given its being structured around the idea of great human being – also contains a democratic element.
Nietzsche introduces his discussion of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth with some reflections on the nature of the event. For an event to attain greatness, two things have to come together: greatness of spirit (Sinn) in those who accomplish it and greatness of spirit (Sinn) in those who experience it. Whenever one acts, one must always have in view this correspondence between ‘deed and receptivity (Sich-Entsprechen von That und Empfänglichkeit)’; and whoever gives must see to it that they find recipients adequate to the meaning of their gifts (RWB 1; KSA 1.431).2 If an individual deed fails to attain greatness this is because the individual must have been in error as to its necessity at precisely that time: ‘he failed to take correct aim and chance (Zufall) became master over him, whereas to be great and to possess a clear grasp of necessity have always belonged strictly together’ (RWB 1; KSA 1.431, trans. R. J. Hollingdale). For Nietzsche, the historical agent qua great human being must ‘possess a clear grasp of necessity,’ that is, she must be able to determine the right moment for her action in order for her deed to produce an event. But, moreover, and more importantly, these deeds need to be received, that is, embraced and affirmed by a people. Here, necessity is not the result of human action as in the conception of small politics. Rather necessity is the reflection of a whole where an individual deed encounters the affirmation of a people. Whereas the deed of the great human being reflects an aristocratic aspect of small politics, the reception of the deed by a people reflects the democratic basis of great politics: without the latter no deed can take on greatness and the true value of eternity. In what follows, I will trace the different features of small and great politics of the event in Nietzsche in three recurrent figures in his philosophy: the historical agent, the genius and the philosopher. I seek to show that true greatness requires ‘great politics’ in contrast to small politics which at best helps prepare its happening.
2 The historical agent: Eternalizing the historical becoming of life
In the ‘Second Untimely Consideration,’ Nietzsche sheds light on the occurrence of great events from two different perspectives: the perspective of the historical and the perspective of the suprahistorical.3 These two perspectives echo in many ways the distinction between small and great politics of the event I have introduced above. These two perspectives can be exemplified with the help of a note from the Nachlass, from the same period of time (Summer–Fall 1873):
In principle everyone is satisfied when the day is over. To take every day so seriously that the next day one is already setting historical investigations under way is laughable. Because this would deprive of effect the main teaching that each day gives, namely, “life has to be atoned for [abzuleiden]” “life is penance [Busse]”. The main point with regard to the overall evaluation [Gesammtschätzung] of life is that no event can teach anything essentially new and someone who lived a few thousand years ago can be as wise as someone who is instructed by the history of these two thousand years. For the human being who atones for existence, history means nothing: he finds everywhere the same problem that is shown by each day. But history does mean something for the active one, for the unwise, who still has everything to hope for, who is not resigned, who fights on – he needs history as an exemplar of what one can achieve, of how one can be revered, but above all as a temple of glory. History has an exemplary and strengthening effect. (KSA 7: 29[39] 7.641)
The above citation nicely illustrates an early formulation of the two conceptions of time found in Nietzsche: on the one hand, there is the idea of the historical comparable to the perspective of small politics, where history pertains to the man of action who conceives human life as historical through and through and as coming with the task of continuously producing new, future life on the basis of past life. On this account, the course of time is in the hands of the historical agent who is incessantly called upon to give her time a new historical direction.4 On the other hand, the passage above refers to the perspective of wisdom comparable to that of great politics according to which time is eternal and hence every moment of life contains in itself the past, present and future of life. On this account, every day and every moment is experienced as a reflection of the whole becoming of the totality of life. Nietzsche refers to this point of view as a suprahistorical (überhistorisch), perhaps metaphysical, perspective because it denies the historicity of life and with it the possibility of the becoming of the new. Historical becoming appears to be superfluous in the light of the eternal return of each and every moment of life (HL 2).
Although Nietzsche rejects the suprahistorical perspective as life denying, this does not lead him to simply embrace the historical perspective on life. On the contrary, he claims that when asked whether they would like to relive the past 10 or 20 years, both the historical and the suprahistorical man would answer No.5 The suprahistorical man would answer No for he sees no salvation in the process and for him the world is finished and reaches its finality at each and every moment (HL 1; KSA 1.255). By contrast, the historical man would answer No for he believes that the meaning of existence will come progressively to light in the course of its historical development: he believes that the next 20 years will be better than the last 20 years (HL 1; KSA 1.255).
Against both the historical and the suprahistorical positions, Nietzsche claims the following view: he shares with the suprahistorical position its insight into the origin of every event, namely, the blindness and injustice in the soul of him who acts. From this vantage point of radical immanence, the historical event, and with it history as such, rests on what he refers to as an ‘unhistorical atmosphere’:
It is the condition in which one is the least capable of being just [ungerechteste Zustand von der Welt]; narrow-minded, ungrateful towards the past, blind to danger, deaf to warnings, one is a little vortex of life in a dead sea of darkness and oblivion: and yet this condition – unhistorical, anti-historical through and through – is the womb not only of every unjust but just deed too; and no painter will paint his picture, no general achieve his victory, no people attains its freedom without having first desired and striven for it in an unhistorical atmosphere that as that described. (HL 1; KSA 1.253–4)
The perspective of the suprahistorical allows one to see that the great deed arises from this atmosphere of the unhistorical where the actor succumbs to a violent passion and unmeasured love (Überschwung der Liebe) for her deed. It is a state of complete oblivion and frantic disorientation where all values lose their meaning and where ‘memory revolves unwearyingly in a circle and yet is too weak and too weary to take a leap out of this circle’ (HL 1; KSA 1.253–4). The historical agent is like the animal which is caught in the moment as in a circle of time. However, this perspective of the suprahistorical as representative of eternity is also a perspective of radical immanence which in many ways prepares Nietzsche’s future vision of the eternal return of the same.
Despite their agreement on the unhistorical ground of all historical action, Nietzsche holds against the suprahistorical perspective its denial of life as becoming. In accordance with the historical perspective, the task of the historical agent is to break out of the circle of time in view of a new beginning. The human being becomes human by employing the past for the purposes of life, and re-introducing into history that which has been done and is gone (‘aus dem Geschehenen wieder Geschichte zu machen’) (HL 1; KSA 1.253).
To sum it up, in the ‘Second Untimely Consideration,’ Nietzsche recurs to two different elements in his conception of the event: the power to affirm the eternity of the moment (suprahistorical) and the power to transform past into future life (historical). Both culminate in his vision of great historical events as constituting a chain of higher human beings who produce an eternal effect by advancing the ennobling elevation of the whole of humanity:
That the great moments in the struggle of the human individual [Kampfe der Einzelnen] constitute a chain, that this chain unites humankind across the millenia [Höhenzug der Menschheit durch Jahrtausende] like a range of human mountain peaks, that the summit of such a long-ago moment shall be for me still living, bright and great – that is the fundamental idea of the faith in humanity which finds expression in the demand for a monumental history. (HL 2; KSA 1.259)
For Nietzsche, the great human being instantiates the totality of becoming, or, as he writes in a note from the late Nachlass, through the great human being we see how far humanity as a whole has advanced so far (WP 881).
But, the question remains how do these great events come about, or, how can they be produced? In the ‘Second Untimely Consideration,’ Nietzsche holds that the monumental, that is, the great historical event reflected in the eternal value of the struggle of the individual human being for the greatness of humanity, is made possible by a series of favourable conditions. The great human being qua event requires a ‘certain soil and a certain climate’ to grow and when they are estranged from their ‘mother soil’ they degenerate into ‘weeds’ (HL 2; KSA 264–5). It requires a genuine need (Bedürfnis) and desire (reine Neigung) for the production of greatness on the part of the individual and those who recognize greatness but cannot produce it are such degenerated plants (Unkraut). The fact that Nietzsche repeatedly recurs to metaphors of growing plants, climate and soil as images for the education and cultivation of great human beings has been pointed out by several interpreters and need not be further emphasized here.6 However, I would like to question whether we are in fact dealing with a metaphor, or whether the analogy between the education of the great individual and the cultivation of plants and soil is meant as a literal comparison. In this case, the education of the individual would require knowledge of necessity, that is, of the actual constellation of things that give rise to great human beings. Possessing a clear grasp of necessity, as one of the elements implicated in the occurrence of an event, would then amount to more than just determining the right moment for the accomplishment of one’s deed, requiring instead knowledge of the conditions under which great individuals can both grow and be received. In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche refers to this series of conditions under the name of freedom. In order to gain a better understanding of the relation between freedom and necessity underlying the production of great individuals qua events in Nietzsche’s early work, I suggest taking a closer look at his conception of the genius and the philosopher in this text.
3 The genius and the philosopher in Schopenhauer as Educator: Turning freedom (Becoming) into necessity (Being)
In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche treats the question of the production of great human beings qua events through the question of the education and cultivation of the individual’s singularity. On this account, as I have argued elsewhere, the figure of the genius reflects both the individual’s higher potential for continuous self-overcoming through the realization of her singularity and the human species’ higher potential for elevation as a whole through the production of great human beings (Lemm 2007). In both cases, freedom figures as a necessary condition for the realization of genius. At the beginning of the text, Nietzsche introduces the task of education in terms of liberation: ‘your educators can only be your liberators’ (SE 1; KSA 1.341). Liberation does not imply imposing a form on life but rather freeing the individual from all those forms, here represented by public opinion, religion, morality, the national state, etc., which obstruct the becoming of individual genius, the growth of its unique and singular form. Further on, we learn that the production of philosophical genius, as for example in the case of Schopenhauer and of the Greeks, calls for freedom, that ‘wonderful and perilous element,’ which is here understood as ‘free manliness of character, early knowledge of mankind, no scholarly education, no narrow patriotism, no necessity for bread-winning, no ties with the state’ (SE 8; KSA 1.411). For the sake of freedom as the true growing ground of the great human being, Nietzsche even calls for an active ‘struggle for culture,’ that is, ‘a struggle on behalf of culture and hostility towards those influences, habits, laws and institutions in which he fails to recognize this goal: which is the production of genius’ (SE 6; KSA 1.386).
Whether with respect to the individual or the philosophical genius, freedom in both cases is conceived of as a task: ‘a heavy debt which can be discharged only by means of great deeds’ (SE 8; KSA 1.412). Nietzsche rejects the modern idea of freedom as freedom of desire: for him, on the contrary, freedom always goes hand in hand with a duty. In the case of the individual, freedom means the responsibility to create and live according to its own laws and standards (SE 1); and, in the case of the philosopher, freedom means the responsibility of imitating and perfecting nature. Whereas the former presupposes self-knowledge, the latter requires knowledge of (the laws of) nature (SE 1). Interestingly, already in the early Nietzsche the possibility of self-creation and self-legislation is inseparable from (self)-knowledge, just as in the Gay Science 335 ‘Hoch die Physik’ where Nietzsche claims that those who want to become self-creators and self-legislators need knowledge of ‘all that is lawful and necessary in the world’ (GS 335).7
Just like small politics, neither education as liberation nor the struggle for culture can guarantee that the philosophical or artistic genius will actually have an impact on its time and produce an eternal effect, that is, take on the form of an event. They may provide the conditions for the becoming of genius and make their time more receptive to the emergence of genius, but it is not within the power of small politics to actually make an event occur. Nietzsche regrets that ‘[i]t often seems as though an artist and especially a philosopher only chances to exist in his age, as a hermit or a wanderer who has lost his way and been left behind. Just think of the true greatness of Schopenhauer–and then how absurdly small his effect has been’ (SE 7; KSA 406). For genius to actually become an event of eternal significance and worth, the recipients of genius, be it an individual, a people or a culture, must fully embrace and affirm the meaning of genius. Here, genius is understood as the embodiment of a destiny deeply inscribed in the life of an individual, a people or a culture. From the perspective of destiny, genius is not contingent and becomes under favourable circumstances, it can neither be produced nor fought for, for it is necessary and always already given.
This idea of genius as a necessity is also introduced at the beginning of Schopenhauer as Educator, when Nietzsche presents each individual’s genius, that is, singularity, as something that happens to the individual, as a unique and irreducible trait distinguishing each and every individual. Singularity or genius are in this sense reflections of necessity, a destiny to which the individual must succumb: ‘In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is’ (SE 1; KSA 1337). Nietzsche conceives of the relation between the great human being (genius) and its time (culture or people) in a similar fashion. Here, it is the great human being which instantiates the destiny (Schicksal) of a culture or people (NL 11 26[75]; KSA 11.168). This idea culminates in Nietzsche’s declaration of himself as the destiny of philosophy and humanity.8
In the case of the individual, assuming genius as an expression of destiny and necessity means affirming and loving one’s self as what one is (singular/genius). The individual needs to look at herself from the perspective of the artists ‘who dare to show us the human being as it is, uniquely itself to every last movement of his muscles, more, that in being thus strictly consistent in uniqueness he is beautiful, and worth regarding, and in no way tedious’ (SE 1; KSA 1.338, my emphasis). Against the contingencies of time, Nietzsche calls the individual to ‘be yourself’ and recognize in herself something allotted from all eternity (SE 1). Here, the education of the self takes on a different meaning in line with the idea of great politics – no longer concerned with the active ‘removal of weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant’ – but rather with introspection into ‘the true, original meaning and basic stuff of your nature’ as ‘something completely incapable of being educated or formed’ something ‘difficult of access, bound and paralyzed’ (SE 1; KSA 1.341). Whereas a small politics of education is a politics of negation which practices the critique of and struggle against ‘what is’ in the name of ‘what shall be,’ a great politics of education is a politics of amor fati: a politics of affirmation and love of what is always already given.9
In this second politics of the event, the task for the individual is to ‘know its self’ rather than to ‘become its self.’ It is a politics of being rather than one of becoming, where the event is pushed forward by the necessity of the past rather than pulled towards the future by what shall become. It is a politics that instantiates the knowledge of the past, in contrast to a politics which projects the vision of its future becoming. It is noteworthy that in his later work, Nietzsche refers to this idea of knowledge of the past as ‘inheritance (Erbe)’: the knowledge that one embodies (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 47 and also 44). The idea of ‘inheritance’ should not be misunderstood as an element of a racial or racist politics, rather, ‘inheritance’ points to the affirmation of what one is (great politics) in contrast to the aspiration towards what one is yet to become (small politics).
In the case of the philosopher, Nietzsche puts forth a similar point of view. Genius in the philosopher exemplifies the latter’s pure and loving eyes upon things. Genius ‘cannot immerse himself too deeply in them’ in contraposition to a philosophy which appears as knowledge of the history of philosophy and which is for a philosopher who affirms and embraces genius, the ‘most repugnant and inappropriate occupation,’ ‘grubbing around in countless strange and perverse opinions’ (SE 8; KSA 1.416). The philosopher’s desire to immerse herself in being reflects her love for the eternal and suprahistorical exemplified by the experience of the irreducible singularity of each and every moment she lives:
He who lets concepts, opinions, past events, books, step between himself and things – he, that is to say, who is in the broadest sense born for history – will never have an immediate perception of things [zum ersten Mal sehen] and will never be an immediately perceived thing himself [ein solches erstmalig gesehenes Ding]; but both these conditions belong together in the philosopher, because most of the instruction he receives he has to acquire out of himself [aus sich nehmen] and because he serves himself as a reflection and brief abstract of the whole world [Abbild und Abbreviatur der ganzen Welt]. (SE 7; KSA 1.410)
From the perspective of the philosopher to whom each and every singular being is a reflection of the whole becoming of life, being (eternity) and becoming (history), the individual and the whole, the philosopher and her time (culture) are inseparable from each other. From the perspective of the whole, philosophy is not a chance occurrence but an inevitable necessity.
The philosopher as a reflection of the whole, that is, of necessity, first occurred with the Greeks, where the whole meaning of the life of Greek culture and the Greek people was reflected in the life of their highest exemplars. Nietzsche argues that an iron necessity tied the Greek philosophers to their time. For him, only the Greeks truly justify philosophy insofar as they alone were able to answer the question of the value of life. Their answer arose from a true culture, a culture overflowing with life and perfection and it is this fullness that Nietzsche sees in the example of life offered by the philosophers in the tragic age of the Greeks who in themselves reflect a strict necessity between thought and character (PTAG 1; KSA 1.807). In modernity, such true culture and fullness of life is lacking and hence the philosopher is condemned to wander among his contemporaries like an ‘unpredictable and hence frightening comet’ (PTAG 1; KSA 1.809). Nietzsche believes that one day Schopenhauer (or, rather, he himself) will prove again that the philosopher embodies necessity by instantiating the whole becoming of life. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer has demonstrated through his deeds that ‘love of truth is something fearsome and mighty [Furchtbares und Gewaltiges]’ (SE 8; KSA 1.427). He has proven with his own example of life that philosophy can become necessary again and will be so ‘more and more as day succeeds day’ (SE 8). However, for this to happen, for philosophy to take on again the features of a true event, what is needed is not only an active politics of education which produces the conditions for the emergence of genius, but moreover a passive-receptive politics of culture which embraces and affirms the philosopher ‘as a reflection and brief abstract of the whole world’ (SE 7). Nietzsche believes that such a great politics of culture may become possible again one day through a redeeming return of and to the Greeks, of and to nature and fullness of life. However, the possibility of such a redeeming return presupposes above all love of necessity.
4 The great human being in Nietzsche’s late work (BGE and TI): Loving necessity
Although it seems undeniable that Nietzsche’s concern for genius and the great human being is in many ways representative of his early work, I argue that there exists a strong continuity between his early and late work, in particular Beyond Good and Evil and Twilights of the Idols. For reasons of space, I restrict my discussion of the figure of the great human being to a selection of aphorisms in the above mentioned books in view of distinguishing the different elements of what I have referred to as the two politics of the event: a politics of becoming concerned with the provision of favourable circumstances for the rise of great human beings; and a politics of being concerned with the knowledge and affirmation of necessity.
In both Beyond Good and Evil and Twilights of the Idols, Nietzsche puts forth the idea that an aristocratic commonwealth (Gemeinwesen), such as for example the Greek polis or the city-states during the Italian Renaissance, offer the true growing ground for human greatness (BGE 262 and TI ‘Skirmishes’ 33). What stands in the foreground in the constitution of the aristocratic commonwealth is a struggle against unfavourable circumstances. In BGE 262, Nietzsche argues that such a struggle against unfavourable circumstances requires the implementation of a strict and unconditional discipline (Zucht). For only the latter is capable of producing a human type, that is, a form of life able to prevail over and against the contingencies of time. Aristocratic morality produces hardness, uniformity and simplicity of form and as such secures the duration and domination of its form of life against that of others. Aristocratic morality has the power to transform contingency into necessity and thereby to provide the conditions necessary for the rise of great human beings.10
In “My Concept of Freedom” (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 38), we find a similar idea. Nietzsche advances the hypothesis that freedom is measured ‘by the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 38) and that this resistance and the freedom that follows from it, is greatest in those who apply ‘the maximum of authority and discipline’ ‘against themselves’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 38). This is why liberal institutions fail in their attempt to produce a free type of human being for they do away with the struggle against unfavourable circumstances by institutionalizing freedom as an entitlement rather than as what can always only be fought for. The struggle against contingency or against resistances is so important for Nietzsche and cannot be done away with, for only those who truly stand in need of such a struggle, whether an individual or a species, are also those who are capable of carrying it through: ‘First principle: one must need (nöthig) strength, otherwise one will never have it’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 38) and ‘the species must need (nöthig) itself as a species’ (BGE 262), otherwise it cannot prevail and make itself durable. This idea reminds one of the figure of the historical agent discussed at the beginning of this chapter whose emergence requires a genuine need (Bedürfnis) and desire (reine Neigung) for the production of greatness and otherwise would bring with it all the dangers Nietzsche associates with the monumental.
In BGE 262, the need of the species-preserving type is disrupted by the instantaneous, seemingly hazardous, irruption of the great human being qua event. The latter returns aristocratic society back to a state of danger and fragility: what has been patiently built over a long period of time is now subject to destruction and seems in vain. From the new perspective of the outstanding individual, the values of the former aristocratic discipline no longer seem necessary and if they persisted it would only be as an archaizing taste (BGE 262). The old discipline has lost its meaning; its rule has been overcome. Accordingly, what seemed to be necessary from the perspective of aristocratic morality now turns out to be merely contingent on the conditions of existence of a particular type of human being: the ‘Julius Caesar type’ as in ‘My Concept of Freedom’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 38), or, a ‘species of severe, warlike, prudently taciturn human being, closed mouthed and closely linked’ as in BGE 262.11 Neither of these two types is capable of producing an event, they merely prepare it. They do not instantiate the eternal value of the totality of life beyond human measure, but always only reflect one of its historical, human all too human, manifestations. Let us recall that according to Nietzsche, the politics of the state (or any other moral or religious institution) is incapable of producing genius (KSA 13: 19[11], 13.546–7). In the words of Zarathustra, only where the state ends begins the human being: ‘there begins the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune’ (Z ‘Idol’ KSA 4.61).
Nevertheless, this does not mean that the cultivation of a social or warrior type of human being is completely in vain. On the contrary, the becoming of the event is only possible on the basis of this long process of disciplining and breeding.12 The latter builds up a ‘tremendous tension’ (BGE 262) without which the singular individual qua event would not be possible: for ‘[i]f the tension in the mass has grown too great the merest accidental stimulus suffices to call the “genius”, the “deed”, the great destiny, into the world’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 44). Against that which has been built over a long period of time, the durable, stable and uniform type, the singular individual qua event stands out as an inevitable necessity, a destiny (Schicksal) that happens to humanity. From the standpoint of Nietzsche’s conception of genius, the great human being is a necessity and the epoch in which they appear is accidental (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 44).
Furthermore, it is worth noting that in contrast to the type of human being built on moral discipline, what is active in the becoming of the event exceeds morality. The event does not take the form of individual action as for example in the fight for freedom mentioned above, or, as in a conception of action based on ‘freedom of will,’ an idea rejected by Nietzsche. Rather, what is active in the rise of great human beings qua events is something that goes beyond the human being’s individual will, something that is inevitable and occurs by necessity. Although in BGE 262, Nietzsche describes the outbreak of cultural highpoints in terms of exploding egoisms in competition with each other, it is important to note that while he emphasizes the new visibility of the singular individual (‘Einzelne’), he sets the term ‘individual’ in parenthesis, when he speaks of the ‘dangerous and uncanny point’ that has been reached ‘where the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life lives beyond the old morality’ (BGE 262).13 This suggests that what gives rise to greatness is something that exceeds and goes beyond the individual’s will.14 The explosion of genius in ‘My Conception of Genius’ as an overflowing of power best illustrates this fatalistic idea of greatness: ‘He flows out, he overflows, he uses himself up, he does not spare himself – with inevitability, fatefully, involuntarily, as a river’s bursting its banks is involuntary’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 44). Greatness does not stem from the individual but rather from the power of the whole manifesting itself through and despite the individual. Greatness reveals the eternal power of the whole becoming of life by means of the individual genius who is merely its contingent and ephemeral bearer. Translated into political terms, one could say that the people are the true agent of greatness (whole) where their power and creativity finds in genius only its contingent and ephemeral messenger (see also BGE 126).
This notion of greatness articulates the perspective of the whole according to which everyone is necessary, a piece of fate: ‘[O]ne belongs to the whole, one is the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare and condemn the whole . . . But nothing exists apart from the whole!’ (TI ‘Errors’ 8). For Nietzsche, the perspective of the whole is liberating for it inscribes each and every individual as well as each and every moment in the whole of life and becoming. From this perspective everything is eternal. Furthermore, the perspective of the whole is always also the perspective of plurality best illustrated by Goethe, who took the greatest variety of irreducible life forces ‘upon himself, above himself, within himself,’ aspiring towards totality, towards creating himself (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 44). Goethe proves the ‘necessity of the most hazardous (Notwendigkeit des Zufälligsten)’ (KSA 10: 20[3]; KSA 10.588).
Interestingly, Nietzsche, just as in his description of the great human being in HL mentioned above, recurs to images of nature – the plant and its soil, the river and its banks – to describe the emergence of genius qua event.15 Nietzsche holds that everything is necessary, that the human being is necessary through and through: ‘The human being is down to his last fibre necessity and is inherently [ganz und gar]‚ unfree “– if one understands by freedom the foolish claim that one can change one’s essential makeup arbitrarily as one changes clothes . . .”’(PTAG 7; KSA 1.830). Furthermore, he conceives of this necessity as destiny and claims that any true culture must begin with knowledge of necessity and that this is ‘decisive for the fortune (Loos) of nations (Volk) and humankind’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 47). The insight that culture begins with knowledge of necessity is exemplified by the Greeks who knew that beauty is not an accident but begins with the cultivation of the body (Leib): ‘This is why the Greeks remain the supreme cultural event of history – they knew, they did what needed to be done; Christianity, which despised the body, has up till now been humankind’s greatest misfortune’ (TI ‘Skirmishes’ 47).
When Nietzsche compares the emergence of the great deeds of the genius to the natural movements of plants or rivers, or when he claims that culture begins with knowledge of the body, he does not mean to collapse the natural or biological (nature) onto the necessary (destiny). In a note of the Nachlass from the end of 1876 to the summer of 1877, Nietzsche writes: ‘In the stage of higher spiritual liberation one should replace everything that is contingent-natural [Zufällig-Natürliche] in relation to life with something that is chosen-necessary [Gewähltes-Nöthiges]’ (KSA 8: 23[69], 8.426). Under certain circumstance, this also means, for example, replacing one’s own father or child by another one. Accordingly, Nietzsche not only rejects moral and religious conceptions of necessity based on discipline (BGE 262) or on ‘free will,’ as we have seen above, but also scientific or naturalistic conceptions of necessity based on facts, absolute laws (KSA 12: 9[91], 12.383; see also GS 335), or, on the erroneous ideas of causality, teleology and determinism (KSA 10: 8[19]). Against these ‘great errors,’ Nietzsche upholds knowledge of necessity as the ultimate source of liberation. Knowledge of necessity frees up the human being’s creative potential by undoing their anthropocentric, human all too human, projections on (human) life and nature. Knowledge of necessity liberates the human being from both the scientific as well as the moral and religious conceptions of nature and necessity that have been imposed on the human species throughout the process of its so-called civilization.
Nietzsche hopes that through this new knowledge of necessity the human being will again adopt a perspective of radical immanence which allows them to love and embrace life and nature as fullness and affirm it as a source of freedom and creativity. From this new perspective, freedom and necessity are not opposites that exclude each other but rather necessity turns out to be freedom itself (Z ‘Of New and Old Tablets’ 2). Necessity as the highest form of freedom reaches completion in the figure of the artist, for they know very well ‘that precisely when they no longer do anything “voluntarily” but do everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, subtlety, full power, of creative placing, disposing, and forming reaches its peak – in short, that necessity and “freedom of the will” then become one in them’ (BGE 213; see also RWB 9 and 11).
From the perspective of the knowledge of necessity, freedom is no longer conceived of as something one has or conquers over time but rather something that occurs always only momentarily, or at the turning point of history (as in BGE 262). Knowledge of necessity then reveals freedom as the ‘calamitous (verhängnisvoll) simultaneity (Zugleich) of spring and fall,’ as something that perishes the moment it emerges, something that can neither be provided for nor secured over time, but needs to be affirmed and embraced in the moment (BGE 262). It is thanks to the affirmation and love of the moment in its relation to the whole of becoming that freedom can be experienced as an event of eternal value and significance. For Nietzsche, it is again Goethe who best represents this idea of freedom as amor fati:
A spirit thus emancipated [freigewordener] stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual [Einzelne] may be rejected [verwerflich], that in the whole [Ganzen] everything is redeemed and affirmed – he no longer denies. . . But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name Dionysos. (TI “Skirmishes” 49; see also KSA 13: 16[32], 13.492 and TI ‘Errors’ 8; KSA 6.96)
5 Conclusion
In conclusion I wish to briefly recapitulate why Nietzsche’s great politics of the event qua cultivation of the great human being does not mean an elitist politics of domination. The reason is that when the production of greatness is made dependent on small politics, that is, on an idea of culture carried forth by the state or other moral or religious institutions, this politics takes on the form of a politics of domination which fails to reflect a whole where individual greatness (aristocratic) meets the receptive affirmation of a people or a culture (democratic).16 Instead, wholeness is brought forth by a different idea of culture, one that is associated with great politics where politics is archipolitical as Badiou points out, a politics beyond politics. What distinguishes this great politics is that on its account events are not political but philosophical in character. This explains why the philosopher plays such an important role in Nietzsche’s conception of great politics as the spiritualization of (small) politics. Badiou refers to this interrelation between event and philosophy under the name of ‘anti-philosophy’ meaning that philosophy qua event can neither be foundational in a political or moral sense nor can it be bear the burden of proof or demonstration. Philosophy becomes entirely absorbed by the act of philosophy qua event and hence meaning is produced in a singular way under the name of the individual philosopher or great human being. According to Badiou, philosophy thus understood means the inevitable collapse of philosophy into madness. Anti-philosophy cannot ultimately withstand the return of small politics and of philosophy as the systematic pursuit of truth. In this view, the role of anti-philosophy is to warn philosophy against becoming a religion, against identifying truth with meaning. Likewise the construction of the truth of the anti-philosophical meaning requires ‘the unavoidable necessity of politics,’ ‘a politics . . . that is content with being faithful to a few new possibilities’ (Badiou 2001, p. 9). Badiou does not believe that the anti-philosophical event can encounter as such the affirmation of a people or a culture but rather this connection between the event and a people or a culture is precisely the work of small politics and systematic philosophy. Thereby Badiou discounts the connection between democracy and eternity, or, in other words, the relation that great politics establishes between the whole of life and becoming and the whole of a culture and a people.
Notes
1 An earlier and shorter version of this chapter has been published in Spanish as ‘La política del acontecimiento en Nietzsche’ in Política y acontecimiento, Miguel Vatter and Miguel Ruiz Stull (eds), Santiago: Fondo de cultura económica 2011, pp. 169–92. The article has since undergone major revisions. I thank Herman W. Siemens, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Miguel Vatter for their comments. Versions of this chapter were presented at the Macquarie University and Deakin University Philosophy Seminars as well as at the Congreso Nacional de la Asociación Chilena de Filosofía (Concepción 2011). I thank the audiences for their comments and suggestions.
2 On the relation between gift-giving and time in the Thus spoke Zarathustra, see also Shapiro 1991, pp. 13–52 and Lemm 2009, ch. 4.
3 On the historical and suprahistorical perspective in Nietzsche, see also Gerhard 1988, pp. 133–62.
4 This conception of time is in many ways comparable to what Deleuze refers to as the age of heroes (Deleuze 1994, pp. 91ff).
5 It is interesting to note that already for the young Nietzsche the affirmation of the eternal return, here in form of the question of whether one would be willing to relive the last 10 or 20 years, functions as a test for the selection of a higher point of view on life.
6 For two examples see Wotling (1995, especially pp. 273–96) and Blondel (1991).
7 On the relation between law and creativity, see Berkowitz 2005 and 2006, pp. 155–69.
8 For an exegesis of the first aphorism of the last chapter of Ecce Homo (EH: ‘Destiny’ 1), see Stegmaier 2008, pp. 62–113.
9 On the problem of how the unconditional and total affirmation of life (Yes-saying) identified with the concept of amor fati can be thought together with the negative practice of total critique (No-Saying) in a coherent way, see Siemens 2009, pp. 182–206. Siemens distinguishes between No-saying which is narrated by Nietzsche from the perspective of the antagonist or warrior and exhibits an intentional state of negation driven by the impulse to transform the status quo or prevail, and Yes-saying which is narrated from a standpoint that abstracts from this or any subject position within struggle and reflects a standpoint between subjects. He argues that the relational standpoint of affirmation does not stand in contradiction to the subject-position of the antagonist, but rather that the former is a necessary condition of the latter. On this account, taking on the stance of critique in Nietzsche presupposes the affirmation of reality as conflict and opposition. I agree with Siemens on the distinction between the subject position and the relational position insofar as they reflect in many ways what I have been referring to as the perspective of the individual and of the whole, of becoming and of being, of the historical and the suprahistorical, of freedom and of necessity, etc. However, I do not agree with his suggestion, that all the passages that like the passage on ‘great politics’, describing the task of Umwertung as a transformative philosophical project are narrated by Nietzsche from the standpoint of the subject of Umwertung, and his self-understanding, as a free and intentional agent (Siemens 2009, p. 203).
10 For an another example, see also Nietzsche’s account on the emergence of the sovereign individual based on moral discipline which transforms the human being into something necessary, regular, uniform etc. (GM II: 1–3).
11 Accordingly, ‘necessary’ in the context of the breeding and disciplining of a particular type of being, simply means ‘true for us [Wahrheit für uns]’, das ‘that which allows us to exist [Dasein-uns-Ermöglichende]’ based on experience, something deeply inbred and so old that ‘a new way of thought [Umdenken]’ has become impossible (KSA 9: 11[286] 9.550). On the different meanings of necessity in Nietzsche, especially in relation to laws of nature, see also Siemens 2010.
12 For a discussion of the economical bases of the event (culture), see Lemm 2009 (ch. 3) and Sedgwick 2007.
13 For the same reason, I believe, ‘genius’ and ‘deed’ are also set in quotation marks in TI ‘Skirmishes’ 44 cited above.
14 On Nietzsche’s conception of activity in TI, especially in opposition to the concepts of active-reactive in GM, see Brusotti 2010.
15 See also Nietzsche’s depiction of the philosopher and his ideas as a growing tree bound up by necessity (GM ‘Preface’ 2).
16 On both the aristocratic and the democratic elements in Nietzsche’s politics of culture, see Lemm 2007 and 2011.
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