Eugen Fink - Nietzsche's Philosophy

Nietzsche's Philosophy
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Nietzsche's Philosophy
EUGEN FINK
Translated by Goetz Richter
\ O N D O N NEW YORK A W Lcontinuum
Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 www. continuumbooks. com English translation Continuum 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-8264-5997-8 (hardback), 0-8264-5998-6 (paperback) Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn
Contents
Translator's Foreword
vii
Chapter One: The 'Metaphysics of the Artist' 1. Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks 2. The fundamental equation of being and value. The perspective of The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music 3. The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world 4. 'Socratism' against tragic wisdom. Concerning truth and falsity in the extra-moral sense 5. Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius. Philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks
1 1 7 13 20 27
Chapter Two: Nietzsche's Enlightenment 1. The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective. Human, All Too Human 2. The philosophy of the morning (Dawn and The Gay Science)
34 34 42
Chapter Three: The Proclamation 1. Form, style and structure of Thus spoke Zarathustra 2. The overman and the death of God 3. The will to power 4. The eternal return: Of the vision and the riddle, Before Sunrise
51 51 57 65 72
vi
Contents
5. The eternal return: the cosmological conception of the problem of morality. The recurrence of the same 6. The eternal recurrence: Of the Great Yearning 7. The eternal recurrence: The Seven Seals. Zarathustra and the Higher Man Chapter Four: The Destruction of the Western Tradition 1. The transcendental creation of value. Beyond Good and Evil 2. The Genealogy of Morals 114 3. The Antichrist and The Twilight of the Idols 4. The ontological idea and the moral ideal 5. The posthumous work The Will to Power. The problem of nihilism 6. The negative ontology of the thing 7. Discipline and Breeding - the Dionysian world Chapter Five: Nietzsche's Relationship to Metaphysics as Imprisonment and Liberation 1. The four transcendental dimensions of the problem of being and the basic principles of Nietzsche's philosophy. The cosmic concept of play as an extra-metaphysical question Notes Index
80 89 98 107 107 114 121 129 137 145 154
164
164 175 182
Eugen Fink (1905-75) taught philosophy at the University in Freiburg from 1946 to 1971. He was a close associate of the German phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and his thinking and language is influenced considerably by these two major thinkers of the twentieth century. Fink frequently refers to the view that philosophy is not just an academic discipline. His lectures on Nietzsche demand a radical commitment to thinking that embraces the existence of the thinking person. For Fink serious philosophical engagement transcends historical curiosity and intellectual interest. The thought and language of a philosopher with this demanding vision of philosophy is somewhat difficult to translate. Fink's German text tends to be complex. It attempts to articulate visions of Nietzsche and his philosophical thinking in a personal and engaged manner. Like any spoken language the text contains redundancies, neologisms and some grammatical errors. In addition it lacks a degree of detachment from Nietzsche that results in Fink's occasional emulation of Nietzsche's prophetic style. The translation has made the attempt to preserve Fink's idiosyncrasies in a literal sense and has not necessarily simplified seeming rhetoric complexities or smoothed over any apparent roughness created by redundancies. Fink's phenomenological method relies on a direct connection between thinking and expression that often discovers its own highly individual style of language. In addition, Fink's close association and engagement with Heidegger has made certain questions and concepts an integral part of his own thinking. The ontological difference between Being itself (das Seiri) and being (das Seiende) and the corresponding distinction between ontological and ontic considerations form an important background to Fink's own thought. Rather than following the tradition of some Heidegger translations that create a peculiar English Heidegger-jargon, the present translation has made the attempt to rely on context to elucidate these meanings. Even though, certain difficult concepts (such as Lichtung or 'clearing', Offenheit or 'openness', etc.) have been directly translated and may only be appreciated if the reader engages with Heidegger or Fink beyond this book.
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Fink's own philosophical focus (also evident in these lectures) is the concept of 'world' (Welt). Fink frequently uses this term by itself and without article in the endeavour perhaps to avoid a simple and reifying understanding of it. The term is closely related to Heidegger's 'Being'. The present translation makes use of the two terms 'cosmos' and 'world' and retains them as a reference wherever Fink refers to a related term. Fink's Nietzsche lectures were written before the current critical Nietzsche edition came into existence. Fink accordingly discusses an edited version of Nietzsche's posthumous aphorisms that is known as The Will to Power. The present translation copies Fink's text and referencing in this regard and translates his citations from Nietzsche's works. On occasion, some standard English translations of Nietzsche's works by Kaufmann and Hollingdale were consulted.1 I am much indebted to Dr Ted Sadler (Sydney) for his inspiration and guidance in relation to philosophy in general and the work of Nietzsche, Eugen Fink and Martin Heidegger in particular. His illuminating interpretations and his generous critical review of large sections of this translation have been invaluable. I should also like to thank Mr Georg Seifert (Winsen) for his early assistance and for inspiring me to pursue the English language to a point where I was able to adopt it as a voluntary exile. Dr Jeanell Carrigan (Sydney) has provided the most essential support at times when this translation appeared too difficult to complete. Goetz Richter Sydney, October 2002
CHAPTER ONE
The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'
1. NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY BEHIND MASKS

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the great, fateful characters in the history of western spirit. He is a fated person who demands final decisions and a terrifying question mark on the path of European man, shaped by the heritage of classical antiquity and two thousand years of Christendom. Nietzsche is a symbol for the suspicion that this path was a wrong track, that man has lost his way and that a reversal and a rejection of everything which hitherto had been considered 'holy', 'good' and 'true' is required. Nietzsche stands for a radical critique of religion, philosophy, science and morality. Hegel made the tremendous attempt to grasp the entire history of the spirit as a process in which all preceding steps are assimilated yet nevertheless relevant in their own right. Hegel considered himself able to evaluate the history of European man positively. Nietzsche presents an absolute, decisive rejection of the past, an overturning of all traditions, and an appeal to a radical reversal. With Nietzsche, European man arrives at a crossroad. Hegel and Nietzsche have a historical consciousness in common, which reflects upon - and evaluates western history as a whole. Both are influenced by early Greek thinkers and return to origins. Both are Heracliteans. Hegel and Nietzsche relate to one another like absolute affirmation to absolute negation. Hegel's enormous conceptual labours reflect and integrate all human modes of ontological understanding and all opposing motifs of the history of metaphysics in one system bringing this very history to an end. For Nietzsche, the same history is only the history of the longest error. He attacks it with unbounded passion and rhetoric resonating with tension and suspicion, with fervent hatred and bitter mockery, with the wit and sly malice of a propagandist. He mobilizes all weapons at his disposal in his struggle: his refined psychology, his cutting wit, his ardour, and above all his style. Nietzsche attacks with full commitment, but he neither engages in a conceptual destruction of metaphysics nor does he demolish metaphysics through a method of conceptual, ontological thought. He rejects the concept and opposes
rationalism with its conceptual violation of reality. Nietzsche struggles with the entire past. He does not only take issue with traditional philosophy, but also with traditional religion and morality. His struggle takes the form of a comprehensive critique of culture. This feature is of utmost importance. Nietzsche's critique of culture can easily conceal the more fundamental fact that he is essentially only concerned with a philosophical polemic against western metaphysics. To be sure, Nietzsche subjects the entire cultural past to his devastating criticism. With this comprehensive approach into the past, with the fundamental interrogation of our occidental origins Nietzsche distinguishes himself immediately from the fashionable, moralizing critics of the nineteenth century. He does not only approach the past critically, but makes a positive decision. Revaluing western values, he has a will to the future, an agenda and an ideal. But he is no Utopian, no idealist wishing to make the world a happier and better place. He does not believe in 'progress'. He makes sombre predictions about the future. He is a prophet of European Nihilism, which appears to have become omnipresent - not only in Europe. Everyone knows that and discusses it - one is even in the process of 'overcoming' it. Nietzsche predicts the advent of nihilism 'within the next two centuries'. His historical consciousness extends far into the future. It accordingly shows a kind of pettiness and poverty of spirit if we attempt to enclose a thinker who embraces our entire history and who projects a design of life over centuries, in our limited, contemporary context and interpret him from this perspective. The attempts to drag Nietzsche into current political debate, to portray him as a characteristic 'advocate' of violence, of German imperialism, as a Teutonic warrior who runs amok against the values of Mediterranean culture must be strongly rejected. Although Nietzsche cannot escape the fate of any philosophy to be vulgarized and trivialized, his political abuse is no argument against him unless it can be shown that the objectionable political practice derives from a genuine understanding of his real philosophy. The works of great systematic thinkers such as Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, are perhaps less exposed to crude misunderstandings than Nietzsche, who seems to be more accessible on account of his style. The splendour of his style and its aphoristic form captivates and attracts us; Nietzsche entices and fascinates with the directness of his discourse. He exudes an aesthetic charm and confounds us with an aura of excess. Considering Nietzsche's increasing influence, the following important question poses itself: Is Nietzsche's influence based on his philosophy or on subsidiary features of his works? Is it perhaps even the result of a seduction by compelling stylistic features of his sharp mind? Our answer might be disappointing. Nietzsche's philosophy is actually hardly influential - it is perhaps still not understood and awaits adequate interpretation. Nietzsche, the philosopher, is concealed by the cultural critic, by the mysterious, eloquent prophet. His masks
Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks
conceal his substance. Our century testifies to a diverse preoccupation with these masks, yet it still remains out of touch with his philosophy. Nevertheless, our view of Nietzsche has undergone a characteristic change in the last decades. At the beginning of the century, Nietzsche was largely portrayed as the ingenious diagnostician of the decline of culture and as the creator of an ambiguous, enigmatic psychology or of a high art of conjecture and interpretation. Nietzsche was praised as the keen investigator of 'resentment' and 'decadence' with an evil eye for all that is morbid and decayed. He appeared to be an artist, an eloquent poet and a prophet. Nietzsche invested the word 'life' (as Scheler put it) with a golden sound. He was the founder of the 'philosophy of life' (Lebensphilosophie). The Nietzsche cult increased with the ignorance about Nietzsche. Nietzsche was made into a legendary figure or stylized to a symbol. Combining biography and work, interpretation created an artistic fiction. The Nietzsche interpretations of recent times are characterized by a stronger sense of reality. Now we can observe an inverted tendency. The approach is often biographical and attempts are made to understand the work through the life which created it. Nietzsche is looked at with fewer illusions. He is not seen as the Overman proclaimed in the Zarathustra. Quite the contrary, the shrewd psychology of unmasking, which Nietzsche developed with greatest virtuosity, is now applied to himself. He appears as deeply suffering, crushed and forsaken by life. The wild, infernal hatred against Christianity is apparently explained by his simple inability to come to terms with it, his anti-moralism by the unconditional honesty of his critique of morality; his glorification of abundant, vigorous life, the Great Health and the man of power by needs arising from the privations of a suffering person. Peripheral aspects of his work determine this image of Nietzsche more than its philosophical substance. Without doubt, Nietzsche's 'psychological achievements' are extraordinary: he has opened our eyes to the ambiguities, the hidden meanings of any spiritual expression and to other countless ambiguities. His technique of psychological analysis is highly sophisticated. Without doubt, Nietzsche is blessed with an uncanny instinct for historical processes; he can read the signs of the future and can even predict it. No doubt, Nietzsche is an artist with the sensitivity of a Mimosa, with a tremendous richness of intuition, with a fertile imagination and with visionary powers. Without doubt, Nietzsche is a poet. Nietzsche once said about himself: 'I am the most concealed of all the concealed.' Perhaps we understand the philosopher with such great difficulty because he is the genuine Nietzsche. Concealing himself became a passion for Nietzsche. He has an uncanny desire for deceit, masquerade and the pose of the jester. He assumes as many disguising as revealing 'roles': perhaps no other philosopher conceals his philosophy behind so much sophistry. It seems as if his shimmering, unsteady being was unable to find a clear and determinate
expression, as if he played too many roles. They include the 'free spirit' from the time of Human, All Too Human, the 'Prince Vogelfrei', Zarathustra, and his final self-identification with Dionysos. What, however, is this desire for the mask? Is it merely a literary device, a mystification of the public, a safe method to advocate a position without being committed to it? Is this feature ultimately the result of Nietzsche's absence of any roots, of his suspension over an abyss, wishing to conjure up a secure basis for himself and others? Psychological information will never be able to solve this enigma within Nietzsche's being. In a metaphor full of symbolism, Nietzsche speaks of the 'labyrinth': for him man is essentially a labyrinth from which no one has escaped and where all heroes have perished. Nietzsche himself is the exemplary man in a labyrinth. The secret of his being cannot be wrestled from him; he safeguards himself through many false tracks, through his many disguises and characters. However, is this relevant to us? In general, the interpretation of Nietzsche suffers from the fact, that the work is approached through the personality, that biography is used as a key. Nietzsche's life is more concealed than his work. But the extraordinary nature of his fate, his passion and his messianic claims, the outrageous pathos with which he postures, angers, confuses and fascinates - all these tempt us again and again to look to the person rather than the work. Nietzsche seduces us. All his books are written in the manner of confessions. As an author he does not remain in the background, but speaks in an almost unbearable manner about himself, his spiritual experiences, his illness and his taste. It takes a peculiar arrogance to burden the reader with the personality of the author and to imply at the same time that all his books are essentially only monologues. Nietzsche uses the audacity of such an imposition on the reader as an artistic device and literary delicacy; he secures himself a following just because he repels. This aristocratic pathos stimulates and interests. As a writer, Nietzsche is sophisticated, he is able to pull out all stops, create tender, sublime sounds as well as blazing fanfares. He has a developed sense for the natural melody of language, constructing a long-winded sentence as an artful period, with the timing of the accelerando, with a flight that puts every word just right. He also commands the staccato rhythm of the short, captivating sentence that hits like lightning. His style teems with the scintillating electricity of spiritual tension, appealing to the irrational forces of the human soul in a virtuosic manner. Nietzsche's style is intentionally affected. His analysis of Wagner's music applies to his own style. There is a great deal of affectation, of seduction and magic in Nietzsche's style. However, where thinking comes into the genuine closeness of poetry we also encounter great profundity. The brilliance of Nietzsche's style, its extreme subjectivity, tempts us repeatedly to look back from the work to the author who is reflected in his work in so many ways. There is a further reason for the usual approach to Nietzsche. A few works
Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks
aside, Nietzsche's books generally do not follow one train of thought or progressively unfold a path of thought. They are collections of aphorisms. Nietzsche, whose poor eyesight prevented him from spending long hours at his writing desk, developed the aphorism into an art form. However, it would be presumptuous if one were to explain his aphoristic style simply through this affliction, categorizing it as a virtue arising from a need. The aphorism, rather, reflects the character of Nietzsche's thought. It allows the short, surprising formulation without need for any justifications. It appears that Nietzsche thinks in flashes, not in a cumbersome way of conceptually developing long sequences of thought. As a thinker he is intuitive and imaginative, possessing extraordinary powers of concretization. Nietzsche's aphorisms are very succinct. They resemble cut stones. And yet they do not just stand on their own, but form sequences and (within the unity of a book) a unique whole. Nietzsche is a master of composition; each book has its own unique spiritual mood which is found in all aphorisms, each has its own pace, its own unmistakable individual sound. No two books of Nietzsche resemble each other. The more one becomes sensitive to this, the greater becomes one's awe about his artistic achievements. At the same time, however, the wonder grows why Nietzsche, who gave so much to his books, always withdrew from organizing his thought within a systematic conceptual framework. We find systematic sketches, conceptions of a planned path of thought only in the posthumous writings. Nietzsche's highly poetical quality and the aphoristic form of his books are disadvantageous to the exposition of his philosophy. Nietzsche concealed rather than revealed his philosophy through a style which equally intended to attract attention, persuade and aesthetically charm be it through conscious provocation or extreme, eristic exaggeration. We would not have to bother about Nietzsche if his work merely articulated the particular existential experience of an extremely tormented person. He would not be a fateful figure, but an interesting person, a great individual who deserves our moderate admiration. If he is, however, a philosopher, i.e. someone who spiritually safeguards our humanity and the truth of our existence, he must concern us, whether we like it or not. Does Nietzsche share the responsibility for the kind of modern mankind we are? Where does he stand as a thinker? We can never find an answer to this question by focusing intently on Nietzsche's personality, by accumulating reports about him and by having recourse to the most penetrating psychology. Only the reflection of his philosophical thought can experience where Nietzsche is located in the history of western thought and gains a glimpse of the seriousness of his questions. Even if we diligently and honestly strive for this understanding we find ourselves in danger. Nietzsche is a threat to everyone, not only to the young person who is defencelessly exposed to his scepticism, his abysmal suspicion and his art of psychological seduction.
Nietzsche is not only dangerous because he is a pied piper, because the music of his language is so persuasive. He is dangerous rather because of the uncanny mixture of philosophy and sophistry, of original thought and radical scepticism of thinking against itself. Nietzsche is the philosopher who places the entire history of philosophy in question and who sees in this philosophy a 'deeply negative movement'. Nietzsche does not follow the path broken by centuries of fundamental thinking. Nietzsche questions this path and attacks metaphysics in a way that differs from the affirmation of everyday life or from the sciences. His attack on metaphysics does not proceed from a pre-philosophical sphere of being; he is not 'naive'. In Nietzsche thinking itself turns against metaphysics. After 25 centuries of a metaphysical approach to being Nietzsche searches for a new beginning. In his battle against western metaphysics he still remains tied to it, he only 'inverts metaphysics'. However, the question which is posed in this book is whether Nietzsche is merely the inverted metaphysician or whether a new ontological understanding announces itself through him. This question cannot be answered briefly and decisively. We must rather engage in a long and involved reflection. Following the paths of Nietzsche's thought, we must immerse ourselves in his work, and, finally and most importantly, we must argue with him. We attempt a preliminary interpretation. In a concentrated journey through Nietzsche's writings we will firstly expose the fundamental features of Nietzsche's thought. We will then pose the question how these fundamental features relate to the basic questions of traditional philosophy. Do they show the features of a metaphysical inquiry or not? This will prepare the question about Nietzsche's new ontological understanding. We are looking for the philosophy of Nietzsche, which is concealed in his writings by his dazzling language, his seductive stylistic power, his unique aphorisms, and behind the fascinating personality which repeatedly demands attention. However, before we look for his philosophy we must obviously already have a preconception of what philosophy is. We are not searching blindly and without guidance nor do we rely on the assurances of the author about his understanding of 'philosophy'. The preconception that guides us all is - in accordance with our historical origins - that of metaphysics, which Nietzsche is challenging. We find ourselves in a peculiar situation. In searching for Nietzsche's philosophy, we may have lost the thread, the thread of Ariadne, which could guide us into the labyrinth of Nietzsche's thought. With what legitimation do we speak about 'philosophy' if Nietzsche casts off an entire tradition? Should we not invent and coin a new word to designate whatever Nietzsche's philosophy is? However, Nietzsche's thinking, which passionately questions an entire historical age, does not deny the origins of occidental philosophy. Nietzsche returns to Heraclitus. His battle begins with the Eleatics, against Plato and the metaphysical tradition
The fundamental equation of being and value
originating from him. The primordial origin of Nietzsche's philosophy remains Heraclitus. After 2500 years a repetition of Heraclitus occurs accompanied by the tremendous assertion to wipe out and oppose the extended reflection of an entire tradition formed in the meantime and to show humanity a new yet ancient path. This stance towards history illustrates Nietzsche's exaggerated missionary consciousness, his feeling of destiny, as he expresses it in Ecce Homo; I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.1
2. THE FUNDAMENTAL EQUATION OF BEING AND VALUE. THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY FROM THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC
Nietzsche's philosophy is hidden rather than evident in his work. To be sure philosophy is hardly ever objectively present and accessible to everyone in its literary form. Accordingly, there is a peculiar tension between the utterance, the common meaning of the words, and the philosophical thought. Nietzsche's 'philosophy', however, does not just show aspects of such concealment. Rather, it is hidden in a work appearing under many guises. It is obscured by his cultural critique, by his psychology, by his poetry, and it is concealed beneath Nietzsche's masks, beneath the manifold roles and characters he plays. It is overshadowed by his 'literary trickery' which is acquainted with every device of charm and seduction. It is distorted by the immoderate subjectivity of the author, and by a never ending, painful self-examination. Nietzsche, who often gets caught by the resentment of thinking against itself, states on one occasion: If thinking is your fate, revere this fate with divine honour and sacrifice to it the best, the most beloved.2 Nietzsche's fateful existence is respected most if we search for his philosophy in the labyrinth of his work. Is Nietzsche's disdain for metaphysics really to be taken seriously, or is it only an arrogant prejudice? His attacks on occidental philosophy from Parmenides and Plato onwards are certainly not the expression of a radicalism that finds the ontological question of metaphysics wanting or that wishes to overcome this philosophy because it does not pose the question of being in a sufficiently decisive manner. Nietzsche rejects metaphysics and its
concept of philosophy from a quite different perspective. Metaphysics is understood 'morally', not ontologically. For Nietzsche metaphysics is a process of life in which above all 'value judgements' assert themselves, a movement in which crippling, subjugating, life-denying 'values' achieve supremacy. Metaphysics is understood as a process of life which Nietzsche assesses according to its value. He views metaphysics through the 'perspective of life'. Nietzsche considers the ontological reflections of metaphysics in respect of their symptomatic importance. The distinction between appearance and thing-initself expresses a declining passion for life. A life which no longer feels at home in the sense-world invents itself an 'otherworld' beyond appearance. Nietzsche does not examine or evaluate the ontological representations of the metaphysical tradition, but sees them merely as symptoms of vital tendencies. In other words, he does not himself pose the question of being - at least not in the traditional way. The question of being gives way to the question of value. Nietzsche's own unreflected basic presupposition must become an explicit topic of our interpretation. Nietzsche himself passes over the ontological question of value and poses questions about the unclear basis of the phenomenon of value. The philosophical significance of Nietzsche's categories, his main concepts of cultural critique, psychology and aesthetics, can only be understood if their foundation, the interpretation of being as 'value', is clarified. In order to arrive at an interpretation we intend to present the work of Nietzsche in a compressed overview and highlight its basic features. The extent of Nietzsche's literary work was only possible through a remarkable productivity that created works in quick succession. The 27-year-old Nietzsche, who had been professor of classical philology at the University of Basle for two years, wrote his first work The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music in 1871, the first Untimely Meditation, namely David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer in 1873, On the Use and Abuse History in Regard to Life in 1874, Schopenhauer as Educator still in 1874, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth in 1876, Human, All Too Human in 1878, Miscellaneous Beliefs and Sayings in 1879, The Wanderer and his Shadow, which was later combined (1886) together with Miscellaneous Beliefs and Sayings as the second volume of Human, All Too Human; Daybreak appears in 1881, The Gay Science in 1882, the four parts of Zarathustra between 1883 and 1885, Beyond Good and Evil in 1886, On the Genealogy of Morals in 1887, The Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo and Nietzsche contra Wagner in 1888. Nietzsche's breakdown in 1888 propelled him into darkness. In less than twenty years Nietzsche pours out his works; his production has an eruptive character. A range of important treatises was finally published from his posthumous writings, in particular The Will to Power. On many occasions attempts have been made to order Nietzsche's literary work chronologically to show an evolution within his thought. Accordingly, one
often speaks of Nietzsche's romantic period, which is characterized by The Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Meditations. This is followed by a critical, more sober period, in which Nietzsche closely approaches positivism. With Dawn and The Gay Science a new existential sentiment announces itself. These books supposedly express an expectant mood and return towards himself. Nietzsche experiences an 'advent', which then finds its first fulfilment in the fourth period of the Zarathustra. The fifth period (Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals) again forms a preparation to a final period (The Will to Power), the non-poetical, reflective completion and final form of Nietzsche's philosophy. The value of such a schema, which operates mainly with biographical concepts presenting the spiritual history of his life, is doubtful. This developmental schema does not establish if the temporally later is necessarily also substantially more important. A path of life is conceivable in which a thinker falls down from an achieved height, shrinks back from his own audacity or sinks to his knees. Accordingly, we would like to focus on Nietzsche's works outside their biographical context and investigate their basic features. We start with The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. This book is firstly an act of homage to Richard Wagner, an interpretation of his musical drama as an all-inclusive work of art comparable to the classical drama. Nietzsche's understanding of tragedy is based on a fundamentally new view of the classical world. Later in life Nietzsche's judgement about the book became quite severe: it seemed to him spoilt by a 'reliance on Wagnerism', by confusing the understanding of the Greeks with the phenomenon of Wagner, a phenomenon which was by no means a 'symptom of ascent' but rather the opposite, a sign of decline. Nietzsche's later re-evaluation of his first book is indeed fitting. The glorification of the Wagner opera overshadows the basic feature of the book, demotes it so to speak to a preliminary reflection. The genuine problem is Nietzsche's essential conception of the tragic. Regardless of whether Nietzsche portrays the classical tragedy correctly, he expresses at any rate the central concern of his philosophy for the first time through it. He formulates his philosophy within aesthetic categories. The true nature of reality is seen through the phenomenon of the tragic. The aesthetic motif assumes the position of a basic ontological principle. Art and tragic poetry become the keys that unlock the essence of the world. Art becomes the instrument of philosophy. It is understood as the deepest, most authentic approach, as the most primordial form of understanding. The concept can, at best, follow it. Understanding becomes immediate only where it commits itself to the more profound vision of art and reflects its creative experience. Although Nietzsche follows the classical ontological insight that the beautiful is a mode of being, he does not achieve a conceptual, ontological grasp of the phenomenon of the
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aesthetic. On the contrary: Nietzsche expresses his fundamental vision of being in aesthetic categories. This lends a romantic character to The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche calls it a 'metaphysics of the artist'. Art achieves supremacy. The world is understood through art and in relation to it. In this context art is not only, as Nietzsche puts it, 'the genuine metaphysical activity of man', but, more importantly, a metaphysical revelation of being in its entirety. Only the perspective of art allows the thinker to look into the heart of the world. However, it is essentially tragic art, the classical tragedy, which possesses this quality. Nietzsche grounds the authentic nature of art in the tragic. Tragic art grasps the tragic essence of the world. The tragic is Nietzsche's first fundamental formula for his ontological vision. For him, reality is the conflict of primordial opposites. Already at the start of his philosophical path the tragic pathos puts Nietzsche in an irresolvable conflict with Christianity. Christian dogma with its necessary idea of redemption does not only contradict Nietzsche's instincts, it contradicts his basic sentiment, the basic mood of his life and of his experience of reality. The tragic world does not know any redemption, any salvation of the finite being from its finitude. It knows only the inexorable law of universal decline of the individual existence and of everything that has been severed from the teeming All-life. In this tragic view of the world, life and death, the ascent and decline of all finite beings, embrace each other. The tragic pathos is no passive pessimism: Nietzsche is struck by this and it prevents him from being a mere successor to Schopenhauer. The tragic sentiment of life is rather a yes-saying to life, a joyous affirmation even of the terrible and horrible, of death and decay. It is, however, wrong to interpret this as a heroic attitude, as reckless courage. Tragic affirmation (including even the affirmation of one's own destruction) is based on the realization that all finite manifestations are just temporal waves in a great flood of life, that the destruction of finite being is not simply an annihilation, but a return to the ground of life from which all individual beings ascend. The tragic pathos lives through the knowledge that 'all is one'; life and death are fundamentally related and embraced by a mysterious circle. Where one ascends, the other must descend; all forms emerge through the destruction of others. Where the one steps into the light the other sinks into the night. However, light and night, appearance and the shadow of the underworld, ascent and decline, are only aspects of one wave of life. According to Heraclitus, the way up and down are one and the same. The tragic pathos understands the identity of Hades and Dionysos. Nietzsche discovers the playful encounter of form and the amorphous flux of life in the classical tragedy. He discovers Peras and Apeiron, finite being consecrated to decay in the infinite ground and the abyss itself which brings forth ever new
II
forms. He calls this antagonism the opposition between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche deals with this distinction in a genuinely antithetical manner, as if the Apollonian and the Dionysian were simply opposed. Later on, this original antithesis is grasped in a more radical way through the inclusion of the Apollonian itself into the Dionysian. Infinite life itself is the building and creative force which produces forms and destroys them again. Towards the end of Nietzsche's development the Apollonian is grasped as an aspect of the Dionysian. Looking back at The Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche interprets the discovery of the 'marvellous phenomenon of the Dionysian' as the decisive feature of his first work. We find here a most informative comment: I had discovered the only parable and parallel of my intimate intuition in history.. .3 Is this only an 'intimate' existential experience of Nietzsche, the person, confirming his position as an outsider in a distant historical past? Or is Nietzsche the medium of a new ontological experience? To begin with, it must remain undecided what value, rank-order or relevance this 'intuition' has. Nietzsche expresses it as a theory of art, which in turn has the form of a psychology of art, a psychological analysis of mutually opposing artistic drives combining in the unity of the tragic art-work. The aesthetic values, as stated further in Ecce Homo, are 'the only values recognized in The Birth of Tragedy'*. One can pose the following question: Did Nietzsche not damage his philosophical problem through the aestheticpsychological approach in this first work much more than through 'Wagnerism'? This is indeed so, but it is no mistake which could be counted against him. The basic equation 'being equals value' characterizes his philosophy. It cannot be ignored without ignoring Nietzsche on the whole. It is his basic, operative presupposition. Perhaps all human philosophy is a finite patchwork where fundamental assumptions always remain obscure. In the Attempt at a Self-Criticism drafted in 1886, as well as in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche erases all the 'Wagnerism' and places the emphasis on the discovery of the Dionysian and its opposing phenomenon. The latter, however, is not the Apollonian, since Nietzsche has already included it in the concept of the Dionysian. The playful antithesis between Dionysos and Apollo is grasped as a complex unity. The opposite phenomenon of the tragic world view, of this deepest view of the cosmic essence, is Socratism, the advent of 'logic', the advent of rationality without a vision for the 'life' teeming behind appearances, creating and destroying them.
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'What', Nietzsche asks, 'is the significance of the tragic myth for the Greeks in their best, their strongest, their most courageous period? And the tremendous phenomenon of the Dionysian - and, born from it, tragedy - what might they signify? - And again: that which killed tragedy, the Socratism of morality, the dialectics, frugality, and cheerfulness of theoretical man - how now? Might not this very Socratism be a symptom of decline, weariness, of infection, of the anarchical dissolution of the instincts?'5 Just like tragic pathos, Nietzsche understands Socratism as a fundamental human stance, as the so-called 'scientific' relation to being. Looking back after fifteen years, Nietzsche states that in The Birth of Tragedy science is posed as a problem, What I grasped then, something terrifying and dangerous, a problem with horns, not necessarily a bull, nevertheless a new problem: today I would say that it was the problem of science itself - science for the first time made problematic, worthy of questioning.6 Such an inquiry into science is not self-evident, it is not a problem which science poses itself. For Nietzsche, science as a whole (with all its problems) becomes worthy of questioning. It becomes problematic and suspect when it is contrasted with the different truth of the tragedy, which sees through all appearance and superficiality to discover the creative and destructive play of life called Dionysos. Nietzsche thus approaches science from the perspective of art, and art in turn from the perspective of life. With the title 'perspective of life' we refer to a fundamental characteristic throughout Nietzsche's entire thought. It is only comprehensible if the concept of life remains primarily guided by the tragic experience, by the tragic revelation, by an ontological understanding of tragedy, i.e. by the knowledge of the nothingness of all finite beings and the infinity of the Dionysian world-ground. All too often and for mainly polemic reasons Nietzsche himself conceals his deep and abysmal concept of life beneath a biological concept. His reliance on Darwin is not to be taken seriously. His concept of'life' is only understood if his key-concept of the 'tragic', the antithetical play of the fundamental powers of the world, Apollo and Dionysos, is grasped. Although Nietzsche also operates within aesthetic and psychological categories, and even says in 1888 about The Birth of Tragedy that it provided the first psychological analysis of the tragic poet, we must recognize that in reality he is concerned with something entirely different. He is concerned with a primordial experience of Being, with an ontology which is merely concealed by psychology and aesthetic theory. In Ecce Homo he calls himself the first tragic philosopher, and refers, across the metaphysical and scientific centuries back to his kinship with Heraclitus:
The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world
13
Before me, this transposition of the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos did not exist: the tragic wisdom was absent - I have looked in vain for signs of it even amongst the great Greek philosophers, of those in the two centuries before Socrates. I retained some doubt in the case of Heraclitus, in whose proximity I feel altogether warmer and better than anywhere else. The affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy, saying Yes to opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being - all this is clearly more closely related to me than anything else thought to date.7
3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART AND ART AS COGNITION OF THE WORLD

From the start, Nietzsche's distinctive approach unfolds as part of an aesthetic and psychological problem. A strong feeling of alienation from the tradition of conceptual, ontological reflection ensures that Nietzsche dispenses, indeed must dispense, with the tools and methods of classical philosophy. Accordingly his thinking hides itself behind aesthetics and psychology. This concealment is maintained for some time. Since all of Nietzsche's aesthetic-psychological concepts resonate as it were with the energy of philosophical inquiry, they are also overloaded, exaggerated and deceptive. 'What found expression here was anyway', Nietzsche says fifteen years later, '. . . a strange voice, the disciple of a still "unknown God", one who concealed himself for the time being under the scholar's hood, under the gravity and dialectical ill humour of the German, even under the bad manners of the Wagnerian . . . a mystical, almost macnadic soul ... It should have sung this "new soul" - and not spoken. What I had to say then - too bad that I did not dare say it as a poet: Perhaps I had the ability.'8 The Birth of Tragedy displays a strange methodological character which is difficult to comprehend. A fundamental philosophical thought is disguised in psychologizing aesthetics and turns aesdietics at the same time into an instrument of philosophy. Nietzsche has a vision of the cosmos as tragic play. In his tragic vision of this cosmic essence, he refers to the tragic artwork as just that 'key' that unlocks and opens up its true understanding. The aesthetic theory of the classical tragedy discloses in this way the essence of being in its entirety. The aesthetic occurrence of the birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music reflects the primordial event of the birth of the anthropocentric world, unfolding from the chaotic, primordial ground into a multitude of forms. The 'tragic' is understood as a cosmic principle. In outlining a theory about the origin of the Attic tragedy, Nietzsche reveals his 'intimate intuition'. He projects himself into the
14
Greek world and interprets himself from that perspective. He recognizes himself (not personally, but through his tragic cognition of the world) in the Greeks of the tragic age. The rejection of Nietzsche's treatise by traditional philologists is in some degree justified. No less than Wilamowitz-Mollendorf led a sharp attack against the treatise, which he accused of 'a dreamy ingenuity and impertinence, ignorance and insufficient love of truth'. However, it rests on the misunderstanding provoked by Nietzsche himself, namely that he was concerned with a philological question. The presentation of this treatise differs in all respects from the level of its actual conception. It appears to deal with aesthetic, psychological and philological problems, but it is in reality Nietzsche's first tentative attempt to articulate his philosophical understanding of the world. This flaw, which already characterizes his first work, remains a feature of Nietzsche's entire oeuvre despite its significant later developments. It lends a provocative ambiguity, a mysterious aura and unfathomable depth to his works. However, it does not sound convincing when this proud and self-conscious mind implies with a prophetical smile that he concealed on purpose, that he had more arrows in his quiver, that this inadequacy was 'intended' in order to address those with ears to hear and those able to read between the lines. Since he does not engage historically with metaphysical concepts, yet refuted (and had to refute) them through his new fundamental intuition, and since furthermore his conceptual identification of 'logical' with 'abstract' and 'inanimate' makes him unable to conceptualize his thinking adequately he becomes diverted and has to philosophize in the guise of an aesthetic theory. Nietzsche's first treatise shows some distinctive characteristics of his thinking with striking clarity. For Nietzsche, intuition is always primary. In The Birth of Tragedy the fundamental thoughts are expressed thetically. They are asserted, affirmed and they obtain a kind of confirmation through their powers of illumination. The phenomena become illuminated and comprehensible through them. They show the projected outline, the inner plan and structure of things. For Nietzsche intuition is an instant view of an essence. It is divination. His most fundamental insights always have the character of illuminations. This is not meant in a derogatory sense. Nietzsche distances himself from any speculation. His thinking emerges from a fundamental experience that is poetical and symbolic. Nietzsche is subject to the powers of thinking and poetry, or rather, he is torn apart by their antagonism. However, there is a kinship between his mythical divination and speculative thinking in so far as both 'leap ahead' of the phenomena to be brought into view. In Nietzsche's first treatise this 'leap-ahead' is very obvious. What looks like a prelude is the heart of the treatise. Nietzsche begins by stating, that it would be a gain for an 'aesthetic science' if it reached the 'immediate certainty of intuition', and that the continued development of art is connected to the dualism of the
15
Apollonian and the Dionysian comparable to the reliance of procreation on the duality of the sexes. We already find all the relevant elements in this first sentence. Nietzsche purports to formulate insights of a science of aesthetics. Aesthetics appears to be the context of his inquiry. Furthermore, he demands for his inquiry an 'immediate certainty of intuition'. He proclaims a divine intuition and at the same time alludes to it in a mythical metaphor. The mythical symbol is borrowed from the Greeks, who - as he puts it - 'disclose to the discerning mind the profound mysteries of their view of art, not, to be sure, in concepts, but in the intensely clear figures of their gods.'9 The 'profound mysteries' of classical art are now brought into view, i.e. the so-called aesthetic theory is extended to include an understanding of the cosmos supposedly revealed by Greek art. The classical work of art becomes the key to the classical world view. The Apollonian and the Dionysian are initially revealed as aspects of the artistic drives of Hellenic man. Apollo symbolizes the formative drive; he is the God of clarity, of light, of measure, of shape, of beautiful proportion. Dionysos on the other hand is the God of unbounded chaos, of the disproportionate, of the teeming flood of life, of sexual frenzy. Dionysos is the God of night, and, in contrast to the image-rich Apollo, the God of music not, however, of the strict domesticated kind that is merely a 'Dorian architecture of sounds', but of the seductive, evocative music which releases all passions. Initially Apollo and Dionysos are merely metaphors for the opposite artistic drives of the Greeks, for the antagonism between image and music. To further clarify the opposition between these artistic drives Nietzsche refers to a 'physiological' antithesis in human life. He crosses over into psychology. The antithesis is restated in the understanding of dream and intoxication. The dream, as it were, is an unconscious and imaginative human power: The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in the creation of which every man is truly an artist, is the prerequisite of all plastic a r t . . .10 he states now. The dream creates the world of images, the scene of appearances and characters. It conjures up the beautiful semblance blessing the soul with a particular vision. Regardless how arbitrary its plot, the dream is a creative vision, a formative force, which creates images over and over again. Apollo, states Nietzsche, was recognized by the Greeks as the power creating the imaginary worlds of man's dreams. But he is an even more powerful force. And here Nietzsche suddenly leaps out of the psychological interpretation of dreams: Apollo creates not only the world of images in human dreams, but also the world of images, which man usually takes to be reality. Apollo, the God of form, Nietzsche says, should be called 'the glorious divine image of the principiium individuationis, through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of
16
"illusion", together with its beauty, speak to us.'n How is this to be understood? The principiium individuationis is the basis of the individual separation of all beings. Things are in space and time. They are collectively in space and time precisely because they are separated from each other: wherever one ends the other begins. Space and time join and divide at the same time. What we commonly call things or beings is an incalculable manifold of all that is differentiated and detached, yet jointly gathered in space and time. The world-view which affirms the division of being, its multiplicity and separation, is caught in an illusion - as Nietzsche following Schopenhauer believes. It is unwittingly misled by the veil of the Maja. This illusion is the world of appearance which we encounter through the subjective forms of space and time. The world as it really is, as 'thing-in-itself is not dispersed into a multiplicity, but is an undifferentiated life, a unified flux. The multiplicity of being is an illusion, a mere appearance. In truth all is one. It is of utmost importance to remember that Nietzsche's point of departure is Schopenhauer's distinction between thing-in-itself and appearance, between will and representation. Interpreted psychologically this distinction resurfaces as the one between dream and intoxication mentioned above. Nietzsche follows Schopenhauer particularly in the remarkable leap from the human dream to the dream of primordial being itself at the beginning of The Birt Tragedy. He thus extrapolates a finding from the psychology of human artistic drives to a principle of the world summoning Schopenhauer as a crown witness for this view. What was initially a human tendency becomes an ontological power. Nietzsche thinks analogically here. The dream of human imagination is comparable to the ontological power creating appearances and images called Apollo. This power of beautiful semblance creates the world of appearance. Individuation and separation are an Apollonian mirage. In this analogy psychology is transformed into a peculiar metaphysics. The same analogy applies to intoxication. Initially it is regarded as a human phenomenon, as that ecstatic condition in which we feel that all confines fall away and we step out of ourselves, become unified with all being, flow and sink into one infinite sea. But it suddenly assumes a cosmic significance: Man 'is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the primordial unity.'12 Intoxication is a cosmic ecstasy, a bacchantic frenzy which explodes, rips apart, assimilates all appearances. It is the great elan of life. It transcends all finitude and individuation. The Birth of Tragedy is indeed a 'metaphysics of the artist', an aesthetic interpretation of the world in its entirety. The two competing fundamental forces of being reveal themselves through art as it were. Art becomes a symbol. In one unified, magnificent and autonomous vision
17
Nietzsche's art-metaphysics introduces itself complete in its basic form already at the beginning of the book. No attempt is made to demonstrate the path leading to these assertions. At no point do we encounter a reflection if the underlying ontological conception is justified or not. One is amazed at Nietzsche's uncritical reliance on Schopenhauer. A critical and suspicious spirit such as Nietzsche displays an astonishing degree of naivety in the area of ontological reflection, in regard to fundamental ontological concepts. Nietzsche does not in any way assess and scrutinize Schopenhauer's fundamental distinction between world as will and world as representation. He has no assessment criteria for it. He does not think in a speculative way himself. But he fills Schopenhauer's questionable framework with unprecedented life; he conjures up mythical symbols and interprets Greek art through them as a key to the essence of the world. Furthermore Nietzsche describes the development of classical Greek culture influenced by the great forces of art. The Apollonian struggles with the Dionysian and vice versa. There is a hostility between these opposing powers: they displace and battle each other, but (and this is Nietzsche's profound insight) neither can exist without the other. Their contest, their dispute, is also a peculiar harmony. They are bound together as contestants. The Apollonian world of the Greek culture, the preference for measure and harmony rests on the suppressed ground of titanic formlessness which nevertheless remains present. The Dionysian is the foundation on which the visible world is based. The Olympian 'Magic Mountain' has its roots in the Tartarous. Beyond the world of beautiful appearance lies the Gorgo. The Greek knew and felt the terror and horror of existence. That he might endure this terror at all, he had to interpose between himself and life the radiant dream-birth of the Olympians.13 Apollo, however, cannot live without Dionysos. Nietzsche contrasts the naive poet Homer, the dreamer of the great Apollonian dream of the Olympic Gods, with Archilochos. The lyric poetry of Archilochos has nothing to do with 'subjectivity'. This is a modern concept totally inappropriate in this context. Lyric poetry is the original musical element of art, the Dionysian counter-feature to epic imagery. Lyric poetry resounds from the depth of the world beyond all appearances for Nietzsche. Music and lyric poetry make clear that the true subject of art is not man, who believes himself to have created it, but the ground of the world itself, which acts through man and makes him receptive to its forces. The cosmic ground itself searches for 'redemption' from the frenzied restlessness, avarice and 'eagerness' of a restless 'will' precisely in the deception of beautiful semblance, the seeming eternity of form, the firmness of appearance
18
and the proportionate harmony of things. In truth, human artistic endeavour is a play in which humans themselves are only characters and appearances. From a human perspective art is - viewed metaphysically - an 'artistic comedy'. For to our humiliation and exaltation, one thing above all must be clear to us. The entire comedy of art is neither performed for our betterment or education nor are we the true authors of this art world.. .. Thus all our knowledge of art is basically quite illusory, because as knowing beings we are not one and identical with that being which, as the sole author and spectator of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual entertainment for itself.14 With this view Nietzsche inverts his original approach. He departed originally from the human, artistic drives to establish an analogy for the ontological powers of dream and intoxication (or Apollo and Dionysos) as cosmic principles. What served as a starting point is now reinterpreted through the attained result. Nietzsche arrives at metaphysical principles of the world through the human artistic drive, and he now interprets human art itself as a cosmic event. In becoming receptive to the fundamental power of Dionysos and Apollo through art man becomes the medium and location of a cosmic event. Nietzsche uses for this the concepts of 'redemption' and 'justification'; these are concepts which are initially familiar to us through the doctrine of Christianity. There can be no redemption in a tragic view of the world. Nietzsche transforms the concepts of redemption and justification, he employs them for a process which belongs to the world and contributes to its ontological constitution. The primordial Dionysian ground casts itself repeatedly into appearance. Its emergence into appearance is transfigured in the phenomenon of art. The world of appearance is, as it were, the beautiful dream of the cosmic spirit. Eternal form, the beauty of the created appearance, the limelight of the great stage on which things appear in space and time - this illumination of the abysmal night is its 'redemption' 'for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.'15 Like a dark urge redeeming itself in the image, like the indeterminate yearning presenting itself on the stage of the world, the happy dream satisfies and art transfigures for Nietzsche the severity and heaviness, the absurd and abysmal character of being. However, Nietzsche is not satisfied with the opposition of both cosmic and artistic principles, nor does he refer just to their mutual dependency in which one necessitates and at the same time opposes the other. He rather searches for the highest unification and interpenetration of the Dionysian and the Apollonian and finds this in the classical tragedy. For him this is not an art form which exhausts and looses itself in beautiful semblance, but, to express it paradoxically, the Apollonian presentation of the Dionysian itself. Beautiful semblance
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here resonates with the raging power of the depth it conceals. 'Appearance' is transparent for, as it were, being-itself beyond it and light reveals the shadows of the night. Appearance is recognized as such which means at the same time that it is exposed. The beautiful image reveals the wave which devours it. Tragedy contains both elements: the abyss of the primordial One (Ur-eine) which discloses itself only in music and the luminous dream world of appearances. Apollo and Dionysos form a 'brotherhood', as Nietzsche calls it: 'Dionysos speaks the language of Apollo; and Apollo finally the language of Dionysos.'16 The tragedy is music and image, dream and intoxication, form and chaos, light and night, appearance and essence, more precisely the disclosure of the cosmic essence. Based on this view of the tragedy as an Apollonian-Dionysian artwork, Nietzsche develops a theory of the historical development of the Attic tragedy. He postulates music as its basic feature, which he finds in the chorus. The music of the chorus creates the vision of the dramatic scene, which is entirely concerned with the sufferings of Dionysos. Oedipus and Prometheus are masks of this God. Nietzsche is convinced that all tragedies reveal one mysterious truth, namely 'the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of everything existent, the conception of individuation as the primal cause of evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness'.17 Nietzsche's hypothesis about the development of tragic poetry may be questionable. A philological profession may reject it. His interpretation of the chorus or his identification of Wagner's opera and Greek tragedy may be problematic or his psychology concerning the associative connection between music and image may be spurious. All this is of minor importance. What matters is that Nietzsche gives an interpretation of the world and constructs a schema of being in its entirety in his theory of tragedy. The vagueness of Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian ground is largely responsible for the difficulty in understanding The Birth of Tragedy rather than the unclear methods, such as the use of analogy as a tool of knowledge. The meaning of the Apollonian, the principium individuationis, is more easily grasped given that we live in a world where things and human beings are individuated. But the ground of this world of appearance, the essence behind the manifold of beings, remains peculiarly foggy. Nietzsche adopts Schopenhauer's term 'will' while taking over his distinction between essence (thing-in-itself) and appearance. He expresses the primordial One18 through ever new images and metaphors: he speaks of the core of being, of the bearers of being, of the primordial One and of the living One. The dimension of Dionysos is mystically intuited rather than conceptually grasped. It almost has the dubious character of an 'Other-world'.
20
For this reason, Nietzsche could say in Thus spoke Zarathustra (alluding to The Birth of Tragedy): Once Zarathustra too cast his deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tormented God. Then the world seemed to me the dream and fiction of a God; coloured vapour before the eyes of a discontented God.19
4. 'SOCRATISM' AGAINST TRAGIC WISDOM. CONCERNING TRUTH AND FALSITY IN THE EXTRA-MORAL SENSE
The Birth of Tragedy is a peculiar book. A thinker makes his debut as a philologist with a questionable interpretation of the stylistic elements of Greek tragedy from a new view of classical antiquity. He psychologizes and exaggerates psychological concepts to cosmic dimensions. He proclaims - based on Schopenhauer's philosophy - an alternative sentiment of life and attempts to interpret Richard Wagner, a phenomenon of the present, through reference to the most distant past of classical antiquity. The book wishes to achieve too much at once, it is so to speak overambitious. Yet, it pays remarkably little attention to its most important concern. It seems as if Nietzsche is not yet able to articulate his insights directly so that he needs to take roundabout ways. However the case may be, Nietzsche's first work appears to be a symbol. It expresses and conceals, insinuates and remains silent. For him philosophy is tragic wisdom, the essential understanding of the primordial strife between the opposing principles of Dionysos and Apollo, the intuition of the strife between the all-bearing, alldevouring, formless foundation of life and the domain of light forming the appearances. Or in other words: Philosophy is the grasp of the eternal discord between all-unity and individuation, between the thing-itself and the appearance, between dream and intoxication. It is the grasp of the dismemberment of being as a whole20 into the opposites of night (in which all is one) and day (where all appears individually). The ancient motif of the strife between darkness and light dominates Nietzsche's fundamental conception. When he later attributes his revelation to Zarathustra, this is not only necessary because this Persian must be the first to revoke his own moral dualism, but because Nietzsche's Zarathustra remains true to the original Persian motif of the strife between darkness and light in his tragic, Dionysian wisdom. In The Birth of Tragedy, ait becomes the instrument of philosophy. Art is not only the theme of philosophical interpretation but its instrument and method. Nietzsche's interpretation of tragedy already relies on a tragic understanding of
'Socratism' against tragic wisdom
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the world. He uses the 'perspective of art'. From this perspective he sees the enemy and opponent of the tragedy: Socratic reason which killed - in his words - the classical Greek tragedy. Socrates marks the end of the tragic age and introduces the age of reason and of the theoretical man. According to Nietzsche this involves an enormous loss of world. Human existence looses its sensitivity for the dark aspect of life, looses its mythical knowledge about the unity of life and death, looses the tension between individuation and the primordial unity of the ground of life and becomes superficial, trapped in the appearances, yet supposedly enlightened. For Nietzsche Socrates is a world-historic figure of a Greek enlightenment in which the classical existence did not only loose its remarkable instinctive reliability, but even more relevantly the ground of its life, its mythical depth. Nietzsche's intuition and his astute perception recognize the enormous historical importance of Socrates. However, his interpretation exhausts itself in psychological terms. Perhaps Nietzsche foresaw that we are concerned here with a change in our ontological understanding, that in the disputes between the sophists and Socrates western thinking was turning towards anthropology and metaphysics and that this constitutes an event, which indeed can hardly be overestimated. The philosophical perspective is accordingly redirected away from the ruling entirety of the cosmos to inner-worldly (ontical) being for the next 2000 years. Nietzsche recognizes the key position of Socrates but he grasps it within psychological concepts. According to Nietzsche Socrates denies the Greek essence, rejects Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Phidias, Pericles, Pythia and Dionysos. However it seems that this rejection of Greek tradition originates from some extreme, individual, psychological characteristics. Socrates appears to Nietzsche as a paradigmatic example of an unauthentic Greek, who is driven by an enormous need and characterized by a complete lack of 'instinctive wisdom'. In Socrates, Nietzsche alleges, only the logical and rational side of the spirit was developed excessively. Socrates did not possess a mystical organ. He was the original non-mystic. However, he was obsessed by the drive to change everything into something rational, logical and thinkable.21 Socrates appears thus to be a rational demon, a human being in whom all desire and passion was sublimated into a will for rational structure and domination of being. Socrates was the inventor of the 'theoretical man'. With this he introduced a new type, a new ideal and seduced the Greek youth and in particular the magnificent Greek adolescent Plato. Socrates created the delusion that thinking according to the principle of causality could reach into the most unfathomable depth of being. The theoretical cognition of the world, which Nietzsche extracts from his psychological analysis of Socrates, does not only function as a contrast to an artistic mode of life, but Nietzsche alleges that the absolute domination of 'theory' constitutes a hidden assertion of a tendency of
22
art. Nietzsche writes that 'in the logical schematism the Apollonian tendency has disguised itself22. The theoretical cognition of the world is based on a weak and impotent artistic drive. The logical concept is as it were the withered and dried leaf which once grew as metaphor on life's 'golden tree'. A theory, a conceptual fiction can be interpreted from the perspective of art because it conceals an artistic drive despite the fact that it is removed from its antithetical tension with the Dionysian and consequently increasingly impotent. According to Nietzsche, theory and science are comprehensible from the perspective of art, but not vice versa. Nietzsche's view of Socrates is not only problematic because of his psychological approach. The assumed absolute identification between the Socratic and Platonic concept of 'theoria' and a general scientific tendency in the modern sense is even more questionable. Nietzsche conflates essentially two different entities: classical theory and nuova scienza. The way in which Nietzsche describes the decline of the tragedy brought on by Socratic rationality and the way in which he attributes the victory of the logical over the mythical drive to Euripides appear irrelevant to our main concern. The interpretation of the tragedy reaches its climax towards the end of the book which understands the tragic myth's mode of existence. The antagonism between Apollo and Dionysos, between thing itself and appearance, between dream and intoxication is understood as a unity of an antithetical, basic development. Existence can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon. Art transforms being. Not only the beautiful in its ordinary understanding, but also the terrifying, the ugly, the horror of existence are moved towards a splendid transformation. In art, the primordial ground of being encounters itself, perceives itself through the images of beings. Nietzsche approaches this riddle through the phenomenon of dissonance. The tragic reality consists in the fact that we desire 'to simultaneously perceive and yearn for a transcendence of perception' just as in musical dissonance we 'listen and yearn beyond listening'. Nietzsche believes that in dissonance and tragic myth we encounter analogical Dionysian phenomena. This encounter 'continuously reveals the playful creation and destruction of the individual world as flowing from a primordial desire, comparable to the comment by Heraclitus, the dark, who likens the world creative power with the power of a child who moves stones and builds sandcastles only to destroy them again'.23 Being in its entirety, the world as a whole is at play. The realm of individuation, the appearance of the many individual things in their distinctive beauty and horror is - considered as a whole - a beautiful semblance perceived by the tragic vision, or, as Nietzsche puts it, 'an artful play, which the will plays with itself for its own infinite fullness of pleasure'.24
23
The ontological distinction between 'will' and 'representation', thing itself and appearance which Nietzsche borrows from Schopenhauer is not taken as a demarcation of two distinct realms but is interpreted as a dynamic and as a creative process. The primordial ground plays the world, it creates the manifold of the individual things like artists creating artworks. Or better: the activity of the artist, the creative process, is only a reflection, a poor replication of the original poeisis of cosmic life. Tragic art becomes an ontological symbol for Nietzsche. The reality, the essence of being is conceived through art. Like man the re-creative artist is redeemed in his creativity through the work of art. Like the beautiful semblance of an art-work that transfigures suffering and ugliness alike, the creative ground of the world achieves a temporary repose and rest through the beautiful semblance of the manifold appearances of finite beings. However, the primordial ground does not only play with creation but also with destruction. The seed of decline is already implanted in all becoming. The pleasure of death and decay resonates in the pleasure of generation and love. The crucial characteristic of this basic conception is firstly Nietzsche's transformation of Schopenhauer's schema. For Schopenhauer, the will, the blind drive towards life, is the only true reality. The world as representation only exists for the human mind. The subjective forms of intuition, space and time, have no metaphysical reality but are only at home in the human spirit. The world as representation exists accordingly only for man. Nietzsche distances himself from this conception. The primordial ground itself playfully creates the world of appearance. This world is a product of its artistic drive and a way to encounter and affirm itself. Yes, one may even be justified to say that the will comes to itself, becomes conscious of itself, takes possession of itself through consciousness and redeems itself in beautiful 'semblance'. The appearance is accordingly necessary to ensure the selfconsciousness of the will. The will must alienate itself in order to own itself and reunite itself from this alienation in order to realize its self-consciousness. Nietzsche assigns tragic art to the realm in which true Being gains selfconsciousness. The tragic play achieves the cosmic realization of being itself. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche remarked much later about this characteristic of cosmic self-consciousness in The Birth of Tragedy that it smelled 'offensively Hegelian'.25 The second characteristic factor of this book is the exposure of primordial reality through the metaphor of play. Nietzsche discloses a central and fundamental concept of his philosophy that reaches back to Heraclitus already here. What is meant by play and how it is to be ontologically determined or conceptualized in more than a witty metaphor is not yet obvious. Ultimately, Nietzsche's concept of play unifies the opposition of Dionysos and Apollo and constitutes the reluctant synthesis of two fundamental powers. The unity of opposites is articulated but is not grasped adequately in any ontological conception. The metaphor of the 'world as play' remains at first a grand intuition. The
24
concept of play becomes for Nietzsche later in retrospect a first formula for his 'innocence of becoming', for a view of the world which opposes all Christian and moral interpretations, for a holistic view of being beyond good and evil. 'Indeed', he writes in 1886, 'the entire book only knows an artist's sense and double-meaning beyond all appearance, a God if you like, but certainly only an entirely questionable and immoral god of the artist, who wishes to become conscious of his own magnificence and pleasure through generation and destruction, through good and evil, who world-creating, is redeemed from the need of fullness and plentifulness, of suffering from the oppressive opposites within itself.. ,'.26 The Birth of Tragedy contains almost all elements of Nietzsche's philosophy. For the first time and with the appeal to an original and fresh intuition it develops the contrast between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, develops the perspective of art and the perspective of life derived from it and displays an anthropomorphic metaphysics which looks at first sight strange and arbitrary. This book practises the art of suspicion in the attack on Socratism. It also introduces the fundamental concept of play - reminding us of Heraclitus. From Nietzsche's posthumously published work we know the treatise Concerning Truth and Deception in the extramoral sense written, but not published in 1873. Truth and deception do not refer to any conscious human behaviour but to a moral issue. The treatise deals with the role of the intellect in the world. Moral truth and untruth are determined within an understanding of the world in the human mind. However, the extent to which the mind itself is true, the extent to which it aims at real truth are different matters. Perhaps the mind with all its pursuit of truth is more radically false. Yet, from which perspective does Nietzsche intend to judge the truth and untruth of the mind? Does he occupy a place outside the mind from which he could view it? It is remarkable that Nietzsche never poses this question, that in his aesthetic vision of the primordial reality of 'becoming' he seems so certain about his intuition. With a kind of cruel irony Nietzsche presents the pitiful, contemptible and superficial characteristics of human cognition. He cites as it were a nature-historical aspect: In some remote corner of the universe of innumerable, shimmeringly dispersed solar systems there was once a planet on which clever animals invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and untruthful moment of world history.. , 27 . However, this external biological view is only an intellectual way of discussing the intellect. Nietzsche does not fall into the traps of the natural scientist. The 'deception' of the rational mind is grounded in the inability to understand the metaphysical rather than the biological concept of life. At the same time
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Nietzsche interprets the role of cognition pragmatically. Reason serves the will to live. It is based on a life-preserving illusion. The arrogance of the cognitive animal convinces it of its existence and seduces it towards it. The most universal characteristic of reason is deception, a clever cunning which assists the survival of the fittest. This tendency attains its fulfilment in man where the art of deception reaches its climax. Nietzsche refers here sarcastically to the futile play of the many human vanities, to the flattery, lies and deceptions and the pretences about oneself and others. He poses the question how in such a context the genuine, pure drive for truth could emerge. Normally we perceive this irreconcilable contradiction: reason is an instrument of clever cunning or vain pretence is opposed to the integrity of the will to truth. However, Nietzsche tries to reflect beyond this distinction here and tries to substantiate that the drive towards truth flows from the instinct towards disguise. One basic aspect emerges in this approach for the first time which is going to be crucial later. Although the development is still elementary at this point it is at the same time clear in its original intention. Nietzsche proceeds from language. Language is seen as a convention which occurs when a peace pact is made in the battle of all against all. According to Nietzsche language essentially conceptualizes conventions and constitutes agreement about henceforth valid significations. However, how does the sign or the word relate to the thing itself? Are they true? Nietzsche denies this: The development of language has no logical determinants. The entire material within and with which the human being, the scholar, the philosopher works, creates derives, if not from cloud-cuckoo land, certainly not from the essence of the things themselves.28 This conception of language may seem questionable. For now, Nietzsche's theory of language or concepts are not relevant but we need to focus on what is responsible for the 'deception' of language, the 'deception' of the concepts - deception understood in the extra-moral sense. 'Truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions.'29 The subconscious use of words and concepts, i.e. the forgotten history of their dubious development, is the condition for an honest, scientific commitment to truth. The scientist uses concepts without being aware any longer that concepts are only empty metaphors devoid of sense. The logical commitment to truth is - according to Nietzsche - only the withered remnant of an originally artistic, that is sensual encounter of man with a dazzling world. The concept is the empty shell of a metaphor once inspired by intuition. Nietzsche contrasts the scientific man who remains blind to the falsity of the concept with the intuitive, artistic mind. The former has retreated into a shell and believes that
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concepts are the things themselves. The latter knows the untruth of all concepts and metaphors, but he relates freely, creatively to reality creating its images. Compared to the logician and the scientist the intuitive person or the artist is the higher type for Nietzsche. For Nietzsche he constantly attacks conceptual conventions. He is no longer guided by 'concepts but by intuition'. From these intuitions no regular path leads into the land of the ghostly schemata, the abstractions. For these the word is not made, man becomes silent when he sees them - or speaks in all sorts of forbidden metaphors and unheard of conceptual constructs in order to at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful intuition created by a destruction and a ridicule of the old conceptual limits.30 Does Nietzsche's discussion of truth and deception make any proper sense given that he as it were inquires into the truth of the human cognition and thus questions a kind of meta-truth? His fictional theory of cognition serves really only as an illustration for Socratism. Nietzsche judges in favour of the artist and against the 'theoretical' man. Art seems to be the true method of philosophy because the primordial ground of being itself playfully creates the world like a 'primordial artist'. Wherever an intuitive man uses his weapons more powerfully and victoriously than his enemy (as in classical Greece) a culture may be formed by itself at best to create the domination of art over life.. . .31 For Nietzsche culture is intimately connected with the striving of the cosmic will to reach self-consciousness in the tragic human work of art. The essence of culture is the genius. The genius is a human being who has become the focus for a justification of being in the beautiful appearance of an aesthetic phenomenon.32 Nietzsche thus portrays culture in two small fragments (from the time of The Birth of Tragedy) entitled Greek State and The Greek Woman with an almost inhuman bluntness. He formulates the 'cruel sounding truth', that 'the essence of culture demands slavery'33 that is the sacrifice of the majority to serve the creation of the genius. This has nothing to do with social arrogance. Nietzsche's concept of culture is grounded in a fundamental understanding that the world is tragic. He considers the 'breathtaking' thought 'that the will (in Schopenhauer's sense) perhaps manifests itself in these worlds, stars, bodies and atoms in order to come to art'.34 Nietzsche's concept of culture and the metaphysics of the genius underpinning it are inseparably linked to his metaphysics of the artist.
Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius
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5. UNTIMELY MEDITATIONS. CULTURE AND GENIUS. PHILOSOPHY IN THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS
The concept of the genius accompanies Nietzsche's intimate intuition of cosmic truth. He finds it confirmed in the two passionately revered figures of Schopenhauer and Wagner. The genius can not be understood by its merely human characteristics. The genius is not the great human being which is quantitatively distinguished from his fellow humans through a number of steps. It is not the most developed type, no ideal type, but rather a human being that is subject to the superhuman and to a cosmic mission, a human being yet a destiny. For the early Nietzsche the concept of genius is a forerunner of the overman. 'Greatness' is primarily a mode of truth. It opens up the reality of the Dionysian play and its manifestations of word, appearance and music. The 'great' human being is only understood through that which manifests itself in it. The genius is an instrument of the creative ground of life, which reflects and represents its own essence in the artistic creation. Without this basic connection of the genius to a cosmic tendency Nietzsche's conception of culture would be inhuman and absurd. Like his concept of the overman, Nietzsche's concept of the genius must ultimately be understood and interpreted via the human dedication to truth. Truth here does not refer to scientific cognition but to the tragic intuition of the cosmic ground. This conception of the genius as a mouthpiece of a cosmic tendency and of culture, as an interpretation of life and world that is accomplished in a unified artistic style by the genius, this conception is repeatedly concealed by Nietzsche himself through the superficial, simplifying heroism of the genius. Nietzsche's cult of the genius often assimilates traces of a hero worship. His superhuman understanding of genius and his function in a unified, primordial will of the world is almost obscured by the emphasis on a 'greatness' which portrays itself as a human achievement. The pathos of distance, of social rank order determines the theory of culture on the surface. We have identified here an essential feature of Nietzsche: his concept of the human being is ambiguous. He is torn between a purely anthropocentric conception distinguishing the extremes of the creative and impotent type, the genius and the herd member and a more profound conception of humanity, which transcends humanism and understands man through his cosmic mission in which he becomes the medium of universal truth. This tension in the concept of the human being remains always alive in the development of Nietzsche's philosophy. Although he inquires into the 'great man' whenever he wishes to express the essence of humanity his exposition of human greatness vacillates within the mentioned ambiguity. In Nietzsche's first period however, it is clear that his metaphysics of the genius is firmly based on the general
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artistic-metaphysics of the cosmos, that the concept of culture is firmly based on the tragic world-view. His concern for cultural regeneration should be understood from this aspect. Despite its foundation on Schopenhauer's dogma, Nietzsche positions himself already against it. Nietzsche also distinguishes himself from Schopenhauer in his conception of appearance which he interprets as an Appollinian expression (rather than as a mere fiction of the human intellect) which is established and created by the cosmic, Dionysian ground. The latter is - although an illusion - not nothing. A further distinguishing mark is a more significant understanding of time. Time does not only exist for the intellect but designates a mode of being of the cosmic ground. The Dionysian play is pure becoming. Because it is rooted in the cosmic ground time is significant for the realm of appearance. The historical development of culture is the human response to the reality of the Being as play as disclosed by the genius. This is the fundamental horizon of Nietzsche's philosophy of history. Even as a cultural critic Nietzsche can only be understood through interpreting these concealed ontological and fundamental thoughts. Nietzsche's theory of culture is at once a diagnosis and a programme. The Birth of Tragedy unfolds his understanding of the cosmos and establishes a central concept of culture. His portrayal of the 'tragic age' of the Greeks with its 'mythical groundedness', its comprehensive artistic style, its creative productivity, its self-representation in the tragic work of art give his thought its direction followed further by the Untimely Meditations. The first Untimely Meditation, David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer, is not only an attack of an 'educational philistine'. It is more: it is an attack on the complacent and self-satisfied German culture. Nietzsche's subsequent comment becomes true in retrospect: he only attacks things which are victorious. After the war of 1870-71 and the success of the new German empire and its emerging culture, the German Bildung*^ which he regards - as he puts it in Ecce Homo - with merciless contempt appears to him devoid of 'meaning, without substance, without aim; a mere public opinion'36. His polemic treatise against David Straufi establishes a contrast to true culture and shows that true culture can not and is not meant to exist. The critique is poignant and cutting. A more fundamental critique also dominates the Untimely Meditation, Concerning the advantage and disadvantage of history in regard to life. This work is concerned with a critique of'historical meaning' as an indication of the decline of culture. The hidden theme of the book is human historicity. The critique of culture engages with the decay of historical meaning, with the exaggerated turn to the past which erodes the vitality of a culture. Nietzsche distinguishes three possible modes of historical engagement: the antiquarian, the critical and the monumental history. The first corresponds to a preserving and reverential kind of person or to a humanity which lives entirely in the past and takes its lead from
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a tradition. Life becomes essentially a remembrance and a recollection. The basic attitude of critical history on the other hand opens itself to the present and makes this the standard for the past judging history from the horizon of the presence. The approach of monumental history projects itself into the future. A life which sets itself great aims has a sense for comparably audacious attempts of the past. The visions of the past reveal themselves only to those with a determined will to a future. Where the vital plan, the projection of life into the future declines the assembly of historical knowledge becomes a burden or even a danger for life itself. In this case man only learns to surrender in the face of history. The futility of all plans and the life which is no longer sustained by intentions to create its own future escapes into the past and seeks to forget its own emptiness in the remote richness of a past life. This work is not only important because it exposes the dangers of an excessively historical culture, but because it interprets the temporality of human existence. The human being is not merely ready to hand in the dimensions of past, present and future like other things. These dimensions are rather horizons which are kept open by the human being itself in different ways. In the other two Untimely Meditations, Schopenhauer as Educator and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Nietzsche portrays the genius which symbolizes the central essence of a culture. He does not simply refer to the present culture (the genius is 'untimely' in relation to his respective contemporary culture) but rather to a future culture. In retrospect37 Nietzsche comments that Schopenhauer and Wagner only served as 'occasions' in these two essays 'to make a few more formulas, signs and means of expression available'. Plato used Socrates in similar ways to express himself. Schopenhauer and Wagner refer to 'Nietzsche, in one word'. However, the meaning of the essays is not exhausted by Nietzsche's psychological identifications, by the allegorical use of two figures. Nietzsche depicts his vision of a future culture in the way in which he depicted the possibility of the greatest culture of history in The Birth of Tragedy. The ambivalence which overshadows all Untimely Meditations is created by the implied, silent metaphysics of the genius expressed so clearly in The Birth of Tragedy. On the whole the presentation of culture remains within the domain of the 'merely human'. The cosmic and instrumental function of the genius remains seemingly obscure. As a result a superficial reading gains the impression of an extraordinary idolization of the genius. In addition Nietzsche seeks an argument. He wishes to assault the 'democratic' levelling tendencies of the time. He is feverishly ready to attack and fight, his 'wrist is dangerously loose'.38 This is a clear example how Nietzsche's writing and his desire for the spectacular endangers his philosophy. On the whole, Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations belong to his first period. The metaphysics of the artist underpin them even though this remains implicit. In discussing 'culture' Nietzsche does not betray his original,
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metaphysical approach and his debt to Schopenhauer. Although his approach has a human focus this is not an anthropology removed from metaphysics as we encounter it in Nietzsche's second period. Culture is not merely a human product. The saint, the artist, the leader and the human genius influence and form a culture. They are the instruments of a divine power which the cosmic ground creates in order to encounter itself. The genius is the caretaker of the truth of the primordial cosmic ground, the location of its revelation. Nietzsche's first period sketched here from its metaphysical aspect and its concept of culture is essentially determined by Nietzsche's view of the problems of Greek culture and philosophy. In his profession as a classical philologist Nietzsche already engaged with Greek philosophy extensively. He did not only write a treatise on Diogenes Laertius, an important traditional source for Greek philosophies. He also gave repeated lectures on the 'Pre-platonic Philosophers' and further an 'Introduction to the study of Plato's dialogues' during his time in Basle. Furthermore, he compiled different sketches made between 1872 and 1875 (including the small essay Philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks written in the spring of 1873) into a 'book on philosophy'. Nietzsche's engagement with Greek philosophy is rather peculiar. Its fundamental ontological problems do not seem to concern him. He is almost blind to them. He is influenced most by Heraclitus and identifies the essence of the primordial ground in accordance with Heraclitus as 'play'. Nevertheless Nietzsche's concept of play is radically distinct from Heraclitus. It is most important that Nietzsche perceives a historical break between Socrates and Plato and the thinkers preceding these. Nietzsche's uncanny instinct for the tragedies of the spirit senses a deep rift here. However, he does not express clearly what constitutes this rift. The philosophers preceding Plato and Socrates are called 'tragic'. Are they tragic because they lived and thought in the age of tragedy or are they themselves inspired by (what Nietzsche calls) the brotherhood of Dionysos and Apollo in the tragedy? Does the tragic understanding of the world determine their thinking? The philosophy of the tragic age disappeared because of the dialectic of Socrates akin to the tragedy itself which disappeared because of the Socratism of Euripides' 'rational' muses. Thus Nietzsche attributes a change of view and method to human influence here, when this change should perhaps be understood more profoundly as a change of truth itself to which humanity reacts and which humanity follows. The heroic, tragic pessimism is contrasted with an optimistic confidence; artistic intuition is contrasted with the assembly of concepts, vision with dialectic. In other words, Nietzsche's characterization of the difference between Pre-Socratic and classical Greek philosophy occurs entirely within anthropological, often psychological categories. The contrast between Nietzsche's intuition of this difference and its interpretation is very peculiar. We can also sense this contrast in his
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relationship to Greek philosophy as a whole. Nietzsche feels its unique importance, feels the greatness of its origins, but he understands it in a way which obliterates the ontological questions entirely. He sees the classical spirits as 'great men' or as 'personalities' of unique stature. He appears to have an aesthetic interest in them. He does not believe in the truth of their systems; he only accepts these as evidence for their rich lives. Whoever enjoys . . . great men at all also enjoys such systems even if they are wholly mistaken: they have some point which is completely irrefutable, a personal mood, a colour, one can use it to gain an image of the philosopher . . . .3<i Nietzsche uses the system to sketch the image of the creative personality. Did the classical thinkers use their 'personality' perhaps to think the essence of being? Nietzsche tells the story of these philosophers in a 'simplified manner'. He simplifies and obliterates subtleties and distorts unbearably - and yet his work is characterized by a peculiar aura. Nietzsche talks about his spiritual idols. The idolized portrait of every thinker whom he describes includes an aspect of his own life. The Greeks symbolise the daring courage to lead the radical philosophical life and make it visible even in the style of their dress. They create the sage, a new mode of existence manifesting itself in manifold and fundamentally distinct ways. He sees the richness of intuition, the rigorous demand for autonomous thinking in all respects and the re-evaluation of the importance and value of Being. He interprets the history of these thinkers as a 'profound spiritual dialogue': 'A giant calls the other through the desolate intervals of the ages.'40 In particular, Nietzsche questions these philosophers about their judgements of the value of existence. These judgements are more important to him than any judgement from enlightened times as they are based on the tragic experience. For Nietzsche, they heal and purify Greek culture, thus occupy a role akin to his own in regard to German culture. Nietzsche finds 'metaphors', immediate intuitions spoilt by reflection in the great thoughts of the Pre-Socratics. Thales had a vision of the unity of being and expresses this vision in the symbol of water. Nietzsche interprets the great allegories of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaxagoras. The centre of the work is the exposition of Heraclitus. Parmenides is emphasized strikingly to provide a contrast. Anaximander is interpreted morally. He was supposedly 'the first Greek to capture the complexity of the deepest ethical problem in a daring grasp'. Dike and Adikia are interpreted as fundamental moral concepts, in which the guilt for the existence of being is determined. It is particularly obvious here how Nietzsche transforms (and perhaps must transform) all ontological questions
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into questions of value. Nietzsche believes he encounters his own questions in Heraclitus. Heraclitus denies constant being, recognizes becoming and the flow of time as the true dimensions of 'reality'. He is also sensitive to the polarized tension between the opposites within the temporal flux. Nietzsche believes that the Heraclitean opposites are precursors to his own opposition between Dionysos and Apollo. More specifically he finds an interpretation of a reluctant unity of opposition in the fundamental concept of play. How can the One exist concurrently with the many? Nobody with dialectical intuition can guess or seemingly calculate the third, solely remaining possibility for Heraclitus: what he found here is rare even in the area of the mystically unbelievable and the unexpected cosmic metaphors. - The world is the play of Zeus or expressed physically, the play of fire with itself; the one is only in this sense concurrently the many.41 Heraclitus illustrates the transformation of one fire into the manifoldness of things in a 'sublime metaphor'. Nietzsche writes: In this world only the play of the artist or the child compare with this becoming and decay, this building and destruction, without any moral responsibility, in eternally identical innocence. And just like the child and the artist, the eternally living fire plays, builds and destroys innocently - and in this eternity itself is at play.42 Nietzsche's interpretation of Heraclitus thus focuses on the fragment 52 (Diels): 'Aion Pais esti Paizon, petteuon; paidos he besileie,/Etermty is a child at play, playing draughts: the kingdom is a child's'43. Heraclitus' concept of play becomes Nietzsche's deepest intuition for the grandly symbolic and metaphorical nature of the cosmos. He feels a kinship with him in the 'fundamental aesthetic conception of the world at play'. 'What he saw' - Nietzsche says with greatest sincerity - 'the doctrine of the law within becoming and of the play within necessity, are from now on eternal visions; he revealed the greatest spectacle.'44 Nietzsche establishes a contrast to this view of Heraclitus which in its opposition is equally revealing. Parmenides relates to Heraclitus like ice to fire, like logical concept to intuition, like life to death. Nietzsche does not understand Parmenides' originality because he fails to see the speculative depth of the ontological problem altogether. 'Being' is only an abstract term for a fiction of human imagination, for an ideal object without corresponding reality for him. Being is something fixed, immovable, rigid, lifeless and opposed to becoming for him. Nietzsche has made no attempt to overcome the common dichotomy and
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to think the opposition between being and becoming from within the ontological problem. Accordingly, he interprets Parmenides as a thinker who is frozen in his lifeless abstractions. He invokes all kinds of colourful metaphors to illustrate the distance between mere concept and life. But nobody tackles such terrifying abstractions as 'Being' and 'Non-Being' without punishment; the blood curdles if one touches them. . . . Truth is now supposed to live only in the most pale, most abstract generalities, in the empty shells of the most indeterminate concepts like in a house of cobwebs. And the philosopher sits next to such truth similarly bloodless like an abstraction and trapped in formulas.... A Greek was able in those days to flee from an excessive reality as if from a mere pretentious schematism of imagination into the rigid deadly calm of the coldest, most empty concept of being.45 This is how Nietzsche views Parmenides. He draws an unprecedented caricature of highest symptomatic significance. Nietzsche opposes the Eleatic already sharply in his first period where he attempts to think metaphysically and where he constructs his metaphysics of art on the basis of Schopenhauer's philosophy. A main reason why Nietzsche does not carry his intuition of the Dionysian and Apollonian play beyond a poetic image - introducing with this a reorientation that leads to his second period - may be this very denial of an ontological concept.
CHAPTER TWO
Nietzsche's Enlightenment
1. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF UNMASKING AND THE SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
Human, All Too Human and to a certain extent also Dawn and The Gay Science represent Nietzsche's second period. This commences suddenly and appears to be a sudden interruption of the original path of thought or even a radical turn. Nietzsche appears to deny everything he has asserted so far. He destroys what he worshipped and worships what he destroyed. His positions seem to be inverted. However, it is a question whether the second period signifies as it were simply a new, opposing world-view of the thinker extinguishing the earlier motives of his thought, or whether it constitutes a more profound development of thought, that is the unfolding of an original intuition. We only indicate our concern about the usual, biographical interpretation of Nietzsche's thought with this question. To be sure, Nietzsche's second period constitutes a biographical break, a deep or possibly irreconcilable rift. It hosts the inner separation from Wagner and the turn away from Schopenhauer, that is a farewell to the 'heroes' of his youth that he worshipped with burning enthusiasm and in whose name he only succeeded to articulate his new conceptions. Biographically, Nietzsche awakes from the romantic dream of his hero worship. A cooler, colder atmosphere surrounds him, he gains a distance to his idols, and he becomes emancipated to become himself. He discards the cliches of Schopenhauer's metaphysics and Wagner's worship of art and searches for a new, individual expression. To be sure, he already had expressed a different sentiment of life and a different existential mood on the basis of Schopenhauer's metaphysics and had replaced passive pessimism with a tragic attitude overcoming the flight from the world with the transfiguration of the world through art. But he also changes Schopenhauer's ontological conception, firstly through tracing 'appearance' back to a cosmic tendency. The primordial One immerses itself in the appearance. The appearance is the Apollonian dream of the Dionysian ground of the world. On the other hand Nietzsche engages more
The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective
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profoundly with the essence of time than Schopenhauer. Time is not just an intellectual form of intuition but the mode in which the primordial cosmic ground is at play for Nietzsche. The inner confrontation with Schopenhauer and Wagner leaves a concealed and hidden stage and comes to an obvious, acute crisis in Human, All Too Human. When Nietzsche sends the book to Wagner he receives - as he puts it - 'through a miracle of significant chance' a copy of Parsival with the dedication: 'to his valued friend Friedrich Nietzsche from Richard Wagner, Church Councillor'. This crossing of the two books - It seemed to me as if I heard an ominous sound. Did it not sound as if two swords were crossed? In any case both of us felt that way, because we both remained silent.1 Human, All Too Human has an important place in Nietzsche's spiritual history. In Ecce Homo he refers to this work retrospectively as the 'monument of a crisis'. He understands this to refer to a liberation from the bounds of reverence which held him captive for too long and prevented him from seeing the individual and autonomous mission of his own life. Nietzsche himself gives a biographical account, an existential interpretation for this sudden 'break' and change in his philosophy on numerous occasions. Are the biographical motif of self-realization, the emancipation from Wagner, the change from a reverential tendency to a self-assertion or the temporary influence of his friend Ree the reasons for his intellectual change? If this were the case then thoughts would be mere reflexes, documents, expressions and symptoms of a psychological history. They would have little to do with truth, but would be mainly traces. Systems would be mere manifestations of 'personalities' in which the 'great man' reveals himself. Nietzsche attempted to understand the Pre-Socratic thinkers in this way. His anthropological approach remained infinitely distant from the Pre-Socratics. He remained engaged in sophistry. Like perhaps no other philosopher, Nietzsche understood and interpreted himself almost exclusively biographically. Every book talks about his life, his experience, his loneliness or his self-doubts. Sometimes one has the feeling of attending an enormous self-exhibition and self-display, a peculiar, dazzling mixture of confession and posture which can be equally interesting and disgusting. Nietzsche lifts the tone of the spiritual biography - and even more so that of the autobiography. One may be tempted to apply the biographical method to Nietzsche himself and to use it as the key to detect the changes in his thinking. We regard this as a wrong approach. Nietzsche is two-headed: he is a philosopher and a sophist. He did not develop sophistry as the art of disputation, not on the rhetorical level. He
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developed it as a prophetic art. Thoughts are no longer primarily true or false; they are symptoms of life, they are revealing symbols of an existence. Nietzsche practised an 'existential sophistry' with much virtuosity. If, however, he was not merely a sophist but also a thinker and if a question assumed the power over him to guide his life then any changes in his thinking would need to be grasped in a more profound way. They would need to be related back to the demands of the subject matter itself which asserts itself in Nietzsche's philosophical thinking. This is initially a demand. It only tries to challenge our complacency in regard to a biographical approach. Purely superficially Nietzsche's second period appears to be an inversion of the first. The latter contained a fundamental distinction between the primordial ground and the realm of appearance. Religion (understood in the Greek sense), metaphysics and art were considered as ways to approach the essence of the cosmos and as infinitely superior to all science. The Greeks, Schopenhauer and Wagner were the trinity of true understanding for the early Nietzsche. And now all this is inverted. Science, critical reflection, methodical critique assume the leading roles now. Metaphysics, religion and art become subjected to their judgement. They appear to be no longer the fundamental modes of truth but illusions in need of destruction. Socratism, the theoretical man, pure cognition and anything else Nietzsche ridiculed mercilessly in The Birth of Tragedy, now appear of the essence and determine the pathos of the entire book. Nietzsche becomes a champion of 'enlightenment'. He even dedicates the first edition to Voltaire, 'one of the greatest liberators of the spirit'. However and very importantly, Nietzsche's enlightened stance focuses its attention and its questions on the human being. Nietzsche's thinking turns into anthropology. It is no longer primarily a contemplative expression of universal truth and the resulting human condition but it focuses on the human condition first and interprets being from this aspect. This human focus is accompanied by a change in the concept of life. Life is no longer understood metaphysically or mystically as universal life transcending the appearances but it is interpreted as the human life and furthermore as a biological concept. This change in Nietzsche's basic view is initially incomprehensible. Does it simply constitute a return to the domination by the world of appearance? Can Nietzsche simply forget his metaphysics of the artist and return to an innocent perspective? Surely not! His enlightenment is after all a battle against his very own approach determined by the tragic age of the Greeks, by Schopenhauer and Wagner and the conception of an intelligible world-as-such beyond the appearances. Now he denies this distinction between a primordial One, the thing itself and the appearances. His argument is directed at this difference. In Human, All Too Human the aggressive attitude against the two worlds and against 'otherworldliness' already resonates through the enlightened pathos. Here we find
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prototypal expressions of what he will call later the apology of man and the death of God. Nietzsche's change comes as a surprise to all. Its inner workings are not easily understood. Its enlightened rhetoric conceals rather than clarifies it. Nietzsche now proclaims the supremacy of science. He will use it to examine and judge the claims of religion, metaphysics and art. This examination takes a peculiar form. It occurs as an unmasking. He does not use any particular methods of any particular science but his tools are analysis and history in general. 'Analysis' includes the critical deconstruction of a seemingly simple phenomenon into a complex formation of multiple levels of relationships. It includes the infinite resolution of the threads of a web, the patient and disciplined pursuit of a well-concealed subject and the investigation of the surface to the point of transparency. Nietzsche believes that the traditional philosophical approach suffers from a genetic defect. After all, traditional philosophy only considers the human being of the last four thousand years, that is the product of historical conditions, of morality, religion, etc. Nietzsche demands a 'historical' philosophy which refuses to believe readily in 'eternal facts' and 'absolute truths' but understands man as the product of history. Philosophy is supposed to become analytical and historical and in summary: 'scientific'. The vagueness of Nietzsche's continuous reference to science is remarkable. Strictly speaking he does not refer to any of the positive sciences but to a general, approximate type of inquiry and critical examination. Science is essentially critical for Nietzsche. However, he envisages a critique of traditional philosophy, religion, art and morality. Accordingly, science does not refer to an inquiry into any region of reality but to the exposition of the deceptive characteristics of those human attitudes identified by him in his first period as the primordially true approaches to the universal essence. Nietzsche believes that he can expose these scientifically through a psychological analysis of illusion. As in The Birth of Tragedy he uses psychology as a conceptual method. On this occasion, however, it is not a speculative but rather a destructive and an unmasking psychology. It is not readily available like a tool which one can just use. Nietzsche has the questionable honour to be the inventor of a particular, sophistical psychology which explains matters ab inferiorf. This is often regarded as a great achievement. To us it seems to be a truly sophistic and an unphilosophical aspect of his works. Nevertheless, we can not just ignore it as unimportant because Nietzsche generally expresses his philosophy through psychology, that is through his own peculiar sophistry. The basic characteristic of his psychological analysis is the assertion of a 'genealogy' of the ideal derived from its opposite, namely of the derivation of right from common utility, of truth from a deceptive, illusionary instinct and of holiness from the very unholy basis of vengeful drives and instincts. He analyses the great
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human sentiments critically, suspiciously and vengefully and exposes them as 'higher forgeries' or in brief as 'idealism'. The book is a sharp, a cutting and indeed a cynical rejection of any form of idealism. In Ecce Homo he writes about it: 'Wherever you see ideals, I see human, all-too-human things.'3 Accordingly, the title should not be trivialised, as if it was concerned with weakness, with pettiness or with the insignificant machinations of human vanities. Its basic theme is rather the so called 'super-human' which is in truth only an all-too-human illusion. Contrary to the view of the metaphysician, the human being cannot grasp the heart of the world. He cannot recognize the thing itself because the belief in a thing itself which exists beyond the appearances (and is initially concealed from our view although disclosed through philosophy) is a metaphysical superstition. We regard all things through the human mind and cannot eliminate this mind. But anything that has made metaphysical assumptions valuable, terrifying, pleasurable was created by passion, error and self-deception. The worst means of cognition, not the best have compelled us to believe them. If one exposes these methods as the foundations of all actual religions and metaphysical systems one has refuted them.4 Nietzsche leads his battle with the psychological exposition of the evolution of metaphysics, religion, art and morality from the largely concealed, subconscious instincts and desires of man. A psychological clarification constitutes already a refutation for him. He does not examine the truth of religion or metaphysics. This question is dismissed at the mere possibility that the search for truth is based on motivations within life which are not disinterested but aim for redemption or the like. This interestedness or this yearning for redemption lead Nietzsche to the immediate conclusion that the metaphysical will to cognition is merely a disguised desire, an all-too-human need. Nietzsche's psychological interpretations have an element of cunning: the unmasking and the revelation of disguises and masks allow him to expose any contrary evidence simply as deceptive. For example: Altruism is merely the disguised form of a subconscious egoism. The psychology of the hidden motivations can bring anything hidden to light. No argument can be successful against this approach because any contradiction can be 'unmasked' and thus overcome. One can merely question the entire style of such a psychology of suspicion. The psychological destruction of metaphysics which Nietzsche undertakes primarily in Human, All Too Human is directed against Schopenhauer's firm distinction of thing itself and appearance which in turn is a very rough rendition of a Kantian conception. Nietzsche's psychological attack is accordingly
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directed against a crude form of metaphysics and does not meet the enemy in his strongest position. And yet, we should not underestimate this attack. Perhaps it conceals more than a 'psychological unmasking', perhaps Nietzsche's enlightenment is a surface phenomenon which hides a deeper truth? Coming to Nietzsche from his first period one tends to be at first profoundly disappointed about his turn. Despite all the sophistic psychology his thinking seems peculiarly 'shallow', narrow-minded and all too trivial. He has lost the great inspiration and he does not live through one fundamental experience. He has become 'critical', engages in a sobering analysis of man and limits his view to the human perspective. Man becomes the basis of all questions. His method assumes the characteristics of a universal argumentatio ad hominem. How does this affect metaphysics? Metaphysics appears to be an enormous fiction, a dream invented by man or a living lie with which he consoles himself and through which he copes with finitude and gives his existence an absolute meaning. Metaphysics - Nietzsche says - can be called 'the science which deals with the basic human errors, however, as if they were basic truths'.5 Nietzsche gives a number of subtle, psychological interpretations of the metaphysical need for consolation. He intends to show how human needs and yearnings underpin all metaphysical concepts - even such concepts as thing, substance and freedom of will. Nietzsche believes that the psychological analysis of religion, art and morality will make metaphysics trivial, yes, boring in future. It is only of vital significance if it remains related to the basic concerns of the human heart and provides these with a conceptual framework. On its own, metaphysics becomes a meaningless repetition of unfounded reflection. Nietzsche sees metaphysics now only as a tool of life or as a way of deceptive self-interpretation. He likens it to the romanticism of the adolescents who value metaphysical explanations because they expose a deeper meaning even in the deplorable and unpleasant aspects of life: if he is dissatisfied with himself, this sentiment is relieved if he recognizes the inner cosmic riddle or cosmic suffering in that which he rejects within himself. To experience himself more irresponsibly and to find at the same time everything more interesting - this is for him a double delight which he owes to metaphysics.6 Metaphysics becomes consequently a spiritual release valve and nothing else. Religion is interpreted similarly as well. Its claim to truth, be it allegorical or literal is rejected from the start. 'Never has any religion' - Nietzsche says most emphatically - 'neither mediately nor immediately, neither as doctrine nor as
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allegory contained any truth. Because religion is born from fear and need, it sneaked into our life through false paths of reason.' He gives a similar psychological explanation of the saint, of the ascetic whom he explains through a lust for power and tyranny against himself, through a desire for revenge, through an enjoyment of great sentiments, through a desire for pretentiousness and in particular through the misconception that others have about this failed person. They do not see 'the eccentric, the sick aspect of his character with its combination of spiritual poverty, bad understanding, eroded health, exhausted nerves'7. This example already shows Nietzsche's style of analysis and psychological explanation. One feels immediately that this method is dangerous and questionable. Soon one recognizes the illusion which dominates this sobriety, namely the enlightened belief that all 'striving for the super-human is an idealistic self-deception'. Nietzsche seems to have lost the sense for human greatness. He has an almost heroic desire to deny, to profane and to attack any human ideals. He invents a psychology of metaphysical and religious need for consolation which could hardly be more sceptical and more suspicious. Metaphysics and religion can only exist so long as man does not know himself and remains alienated from himself. The spirits disappear with the psychological understanding of the self. Nietzsche demands a philosophy of consistent and active disappointment. He demands a human return from the cloud-cuckoo-land of the ideal in a number of variations. Compared to the first period even art is now interpreted differently. It is no longer a mode of profound cosmic understanding. It is primarily the selfexhibition of the artist. Inspiration is no longer viewed as a flash of deepest insight into the heart of the world but as a kind of spiritual burst, as a sudden release of long-stored energies, as a release with a highly complex and to innocent minds hardly transparent structure, which is often all too easily understood as a 'miracle' and a manifestation of a strange power. According to Nietzsche art, the vital illusion which seduces us towards life, is in the grip of metaphysics and religious illusions. It transforms and even solidifies them. One does not admit it without deep regret that the most inspired artists of all times just elevated those representations to a divine transfiguration that we have recognized to be false: They glorify human religious and philosophical errors and they could not have existed without believing their truth. If the belief in these truths, the rainbow colours surrounding the extreme boundaries of human cognition and aspiration decline, such art can never flourish again.'8 The role of the genius is also perceived differently and more soberly. Nietzsche argues polemically against his own earlier view in which the genius had a cosmic
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function and his education remained the purpose of any culture. He rejects such things as 'superstition'. He puts the scholar, the scientist on a same level with the artist, indeed, he even ranks them higher since they are not deceived by metaphysical delusions. The problem of culture is now posed more critically and not in the context of a glorification of the Greeks but as a merely future human aim, that is as a task of humanity liberated from illusions. Nietzsche's second period is an inversion of the first in almost all respects: the former viewed the theoretical approach of science from the perspective of art. The latter views art from the perspective of science. However, in both cases we find the perspective of life. Nevertheless, the concept of life is understood in two different ways: firstly cosmologically and metaphysically and now psychologically and biologically. Man is understood as an animal with ideals. These are allegedly concealed instincts, wishful projections and yearnings. However, the main human psychology is always a psychology of his many metaphysical, religious, artistic, moral and cultural illusions. Man is understood through his great aspirations. Even in its sobering psychological unmasking Nietzsche's main topic remains the human greatness. However, it is always the philosopher, the saint, the artist and the genius who remain the human mystery. Thus Nietzsche's two early periods have something in common here. The existential sentiment, dominated in his first period by the tragic pathos is now strongly characterized by the dissonance of human life resulting from the tension between innocence and critical knowledge. 'We are from the start irrational and therefore unjust creatures and can recognise this: this is one of the greatest and most irreconcilable dissonances of human existence.'9 Critical knowledge becomes a power which attacks life itself and destroys its security and its misleading illusions. Nietzsche is conscious of the dichotomy between life and science and he now opts for the latter. This decision shows itself in the character of the 'free spirit'. Nietzsche invents its marvellous characteristics far removed from the common and clumsy free-spiritedness of the traditional enlightenment and from the deadly serious belief in reason. Nietzsche's free spirit has a distance to himself. He has a daring, ruthless spirit. He is a precursor to the Prince Vogelfrei, to the light-footed dancer and to the peaceful gaiety and relaxation of Zarathustra. He has a seductive, daring courage. He experiments with himself, with the world and with God. He challenges everything and disregards even the most revered things. He is suspicious like no one else. He practises a psychology of secrecy and ambiguity and brings more than one background to the fore. He has no inhibitions and no respect, least of all for those things that are valued by the world. He has a sixth sense for the hidden path of the ideal. He is a hunter pursuing many traces. He has the icy coolness of a relentless thought which 'cuts into life's flesh' and which pursues truth directly even when this could be deadly.
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Nietzsche's character of the 'free spirit' must not be understood as a fixed or static attitude. It is a transitional figure. Nietzsche liberated himself spiritually in Human, All Too Human. The turn away from Schopenhauer and Wagner is not an event in his life but rather and more authentically a turn in his thinking. However, the object and aim of his liberation are not easy to see or to conceptualize clearly. Does he merely break with all metaphysics? Does he break away from a path leading through the centuries? The fact that he develops no positive scientific research programme anywhere indicates also that his newly sung praise of 'science' must be regarded with some caution. He unmasks only all the idealism and discovers, as he believes, in all human self-transcendence merely the 'human, all-too-human'. The book is filled with a peculiar mood of suspense. It is a monument of a crisis, however, not of a static and fixed one, but it expresses as it were a dynamic transition. It articulates a strange philosophy. It gives expression to a first tempting clarity, to a dawn of a demystified world no longer hidden behind a mystical veil or beyond the metaphysical clouds yet nevertheless itself only provisional and transitional. It is the hunting ground of the 'free spirit', who is a 'wanderer' and a 'departure on all gates' - who freely receives many good and light things, the presents of all those free spirits, who are at home in the mountains, the forest and in the solitude and who are wanderers and philosophers like him with an occasionally gay or contemplative manner. Born from the secrets of sunrise, they wonder how the day between the tenth and twelfth hours can have such a pure, ethereal, transfigured, gay expression - they are searching for the philosophy of the morning.10
2. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MORNING (DAWN AND THE GAY SCIENCE)

The philosophy of the morning, however, which expresses itself in these peculiar writings by Nietzsche and which we have just summarized under the heading of a second developmental period (i.e. in Human, All Too Human, Dawn and The Gay Science) is a strange philosophy indeed with hidden depths that do not become readily transparent. To be sure, it pretends to be purely prosaic and lucidly clear. It just pretends to be a critique which has become immune to deceptions. It just pretends to be scepticism and deep suspicion, in one word: it just pretends to be science. Yet at the same time it has already gained an ironic distance to science and harbours exuberant suspicions against suspicion itself. Despite its entire cool and scientific attitude it is gay. Despite its entire coolness of the dawn one senses the rising sun.
The philosophy of the morning
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Nietzsche's second period is perhaps most difficult to understand. It does not only turn away from the first, but it turns towards a third period, if in a concealed and mysterious manner. All the important, basic thoughts are becoming recognizable and appear on the horizon. They illuminate the attitude of the free-spirited enlightenment with the deeper, fuller light of the midday. An affirmation of Nietzsche's true philosophy slowly rises from the negation of enlightenment. The second phase appears to be largely transitional. Nietzsche's philosophy of the morning is documented in a number of ambiguous books. However, they precisely conceal this ambiguity. The 'free spirit' seems to be an enlightened mind. He operates with the cunning of the snake, with understanding and he unmasks. At first one does not realize that he is himself intoxicated, that the wisdom of this spirit is a bird's wisdom which transcends all fixed determinations. One does not realize that his coldness and his suspicion symbolise a negation which will be replaced by affirmation. Nietzsche's enlightenment is enlightened about itself. It does not believe in reason, in progress and in science with dead-seriousness, but it uses science as a way to question religion, metaphysics, art and morality and to transform the latter into 'question marks'. Whenever Nietzsche's 'free spirit' sings the praise of science, he does not forget that science itself is also a problem. He selects so to speak a 'scientific perspective' because this corresponds to the fundamental mood which dominates the entire second phase of Nietzsche. Life is an experiment. He refers repeatedly and variedly to the experimental character of life, to the creative risk or to the projections of one's own aims. The free spirit is not free because it lives according to a scientific experience. It is free because it uses science to free itself from the existential imprisonment in the ideals by breaking the domination of religion, metaphysics and morals. The scepticism directed against religion, metaphysics and morality uncovers - as Nietzsche believes their roots and exposes their timidly concealed and forgotten foundations scientifically. It does not only intend to 'unmask' and to demonstrate the falseness of religion, metaphysics and morality. The leading thought guiding this unmasking asserts that man has lost himself. He has succumbed to the super-human. Religion, metaphysics and morality are the forms of his servitude. Man worships the divine, adjusts his entire life in accordance with it and forgets that it is man himself who puts the Gods in his own divine heaven. Man worships his own creations. The divine is only an illusion of something human, an external mirage of the creative powers of man. The sobering revelation of the all-too-human foundations of all 'ideals' thus does not only lead to a collapse of the religious, metaphysical and moral universe which man has erected beyond his existence. More importantly, it triggers a human conversion, a change of man's fundamental stance, an evolution of his existence. Man must not search for transcendental aims but must
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search inside himself. Life no longer has a pre-given meaning, it is no longer bound, it is no longer led by a divine will, it is no longer controlled by moral precepts, it is no longer determined by a metaphysical world transcending the world of appearance. It is not constricted by any superhuman powers, but it has become free. Man understands that existence includes a risk. Life becomes possible as an experiment. An entirely new existential sentiment becomes possible in the form of the greatest spiritual boldness which is dependant on nothing, entirely free to do anything and required to determine its own aim and path. Nietzsche summons this mood of departure or of the highest risk in many ways. He compares himself more than once to Christopher Columbus from Genoa. He steers the human ship into new waters. He leaves all shores behind to voyage towards eternity itself, which hovers no longer above man as the God, as the moral law or as the thing itself. Eternity is now discovered within man himself. The human being can transcend itself. The heavenly constellations of idealism are only the projections of this self-transcendence. Nietzsche actualizes the experimental style of human existence himself. He experiments with the existence of a scientist. In doing this he already has some distance to such a 'science'. He is no scholar, no researcher, because such a person - unless he philosophizes - lives in the thematic engagement with his science. The natural scientist is absorbed by science. He experiments scientifically, but he does not experiment with science itself. However, this is precisely what Nietzsche does. He uses the methods regarded by him as scientific to destroy religion, metaphysics and morality. He plays with the scientific pathos and distils this pathos into the character of the 'free spirit'. The science of the 'free spirit' is 'gay' - La Goya Scienza. It does not have a heavy, solemn seriousness, not the conceptual rigidity or the clear engagement with the concealment of being. He is inspired by - and attuned to the radical emancipation of man from the age-old, self-imposed servitude to seemingly strange ideals. Nietzsche's fundamental mood expresses itself in the songs of the Prince Vogelfrei which conclude The Gay Science., in particular in the dancing song 'To the mistraF. For Nietzsche, dawn is the symbol for the power of his type of science. It clears away the clouds, the deceptions of'superhuman' powers from the human sky. We quote just two verses: Mistral wind, you rain cloud leaper Sadness killer, heaven sweeper How I love you when you roar! Were we two not generated In one womb, predestinated For one lot forever more
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Let us break from every flower One fine blossom for our power And two leaves to wind a wreath! Let us dance like troubadours Between holy men and whores Between God and world beneath!11 Unmasking the saint and reducing him to all-too-human needs and misunderstandings in his own 'scientific' way and with his revealing psychology enables Nietzsche to reconcile the difference between saint and whore within the one human dimension. Greatness and baseness of human existence are embraced by the one arch. God and man are no longer separated. Whatever seemed divine or whatever seemed to transcend man and earth is merely a creation of human existence. The distance between God and world, between saint and whore give rise to the dance, namely the expression of a new human thinking which has become conscious of his own freedom. Nietzsche's second period is characterized by the fact that 'science' becomes increasingly more 'gay' and by an increasing transformation of the sceptical investigation into a new, a joyful prophecy. Similarly, the figure of the free spirit becomes further and further removed from the image of the cold-blooded investigator. The characteristics of the daring and adventurous type of person who experiments with life become more pronounced. The methodical attitude of the positive sciences and the critical and historical perspective seem strongest in Human, All Too Human. Dawn already brings a change which gains momentum in The Gay Science. The next step is the Zarathustra. Nietzsche swiftly passes through positivism. It is only a means of liberation, of emancipation from the traditions for him. And yet, the positivistic period has some consequences. Nietzsche uses it to perfect a style of suspicion and a sophisticated polemic. He perfects a high art of unsubstantiated allegations and unmasking, takes sacrilegious pleasure in explaining the higher through the lower, the ideal through instinct or the greatness of existence through commonness. His exposition uses a genealogy ab inferiori. This remains a fateful burden for his thinking as it turns towards sophistry. However, his sophistry and his philosophy do not exist separately. Both are always connected. Nietzsche thus offers us many opportunities to argue against him. However, one does not overcome Nietzsche if one can refute his psychology of unmasking. The essence of his thought lies elsewhere. All his books are ambiguous. One should not be misled by his aggressive style. One should not take his battle slogans too seriously because his strife loves strong expressions, gross simplifications, the knockout and the poisoned arrow. Nietzsche fights like a sophist but he is nevertheless a philosopher. To distinguish both aspects is difficult and the real challenge of any Nietzsche
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interpretation. Although Nietzsche's philosophy of the morning, his cool scientific scepticism towards all ideals, towards all 'idealistic swindle' and 'otherworldliness', towards transcendence and any divinity argues in a sophistical manner it is nevertheless guided by more profound philosophical thoughts. In Human, All Too Human the mask of science appears still firm. It introduces a new attitude. The scientific perspective replaces the perspective of art dominating in the first phase. The 'free spirit' is the great sceptic who doubts whatever man has so far trusted most. He has an evil eye. He sees the biological foundations of all 'ideals'. He illuminates the other-world of the divine, of truth and the Good and exposes peculiar things. As long as Nietzsche's concept of science remains guided by positivism the result is enormously sobering. It profanes humanity. The most basic and elementary instincts supposedly generate the selftranscendence of man and the 'greatness' of his existence. Common needs generate morality, repressed and misdirected instincts and needs create the saint and subconscious deceptions create the philosopher. Increasingly, however, and proportionally to the experience of science as a temporary disguise, the free spirit assumes the characteristics of the Prince Vogelfrei. Increasingly, science becomes a conscious experiment and a means of emancipation. With it the view of human greatness returns and the profanation, this cheap, all-toocheap unmasking recedes. The disguise of cold-blooded science conceals a new enthusiasm. A new image of man emerges from the disillusionment. This is no longer a being who bows to and worships superhuman powers, who kneels in front of God or who submits to the moral law and reflects and inquires beyond the appearances. It is rather a being who understands the super-human as a hidden dimension of his own existence and who becomes accordingly an 'overman'. Dawn and The Gay Science undeniably dissolves the human image derived through the unmasking psychology. The greatness of existence is now conceived as an attitude of daring projections, as the adventurous existence which experiments with a freedom without God, morality and metaphysics. Basically we have to distinguish two forms of one fundamental characteristic in Nietzsche. The human emancipation from the servitude to transcendental ideals (God, morality, metaphysically conceived otherworld) occurs on the one hand as a psychological unmasking. This leads to a human profanation. The transcendental urges are put aside as mere obsessions, that is man is mutilated, he is inadequately understood as a mere instinctive being which under certain particular and complex, instinctive conditions develops into the preposterous figures of the saint, the artist and the sage. On the other hand, however, while the transcendental meaning of human greatness is denied, the possibility of selftranscendence is not denied and man is not reduced to trivial instincts. Instead
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the greatness of human existence remains but it is interpreted differently, namely as a human self-alienation or as a projection beyond itself in which man forgets that he is responsible for the projection. This distinction is of fundamental importance. The two ways to view man, that is as profane or as 'preserving the hero in his soul' relate to each other like sophistry and philosophy. And they are just mixed and connected in Nietzsche and can only be separated with some difficulty. We find the method of profanation in many aphorisms of Dawn and The Gay Science, but the basic attitude of these two books is different. They are on the way towards the Zarathustra. Nietzsche's decisive and fundamental thoughts are initially, if somewhat indirectly expressed at this point. The light of noon falls upon his philosophy of morning. He becomes increasingly fond of parables and more poetical. His science becomes 'gay', his rejection of positivism more decisive. Positivism is only a guise behind which Nietzsche conceals himself for a while, a temporal and serpentine wisdom. He soon starts to remove it. At first his arguments are hardly bearable, for example when he deduces morality from the human experiences of the useful and harmful. Morality signifies the experiences of early man in regard to what is supposedly useful and harmful - however, the moral sense does not relate to those experiences themselves but to the age, the sanctity, the unquestionability of morals. And with this, this moral sense combats new experiences and the correction of customs. That is morality suppresses the development of new and better customs, it makes us stupid.12 This short aphorism is telling. One can as it were recognize the device which Nietzsche employs in his profaning perspective. His thesis is this: morality is formed entirely by assembling experiences in relation to advantage and disadvantage. But it shows itself differently to us, namely as an ancient tradition of the supposedly holy and venerable. Although he does not neglect these apparent characteristics he interprets them away. The phenomena conceal the utilitarian character of morality. Nietzsche does not show why and whence such concealment occurs. Why do these stored experiences of advantage and disadvantage disguise themselves in a venerable aura? A similar deduction of morality ab inferiori reduces the former to an instinct for cruelty. According to this, morality is supposedly sublimated cruelty. One aphorism speaks for many: Here is a morality, which rests solely on the drive for recognition - do not think too highly of it. What is this drive and what is its deeper meaning? One wishes that our presence hurts others and inspires their envy, a feeling of impotence and inferiority in them; one wishes to make them feel the
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bitterness of their fate in dripping on their tongue a drop of the honey and looking into their eyes in a straight and triumphant manner when committing this act of charity. The others have become humble and are most perfect in their humility - he searches for those whom he has meant to torture for a long time in turn! You are certain to find them. One shows pity towards animals and is admired for this - but there are people on whom he just wanted to exercise his cruelty: The intuitive pleasure about rivals defeated by envy did not let his powers rest until he has become great - how many bitter moments in other souls did this greatness cost! The celibacy of the nun: How punishing are her looks when she encounters the faces of the women who lead other lives. How much pleasure for revenge is in these eyes! .. .13 Nietzsche completely neglects the difference between the genuine and the false type of humility, of asceticism and of artistry here. The fact that immodesty can disguise itself as humility is beyond doubt. However, the revelation that all modesty should be nothing but hubris, nothing but the drive for recognition and cruelty against others misses the point. The great man is not just a disguised and concealed small man. In almost all respects Nietzsche's second phase is characterized by a profaning demolition of the three basic forms of human greatness, of the saint, of the sage and of the artist. However, the great man assumes now the form of the enlightened, free spirit. He only seems initially and superficially to have the characteristics of the positive scientist and Nietzsche tries hard to reinforce this appearance. He emulates the scientific pathos, its critical objectivity, its radical dedication to truth and its intellectual rigour. However, he does not deal with the same things as a positive scientist. He does not deal with things, with being as presence or with the constitution of things, indeed strictly speaking not even man is the natural object of his psychology. The free spirit, which dominates Nietzsche's second phase is not the counter image of the saint, the artist or the metaphysical sage. The three basic human characters are not just put on trial by the positive sciences and Nietzsche does not arbitrarily leap into a new perspective. The free spirit is rather a development of the saint, of the artist and of the sage. Although these are existential modes of human greatness their existence is a form of self-alienation. They are only possible where man forgets his own role in creating his idols. They rely on the fact that man does not become conscious of his secret creativity and that man believes God to be elsewhere. They regard morality as an external, binding moral law and devalue the real world as an appearance of the more essential, transcendental one. The free spirit is the saint, the artist, and the metaphysical philosopher with a 'self-consciousness'. It is the return of these figures from their alienation. It is their inversion. This alone makes the free spirit philosophically important. The free spirit is the truth of the
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alienated existence oblivious to itself. This also implies that the free spirit is no attitude that one could assume and attain. It is rather a change of existence, the recovery of the self from its transcendental overcoming and oblivion. The free spirit is the human emancipation towards an autonomous life. It is the human self-empowerment. One has reflected and finally realized that the Good as such, beauty itself, the sublime itself, the evil itself do not exist, however there are psychological states in which we give the external and internal things such attributes. We have withdrawn these attributes, or at least have remembered that we have bestowed these attributes on them - we must beware that this insight does not rob us of our ability to bestow.14 Human emancipation occurs thus through contemplation of the fact that the essence, the transcendence of the Good, the beautiful and the holy are just appearances created and forgotten as such by the human being itself. This contemplation is no simple thought. It implies rather the overcoming of the most profound oblivion and the recovery of the transcendental tendencies of life into life itself. This perspective of life remains Nietzsche's basic concern and is developed in various and radical ways. It has some similarity with Hegel's concept of self-consciousness. Hegel calls self-consciousness only this step of the dialectic, ontological thinking in which the I or the subject recognizes itself in the object and in which the separation between both is sublated. Nietzsche's 'free spirit' is the self-consciousness of the saint, the artist and the philosopher. But from this it does not follow that these living characters would understand themselves subjectively as free spirits. On the contrary: they believe in transcendence, bend their heads and submit to it. The free spirit stands for a radical contemplation of these characters. It stands for the emergence of human freedom within these all and for a gaining of a creative self-determination which is no longer reactive to the designs of a creation. Dawn had the subtitle: 'Thoughts about the moral prejudices'. The 'free spirit' inverts the human self-forgetting in tracing the 'values themselves' back to the positing of value. The free spirit discovers himself as positing values. This insight gives rise to the possibility to revalue and newly create all values. The approach towards a philosophy of value belongs essentially to the development of the saint, the artist and the sage into the free spirit. It is amplified further when Nietzsche turns from the merely critically-suspicious, from the ice-cold destruction of moral sentiments to an experimental existential attitude and to the daring lightness of the Prince Vogelfrei, to a 'gay science'. All three modes of human greatness bound by their servitude to an apparent transcendence are approached through the concept of 'idealism'.
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He accepts the inversion of idealism as his mission. It is the joyful message which increasingly finds its first careful expressions in Dawn and The Gay Science. The destruction of an idealistic world-view, the destruction of religion, of the moral and metaphysical other-world is attempted once in Nietzsche's psychological destruction. It is attempted again in a more profound and philosophically more important sense by inverting the human self-alienation. In the first case, idealism is not really inverted. It is rather denied. In the second case, human existence retains its 'greatness'. Man is conceived as a self-transcending being and idealism is inverted. Man recovers all transcendental attributes. He is given thus the utmost freedom of a bold mission. The feeling that only the end of idealism provides the great human possibilities occupies Nietzsche and constitutes his gaya scienza. The fundamental, leading thoughts of Nietzsche's philosophy are already obvious in Dawn and The Gay Science. They constitute the deeper meaning of these works: the death of God, the will to power, the eternal return and the overman. They come fully to the fore in Zarathustra.
CHAPTER THREE
The Proclamation
1. FORM, STYLE AND STRUCTURE OF THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

The third, definite phase of Nietzsche's philosophy commences with Zamthustra. It introduces the noon of his thinking in which his spiritual powers reach their climax. Following the romantic approach of his earlier writings and the critical, scientific turn a new identity is established. Zarathustra exposes the crucial fundamental thoughts, however, not in an unexpected or surprising manner. Their motifs are recognizable within his previous works, however, there they are seemingly concealed beneath the concepts of Schopenhauer's metaphysics or beneath those of 'scientific' positivism. Nietzsche's thinking finds its authentic expression in Zarathustra. It constitutes a great turn in his life. From now on Nietzsche knows his goal. The time after Zarathustra is merely an unfolding or an exposition of whatever is expressed there. To the untrained eye this work appears to be a distinct break with - and an attack on - his previous writings. How is it possible that the most insistent proclamation of this strict scientific attitude with its repeated demand for soberness and cool critique is followed by such a passionate eruption embracing an entire spectrum of spiritual moods with all-encompassing and increasing pathos? Whatever remained submerged in Dawn and The Gay Science erupts with primal force in Zarathustra. The spirit of the daring risk and of an experimenting life resonates already through the 'free spirit', blurring its definition and corrupting the scientific attitude. The hidden tendency of Nietzsche's 'philosophy of the morning' already endeavours to return man to freedom, to throw off his oppressive weights such as God, morality and transcendence which enclose, burden and determine man externally and to give human freedom a new scope in which it constitutes itself radically and completely and in which it progresses towards new experiments in life. Zarathustra does not suddenly erupt as an entirely new form of expression in response to a positivistic period. It was already prepared in the adventurous characteristics of the 'free spirit', in the songs of the Prince Vogelfrei and in the
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The Proclamation
hidden indications which contribute to the suspense in Dawn and The Gay Science. His poetry does not erupt suddenly, taking the place given emphatically to science so far by Nietzsche. If the 'free spirit' is the self-consciousness of the great human existence, that is the essential truth of the religious, artistic and metaphysical genius or the key concept of his early romantic 'metaphysics of the artist' then the Zarathustra is the completion of the 'free spirit'. Genius, free spirit and Zarathustra are aspects of the same idea. The work with the title Thus spoke Zarathustra is already difficult to formally define. It eludes ready, all too readily available categories. What is it? Is it philosophy disguised as poetry or poetry disguised as philosophy? Is it a religious or pseudo-religious prophecy or a world-view full of pathos? Does it contain sayings of profoundest meaning or jests and spiritual clowneries? Is it a new myth or Nietzsche's glorification of himself? These questions have often been posed. More questionable however is whether these alternatives are comprehensive in themselves and whether one can decide such an 'either-or'. Perhaps the thinking which attempts to leave the path of metaphysical ontology requires a closeness to poetry? Perhaps the style of Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a result of a deep nonconceptual perplexity of a thinking blinded by the light of a new question of being? These are questions and question marks and not yet hypotheses. However, they are meant to protect us from the all too easy interpretations of Zarathustra which use Nietzsche, the person, or his poetical talent and musical inspiration which had allegedly carried him away here. Nietzsche refers to himself repeatedly as the 'poet of Zarathustra' and at the same time to the work as the 'yes-saying part' of his philosophy. In retrospect it seems to him in Ecce Homo that this part has been completed and that his aims have been fulfilled in this positive part. Nietzsche himself does not believe that Zarathustra requires further qualification through a theoretical exposition. The yes-saying part of his philosophy is for him a poem of high or even highest quality. He does not shrink from comparing it to those of the greatest western poets even with the implication to have surpassed these in Ecce Homo: That a Goethe, Shakespeare would not for one moment be able to breathe in the tremendous passion and height, that Dante is merely a believer compared to Zarathustra and not someone who creates truth in the first place, a world ruling spirit, a fate - that the Vedic poets are priests and not even allowed to loosen Zarathustra's bootlaces - this is the least and does not give us an idea of the distance and the bluish solitude in which this work resides.1 One can only listen to such a statement with bewilderment. Does this express a lack of standard, a loss of perspective or a mad overestimation of himself? Or does this only seem so since Nietzsche compares the Zarathustra with something
Form, style and structure of Thus spoke Zarathustra
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that it cannot be compared with anyway? The above quote contains the peculiar statement that the genuine poet is a creator of truth. For Nietzsche the poet is someone whose Poeisis aims towards primordial truth or towards the emergence of a new cosmic conception. The poet is already close to the thinker. Nietzsche sees their closeness in the original creation of a new revelation of being in its entirety. Zarathustra is neither poetry nor philosophy as long as these are understood traditionally as conceptually opposite poles characterized by thinking and poeticizing. With Nietzsche the duality and dichotomy of the essential understanding of the cosmos becomes questionable. Zarathustra's literary quality is certainly not as high as Nietzsche believes. It contains too much effect, word play and conscious effort. Only the occasional symbol - this mysterious coincidence between the particular and the universal, this presence of a cosmically universal power - is successful. Image and thought remain mostly separated in Zarathustra. The image becomes a metaphor. Zarathustra cannot be denied some literary greatness, but this rests with its parables. At times the exposition becomes an unbearable parody of the Bible with countless flaws in which the excessive style suddenly comes to grief. And then there are sections of impeccable beauty. Formally, Zarathustra is something between reflection and poetry. Nietzsche expresses his intuitions in a flood of images and in countless parables which he often interprets himself subsequently. His thinking as such occurs in the form of images and visions. He moves within concrete images and not within speculative concepts which seem to him empty abstractions. His deepest thoughts assume a concrete shape and form. They solidify into the Zarathustra character. A new 'perspective of art' shows itself here. After expressing his thoughts through the metaphysics of art, through his interpretation of classical art and Wagner's music, Nietzsche does not continue to theorize about art. He does not use art as a tool, but he philosophizes artistically and he thinks poetically. However, the question of the relationship between poetry and philosophy or the dual character of poetic reflection and reflective poetry is not addressed, indeed, it is not even clearly posed. Despite this the book does not seem to be a mere fiction. It is rather driven by a strong force and it is conceived through this driving power. The character of Zarathustra was not just invented by Nietzsche as an alternative to the traditional views of man. 'He surprised me' he writes in Ecce Homo. Although the previous writings prepared its basic themes, the final assertion of Nietzsche's authentic philosophical individuality takes the form of a volcanic eruption or of a revelation. He writes in Ecce Homo'. Does anyone at the end of the nineteenth century have any idea what the poets of the vital ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had
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The Proclamation
the slightest degree of superstition one could hardly reject the idea to be an incarnation, a voice, a medium of superhuman force. The term revelation used in the sense of a sudden, indescribable, certain and subtle vision, a perception of something, which shatters and moves one deeply describes this phenomenon simply. One hears without seeking to, one takes without questioning the giver. A thought appears like a flash, with the force of necessity and without hesitation I never had any choice. . . . Everything happens to the highest degree without free choice but through a tempest of liberating sentiment, of necessity, of power, of divinity. The necessity of the image, of this metaphor is most peculiar. One no longer knows what is the metaphor and what is the image. Everything offers itself as the closest, the most perfect and most simple expression. It really seems as if the things themselves come close and offer themselves as metaphors - to use an example from Zarathustra. This is my experience of inspiration. I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years to find someone who may also say: This is mine also.2 Is this merely a psychological statement by Nietzsche about his creative style? This famous statement about inspiration is often not exactly understood. Nietzsche expresses the pure essence of an ontological experience in autobiographical form. A corresponding passage may be found in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Nietzsche characterizes here with unprecedented lucidity an emerging new conception of the cosmos, a sudden flash like inspiration in which all things and the thinker alike are changed, moved and overwhelmed. And if Nietzsche talks in millennia this is not - as one may perhaps be inclined to think - grotesque boastfulness. If he questions and challenges western metaphysics as a whole, the ontological structure of the world becomes questionable after having been valid for more than two thousand years. If, however, such an attack is not just an empty, meaningless suspicion, if it is driven by a genuinely philosophical impulse and not by the vain desire to criticize while admiring itself in the role of a radical thinker and waiting for a position to emerge on which it can exercise its critical playfulness - if the scepticism is genuine in other words, then it already emerges from an intuition of a new cosmic emergence of being itself. Zarathustra is the original expression of a 'revelation' rich in image and parable - at least this is how Nietzsche experiences it. The conviction of having this genuine experience however, does not decide the question of its truth. Nietzsche himself argues against existential evidence, against the blood of the martyrs in Zarathustra: Blood is the worst evidence for truth. Blood poisons the purest doctrine and turns it into an obsession and towards hateful hearts. And what if someone
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went through the fire for a doctrine, what does that show? It is more likely that the doctrine is produced by the destruction of the individual . .. Nietzsche can only be a challenge for us which is met in the attempt to follow his central thoughts. The style of Zarathustra, the metaphorical expression created in a twilight zone of poetry and conceptual thinking makes it difficult to follow Nietzsche's path although one might rather expect the opposite. The image is no easier to understand than the concept but it seems rather otherwise which tends to mislead us. The conceptual structure of the work is not simple. It falls into four parts which are each created within the one tempestuous spirit. Nietzsche calls them 'ten day works'. However, there are big differences between these parts. In total it took barely a year from its conception to its writing. A long period of conception had passed including the famous and much discussed, almost mystical experience at the rock near Silvaplana and Surlei in the Engadine 18 months ago where the thought of the eternal return took hold in his mind '6000 feet beyond man and time'. His thoughts had already been germinating in many guises such as the artist's metaphysics and his positivism. Purely superficially Zarathustra appears to be a weak fable holding together a chain of parables. In this regard the parts appear similar. Each one contains many thoughts and also some weaker speeches. However, the increasing dramatism of the work cannot be missed. The first two parts culminate in the third as a climax which contains most of the profound speeches. The fourth part constitutes a steep decline in which an allegorical and mythical type of exposition takes over and affects us often embarrassingly. Nietzsche left different drafts for a continuation and alternative conclusion of Zarathustra which - although highly suggestive to any particular interpretation - point somehow to the closed, fragmentary character of his fundamental philosophical experience. It will be impossible to interpret all speeches; however, it seems to me equally impossible to talk about Zarathustra without at least attempting to interpret some sections. Regarding the name, we should briefly note that Nietzsche intended to refer to a historical turn with the allusion to the figure of Zarathustra. He writes in Ecce Homo: One did not ask me, one should have asked me what is the meaning of Zarathustra in my mouth, the mouth of the greatest a-moralist - since the immense uniqueness of this Persian in history is based on precisely the opposite. Zarathustra was the first to see the real cog in the wheel of the things in the struggle between Good and Evil - the transformation of morality into metaphysics through power, cause, purpose as such, is his work. However, this question would really be the answer already. Zarathustra created this fatal
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The Proclamation
mistake: morality. Accordingly he must be the first one to recognize it. Not only does he have more and a longer experience of it than any other thinker.... It is more important that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine alone designated truthfulness as the highest virtue . .. the self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into its opposite - into me - this means in my mouth the name Zarathustra.3 The basic plot - in essence a short fable - is told quickly: At the age of 30 (the age in which the corresponding figure of Jesus of Nazareth begins his teaching) the thinker commences his descent after withdrawing for another ten years into the mountains, into the solitude and with this into an essential closeness to the things. He descends to the people to teach his doctrine proclaiming it firstly in the market-place and then to individuals. However, their ears are neither open nor receptive to his message. He returns again and makes a second set of allegorical speeches to his disciples, yet he hesitates to proclaim his most abysmal thought, namely the thought of the eternal return of the same. And thus he returns a third time to find himself and the central essence of his thought. The fourth, declining part shows the attempt to live the life of the 'higher person', that is of those who constitute the 'remnants of God' - the idealists whose ideal heaven has collapsed and who now experience a great emptiness: 'all those people of the great yearning, the great disgust, of the great tiredness' and the nihilist. However, the thinker also overcomes the 'higher man' although he celebrates the sacrilegiously mocking 'eucharist'. But when his time comes he leaves 'his cave, glowingly and strong like a morning sun which comes from the dark mountains'4 with the lion and the dove, the symbols of strength and gentleness. The book closes with the departure into the unknown which is perhaps its strongest if least intended parable. The first part opens with a prologue including Zarathustra's double-sided portray of man. It deals with the overman and with the last man. These are not two rough extremes which exist side by side. The overman is not yet concrete at all. It is a possibility, a hope whose reality is the last man. At the cosmic hour of the last man the time has come to create the overman and to reach out to it as the highest hope. Nietzsche conceals this relationship by inverting their succession. Zarathustra creates the image of his hopes in the market-place, that is among the last men, among the people who have lost their idealism and their power of self-transcendence and of people who risk nothing, wish nothing, who no longer design the future and who are tired of the game because they are saturated with history. This is the man of a passive nihilism who believes in nothing. His creative human powers are extinguished and burnt out and despite his extensive education he vegetates. He does not present any challenge to
The overman and the death of God
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himself. This is the small man without any further burning fire of enthusiasm in his soul. 'One has the pleasures for the day and the pleasures for the night, but one respects one's health.'5 Nietzsche portrays modern life with astute accuracy. We are all the last man, we who believe in God on Sundays, we who need the seductions of mass entertainment and the organized leisure in order to escape the temptation of boredom of a life which does not aim for anything or which aims for 'nothing'. The time which Nietzsche foresaw and whose visions frightened him deeply has arrived. 'Beware! The time comes in which man no longer aims the arrow of his yearnings beyond himself and in which the sinew of his bow has ceased to know how to swirl.'6 Nietzsche's doctrine of the overman and of the last man contains aspects of a prologue. It seems merely a prelude, an upbeat to his philosophical attempt to understanding man's essence anew through the basic truth of the will to power and through the eternal return of the same. Neither the overman nor the last man exist concretely. Their existential characterization has a preparatory importance. They are first indicators of the path of thinking which Nietzsche follows in Zarathustra.
2. THE OVERMAN AND THE DEATH OF GOD

On his descent towards the world of men following his decade-long solitude in the mountains Zarathustra encounters the saint in the forest, the hermit who withdrew from a life among men to dedicate himself to God. He does not care about men and has no wisdom for them. His isolated existence reaches towards God. He leads his dialogue with Him. His essential discourse is the prayer or the human address of God. The hermit Zarathustra who says to himself: 'Should it be possible? This old saint has not heard in his forest that God is dead.' - This hermit without a dialogue with the divine must precisely lecture to men. He must teach if he wishes to say anything meaningful. With the death of God the true human expression is no longer the address of the Gods and the divine but the dialogue between men. The articulation of the highest human possibility is now the doctrine of the overman. The death of God is accordingly the starting point for Zarathustra's teaching. Nietzsche illustrates Zarathustra's teaching with the help of a 'parable of the sun': Happiness for the sun is that its plentiful light is absorbed by the things for which it shines. The thinker Zarathustra compares himself to the sun. The teacher of the overman turns into the 'light of the world' which replaces God. The death of God, that is the demise of all transcendental 'ideality', of objective transcendence and the destruction of the heavenly stars above the living human
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The Proclamation
world, creates the danger of a tremendous impoverishment of humanity or of a dreadful trivialization if agnosticism becomes common and morality becomes absent. Idealistic tendencies wither away, life becomes enlightened, rational and common. Alternatively the idealistic tendency remains. It does not loose itself by worshipping the self created as something alien, as the transcendental God and His revealed orders - the idealistic tendency becomes conscious of its creative essence and creates now consciously new and humanly created 'ideals'. The last man and the overman are the two human possibilities following the death of God. Nietzsche himself takes over one part passionately: he teaches the overman by illustrating the profoundly deplorable nature of the last man. And his teaching does not have the coolness of a theoretical exposition. It vibrates with emotion and aims to inspire Zarathustra's speech to reach a hymn-like enthusiasm. Nietzsche writes in Ecce Homo: What language will such a spirit speak if it speaks to itself? The language of the dithyramb. One should hear how Zarathustra speaks to himself before dawn; such a turquoise happiness, such a divine tenderness has never been previously expressed.7 Strictly speaking, only Zarathustra's monologue is dithyrambic, in particular songs such as the The Night Song, The Grave Song, Before Dawn, Of the Great Yearning, The Seven Seals (The Yes-and-Amen Song). Zarathustra's speeches to the people and to his disciples are parables filled with the strongest pathos. However, Nietzsche does not only teach through Zarathustra's sermons, but more so through his dithyrambic monologues where he portrays the kind of overman, imitates his existential mood and his most direct experience. Zarathustra's poetical form can ultimately not be understood through Nietzsche's effort to express the inspiration of a new, inverted idealism and to call fervently for a greatness of existence. 'Oh, I knew noblemen' - says Zarathustra - 'who lost their highest hopes. And now they deny all high hopes. Now, they live audaciously with brief pleasures and do not conceive any aims beyond a day. But through my love and hope I beseech you: Do not expel the hero from your soul! Keep your highest hope sacred!'8 It is important to retain the heroic character of human existence even after the death of God and to incorporate into life what seemed as transcendent and as remote as a divinity. Since Nietzsche attempts this universal appeal, since he aims to create a mood of human heroism and greatness in addition to facing the destruction of an 'ideal heaven' Zarathustra is overloaded with exaggerated
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pathos, with appeals and mood flashes and with demands and aversions. The hymn-like character of the language in Zarathustra does not simplify the approach to it but on the contrary makes it rather difficult. The inner structure of the work and its path of thought cannot be detected easily beneath the many parables and speeches. And yet it is there. If one has once sensed it one marvels at the consistency of its structure. The 'prologue' sketches a brief image of the overman. He is the 'essence of the earth'. Man, this self-transcending being, has so far only transcended himself towards the divine. God is for Nietzsche the essence of all transcendental ideality. Man has used and abused the earth to beautify the image of the otherworld. From this he took his colours, his desire and his representations with which he furnished the transcendental realm of eternal light and of the imperishable ideas. Denying the earth he abused it. The overman is conscious of the death of God and of the end of an idealism connected to transcendence. He recognizes the ideal otherworld as an Utopian reflection of the earth. He returns what is borrowed and stolen from it to it. He farewells all transcendental dreams and turns to the earth with the same commitment which previously attached itself to the dream world. The highest pinnacle of human freedom turns towards the great mother, the broad-breasted earth and finds in it the boundary and weight which balances all ideals. Man returns to the earth and grounds his freedom on the earth. His freedom is no longer a freedom towards God or towards nonbeing but towards the earth, the source of all that emanates in the light and the time and endures in time and space. With it the human being gains a position despite all the risks. The earth replaces the God of a self-alienated humanity. Once upon a time the divine sin was the greatest sin. But God died and with this the sinners. To sin on earth is now the most terrifying, to value the insides of the unknowable more than the meaning of the earth.9 Nietzsche starts directly with the transcendental characteristics of man: 'Man is something that must be overcome.' However this is also generally, biologically expressed: 'All beings so far created something beyond themselves and you wish to be the low tide of this great flood and rather turn back towards the animal than overcome man?'10 Does this ultimately resemble Darwinism? Is Nietzsche's metaphysics based on a scientific hypothesis? Not at all! The thinker merely refers to common, familiar ideas to capture his problem. Man is a selfovercoming being because the universal essence of life as such, the will to power becomes conscious in him and conscious of itself. The realization of the will to power implies the recognition of the death of God and vice versa. Both thoughts have an inner connection. Ignoring the death of God, self-overcoming aims at a transcendental world. Asceticism, contempt for the body, overcoming
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The Proclamation
of the finite or the sensual are a betrayal of the earth: 'But whoever is even the wisest among you is only a mixture and hybrid of plant and spirit.'11 What does this mean? He is torn by the opposites of the here and the beyond, of the sensual and the spiritual. The spiritual is Utopian, removed from the earth and fantastic. The sensual is seemingly ignored by the spirit and has an animalistic, plant-like presence. The unfaithfulness to the earth splits man into a duality of sense and spirit, into an opposition of body and soul. Idealism makes man a twofold, unhappy being. He despises the body to which his soul is chained. He wants to escape from diis prison. The inversion of idealism in the conception of the overman cures this rift which splits man and separates him. It means the reconciliation in which the separation of body and soul is sublated. 'I beseech you my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak about transcendental hopes. They mix poison whether they realize this or not.'12 The image of the overman remains initially undefined. Nietzsche, however, gives an approximation by describing the premises and precursors of this perfect and complete human being which he calls the overman. He thus determines the overman further indirectly and by inference: 'What is great about man is that he is a bridge and no aim itself. What can be loved about man is that he is a transition and a decline.'13 The precursors identified by Nietzsche are the bridge between man and the overman: the great despisers, who sacrifice themselves to the earth, the disciples, the workers and inventors, diose who love their virtue and perish through it, the wasteful of the soul, the bashful of happiness, the apologists of the entire future and past, the persecutors of God, those with depth of spirit, the over-rich or the free spirits. Nietzsche takes his honey from many rare flowers of the human garden. The overman focuses and prepares himself in any of these precursors, however what remains separated in these types is synthesized in him. I love all those who are like heavy drops, falling separately from a dark cloud which hovers above men. They announce the coming of the lightning and they perish as prophets. See, I am a prophet of lightning and a heavy drop in the sky, the lightning is called the overman.14 Zarathustra starts his speeches to his companions with his animals, the eagle and the snake, that is, with pride and cleverness and commences his 'descent'. The choice of pride and cleverness is intentional. They present a conscious contrast to humility and the 'poverty of spirit' for which the wisdom of the world turns into foolishness. They are anti-Christian. The central theme of the first part of Zarathustra is the 'death of God'. All speeches must be related back to this essential focus of the death of God. Zarathustra's first series of prophecies aims to invert idealism. One could show
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this convincingly through a detached and continuous interpretation of the individual speeches. We concentrate on a few central aspects. The first speech entitled 'On the three metamorphoses'I5 indicates the basic concern: the transformation of the human being following the death of God that is the change from a self-alienation to a creative freedom of self-consciousness. 'I name three metamorphoses of spirit. The spirit becomes a camel, changes from a camel to a lion and finally from a lion into the child.' The camel already implies the possible greatness of human existence. It implies the person of great respect, who submits to the superior powers of God and to the supremacy of the moral law. He sinks to his knee and carries great weights willingly. 'What is the heaviest, you heroes - the enduring spirit asks, so that I carry it and enjoy my strength..." The human being burdened by the weight of transcendence, the human being of idealism resembles the camel of Zarathustra's speeches. He does not want an easy life. He despises the weightlessness of everyday, prosaic life. He longs instead for challenges. He longs to fulfil stringent and arduous duties, which are difficult for us and which burden us heavily. He wills his duty and, furthermore, he seeks to obey God and submit himself to the meaning of life which is imposed on him. The submissive spirit finds its own greatness in obedience and submission. Imprisoned by a firm world of values he submits willingly and submissively to the commands of the 'thou shalt'. The camel which stands with its load in the desert experiences its change into a lion. Idealism destroys itself. Morality refutes itself through truthfulness and idealism is inverted by ideal motivations. The respectful and complicit spirit turns into a lion, that is he throws off the weights which oppress and suppress him from 'outside'. He struggles with his 'last God', namely objective morality and he recognizes his previous self-alienation. And he struggles now against the thousand year old dragon and against apparently objective values. In the lion-fight against the morality of idealism and its transcendental basis, its 'intelligible world' and its divine will, man creates his freedom. He uncovers his own latent freedom and overcomes his position of radical slavery, namely the determination of life through a given meaning of life which must be merely accepted. However, this negative lion freedom which denies God, the objectivity of morals and the metaphysical thing in itself as mere illusions of idealistic self-alienation is not final. It is only a negative freedom, freedom from but not freedom to. 'To create freedom and a holy No also from duty - for this my brothers the lion is required.' However, the denial of the old, honoured values or rather more accurately the denial of the transcendence of these values or the liberation of human existence from this self-alienation is no new initiative, no creative, constructive productivity of a liberated humanity. The lion confronts the 'thou shalt' which dominates the camel with its own masterful 'I will'; however, there is much opposition and
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effort in this 'I will' and much defiance and spite. The new will is itself still willed. It does not have the true ease of a creative will or of a new creation of values. This only belongs to the child. Innocence is the child and forgetting, a new beginning, a play, a wheel turning through itself, a first motion, a holy yes-saying/ Yes to the play of creation, my brothers, we require a sacred affirmation: The spirit wills its will now, a world is gained by the one lost in the world. The true, primordial essence of freedom as a creation of new values and realms of value is addressed in the metaphor of the play. Play is the essence of positive freedom. The death of God reveals the playful, risky dimension of human existence. Human creativity is play. The progress from man towards the overman is not an evolutionary leap of a biological kind in which a new kind of living being appears beyond the homo sapiens. This progress is the development of finite freedom, its retrieval from a self-alienation and the free emergence of the character of play. It must be pointed out that Nietzsche takes up the concept of play already in this first period in the attempted continuation of Heraclitus and uses it to focus on the fundamental concept of the Dionysian. The play is not yet the entire Dionysian world in this speech by Zarathustra. Play is here understood as the playful design of the worlds of value, not as the primordial ground which constitutes and destroys the world of appearance. The play of creative valuation, however, makes the entire metaphysical structure of sensible and spiritual, of mundus sensibilis and mundus inteUigibilis or of this world and the other world, questionable. Like the transcendence of values, the transcendence of metaphysics is based on a living God. After the death of God, however, such a distinction is superfluous. The metaphors of the camel, the lion and the child do not only present essential transformations of the freedom which comes to itself and thus generates the overman, they are in some ways steps of Nietzsche's path of thought. These cited characters correspond to the order in which Nietzsche articulates his understanding of himself. The genius, the most subservient human being who becomes the medium of a superhuman power corresponds to the camel. The free spirit, the critic and revolutionary and the daring explorer of distant, unknown shores, corresponds to the lion. And Zarathustra himself, the yes-saying spirit who posits new values corresponds to the playing child. At the same time the message of the 'speech' is far removed from an autobiographical exposition. The fact that Nietzsche's own life went through stations and transformations which he demands for man himself only shows the seriousness and consistency of his thought. He leads an existence of a thinker who lives his thought and reflects on his life. The radical existential change expressing itself in
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the first speech remains the condition of all subsequent transformations. From this perspective he can characterize the understanding of virtue as it occurs before such transformations as a sleep of life in which man has not yet awoken to himself, in which he is caught in the appearance of transcendence and in which he forgets his own creative existence. The teachers of virtue preach a sleep or the self-oblivion of freedom at play. And similarly, the metaphysical thought of an 'otherworld' has a worldly origin for Nietzsche. It is as it were merely a dream which seeks redemption from suffering. 'Tiredness, which aims to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one deadly leap, a poor, ignorant tiredness, which does not even will any longer; this created all Gods and other-worlds.'16 In the idealistic contempt for the body Nietzsche sees consequently an unenlightened will for decline. The knowledge of the death of God expresses itself in a tripartite view of virtue, otherworld and contempt for the body. The same view engages in an interpretation of death, war, friendship and love: all human fundamental concerns are revalued, examined and judged anew. This time the measure for existence is not in God's hand. Since God is dead all is seen differently. The earth becomes the final measure. The examination of human things must be true to it. Man is regarded abstractly as the creator. 'The path of the creator' is the title of one speech17 which again takes up the issue of an existential change. The path of the creator leads to extreme solitude. It excludes us totally from living communities, from society and from love and pity. Solitude isolates us within ourselves. However, not everyone has the right to such a search and desire for the self. You call yourself free? I would like to hear your leading thought and not that you have escaped from a yoke. Are you one that was allowed to escape from a yoke? There are many that threw their last value away when they threw away their servitude. Free to do what? What concern is this to Zarathustra! Clearly however, your eye must announce: Free to do what? The decisive, final speech of the first part Of the Giving Virtue19 expresses the genuine human existence and the liberation which commences with the knowledge of the death of God. Being oneself is no static preservation and assertion of self. It is a playful, self-transcending activity. The egoism of the creator does not have the characteristics of the small, petty egoism, it is pure self-sacrifice. Truly, a robber of values must such giving love become; but complete and sacred I call this egoism. There is another egoism, an ail-too pure and hungry one, which attempts to steal all the time - the egoism of the sick, the sick egoism.
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The rich, generous egoism does not intend possession but transformation into a richer, fuller and more powerful life or a life which overflows and shares its riches. This drive of life, of increasing, swelling life for more power and empowerment, this search of the self for ever new self-overcoming and selftranscendence is the true mode of a human existence and of a creator who is liberated from God. If your heart flows broadly and fully, akin to a stream, a blessing and danger to your neighbours. This is the origin of your virtue. If you stand above praise and reprimand, and if your will commands all things as the will of the lover, then you have the source of your virtue. The basic manner in which the creative, overflowing existence which searches for a supreme empowerment of life is determined here already indicates the basic thinking which will dominate the second part of Zarathustra, that is the thought of the 'will to power'. The will to power is basically still conceived from a human perspective, namely as a creative self-transcendence of a freely creative existence. Idealism, be it moral, metaphysical or religious, seems to be the great human error. A hundredfold did the spirit and virtue alike attempt and fail so far. Yes, man was an attempt. Oh how much ignorance and error do we embody. Not only the reason of thousands of years - even its madness shows itself in us. It is dangerous to be an heir . .. The insanity of millennia is for Nietzsche the idealistic interpretation of man and world. The insanity of idealism is to be inverted precisely into the insight that God is dead. Only this will show the free human possibilities: 'There are a thousand paths, which have not been used, a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Man and the human earth are still untouched and undiscovered.' The possibilities of freedom are infinite if God no longer limits man, if this insurmountable wall no longer blocks the ascending human path and if the gigantic shadow of the master no longer falls on the human land. Nietzsche does not place man within God's plan. He does not deify and worship finite existence. He puts the earth into the place of the Christian God and of the Platonic realm of ideas. Perhaps this is also an ancient Goddess, but an abstract one without concrete form which is 'near but hard to grasp'. Nietzsche concludes the first book with a dedication of the parting Zarathustra to his disciples: 'All Gods are dead: Now let us wish that the overman lives - this may be our last wish at the great noon.'
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3. THE WILL TO POWER

The second part of Zamthustm reveals explicitly the cosmic force within the realm of human freedom. The fundamental thought is now the doctrine of the will to power. However, this is not introduced suddenly. Nietzsche does not leap to a new thought. He develops it from previous material. The childlike, transfigured man has become the creator. He is the genuine and authentic man. The 'creator' does not refer to the human being at work of course, but to the one who plays creatively, who sets values and to the person focused on a great will who has created an aim for himself and who courageously risks a new vision. The creator does not recognize the existence of any ready-made world of sense perception to which he adapts or which he accepts. He posits new standards and values, he re-invents human life and he exists in the most authentic sense 'historically', that is creatively. 'And what you called world, this you are supposed to have firstly created, your reason, your images, your will, your love are to become this.'19 This radical, creative stance would be limited and restricted if there are God and Gods. Freedom would be defined through instructions, laws and prohibitions. God stands in opposition to human freedom. If it is properly understood the latter can no longer allow the thought of God. 'If there were Gods how could I bear not to be a God.'20 This statement by Zarathustra is not intended to be blasphemous - it is rather conceived from a perspective which contrasts finite freedom and the divine will. The freedom of the creative person cannot be restricted by divine freedom. The only limit which is acceptable to the creative person is the earth, that is not the power of an individuated, separate being, but the omnipresent power of the all. The creative person knows himself to be in harmony with the creative power of the earth in his creation. 'God is an assumption. But who would drink all the pain of this assumption without dying? Is faith to be taken away from the creator and the love for distance from the eagle?'21 However, the thought of God is not the only restriction of human freedom on its path towards the open, hitherto unknown possibilities. Because creation as such is essentially historical, it is related to temporality. It is committed to time. It projects itself into the future. It anticipates time in its intentions and its highest hopes precede it. However, the metaphysical, transcendental conception of God presupposes a transcendence of space and time in which time does not really exist and is a mere appearance. Time is devalued. It is excluded from true reality. The idealistic approach of the Christian transcendental conception denies the reality of time and constitutes for Nietzsche a deadly devaluation of the creator's will to a future. If time is ultimately not real, history is meaningless, man's path in time and his projected aims make no sense. The death of God
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implies accordingly for Nietzsche the demise of the denial of time and the recognition that time is an essential dimension of all being. As opposed to idealism, which exorcized time from being, Nietzsche reinstates time within being as 'earth' and recognizes the fundamental relation between being and time. 'I call it evil and anti-human. All these doctrines of the one, of the full and immovable and the self-sufficient and the eternal. All eternity is only a symbol. And the poets lie too much.'22 The true, omnipresent, all-encompassing time, the ascent and decline of the things, the eternal change or the rapid decline of all finite things is the only path for the creative person. He has his ethereal home in the finite and the earthly. His creation is itself created and destroyed, a vision of finite aims and their overcoming. The creative person who gains a radical freedom through the death of God and who discovers the earth, places himself consciously and intentionally within time, accepts finitude and with it his own demise. Placing himself within time, in the turn towards the earthly dimension of all things, the overman experiences and accepts his finitude: 'But the best metaphors are to report to us about time and becoming. They are to be praises and apologies for all finitude.'23 The freedom of the creative person establishes itself through the vision of temporally finite possibilities or in other words through the will. The essence of creation is always an overcoming, not, though an ascetic, world negating overcoming of time and life but the overcoming of finite steps and of finite intentions. The creative person transcends himself through time, destroys what he was and searches for what he is not yet. 'Yes, there must be much bitter death in your life, you creators. You are consequently the advocates and apologists of finitude.'24 The creative person is always on the way between ascent and decline. He does not only live within time, he participates in the play of cosmic time. He is the 'playing child' (Pais Paizori) of Heraclitus. The commitment to time, the inversion of the idealistic negation of time, the temporal, temporally directed will of finite, continuously self-transcending aims of the will establishes the humansuperhuman freedom of the creative person. 'Willing liberates: This is the true doctrine of the will and of freedom - this is taught by Zarathustra.'25 Looking at the ontology of creation, Nietzsche discovers as it were the characteristics of life itself. The creative person reveals the essence of finite being purified from all transcendental, metaphysical representations. We are by no means dealing with an uncritical application of anthropocentric categories to being as such. We must see the connections much clearer here. The human transformation resulting from the experience that God is dead leads to the ascent of the earth which had been obscured and disfigured by misleading idealistic interpretations for too long. The here and now of the world in space
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and time that is the realm of life is no longer devalued as a superficial, redundant and inauthentic appearance. The true world is no longer found beyond space and time in the thing-in-itself, in the realm of the ideas, in God and the divine sphere. Spirit and freedom return to the earth in the existential transformation of man into overman and recognizes itself as part of the earth and as united with the earth. Nietzsche invents for this the comparison which is frequently perceived to be objectionable that spirit and soul are only physical. The body or the earthly manifestation of our existence is the only reality. We are no citizens of an intelligible world and no members of a spiritual realm. We are wholly and totally earthbound. Only the inversion of idealism presents Nietzsche with the possibility to identify humanity and being as such and to find the key to life and even to all being in the human essence. Nietzsche does not ignore the obvious differences between the diverse ontological modalities of things in the world. The stone, the animal and the human being are certainly not identical. There are differences of what-ness and that-ness. Nietzsche does not obliterate these differences. He does not arbitrarily equate the creative person with the pebble. He rather links them in a deeper sense: Despite their difference of appearance they are similar in so far as they are 'forces' or 'products' of the earth. The earth, however, is not just the present stuff and not just the mere totality of things. The thing or the existing individual has already emerged from the earth, however, not to leave it behind but to rely on it as the sustaining ground for all finite being. The earth is omnipresent but not near or distant like things. It is always present but never itself an object. The concept of the earth as it shows itself in Nietzsche's thinking is hard to grasp. We can merely indicate that Nietzsche does not think of earth as merely present-at-hand but as that which allows emergence, as the bearer of all things or as the dynamic of bearing lending shape, nature and duration to the manifold of individuated and contingent being. Nietzsche thinks earth as a creative force, as poieisis. And similarly, the essential human characteristics are conceived as creativity and creative freedom. Nietzsche accordingly gains an insight into the creative nature of earth - and with this into the cosmic principle of all things - from the perspective of human creativity. The second part of Zarathustra sketches the image of the creator and his relationship to time and his inevitable atheism in the chapter On the blessed islands. In the following chapters he takes a position (from the perspective of the creator) against the compassionate, against the priests and against the virtuous and against the riff-raff. The chapter entitled On the Tarantulas exposes this argument more clearly and prepares the important message of this second part. Nietzsche uses the metaphor of the tarantulas to characterize the spirit of revenge, of those who have missed out on greatness and well-being in life. The tarantulas are the preachers of equality. The impotence of their life takes
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revenge at all powerful and accordingly unequal forms of life. Nietzsche does not only argue here polemically against modern trends, that is against the French Revolution, Rousseau, socialism and democracy, but equally against Christianity with its understanding of human equality in the face of God. Nietzsche places himself in distinct opposition to western tradition and to the traditional views of justice. The more powerful, creative or influential a life, the more it will assimilate the inequality of men into its own system of values and posit a hierarchy and a spiritual aristocracy. And vice-versa: the more impotent and powerless a life, the more it will insist on equality attempting to drag the exceptional individual person down to an average, mediocre level. It will view greatness as a crime against equality and it will attempt to take revenge at those who are powerful and well adjusted in life. The will to equality is accordingly only the impotent yearning of the weak for power. Nietzsche attempts to reveal here that the apparent idea of justice is merely a frustrated will to power concealing itself while abusing the appearance of virtue and moral honesty in order to succeed. The ordinary notions of justice harbour revenge. The tarantula weaves its web and chokes life in it. Nietzsche points here already to the big theme of a 'master and slave morality' which is going to play a central role following Zarathustm. However, this difference which remains a human one or these different conceptions of 'justice' are not the essential point. The crucial point is Nietzsche's move from the battle of value systems or from the battle between the ideas of good and evil to the battle of life itself, that is the move to the will to power. Good and evil, rich and poor, high and low and all kinds of values - these are to be weapons and resounding characteristics that life must always overcome itself anew. It builds itself up with pillars and steps, life itself: It wishes to enjoy a distant view and view blessed beauties - that is why it needs height! And because it requires height it needs steps and conflict between the steps and its climbers. Life wishes to climb and to overcome itself in climbing.26 Earth is addressed as 'life' in its absence and as the generating force. Life here does not mean the essence of organic life as in the plant, the animal and man. Life as organic life is merely a part of being. It cannot yield insights into essential characteristics of all things. Nietzsche's fundamental conception of life is not very developed conceptually. It is described in ever changing images. Nietzsche's central intuition does not succeed in becoming conceptualized. And yet - notwithstanding the frequent accusation - he is far from vague or nebulous. Life has to be conceived in a multi-dimensional context. The main relation is that between earth and life. Earth lives. Earth grants presence to all beings. All things, humans or animals, or even simple stones are children of the earth and
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generated from its bearing, giving life. And this life of the earth is - for Nietzsche - the will to power. Nietzsche reflects on creativity itself, on the earth's will to power itself from the point of view of human creativity. Nietzsche interrupts the internal train of thought moving towards a conception of the will to power with three songs: The Night Song, The Dancing Song and The Grave Song. The meaning of these songs is not easily established. Are they expressing moods and is it in fact futile to investigate their deeper meaning? The Night Song is a love song, a song of yearning of the solitary thinker who longs for the night, the abyss and the shelter in the sunlight of his understanding. 'It is night, now all bubbling fountains speak, and my soul is also a bubbling fountain/ It is night: only now the songs of all lovers awake. And my soul too is a song of a lover.'27 In Ecce Homo Nietzsche comments on the night song: 'This has never before been written, never before been felt, never before been endured. This is the suffering of a God, of Dionysos. The answer to such a dithyramb of solar solitude in the light would be Ariadne . . . who knows except for me who Ariadne is!'28 The Night Song sings of the light's yearning for the night. Night appears to be feminine or to be Ariadne. The Dancing Song, however, addresses life. 'Into your eye I looked recently, o life! And I seemed to disappear into the infinite.' Life appears in the form of a woman: 'But I am only fickle and wild and a woman in all respects - and not a virtuous one either ...' And similarly, Zarathustra's 'wild wisdom' is a woman and is somehow infinite life itself.29 In The Grave Song Zarathustra remembers the graves of his youth or of the past life and he experiences the pain of finitude against which he summons his 'rock-shattering' will. 'Yes, you are still the destroyer of graves, Hail thee my will! And only where graves are can there be resurrections.'30 Love, death and lust - night, infinity and grave - all this is implied in the songlike address of the feminine, of the woman of all women or of the all-bearing earth. One has been tempted to interpret these songs as expressing Nietzsche's personal experiences. It may be that such experiences have given Zarathustra's songs a certain colour and atmosphere. However, they are found at a decisive point of the work and they are more than existential confessions. In the chapter On self-overcoming the basic characteristic of the second part is exposed. Nietzsche commences again with man, with the thinker and with the creator of value. Thinking appears to be free of any will to power; it appears to be a pure, disinterested human attention to Being itself. However, Nietzsche states that precisely this is a will to power, the will to make Being conceivable. The thinker organizes being through concepts, arrests the flow of becoming and solidifies what does not essentially remain static. The framework of words and concepts casts - as it were - a net into the river of time and only catches fishes after all which it had released itself into it in the form of substance, causality, etc.
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'You wish to make Being conceivable because you are rightly suspicious if it is already thinkable. This is your entire will - you wisest of men, as a will to power, even though you may talk about good and evil and about values.' Nietzsche departs again from the human will to power and proceeds to a universal will to power determining all being. 'Wherever I find life, I found the will to power. And even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master... and this secret life itself confided to me: see, it said, I am that which needs to continuously overcome itself.' Self-overcoming does not refer on this occasion to an ascetic meaning but to the precise opposite of this. Life has the tendency to 'climb'. It creates forms of power and never comes to rest in itself. It is existential excitation and motion, but precisely not a linear motion which would not transcend itself. It does not resemble the play of the waves in which form is created and destroyed. It rather resembles an enormous and ever-growing tower. Every achieved position becomes the starting point for a further ascent. Life is no all-embracing flood. It is rather the permanent struggle and the conflict of all individual beings with each other. It constitutes so to speak the opposing poles in which all struggles with all and yet all embraces all. However, the totality of things does not merely disappear and dissolve in an amorphous, all-embracing life but the things are driven towards opposition and strife. The play of life contains the difference which limits and creates a disharmony between the particular things. However, its limits are not fixed as the one attempts to overcome the other. Will to power is not the attempt to remain within a position of power once achieved, but it is always the will to overpower and to transcend power. And as the smaller submits to the larger so that this may have enjoyment and use of the smaller: so the larger submits itself and looses - for the sake of power - its life. This is the dedication of the greatest, that it contains a risk and a danger, and a gambling with death. Nietzsche turns explicitly against Schopenhauer: 'Whoever coined the phrase of the "will to being" did certainly not hit the truth. This will does not exist. . . . The living value many things more than life itself, but the valuing exposes this the will to power.' The fundamental ontological meaning of the will to power is not explicated by the Zarathustra. Nietzsche characterizes life with it. Life, however, is no mere biological category which defines the 'animated' as opposed to the dead matter. But because Nietzsche progresses from human life to life itself in the Zarathustra, the basic conceptual importance of the will to power is not easily understood. Nietzsche conceives with it the constitution of all finite things and their dynamic: the interplay of opposition and strife. The second part of Zarathustra
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leads from the creator to the fundamental concept of the will to power. The creative spirit is only possible in a serious relationship to time. Life ascends to ever-higher forms of power in the flow of time. Every step already prepares the next. How does this ever increasing and continuously self-overcoming will to power relate to time? This is obviously a serious question. Can the game of overcoming and ascending be continued into infinity? Does an infinite tower of the self-overcoming life not contradict the essence of time? In thinking the will to power, Nietzsche arrives at a major riddle. This is at first conceived in the will to power. The will to power is the principle of the ambitious life. And life itself is now again brought into view as the aspiring human life. In the chapter Of redemption Nietzsche does not only turn with scathing sharpness against the idea of Christian redemption, against metaphysics itself which he conceives as a rejection of the concrete world and places the overman, his form of redemption, against it, but he shows that the deeper issue is the relationship between the future when the overman is realized and the presence or between the presence and the past. Zarathustra moves among men as among 'human fragments and husks'. He finds the present and past human being most unbearable and rejects him in the creative will to the overman. He would not be able to live if he was not the seer of the future and if he did not live with a hope for the overman. He accordingly lives in the will to the future, in a tension towards the future which drives him on. All human fragmentation appears justified to him by the future and is consequently 'redeemed'. The will to a complete and unified human being or to the overman condenses into one what is presently 'a fragment and a riddle and a terrifying chance'. However, this will can only redeem in the future. It wills the possible or the not yet realized. The present and the past are its limits. It can only progress not regress. 'The will cannot turn back. That he cannot overcome time and the desire of time - that is the most isolated regret of the will.' The absolute character of time limits any power of the will. Does the will to power merely need to accept the higher power of time, which manifests itself in the determinations of the past to achieve the reconciliation with time? Can the will only progress infinitely and never turn back? The chapter Of redemption ends with the indication of this problem. Nietzsche views redemption within the context of power and time. Within this context a solution would need to oppose all Christian and metaphysical conceptions of a transcendental world and of a negation of time itself. There has to be a more radical reflection about 'will to power' and time. The aspiring will to life is not only limited by the unchangeable past. It can also not progress into infinity, infinitely overcoming itself. It appears doubtful that that there can be an infinite overoverman or an overman of infinite potency. The aspiring, progress of life cannot lead to a self-transcendence into infinity. The question here is this: Is time really a succession of moments where the past is completely determined and only the
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future is subject to the will? Is time comparable to an infinite line which is split into two heterogeneous parts by the present, into pasts and future? Is it true that the past can never be the future and vice-versa? Or is there a 'deeper understanding' of time? Zarathustra has such an understanding - he has a premonition of it at least, however, it is not yet a conceptual understanding. It is rather his most intimate thought. In the chapter The quietest hour which concludes the second part31, Zarathustra experiences the call of this intimate, concealed truth. The quietest hour reveals time in its essence. It is so quiet because it reveals the conditions of all sound and noise. The forests hum, the trains rattle, the clocks chime and the sand flows quietly through the hourglass - time is the quietest. The silent hours, its powerful mistress speaks to Zarathustra: 'You know it.' But what does he know? What seems to exceed his powers driving him back onto his solitude and separating him from his disciples is the new and secret knowledge of the essence of time which no longer holds fast to the inevitable difference between past and future. This knowledge of time which forms the basis for any relation between time and will to power is the fundamental thought of Zarathustra and at the same time the climax of the entire book: the doctrine of the eternal return of the same.
4. THE ETERNAL RETURN: OF THE VISION AND THE RIDDLE, BEFORE SUNRISE
The third part of Zarathustra is the centre and heart of the work not only in the formal sense and in relation to its composition. The story certainly builds up consciously towards the third part. Following the proclamation on the doctrine of the overman in the market-place and the teaching of the 'death of God' and the 'will to power' to his disciples the third part does not constitute a teaching doctrine. Zarathustra is on the way to his cave in the mountains, on the way to his last and highest solitude where he confronts his most abysmal thought which leads to his last transformation. Although he addresses the sailors who carry him across the sea, his speech is couched in riddles. He addresses the 'buffoon' of the great city which he passes in more than one way. His speech is essentially not directed at others but constitutes a monologue. However, the stylistic and formal elements are not unimportant or arbitrary. Nietzsche does not just use them to make the story more interesting or exciting. The parable does not merely serve to enrich a seemingly monotonous collection of doctrines. It is intended to be more important. Zarathustra speaks about the overman to all, about the death of God and the will to power to fewer and about the eternal return of the same really only to himself. This obviously implies a rank order of his
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fundamental thoughts. Nietzsche says about Zarathustra in Ecce Homo: T am now relating the story to Zarathustra. The basic conception of the work, the thought of the eternal return, this highest formula of affirmation which can be reached at all, belongs to the August of 1881 ,'32 This seems to identify the eternal return decisively and explicitly as his essential concern. The formal structure of Zarathustra's story emphasizes this. The sequence of Nietzsche's fundamental thoughts is not arbitrary. Although they are related and mutually explicative overall, their sequence of development cannot be reversed. The overman which is initially only posited as a human possibility is intimately dependent on the death of God. Only when it is recognized that the transcendental God, morality and the other world are dimensions of human self-alienation, the inversion of idealism can occur and Zarathustra can state: 'All Gods are dead, we will now that the overman may live.' And the death of God itself, the insight that the ideal does not exist is in turn only possible because Zarathustra questions life, investigates the immanent constitution of life and discovers the will to power. For Nietzsche, the will to power is the ontological substance. Substance is here not understood to mean 'essential', the static formation of the appearance or of the image or idea. It rather refers to subsisting in the literal sense or to an ontological dynamic. All being is will to power. This cannot be observed as such. Existing things appear to be highly different to us. We are used to distinguishing different kinds according to their difference in observable appearance inanimate stones, living plants, animals and humans. Alternatively we distinguish the things which exist through themselves and those created things (tools, houses, states) and again things like number and shape. As long as one looks towards difference from the aspect of difference in appearance one will be unable to bring the will to power into view. Only the focus on the ontological dynamic of becoming and passing away or of ascent and decay referred to in the concept of 'life' by Nietzsche leads to an understanding of the will to power. All being is will to power in so far as it is temporal. The temporality as struggle and strife for power, as overpowering and as progress, constitutes the path of the will to power which extends into the future. The will to power wills essentially the future, the possible and the yet undetermined. As the dynamic and as the directed temporality of all being the will to power is subject to the determination of time which opens the possibilities of the future and closes any possibilities of an already determined past. The will cannot turn back. It is bound to the passage of time. It has to conform to the latter, it must progress and it cannot regress. The will to power is grounded in the passage of time. Considered as a whole, we find a peculiar, fundamental connection between Nietzsche's four basic thoughts. The overman depends on the death of God. The death of God depends on the will to power and the will to power depends
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on the flow of time. Nietzsche's thought has the character of a peculiar rereflection or of a remarkable return. His progress reflecting about inner-worldly being to the embracing and circumscribing world itself distinguishes him perhaps most from the metaphysical tradition. He turns from man and God via the becoming of all things to the cosmos as a whole. He conceives the totality of the cosmos as the thought of the eternal return of the same. This thought is more implied than truly explicated. Nietzsche appears almost afraid to articulate it. In essence his reflection defies the word. It is a secret understanding. Nietzsche hesitates and conceals his secret behind increasing walls because his most profound intuition eludes a conceptual grasp. The secret of his fundamental thought remains for him itself in mysterious darkness. Perhaps he escapes thus initially from the metaphysical path and finds his place without any path and in a state of perplexity in a new dimension. A superficial reading could easily and erroneously assume that the eternal return represents the central and essential topic of the third part of Zarathustm. It seems as if it is only one among many aspects holding the balance with equally important ones such as Of old and new laws and Of the three evils. In truth, however, the eternal return is its only concern. The substance of the revaluation of values is re-examined through it. We attempt to follow the inner structure of the third part. Initially we find peculiar indications and hints. The direction of the second part which closes with Zarathustra's most silent hour in which the abysmal thought and knowledge of temporality approaches him is continued: Zarathustra returns. He ascends into even higher regions of the mountains and draws circles and divine boundaries around himself. He is on the way to his last summit. He has to become loneliest in order to see into the heart of the world. You, however, Zarathustra, wanted to see the ground and background of all things; you have to ascend beyond yourself. Go on, ascend until you even leave your stars beneath you. Yes, to look down upon myself and even upon my stars, that only is my summit, this remains my final summit.33 The climax of Zarathustra's thinking is reached where even the self-overcoming and the will to power are transcended and where the conditions of the latter become conscious. Zarathustra's ascent to his last summit is at the same time paradoxically the steepest descent. In thinking the deepest thought Zarathustra comes to his highest height: Where do the highest mountains come from? This is what I once asked. I learnt that they come from the sea/ this testimony is written into their rock
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and into the walls of their summits. The highest gains its height from the deepest.34 This means: Zarathustra's last transformation, his superhuman greatness consists in the conception of the all-embracing ground. The greatness of the overman is based on the understanding of the sea of time. The chapter Of the vision and the riddl^5 contains the first metaphoric expression of the eternal return. Zarathustra reports the 'intuition of the hermit' to the 'daring searchers and seducers' or to the seafarers and to those enjoying riddles. The loneliest man has a vision and intuition of the eternal return. The most individual thinks the most unusual. Only the lonely man is exposed to the vastness of the universe and relates to it in the 'great yearning'. This tension between solitude and the world in its entirety dominates the highest reflection of Zarathustra. Zarathustra tells his vision to the sailors. He relates a metaphorical experience: once upon a time he climbed a mountain. On his shoulders sat the spirit of heaviness, half dwarf, half mole. He ascends to defy this spirit and despite the weight of his thoughts which are heavy like drops of lead. Zarathustra's ascent is the human path, the ascent to the highest humanity or to the overman. This ascent is accomplished against the resistance of the spirit of heaviness. It is the path of the creator, of the creative will which always projects itself ahead of itself. But can this continue ever further and higher? Can the creator ascend continuously beyond itself and yet never reach an end? The spirit of heaviness whispers the defeating thought to Zarathustra which breaks all will to the future: 'O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you destroyer of stars. You threw yourself too high - but every stone once thrown must fall.' All human projections must finally sink. An infinite ascent is not possible, because this is prevented by infinite time. All power exhausts itself in it. Time dominates the strongest will and it breaks the back of the most powerful hopes. Whatever hopes the spirit of heaviness attracts he converts them to fall. The view into the abyss of time and accordingly into the futility of all hopes, paralyses and creates a 'dizziness' in the thinker who reflects upon the greatest human possibilities. In view of infinite time all meaning becomes meaningless, all risk becomes wasted and all greatness shrinks. The spirit of heaviness prevents the genuine exposition of the human being to the openness of the cosmos. Empty infinity repels. Just like gravity which exhausts the finite power of the thrower and destroys it ultimately, the infinite power of time exhausts and destroys all the powers of human self-overcoming which follow its path. Zarathustra summons his courage against the paralysing thought of the dwarf to conceive the 'most abysmal thought'. This courage kills death and facing life itself expresses a will to repetition. Against the lead drops of thinking by the dwarf he proposes the most courageous human thought. The dwarf jumps off
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his shoulder. He is redeemed from the spirit of heaviness. And finally the conversation about the flow of time can take place between them. One may remember that the will to power was limited by the path of time. One can only will the future. The determined, immovably fixed past is not subject to any effort of the will. One can merely 'accept' it and affirm its inevitability in particular. In this respect it is possible after all to take an intentional attitude towards the past. One can change one's will to sublate that which cannot be changed. One can sublate the deterministic aspects of the fact through an intentional acceptance of the fact and achieve thus a reconciliation of freedom and necessity by submitting freely to necessity. Schiller has expressed this idea as the reconciliation of fate and freedom. However, on a fundamental level Schiller's idea is not even vaguely approximate to Nietzsche's novel conception of time. In the dialogue with the dwarf Zarathustra argues from the basis of a new understanding of time against the dwarf, who, as we have seen, represents a particular understanding of time which Zarathustra in fact uses as his premise. The gateway 'moment' is a junction between two long paths. These extend forward and backward into unfathomable infinity. The difference of these paths is initially characterized with striking clarity. They oppose each other where and when they meet. The past is determined, the future is as yet undetermined. Past and future are fundamentally different. They contradict each other. And yet they meet in the present moment. The incompatibles meet at their borders. The essentially different paths continue into infinity from this elusive, withdrawing border of the now. They present an 'eternity' in the past and a future infinity. It becomes clear that Zarathustra approaches time immanently. Time is conceived as a sequence of moments. A given moment is preceded by an infinite sequence of moments in the past and followed by a similarly infinite sequence of future moments. However, and this is the crucial question, does this sequence really extend into infinity? Do both temporal paths really extend into opposite directions? Is every distant past preceded by a more distant past and so on ad infinitum? And how about the future? Is the furthest future followed by an even more distant future? Is human thought not utterly destroyed by such dimensions? Is such an infinity of time really conceivable? Zarathustra asks the dwarf if the two opposing paths of time contradict each other for ever. This question implies if the conception of temporality which is based on the two paths of time is the last and decisive truth about time. What does 'eternal' mean in reference to 'eternity' and the unfathomable past and the inconceivable future? Do we really have a conception of 'eternity'? Or do we merely imply here an ordinary notion of an infinite sequence? The answer from the dwarf is from Nietzsche's point of view correct; however, it is also much too
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simple: 'All straightness is a lie, muttered the dwarf, all truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.' What is too easy here? Time is circular. Past and future are connected inconceivably like a snake which bites its own tail. The circle of time is conceived as an ontic round, as a cycle of moments of time. This however distorts an important meaning of the thought of the eternal return. Nietzsche himself continuously falls into the mode of thought of the dwarf and into metaphors which are borrowed from the sequence of time. He expresses the eternal return through the image of the ring. But perhaps it is impossible to do otherwise since we have initially no concepts or representations which belong to time itself. All our concepts of time have an inner-worldly perspective. We do not think of time in its entirety because this is an essential aspect of the world as a whole. Perhaps the conception of the entirety of time is as it were only possible in a permanent rejection of an inner-temporal conception. In the chapter Of the vision and the riddle the thought of the eternal return is not fully developed. It is indicated and implied in a preliminary way. It is important that the issue is approached from within an ordinary understanding of time. Zarathustra exposes the difference of the paths of past and future within this horizon and refers to their infinity in order to question the opposition and exclusivity of these two kinds of eternity. What does it mean to speak about infinity of time or about an eternity of the past and future time? Zarathustra draws a conclusion from the twofold eternity of time which contradicts all common conceptions. If any moment is preceded by an eternity then all 'the things which have run must already have run this path once before'. In other words: an infinite past is not conceivable as an infinite chain of ever-new events. If there is an infinite past then all that can happen must have happened and nothing can be a mere possibility or future any further. An eternal past cannot remain incomplete. If the depth of the past contains an infinity of actual events nothing can any longer be excluded from it and any possibility must have already become actuality. The infinity of the past demands that the possible has already occurred. The completion of the totality of time and similarly an infinite, eternal future demand the future realization of all inner-temp oral events. The conception that the past and the future are eternities necessarily includes the totality of both possible temporal events. Twice the same tune - is this not paradoxical? Nietzsche's Zarathustra is led to the doctrine of the eternal return of the same. All things, all inner-temporal things and anything temporal have already occurred and must occur again if past and future are supposedly totalities. The eternal return of the same is based on the infinity of time. Everything must have occurred and must occur again: And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight and this moonlight itself and you and I on the gateway, whispering together, whispering about eternal
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things - have we not already been there and come again - and run the other path ahead in front of us, this long, terrifying path - do we not have to eternally recur? When Zarathustra progresses so far he hears a scream and fiends a shepherd who has swallowed a snake. This means: the thought of the eternal return crawls into the human throat to provoke a disgusting convulsion. It is a suffocating thought. If everything recurs, human efforts are futile. The steep path towards the overman is a senseless folly because the small, contemptible man returns forever. All risk appears wasted. Even more than before the spirit of heaviness, the thought of the eternal return contradict the will to power and the selfovercoming of life. However, this only seems so. Zarathustra calls upon the shepherd to bite the snake's head off in his mouth: 'No longer shepherd, no longer man - a transformed, a transcended being who laughs. Never before did man laugh as he laughed.' The endurance and the acceptance of the thought of eternal return effects a decisive existential transformation. It results in a transformation of all seriousness and heaviness into a lightness or into the superhuman lightness of laughing. The thought of the eternal return has seemingly two aspects. It can be viewed primarily from the perspectives of the past or from that of the future. If all events are merely repetitions of the past, the future is obviously also already determined. It merely repeats what has already occurred. There is truly nothing new under the sun - the predetermined future unfolds itself inevitably. All doing, all risk is senseless and futile since everything is already determined. But one could equally say this: all is still to be done, whatever we decide now, we will need to decide over and over again. Every moment has an importance which extends beyond any individual life. It does not only determine the foreseeable future but also the future of future recurrences. The importance of eternity rests on the moment. Just like the worldly existence determines the transcendental fate of the soul in the Christian conception, the worldly decisions of the moment determine all unforeseeable recurrences of the worldly existence. Nietzsche refers frequently to the thought that the moment determines eternity - that the doctrine of the eternal return poses a new centre of gravity for human existence. Strictly speaking, both aspects, the fatalism and the weight of eternity on the decision of the moment, have become questionable. The thought of the eternal return sublates the difference between past and future or better it imbues the past with the open possibilities of the future and the future with the determinations of the past. Both characteristics blend together in a peculiar way: events in time are on the one hand already determined and on the other hand not yet determined, they are already decided and they need to still be decided. The past shares the characteristics of the future
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and the future those of the past. The will cannot only wish to progress now, but in willing progress it also wills regress. Time loses its unambiguous direction. The firm characteristics of the ordinary understanding of time are being shifted. We tend to find this all very confusing. We cannot yet grasp if Nietzsche only thinks a fanciful thought which dissolves any understanding of time or if he gains a more profound understanding of time and the world as a whole or if he conceives time essentially according to the unambiguous path of the cosmic direction of becoming or if he transcends this dimension altogether. The reflection in the third part of Zarathustra has a peculiar form. The above mentioned chapter Of the vision and the riddle seemingly interrupts the proclamation of the eternal return. However, this interruption only leads to emphasize the importance. As Zarathustra predicts in several chapters: 'See it will come, it is close, the great noon.' The 'noon' is the proclamation of the eternal return. This is the centre of time where time reveals itself, where all-embracing time which constitutes a dimension for all being becomes itself openly exposed. The chapter Before sunrise^ is of utmost importance. One could see it as a lyrical expression or as an ecstatic jubilation of the soul transfigured by the silent beauty of the morning sky. But this would be a severe misunderstanding. Nietzsche's images are always symbols of his thoughts. Before sunrise Zarathustra encounters the abyss of light, the shimmering and open expanse of the cosmos, Ouranos in its splendour, which lends visibility to all things beneath it and circumscribes, unifies and collects the manifold individuals. 'To throw myself into your light - this is my depth. To hide myself in your purity - this is my innocence.' The thinker becomes attuned to the vast heaven of light. The profundity of his thinking depends on the extent to which he succeeds to expose himself to the openness of the light which transcends all things within the light. 'Innocence' of being - this is for him the light which the cosmos throws on all things. Wherever the world is conceived, 'guilt' and 'punishment' disappear, human words darkening the pure sky like clouds disappear and the wrath of the Gods and their governance of the cosmos disappears. 'All things are surpassed by the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of approximation, the heaven of exuberance.' Cosmic time and the temporal cosmos are the heaven which transcends all things. Wherever the cosmos with its space and time opens itself up to reflection the realm of the transcendental spirit is dissolved and the moral and metaphysical interpretation of being collapses. 'Since all things are baptized at the well of eternity and beyond good and evil - Good and evil are themselves only intermediary shadows and damp and sad trickles and clouds.' Things are described as baptized at the well of eternity not because they have a supernatural essence over and above their earthly significance and finite being or because they are 'things-in-themselves'.
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Eternity and temporality are not different; they are truly one. Time is eternal as the eternal return. To see being in the light of the world means to divest the latter from all categories such as 'divine premonition', moral importance or rationality of the cosmic unfolding within time and to interpret this unfolding as a 'dance' or as a round in which everything connects and turns. 'O heaven above me, you pure, distant heaven! This is your purity to me, that there are no spider and cobweb of reason - that you are my dance floor for divine coincidences, that you are my divine fable for divine dice and gamblers.' The play of being is here understood to be divine and the thinker, who is exposed to the expanse of the heavens of light and to the expanse of the cosmos, is accordingly beyond good and evil and close to the whole. Yes, he can question the heaven: 'Are you not the light to my fire? Do you not have the sister-soul for my insight?' Zarathustra's cosmic attunement is not a mere mood which comes to him by chance. It is essentially a fundamental attunement. It is the way in which the world itself approaches the thinker, expresses itself to him and concerns him. It is the ordinary way of encountering objects through an objectifying thought and within a vast horizon in which objects are encountered. Perhaps, however, the attunement to the cosmos is a precondition of understanding the eternal return more primordially. And vice versa one could perhaps say in Nietzsche's sense: If human understanding is blind to the cosmos and if it is captured by the urgency of being, if it fails to expose itself and to be exposed to the light-heaven above all things, it will be more likely to succumb to the spirit of heaviness and its creations of morality, metaphysics and religion. It will also be more likely to misunderstand the essence of time and to conceive it as a linear, dual formation with a distinct difference between an unchangeable past and a not yet determined future. The entire problem of the revaluation of values is in this third part dominated by a leading fundamental thought which attempts to question the character of time as the eternal return of the same.
5. THE ETERNAL RETURN: THE COSMOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF THE PROBLEM OF MORALITY. THE RECURRENCE OF THE SAME
The 'eternal return of the same', Nietzsche's most abysmal thought appears to be ambiguous. It seems that the thought lacks a clear conceptual definition and form. It rather resembles a sombre prophecy or an oracular and mystical revelation than a rational conception. Zarathustra is the teacher of the 'eternal return'; however, he does not really teach it, he merely indicates it. His vision of the abyss of time expresses itself in a riddle. This, however, is no ambiguous enjoy-
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ment of the mask and of concealment and disguise leading him to speak in riddles. Nietzsche's conception of the eternal return stretches the limits of expression, the limits of the logos, of reason and of method. His inability to develop the doctrine of the eternal return conceptually is no individual shortcoming but that of the philosophical tradition to which Nietzsche is bound. Although he opposes traditional metaphysics, his opposition is still dependent on it. He inverts it and he thinks anti-idealistically and yet still uses metaphysical and conceptual methods. Nietzsche is an ambiguous figure. His backwardlooking struggle against Platonism, Christianity and slave-morality or against an interpretation based on human self-alienation follows largely a path of metaphysical categories and inverted modes of thought. The interpretation of being or the interpretation of things in the world remains his main focus. With the eternal return Nietzsche questions the world in its entirety. He conceives it temporally. The world as such is understood as the totality of time, as the eternity of time and as the eternal temporal existence of the world. Nietzsche looks ahead. He opens himself towards the unsayable and still-nameless. The fact that there are no concepts, that he remains truly suspended above the abyss only means that he is innovative. 'Oh my brothers, whoever is first will be sacrificed.'37 Nietzsche is the explorer of a thought which attempts to grasp the world beyond all things. However, because he attempts to reflect beyond the things and beyond inner-worldly being his cosmic conception remains trapped within the realm which he wishes to transcend. Wherever world is thought as transcending things, as surpassing and embracing all being, it is still conceived from an ontic perspective even though this might be done negatively. Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return commences with linear time, namely with the temporal sequence and its firm distinction between the past and the future. It progresses to sublating this distinction by questioning the infinity of time and its eternity in a novel and peculiar manner. Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return turns on this conception of eternity. One must yet ask and show if he means by eternity just the infinite continuation of the temporal sequence or if he articulates a substantial understanding about the nature of the world. Zarathustra fails to clarify the eternal return adequately. The thought of the eternal return dominates the entire third part of Zarathustra. However, only two chapters out of sixteen deal with it directly. The first one is Of the vision and the riddle and the other one is The recovery. However, all other chapters avoid the eternal return. All aspects (the overman, the death of God and the will to power) are now considered and reflected upon from the perspective of the eternal return. Cosmic harmony and the cosmic stance of human existence become the scale which measures everything now. Human greatness depends on its measure of
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openness to the world. The life most exposed to the world has the highest rank. The overman exposes himself most to the entirety of the world and understands this entirety as a temporal infinity or as the eternal return of the same. Human existence approaches the overman the more it is torn away from the concrete presence and the more it is open to the abyss of light. Only from this perspective does it make sense that the chapter Before sunrise, which expresses cosmic transcendence metaphorically as the ether of light, is followed by the chapter 'Of the diminishing virtue'. Nietzsche does not loose the problem, he does not abandon the path of reflecting on the cosmos and does not even - as one may be inclined to assume tackle the issue of morality now. He rather approaches the problem of morality cosmologically. He sees that the common notions of morality contain a loss of world. With its possibility to expose itself to the vastness of the world and to experience and think the eternity the human being can also close itself to it and can seemingly shrink and become small. This mediocrity is understood as a 'shrinking'. If man accommodates himself in the near and nearest or if he limits himself to attend only to the finite and the presence, if he only desires the little happiness, his contentment and comfort or if he lowers himself and arranges himself in a familiar realm or if he becomes weak and tame he has done so because the expanse of the world no longer resonates through his life. No yearning tears and drives him into the terrifying eeriness. The 'diminishing virtue' is a symptom of the world-poverty of human existence. Nietzsche contrasts again the man poor of world with the man open to the world. In the chapter On the olive mountain36 Zarathustra praises the silent wintry sky. It is for him a symbol of the great man. It opens itself widely. It does not seek warmth from the 'neighbour' and it does not shelter in mutual brotherly love. It rather endures the vast, icy realm which surrounds all warmth and closeness. The vastness of this realm relates to the limited, finite warmth like silence to noise and like the great man who lives within the breath of the world to the small man who is no longer exposed to infinity, who cowers and cringes and hides in his living room, in the house or the city or in the business of comforting company. 'You snow-bearded, silent winter's sky. You round-eyed white head above me! You divine symbol of my soul and its desire!' Zarathustra conceives himself as the opposing possibility of the 'smoky, cosy, used, dead and resentful souls'. Zarathustra remains in the stream of the cosmos. Open to the world he is also truly autonomous and full of character. Exposing itself to the vastness of the world does not extinguish the self. Quite the opposite! Both belong fundamentally together. The chapter Of passing39 does not only contain Zarathustra's rejection of the big city. The big city is just a metaphor for an extreme loss of world. The great man can merely pass by such poverty. Zarathustra's decisive rejection of
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all kinds of world-poor humanity causes the return to his freedom in the mountains and to his home in solitude. Man is not at home in the human hustle and bustle of the big city. He has no home among the mediocre and the weak, among the selfless and those poor of world. Nietzsche profoundly understands that home is not only where there is world. We usually fail to grasp the essence of home when we think it is only the closest realm of experience such as for example the small realm of house and garden and of childhood, which in retrospect appears so small and insignificant. However, in this we misconstrue home and childhood. Home is earthy ground or the familiar closeness to the earth within the openness of the world. The life of the child does not only experience the close and immediate things, the ball and the doll, but also the shimmering distance, the clouds in the sky and the eeriness of the night. Nietzsche addresses Zarathustra's solitude as his home. Home, that is essential closeness to the things and trusting love for the earth exists when human existence is granted an immediacy from the vastness of the cosmos. In the solitude of the mountains Zarathustra is embraced by the great 'blissful silence'. The world resonates in it. Beneath him among the many men dwells a noise, which discusses and dissects everything and which does not allow the silence of the world to come forth in which human existence prepares itself for its purpose. 'One misunderstands man if one lives amongst them. They live too much in the foreground. What use are far-sighted and far-reaching eyes?' Zarathustra has a yearning vision or a vision of the great yearning, which reaches into the universal realm and searches for the man with the greatest openness to the world and for the man with the knowledge of the eternal return. The chapter Of the three evils*0, which appears initially to be dealing with moral questions, examines the three most condemned things critically, namely bodily lust, hunger for power and egotism. However, this analytical examination is guided in a hidden manner and tacitly by the problem of the world. We require yearning eyes as well in order to see this. We need to approach this chapter through the argument of the third part. The focus of the entire third part is the question of the world. How do desire, hunger for power and egoism relate to the world? One could answer that these three evils are traditionally considered to be aspects of a 'secular attitude' as opposed to a transcendental and ascetic one. However, this would conceive the cosmos merely as a human orientation or as a tendency and an instinctive delusion, but not as the All which embraces all being. In an existential sense world would be just one aspect of human existence. However, Nietzsche examines lust, hunger for power and egoism according to their cosmic relevance. He examines whether they are modes of existence in which the human being opens or closes itself towards the world. Not only does Nietzsche oppose the traditional Christian values of chastity, humility and altruism, but he is also guided by the question if and in what
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respect they reveal an openness to the world or a transcendence towards the whole. 'Lust, hunger for power, egoism: These three have hitherto been at best cursed and at worst misrepresented and falsified. These three I wish to debate well from the human point of view.' All three reveal for Zarathustra a mode of essential engagement with the world if they are not understood in a vulgar sense. Lust is for him 'the pleasure of the earthly garden, the excess of future gratitude for the now'. Lust elevates the individual existence beyond itself towards the infinite chain of sexes. It exists in the wholeness of time although it appears to perish in the ecstasy of the moment. Lust is as it were the natural existence in the entirety of time or the excess of gratitude of the entire future or of all time. The finite moment includes time in its entirety. The hunger for power seems to be the historical force for Zarathustra which aims to reach beyond any rest and pause. It is the principle of restlessness that stirs up individuals and people and pushes them on to the path of history. Dominance is the driving and hunting aspect and it is time as history. Every epoch transcends itself towards ever further distances and futures in the desire for dominance. Dominance does not loose itself in what becomes familiar by being achieved. It never stops. With this it refers towards the openness and towards the unpredictable. It is the opposite of the diminishing virtue and of all modesty and satisfaction. The desire for the self is no desperate egoism of a petty life, but a generous virtue of an overflowing soul and of a soul which needs the world and finds a ground and basis if it is surrounded by the harmony of the most distant worlds. All three evils contain an explicit relationship to the world. If one wishes to speak of a 'revaluation of all values' here it must be clear that the principle of this revaluation implies only the greatness or smallness of the relationship to the cosmos. This becomes even clearer in the following chapter Of the spirit of heaviness*1. Nietzsche summarizes here seemingly all negative aspects of the human existence which closes itself to the cosmos. Zarathustra sees himself as the enemy of the spirit of heaviness for whom he is the 'original, deadly archenemy'. Zarathustra's character is that of a bird. He elevates himself, he transcends himself and he exposes himself to the universe. He is the person of the cosmic transcendence. What perhaps had been earlier the enthusiasm or the oneness with God or the idealistic dissolution in a merely fictional other-world becomes for Nietzsche the profound and real human relationship with the cosmos. The highest immanence of life is the immanence in the world. The spirit of heaviness is the tendency to limit human existence and to chain it to being and the inner-worldly things with the consequence of forgetting the world. There can be no absolute loss of world because man is essentially in the world. However, the worldliness of human existence can experience a peculiar perversion
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with a cosmic denial which is only possible for a cosmic being. The stone is not blind since it lacks the possibility to see. Blindness is a personal mode of being. There can only be forgetting of world where world belongs to the ontological mode of existence. The existence which forgets world is at the same time 'selfless'. World and self are related in an overarching tension. The more open to the world the more man realizes himself. The fulfilment of the self is achieved in an excessive existence of freedom and creativity. Life and earth seem light to the creative person. Man liberates himself through creativity from the weight and load which commonly oppresses him. Nietzsche sees the essential connection between lightness, creative excess, self-realisation and the cosmos. The spirit of heaviness contrasts with all of these. It condemns man to self-alienation, burdens him with the weight of a transcendental God and morality and chains him to the ontic world. Gravity becomes the symbol of an oppressed life for which everything is heavy and which carries the burden of morality, other-world and religion like a camel. It carries itself pompously with an expression of sombre seriousness. The forgetting of world and the loss of self correspond to their opposites, the realisation of the self and its openness to the world. Zarathustra contradicts the spirit of heaviness with an extreme passion. He addresses the human forgetting of the cosmos like a tempest: 'Whoever teaches man to fly moves all border stones. All limits will be blown up, the earth will be renamed as "the light one".' Flying becomes the symbol of world-transcendence and of the exposition of the self to the spatio-temporal expanse of the universe. The explicit relationship with the world leads to an overcoming of all ontic distinctions and separations. The limits dividing finite things from each other and the opposition of good and evil created by the spirit of heaviness are drawn into a vortex as soon as man senses the cosmos, when his existence extends and expands into infinity and when he transcends finitude towards infinity. However, this is not a metaphysical infinity, an other-world, a thing-itself or a God. The metaphysical infinity is a denial of finitude. The world is the infinite which embraces all finite things. The space, time and light of the world grant appearance to the things. Their infinity is not beyond them and it does not transcend the things. It is immanent within them and embraces them. The contrast of the light and heavy life, of realization and loss of self, of opening to and forgetting of the world becomes now the distinctive principle between 'old and new tables'. Zarathustra approaches the difference between two value systems now from the aspect of the relationship between human existence and the cosmos. However, the chapter Of old and new tables*2 goes even further. The connection between man and the cosmos is exposed in a fundamental way. Zarathustra's wisdom is 'wild', a 'great winged yearning'. His cosmically open wisdom reflects on the dance of becoming in which the world abandons itself and returns to itself. The new
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tables contain those of love for the farthest and those of the creative yearning for the overman. They are tables of value created by excess, yearning and love for the world. The soul is seen as the highest kind of being 'with the longest ladder and which descends the furthest... . The most expansive soul which can run the furthest and err and roam; the most necessary one which takes pleasure in plunging itself into chance; the living soul which dives into becoming. The possessive soul which wills the will and the desire . . . the soul which loves itself best, in which all things have their flow and counter-flow, their low and high tide . ..'. The soul is not the highest kind of being because it is more powerful or richer than other beings. It is the most embracing being because it is open to the existence of the world. All things flow in it because it is conscious of the eternal return. Nietzsche develops an even more profound understanding of the existence open to the world in the chapter Of the great yearning. The second, thematic exposition of the doctrine of the eternal return precedes it in the chapter entitled The recovery*3. Here too we find a submerged form of exposition. The animals, not Zarathustra, articulate the true content. The animals speak of being itself which circles within time. Zarathustra wishes to confront his most abysmal thought finally in his solitude. He summons it. The abyss must speak. However, this does not occur. The thinker of the eternal return chokes with deepest disgust. Zarathustra is struck down for seven days, appearing to be dead. One may be tempted to view this event as a kind of dramatic trick designed to emphasize its importance. However, it is no mere stylistic decision adding tension to the plot. Nietzsche is indeed unable to articulate his most radical thought directly. He can just indicate it and he can only articulate it indirectly and by reference. According to the Christian account of creation, God created the world in seven days. Zarathustra experiences the godless world in seven days. And now all is transfigured. The earth appears as a garden to him. What could this mean? All things are transfigured through their appearance in the light of the world. All limits are removed. Everything that is there is present at hand, given and is elevated from the burden of its individual concreteness. It appears in a context of repetition as that which occurs always again in the eternal return. The past, present and future are no longer irrevocably separated and divested from each other. In so far as it is understood as the eternal return, time has a suspended, light and dancing character. The future has already occurred and the past has yet to occur. The moment contains the entire time in so far as it is the infinitely repeated moment. Man is suspended within a suspended time. He has learnt how to fly and he is flying. The power of the spirit of heaviness is broken. In his discussion with the animals however, Zarathustra insists on the human solitude even though he grasps the eternal return. Such a knowledge does not dissolve into a universal sympathy. It does not dissolve his individuality. On the contrary,
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he only finds himself through it. 'Every soul owns a different world. Every soul considers any other soul to be an other-world. The most similar is best betrayed by semblance, because the smallest distance is hardest to cross.' The eternal return is revealed differently to the animals than to humans. They are embraced by change and do not confront it. They are involved in the play of being, they do not play against it like man. Whatever the animals themselves say about the eternal return is seen from the aspect of being itself. Everything moves, everything returns and eternally the wheel of being turns. Everything dies and everything flowers and the age of being is eternal. Everything decays, everything is newly formed and being builds the same house forever. Everything parts, everything welcomes itself again and the ring of being remains true to itself eternally. In every now being commences. Every 'here' captures the ball 'there'. The middle is everywhere. The path of eternity is crooked. What does this speech of the animals say? What does it aim at? It does not mention time itself but rather its path. The path of time is brought into view as the path of the things within time. The relation of immanent temporality to time or the immanence of temporal being within time are now the topic. Everything that comes and goes, dies and flourishes, decays and is formed anew - all this is conceived finitely. Although the manifold of being is inconceivable it is nevertheless not infinite. The temporal within time is finite. Time itself however, within which all things occur is not finite. And hence the sequence must recur after all events have occurred. It must recur and it must have recurred an infinite number of times and it must repeat itself ad infinhum. The transition of the things through time is a year of being. However, an infinite number of such years must have occurred and must still occur. Strictly speaking Nietzsche does not believe in unique or concrete time precisely because the acquaintance with the present time in which we live does not reflect a true consciousness of time. While time runs through our ringers and we realize the unique and the fleeting transition of our existence our experience of decay conceals the premonition of eternity. It is not the case that from now on our life and the generation of things are repeated eternally. Our present life has already been repeated. There is no first life which is not itself a repetition and which could form the original basis for all repetitions. The character of repetitiveness is not found within time, that is, not through the repetition of a primordial event. Or in other words: recurrence is not generated in time. It is time itself. Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return implies great conceptual difficulties. Nietzsche attributes a deeper dimension to time over and above its phenomenal uniqueness and factuality. He attempts to conceive of time and
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eternity as a unity and to attribute eternal characteristics to time. Temporal individuality of a moment is merely an appearance. An apparently singular event is already an infinite recurrence. The apparently linear direction of time is circular. The superficial perspective separates the distinctions between the present, the past and the future, between the 'here' and the 'there'. To Zarathustra's deeper perspective they are one: 'The centre is everywhere.' Time however is not only the realm, the path on which all things begin and end, dissolve and form; it is the beginning and ending itself. Time is the power of letting be and it is simultaneously constructive and destructive. It is the Dionysian play of the world. Nietzsche has finally separated the thought of the eternal return from a metaphysical framework. Zarathustra accepts the presentation of the eternal recurrence given by the animals conditionally: 'Oh you cunning jesters and hurdy gurdies, Zarathustra replies . . . how you know what had to fulfil itself in seven days.' And yet there is an essential distinction between him and his animals. These are driven by the current of time. Unlike man, they have no aim. Although man himself too is subject to time like any being, he relates to it. He has aims, ideas and he is his own task. The human task is the overman. The fear gripping the human conception of the eternal recurrence as the temporality of the world is the premonition that everything, which has been overcome, is going to return and will need to be overcome again. Man's fate resembles that of Sysiphos. Zarathustra's highest achievement is his reconciliation of freedom and necessity. In the face of all recurrent being he retains the will to will. The animals call him the teacher of the eternal recurrence and they, not he himself, express the doctrine: See, we know what you teach, that all things recur eternally and we too and that we have already been present eternally and all things with us. You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monstrous great year; This must turn eternally around like an hourglass so that it continues to flow, so that all these years resemble each other in the biggest and smallest way, so that we too remain the same in every great year in the greatest and smallest sense. These sentences do not just state the recurrence but they state the recurrence of the same. This makes Nietzsche's thought even more difficult and obscure or more paradoxical so to speak. What do we usually mean by the recurrence of the same? For example: we repeat the same request, that is, we express it repeatedly. We do not utter the same sounds but always different ones. However, the different sounds, the sounds of our speech, have the same meaning. We use the same linguistic expressions for our requests. The multiple requests with their identical
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meanings are distinguished from each other, however. One is the first, the other the first repetition, the next the second repetition of the 'same'. Identity of meaning is not the same as numerical identity. The repetition of the same presupposes a real, temporal difference. The first one occurs first. It is, as it were, the original. The others are repetitions. An ordinary understanding of recurrence presupposes a direction in time. We distinguish that which is sooner from that which is later. The thought of the eternal recurrence, however, precisely destroys this distinction. There is no longer a difference between the three dimensions of time. And accordingly we cannot conceive the recurrence of the same within a linear time. When Nietzsche uses the parable of the hourglass he borrows it initially from an ordinary conception of time. The flow of the sand is a temporal occurrence which can be repeated infinitely ad libitum, however, at different points in time. The sequence of the repeated turns of the hourglass requires time in itself. It occurs within an embracing temporality which consists of temporal extensions measured by the hourglass. Does Nietzsche believe that the recurrence of the great year of being or the passing of the things in time occurs in an embracing time? Does he believe, as it were, that there is a time in which the cosmic years pass? The answer to this is not easy to find. The crucial problem is that a thinking which turns from the dimension of temporality to the temporality of the world itself can do so only in a constant rejection of- or flight from - the concepts of ontic temporality. It is not surprising that the reflections of the third part of Zarathustra express the relation between the human existence and the world and its attunement to the world in a language resonanting with a passion for distance. This is most evident in a chapter which is perhaps the most beautiful of the entire work: 'Of the great yearning'.
6. THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE: OF THE GREAT YEARNING

The doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same is not developed beyond a meagre exposition of basic concepts in Zarathustra. Nietzsche approaches it through the common understanding of time. He focuses on the given moment as the gateway between the two long temporal paths with opposing characteristics. The problems emerge through the question of the relation between the finite temporal content and time itself as Nietzsche defines the extension of these paths as eternity and eternity itself as infinite temporality. If every temporal event is finite then an infinite past must have already passed the entire ontic past. No possibility remains unrealized. Accordingly, everything concrete at any moment is essentially a recurrence and, as it were, an infinite recurrence. Any future can only unfold as an infinite
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future in continuous recurrence. However, there are no longer two distinct eternities of the past and the future since the conception of eternity as an eternal repetition of a temporal content sublates the difference between past and future altogether. The temporality of being is called the great year. In the recurrence of the great year the same returns or the recurrence of the same occurs. However, not only does the sequence of events, the creation and decay, the coming and going, the unfolding and destruction of being recur. The recurrence of the great year also recurs itself. The years are countless. No actual year is a recurrence of n +1 potency. Does an eternal recurrence contradict itself? Can one speak about recurrence even in this context? The obscurity of concepts such as 'eternity', 'recurrence', path of time and temporality in Zarathustra make Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence questionable and ambiguous. There is no explicit elucidation of any concept of time. One has rather the impression that Nietzsche attempts to express a tremendous inner vision which oppresses him and which trembles through the terror of its experience. Eternity is within time, not beyond time. But since Nietzsche clings to the classical conception of being as presence despite his inverted Platonism and since all being threatens to disappear in the receding time he can think presence just as an eternal recurrence of decay and generation. The guiding interpretation pervading all his thought of the connection between temporality and time is itself perhaps most questionable. Is it not circular when Nietzsche infers the finitude of the entire temporal content from the finitude of all temporal being? All events and facts commence and terminate in time. All events have their duration. 'All that can endure' commences in a now and endures for a sequence of moments. If it is to commence, however, it must have been preceded by a past. Time itself transcends any given temporal content. Time as it were is larger than any inter-temporal becoming. However, if every event is finite and if time transcends any temporality is it a necessary conclusion that the temporal sequence or the entirety of the temporal events is also finite? For Nietzsche 'all possible events' has a finite meaning. The possible consists of a tremendously large but nevertheless finite number of constellations. The great year is the finite totality of all events. All finite succession of events however can only occur in an infinite time as a recurrence. The limited amount of sand in the hourglass can only continue to flow if the latter is constantly turned around. The souls are as mortal as the bodies. However, the knot of causes in which I am tied recurs - It will re-create me. I myself am a cause of the eternal return. I recur, together with this earth, with this eagle, with this snake - not to a new life or to a better life or to a similar life - I recur in this very same life, in all greatest and smallest respects so that I again teach the eternal recurrence of all things.44
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Here Nietzsche augments the recurrence to include the recurrence of the presence and thus achieves a complete paradox. The 'this-there', the uniquely individual and simple point is in precisely this time and at this point in space simply not repeatable. To cite an earlier example: I can repeat the same request using the same words and the same manner of expression but not the identical sounds of language. Everything that happens is unique and is inevitably lost in the flow of time. Spatio-temporal being (that is being in the openness of the world) occurs only once. Birth and death are the boundaries of the unique, singular path which we travel in the light. This provides man conscious of transience with an intense attention towards his own life. We are here and now: in this one, unique life which appears to be so short compared to the immense expanse of time. Nietzsche attempts to conceive the eternity of the transient, not, however, by pointing to an eternity beyond time following death and by reducing time to a mere appearance. He rather conceives of time as eternal in positing transience as permanence and singularity as recurrence. Recurrence is not supposed to oppose singularity but to eternalize it and to give it concrete and factual existence and an infinite dimension. As long as one understands the thought of the eternal recurrence as an unrelenting repetition like the great records of all possible events being played over and over again or as a never-ending perpetuum mobile of infinite monotony and boredom the paradoxical aspect of Nietzsche's conception is not recognized. All his concepts that he uses in the development of the doctrine of the eternal return sublate each other. An eternal return which has no original that recurs is just as paradoxical a conception as a recurrence of singularity with the recurrent characteristics of singularity. The eternal recurrence is Nietzsche's doctrine of the entirety of being. It is luminously clear and it radiates through almost all the chapters of the third part that Nietzsche refers to the world by referring to eternity which transcends all temporal events, occurrences and facts and transcends all finite temporality infinitely. Everywhere we find the resonance of an aura of distance which only grounds the essential closeness of being. This is most obvious in the chapter 'Of the great yearning'45. It shows that every word and every expression in Zarathustra is meaningful and it shows that Nietzsche's metaphorical language is everywhere full of important thoughts. One has not read the Zamthustra if one has merely heard an opulent, overloaded, and loquacious voice rich in metaphor or if one is not able to translate the metaphors into thoughts. Nietzsche's intuitive and visionary style is usually not received very congenially. We will need to work hard to understand the powerful images of his thoughts in his language. The chapter to which we are going to turn now deals with the great yearning. We all understand this human emotion. It refers quite obviously to a desire, namely a desire for something absent. We do not feel yearning for that which is in front of our hands and eyes or for that which we can see and touch. We may
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desire whatever is present and desire it perhaps vehemently and passionately but we do not yearn for it. Yearning implies the extension of the desire into the distance. We yearn for the distant lover, for the days of childhood and for death. Yearning liberates us from the present context and from its limited aims and purposes. We are far removed from all oppressive closeness, are in a way removed like Iphigenie who looks yearningly across the sea on the beach of Tauris and searches with her soul for the land of the Greeks. Yearning implies an active waiting for distant realms and times. We are also all familiar with the yearning for the indefinite and with a yearning without aim, with the soul's yearning for the distance or with the gaze towards the open sea. Yearning does not imply the desire to concretely fulfil itself. It has a mysterious and hidden tendency to keep the object of yearning at the same time out of our actual reach. The desiderium implies that the distance is kept intuitively at a distance. Augustine states 'inquietum cor nostrum .. .' God is the object of his yearning. The desiderium is not fulfilled by finite objects. Only the infinite God can fulfil the yearning of the human hearts. The small yearning is a desire for being which reaches into the distance. The great yearning, however, is an attitude which accepts distance itself. It does not only permeate distance; it reaches for distance itself. For Nietzsche this distance is no longer the divine Christian creator who transcends the visible and created realm but the distance which embraces all that is visible and tangible as the distance of space and time of the cosmos that grants all closeness. The great yearning is the human exposure to space and time or his openness to the world. The chapter deals with the cosmic openness in so far as it has the character of an understanding of the eternal recurrence of the same. Zarathustra converses with his soul: 'O my soul, I taught you to say "now" like "once upon a time" and "in the past" and to dance over all here, there and that.' The common human ontological understanding conceives being within the horizon of time in such a way that today, yesterday and once-upon-a-time are separated and divided. If something exists today then it has ceased to exist yesterday or in the distant past. The presence is separated from the past and from the future. A rock endures a long time. It exists differently in time than a short event, for example a flash of lightning. But independently of these two modes of temporal existence it is clear that past, presence and future are distinctly and definitely separated from each other. They are the three dimensions of time; they cannot loose their distinctness. Just like time, space is separable: here and there are in different realms. All existing things are dispersed through different spatial realms and have particular locations. To be sure, the difference between here and there is relative to the perspective of the observer. Whatever is here for one person is 'there' for another. The fact however that here and there apply in a definite sense is not based on its relation to any particular situation
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but on the real spatial location. As long as the soul is subject to an ordinary understanding of space and time or to a defined situation it is tied to an ego. It is placed among the things and is itself a kind of object. It is found in the body. Zarathustra, however, has taught his soul (in the doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same) not to take the fixed differences between space and time, the differences between today, yesterday and once-upon-a-time, of here and there seriously in order to free himself from the spirit of heaviness which creates all such limitations. He taught it to see the today, the yesterday and the once-upon-a-time as identical. How are these identical? They are identical to the thought of the eternal return. If the eternal recurrence is the essence of time then the difference between past and future collapses. The future is then also always the past and vice-versa. The soul exists in the entirely of time if it 'devalues' the irrelevant differences of events. In a sense it acquires omnipresence. It exposes itself to the presence of the all in which the differences of the temporal dimensions disappear. The soul which is thus enlightened can dance beyond the ontic determinations of spatial location and realms because it dwells in an universal realm. 'Oh my soul, I liberated you from all corners, I removed the dust, the spiders and the twilight from you . . .'. The soul which has extended itself into the universal realm and yearns for the great yearning now stands within the open light and finds itself under the heaven of'innocence and chance'. Only as long as the human soul closes itself to the world, clings to the given and obvious and only as long as it hides itself, can the dark knowledge of the cosmos remain concealed in a divine belief. God is, as it were, the shadow of a world where human existence is diminished and does not dare to expose itself. If the human existence does not truly transcend itself this shadow appears in the form of a transcendent, other-worldly God and with it the entire interpretation of life as guilt, sin and shame. According to Zarathustra man has to face the sun 'naked'. The true human spirit resembles the tempest which clears all clouds. Clouds conceal the luminous expanse of the heavens. All basic concepts of the Christian tradition are like clouds, like dark shadows which, according to Nietzsche, are based on a basic human stance which forgets and is blind to the world. Wherever the exposure towards the open realm and the yearning extension into the deep cosmic dimensions of space and time occurs the tempest of the human spirit rages and the human liberation from God, other-world and cosmic empowerment eventuates. 'Oh my soul, I gave you the right to negate like the tempest and affirm like the open sky, you remain silent like the light and you pass through negating tempests.' And Zarathustra continues to converse with his soul. He demonstrates how the doctrine of the eternal recurrence does not limit freedom but liberates the soul from the inevitable past. If the entire past is also the entire future the soul
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has the freedom to determine the 'created and uncreated'. The creativity of the creator, that is the human creativity, is given free reign like never before. Indeed, it has a secret connection with the creative and forming essence of the world which lets a being be in the eternal return of the same. And Zarathustra speaks about contempt. This contempt 'does not arrive like an infestation of worms, the great, the loving contempt loves most where it despises most.' Such contempt is no dismissive ignorance. The human being which is tied to ontic being can become conscious of this attachment and can feel contempt for itself as a servant to the things. The person conscious of the eternal recurrence is elevated above the attachment to and immersion in ontic being, however, he returns from the open cosmos to the things. Transcending ontic being he reencounters them in a primordial sense. He feels contempt for man as he is now, for this torso and this pitiful cross between nothingness and infinity. Man is the finite being who has a premonition of the infinite. Because man mostly hides away, fails to expose himself truly to infinity and remains rather distant to infinity, indeed, even constructs the sculptured image of the transcendental God or because he is not what he could be, he is contemptible to Zarathustra yet at the same time also lovable. He loves in man the ideal of the overman. He is the most loved and the most condemned as a path to the overman. The overman, however, is nothing but the human being in the mode of the great yearning. 'Oh my soul I took from you all obedience, submission and worship of a lord. I gave you the name "turn of need" and "fate".' If man is transformed into the overman through the understanding of the eternal return and exists yearningly in the cosmos as a whole, the mirage of a God to which he has to submit disappears. All human servitude ends. Man has been liberated because he dwells in the freedom and openness of the cosmic play itself. He has become necessary because the difference between will and necessity has become superfluous, because whatever is willed must be realized anyway through the eternal recurrence. The soul itself is 'fate' for Zarathustra. The last and the greatest will is to will the necessary. However, this is not the acceptance of a predetermined will for Nietzsche. As long as destiny is understood like this, man cannot identify himself with it. Nietzsche conceives a completely different concept of fate. In the understanding of the eternal return human existence joins into the play of the world and becomes a participant of the great game. The separation between freedom and necessity is sublated. Just like the past acquiring characteristics of the future and the future characteristics of the past, freedom is included in necessity and necessity within freedom. Here again we see Nietzsche's desire for paradoxical expressions. He approaches the cosmos through a paradoxical sublation of ontic contrasts. 'Oh my soul, I gave you new names and coloured toys, I called you "fate" and "circles of circles" and "umbilical cord of time" and "azure bell".'
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What is the point of such metaphorical language? The change to the human existence created by the thought of the eternal recurrence also changes the entire ontological understanding. This is no longer primarily an understanding of being in its being, but an understanding of being in the light of the world, in an all-embracing light or in a light of an all-pervasive game in which all ontic being receives its form, its appearance, its duration and direction. Exposed to the all-embracing play of the world, the soul itself becomes cosmic and becomes similar to the world. Like the world it is in some respects the 'circle of circles'. It is itself related to all-pervasive, universal time like the child to the mother. It is the 'umbilical cord of time'. It is like the azure sphere of the sky above all things. The lonely earth supporting all things lies beneath the blue sky embracing all being. The fatherly ether embraces mother earth eternally. Similarly, the soul itself, thrown into this cosmic marriage by the great yearning itself, is ambiguous. It is sky and earth in one. Nietzsche conjures up some basic mythical ideas which are as old as mankind. 'Oh my soul, I poured all suns on you and all nights and all silences and all yearning. You grew for me like a vine.' The primordial opposition and marriage of heaven and earth created all things that endure on earth and come forth into the light. Heaven and earth are the farthest ends and distances of the soul's yearning reach. They are no finite limits. Man stands between heaven and earth. The human soul which is transfigured through the eternal recurrence resembles the vine which grows from the earth towards the light, which carries fruit and which is a joint creation of heaven and earth, the old sacrifice and the old sacrament. Heavy with a yearning the soul resembles the vine. Having become as deep as the world it resembles the vine heavy with golden-brown grapes. The soul has become overripe. It can no longer bear its excess riches and its worldliness in a calm way. It embraces the world in its ecstatic yearning. 'Oh my soul, there is no soul anywhere which was more loving, more embracing and more embraced. Where is the future and the past joined closer than in you?' However, with all the energy of its yearning thus open to the cosmos the soul expresses a melancholy. 'Your richness gazes across the roaring seas and searches and wants.' All cosmic yearning waits. It exposes itself and waits for space and time. Like all other ontic things, the human being exists within the world and yet it is able to expose itself yearningly towards that which is further afar than any thing could ever be. Called upon by the whole cosmos man nevertheless remains among the things. Understanding the infinite he remains trapped in the finite. The infinity of the world confronts him with his own finitude. Precisely the ecstatic openness to the world throws him back towards the things. Such suffering creates the song to the world or the reflective poetic song. Zarathustra's soul has to sing unless it wishes to perish in the suffering of the great yearning. It has to sing
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with roaring song, until all seas become calm, so that they attend to your yearning - until the boat floats across all calm, yearning seas, the golden wonder, the gold being surrounded by the dance of the evil, good, mysterious things - also many great and small animals and all that has miraculous feet so that it can tread on paths lined with blue pansies towards the golden miracle, the free boat and towards its master. This, however, is the winemaker who waits with the diamond-studded knife .. . The great human yearning which understands the eternal recurrence as the cosmic essence and exposes itself receptively is to be fulfilled. That which is conceived within the yearning reach is to arrive by itself. The eternal recurrence is not final. The doctrine of the eternal return knows time as eternal recurrence. What, however, the eternal recurrence is in itself Nietzsche's Zarathustra expresses only through song. The soul which reaches patiently across the silent, yearning seas encounters the boat which floats on the water of becoming. This is the ultimate centre of being. All things dance around this boat like dolphins around a boat. 'The heart of the earth is made of gold' an earlier chapter stated. The centre of being is addressed in a metaphor of a golden miracle. The master of the boat, however, is Dionysos, the god of intoxication, of love and of death and the God of play. It is the God of tragedy and comedy, the master of the tragic and at the same time of the light-hearted cosmic play. However, it is no God that appears in finite form among the ontic beings within the world. He has no epiphany in any defined form. He is a formless creator and the play of Being itself. And he is the God of vine or Dionysos Bacchus. He liberates the vine from oppression with the redemption of the knife. He cuts with the hardest knife, with a pruning knife made of diamonds. He is the cut of time itself, which takes all that it has used. It gives and takes, builds and destroys, creates and decays. Dionysos is the donor and thief of the eternal recurrence. You great reliever, oh my soul, the nameless - for whom future songs need to yet find names.. .. You are glowing already, you are dreaming already, you are drinking from all deep wells of comfort. Your melancholy rests already in the bliss of future songs. Dionysos is the answer to the great human yearning. He brings all being into presence and absence. He is the master of all becoming, the master of all things changing in time. Wherever the Dionysian, which reigns and rules all change, appears itself the arrival of the world has occurred. Yearning for cosmic expansion, Zarathustra's soul has come home. Dionysos is Nietzsche's last word. Although Dionysos' name is not mentioned here, the knife indicates the master
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of the vineyard. At the same time Nietzsche's reticence is very important. The arrival of Dionysos rather than his actual presence is proclaimed. He remains the nameless of any future songs. The human being open to the cosmos is supposed to approach this ultimate goal in song: 'Oh my soul, now I gave you all and even my last and all my hands are empty for you. That I made you sing, that was the ultimate.' The Dionysian song occurs in the last two chapters of the third part of Zarathustra. The Other Dancing Song*6 is a peculiarly suspended hymn to life in its concealment and obscurity. Life appears in the seductive guise of a woman who is a witch and a snake or a tempest and an abysmal night. The description of it as an abyss and a labyrinth is the decisive feature here: 'I recently looked into your eyes, O life, I saw gold shimmering in your dark eyes, my heart stood still with such lust.' Zarathustra appears to sing a maenadic song about life. Perhaps the style is less successful than Nietzsche believes. In particular the attempts to rhyme disturb in the first third of the chapter. Life, however, says to Zarathustra: ' . . . You are not true enough to me! . . . I know that you are planning to leave me soon.' And Zarathustra whispers into the ear of life, the seductive witch 'right into the midst of her tangled, silly plaits of hair'. He does not reveal what he says. However, we can make a guess. It is not at all possible to leave life in any absolute sense. If Zarathustra intends to die soon he has to continuously return an infinite number of times in the ring of eternal recurrence. 'You know that, O Zarathustra - life answers - what nobody knows.' After such a conversation Zarathustra strikes the bell of time twelve times. His understanding of time is expressed through the number of strokes of the bell. We are usually immersed in time. We live in it like a dream. It is the path of our existence, the medium of our life. It is the air we breathe but we are not conscious of this, usually. However, we can wake from such a dream and suddenly startle at midnight. The dream perishes. Time becomes a problem in such a way that the depth of the world is recognized. If we reflect upon time, if we awake and do not sleep the ordinary sleep, the world must appear deeper, more mysterious and more questionable to us where it supports us. We hear the silent passing of time, as it were, in the silence of the night, whereas the noise of the day with its colourful, intoxicating appearances hardly allows us to understand the eerie breeze of transience. To understand transience is to understand the deep suffering of the world. Everything perishes and nothing seems to endure. Wherever anything flourishes death already lurks in the wings. Everything is devoured by it. The suffering of the world is deep. But Nietzsche contrasts the suffering of the world with pleasure and its greater depth. Suffering sees only the passing of time, the decay of being in time. Pleasure, however, is more profound. It does not only emphasize the contrasting aspect of the passing' time, it
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recognizes the eternal return of the same or the eternity within the nature of time. Suffering, pleasure, world, time and eternity are here thought in a connection. The Other Dancing Song closes with the chimes of the bell. O man, take care/ what speaks the deep midnight/1 slept, I slept/ from deep dreams did I awake/ Deep is the suffering/ Pleasure deeper than heartfelt suffering/ Suffering says: perish!/ But all pleasure desires eternity, desires deep, deep eternity!
7. THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE: THE SEVEN SEALS. ZARATHUSTRA AND THE HIGHER MAN
The development of our preliminary interpretation of the eternal recurrence was guided by the question whether Nietzsche's understanding of time is informed by ontic time, by the temporal extension or by ontological time itself. It should have become clear from our interpretative attempts that the cosmos resonates through the third part of Zarathustra. Nietzsche's thinking surrounds the unsayable and still nameless which is the harmony of the open, luminous distance of the heavens and the closure of the earth and which grants space and time to all being. Time shows itself to Nietzsche in two ways. On the one hand we view time from the aspect of suffering. Suffering or hurt does not refer here to the encounter with pain or unhappiness, but refers to a basic structure of human existence. The heartfelt hurt is the elegiac, fundamental experience of transience. The Buddhist or Christian interpretation of the cosmos and also Schopenhauer's pessimistic metaphysics are based on the notion of suffering. For Nietzsche suffering is also an essential experience of the essence of time. It experiences absence and the nothingness of all being in time. Time removes. It devours its children. It constitutes decay. Nothing can resist it. The mountains erode and the heavenly fires extinguish. Nothing can endure. All is subject to the erosion of change. The focus on suffering regards time only as the inevitable loss, the disappearance of the presence, the departure and the path into nothingness. Nietzsche does not ignore and he does not neglect the elegiac conception of time provided to us by heartfelt suffering. He recognizes it, but he takes it to be limited and contingent. Pleasure provides him with a deeper insight. Pleasure does not refer here to the petty entertainment, of course, to the excitement or to the sensual stimulation. Pleasure is a way in which man opens himself to the world. It is a mode of excessive understanding. Hedone is the blessedness of the dust and the blessedness of man. Man disappears and decays in time but experiences pure, full and complete, unquestionable and unchallengeable being in the
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embrace. Eating bread he tastes the calm and enduring earth in which the wheat ripens in the wind in which all things have their own place. Human pleasure is not merely the enjoyment of perceptions. It is no stimulation of the senses and of sensuality but the experience of the concrete, embodied existence of the things and of the firm rootedness of being on the earth. However transient the things may be in the flux of time the earth endures. We do not eat bread and drink wine as if these were separate things. We constantly celebrate the sacrament of our belonging to the earth. Bread and wine are body and blood of the great mother. They grant us revelation of Demeter's silent peace. The mystery cults of antiquity understood the symbolism of bread and wine. They understood the reference of these finite things to the infinity of the earth. The pleasures of food and sexual love were seen as symbolic experiences revealing the permanence within transience and passing away. They show how the earth resists in the wind of time and how despite the transience life itself remains indestructible. For Nietzsche, pleasure provides a deeper insight into time. It even realizes, albeit in a subconscious manner, the eternal recurrence and the eternal return of the same. 'Since all pleasure strives for eternity, for deep, deep eternity.' The question whether Nietzsche was guided by a knowledge of the permanence of the earth which is the stage and dimension of all transience when he attributes a deeper understanding of time to pleasure will have to remain open. Is the eternity of the eternal return accordingly to be approached through this knowledge of the earth or does he merely dogmatically assert a paradoxical view on the eternity of time? Nietzsche's understanding of pleasure is revealed in the last chapter of the third part. This carries the heading The Seven Seals (or: The Yes-and-Amen Song)". All seven seals with which Nietzsche intends to seal his book giving it an esoteric character are addresses of the cosmos and its eternity. Pleasure is cosmic pleasure or the trembling experience of eternity. Cosmic pleasure is the fundamental stance of the thinker who is 'full of this prophetic spirit, who wanders on the high mountain path between two seas'. Even in the dull and blunt way of everyday life we are always standing between two seas. We live in the present moment with an unforeseeable future ahead and an infinite past behind us. However, we are not on a high yoke like Zarathustra here. He stands high above two seas. Inspired by the eternal return both seas are not different to him. And yet they do not flow into one. Precisely because he knows the eternal significance of the moment, he can experience the moment more profoundly and significantly. He does not only live within the path of time he shapes time. He wills the great will, however, not in a blind hope for a distant past which, is yet undetermined. The highest will joins with necessity itself. It does not will what he desires; it wills what must occur. 'Truly, long must the heavy weather
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remain in the mountains that is to illuminate the future in times to come.' However, precisely the long and difficult will to the future understands the latter not as a realm of possibilities but as necessity. This highest form of the will and the path towards a new humanity create and excite an infinite cosmic pleasure. The creative will to the future burns with the passion for the eternal return. The second seal relates the death of God to the thought of the eternal return. 'God' was the expression for any attempt to elevate the infinite beyond real time. Only when the transcendental, eternal God dies or when he is killed the reflection of eternity can appear in this concrete, transient world. When I sit jubilantly where old Gods are buried, blessing the world, loving the world next to the monuments of those who renounced the world. I love even the churches and the graves of God, if the heavens become clearly visible through their broken roofs; I sit with pleasure on the broken churches like grass and red poppy. These words do not express a mad, unrestrained hatred of God. They do not express an uprising of human prophets against any divine domination. The eternal Gods must die so that finite man can understand his finitude as eternity and as eternal recurrence. Human and cosmic infinity cannot tolerate a separate divine infinity. The desire for the world kills God. And the third seal commences with the divine human characteristics, with the creativity of the creator, with 'the divine need, which even overcomes chance in order to dance starry rounds'. Man becomes divine through creativity. The disappearance of God enables the divination of man. Man can say: the 'earth is a divine table and shaking with new creative words and divine inventions'. This creative dynamic has its deeper root in the desire for the world. The fourth seal refers to the melting pot into which all things are thrown. The melting pot is an ancient symbol for the world. The world unifies and combines all, unites the opposites and provides the good with the taste of evil and vice versa. If we think beyond the obvious and firm opposition or if we understand that opposites relate to each other like the tension of bow and lyre in Heraclitus' grand metaphor we understand the existence of the cosmos. This thinking transcends finitude and opposition towards the all-comprising whole and towards the' great fusion which joins all opposites. The strongest and most beautiful expression of achieving cosmic openness through pleasure is given in the last three seals. The fifth seal invokes the image of the sea. The cosmic desire is a 'yearning desire which sails towards the unknown' like the desire of the sailor. The transcendence of the existence which yearns for the world is expressed with almost uncanny metaphorical precision and imagination: 'if my rejoicing ever
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cried: "the coast is disappearing now my last chain is falling off - infinity thunders around me, space and time glow far beyond" . . .' We live ordinarily in a manner in which the vastness of the world remains obscure. We live within the limitations of finitude, within self-limitation. The space around us is always denned, limited and separated by boundaries. And where we dare to venture outside into the open we stay close to the coast. The open sea is only the distant horizon for us. Space is limited and measured - time as well. We do not usually think about space and time which are more primordial than their determinations. We do not think about the open expanse of the cosmos, where the coast and the limitations disappear and space and time shine into the distance. The radiance of the luminous openness reveals the essence of space and time more originally than the limitations of the things within space and time. The pleasure of distance and infinity resonates with the cosmic splendour or space and time. Zarathustra speaks about the lightness of an existence which is at home in the openness of the world in the sixth seal. It transcends all boundaries like a bird and knows no up and down. All things dance for it because it itself dances above the wide expanse of the world: 'And if this is my alphabet, that all heavy things are light, that all bodies become dancers and that all spirits become birds - and I tell you this is my alphabet.' Nietzsche does not praise the happy soul who leads a carefree and easygoing life. His lightness is only achieved where life is seized by a thought of and by a desire for the world. The seventh seal explicitly speaks about the way in which human existence turns towards the world. 'If I ever suspended quiet heavens above me and flew with my own wings into my own heaven/ If I swam playfully in deep reaches of light and came to the freedom of my bird's wisdom . . .' The self-expansion of human existence towards its own heavens and towards its farthest reaches of light is a way of turning towards the world. The turn towards the world is, however, always a love for infinity for Nietzsche; however, not for an infinity beyond the world or not for an other-worldly infinity, but for the infinity of the world itself. All seven seals conclude thus: 0 how would I not lust for eternity and the wedding ring of marriage - the ring of the eternal return. I have not found the woman who I love, with whom 1 would like children, unless it is this woman, who I love; because I love you, O eternity. The love for infinity is compared to erotic love. Infinity is a woman; the ring of eternal return is a wedding ring. Is this just accidental? Does Nietzsche use a metaphor which could easily be replaced? Or does the love for eternity compare with erotic love? Does this metaphor perhaps indicate that similar to earlier
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occasions, namely in The Dancing Song, The Night Song and The Grave Song, Nietzsche refers here to the woman of all women or the mother earth when he refers to eternity? Does this highest and deepest thought not invoke ancient myth? Is the eternal recurrence of the same only explicable, so to speak, through a reflection on the essence of time? Or does this question refer to the puzzling, obscure relation of time and space, of heaven to earth and of the light to the sealed ground? Does it refer to the mythical dimension of a union between Ouranos and Gaza? Is this the real source for the marriage ring of rings or the ring of eternal return? This question does not have a ready and simple answer. The philosophical concept does not reach the complete dimension of this oldest of myths. Perhaps this is a task for the future? It may be that Nietzsche's theory of the cosmos would gain a meaning then that is far removed from the hypothesis of infinite time and the finite temporal occurrences, which only repeat themselves within it. The immense passion with which Nietzsche clings to this thought makes it central to the Zarathustra and develops it accordingly into a central thought of his philosophy. This passion would appear extremely strange if it constituted no more than a view of time, which contradicted all pre-theoretical experiences and also the traditional conceptual analysis of time but failed to reach itself a rigourous conceptual level of analysis of time. The thought of the eternal return is the foundation for Nietzsche's main thoughts. These are the doctrine of the will to power, the death of God and the overman. The Zarathustra reaches its climax in the third part. It concludes a gradual development of Nietzsche's central thoughts. This part would be a natural end of the book. Nietzsche originally intended it to be so as well, perhaps. The chapter The Recovery concluded with the view of the animals that the proclamation of the eternal return was the end of their master: 'Thus concludes Zarathustra's descent.' If Nietzsche had finished the book with the third part, it would display a logical unity and style. The parable proclaims a new basic philosophical theory. The fourth part, however, introduces new stylistic elements. The fable which was merely a superficial thread running through the first three parts and is only developed in so far as it is addressed to all, then to fewer and finally only to Zarathustra himself in the soliloquy and song of his soul - this fable becomes further and even oppressively emphasized. There are some terrible and embarrassing mistakes. On the whole the fourth part is a failure. The poeticphilosophical vision appears to be somewhat exhausted. The fourth part is attached to this work which reveals a new and tragic view of the world, like a satire. It was meant to portray Zarathustra's greatness in relation to the traditional forms of human greatness and to show his superiority over all kinds of 'higher beings'. However, just this fails and it remains a mere posture. He is portrayed as magnanimous, victorious, kind and confident among all the
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fragmented existences which form the higher being. Zarathustra's character does not gain significant depth or existential clarity through its superiority over the higher beings. Nietzsche does not succeed to show how this being lives with its knowledge of the death of God, of the will to power and of the eternal return. His art to portray existential moods and stances fails here. Zarathustra eludes Nietzsche's psychology as a thinker of new thoughts. The fourth part commences after many years have passed. Zarathustra has been living in solitude for some time. His hair has turned white. And yet he is only waiting for his hour - the hour of his last and final descent to mankind. He does not enjoy the solitude and its blessings. He is keen to act. Yet, he, 'the most evil of all human pied-pipers' still waits on his high mountain peak. He baits the human fishes with the sweetness of his silent, private happiness and with his mountain freedom. The existence of Zarathustra, of the hermit who endures the solitude or of the atheist who can live without God tempts the 'higher men' or the men of the great disgust who can no longer live among the mass of their small and oppressive fellow men and who can no longer endure the spiritual divide and emptiness of modern life, to ascend to him. They are all searching for Zarathustra. They are screaming for help. The scream of the highest men lures Zarathustra from his cave and roaming through his territory he finds many types of higher men whom he sends up to his cave. A peculiar society assembles there: the soothsayer of the great tiredness, the two kings, the pedant of the spirit, the magician, the old pope who lost his job when God died, the ugly man, the voluntary beggar and Zarathustra's shadow. These higher men are the 'remnants of God' on earth. While man projected his yearning and his innermost longing beyond itself the death of God did not kill the yearning and longing human heart. Man still wishes to transcend himself, but the direction in which he attempts this is now empty. His thrust amounts to nothing. God has been replaced by the silence of nothingness. The nothingness still inspires these higher men. They are not yet truly transformed like Zarathustra. They are still trapped within a kind of self-alienation, except this has now an uncanny, negative character. The soothsayer of the great tiredness is the prophet of a future nihilism. The magician is the artist who has become an actor. He has no genuine life and no truth. He merely imitates truth and lives with a mask of a former, genuine existence. The two kings are tired of the false character of their royalty. They are not masters, they have no will to power and they are no warriors. They are the late grandchildren of warriors. They despise the false representation of a power which is no longer real. They too suffer from a falseness of life, from false concepts of power and mastery valid in modern life. However, they only despise this falsity, they do not achieve a new truth. They are searching for Zarathustra who preaches war and for whom the will to power is the essence of life. The pedant of the spirit suffers from this falsity as
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well. He despises the falsity of apparent knowledge, the entire Alexandrian culture of learning which enjoys knowledge, collects and gathers it in many communicable forms without, however, really knowing anything truly. The pedant of the spirit despises the knowledge which does not flow from a real sacrifice and risk of understanding. He only researches one thing, something highly specialized or even something particular within the particular. He researches only the brain of the leech. He is Nietzsche's symbol for the positive sciences that have lost the connection with the whole and have sunk into an extreme specialization while refusing to know anything where one can only appear to know. A profound respect expresses itself in this one-sided attitude. The pedant distrusts all theological and metaphysical hypotheses that merely pretend to connect objects of knowledge. He rather prefers to remain limited but precise than deceived by seemingly higher knowledge. Nietzsche declares thus that the limitations of the positive sciences are a sacrifice and an indication of the necessary and true knowledge of the whole. The pedant prefers to remain ignorant rather than pretend to know or know falsely. He allows the leeches to suck his arm. All genuine knowledge eats into the flesh of life. The old pope is the venerable man who embodies blessedness and veneration even though he knows that the being in whose name he blesses is dead. He even loves the dead God and grieves for him in sadness. The grief makes his life great although he is unable to transform it into an existence liberated from God. The person who grieves for God has a higher rank than the worms of every day who accept the death of God readily and who pursue their little pleasures. The ugliest man symbolizes the disgust of man with himself. As long as the fragmented and the twisted aspects of human existence are clear or as long as man suffers from himself and desires to transcend himself he retains a trace of greatness. Only the self-satisfied man, who is no longer driven and who has lost hope and dissatisfaction is the last man. A similar thing can be said about the voluntary beggar and Zarathustra's shadow. The beggar who voluntarily gives up all his possessions and goes around as the preacher of the mountain preaching gentleness and forgiveness is also searching and yearning. Zarathustra's 'shadow' is the 'free spirit' who daringly and recklessly abandons all safety. He negates and attacks, he lives experimentally and even searches for evil and danger; however, he has no firm base on which he could stand. There is no position, no substance and no halt beyond his negation. He is homeless and without a home. The eternal nihilist is only Zarathustra's shadow. For Zarathustra even the strongest attacks and the most determined and stubborn denials flow from a personal and rooted view of existence. Zarathustra is rooted - his shadow is not. He is homeless and a wanderer and ultimately destroyed by his homelessness: 'What have I got left? A tired and daring heart, a wandering will, flapping wings, a broken back . . ,'.48 Nietzsche's characterization of Zarathustra's shadow is a
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constant danger for his own substance: the daring free-spiritedness, the uncanny desire for a lack of commitment. The entire set of the 'higher men' shows a common aspect. They are all desperate. They are searching for Zarathustra who has overcome human desperation and for whom God is dead. Zarathustra's knowledge of the death of God is no melancholy or sombre grief for a lost meaning of life. His knowledge is joyful because it is conscious of the overman, the will to power and the eternal return. The higher men receive hope and joy in Zarathustra's cave in the face of the one upright person who overcame the death of God. Zarathustra talks to them and invites them to eat but he does not receive them as equals. He honours the higher men as a bridge to the overman. A step-towards and a bridge are not yet the essence. Paying homage to the higher men, Zarathustra distinguishes himself from them. They are addicted and yearning - he however stands on the earth. The higher men are higher because they are distinguished from the mob. Zarathustra loves them because he can no longer live in today's age of the mob. 'And rather despair - he says to the higher men - than give up. And truly, I love you because you are unable to love these days, you higher men.'49 'The higher the kind, the rarer its success. You higher men - are you not all failures? Have courage - what does it matter? How much is still possible. Learn to laugh about each other - as one should laugh.'50 Human greatness reveals itself as a failure. The higher men in Zarathustra's care are all failures - however they are failures if one compares them to the overman. Compared to the mob they are great men. Zarathustra advises these failures to liberate themselves through laughter, which sees the comedy of human life in the light of the beauty of the overman. 'This crown of the laughing, the crown of thorns - I throw this crown to you my brothers. I declare laughter to be holy you higher men - learn to laugh.'31 Zarathustra's advice is only partially understood. The higher men learn only slowly and painfully to make fun of themselves. The old magician sings a sombre song, a song of melancholy in which he tries to ridicule himself. However, the issue here is not only the tragi-comic nature of art which pretends to be truthful and is in reality only a blissful vision of a fool and poet who is 'banished from all truth, merely a fool, merely a poet'.52 This song of melancholy throws a dark shadow on Zarathustra's soul. Nietzsche makes the higher man a mouthpiece for his own message to articulate things that apply to himself. Zarathustra is by no means the only representative for Nietzsche. The higher men are characters in whom he conceals himself. It is no accident that the higher men are Zarathustra's 'last sin'. His pity for them is his sin. However, this can only be the case because Zarathustra suffers with the higher men and because their suffering is in some ways also his suffering - or at least Nietzsche's suffering. The higher men are accordingly not just contrasting characters designed to clarify
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the character of Zarathustra. They are all concealed shadows of Zarathustra's psychic possibilities, perhaps possibilities which have been overcome. In overcoming his pity for the higher men Zarathustra achieves his last and highest maturity. His sign arrives, the laughing lion and the flock of doves and he commences his task. He leaves the cave 'glowing and strong like the morning sun which shines from dark mountains'53. This concludes the book. One remains uncertain whether Zarathustra embarks on new revelations of his doctrines or on the fulfilment of a great deed. It is a strange ending which leaves behind a peculiar void. Nietzsche made a number of different sketches of this end which remained unrealized. The pathos of the work is exhausted and this does not permit a powerful, logical end to follow the fourth part. The Zarathustra is powerful and possesses an original power of language and thought as long as Nietzsche philosophizes, that is, while he develops his thoughts of the overman, of the death of God, of the will to power and of the eternal return. Where he, however, develops an existential vision as in the fourth part in order to make the persona of Zarathustra come to concrete existence, the work looses in quality. Nietzsche is awesome where he thinks, speaks and teaches like Zarathustra. He becomes weak where he speaks about Zarathustra. He is not sufficiently of a poet for this.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Destruction of the Western Tradition
1. THE TRANSCENDENTAL CREATION OF VALUE. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

In thinking critically about western metaphysics and in denying the traditional conceptual forms of thinking Nietzsche does not achieve to overcome metaphysics himself conceptually. Instead, he sidesteps the issue and choses an existential expression in the Zarathustra. Existentialism is a sign of a profound conceptual need. It is innovative where it achieves the highest level and does not degenerate into philosophical chatter. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is an existential philosophy in the form of a preliminary way of expressing thoughts which elude traditional concepts. This detour via a thought embodied in the lived life is in Nietzsche's case accompanied by a re-interpretation of all ontological questions and questions of value. Nietzsche did not venture beyond Zarathustra. 'It is' - as he says in Ecce Homo - 'the yes-saying aspect of his task.'1 It is certainly not the case that the time following Zarathustra is dedicated to a theoretical analysis of its aspects in order to determine the death of God, the will to power and the eternal return more accurately and profoundly. Not even the late and last unpublished work The Will to Power extends Nietzsche's ideas beyond those of Zarathustra significantly. The time following Zarathustra is dedicated to the 'denying and rejecting half of Nietzsche's task. If the Zarathustra is the constructive part of his philosophy, the works following it are its destructive part. He realizes the philosophy of the hammer here. He attacks traditional philosophy, religion and morality with the blows of his critical hammer. He wishes to destroy and annihilate these disciplines in order to put the creative existence onto a new path. Just like the chisel of the artist which rages against the stone to uncover the image which slumbers in the block of marble, the hammer of critique rages against man as he is and as he understands himself. The image of the overman slumbers within man. The destructive critique of concrete man is the bitter path to the future. Oh you humans, the stone conceals an image, the image of all images. Oh, that it has to slumber in the hardest and ugliest stone!/ My hammer rages
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cruelly against its prison. Splinters fly from the stone - what do I care!/1 wish to complete it because a shadow appeared to me - the quietest and lightest of all things came to me!/ The beauty of the overman came to me as a shadow. What do I care about the Gods now?2
Nietzsche's approach is basically consistent. If the overman who is conscious of the death of God, the will to power and the eternal return is to appear and is to become the future of humanity (as 'our great Hazar1, as 'Zarathustra's empire of 1000 years'3), the humanity of the western tradition must be destroyed. This requires a relentless attack on Platonism and Christianity. However, the peculiar manner in which Nietzsche leads this attack is highly questionable. He battles with psychological means. His subtle, cunning and clever psychology destroys the tradition. This means that he does not overcome his real enemy. He does not overcome metaphysics because he does not question its truth conceptually but simply accuses it. He does not overcome Christianity because he attacks a caricature of Christianity. He attacks a psychological fiction of Christianity. Assuming that philosophy was required to advance against traditional metaphysics, morality and Christianity, this battle would have to be fought on its own ontological terms and without armour. It ought not to include psychological suspicion of the enemy but it should solely show the falsity of the metaphysical and the Christian world-view. It is not questionable that Nietzsche attacks Christianity. It is only questionable how he does this. If Christianity is God's own revelation no philosophy can harm it. If the 'gates of hell' themselves could not overcome it any finite human wisdom is doomed to fail at the word of God's son. The 'denying, rejecting part' of Nietzsche's project is mainly rhetorical. However, its considerable quality makes it more dangerous. His sophistry, that is his psychological analysis, is based on a psychological transformation of all ontological questions into questions of value. The denial and rejection take shape as a 'revaluation of all values' and this occurs through a psychological analysis. Nietzsche believes that he can support and establish his by discrediting and dissolving the traditional system of values. This - he believes - makes a new value path and a new start to life possible. History may have seen many revaluations of value. It may have seen the destruction of value tables and the establishment of new ones. Nietzsche, however, implies a more radical revaluation. Firstly, he refers to a change of value as such. If the human being lives within a coherent system of values, values are things as such. If values are universally and eternally binding they are 'objective'. Only when the community dissolves within a system of value and the final stages of an extreme individuation become evident, the values become relative to the
The transcendental creation of value
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relevant subjects. Doubt and subjectivity threaten the unquestioned basis of social life. Nietzsche believes that so-called objectivity is precisely nothing but an invention of the human being which has been forgotten as such. Human life implies the positing of value. In most cases it forgets its posits. The posited is encountered as the binding power of the moral law. Man transcends himself in positing value and encounters his invention as a foreign object imbued with all properties of venerable being as such. Nietzsche intends to radically suspend value theoretical dogmatism. Man does not awaken from the slumber of dogmatism if he becomes a discerning individual who lives according to his whim and 'values' things highly individually. Nietzsche's philosophical reflection on value goes further: it targets the transcendental positing of value which occurs normally subconsciously. Nietzsche intends to discover the subconscious productivity of a life which creates values and value tables. Human existence transcends itself where it projects the aspects of value ahead of its existence under which it then only encounters the things. Nietzsche does not consider the individual act of valuing but the creative one, which presupposes and directs all individual acts of valuation. Humanity, a people or culture all have 'a priori values' or a basic valuation which establishes it within being and life. This 'a priori', however, is not a firm, genetically fixed knowledge of value but it has its own dynamic and history. Nietzsche believes that the real segments of world history are subject to changing transcendental creations of value. His philosophy is thus an ultimate turning point, the centre of time, the great noon, because it uncovers, as he states, for the first time the apparent objectivity of value and its dependence on value-positing life. It breaks the dogmatic slumber which usually envelops the creative powers of human existence. Nietzsche's theory of the subjectivity of value is far removed from a cheap relativism based on individual choice. One may even say that his theory of subjectivity does not deny the phenomenal objectivity of values but discloses this as a forgotten, transcendental invention of human existence. Revaluation of value means thus sublating the self-alienation of human existence. It means the liberation towards a higher self-consciousness of life and an awakening from the theoretical dogmatism of value. Nietzsche arrives at a view of life itself against the self-alienation of life and by returning to the forgotten creation underpinning all value systems. This appears to him as the will to power which returns eternally in the circle of time. A universal critique of traditional systems of value could be undertaken to throw light on the projection of value which created them in the first place. This would criticize these values for their naivety and inauthenticity. All values are based on the great game of life itself. Are these values not all of a similar rank? Are they not simply ways with which life experiments temporally? Or is there a
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possibility to judge systems of value themselves? We encounter a decisive move in Nietzsche here. He is not satisfied with a philosophical reflection of the transcendental projection of value by the human being where life takes the final responsibility and risk in regard to any value, but he continues with a substantial and a material interpretation of life. This move is perhaps one of the most contentious aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. One may imagine a critique of Christianity, that is, of Christian morality which criticizes the foundation of all values in the existence of God in so far as this makes all values a given, imposed on the human being through external demands. It is conceivable to criticize this morality as a kind of inauthentic life. However, this reflection about the way in which values are posited does not negate the values themselves. The justification for the values would merely differ. Nietzsche, however, does not only deny the objectivity of Christian values, he also denies their substance. The return to life as value-giving becomes the new principle for creating values because he implicitly judges life itself according to its 'strength' and 'weakness'. Nietzsche uses these common biological concepts in a completely new manner. Strength and health of life seem to him to be present where there is a simultaneous consciousness of both the dreadful and the beautiful aspects of existence, where both are affirmed and where the constructive and the destructive power or the Dionysian play is experienced as will to power and eternal return. Weakness and sickness, however, imply that man avoids the terrifying, dreadfully beautiful abyss of existence. He turns away, he avoids the fight and the war and he searches for peace, for calm, for brotherly love and security. Strength of life rests in the knowledge of the will to power and weakness in the avoidance of it. Nietzsche's unreflected conceptual ambiguity is dangerous. On the one hand he sees the will to power as the fundamental drive in the unfolding of all finite being. In this context everything is will to power including the heroic-tragic attitude and the Christian morality. On the other hand he takes a more substantive approach to the 'will to power' and sees in it a heroic mode of existence. He does not overcome this ambiguity. He appears to be able to distinguish systems of value substantially which are consistent with the essence of life and systems which deny life - moral systems created by weakness, by disease and by a decline of life. The difference between the systems of values which are based on the unauthentic alienation and the authentic empowerment of life and those which are derived through a strength or weakness of life become intermingled. The questionable and ambiguous approach determines the writings after Zarathustra. Nietzsche launches an attack. He has always been a master of aggression. However, he now attempts to land his most fatal blow. He uses all weapons, fights with desperate passion and with diabolical hatred. It seems initially peculiar that Nietzsche returns to a critique of modernity, of the present and the all-too-topical after the overview of the future of humanity in the
I II
Zarathustra. Nietzsche contrasts his vision of the future with man's destiny so far. In this context the past is a false track. However, Nietzsche does not attempt to show the errors of this wrong path through an explicit examination of its stated truths. He embarks on the indirect way of a psychological destruction: ' . . . the psychology is applied with unashamed toughness and cruelty'4 he even states about the last period of his work. It comprises the books Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, a Ecce Homo (in addition to two smaller essays which deal once again with Wagner). Beyond Good and Evil is the book following Zarathustra. It appears in 1886. In some ways it represents a re-engagement with ideas from Human, All Too Human. Nietzsche who chose the free spirit as a persona and as a mask offers now in the later life a more intense free spirit, a more daring wandering and a more courageous experimentation of possibilities. Nietzsche describes the work as a critique of modernity, of modern ideas, of objectivity, of history and the scientific spirit in Ecce Homo. However, this is only partially accurate. It is important that Nietzsche takes up the basic theme of Human, All Too Human on a higher level: he develops a critique of religion, philosophy and morality. Philosophy is a symptom for him. He views it through the perspective of life and as a sign of a particular attitude towards life. Philosophers are all unconsciously subject to particular moral decisions. I realized gradually what all philosophy has so far been, namely, the selfrevelation of its creator and a kind of unintentional and unconscious memory. Furthermore, the moral (and immoral) intentions of a philosophy form their true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown.5 Nietzsche sees in all traditional philosophy what he does himself: reducing the ontological questions to questions of value: he investigates them all according to their implicit value judgements. And he discovers within philosophy the worship of the life-denying instincts. Traditional philosophy is for him essentially a flight from the real and concrete world towards a 'true' world. It is a symbol for a denial of the world even if it takes a modern approach like Kantianism, positivism or Cartesian fundamentalism. Nietzsche polemically ridicules the uncritical belief in the ego, in logic with its supposed rigour and other so-called 'immediate certainties'. Nietzsche perceives that the ultimate epistemological phenomena, the Ego, the will and the ability to synthesize are nothing but 'power relationships of life', that is, formations of the will to power. 'The power of moral prejudice has deeply penetrated the most spiritual, the most sober and the most presuppositionless sphere - and has (this goes without saying) damaged, inhibited, blinded and perverted it.'6 Nietzsche objects to this perversion and damage of life. He rejects traditional
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philosophy because it dominates through moral prejudice even where it appears to be completely pure cognition. Nietzsche uses psychology to establish this. His history of philosophy is sophistical because it declares a psychology which operates with ambiguous notions of strength and weakness, of health and sickness of life, to be the decisive judge. 'Never before have daring travellers and adventurers gained a deeper insight into the world of the "prejudices of philosophy" ' - he states at the end of the paragraph - 'and the psychologist must at least be able to demand that psychology is again recognized as the master of the sciences and that the other sciences are serving it and are preparatory to it. Because psychology is now again the way towards the fundamental questions.'7 It is hardly possible to state more clearly that Nietzsche's psychology takes over the role of metaphysics. As an alternative to the morally dominated traditional philosophers Nietzsche demands 'philosophers of the future' who admit that the 'falsification of the world' is still the 'most certain and secure'8 aspect available to us. Unlike Descartes, these philosophers do not need the truthfulness of God in order to recognize the transcendental things. Nietzsche calls them 'experimenters'. They would find it tasteless if their truth were a truth for anyone. They would dare to gather knowledge in dangerous ways and they would have secrets. 'In the end things must be as they always were: The great things remain reserved for the great people, the abysmal ones for the profound, the tender ones for the sophisticated and - on the whole and in brief- anything rare for anyone rare.'9 Nietzsche conceives the free spirit in a more concealed, mysterious and peculiar manner than he had in Human, All Too Human. The pathos of truthfulness is no longer stated naively and directly. A greater and more determined scepticism awakens against the moral prejudice within the will to truth. The free spirit appears to be more abysmal, more nocturnal. 'Whatever is deep loves the mask; the deepest things even hate the image and the metaphor.'10 The chapter 'The religious existence' reveals a critique which contains those critical aspects hurled against Christianity with a fiery eloquence already earlier. Christianity leads the classical world towards the orient. It is the simple inversion of the noble Roman and Greek values. It is the uprising of the oriental slave against his master. It is a religious neurosis and a sickness of life. Nietzsche rejects Christianity on the basis of its plebeian character and on the basis of the supremacy claimed by the values of the masses. The free spirit regards religion in any case only ever as an instrument of the will to power. A religion is an instrument with which he plays independently and aesthetically. He uses it as a 'punitive and didactic device'. He experiments with it in his creation and manipulation of man which is directed by the will to power. From this point of view Nietzsche finds some commendable aspects of religion: 'Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of the education and improvement
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if a race wishes to conquer its fate of being derived from the mob . . .'.n However, these instruments are lethal if they are not controlled by the philosopher but operate autonomously. The two greatest religions, Buddhism and Christianity, are religions of the suffering, the sick and the weak. Eighteen hundred years of Christianity have turned European man according to Nietzsche into a sublime cripple. In the chapter 'On the natural history of morality' Nietzsche interprets morality as a 'sign language of the affects'. All systems of moral value conceal a rank order of life-dominating instincts. They may be promoting or weakening life. Nietzsche distinguishes particularly between individual morality and the morality of the herd; furthermore, between the morality of timidness and the morality as a self-discipline of a daring and powerful will. He believes that the appearance of Napoleon is a 'beneficial deed' and a 'liberation from an ever-more oppressive need': Napoleon was the 'unconditional master' of the 'herd-animals of Europe'.12 The same could be said about Alcibiades, about Caesar and about Frederick the Great. All present instance of the great life. In conclusion Nietzsche states: 'Today's morality is the morality of the herd.'13 In the chapter 'What is noble' he finally introduces the essential distinction between the morality of the master and the morality of the slave. These notions are often criticized as signs of unbelievable and unjustified arrogance and of an impertinence which has the audacity to call itself moral. Outrage and disgust, however, clarify little. The two opposing kinds of morality, the noble and the ignoble, do not just refer to life-promoting and life-weakening aspects. A new focus is added. The noble master-morality grows from the pathos of distance and from a proud, elevated spiritual condition. It is a morality of rank order. The slave morality, however, is based on a levelling tendency, on a revolution against rank order and on a will for equality. The master morality operates with the distinction between 'good' and 'bad'. Whatever elevates the individual and leads it towards its own life and authenticity is good. Whatever makes human existence noble and great is good. The hero and the warrior are good. The master morality is first and foremost a morality of war. It is a chivalrous morality. It respects members of a community in which the superior person is among equals and those of equal rank. However, it despises all lower ranks, all the lower minded people who follow their ordinary desires and no longer extend themselves. Anything low is bad. The slave morality is different. It is inspired by the instinct for revenge against higher forms of life. It intends to level everything. It ostracizes the exception and judges it to be immoral. It glorifies whatever makes life bearable for the poor, the sick and the poor of spirit. This includes the great brotherhood of mankind, the love of kin and the love of peace. Slave-morality uses the distinctions between good and evil. The masterful life which is conscious of its power and ability is
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dangerous and evil for the slave. Evil is despised because it is a fearful and a hateful danger, not because it is inferior. Nietzsche draws a detailed picture of these two opposing moralities. One important detail is that the noble morality creates and posits values. The slave morality accepts values. The former is active, the latter reactive. This points the entire distinction ultimately towards a distinction between existential self-alienation and self-determination within a context of a system of values. This connection, however, is not made explicitly and it adds a further dimension of ambiguity to Nietzsche's already ambiguous works following Zarathustra. Towards the end Nietzsche expresses the essence of the noble, masterful life and the powerful existence which exhausts itself in an allegorical manner. He calls it the 'genius of the heart'. The genius of the heart, as possessed by the great concealed, by the God of temptation and the born pied-piper of conscience, whose voice knows how to descend to any soul of the underworld, who does not say a word, who does not cast a look without sensitivity and trace of temptation, whose mastery includes his ability to appear. ... Just like anyone who has been away and abroad from childhood on, who has encountered many strange and dangerous spirits along the way - among those in particular the one just mentioned and always that one, none other than the God Dionysos, this great ambivalent God of temptation to whom I dedicated once upon a time in all secret and awe my first-born.... In the meantime I have learnt much, too much about the philosophy of this God and as stated from mouth to mouth - I, the last disciple and initiated of the God Dionysos.14
2. THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS

All the writings following Zarathustra are dominated by the thought of the 'revaluation of all values'. This means initially that Nietzsche thinks along clearly defined lines which are themselves no longer subject to an inquiry. All philosophical questions are questions of value for him. The ontological nature of value itself does not become problematic. Wherever the philosophy of the past pursued ontology this is - according to Nietzsche - secretly guided by considerations of value. It wishes to escape from 'becoming'; it values the firm and enduring higher and considers it more valuable than the original. Nietzsche overcomes the open question of the truth of value with the seemingly more radical one of the value of truth. In this it is crucial that he uses a limited notion of truth which remains primarily guided by objective-scientific knowledge. The truth whose value he questions is the truth of things, the truth of the sciences and the truth of metaphysics which concerns the foundation of being. Truth as
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the revelation of the teeming life, as will to power and as eternal return is, however, the basis for Nietzsche's universal perspective of value and can itself not be a phenomenon of value. The essence of the truth which underpins his own philosophy is not completely clarified. This is not accidental and no limitation that could be explained biographically. The ambiguity in the essence of the truth of 'life', that is, of the truth of the will to power and of the eternal return hides Nietzsche's ambiguous position towards metaphysics. It conceals a profound doubt if he is a part of metaphysics or if he has transcended it. It appears to be a peculiar spectacle that Nietzsche explains all traditional conceptions of truth through the will to power and its perspectives of value but fails in return to clarify the truthfulness of the will to power itself. The quality of morality is determined according to Nietzsche by its truth, that is by the way in which it uses the will to power as a measure and recognizes it as a principle of value-judgements. This means that the question of morality is in the final analysis also a question of truth for Nietzsche or a question how relevant the will to power is as the essence of life. At the same time the ambiguity of the notion of the will to power is never overcome by Nietzsche. The will to power is primarily an ontological concept which refers to the way in which all things are in flux. The being of beings is a drive towards overpowering. The ontic model for this ontological conception is found by Nietzsche within organic nature. Here we find the drive towards self-realization, towards assimilation and domination of the other. Here we find the struggle for power and super-power. Anything organic behaves in essence like auxesis and phthisis., like growth and decay and the creation of one costs the destruction of the other. The will to power, however, is not limited to the region of organic nature, to plants, animals and humans. It refers for Nietzsche to the ontological dynamic of being. Nietzsche remains highly ambiguous, however, in relation to morality in so far as he uses the concept of power in a shadowy way both as an ontological universal and also as an ontic model. All morals are formations of power. The will to power is conceived ontologically here. There are morals of a flourishing or of a powerful life and morals of a declining or of a powerless life. Power and powerlessness are conceived here through an ontic model. Nietzsche gains an insight into life as the basis of all value by sublating the self-alienation of the human existence. Values exist only because they are posited by life. The human creation of values within life is a manifestation of the will to power. Man relates to himself either authentically (adopting the mastermorality) or unauthentically (adopting the slave-morality). The will to power has so to speak a twofold appearance as power and lack of power. Wherever this opposition is mentioned within the context of the will to power, power and its opposite are understood in the ontic sense. Power can thus have characteristics of strong drives, of uninhibited aggressive instincts or of high vitality. The lack
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of power can likewise assume the appearance of a loss of drive, of a loss of instinct and of a bloodlessness. Power and lack of power are explained through biological categories. One should remember this context if one wishes to understand the disputations and writings after Zarathustra. The difference between master- and slave-morality exists for times immemorial. There are attitudes of judgement which flow from an excessive, overflowing and richly oozing life and attributes which are the result of the need and the suffering of those whose life has not been favoured, of the sick, the weak, the suffering and the burdened. However, this difference between the master- and slave-morality remains so to speak 'blind' within the traditional history of morality. The noble, strong and vibrant masters, the elite, the warriors and the aristocracy 'do not know who they are'. Their mastery is innocent, unreflected and subconscious. Only Nietzsche's value-theoretical reflection about the transcendental source of the apparent objectivity of all values makes genuine governance, real mastery and true master-morality possible. The supremacy of the master is now grounded in the knowledge of the will to power and the eternal return. The master-morality is the value system of the overman. And similarly, the servitude of the servant and the real longing for servitude in humans are understood more radically. Not only do they reveal a lack of instinct, a lack of blood and a lack of power and vitality, but they also surrender to God. The overman and the man who worships God are now the two opposites. The life within the new morality of the master realizes the death of God. The new view of the slave-morality reveals that human servitude consists in the idea of a God. It is the result of the 'fear of God'. The historically conceived interpretation of master- and slave-morality has only a preparatory importance for Nietzsche. They must not be understood (as frequently the case) as Nietzsche's new ideal and counter-ideal. His central issue is the articulation of the historical opposition between masters and slaves within in the context of a highly polarized antagonism between the atheism of the overman and any form of divine worship. The Zarathustra is the implied foundation of all subsequent treatises. Nietzsche wages a war, his Great War against all kinds of self-alienation and enslaved human existence. He intends to struggle for human liberation. During this struggle he collapses. Under the cover of the night he is abducted by the God whose disciple and apostle he was. Nietzsche had already embarked on developing a critique of religion, philosophy and morality in the second stage. However, Human, All Too Human, Dawn and The Gay Science were largely enlightening critiques which contrast the pathos of a rigorous, sober science or later the experiment of life itself with metaphysical dreams and turned towards the concrete presence in a positivistic move. Zarathustra rejected positivism and thought about the 'here and now' more profoundly. After Zarathustra the
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critique of religion, philosophy and morality assumes a more radical meaning. It is no longer part of an 'enlightened' attitude but a struggle for life or death. For Nietzsche himself at least Zarathustra is the beginning of a new ontological experience. The traditional ontological interpretation with its religion, metaphysics and ethics, appears to the ontological experience as a single massive error, as a horrific monstrosity, as an interpretation which violates life and as the greatest lie and untruth. Nietzsche is struck by a terrifying insight. The most dreadful suspicion has taken hold of him. Philosophy, religion and morality as we know them pollute life. Was the traditional interpretation of life not the work of an essentially unified, healthy and strong life but rather the work of a powerless hatred of death intended to make life bearable for the weak, intended to choke the strong and inspire their bad conscience and to take away the confidence and trust in their drives and instincts? Beyond Good and Evil is written from the perspective of this suspicion. It is characteristic for Nietzsche's method that the suspicion does not only dominate it instrumentally but that its presence justifies itself. That means his thinking is determined by the new conception of life without being objectively and critically examined. His basic assumptions of the will to power, the death of God and the eternal return of the same are the product of his psychology. They are his philosophical thoughts. However, Nietzsche believes that he can endow his thoughts with better clarity and differentiation, with more substance and richness through his subtle and sublime psychology. He believes that he can prove his philosophy through a sophistical method. He shows that the traditional philosophers are led by moral prejudices and that the believers are neurotic and moralists full of revenge. However, this method of proof can always be increased and overcome. It corrupts because it generalizes the understanding of particular cases. Neurosis can be disguised as religious belief. Vengefulness can find its way into morality. But this does not mean that all religion is neurosis and all morality vengeful. One might just as well ask what it means if someone finds only revenge in the morality of brotherly love and only neurosis in divine worship? Is such a residual psychology itself the sign of a crippled and valueless life? Nietzsche intends to clarify Beyond Good and Evil in On the Genealogy of Morals. This book falls into three parts. The first is a psychology of Christianity. It commences with the well known distinction between master- and slave-morality and refers to a subdivision of master-morality into a warrior-like and a priest-like one. The warrior possesses the virtues of the body. The priest invents the 'spirit'. Priests are 'the really great haters of world history . . . they are also the most spirited haters'.15 The rivalry between the casts of the warriors and priests gives birth to the change from the master- to the slave-morality. The priests are the defeated masters who mobilize the weak, suffering and deformed against the warriors. Nietzsche believes that the 'Jews' are the indirect manifestation of
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spiritual power. They are the masters of revenge for Nietzsche. Nietzsche is no anti-Semite. He merely believes that the Jews are the 'priestly people' and lead the revolution against anything masterful and noble. The Jews have dared to invert with awe-inspiring logic the aristocratic equation of values (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved by God) and have clung with their teeth of abysmal hatred (the hatred of impotence) to this: Namely, the miserable alone are good, the poor, impotent, low ... the suffering, short-changed, sick, ugly.16 The inversion of all noble values creates the slave uprising of morality. It creates the birth of Christianity. Nietzsche believes that through Judaism 'resentment becomes creative and creates values'.17 Defeated and subjugated by Rome Judaism rises against Rome and inverts the values of antiquity. It occupies Rome in the form of Christianity. Nietzsche simplifies the history of western culture incredibly. The Renaissance appears to him to be a brief awakening of the classical values which, however, 'due to the radically plebeian (German and English) movements ofressentiment called reformation'18 soon returns to th 'old peace of the grave of classical Rome'. An even more decisive victory of slave-morality in Europe is the French Revolution, this triumph of mediocrity and the birth of modern ideas, for Nietzsche. Among this raging uprising of the mob only Napoleon ('this synthesis of overman and monster'19) embodies for a brief historical moment the great, noble person. Nietzsche believes that Christianity suffuses even the most secular phenomena. Christianity is just the most striking symptom of something more universal. Christianity is slave morality. This is the decisive reason for his struggle against it. He understands it primarily as a system of values, not as a doctrine and not as a divine revelation. The second treatise contains a psychology of conscience. Here too, Nietzsche does not start with an analysis of the phenomenon of conscience but jumps straight to a psychological explanation. Neither the immanent way of the existential experience of the self nor the nature of the call of conscience come into view. 'Immanence' is the result of a perversion of instincts: 'All instincts which do not relieve themselves externally become internalized.... The entire inner world which is originally thin as if stretched between two skins, receives depth, width, height, where the human being is externally inhibited.'20 It remains unclear how the immanence constitutes itself as a consequence and dimension of inhibited instincts. What is meant by 'external' which supposedly exists before any opposition between external and internal? Nietzsche clarifies his psychological preconceptions and the structure of the psyche itself nowhere clearly. He rather throws an ingenious thought into the field, into this
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obscure, murky field of psychology which despite all its subtlety remains unable to grasp the ontological character of the human soul. Nietzsche refers in an obscure and general manner to drives and further to the masking of drives because he argues rhetorically against the Ego and its function and against the conception of a psychic substance without developing a philosophical alternative to the reifying psychological conception of man. Nietzsche's psychology is substantially richer than its conceptual structure. He develops thus in this second treatise an insight into the nature and importance of cruelty. It seems to him to belong to human nature, to a basic instinct, to a pleasure to see and produce suffering and to a pleasure which is an aspect of the joy of life of strong and natural people. Even the punitive practices of a cultured society conceal the instinct for cruelty. Cruelty is a hidden foundation of human culture. Nietzsche's hypothesis about the origin of conscience is as follows: It is only the instinct for cruelty which has been prevented to release itself externally and turns inward. Man imprisoned by the oppressive confines and regularity of customs lacks external enemies and resistance and impatiently rips himself apart, persecutes himself, mauls himself, startles himself, abuses himself, this animal which has wounded itself on the bars of its cage because one wishes to tame it, this suffering person destroyed by its yearning for the desert, who had to make himself into an adventure, a place of torture, an unsafe and dangerous wilderness - this fool, this yearning and desperate prisoner became the inventor of the 'bad conscience'.21 Nietzsche interprets what is really only a kind of submerged bestiality as an ideal bestiality. Man is always a beast, either externally or internally through the self-torture of conscience. The third treatise contains a psychology of the priest. It asks 'What are the ascetic ideals?' Ascetic ideals can imply a form of self-discipline and economy of powers as in the philosopher for example. 'A certain asceticism ... a tough and joyful renunciation of best intention belongs to the most productive conditions of highest spirituality.'22 It is for this reason that Nietzsche believes that philosophy has never completely recognized ascetic ideals as a pollution of the sources of life. Philosophers have certain ascetic experiences. A long-term interest in thinking or a perspective stretching over years or even decades requires self-discipline and strength. However, in the case of the philosopher it is the creative impulse of life which constrains the person. It does not stand in opposition to life. The case is different and highly dubious in the case of the ascetic ideal of the priest. Here, it flows from 'the protective and regenerative instincts of a degenerate life'.23 Asceticism is itself a way in which the weak and the sick life survives. It has to
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refrain from an explosion of the passions and the great sentiments. It must subjugate the passions if it wishes to scrape through. For Nietzsche the priest is the 'false doctor and healer' who prolongs the lower, pitiful and short-sighted life or the suffering life in its suffering and who heals the wounds of such a shortchanged life while poisoning it at the same time to create an eternally open wound. Nietzsche believes that the priest 'redirects resentment'. He convinces the sick person that he is responsible for his own sickness. He comforts him and sells him the ascetic ideals.24 Nietzsche answers the question of the power of the ascetic ideals as follows. So far, this was the only ideal. All historical ideas have been ascetic. Wherever man transcends the simple, animalistic instinctive formation, wherever he desires, he confronts his instincts with his will. He wills against them. The human being, however is free, that is, he must will where he awakens from the a-historical peace with nature towards history. He cannot merely vegetate. He must erect ideals which refer beyond himself. He must see the stars shine. All stars, however, have hitherto been transcendental. They have been inventions of priests and ideals opposed to nature. They constituted a tough path of the will which gained its highest power through its tension with nature within the human being and became complete will. Nietzsche thus combines will and ascetic ideal. In some way all will implies asceticism. However, what did the will intend if it pursued ascetic ideals? Nietzsche's answer is: nothingness. The will was a will for nothing or a nihilistic tendency of life. One can simply not conceal what is expressed by the will as a whole which had been directed by the ascetic ideal. This hatred against humanity, more so against the animate, more so against the material. This disdain for the senses, for reason itself. This fear of happiness and of beauty. This desire to leave appearance, change, becoming, death, wish, desire itself behind - this all implies . . . a will for nothingness, a rejection of life, an uprising against the basic conditions of life. However, it is and remains a will.25 The ascetically charged will wills nothing. It wills the transcendental nothingness or the nothing of the other-world and of the moral ideas. It denies the here and now, the earthly life and the lived life. Where does this fascination with the nothing come from? Nietzsche states: 'Man would rather will nothing than not will at all . . ,'.26 This means, that so far there has never been an alternative to the ascetic ideal which denies nature. There has never been one in conformity with nature. The difference between reality and ideality becomes only possible in the opposition to nature. An infinite hiatus opens itself which provides a path to the
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will. From this point of view the ascetic ideal has even a tremendously positive meaning. It firstly creates a rift and chasm which the will attempts to overcome. The human being becomes a bridge. Nietzsche inverts this existential tension now. He is, however, not concerned to reject the ideal but to identify it closer with life. Man becomes the bridge to the overman. Ideality must be understood anew through the self-overcoming of life and through the gradual progress of the will to power. The ascetic ideal was so far the only ideal. The Zarathustra proposes an alternative. Nietzsche places himself into a radical, determined and burning opposition to anything considered 'valuable' so far. However, his choice is not an expression of stubbornness, pleasure for resentment or an arbitrary oppositional attitude. It follows from a thinking which grasps the essence of value in a fundamentally new way as an expression of the power of life and as a positing of value by the will to power. Rethinking the nature of value gives Nietzsche the reasons to invert the table of values and to bless what has been cursed so far and to curse what has been blessed. The 'revaluation of values' remains fatefully burdened by the thought of an 'inversion'.
3. THE ANTICHRIST AND THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

In the book The Antichrist (An attempt at a Critique of Christianity) Nietzsche struggles with unprecedented hate and hurls a flood of insults and suspicions against Christianity. His virtuosity to fight with all means excels. The lack of measure, however, is self-defeating. One does not persuade if one foams at the mouth. The book does not offer anything substantially new. Nietzsche summarizes what he has already stated about the morality of pity and the psychology of the priest. However, he now articulates his thoughts with an unprecedented sharpness. He intends to hurt, intends to hit out at tradition and intends to 'revalue' in anti-Christian ways. Christianity seems to him to be the 'deadly war against the higher kind of man'. It is simply corrupt, namely the corruption of the human instincts. It is an unnatural religion and the seducer of European philosophy which now has theological blood in its veins. The Christian concept of God is one of the most corrupt concepts of God on earth: It presents perhaps the lowest form of a concept of God in the declining development of divinities. God is degenerated into an enemy of life instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal affirmation. To declare war on life, on nature, on the will to life with the help of God! God, the formula for any insult of the 'concrete presence', the formula for any lie of a 'beyond'. God sanctifies nothingness and declares the will to nothingness to be holy.27
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This quote shows particularly what underpins Nietzsche's critique of Christianity. Christianity is for him only the spiritually most significant symptom of a European error of the instinct which shows itself as the invention of an ideal, transcendental world and with this devalues the real, concrete world. Christianity is an objectionable form of Platonism for Nietzsche. Nietzsche presupposes atheism. He no longer even questions this presupposition of his critique of Christianity. He avoids the Christian claim to be the revelation not only of the human son but also of the son of God. Let us assume firstly that Christianity did not invent God through a human, all-too-human tendency of life, through the sick, resentful and declining life which opposes a life full of power and secure instincts. Let us further assume that God himself served the low and the fallen, the despised, the burdened and the suffering and those who are pure of heart. Let us suppose that he selected those who had been rejected by the world to be the vehicles of his revelation to turn the wisdom of the world into foolishness. Based on these assumptions, a critique of the tendencies of life could never touch Christianity. Nietzsche's atheistic prejudice prevents him from considering this possibility at all and excludes it without further thought from the beginning. Atheism is selfjustifying for him. He does not consider it appropriate to even doubt it for a moment. However, this means that he has lost sight of religion altogether. Nietzsche's critique of Christianity is not met by showing the strong, courageous aspects of Christianity or by asserting that Nietzsche only considered a weak, pietistic and moralistic form of a Christianity of pity. His dogmatic atheism or his fundamental conception of the death of God have to be questioned. Only if these are justified then all religions are indeed concealed tendencies of life and nothing else. And if they are not justified no religion can be touched by a critique of an existential ideal constructed according to the standards of the will to power. Religion and in particular Christianity is for Nietzsche a particular way of life, a relationship towards existence and an attitude towards life. Christ is not the Son of God for him. He does not take this seriously at all. He is the great weakling, the gentle person and the 'saint'. His instincts are weak. He carries the heavenly paradise in his heart, in his gentle and weak heart. However, this redeemer is no founder of a church, quite the contrary. He is the plain denial of any organization, of any culture and of any work. He only carries the message of salvation, the message of peace, gentleness and forgiveness. Jesus of Nazareth is a new way of life. He rejects the hierarchical structures of Judaism. He denies any structure and organization of life. He is the extreme introversion of the immanence of the soul which does not require any institution because it carries the kingdom of God within itself. Nietzsche thus contrasts the evangelical Jesus with the church-founding Paulus. Christianity is even more the work of Paul than that of Jesus. Jesus is no fanatic. He is an innocent person.
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The joyful message is just this, that there are no differences any longer. The heavenly kingdom belongs to the children. The belief which becomes evident here is nothing that has been achieved. It is simply there from the beginning. It is, as it were, a spiritual naivety.... Such a belief is never furious, it does not criticize, it does not defend itself. It does not bring the sword. It does not suspect how much it may once separate. It does not prove itself neither through miracles, nor through rewards, nor through promises or even 'through the book'. It is itself its own miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its 'kingdom of God'.28 Nietzsche thus constructs Jesus as a kind of harmless salvation-army guy who goes through life with a gentle and concilliatory smile on his face. On this background of the evangelical Jesus Paul becomes the intentional misunderstanding of Christianity. Paul changes the pure-hearted way of life into a church with miracles, with priests and with a system of rewards and punishments. He changes Jesus into the Son of God who sacrifices himself for the sins of the world and invents the other-world, final judgement, resurrection and any other so-called 'ultimate matter'. Paul magically removes the only reality of Christianity, the blessedness, the kingdom of God within the gentle soul, that is, the joy of gentleness. He shifts human blessedness to the life after death to make it a future reward. Paul is the victory of Orthodox Judaism. He is the victory of the Jewish priest over Jesus of Nazareth. 'The joyful message was immediately followed by the worst one: that of Paul. Paul embodies a contrasting type to the type of "joyful messenger", the genius of hatred, a vision of hatred with an untiring logic ofhatred.'29 Paul is the creator of the doctrine of judgement. It was his way to form a herd and to establish again and more radically than before the tyranny of the priests. Paul concluded the demise of Christianity which commenced with the death of the Messiah with the logical cynicism of a rabbi. Paul represents the dominance of all decaying values in the name of God. The Christian concept of sin is the greatest human self-mutilation. It is an attack by the priest and by the parasite on life itself. Nietzsche sees in Paul the simultaneous uprising of the priests and the decline of all values. Priests assume power where life declines. Christian and nihilist rhyme, he thinks, and they do not only rhyme but form a necessary connection. Christianity brought about the end of the classical world not just historically, though, but also by destroying a noble way and value of life. This is fateful. Nietzsche's pathos is nourished by the belief that his philosophy is similarly fateful as it is the reconstruction of values in accordance with life which Christianity had completely perverted and ruined. Anti-Christianity is accordingly the revaluation of all values in the form of an opposition against the millennia of a decline of life. In the court of life, which is conceived as will to power,
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Nietzsche raises 'the most terrifying accusations which have come across the lips of any accuser'.30 For him Christianity is the worst of all conceivable corruptions with its revaluation of any value into a non-value and of all truth into a lie and viceversa. It poisons life with the thought of sin, destroys real rank order through the 'equality of the souls in the face of God' thus providing the explosive material for the mob-uprisings of European history. He calls Christianity 'a form of parasitism which lives from the emergencies in the human soul - the thought of another world with its denial of any reality, the cross as the symbolic identification for the most hidden conspiracy ever - against health, against beauty, fitness and courage, spirit, generosity, against life itself.' Nietzsche concludes his diatribe: I intend to write this constant accusation of Christianity on to walls wherever there are any. I have letters which can even make the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great internal perversion and the one great instinct for revenge to whom no mean is poisonous, secretive, concealed and small enough. I call it the one immortal embarrassment of mankind. / And one establishes the calendar according to the dies nefastus who brought about this fate. - According to the first day of Christianity. Why not according to its last? According to today? Revaluation of all values!31 One may find Nietzsche's sacrilegiously ranting language peculiar. He is, however, not concerned with religion in the genuine sense. Nietzsche passionately attacks primarily metaphysics and a way of judgement in Christianity. Christianity represents a factual, historical manifestation of such metaphysics. Christianity represents something universal, not just another metaphysics or any set of values. It stands for the set of western ontological values which interprets the sensual, the here-and-now, the concretely experienced in the light of the ideas and in the light of the transcendental, 'true' and the real world as a preliminary or unauthentic appearance. He refers to this as 'Platonism'. He attacks Christianity in the final analysis because it is a 'Platonism for the people'32; it is a common form of metaphysics. His philosophy, however, is as he calls it an 'inverted Platonism'33. The revaluation of all values is more profound than an 'anti-Christianity' or an anti-Platonism. One will have to keep this context in mind to see the limitations and the importance of Nietzsche's final works. Religion, morality and metaphysics are for Nietzsche connected. They do not have a separate or an independent relationship to man. God only represents the transcendentality of values, their essence and objectivity which is ultimately grounded in God as the highest existing Good or as the summum ens. This is Nietzsche's entire interpretation of religion. Man idealizes his highest
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values through God and through the Gods and imbues them with personal existence. If affirmative values dominate the way of life the Gods are accordingly like Greek Gods, namely affirmative and idealizing Gods. If, however, the leading values are derived from impotence, then God becomes crucified. The transcendental God who condemns the natural instincts and drives of life as sins is the outcome. The death of God thus means for Nietzsche the revocation of the transcendental nature of value and the discovery that values are human creations. Nietzsche's universal perspective of values or his thought of the revaluation of values is perhaps still connected to the metaphysics against which it turns. The inverted Platonism is indeed still a form of Platonism. This becomes clear in the treatise with the title The Twilight of the Idols. Although Nietzsche shows off results of his sophistic psychological investigation he surpasses them in substance. We find in it the most important fundamental ontological thoughts. We find the interpretation of his fundamental thoughts derived from a particular ontological conception. Although this had been frequently indicated he clearly and unmistakably articulates it here. His basic formula is this: traditional metaphysical ontology regards as 'being' what is in truth merely an illusion and a fiction and rejects non-being as unauthentic existence when it is in truth the only effectively real being. What is regarded as essentially existing is nothing. What has been regarded so far to be nothing is the only truly real being. 'Being' as opposed to 'becoming' is not; becoming alone is. There is no being beyond space and time, no intelligible realm of things as such and no world of eternal ideas. There is only a sensually experienced world which reveals itself within space and time - the earth beneath the heaven with its infinite manifold things 'beneath heaven and earth'. Yet, this only, real, active, living and moving world which is driven by the will to power does not know fastness, calmness and foundations. It is dynamic, it is time and space and nothing else, that is it is will to power and 'nothing beyond'34. Nietzsche inverts the foundations of the entire traditional metaphysics. But he simplifies on the way in a very dubious manner. He uses the simplest contrast between being and becoming without developing these concepts at any stage properly and without elevating them above their common, everyday meaning. And yet, despite all the shortcomings of his ontological speculations he nevertheless has an incredible instinct for the deep and genuine questions akin to his intuition of the importance of the Pre-Socratics whom he interpreted entirely inadequately. As a facilitator, as a 'precursor', as a messenger of a future philosophical path and as a prophet of the 'change of being' Nietzsche is more important and greater than as a thinker who completes conceptual work. The real heart of The Twilight of the Idols is the section 'Reason within
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Philosophy'. It is preceded by an interpretation of Socrates which is a brilliant example of Nietzsche's sophistry: I myself realized this fatal dishonesty that the great characters are instances of decline in one particular case which contrasts especially with the learned and unlearned prejudice: I recognized that Socrates and Plato are symptoms of decay. They are tools of Greek decadence, they are pseudo-Greek, they are anti-Greek.33 Before attacking Platonic ontology he attacks Socrates as a Platonic existence. This appears to demonstrate the decay of the Greek instincts. Nietzsche combines aspects of his image of Socrates with a sophisticated sophistry. Socrates is a commoner and plebeian by birth and in spirit. And he is ugly. He is externally a monster and had to - as Nietzsche says - become ugly internally as well since the Greeks were intoxicated by beauty and regarded ugliness as a refutation. The ugly person could never win over the beautiful admirers if he did not fascinate them with something incredible. This spell was the discovery of dialectic, a competitive art. However, the fact that dialectic can seduce, that logic stimulates and that the search for reasons and the refutation of apparent reasons becomes a new pleasurable exercise, a new Agon - this fact by itself shows that Greek existence has lost its 'natural quality'. Socrates merely accelerates what had already begun. Rationality takes the place of secure instincts. However, this disintegrating life needs reason more than it needs a tyrant. It would otherwise become the victim of an anarchy of conflicting drives which are no longer ruled by a leading instinct. The Greeks must have needed reason since they committed to it so absolutely. Nietzsche believes that the 'Socratic identification of reason = virtue = happiness' is 'the most bizarre identification there is and one which in particular contradicts all instincts of the earlier Hellenic culture'.36 'To fight against the instincts - this is the formula of decadence: As long as life ascends happiness equals instinct.'37 He even interprets the death of Socrates as a will to selfdestruction. This wisest of the Greeks knows that such a sickness, that is such a confusion of instinct requiring the rule of reason itself can only mean that 'death itself becomes the healer'.38 Following this portrayal of the Socratic existence with its inversion of a traditional understanding Nietzsche commences his real attack on metaphysics. Metaphysical philosophy is Egyptian in more than one sense. Nietzsche alludes to his frequent assertion that Plato was seduced by the Egyptian priests and estranged from the true Hellenic nature. Philosophical moralism is an Egyptian legacy. It is the home of a denial of temporality. The Egyptianism of the philosophers is 'their aversion against the idea of becoming':
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For thousands of years philosophers have only handled conceptual mummies. . .. They kill, they preserve, these gentlemen who worship the idols of the concept where they worship.... Death, change, aging as well as procreation and growth are exceptions to them.... Being does not become, becoming does not exist.39 This means that in Nietzsche's view the history of metaphysics is dominated from the beginning by the attempt to expel becoming from being, to deny that becoming truly exists and to keep being itself free of any form of becoming in return. This opposition between being and becoming remains a basic model he uses and the one he simply inverts. He interprets being as constant, resting, immovable and timeless and becoming as passing on, moving, temporal, that is he separates being and time. This separation appears to him to be a dual world theory reflecting the difference between the world of appearance and the world as such or the 'other-world'. Metaphysics, Nietzsche believes, has devalued the true, spatio-temporal world of appearance and pretends that a merely ideal world or a figment of the imagination is the true one. It distrusts the senses because they show the transitory and it views the senses and sensuality as such as an enemy of thinking and a 'deceiver' which fools us. It is accordingly opposed to the senses and their evidence. Metaphysics becomes a reflection of an intelligible world with transcendental predicates of eternal, infinite and a-temporal being. The second basic mistake of traditional philosophy is a confusion of the first and last principle. Nietzsche means here the dependence of metaphysics on highest and universal principles. It is a kind of thinking in empty concepts. Nietzsche interprets ontological concepts as mere abstractions. This conception conceals a short-sighted theory of the concept and a considerable misunderstanding of metaphysical concepts in particular. Concepts are in general something questionable for Nietzsche with only limited application to reality. The words which allow us to see and hear something are originally images and metaphors; however, at the same time they interpret reality. However, concepts are images which have become empty or symbols which have become pale. They take the place of past intuitions. Nietzsche thus believes that ontological concepts are 'abstractions' and 'abstract concepts'. He does not clarify his opinion. He does not analyse the abstraction itself. He merely asserts it. Philosophical concepts appear to him to be 'the final vapour of a condensing reality'40, that is a trace and a postscript. Concepts such as 'being' are for him utmost abstractions and manifold copies of reality. Contrary to the metaphysical method one should commence with the senses, the concrete presence, the changing reality and with intuition not with the concept. In Nietzsche's view, metaphysics is the inverted world and it is even proud of
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it. It relies on 'highest' and at the same time necessarily obscure concepts such as 'being, the infinite, the Good, the true, the perfect'. Nietzsche refers here critically to a number of transcendental concepts which conceptualize the highest universals transcending abstractions of any kind. However, yet again he fails to reflect on the quality of this transcendental universality itself. He neglects the fundamental difference between concepts derived through abstraction and concepts which we rely on in order to experience a concrete, empirically given thing and subject it to abstractions. However, this refutation of Nietzsche's critique does not completely hit the mark. Nietzsche attempts to attack metaphysics with unsatisfactory means, to be sure. He interprets it frequently inadequately but his attack does find a target of sorts. He objects to the foundations of metaphysics and to its dual structure as the question of being as such and as the search for the highest being or for God. While the reasons for his objections are frequently not valid, however, his struggle against metaphysics is often more serious than the stated reasons suggest. He inverts metaphysics and he inverts the traditionally conceived relationship between becoming and being, between sensual and conceptual, between empirical world of appearance and the conceptual, that is the intelligibly accessible 'true world'. He turns metaphysics on its head. However, he only refers, as it were, to his intention to do so. He does not just avoid the concrete critical analysis but, more importantly, he lacks the language for its destruction. He cannot express his true intentions because language itself is metaphysical. It has in his own words a 'crude and fetishistic nature'41 since it determines act and activity, substance, causality, will and being. Language contains an ontological conception. This means for Nietzsche that it is rilled with fiction and with grammatical concepts that have become misinterpreted as entities. He states: Indeed, nothing so far has had a more naive power of persuasion than the error of being as it was for example articulated by the Eleatics. It is supported by every word itself, by every sentence itself which we speak! ... 'Reason' within language: O, what a deceptive old woman! I fear we are not going to get rid of God, because we still believe in His grammar.42 The decisive aspect of traditional philosophy is for Nietzsche the much-varied appearance of the difference between 'true' and 'apparent' world. What is this peculiar difference between being and appearance? This difference contains a dichotomy within the being of beings and between authentic and unauthentic forms of existence. 'Being' divides itself into true, authentic and untrue, unauthentic being or into 'essence' and 'appearance'. This means that being does not exist in any unqualified sense but distinguishes itself by grades and steps. It distinguishes itself according to an ontological rank order. And any rank
The ontological idea and the moral ideal
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is relative to its distance from the highest ranking with the highest being commonly called the 'Absolute' or 'God'. The being of the highest ontological value is the 'Good', the Agathon or the Bonum. Being is itself differently conceived depending on its relationship to the highest-ranking Bonum. Depending on this relativity it is itself a Bonum. Omne ens est bonum. Nietzsche does not only object to the Christian understanding of this proposition, he also objects to the ontological conception of a ranked structure of being. He intends to unhinge metaphysics by refuting the ontological dualism of a real and an apparent world implied by the ens qua bonum that is the fundamental error of metaphysics. There is no other world than our concrete, spatio-temporally apparent world. The 'otherworld' of an intelligible, immovable and a-temporal being is an invention or a mere theoretical construct. However, metaphysics always judges this world in relation to a transcendental world. Nietzsche objects to this devaluation with his idea of a revaluation of the values. Approaching the question of being through the question of value he nevertheless does not leave the path of an identification of ens with bonum.
4. THE ONTOLOGICAL IDEA AND THE MORAL IDEAL

Ever since its beginning philosophy thinks about the ontological difference. It thinks about the being of the many things (the polio) as a being mixed with nothingness and contrasts this with a more essential Being either as physis, as eon, as apeiron or as the idea. In other words, philosophy starts with the destruction of a common understanding which only knows the alternatives of being and non-being and excludes the concept of being from any gradation. Ever since the days of Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato the essential thinking has been directed against the indifference of the human ontological understanding for which all existence of being 'amounts to the same'. Since then being has been conceived within the horizon of a rank order and being and nothingness have been intermingled. More accurately, a more authentic being free from non-being and an unauthentic being that accommodates non-being have been conceived. The origin of western philosophy is grounded in the ontological difference between authentic and unauthentic being. This difference creates the problem of ontology and the realm of its questions. Wherever philosophy commences this occurs by opening an inner difference within the beingness of being itself. Philosophy is the acute and explicit challenge to the indifference of human ontological understanding. To put it more simply, from the beginning philosophy exposes the ontological problem through a question about the one, the whole and indivisible
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'real-being' free of any non-being. This provides it with the measure for any determination of ontological value. At the same time it exposes the ontological problem through the question of the ontological mode of unauthentic being, of the manifold of the many, individuated and spatio-temporally dispersed things. The dimension of the question is the connection between the one and the many or between the Hen and the Polla. The primordial one is regarded as true. The many finite things are regarded as unauthentic while providing at the same time the basic distinction between infinite and finite. A philosophy which no longer identifies all modes of being and which is conceived as an awakening from the indifference of existence transcends the value of the individual, limited and finite being through reflection and reaches beyond the realm of the sensually given. We never encounter the whole, the one and true 'Being' as simply present at hand. We do not encounter it as an 'object', as a finite thing with a firm shape, with a structure and with an appearance. We do encounter things, limited by their shape, by their spatial form and by their temporal duration. The realm of the concrete things is indefinite. These are constantly changing and moving, they increase and decrease and are generated and decay. However, the dimensions in which they change and move, the dimensions of space and time are not themselves generated and do not themselves decay. The 'earth' which supports all things and from which all things are made does not decay, provided we do not interpret this to refer to the little planet on which we keep ourselves busy but as the one closed ground from which all things come into being and into appearance. And the heaven, the light too, which provides the form to all things. It is not generated and it does not decay provided we do not conceive it short-sightedly as the day following the night. What is the one, the essence, what is 'Being'? Is it physis, the opposing unity of revelation and concealment, of heaven and earth or with one word: the realm-giving, timegiving, existing world or Being itself which contains 'becoming' within itself? Or does true Being exist beyond the world as an other-world of eternal things of which the concrete finite things are only appearances? It is difficult and beyond our scope to establish how the original interpretation of western philosophy conceives the essence of Being (as apeiron in Anaximander, as physis in Heraclitus, as eon in Parmenides) and how this conception of the cosmos changes in Plato into an absolute concept with one aspect, namely that of light which lends all things their appearance and moulds them into the definition of a form. Plato calls the defining power of light, its power to provide the appearance and the image itself appearance and image, that is Eidos and idea. The ideas pervade the world. They are the defining powers of any revelation and they shape all individuated, finite and limited being. They are present throughout any formation and yet separate from that which they form. All ideas are united and joined in the idea of the 'Good' or the Agathon. They are united
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like the rays of light in the sun. The ideas are true being for Plato. They are the ontos on whereas the definite things of appearance are only the unauthentic mean. The reason for the difficulty and ambiguity of Platonic ontology is its interpretation of the relationship of the appearances to the ideas and that of the spatial matter (chord) or of the 'earth' to the power of the idea. Either relationship is interpreted through a relationship between authentic and unauthentic being. Being equals light is a basic Platonic equation. This is a decision of worldhistorical importance. It is possible that Nietzsche saw this beginning of a wrong track or perhaps he suspected it only. In the final analysis, his anti-Platonism has to be understood more radically than he himself expressed. It is precisely not a critique of Plato, which makes him the founding father of a moralistic interpretation of being, but it is the beginning of a dissolution of an original cosmological conception. To state it in the form of a thesis: Plato changes the primordial cosmological difference between a one, whole and real world and the many finite, apparently real things in this world into a difference between infinite, eternal, supersensual ideas beyond space and time or universals and the finite, individual things within time and space. At the same time the common view of a Platonic dualism in the sense of a two world theory (which Nietzsche himself had fallen prey to frequently) is not tenable. It is the task of an interpretation of Plato to understand the metamorphosis of the cosmological problem through \h&para-ousia of the ideas within the things of appearance, that is in the methexsis or the participation of the ideas in the individual things. Plato's philosophy is more complex, mysterious and profound than common interpretations suggest which continue to refer to a Platonic dualism. These construct a schema of two complementary, yet separate ontological realms: the realm of the ideas and the realm of the appearances. This schema already prevents an understanding of the Platonic issues. The idea is seen to be some kind of object - to be sure, not as stable as the appearances. They do not become or decay and they do not exist within space and time. Ordinary Platonism, which already existed during antiquity, thus locates the difference between authentic and unauthentic being in the realm of the things, that is in the ontic realm. Thus the standard of being becomes finally something 'absolute', divine - a theion. It provides the measure for everything. A second, real world emerges beyond the world of appearance. Beyond the physical world arises the metaphysical world. Beyond the finite things we find an infinite God. The original ontological difference between authentic and unauthentic being becomes a 'theological difference', a difference between created things and the creating God. The original conception of the cosmos changes into something existent, into God with the supposed attributes of infinity, omnipotence, etc., attributes which articulate the ontology of the world
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directly. The 'authentic', the 'existing being' becomes a highest being or a summum ens. This is an ens and also the summum. It is supposed to be the Good itself in relation to which all things achieve their measure. Through it all things are one separate bonum. Nietzsche particularly objects to the connection between the ontological idea and the moral ideal in the term of 'God'. God stands for the devaluation of concrete existence and of the sensual evidence of the things. At the same time it stands for a rejection of pleasurable and instinctive life as 'evil' and posits an Absolute in the form of a fanciful, imagined and merely abstract a-temporal being. This robs the temporal things of their real existence and authentic being. God thus refers for Nietzsche not primarily to a religious power but to a particular ontology which articulates itself as a particular and life-threatening morality. The thought of God is a vampire of life. It refers to a moralizing ontology and to an ontological morality. The infinite, the unmoved and the ideas are also the Good. The attention to the ideas, the elevation above the sensual and the contemplation of the ideas is the true human morality; the more abstract and intelligible, the more moral. Nietzsche's view is terrifyingly simplistic. He nevertheless is one of the first to see a fundamental issue here. His critique of Plato does not really apply to the historical Plato but to a particular aspect of western history, rather more to the common traditional interpretations of Plato, to certain aspects of NeoPlatonism, of the Gnosis and of Christianity. The idea of a true world, the idea of the reality of the divine Absolute is for him the most dangerous threat to humanity. It presents a fateful renunciation of reality which occurs in the name of truth. The desire for truth thus becomes a terrifying human deception. It misleads more than the naive reliance on the senses. One may say that Nietzsche's ontology intends to invert traditional ontology or at least the ontology which conceives the real existence as a-temporal, unchanging being and all temporal being as unauthentic. At first sight it seems that he opposes the real, changing things to the intelligible ideas, becoming to being, the concrete to the universal and the 'body' to the 'spirit' - all this within an inverted ontological and also moral valuation. Nietzsche opposes 'God', that is, the difference between authentic and unauthentic, and promotes the indifference of existence or the equality of value which is no longer unsettled by a merely imagined difference, as it were a second and profoundly justified naivety and innocence of life. The philosophical invention of a 'true world' (and with it that of an apparent one) has to be abolished. The interpretation of the concrete world as a mere appearance has to be removed. It has to be cleaned from the fungus of the sick minds and sick bodies which infects it. The goal of the revaluation of all values is to liberate being itself
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from moral ontology and ontological morality. The abolition of the ontological difference of authentic and unauthentic or of'true world' and apparent world is, as he states, the 'climax of humanity' and the 'noon, the moment of the shortest shadow, the end of the longest error'.43 The parable of the 'shortest shadow' is revealing. This contains a reference to the Platonic interpretation of sensual things that are generated and decay as a 'shadow' of the 'idea' or as an image of the eternal idea. This is a reference to the allegory of the cave in the seventh book of The Republic. However, Nietzsche does not refer to a disappearance of the shadow but to the shortest shadow. Does this not mean that he opposes the great division of the idea and the sensual thing but retains a trace of this division nevertheless while locating it in a completely different context? This is the central issue of any interpretation of Nietzsche. Does Nietzsche indeed deny the above ontological difference as such or does he retain it in a new yet extremely ancient way? Nietzsche opposes the theological form of the ontological difference and attempts to conceive it cosmologically. He does not simply stop with the contrast to the allegedly 'true world', with the senses, the things, the coming and going of things and their changes, with the individual, spatially and temporally limited things. He does not make the realm of the finite things absolute but he inquires in a new way into their depth in interpreting the change of all finite being as the will to power and temporality itself as the eternal return of the same. Will to power and eternal return are not just simply present but are only revealed by a radical thinking transcending the appearances. However, something like the will to power and the eternal return do not reside in a transcendental realm. It is no essence distinguished from appearance or beyond appearance but it is the existing essence of that which is concrete, finite and transitory. In these fundamental thoughts, Nietzsche does not reflect about an 'other-world' but about the existence of the world itself and about the great process of generation and destruction, of dawn, decline and return which creates all risks and brings all things into play. His thinking is also speculative. However, the speculation follows a different path than the reflection of metaphysics which posits an authentic, true and real existence beyond nature (physis). Metaphysically conceived being is exactly what Nietzsche opposes in the concept of'God'. The abolition of transcendence is the active consequence of the death of God. The death of God can accordingly become the dawn of the earth as in Zamthustra. We must understand that Nietzsche attacks a form of ontology when he refers to God and that the passion of his dispute with Christianity is not fuelled by a soul which refuses itself to God out of hatred against God but by a changed ontological conception. We must understand that he does not oppose the 'God of Abram and Jacob' but the 'God of the philosophers'. Even where he attacks the Jewish God and Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, with
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utmost vehemence, this attack is aimed at a moral ontology or an ontological morality. The Twilight of the Idols reveals his conceptual weapon of equating God with the transcendental world of true being in principle. He condenses his 'new insight' into four points on which he places greatest importance: 1. The reasons why this world is considered to be apparent are rather the reasons for its reality. It is absolutely impossible to prove a different reality. 2. The characteristics which have been assigned to 'true being' are the characteristics of nothingness, of the nothing, - one has constructed the true world in contradiction to the real world: An apparent world indeed in so far as it is only a moral-optic illusion. 3. To babble about 'another' world than this one does not make any sense, provided that we are not subject to an instinct of insult, diminution and suspicion of life. In the latter case we take revenge on life with a fiction of 'another', 'better' life. 4. To separate the world into a 'true' and an 'apparent' one, be it in the manner of Christianity or in the manner of Kant (a cunning Christian after all) is merely a trick of decadence - a symptom of declining life . . . Nietzsche believes that his original intention is directed towards an inversion of traditional ontology and values. What had been considered to be an appearance is truly real, namely the sensual, the temporal and the things in the flux of becoming. What had been so far considered to be truly existing, that is the atemporal, eternal and pure being is merely a thing of the mind and nothing else. However, in this inversion he uses the difference that he opposes. Whatever is concrete is authentic and whatever is metaphysical is merely an appearance or a mere illusion. In using this difference which he wishes to sublate to achieve the very sublation of the difference itself he indicates that this difference may after all make some sense which is not affected by the inversion. And Nietzsche refers immediately to a justifiable difference of this kind in the artist. He attributes a higher value to semblance. But the semblance which is created by the artist and which he worships as the divine power of the beautiful is no transcendental world and no image which abstracts the concrete existence from nature like a vampire but the contrary. 'Because semblance refers to reality anew, only in a selection, emphasis or correction; the tragic artist is no pessimist, - he affirms all questionable and terrifying things, he is Dionysian.'44 This reference to the artist is not incidental. It is a crucial hint. The appearance of the artist is different and more real than the appearance of a pure, conceptual thinking. The appearance of art transfigures life itself. Nietzsche refers explicitly to the tragic artist; however, the naive artist remains trapped in his Apollonian world of dreams and the tragic one breaks through all the appearances to the dreadful
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truth which requires illusion as a form of consolation. Already in Nietzsche's first work, tragic art was an instrument of philosophy. Does tragic, Dionysian art not require a tragic, Dionysian wisdom which renews the distinction between being and appearance and yet does not deny and renounce the earth? The turn of reflection towards the will to power and the eternal return breaks through the surface of the phenomena to a depth of a tough philosophy without illusions. This philosophy remains open to the terrifying beauty and to the mysterious ambiguity of all existence. It endures the death of God and probes all cherished beliefs and truths and all idols of tradition with a hammer. It is not afraid of the 'famous hollow sound' and it is not discouraged. It rather understands the 'twilight of the idols' as a historical human task. Nietzsche only indicates aspects of the history of the longest error. Nowhere does he destroy the traditional ontological conception. His attacks on Plato, Kant and others are all combined judgements which formulate objectives but do not truly prove them. On the whole Nietzsche deals with terrible simplifications about Plato and Kant. Yet, his critique is not countered if one attacks the vagueness and obscurity of his generalizing conceptions. Nietzsche's thoughts are always (and this is their fundamental validity) deeper and more profound than his arguments, proofs and his evidence. He senses a new dimension but he is unable to explicate it adequately. Even his main posthumous work which he had frequently announced as the 'most independent book of mankind', The Will to Power, does not achieve a systematic development of his thoughts. Nietzsche admits that he despises the system. He believes that it entails a massive rearrangement of and change to the subject matter itself, presenting it with a violating schema. The systematic person is either infinitely naive or dishonest according to Nietzsche. 'He pretends to be more stupid than he is.'45 Nietzsche does not have a genuine relationship with systematicity. He is rather committed to the proposition that the enigmatic character of reality cannot be captured in a system and that life is always more puzzling, perplexing, ambiguous and mysterious than any human would know. Not only is truth a woman who will hardly be conquered by the clumsy attempts of a philosopher but life itself is a mysterious, unfathomable and unconceivable woman. Nietzsche made a number of sketches of The Will to Power. The editors have finally selected a sketch of 1887 and have ordered the aphorisms accordingly. The book available to us today is thus no longer Nietzsche's book but an edited version following mere sketches. This shows itself in many ways. The aphorisms are not as polished as usual. They do not have the concise and precise character of the later writings. The book does not have a particular pace and no individual style. Its structure contains again Nietzsche's four basic thoughts but the sections are less clear. The edited version of the work falls into four books. The first
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two deal with the death of God, the third with the will to power and the fourth with the overman and the eternal return. However, why does Nietzsche dedicate two books to the death of God? Is this not a unified subject? The idea takes on a peculiar character. The death of God is a double-headed event. It is an event which has occurred and one which still presents us with future tasks. We are in a peculiar situation. Nietzsche interprets modern man as an end. He is the end of the spiritual and moral development of the last two thousand years, the end of metaphysical philosophy and Christianity and the end of a system of values. Why should the end of this path become visible only now? Who has stopped man in his tracks? Nietzsche's answer is as follows: the 'eeriest of all guests'46, 'European nihilism' which already throws a dark shadow across man's path to arrest his foot and stop him in his tracks. Nihilism is on the rise; we live in its advent. What, however, is nihilism? "That the highest values are devalued. The aim is absent, there is no answer to a why?'47 Human existence has become aimless. It has no stars that guide its path. The 'starry heaven' of the moral ideals is extinguished. God is dead for us, that is the moral and ontological interpretation of being in the tradition of western metaphysics has lost its commitment for us. We are no longer supported; we are suspended without foundation above empty space. However, this is no event that has burst in on man vehemently, suddenly or inexplicably. It is rather the result of a long rule of natural morality and otherworldly metaphysics. The coming nihilism refers to the process of self-annihilation of Christian morality and to the self-destruction of the distinction between transcendental, true world and apparent, concrete world. 'However, among the powers reared by morality there was truthfulness. This finally turns against morality.'48 Nietzsche's basic belief here is that traditional morality was not finished by an arbitrary event or by a new living impulse but came to an end historically while it completed its original destiny. History brings the hidden seed of selfdestruction, hidden from the beginning in the moralistic interpretation of the world, to light. It sublates itself. It is already from the start nihilistic, albeit in a concealed manner. However, history must run its course. Morality poisons itself. Metaphysical ontology completes itself historically. We find ourselves within the final phase, within diis eschatology of metaphysics and in the midst of the death of God. In the problem of nihilism Nietzsche identifies our historical situation, our fate and evil inheritance. In the second book, Critique of the highest values so far, Nietzsche becomes active as a thinker. He understands his own task to be the active completion of the death of God, to be the audacity to eliminate the conception of God (in the way in which he sees it moral-ontologically) and to deal the dying God the final blow according to Zarathustra's instruction: 'whatever falls should even be pushed'. The death of God is firstly a historic interpretation of the condition of
The Will to Power. The problem of nihilism
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modern man who faces the advent of nihilism and further a radical critique of religion, morality and philosophy in the age of metaphysics. This very critique attempts to finish the drama of the death of God to open the view towards something new, dreadful and terrifyingly beautiful, towards a tragic view of the world.
5. THE POSTHUMOUS WORK THE WILL TO POWER. THE PROBLEM OF NIHILISM

Nietzsche's greatness as a thinker is based on his diversion from a path which has guided western thinking for many centuries. His path leads into unchartered territory, however, not as an adventure and not because he finds pleasure in what is new and outrageous. It does not occur out of crazy vanity like Herostratus who burnt down the temple of Diana in Ephesus to gain fame. He does not burn down a holy temple, the house of morality and the citadel of ontological thinking. Nietzsche himself believed to have acted in conformity with fate, that is, out of historical necessity. Whatever is necessary is always also that which changes the need and it is the turning point of need. Nietzsche experiences the need of the times as an end-time. These are times in which the impulses of life which have directed western history for more than two thousand years and have manifested themselves in the philosophy, namely Christian religion and morality, are coming to an end. Such an 'ending' process is no vital process that one could simply understand with ready-made categories. In some respects we are familiar with the transition of 'world-views' and 'habits'. It seems that we are familiar with such 'cultural-historic changes'. We can refer to many 'changes of the spirit of the times' and to many a decline in the history of culture or in ethnology. We possess much material about changes to the Babylonian and Egyptian culture. We know about the decline of many an Inca culture. The world is a field of cultural ruins and a wonderful treasure trove for scientific excavations. There are yet many fragments in its ancient ground and much blood that was spilled to honour Gods who have long gone. We know the phenomenon of a sudden invasion of a new spirit of life into history, the emergence of original impulses - and also their slow and sudden disappearance. We know about the fresh innocence, the maturity, the age and the decline of cultures. And in particular, since we are historically 'educated' and possess a rich museum of 'preserved human goods', we are able to look upon our own culture from the point of view of a museum. However, there is a definite question whether we actually experience its fate within this view. We do not experience how God dies if we turn away and look towards other people and strange times and acknowledge a twilight of the Gods there or a
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death of Gods in whom we do not believe. We do not understand how our God dies even if we search through the entire department of dead Gods in our museum. Nietzsche's concept of the death of God must not be trivialized. His interpretation of our end-time should not be understood with the help of a museum-schema. The death of God becomes a dual subject in the posthumous work The Witt to Power. Firstly, it is the event of the self-devaluation of religion, morality and metaphysics. Nietzsche calls this the arrival of nihilism. Secondly, it is the active and explicit revaluation, the 'critique of all highest values to date'. The arrival of nihilism is - even for Nietzsche himself - an uncanny matter. Everything that elevated man beyond himself, everything he cherished and worshipped with his inner soul and everything that made him human at all and distinguished him from the animals and mere animality - every star which has illuminated the landscape of his life for over 20 centuries - suddenly reveals a dark backside and exposes an uncanny and frightening foundation. The wine of life becomes poisoned by bitter yeast. It is most important that Nietzsche does not regard the nihilistic devaluation of traditional values as a consequence of an opposing spirit of life but as a consequence of the values themselves. Nihilism is hidden within them. It is their hidden dowry from the beginning. Values are first and foremost programmes of life. They are inventions to which life commits itself, which inform its aims and according to which it designs its own mission. Values are historical extensions into the future; they are the human paths. Nietzsche believes that a total set of values is a programme of life or one attempt to live. Such a programme is not necessarily transparent to itself. It has to assert itself in order to gain transparency. The frightening part about the traditional values is that they destroy themselves in their historic mission. Truthfulness, nourished by Christian morality, turns itself against this very morality. The latter destroys itself. At first, values are concealed and obscure in their direction. Only the historical realization develops their hidden aims. Thus a morality can appear for a long time to aim to realize the higher form of life such as a life of modesty, brotherly love or purity. It thus saves many lives who would have perished under the tougher conditions of a warrior-like morality. However, this salvation of the weak, tender and gentle lives and this opposition of strong lives is in reality an attack on life itself. What appears to be supporting life becomes a denial of life through the dominance of the poverty of life. Nihilism is already present within Christianity, Nietzsche maintains. It does not only come into existence once Christianity and its values have lost their validity. Christianity, traditional morality and metaphysical philosophy are 'nihilistic tendencies'. They are directions of life towards 'non-being' even where they conceal this 'non-being' for a long time as the summum ens or as God. We live in an end-time because all traditional values 'arrive at their final conclusions'. The hidden
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directions have come to the surface after being at work within these values for a long time. Perhaps this is in general the end of any historical epoch if the mystery sustaining life overtakes life and becomes fully conscious of itself. For Hegel too, the history of the spirit is finished when it owns itself, when the differences between being as such and being for itself have disappeared and when it has achieved being itself and being for itself. Morality reveals its mysterious intentions because it draws conclusions from its entire past: its path is a path leading nowhere. God was the mask of nonbeing. Nietzsche's moral interpretation of God and of the metaphysical 'otherworld' allows him to speak of an unmasking of God, that is, of the hidden 'nihil' in the summum ens. However, even the cosmological concepts such as 'purpose' and 'unity' of the cosmic history, that is, the metaphysical conception which understands becoming through finding a meaning or an aim of its history lead to nihilism. Nietzsche distinguishes three psychological kinds: firstly, desperation as the outcome of the futile endeavours to discover the meaning or the final aim of becoming. Then, the shock that it is impossible to discover a kind of rule and a structural unity of the whole and to understand the structure of the cosmos and man's position within it. Thirdly, nihilism is also the feeling to be exposed to an unfathomable, puzzling world without knowledge of where we are going and whence we came. It is the paralysing feeling of an utmost homelessness and of a stifling lack of answers within an impenetrable situation in which we find ourselves like Oedipus who killed the father and entered the bed of the mother. If the tragic knowledge of the human Oedipus-condition is experienced and if this experience is cast into a negative form of a failure of a unified conception of the world which understands the role of man through the overall context, then it turns into a nihilistic renunciation: nothing has any meaning any more if the human position in the cosmos is unknowable. And similarly discouraging is the insight into the untenable, metaphysically conceived 'true world': ' From this point of view the reality of becoming is admissible as the only reality. Any secret passage to the other world and to the false divinities is forbidden however, this world is not bearable although one does not wish to deny it.'49 This means that while nihilism is a new insight it still depends on old values. Since the transcendental world, which had hitherto been the focus of all value, is no longer, it appears to be a 'worthless' residue. Nihilism is thus essentially a transitional state or a bridge. It is overcome if the here and now are seen as a godless and godforsaken world following the death of God and if this godless world starts to reflect the light of a new ontological experience. Nihilism is a new pathological transition, that is, a transitional age in which one age comes to an end and a new one emerges. It is pathological because it carries with it the change of the human existence which appears to be a great sickness. Man judges in so far as he is human. Judgement is not a behaviour of choice which is
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exercised here and there. Man exists as a human being within a realm of values; man's existence is judgement. Man already occupies a fundamental position. Human life is guided by ideals even though we usually fall short of these in daily life. And if that valuing behaviour is transformed in its entirety so that nothing counts and nothing matters or if everything appears to be meaningless and worthless, then life becomes abnormal. It has become pathological. Strictly speaking, we do not cease to judge but we judge according to an uncanny standard: the leading value is 'nothing'. Nietzsche distinguishes many kinds of nihilism that do not simply coexist but present different stages in the transition from a past interpretation of existence to the new and tragic experience of the world that Nietzsche intends to proclaim. Pessimism is in this understanding for example a precursor to nihilism. However, Nietzsche distinguishes here again between a pessimism of weakness on the one hand and a pessimism of strength on the other. The former accuses life since life is cruel, excessive and loves becoming thus connecting love and death. The latter does not admit the idealization of life or euphemisms but confronts the abyss of life yet nevertheless affirms it and human fate. Nietzsche calls an extreme nihilism the view that 'there is no truth, there is no absolute constitution of the things, no thing as such. It posits the value of things precisely in denying a reality to these values. They are merely symptoms of the power of those who posit the value, a simplification to assist life.'50 Here Nietzsche refers even to his doctrine of the transcendental invention of values as nihilism. The transcendence of values is a fantasy; it is nothing. And he refers suddenly to the death of God, that is, to the denial of a metaphysically conceived true world as a 'divine mode of thought'. The nihilistic mode of thought is divine, not because it belongs to God but because it belongs to a humanity that has liberated itself from the burden of servitude to the Gods and has gained itself a kind of divine status. This type of nihilism is the opposite of the decline of life which Nietzsche terms decadence. He says about this nihilism: If we are disappointed we are not so in regard to life, but because our eyes have been opened to the 'desirables' of all kinds. We attend to the 'ideal' with mocking fury. We simply despise ourselves only because we are unable to suppress the absurd desire called 'idealism' at any time.51 The problem of nihilism is without doubt regarded only 'morally' in this work. Nihilism is the devaluation of all traditional, higher values. This draws a final conclusion from the traditional values themselves. The hidden, secret values, the secret intuitions of morality and metaphysics and religion have been brought to light and have lead to an end of this history of value. On the other hand nihilism already announces a new view, which, however, does not yet have
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confidence in itself. Nihilism is a sign of decadence and of a decline of life more precisely, it shows up a long and venerable tradition as decadence. It erupts if the hollowness of the doctrine of the established Gods is recognized. However, it casts an immense shadow on all traditional ideals when a new sun rises on the distant horizon. Nihilism is thus the interim period where end and beginning are locked together or the time of need where old stars have faded and new ones are not yet visible. This interim time is our time. Nietzsche always views it as an ambivalent time of decline and assent. It is a time of change and need and a time when change is needed. Nietzsche believes that this interim time has four large periods. In the first period we may experience the devaluation of traditional values. The power of religion, morality and metaphysics diminishes and serious men attempt to resist change and to revive religion and Christianity with new impulses. However, such attempts to preserve the great ideals of the pious, the good and the wise are made in the 'modern' spirit. One attempts to reconcile contradictions. Following this time of failed attempts to rescue western civilisation a 'period of clarity' occurs. One 'understands that old and new are fundamental opposites; The old values are born from decline, new values from emerging life'.52 One knows about the irreconcilable contrast but has not yet found a new path. According to Nietzsche the next period is characterized by the three great affects of contempt, pity and destruction. Man attacks himself. And finally, the time of the catastrophe. Nihilism leads to a disaster turning mankind around through a new doctrine which gains power over man: this doctrine is the doctrine of the eternal return. Nietzsche believes that the power of this doctrine is the heart of history. This means that the time in which he proclaims his own doctrine is not the 'heart' but the future time in which this doctrine comes to power, when it rules man, when it 'selects' because only the strongest characters can stand up - and are up to this doctrine. He believes in the future power of philosophy. He sees himself as a fate and as a historical necessity. He believes to stand outside all chance and accidental individuality. Human history changes with Friedrich Nietzsche. However his own grandeur does not achieve this. He merely fulfils what has been prepared in European nihilism, namely the disappearance of the meaning of life and the devaluation of the traditionally highest values. He is able to see the decadence of the modern world so clearly because he experiences it himself, because he is decadent himself and has converted to its opposite, because he endured nihilism and lived ahead of his time like the first-born who is sacrificed. The Will to Power provides an essential new aspect of the importance attributed here to the problem of nihilism. In truth, this contains Nietzsche's entire philosophy of history. The substantial determinations of nihilism are not the only important aspects accompanied by insights into the historicity of mankind
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and being which is understood here as value. It is clearly visible in Nietzsche's interpretation of nihilism as a consequence of the traditional value-judgement of human existence that temporal human existence has the ontological modality of a 'history'. This is no string of sequential events but the completion of a projection into the future. The consequence is eschatological. Nihilism is contained from the start within metaphysical philosophy, within Christian morality and religion. It remains concealed for long and emerges as the 'mystery' of the combined powers of history whenever the process of self-empowerment and selfrealization of life concludes. Following the general characterization of nihilism and a sketch of its many possibilities Nietzsche proceeds towards an interpretation of the last centuries. He analyses the modern darkness and points to the ambivalent characteristics of our time. Precisely because he lives in an 'intermediate time', in a transitional period, all forms and all kinds of life and all attitudes to life possess a profound ambivalence. One cannot simply view them as symptoms. The sophisticated intuition of the psychologist too no longer has a straightforward expression for the symptoms of modern life. Everything is ambiguous and ambivalent. It can be a sign of decline and decadence but it also can be a sign of a new life and of a strengthening life. It seems to me that Nietzsche gains a deep insight with this that points to a limitation within his sophistical psychology as well, at least from afar. This psychology pretends to understand the language of the symptoms with certainty. The ambivalent character of our modern world - just the identical symptoms can imply decline and strength. And the symptoms of strength, of accomplished maturity can be misunderstood as a weakness on account of a conventional (residual) devaluation of sentiment. In brief, the sentiment for value is out of touch with the times.53 The modern world is ambivalent because it is both decadent and at the same time a new period of growth. It is the end of an era and a first dawn of a new age. Nietzsche tackles a grand vision within the concept of nihilism. He attempts to conceive the death of God as a consequence of precisely the history that created God, that is, the cosmology of the moral metaphysics and the metaphysical morality. In his view and his premonition of the coming nihilism Nietzsche understands his historical situation and attempts a historical philosophy of cosmic dimensions. The second book of the posthumous work also deals with the death of God with the difference that this is understood as a human challenge. Man is supposed to achieve his true potential. He must become explicitly and intentionally the assassin of the Gods. He must become a destroyer of the moral and meta-
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physical beyond and he must sublate the theologically conceived difference between essence and appearance or between being and appearance. The murder of God liberates man by uncovering the creative powers of human existence. The radical critique of religion, morality and philosophy that are ways of human self-alienation, self-denial and self-forgetting constitutes a human apology on account of the destruction of these attitudes. The human justification takes the place of a theodicy. Man requires a justification by the thinker because he created the Gods and submitted himself to the servitude of his own inventions. The fundamental meaning of his critique and of the highest values so far is expressed by Nietzsche in a beautiful and clear way in the foreword to his critique of religion: I intend to demand back all the beauty and sublimity which we have given to the real and invented things as the human property and product, as man's most beautiful apology. Man as a thinker, as a poet, as a God, as love, as power - O, this royal generosity with which he has graced the things in order to impoverish himself and to make himself feel miserable. This was his greatest selflessness so far, that he admired and worshipped and hid himself, that it was him who created that which he admires.54 Man is that being which remains ignorant of itself and who conceals his creativity in order to worship the products of his hands, his hearts and his thoughts. The apology of man, however, is Nietzsche's central thought which clarifies the inversion of the metaphysical modes of thought. Within metaphysics the human rank is ascertained through the relation towards the highest being, be it the Absolute or more concretely God. Man is a finite, limited and determined being which does not only require justification in so far as it has the freedom to turn against God and which can choose evil but also in so far as it itself exists at all. It is existentially carried by the Absolute. The finite human existence refers to the infinite divine existence. God - the source of all Being and all value and the possibility of evil as the possibility of a free decision even against God - requires a cognitive justification, that is a theodicy. Nietzsche inverts this conceptual motif. He does not, however, turn man into the essential or the highest being. He does not ignore human finitude, but he conceives the human essence through his creativity and through his finite creativity. The more creative man is and the more original he is as a thinker, poet, artist and creator of values, the higher is his rank among human beings. Nietzsche does not know a rank order among the things and no accumulation of things towards a highest thing or a transcendent being. There is no ontological dimension which would be genuinely 'more existing' than another. Because anything that we usually address as existing and that metaphysics conceives basically in its basic design as the
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structure of substance - all this does in truth not exist for Nietzsche. The things are only fictions or only illusions behind which there is a specific quantity of power and force. Flooding life that permeates the will to power, the unsteady and always changing life is the only reality whereas all finite and limited things are only fictions. It is for this reason that Nietzsche believes that all things are similar. None are more existent than any other. There is no rank order of the things as such but only a rank order in the human realm according to the creative power which asserts itself in a particular person or people. Perhaps Nietzsche takes up the issue of rank order within the human context with such a passion because he abandons the ontological rank order? Whatever Nietzsche believes to be the 'apology of man' in detail, it is the return to a planning existence and the return from an attitude of value or from transcendental values to a creation of values. In such a return to a forgotten and concealed creativity man comes to himself and conquers the most essential aspect of his existence. If he recognizes himself as the creator of his values he has gained the possibility to explicitly set new values and to embark on a new design of value. In regard to the substance of the critique there appears to be hardly any new aspects that are not already contained in the late writings. We encounter here too a fundamental reinterpretation of religion and philosophy according to principles of morality. One has frequently the impression that the editors included in these passages some fragments that were substantially already contained in The Antichrist, in The Twilight of the Idols and in Ecce Homo. There are occasionally some wonderful remarks which throw new light on known thoughts. Nietzsche's critique of morality is a critique of Christian morality. The critique of philosophy is essentially a polemic critique of the moral denial of the world through metaphysics. It contains a rather less obvious tendency which, however, appears to be very important. Nietzsche does not only distrust other-worldly metaphysics which is fettered by moral prejudice. He is fundamentally distrustful of philosophizing in general, indeed, he is even suspicious towards his own philosophy in particular. The value of truth has become questionable to him. Why do we need truth? What is the use and disadvantage for our life? Why do we need to illuminate human existence and why do we need clarity and understanding? Why should we not just vegetate in a subconscious happiness, enveloped in the comfort of profound obscurity? Is the will to truth as such not an uncanny, questionable affair? Does the cognitive human being not recognize himself forever in the fate of Oedipus who chooses blindness to no longer witness the terrifying aspects of an uncovered reality? Nietzsche attempts a most extreme form of scepticism. He does not doubt the truth of this or that, he doubts truth itself and as such. He despairs over it and he views it as an uncanny and questionable thing. Perhaps life is in danger if it trusts a 'truth'. Is 'being' conceivable as light or does this imply a one-sided
The negative ontology of the thing
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interpretation? Is the world perhaps 'conceived deeper than the day' as it says in Zarathustra's 'intoxicated song'? Especially in regard to this latter conclusion of philosophy we are not merely dealing with a critique based on a newly discovered truth, we are dealing with a submerged and extreme scepticism against truth itself. Philosophy is for Nietzsche rather a practice of life than a theoretical truth. 'One searches for the image of the world within that philosophy which liberates our spirit most, that is, in which our most powerful instinct is free to act. This will also be the case for me.' This statement about traditional philosophy is already expressed more precisely and more sensitively in The Twilight of the Idols. One even finds there frequently some prototypical expressions. From this aspect the collection of the editors is not terribly successful. Nietzsche's attitude towards philosophy in this book oscillates in a peculiar manner between a contrast of metaphysical and Dionysian philosophy on the one hand and a conflict of philosophy itself (including his own) and the innocent night of life that rejects truth altogether on the other hand. Thus he can state: I understand 'freedom of spirit' very specifically. To be one hundred times more superior to the philosophers and disciples of truth through a strictness against oneself.... I treat all traditional philosophers as despicable libertarians disguised under the hood of the woman of 'truth'.55 And he continues to refer to the three great naiveties that believe that insight is a path to happiness, towards virtue and mastery of life. In all its critical acumen evident here he puts the German philosophy next to the classical one. He places himself next to Hegel. He writes: 'The importance of German philosophy: Hegel to conceive a pantheism in which evil, error and suffering are no argument against divinity.'56 That means, he recognizes in Hegel a kind of Dionysian truth. This is a very profound insight. He also knows and emphasizes that German philosophy is in its greatest manifestations a yearning for the Greek world - like his own philosophy. It is for this reason that he can say: 'What I wish is this: that the true concept of philosophy is not ruined in Germany. There are so many half-beings in Germany who wish to hide their deformity beneath such a noble name.'57
6. THE NEGATIVE ONTOLOGY OF THE THING

The third book of The Will to Power engages with the theme of the work's title. However, even here we do not find a direct ontological analysis that would expose the will to power as an essential characteristic of being. We are not
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invited to participate in a development of the fundamental thought. Nietzsche does not show a path that justifies his fundamental 'truths' of the will to power and the eternal return. This critical thinker who inclines to any form of scepticism displays at the heart of his reflection a peculiar immediacy free of any critical reflection. The will to power is not exposed as a basic character of the phenomena through their investigation. It is presupposed; it forms the basis of a critical and extremely suspicious interpretation of the phenomena. Nietzsche uses the will to power to achieve an ontological interpretation. However, the operating presupposition is justified in no other way than through this 'interpretation'. Is the conception of the will to power more than a hypothesis and more than a heuristic principle which is assessed according to its usefulness to understand a chaotic world with its countless contrasts through a unifying principle? The amoral conception beyond good and evil has the advantage over the moral value interpretations that it can view life with all its contrasts through one basic aspect. The will to power operates perhaps in a disguised form but nevertheless in all appearances and even in the life forms which appear to be its opposite such as the morality of altruism. It is here the will to power of the powerless, of those who have been disadvantaged in life and of those who disguise their resentments. In exposing the hidden enemy and the hidden meaning in all phenomena that appear to contradict superficially the principle of the will to power, Nietzsche achieves a unified interpretation. The danger of such a method has already been pointed out repeatedly. It is most dangerous, not for others but for the thinker himself who uses it. The 'reversal' which 'unmasks' the presupposed aspects of the interpretative foundation and eliminates any contradiction excludes the interpreter in some way from the autonomy of the phenomena. He becomes a prisoner of his method and becomes trapped in it. He is unable to leave his own perspective. The contained perspective, however, is not overcome as is naively believed by an approach of the phenomena without prejudices or by the thinker who observes and describes them in a descriptive phenomenology and lets the 'things speak for themselves'. There are no such 'things as such' nor is there a thinking which faces being without presuppositions. Thinking is no spiritual introspection. Thinking does not face being like the ass faces the haystack. Thinking has already been at work where we find being, things and properties of the things at hand. Things themselves only exist where in some ways the substantiality of the thing is prereflected. Being exists only in the horizon of an ontological conception and interpretation. Our critique of Nietzsche that accuses him of operating with a conception of the will to power without elucidating this fundamental concept implies that we also miss an explicit exposition of this central theoretical aspect in the work which carries its title. Nietzsche is unable to clarify his own intimate ontological
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experience with a corresponding ontological theory that could be achieved in an engagement with the ontology of metaphysics. 'Will to power' and 'eternal return' are his main intentions for which he is not only unable to find refined concepts but which he also does not clearly distinguish from the fundamental principles of metaphysics. Ontology has assumed the shape of a philosophy of value. The will to power is introduced as 'the principle of a new positing of values'. After dealing with nihilism as the experienced devaluation of all values and following a critique of all traditional higher values, that is, after the active destruction of the traditional realm of values, the third book gives us the real revaluation and the new valuation according to the standard of life which is understood in its essence as the will to power. The book falls into the chapters: 'The will to power as cognition', 'The will to power in nature', 'The will to power as society and individual' and 'The will to power as art'. What does this structure imply? Cognition, nature, society, the individual and art? Are these different realms of existence? Nature and the socio-historical realm are obvious fundamental dimensions of reality, but what is the point of including 'cognition' and even 'art' in this structure? This schema of a division into metaphysica generate and metaphysica specialis hides the clarification of traditional metaphysics as it is applied for example in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in a seemingly concealed way. Metaphysica generalis is concerned with being as existing. Metaphysica sepecialis is concerned with being as nature, man and God. 'The will to power as cognition' is not an epistemology as is often assumed. The section contains Nietzsche's negative ontology of the thing. And finally, the section on art is nothing else than his 'theology'. This is a theology without God, that is, without a Christian God and without a creator of the universe. It is a theology that justifies existence as an aesthetic phenomenon and recognizes the wholeness of the world in the appearance of beauty, the art religion of the playing God Dionysos. These are at first simply assertions; however, they are made from the beginning to indicate the fundamental structure of this third book which is the centre of the entire work. The cognition of the will to power commences with the cognition of the will to power within cognition. The will to power is at work in that which we ordinarily call cognition. This does not only mean that the desire to understand is an instinct of power or a drive to possess and conquer but even more that understanding is subject to the determinations of the will to power. To put it differently: what we ordinarily call cognition is not a suitable device to understand the will to power. Such understanding is already itself formed by the will to power. As the forming element the will to power is not grasped itself by that which it forms, namely by 'cognition'. However, how does Nietzsche know this? He only relies on his philosophical intuition which is different from all ontological intuition of any kind. This intuition flows from a receptivity for the
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flow of becoming, for the forming and destroying 'life' and for the force of the will to power. Only the knowledge of tragic wisdom breaks through the structure of power and gains an insight into the power of life. Tragic wisdom becomes critical for all ordinary cognition. What does Nietzsche mean here by 'cognition'? Nothing else than the cognition of being! This is on the one hand an empirical cognition but on the other also an a priori cognition, that is, the essential concept of the categories according to which we think being as one thing, as a separate thing which exists for itself as a substance with properties and as an individual thing with a universal essence. Nietzsche's thesis is this: in truth there are no things, there are no substances, there is no 'being'. There is only the wavering flood of life, only the stream of becoming and the incessant up and down of its waves. Nothing endures, stays and persists and all is in flux. But our cognition forges its reality and changes the flow falsely into the being of enduring things which endure in the change and which persist during the change of their states. The 'thing' or the substance is a fiction. It is a structure created by the will to power which violates the reality. It arrests, forges and grasps becoming and subjects it to the concept. It subsequently forgets this act of violence to the point where it believes to have grasped reality itself in the created concepts of substance and causality. Man believes in the things but none exist. He believes in being, but being is his own creation and his own net of concepts which he casts repeatedly into the stream of becoming. The world is no sum of different and separate things for Nietzsche, which coexist in connection with each other. It does not consist of things at all; it is one single stream of life, one 'sea' in which there are waves but nothing that endures. The appearances obviously contradict this intuition. We see things after all. We distinguish ourselves as a thing from others. In terms of appearance the world is present to us as an infinite manifold of the many things. We do not abstract from the things what they are. Quite the contrary: we always live already in a pre-understanding of objectivity if we record something empirically about the particular things. However, this a priori construct of the things conceived within categories is a forgery and a law made by cognition in order to enable itself to become the cognition of being. This means: at the beginning of cognition is the primordial sin or the lie of the categorical interpretation. True reality is becoming, however not a becoming of something already existent which merely changes in respect of its existence but pure becoming, a constant stream and a perennial dynamic. It is namely 'life' which is present everywhere, in the rocky walls of the mountains as much as in the thundering wild rivers, in the grass of the meadow as much as in the eagle which circles high above, in the stars of the night sky as in the shepherd whose soul is moved by them. What we believe to be things conceals our view of the infinite, indeterminate
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and unlimited whole. The things obscure the world to us. However, we cannot live in the flooding, universal sea of pure becoming. We need to distort reality. Becoming is for us inconceivable. It is that which makes our spirit turn dizzy and drags it into a vortex where it is overcome by a dizziness which announces the world. This distortion is a biological necessity for us. Necessity breeds invention. The need to live in a world in which everything constantly changes, recedes, passes and spins has created the concepts and the categories which make this incomprehensible change comprehensible and fixes it, underpinning the events with a basis. It posits something firm within change such as 'substance' which is, as it were, the lifeline for us and that gains some security and orientation in a predictable world. The categories represent a humanization of the world and they are the anthropocentric interpretation which 'fixes us up' in positing a fixity. The categories do not possess objective validity, they are fictions. The thing is a human invention of the mind - nothing else. Man projects himself into everything. And even then, the conception he has of himself is an error, an illusion which remains obscure to him. He calls himself'I'. The I appears to be a fixed, consistent entity within the changing and subjective set of experiences. However, the I is precisely a fiction according to Nietzsche. It is the paradigm of our illusions, because we apply this I and its supposed fixity to the things. The things are created after our own image. Substances refer to their properties as the I to its actions. The concept of substance is a result of the concept of the ego. Man has projected . . . the will, the spirit, the I from within himself. He firstly took over the concept of being from the concept of the I. He posited the 'things' as existing after his own image, after the image of the I as the cause . . ,58 The deception of the mind is the powerful aspect of cognition. The mind needs to deceive if it wishes to cognize anything at all, that is it needs to determine the predication of the substances. It needs to state about being that it is such and such. The deception is thus a function of the categories used by the mind. Its means of cognition are already faulty. The basic concepts contain the deception, not those things that are understood with the help of these basic concepts. Nietzsche transforms the traditional question of the categories. The basic propositions about being as such are 'exposed as deceptions' or as lies in the extra-moral sense. There is no cognition of the beingness of being which metaphysics aspires to because there are no finite things that might persist in their finitude. Nietzsche does not conceive being as the being of beings but as becoming or as the Dionysian truth of the cosmic interplay of universal production and destruction. One misunderstands the extent of the polemic against the categories
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if one sees it merely as a fictional epistemology. Nietzsche does not progress from a critical analysis of the faculty of cognition arriving at a rejection of the categories in which the thingness of the thing is conceived as substance according to the ideal of the ego. He rather starts with a primordial intuition of his Heraclitean philosophy that relies on becoming as the only truth. Since the categorical concepts cannot grasp becoming, since they arrest it, forge it and base it on something persisting, they are deceptions. He denies finite and individual being with his fundamental conception of being as becoming. Being does not exist because there is no individuation. More precisely, Nietzsche does not deny the phenomenon of individuated being but only its objective significance. What looks like a separate thing is only a wave in the stream of life and temporary quantum and conglomeration of power which only presents a phase in the dynamic of the cosmic interplay. Nietzsche's fictional epistemology which understands the will to power as the deceiving and violating power of the intellect is in its important aspects a negative ontology of things: there are no things. His critique does not target all cognition but only the cognition of being, empirical cognition and particularly a priori cognition, that is the ontological interpretation in accordance with the categories. His intuition or his philosophical vision of becoming is not affected by his critique of cognition. It is rather the presupposition that enables this critique in the first place. In other words, if and only if this intuition is true does this critique of ontic and categorical cognition make sense and have validity. Nietzsche himself does not distinguish clearly enough between the truth of becoming and the truth of being. The former is intuitive and the latter is conceptual. However, this antithesis does not grasp the essence. The truth of becoming is a revelation of the existing cosmos that presents its creative dynamism as the will to power. The truth of being implies a belief in the fictions of substance and Ego. It opens itself towards an inner-worldly existence obscured by 'becoming'. The real distinction is thus not one between any intuition and any concept but between cosmic intuition and the categorical concept. One often criticizes Nietzsche for using a circular argument. He connects cognition on the one hand with an instinct for deception but proclaims on the other hand a new philosophy which is obviously a new form of cognition. He believes that cognition is an expression of the will to power and yet claims cognition of this very will to power itself. This critique misses the point because the cognition of becoming which leads to a critical rejection of all categorical cognition destroying the authenticity of becoming is not itself subject to the criticized concept of cognition. The truth of becoming has a completely different nature than ordinary understanding of truth which is only achieved on the basis of the deceptive, fixed concepts. What we 'ordinarily' call being, the individual things and structures, are for Nietzsche 'illusions'. Illusion, however, is not nothing. It is something real; it is
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the formation of the will to power at work. Ordinarily, we succumb to the deception of this appearance. We even call this very appearance being. Nietzsche's suspicion and doubt about the categorical interpretation of being through substances, in the way that metaphysics since Plato and Aristotle conceives it, is not based on an extreme scepticism but is rather an almost dogmatic view about the ultimate reality of becoming. In this conception Nietzsche turns away from the traditional ontology of being. He turns the problem of the categories purely negatively around into an uncovering of deception. The intellect and thinking, more specifically an ontological thinking of the entire metaphysical tradition starting with Parmenides, are deceptive. There are no things. Things are figments of reason that are nowhere and never real. Thinking and not the senses are the subjective source of appearance. Reason invents the fictions of the Ego, of substance and causality, etc. This rejection of thinking, more precisely of ontological thinking, underpins his aggression against tradition and transcendentalism. Man forges the world, because he thinks, because he invents the categories and the structure of the thing and pre-conceives the blueprint of the things and all experience. Man has separated and alienated himself from reality in so far as he relies on the categories for cognition. He surrounds himself with fictions in which he is imprisoned as a separate thing among other things. Only the cosmic intuition of becoming makes genuine truth possible. He states with disarming precision: 'Parmenides said "one does not think whatever does not exist" - we are at the other end and in another state and say: "Whatever can be thought must most certainly be a fiction.">59 An alternative argument against Nietzsche's position perhaps directs our attention to the contradiction that is concealed by the hypothesis of a deceiving power of the human intellect. If reason is deceptive and if man invents the deception of the categories he must have a true individual existence as the deceiving being. Not everything can be the same in the cosmic interplay of the will to power. To be sure, Nietzsche sees this conclusion. Man is a fiction to himself. In the final analysis he is no absolute individual. Life itself creates fictions. The will to power is at work in these fictions and creates the finite living form of the human being. It is only an idiomatic expression to speak about human fictions. The stream of life is no homogenous flux. It is the interplay of opposing waves, of concentrations of power and quanta of will which are immediately dissolved like the waves of the sea. Nietzsche radicalizes a Kantian aspect. The substance of the thing is 'subjective'. For Kant, the categorically conceived substance enables us to experience the object. For Nietzsche, however, the thing or the belief in the thing is an illusion which makes life possible. We do not engage with Nietzsche's many attempts of a psychological analysis nor with his thesis intended to expose the fictional nature of all categories. If we read it as an epistemology these thoughts remain quite questionable and
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even in parts very primitive with occasional digressions into the simplest form of positivism. Yet, the philosophical meaning does not rest here with a theory of cognition but with a negative ontology of the things which does not only affirm the falsity of the concept of the thing but rather denies the 'reality' of things as such. Nietzsche does not only object to the ontological categories but he is passionately committed to becoming and to dynamism: 'Against the value of the ever-enduring "he posits" the value of the shortest and most finite, the seductive flash of gold in the belly of the snake vita.'60 And elsewhere: 'Being - we have no other conception of this than "life". How can the dead exist then?'61 Nietzsche always remains within the opposition of being and becoming in a way that prevents him from capturing the inner dialectic of these ontological concepts and separates itself, opposing becoming to being and yet always struggling for conceptual unity of these opposing concepts. If the concept of being includes the aspects of permanence, endurance or fixedness, that is, if being is viewed in relation to the existence of things and ideas, Nietzsche discards this concept. If however, being is understood as truth, as life, as a dynamic and as the will to power, he affirms it. Nietzsche appears to represent seemingly a turning point at which he rejects on the one hand the ontological understanding of the metaphysical tradition, the categories, and on the other hand has already a fundamental conception of 'being' of a kind which must no longer be understood in opposition to - but is inclusive of- becoming. Being is in time and time is within being. 'To impose the characteristics of being on becoming - this is the greatest will to power'62 he states. He means with this the greatest will to power within cognition and as cognition. However, he does not refer here to a will to power of deception but to a will to power of the greatest cosmic truth. 'The eternal recurrence is the most extreme approximation of a world of becoming to that of being - pinnacle of contemplation.'63 This truth of the eternal return is exempt from his statement about the truth of things: 'Truth is a kind of error without which a particular kind of living creature could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.'64 Men cannot live in the turmoil of the cosmos and in the blowing winds of time in which nothing remains consistent and all is in flux. They must commit a deception out of biological necessity in order to live and arrange themselves. They need to surround themselves with fictions of finite things and need to dismember the entirety of the cosmos into dissected separate entities. The knowledge of the eternal return does not arrest and determine becoming but affirms becoming as becoming. This is meant by the 'pinnacle of contemplation' because it reconciles the opposition between being and becoming. Nietzsche's fictional epistemology can be characterized as follows: (1) It is not a general scepticism. The insight into the fictional character of the categorial ontology is
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grounded in an indubitable philosophical insight of the will to power, of becoming as ultimate truth and of the eternal return. (2) The will to power is at work in the cognition of things as deception and violation and as the power of 'semblance'. (3) The decisive point here is not a biological epistemology, but a negative ontology of the thing. Being as being or as On He On is merely a fiction. Only if we turn towards the cosmos and not towards the things do we find true Being or the flux of becoming. The will to power is the primordial event which symbolizes the dissolution of the unity of life, the interplay of generation and decline and the construction of apparent formations of power which are dissolved as soon as they are created. We humans are usually trapped within differences and within limits and separations. We do not see the articulating power and the existence of the difference itself. We do not see the primordial one in its self-alienation or in the way in which it posits and sublates the difference. We do not realize how the will to power asserts itself. Nietzsche attempted to show this primarily in regard to cognition. He captured a problem here even if the biological and pragmatic mode of expression obscures the meaning of his thoughts somewhat. The attempt to illustrate the will to power 'within nature' is considerably weaker. His critique of mechanism and its concept of power remain inadequate although some essential thoughts are specifically indicated. The same applies to the interpretation of organic nature. Here the references to the phenomena of power relations and transfers of power are confused with a philosophical transcendence of the realm of phenomena. It sometimes seems as if Nietzsche wishes to use the presence of power within the phenomena to show that the will to power underpins the phenomena and is the truly real and significant. Nietzsche also says very little in terms of the quantity about the will to power in the inorganic and organic nature. Perhaps this is no accident. Nietzsche never worked out a regional ontology relevant to nature or history. He does not command a differentiated intuition to analyse the essence of such basic realms and to perhaps discover a variation of the one cosmic principle of the will to power. In the final analysis it appears generally doubtful if a principle of cosmic ontology, that is, of the flux of the creating-destroying becoming can be 'proven' within the realm of things and if it manifests itself in the phenomena. Even in the sphere of 'society and the individual' Nietzsche's project to find evidence for his basic thoughts remains peculiarly fruitless. He interprets the state as a power structure and objects to the democratic trivialization of the state that attempts to make it into a moral institution. (Example: 'A society which irrevocably and instinctively rejects wars and conquering is in decline, it is ripe for democracy and petty government.. .'.65) He perceives the manifestations of power in institutions such as marriage. He opts for marriage as the expression of a tribal power that intends to extend its
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possessions and its children and he explicitly rejects a marriage based on love. He also sees 'power' in the judicial structures of a state and in the whole system of punishment and guilt, etc. Like the state, he finds traces of the will to power in the great individual. Whoever stands out from the masses does not represent the higher moral value but simply a greater power of life. Nietzsche gains some ground only in the fourth section 'The will to power as art'. Art is no phenomenon which is simply present in the artist and in his work. Art is tragic art in its highest form, more precisely, it is a transcendence of appearance and a profound view into the heart of the world and at the same time a justification of semblance. The play of the artist reflects the primordial play of the world, its existence as will to power - or as Nietzsche puts it: 'The world as a self-creating work of art.'66 In addition to the psychological interpretation of artistic creativity as an increased eras, as an overflowing power of life, there is a more profound interpretation of tragic art as a kind of cognition of the will to power. Tragic art even affirms the uncanny and the deceitful, danger and evil. It even experiences the abyss of suffering as a profound pleasure. It does not flee from the terror into a beautiful semblance but transfigures the dreadful, stony face of life within appearance. Tragic art flows from the highest human power and reveals also the dreadful aspect in the appearance of beauty. Tragic art is thus for Nietzsche the answer to the decline of religion, morality and metaphysics. It 'redeems' differently than Christianity. Nietzsche calls art 'the redemption of those who cognize, of those who see, who want to see the terrifying and questionable dimension of existence, of tragic understanding.' He calls it the redemption of the actor of 'the tragic, warrior-like human, the hero' and he calls it the 'redemption of those who suffer, a path to states which will transform, deify suffering where suffering becomes a form of great delight'.67The threefold redemption of art is, however, not just a human, all-too-human affair, but it constitutes the advent of a redeemer. Nietzsche creates a new theology of the master of the tragic and concealed play. He thinks the epiphany of Dionysos.
7. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING THE DIONYSIAN WORLD

The final book of The Will to Power carries the heading Discipline and Breeding. It falls into three parts: 'Rank Order', 'Dionysos' and "The Eternal Return'. The death of God was the topic of the first two books of this posthumous work. The third book deals with the will to power, however in a way that is still influenced by the concealed division of metaphysics into metaphysica generate and metaphysica specialis. The fourth book relates all these foundational thoughts to each other. It does not only connect the aspects of the overman and the eternal return
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with each other. It also relates nihilism, the revaluation of the values and the murder of God that is committed by a humanity under the influence of the will to power. Nietzsche is tremendously ambitious in this last book. He intends to 'act' although he is a philosopher. He does not just wish to articulate insights, he intends to prepare world-historical decisions and to change mankind. His philosophy of the will to power aspires to gain itself power according to its own ontological experience and conception. It aspires to power not just in the form of a general recognition but as a doctrine of life for the few who are predestined to rule and as an ontological understanding of the masters of the earth. The central topic of the fourth book is thus a humanity which endures the death of God, which knows that the will to power is the essence of being and which experiences the infinity of existence in the eternal return. To put it differently: the revelation of being becomes a topic. It would, however, be intuitively wrong to regard this as a careful application of philosophical insights for life. We are not dealing with a practice following a theory. The usual distinction between theory and practice is here completely inappropriate. The decisive point is the existential exposure of the death of God, of the will to power and of the eternal return. Zarathustra addresses a humanity that rejects all transcendental worlds and turns decisively towards the earth, recognizing contradiction and opposition and recognizing the 'war' as the father and ruler of all finite existence. At the same time it recognizes the infinity of all finite being in the eternal circle of time with the creation of the overman. Here, in the fourth book of The Will to Power the character of the overman experiences a peculiar metamorphosis. Nietzsche speaks about the strong human being, of the noble, the great and the highest man. What was originally a seemingly distant ideal of the future has now become a progressive historical path. The overman becomes a concrete goal for Nietzsche. It is the goal of man's self-realization. The issue is the hierarchy of power. Since the meaning of life has changed with God man must give life a new meaning. Following the devaluation of all traditional values, the new human creation of value becomes an unavoidable necessity. God punishes those he loves. The god-less man is no longer the subject of a divine authority. He becomes his own authority unless he wishes to sink into chaos or to vegetate in dull animality on the deserted steps of the temples. The great danger is a lack of authority. The approaching nihilism is the irrelevance of all traditional laws. The demise of the religious and moral laws liberates human freedom to embrace nothingness. For Nietzsche human self-discipline is the only possible way to overcome nihilism. However, this self-discipline is for him neither a discipline with a reverence for moral laws nor an arbitrary commitment to any aims in order to escape from the desert of meaninglessness and aimlessness. Human self-discipline remains within truth. It is subject to the enlightenment through philosophical intuition. If the essence of being is the will
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to power, then the autonomous human existence must also be determined by the will to power. On the other hand this determination must occur within the temporal understanding of the eternal return. This has a peculiarly contradictory meaning. As Nietzsche sees him future man wills a great will which defines itself and others as far as possible to give it a clear form, that is, he wills something particular or a finite aim. In so far as he wills this he excludes other things. A will always makes things finite. However, the person who wills realizes the limitations and the finitude of his will. Within the openness of the eternal return he knows of the final meaninglessness of his intended meaning. Will to power and eternal return are opposed in a peculiar manner. This contradiction does not refute their truth but is rather a fundamental truth of life itself. The will seems to be a creative force which aims to create form. The eternal return, however, conceives time as an infinite circle which digests and returns all forms. It conceives it as the flux of life which manifests itself on the one hand always in finite forms but sublates these forms again on the other hand as the infinite itself. A humanity that subjects itself to the discipline, that is, to the insight of the two truths of the will to power and the eternal return, is characterized by a tragic pathos and by a dual and contrasting tension. The will to power wills form. The eternal return destroys form. The will to power projects itself into the future. The eternal return transforms all future into a repetition and thus into a past. One must realize this antithetical tension between Nietzsche's two main thoughts if one wishes to understand the view of the human being portrayed here. Future man is a man of will and yet realizes the futility of the will. He is autonomous yet yearns for the amorphous ground of life. He is someone who has a clearly defined day and yet he is rooted in the night where all is one. He is similarly at home in the dual realm of light and concealment. Only in the context of Nietzsche's view of this human ambiguity can one judge the relevance of the ideas of discipline and creation. Nietzsche does not proclaim an absolute human domination when he refers to the masters of the earth. The mastery of the earth is not a technical dominance over the world and not the selfsatisfaction of an absolute will to power that reifies all being and reduces it to a material to be used. Such a conception is one-sided and considers as it were the aspect of the will to power alone. Man is the master of the earth because he is empowered to such a human existence by the earth when he recognizes it as the great mother, as the source of all things and as that which gives and takes. The ruling human being returns to the earth if his will to dominate is conscious of the eternal return. Nietzsche's view of the human being is double headed. It would be highly naive if we overlooked the hidden double meaning that Nietzsche introduces into all his visions of the future human world. Nietzsche's future human being is
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ambivalent because truth itself has a dual nature. Reality is the will to power and it is the eternal return. Nietzsche thinks the flux of things, more precisely the flux which seems to solidify into things, forms, shapes and structures created by the limited, finite and individual human being. The will to power is the cosmic principle of finitude and also the cosmic principle of opposition, of war, of difference; in other words it is whatever separates the primordial one, flooding life into finite forms. However, the principle of finitude does not only achieve the simple existence of the finite things but it is also the principle of their unsteadiness, of their opposing struggle and of their struggle for power in which they overcome each other and ascend and in which one lives through the death of the other. The will to power does not only create the finite forms, it also drives them into the arena of an opposing strife, that is it negates them again. It is - to quote Hegel - not simply a negation which dissects and separates the one life, but it is also the negation of a negation. The will to power is the negation within being itself. It is the forming principle and the creative power. The eternal return, however, implies the presence of infinity for and within all finite being. Understanding all forms as repetitions makes concrete and historical existence timeless. The individual and finite thing reflects the eternity of the cosmos. It disappears, so to speak, in the depth of the gaping abyss of time. The eternal return thinks the primordial existence of the cosmos. The will to power and the eternal return relate to each other like the principle of limit to the principle of infinity, like peiras to apeiron, like finitude to infinity and like being to the cosmos. Nietzsche thinks radically within the categories of the will to power and the eternal return. He conceives cosmologically what he had already formulated in his first essay aesthetically as the opposition of the two principles of art. The will to power and the eternal return relate to each other like the Apollonian and the Dionysian. They take, rather, the dualism of Nietzsche's early metaphysics of the artist to its conclusion. All forms of the will to power are really 'semblances'. They are no things. Only becoming and life are real. The will to power as cognition arrests becoming in the realms of nature, history and art. It creates the ontological illusion called being which is in truth the being of appearance. We experience eternal life, the cosmic time which grants temporality and the sea where the 'forms' are merely waves through the eternal return. Nietzsche, however, does not stop here at the end of this path and with this seemingly rigid dualism, but he combines the two ambivalent aspects in his concept of Dionysos. The original contrast between two artistic principles radicalizes itself to become a contrast between the will to power and the eternal return. It is unified in the name of the God Dionysos who is according to traditional myth an ambiguous God. He is mysteriously identical to Apollo in whose temple he is worshipped in Delphi. He is the God of the overflowing
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excess of life. He is also the dismembered and dissected God torn apart by the Maenads. Phallic songs are addressed to him and he is the God of death. Houtos de aides kai dionysos - one and the same are Hades and Dionyos, states Heraclitus.68 Nietzsche does not only refer to a mythical memory when he intends to articulate his ambivalent yet unified fundamental understanding of life. He is exposed to the dawn of a new divine mythos of the cosmos. If one has only understood that 'Dionysos' is Nietzsche's name for creative and destructive being itself and that it thus refers to the will to power and the eternal return together without destroying their opposition it also becomes clear why the fourth book of The Will to Power focuses on Dionysos. Although this fourth book is primarily an interpretation of a humanity formed by Nietzsche's new truths, the human truth of Dionysos remains its central concern. It is preceded by Nietzsche's doctrine of rank order, that is human existence is interpreted in the light of the will to power. The 'Dionysos' chapter is followed by the humanity illuminated by the eternal return. Human discipline is twofold. It is subject to the experience of the will to power and the eternal return. This dual and contradictory educating discipline is ultimately the divine life of the cosmos. Even the masters of the earth are still subject to the rule of the lord Dionysos. Nietzsche's doctrine of rank order argues polemically against the Christian idea of the equality of man vis-a-vis God and not only against modern levelling. He calls the latter the 'ultimate nonsense known so far on earth'.69 Men are not equal. Men are subject to the will to power with its necessary distinction between steps and those who climb them. Rank is determined as Nietzsche puts it accordingly 'solely through the quantities of power and nothing else besides'.70 Rank order is an order of power. The only true order of rank is that corresponding to the only true power, that is, corresponding to the power of life and to human vitality. 'A declaration of war by the higher being to the masses is required' he writes71 provocatively. However, such a declaration does not intend to extinguish the masses (something altogether impossible) but to use them as a condition of higher forms of humanity or to use it but not to succumb to it. The higher man must deal with the masses through the strategies of war. The existence of the masses implies itself a protection of the higher man from his kind and from its own acts of violence. The high existential tension characteristic of a higher humanity cannot be part of everyday life. 'All great times have their price.'72 It is economically prudent for life to create the mass of average people as the basis for the higher type of man. The great man is a kind of luxury and an exception violating the rule but still determined by it. Nietzsche states: 'He needs the opposition to the masses, of those levellers, the feeling of distance to them. He stands on them, he lives from them.'73 Realizing that humans are not equal Nietzsche demands that the rule of the
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strong be organized aristocratically to use the masses in the age of the masses. This aristocracy would form a conspiring association of higher men who guide the masses and rule them with two types of aims, namely open and secret ones. The issue, which Nietzsche encounters here with a cynical naivety, has already become a fatal issue for our own century. Nietzsche understands the creation of elites as the aim of human breeding. These thoughts have become suspect through the disastrous attempts which have themselves arisen through the masses. One cannot breed the masters of the earth with the zoological methods of horse breeders. For Nietzsche, the thought of breeding is much more radical and profound. One question poses itself continuously to us, a tempting and terrible question, perhaps. Let us whisper it into the ears of those who have a right to hear such doubtful questions, those strong souls of today who rule themselves. Would it not be appropriate to attempt the radical, conscious and artificial breeding of a counter-type with corresponding virtues given the advance of a type of herd animal in Europe today? Nietzsche does not fear consequences that horrify any moralist. He demands the use of all means including deception, betrayal and forgery: A morality which wishes to breed man to be higher rather than comfortable and mediocre, a morality with the intention to breed a governing caste - the future masters of the earth - must be introduced through the existing moral law, with its words and under its guise, in order to be teachable.74 It must invent many 'means and deception'. This ruling caste of the future is for Nietzsche the condition of the new philosopher. 'The new philosopher can only exist in connection with the ruling cast as its highest spirituality . . ,'.15 This means, that the humanity which exists on the basis of the truth of the will to power is completed in the explicit knowledge of the will to power. Nietzsche conceives the nature of the philosopher anew: After trying for a long time and without success to connect the term 'philosopher' with a particular concept, I recognized finally that there are two types of philosophers: (1) Those who wish to identify a particularly important fact about value judgements and (2) those who are the creators of such value judgements.76 The greatest power is the establishment and the creative design of a value system. The will to power establishes its own conditions of struggle and the
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dimension of its war in so far as it is human. 'Whoever determines the values and directs the will of millennia by directing the most important characters is the greatest man.'77 Nietzsche thinks of the philosopher here as the greatest man, however not like Plato or Aristotle who saw his highest rank in theoreia but in his creation of value and in his creative freedom. In the next section entitled Dionysos it is difficult to recognize to what extent Nietzsche has a new religious vision or to what extent he merely uses the name 'Dionysos' as a label for the divinity of the cosmos. It would be a difficult interpretation to find the precise border between Zarathustra's atheism, which he summons here yet again, and his own, as he calls it, intuitive and god-creating instinct.78 Whoever has learnt to look around here and to perceive the connotations will be able to recognize the hesitant revelation of a new God in Nietzsche's last and fragmentary work. However, this is no God, no being and not even the highest being, no summum ens and no God of fixed shape or form. It is the inconceivable God of being and of the existing cosmos. It is 'open like the heavens'79 in whose light all things appear and it is immediate like the sealed earth to whom all created being returns. Dionysos is the holiness of being itself. Nietzsche contrasts the Greek Dionysos with the Christian martyr and opposes their respective conception of suffering. From a Christian point of view suffering is the path towards a sacred existence beyond the world. From a Greek perspective 'being is sacred enough to justify a morality of suffering'.80 From this climax of joy, where man perceives himself and himself entirely as a divine form and justification of nature, to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy half-human animals: This complete and immense spectrum of the light and the colour of happiness was identified by the Greeks not without a grateful shudder of those who are initiated into a mystery and not without much care and holy silence in the name of the God Dionysos.81 Dionysos is the unity of the will to power, that is the Apollonian tendency and of the eternal return, that is the Dionysian temporal depth of all finite things. The unity which unites the will to power and the eternal return is identified by Nietzsche but he does not characterize this unity itself although he moves towards a characterization of 'play' at all decisive points in his thinking. Only when we succeed to understand Dionysos as the God of play can the divine play of the cosmos in the realm between heaven and earth be understood profoundly. The final section deals with the eternal return, however in no greater detail than in the Zarathustra. It is regarded as a human challenge to human discipline. It is the great 'disciplining thought' condemning the weak races who cannot
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endure it and elevating the strong races, who perceive it as highly beneficial, towards leadership. Whatever they do now, they will continue to repeat eternally and continuously. Thus the thought of the eternal return becomes the greatest anchor of human existence. Although Nietzsche approaches the eternal return through an interpretation of life it is clear that this is a new cosmology. The importance for life and the disciplining power of the doctrine of the eternal return are connected in the fact that all transience is only an appearance of a unique transience and is in truth infinite, that is it returns for ever. It can not be decided with certainty if this is to be understood in a concrete sense and if our existence repeats itself an infinite number of times just like the sand running through the hourglass or if Nietzsche starts to approach for the first time the existence of the cosmos which provides all things and remains unexhausted in the giving and taking. The philosophical importance appears to be the conception of inner-worldly being through the inexhaustible space-time of the cosmos. 'The world exists; it is nothing, that which becomes, nothing that which passes away. Or rather: It becomes, it passes away, however, it has never commenced to become and never ceased to pass away - it persists in both.'82 The peculiar persistence of the world and its eternity within the transitory change of the things is clearly and especially identified in this quote. And since the world is no vessel in which the things are present, since it exists in all things all things have the cosmic property of eternal existence notwithstanding their temporal transience. The final section closes with the grand aphorism 1067 that exists in two versions. Everything comes together here. He makes reference to all aspects of his thinking, to the fundamental connection between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, to the will to power and the eternal return and to the unity of both within the concept of play which separates itself into opposites and reunites after this separation. And whatever else Nietzsche identifies within the mysterious concept of 'life' is explicitly conceived as the world or as the cosmic interplay of being. He identifies clearly a new path of thinking through which he opposes and rejects the tradition. And yet this aphorism contains the entire history of western thought. Its cosmological categories are identical with those of Parmenides of the Eon of being or of the primordial one. The world has no beginning and no end and yet it has a fixed form. In Parmenidean terms: the Eon is ateleston and telesmenon.93 Furthermore, Nietzsche's 'cosmos' is understood as a Leviathan of power. This directs the entire cosmos towards the path of an ontological interpretation of being as an Ergon which Aristotle questions in the discussion of dynamis and energeia, Leibniz in the concept of the monad and Hegel in the fundamental category of power. Power is conceived as play reviving a tradition from Heraclitus to Hegel. And although one can only understand Nietzsche's philosophical language if one hears the resonance of the two-thousand-year-old western tradition in it, he nevertheless deviates from the path of this tradition.
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The world is seemingly conceived as the all-embracing being in which all things come and go, in which all movement occurs and which remains eternal in its change; however, not like an eternally present material but rather like time itself which endures despite the passing of the temporal events. In the Timaios even Plato had thought of the cosmos as a great thing. However, he uses the image of the Agathan, of the idea of the Good which contains all ideas. As a reflection of the Agathon the cosmos contains the many things like the Agathon the many ideas. The image-character of the cosmos, its idea tou agathon grants it the character of reason. The heavenly notions of the stars reveal the reason of the universe as it were. The cosmos is 'rational'. It rests in the light of being. This is different for Nietzsche. Reason is no property which could be added to the cosmos from somewhere outside. Reason is a part and an aspect of the cosmos. It is not just revelation (Lichtungf*, it is also the concealment of being. The cosmos is not comprehensible through reason or through a relationship with an 'ideal' and transcendental cosmos but rather the opposite. The rationale of all things follows from an aspect of the cosmos itself. The cosmos has no meaning and no purpose, because all its meaning and all its purpose are immanent. The cosmos itself is beyond purpose, meaning, good and evil. It is not divine in the sense that this divinity retains a reference outside itself. It is divine in absorbing all references even to God or to the devil, to light and night and to good and evil. Nietzsche explicates his two fundamental thoughts of his positive philosophy, namely the will to power and the eternal return. Since the will to power has been conceived in opposition to the eternal return and vice-versa, it is a limited view to see in the will to power Nietzsche's basic ontological formula and to view this as an extreme position of contemporary subjective metaphysics which conceives the beingness of being as an object of representation and thus as a product of a representative power. This view which we will still need to deal with properly because it is the Nietzsche interpretation of some of the greatest living thinkers perhaps only reaches the metaphysical aspects of Nietzsche and his reluctant dependence on history which he intends to overcome. But it does not reach the will to power and its inner relationship to the eternal return. Both opposing aspects have their unity and centre in Dionysos. Although the aphorism refers to the will to power as the 'key to all puzzles' and thus emphasizes this aspect especially, the conceptual thrust of the entire thought shows the contrast of the will to power to the infinity of the eternal return. The concluding aphorism, which summarizes all aspects of this, his cosmic vision, in a remarkable way, should be cited despite its length. It is profound in all its intricacies and full of a deep meaning that eludes an exhaustive conceptualization perhaps for some time to come yet. And do you know what the world is for me? Do you want me to show you it in my mirror? This world, this leviathan of power, of beginning, of end, a firm,
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iron edifice of power which does not increase or diminish, which does not exhaust itself but only changes, remains in its entirety constant, a budget without expenses and income, but also without increase, without profit, is embraced by 'nothing' like a border, - nothing vague, nothing wasted, nothing infinitely extended, but a denned power embedded in a denned space and not in an 'empty' space, but rather as power everywhere, as a play of powers and waves of power at once one and many, increasing here and diminishing there at the same time, a sea of internally storming and flooding powers, eternally changing, eternally recurring with immense years of recurrence, with an ebb and flood of forms, expelling the simplest towards the most diverse, from the most silent, most fixed, coldest towards the hotest, wildest, most self-contradictory and then again returning from the fullness home to simplicity, from the interplay of contradiction back to the pleasure of harmony, to affirm itself even in this uniformity of its paths and years, to bless itself as that, which has to return eternally, as a becoming, which knows no satisfaction, no weariness and no fatigue: This, my Dionysian world, of the eternally-self-creating, of the eternally-self-destroying, this mysterious world of the double desires, this, my beyond of good and evil without purpose, unless there is a happiness of the circle in the purpose of no will, unless there is a ring which wills itself- do you want a name for this world? A solution to all its puzzles? A light even for you, you most hidden, you strongest, most courageous, darkest? - This world is the will to power - and nothing else! And even you are the will to power - and nothing else!85 Is Nietzsche's cosmic vision only the end of metaphysics or is he the passionate herald of a new ontological experience?
CHAPTER FIVE
Nietzsche's Relationship to Metaphysics as
Imprisonment and Liberation
1. THE FOUR TRANSCENDENTAL DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF BEING AND THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY. THE COSMIC CONCEPT OF PLAY AS AN EXTRA-METAPHYSICAL QUESTION It is now particularly important to emphasize the question more strongly that underpins the representation of Nietzsche's philosophy. Does Nietzsche belong to the history of philosophy as one thinker among many, as one more or less relevant figure in the long succession of ontological interpretations, which have pursued a persistent basic question ever since the Eleatics or is he indeed an innovator, a pioneer, a precursor, a 'herald and cock crow' of a new cosmic age, the dawn of a new, gay science which perhaps still stammers and searches for its own voice in the 'drinking song'? Is he a thinker who has experienced impotence and admits to be 'merely a fool, merely a poet' and who identifies himself with Zarathustra 'full of prophetic spirit, on the high yoke travelling between the seas'? We have attempted to uncover the fundamental aspects of Nietzsche's thinking in a journey through Nietzsche's writings. His basic ontological equation of being and value, his doctrine of the will to power, of the eternal return, of the death of God and of the overman. We have been unable to engage truthfully and comprehensively with the fateful thinker who also determines our life whether we choose to or not. However, we are not prepared for this anyhow. A true engagement would need to go further than a mere critique which detects mistaken interpretations of traditional philosophies in this dazzling, in every sense of the word, dazzling spirit, which criticizes his sophistry, which reveals his art of detection and which finds his inability for conceptualization and his presumptuous divination suspicious. A true engagement could and would have to occur in a pre-conceptual way grasping that which Nietzsche fails to grasp and which broke the will to power of his intellectual passion. He resembles the mythical figure of Tantalous. The sole object worthy of thought, namely the cosmic All and aim of the 'great yearning' eludes his grasp. At the end of his path of thinking he addresses the self-contradictory and ambiguous essence of
The four transcendental dimensions of the problem of being
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the All in the mythical image of Dionysos. For Nietzsche this is the formlesslyforming, creatively-destroying God whose face is the mask, whose appearance is concealed and who is one and many, overflowing life and the simple calmness of the underworld. Nietzsche's dithyrambs to Dionysos resonate with a tantalic pain within the magic circle of a language growing poetical through resignation and impotence at its most pure perhaps in the poem The sun is setting which refers in its final stanza to the 'golden boat' of Dionysos approached by the boat of the poet: 'Seventh Solitude/1 never sensed it/ closer to me sweet certainty/ warmer the face of the sun/ Does the ice of my peaks still glow?/ Silvery, light like a fish/ my boat glides into the distance ...'.' Poetry becomes the preliminary salvation of a pre-conceptual cosmic intuition beyond language that distinguishes itself from metaphysics. In the context of the spiritual richness, experience, intuition and most sophisticated psychology and existential experience of Nietzsche's philosophy, the categorization of his philosophy into four basic aspects may appear as an impermissible simplification. And yet, in their relation and interdependence these aspects make up the essential and basic structure of Nietzsche's thinking. Only with the knowledge of the death of God, that is with the decline of the idealistic other-world can the will to power life come into view as constitutive for life. And in so far as time is seen as a path for the will to power the eternal return can become visible and the overman can appear as that human being with the tragic truth. Nietzsche proclaims his fundamental doctrine in a conscious and explicit contrast to tradition. He struggles against western metaphysics. However, does he really find a new ground or does he remain dependent on metaphysics in this struggle against metaphysics? This question of alternatives is put too simply. The rule of traditional metaphysics is not yet broken if one renounces it. Here too, not everyone is free who ridicules his chains. The deviation from the path of metaphysics is not just a new method or mode of thought, something that man could accomplish through himself. It is rather and more primordially an event which captures man or a fate which he experiences. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche finds the language for the consciousness of his fate. One understands little about the greatness of this thinker if one merely detects here the tone of an immense hubris or of a mad self-overestimation. Nietzsche is struck by lightning. He is burnt by a light of a new dawn of the truth of being in its entirety. He says there among other things: The discovery of Christian morality has no equal. It is a real catastrophe. Whoever understands it is a force majeure, a fate. He breaks the history of man into two parts. One lives before him, one lives after him. The lightning stroke of truth struck precisely that which was the highest so far.2
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Nietzsche's Relationship to Metaphysics as Imprisonment and Liberation
One could hardly describe the essence of a new cosmic intuition more succinctly and more convincingly. Such an intuition has the character of a lightning strike. The highest is destroyed: everything is inverted. In Nietzsche's words: revaluation of all values. He concludes Ecce Homo with the aggressive sentence in which not only two religions collide. The statement 'Dionysos against the Crucified' places a caesura into the history of the world. The uncanny symbolism of this sentence is not easily comprehended. Dionysos is the God of suffering like the Crucified, however die suffering Dionysos is always sublated by the dark pleasure of procreation of which he is the master as he is the master of death. Suffering, death and decline are always merely the other sides of pleasure, resurrection and return. Dionysos is life itself, the deeply suffering and profoundly pleasurable, the creative and destructive cosmic life in which we are at home in a questionable way and which shelters but also exposes us. The Crucified, however, is for Nietzsche a symbol of great suffering renouncing the concrete world and referring beyond itself as the great leader towards a transcendental life. In Nietzsche's view die Crucified represents a morality which is foreign to life and a Utopian religious and metaphysical ideal. The Crucified is for him not only the symbol of Christianity but He also symbolizes Plato and Socrates, that is, a philosophical tradition focusing on the order of inner-worldly things rather than the existing all-comprising cosmos. How can Nietzsche's relationship to metaphysics be determined? We do not mean with this question his own opinion about metaphysics but we ask how we can and need to characterize this relationship. How do his four basic doctrines relate to die horizons of a metaphysical ontology? Metaphysics is the thinking which determines being in its beingness. Metaphysics focuses basically on die existing diings, diat is on the manifold, finite and limited beings or on things. Things, which are themselves finite things in respect of time and space, meet us from the open realm of the cosmos. The metaphysical approach is inner-worldly and fourfold. It investigates being as such, the totality of being, die highest being and the revelation of being. The reason for this fourfold division is difficult to clarify. It is based on the dimensions of die concept of being itself. We already distinguish normally being and nodiing, being and becoming, being and appearance and being and diinking. Wherever we encounter 'being' we encounter a hidden horizon of nothing, of becoming, of appearance and of thinking. We have just established how Nietzsche uses the contrast between being and becoming and makes it the pivotal point of his philosophy. While it is crucial that philosophy relies on the four-dimensional, ontological horizon this does not bring die ontological dimensionality itself into view. It reflects about being. If this is taken to be the thing, die individual or die finite tiling tiien being already shelters nodiingness since it is limited. The limit is a boundary towards nothingness. In being a
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defined thing, the thing is also not something else, it is no other thing. Omnis determinatio est negatio. Metaphysics thinks the ontological structure of the things in an existence of a thing hollowed by nothingness. It thinks the On He On. For Aristotle this is the character of a categorical interpretation of Ousia on the one hand and an interpretation of the thing as a work, as an Ergon in the realm of dynamis and energeia. Plato interprets being through a fixed, one and only aspect of the manifold yet homogenous being. The non-existence of the things shows itself in the unsteadiness of the future, created and destroyed things of appearance and the being of the things shows itself in their participation in the ideas. Plato sees an intimate connection between the ontological explication of being and nothingness with that of being and becoming, being and appearance and being and thinking. Appearances are not only not real, they are also exposed to generation and decline and unauthentic and only apparently existing. They do not belong to thinking but to opinion whereas the ideas are the truly existing, immovable and most constant existing entities belonging to thinking. The fourfold schema of traditional metaphysics could perhaps be developed only properly in an analysis of the history and origins of metaphysical ideas. We can indicate this much: Wherever the ontological interpretation relies on the context and connection between being and nothing the attention is directed towards being as such. If the context is the relationship between being and becoming the attention is focused on motion and the totality of all the tilings in motion. If the things are investigated in the light of their authenticity or unauthenticity, the question of the highest being is posed. If the tension between being and thinking becomes predominant the truth of being and accordingly the human relevance of this truth is brought into view. To put it simply: these four ontological horizons correspond to the four transcendentals which define classical, medieval and modern philosophy in their own characteristic way, namely On, Hen, Agathon, Alethes or Ens, Unum, Bonum, Verum. We ask independently: does Nietzsche's fourfold division of his fundamental questions have an immanent connection with this metaphysical division? Does his attempt to invert metaphysics remain within the realm of metaphysical questions? The doctrine of the will to power is Nietzsche's doctrine of the existence of being. Strictly speaking he does not (as we have already seen) recognize firm, finite things. What appears to be a defined and individual thing is merely a transient formation of the will to power or a quantum of power which does not remain constant but is rather in motion. All things are struggling. The will to power drives and urges all living things forward. The being of all finite being is a never-ending destruction of limits, however it does not absolutely sublate limitation as such but moves limits in an unstable way. It is a struggle for overcoming, a desire by the strong to rule the weak and an eternal struggle for
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power. Nietzsche thus does not conceive the existence of things as an enduring form. All finite things are something unformed and restless which merely assumes a form under the influence of power. He does not conceive the nothing, which inhabits being, as the limit of the latter but as a movement of this limit and as the existence of the difference which is created by life within itself and which continues to rage in the creations of this struggle negating their limits and causing them to move forward. The doctrine of the will to power is Nietzsche's answer to the metaphysical question of being as such. It is his verdict in the case of being against nothingness. Will to power is being and nothingness in their original relation to motion. What, however, is his intellectual focus in the doctrine of the eternal return? Nietzsche conceives in this the totality of motion itself. Totality is not primarily set as a spatial totality and not as a sum or a heap of things. Since he denies fixed, unchanging things the totality cannot imply a concept of resting things which are present. The totality of being can only make sense as a totality of change since the thing is primarily interpreted in respect of the change effected by the will to power. The whole which embraces all changing things, which envelops and transcends the unsteady development of their struggle for power cannot be a result of the change to the limitation of the things. Since it is a temporal totality it precedes immanent temporal change. How can the totality of time precede an individual extension of time, however? Our common understanding of time presupposes that time itself is basically incomplete. The things are still changing, time has not yet run out and it still is continuing into the future. This matter is completely different if all temporal events are understood to be repetitions in principle. This makes it possible to conceive time as a totality or to conceive the totality of time. Time is no longer the infinitely incomplete which is only realized fully in the future. It is the future already. All events are transcended and embraced by time itself because they are repetitions. Thinking about the death of God is thinking about the issue of being and appearance for Nietzsche. He objects to the opinion of an illusory, concrete world and a real, metaphysical and transcendent realm. The Ontos On is no idea for him and it is no God. It is no summum ens which could be approached as the highest ranking Absolute or as an Agathon and thus as the measure of all things. The death of God implies a denial of the traditional distinction between being and appearance. Despite his rejection of the Platonic, Christian or Kantian conception of this difference, Nietzsche remains trapped in it. Firstly he sees being through the perspective of value and secondly he takes up this distinction again in the phenomenon of art. All finite beings are seen as 'formations of the shaping will to power, artful creations of beautiful semblance' which are created and destroyed, made and demolished by the primordial artist, namely the Dionysian and Apollonian life itself. And finally the doctrine of the overman
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is more than an instruction to lead a 'dangerous life' or the pathos of the Zarathustra character is (despite the fact that he uses these formulas) more than a Caesare Borgia or a 'Caesar with a Christian soul'. The overman is humanity that has realized the death of God, the will to power and the eternal return. It is the Aletheia of a cosmically open existence. Nietzsche does not believe that this human truth of the cosmos realizes itself in an abstract or conceptual thinking. This thinking takes the form of an insight or an intuition. This implies however no immediate sense perception of the given for Nietzsche, but the divinatory intuition of the essence of the cosmos which cannot be expressed in common everyday language. It eludes the concept and remains perhaps inexpressible. This inexpressible quality may find its voice possibly only through poetry. Even for Plato for whom philosophy is otherwise dialegesthai - the account of being through a dialogue with friends or within the soul itself - even for Plato the heart of philosophy is guarded by silence. It is Arrheton - unsayable. Thus even in his rejection of the discursive concept and with the conception of the highest truth as a 'showing' Nietzsche still remains on the ground of a tradition which he intends to overcome. In summary, Nietzsche's questions correspond to the structure of western metaphysics. He thinks the beingness of being as the will to power, being in its entirety as the eternal return of the same, the highest being on the one hand negatively as the death of God and then again positively as the Apollonian-Dionysian play which creates all things as products of appearance like an artist and the work of art. Finally he grasps the truth of all this in so far as it is human through the overman. Nietzsche remains within the ontological dimensions of nothing, becoming, appearance and thinking like the metaphysical tradition that he opposes. He relies on these dimensions but does not bring their role explicitly or radically into view itself. Nietzsche's philosophy is in this sense ontologically as tame as the tradition from which he wishes to distinguish himself. He remains within the spell of metaphysics even where he already celebrates his victory over it. He is a prisoner of metaphysics in a further sense since he predominantly interprets being as value. Even the origin of this identification is found already in Plato. To be sure the Good, the Agathon which Plato calls megiston mathema, the greatest thing worthy of knowledge and the target of all education of the philosopher-king in The Republic is for Plato no value but the essence of the ideas, that is the idea of the ideas. Just like the sun that lends visibility to all things in the realm of vision and grants them growth, the Agathon combines cognizance and identity of existence to all ideas. As that which grants being, the Good is Epikeina Tes Ousias - beyond all being. The Agathon is not only more existent than the things of sense perception, it is also more real than the enduring ideas. Such is the essence of the Platonic Good. All things appear in the light of the Agathon and thus every finite thing that is exposed to this light is in some ways
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'good'. The goodness is a transcendental character of being. For modernity and especially for Kant the transcendental ontological characteristics become necessarily relative to the subject for which all objects are since Kant determines being through objects. And this enables Nietzsche to determine the goodness of all things accordingly through a relativity of all things to man, that is to determine it as value. Values do not exist as such; they always exist for someone. Values correspond to value judgements. They are no aspects of objects - at least not in the sense that the things exist first and receive added predicates of value later. The openness towards things, towards their mere simple presence is already a matter of certain perspectives of value. Since according to Nietzsche the essence of things is the will to power values are presupposed and projected by the will to power as 'conditions of survival and growth'. Such a projection establishes the directions and aims of the will to power. Every being has value because the will to power flows through and permeates the motion of things. Nietzsche's basic approach is this: the ontological value follows from the modern metamorphosis of the classical relation between On and Agathon. For Nietzsche all values are within life; they are in the cosmos. Life itself or the world itself has no value. This does not imply a negative evaluation of life and world, but the realization of the impossibility to evaluate them since they are the whole in which all values occur and all valuing takes place. The eternal return establishes a spatial and temporal dimension for the expansion of the will to power. This doctrine establishes precisely the meaninglessness and valuelessness of that whole in which all evaluation occurs. 'The total value of the world cannot be estimated.'3 Having value is a fundamental ontological determination which Nietzsche attributes to finite being. Absence of value, however, is a basic characteristic of the entirety of being or becoming in accordance with the thought of the eternal return. In the fourfold structure of his question and in the basic value-philosophical approach Nietzsche remains indebted to metaphysics. However, it remains a central question of any interpretation of Nietzsche whether this dependency on metaphysics, which he nevertheless passionately opposes, is complete or if he somehow transcends it. Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche as contained in Holzzvege denies that Nietzsche essentially succeeds to break through towards a free cosmic vision. Heidegger believes that Nietzsche is a prisoner of metaphysics in so far as he completes its basic aspects in a particular way. Heidegger's interpretation is predominantly guided by the will to power. Nietzsche essentially concludes modern metaphysics and thinks it through to its end. Modernity commences with an essential change towards truth. Antiquity understands truth as uncovery of being (Aletheia) or as the lighting in which all things appear and show themselves. For modernity truth gains the character of certitude following the Platonic conception of truth as an adequate view or vision of the ideas. Truth becomes a way in which man, the
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conscious subject, reaches certainty about being. Being is essentially conceived as an object that is as a thing, which is what it is by revealing itself to a subject. The subjective perception of being or the perceptio on the other hand is a drive which represents or a representation which is driven - and this concurrently not separately or successively. The subject is will and representation. The driving force of the representation is the will. Representation is an objectification. Representation as such is a violating will to power. Nietzsche brings this hidden basis into view. The subject's own experience of itself becomes the ontological essence. Everything is will to power. Heidegger interprets the will to power through a modern conception of substance which for Leibniz is the monad and both appetitus and perceptio and which is ontologically determined as power. With his doctrine of the will to power Nietzsche completes in Heidegger's view the metaphysics of modernity which conceives substance through power and through the self. The overman is interpreted thus by Heidegger through the human being who is ready to will the will to power and who takes over the rule of the earth. It is thus not something that will occur as a completely new form of existence at some stage but it is inherent in our human and indeterminate subjectivity even if it is not yet developed to gigantic excess. Heidegger's Nietzsche interpretation is essentially based on Heidegger's summary and insight into the history of being and in particular on his interpretation of the metaphysics of modernity. Nevertheless, the question remains open whether Nietzsche does not already leave the metaphysical dimensions of any problems essentially and intentionally behind in his conception of the cosmos. There is a non-metaphysical originality in his cosmological philosophy of 'play'. Even the early writings indicate the mysterious dimension of play including the metaphysics of the artist, his Heracliteanism with Zeus, the playing cosmic child, the Pais Paizon. Even if Nietzsche comes frequently close to Hegel who says at one point that the play in its indifference and its 'ultimate recklessness is at the same time the most sublime and only true seriousness'.4 Nietzsche refers to their joint root Heraclitus and not to the metaphysician Hegel. While the idealism of Kant, Schelling and Hegel referred often to the connection between imagination, time, freedom and play, it referred to primordial being as will and spirit. Nietzsche makes the human playing, the playing of the child and the artist into a key concept for the universe. It becomes a cosmic metaphor. This does not mean that the human ontological modality is uncritically applied to being in its entirety. Rather vice versa: the human essence can only be conceived and determined through play if man is conceived in its ecstatic openness towards the existing world and not simply as a thing among other things within the cosmos distinguished by the faculties of mind and reason. Only where the cosmic play comes into view, where the conceptual view breaks through the Apollonian illusion and sees through the constructs of finite appearance to perceive the
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creative, productive and destructive 'life' itself- where the ascent and decline of the finite, temporal forms is experienced as a dance and a round, as the dice game of divine chance, covered by the innocent and careless heavens, man can experience himself in his playful productivity as connected to the life of the All, as embedded in the great play of the birth and the death of all things and as immersed in the tragedy and comedy of universal being. The cosmos plays. It plays the Dionysian ground which gives birth to the Apollonian illusion of the existing forms and which drives the finite things 'with the whip to the fields'.5 It plays joining and separating, weaving death and life into one beyond good and evil and beyond all value because any value only appears within the play. The name for the fathomless all-power of play is Dionysos. The posthumous work contains a late statement: Tragic art, rich in both experiences, is described as a reconciliation of Apollo and Dionysos, the deepest importance is given to appearance by Dionysos: And this appearance is even denied and denied with pleasure ... and the destruction even of the most beautiful appearance drives the Dionysian happiness to its highest climax.6 The climactic Dionysian happiness is found in a frightening experience that reveals the emptiness of all individual formations and reclaims all individuality for the process of the individuating play. This ecstatic happiness of Dionysian transcendence is already expressed in the fragment by Heraclitus which refers to the cosmos as a scattered rubbish heap. Taking the perspective of a tragicDionysian worldview, the realm of a metaphysical conception of being as being is the dimension of that which forgets itself, the realm of a pretended, illusory world of play. Man has the tremendous possibility to grasp illusion as illusion and to immerse himself in the great cosmic play through his own playing and to experience himself in this immersion as the participant of the cosmic play. Where Nietzsche conceives being and becoming as play he no longer remains within the boundaries of metaphysics. Similarly, the will to power has no longer the characteristics of reifying being for a conscious subject but it has the character of Apollonian formation. The eternal return of the same on the other hand conceives the all-embracing, all-providing and all-eliminating play-time of the world. The halcyon aspect of the vision of the overman refers to the player not to the violent aggressor or the technical giant. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche states: 'I know no other way to deal with great tasks than the play: This is as an indication for greatness and an essential pre-condition.'7 However, the playing man who remains ecstatically exposed to the formless and forming God Dionysos does not live in the wandering wilfulness of absolute freedom. He is a participant in the play of the cosmos and wills profoundly that which is necessary. Nietzsche
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uses the formula 'amorfatf for this will which does not just resign itself to a fate but which participates in the cosmic play. The Dionysian dithyramb Fame and Eternity expresses Nietzsche's essential and existential experience of his thought and poetry as the cosmic harmony between man and world in the play of necessity: ' . . . shield of necessity!/ Highest stars of being!/ no wish reaches you/ no denial can tarnish you/ eternal yes to being/1 am forever your yes/ because I love you, O eternity!'8
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Notes
Translator's Foreword 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 'The Birth of Tragedy'. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Kaufrnann. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967. pp 3-144. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. Ed. Walter Kaufrnann. Trans. Walter Kaufrnann. New York: Random House, Inc., 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961. Chapter One: The 'Metaphysics of the Artist' 1. Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks 1. Nietzsche. Ecce Homo. Random House, Inc.: New York, p. 326. Fink cites Nietzsche from an edition of Nietzsche's works published by Kroner. As far as could be established this edition is identical with the edition prepared by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche in 1905. Citations used in this translation are those used by Fink (Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche) and translated. 2. The fundamental equation of being and value 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Nietzsche. Werke. XI, p. 20. XV, p. 63. XV, p. 62. I, p. 2. I, p. 3. XV, p. 65. 3. The psychology of Art and Art as Cognition of the World
8. I, p. 5. 9. I, p. 19. 10. I, p. 20.
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11. I, p. 23. 12. I, p. 24. 13. I, p. 31. 14. I, p. 44. 15. I, p. 45. 16. I, p. 153. 17. I, p. 74. 18. 'Urgrund', 'Ur-Eine', 'Ur-Wesen'. 19. VI, p. 41.
Notes
4. 'Socratism' against tragic wisdom 20. It appears that the context for Fink's terminology ('das Ganze des Seins') is Heidegger's ontological difference. 'Das Ganze des Seins' (Being as a whole, ontological Being) is distinguished from 'das Seiende im Ganzen' (being in its entirety, ontic being). 21. I, p. 95. 22. I, p. 99. 23. I, p. 169. 24. I, p. 168. 25. XV, p. 62. 26. I, p. 8. 27. X,p. 189. 28. X, p. 194. 29. X,p. 196. 30. X, p. 205. 31. X,p.206. 32. cf. footnote I. 33. IX, p. 151. 34. IX, p. 170.
5. Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius 35. 'education'. 36. XV, p. 68. 37. XV, p. 72. 38. XV, p. 68. 39. X,p.5. 40. X,p. 13. 41.X, p. 37. 42. X,p.41. 43. Barnes, Jonathan. Early Greek Philosophy, p. 102. 44. X,p.47. 45. X,pp. 52, 57.
Notes Chapter Two: Nietzsche's Enlightenment 1. The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective
1. XV, p. 79. 2. 'through/ from the inferior'. 3. XV, p. 73. 4. n, p. 24. 5. II, p. 36. 6. II, p. 34. 7. II, p. 151. 8. II, p. 200. 9. II, p. 49. 10. II, p. 414.
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2. The philosophy of the morning (Dawn and The Gay Science) 11. V pp. 360-361. 12. IV, p. 28. 13. IV, p. 36. 14. IV, p. 213. Chapter Three: The Proclamation 1. Form, style and structure of Thus spoke Zarathustra
1. XV, p. 94. 2. XV, p. 90. 3. XV, p. 118. 4. VI, p. 476. 5. VI, p. 20. 6. VI, p. 19.
2. The overman and the death of God

7. XV, p. 97. 8. VI, p. 62. 9. VI, p. 13. 10. VI, p. 13. 11. VI, p. 13. 12. VI, p. 13. 13. VI, p. 16. 14. VI, p. 18. 15. VI, p. 33. 16. VI, p. 42. 17. VI, p. 91. 18. VI, p. 109.
178
Notes 3. The Will to Power
19. VI, p. 124. 20. VI, p. 124. 21. VI, p. 124. 22. VI, p. 125. 23. VI, p. 125. 24. VI, p. 125. 25. VI, p. 125. 26. VI, p. 149. 27. VI, p. 153. 28. XV, p. 100. 29. VI, p. 157. 30. VI, p. 163. 31. VI, p. 203.
4. The eternal return: Of the vision and the riddle, Before Sunrise
32. 33. 34. 35. 36. XV, p. 85. VI, p. 224. VI, p. 226. VI, p. 228. VI, p. 240.
5. The eternal return: the cosmological conception of the problem of morality. The recurrence of the same
37. VI, p. 292. 38. VI, p. 253. 39. VI, p. 258. 40. VI, p. 274. 41. VI, p. 281. 42. VI, p. 287. 43. VI, p. 314.
6. The eternal recurrence: Of the Great Yearning

44. VI, p. 322. 45. VI, p. 324. 46. VI, p. 328.
7. The eternal recurrence: The Seven Seals. Zarathustra and the Higher Man
47. VI, p. 334. 48. VI, p. 398.
Notes
49. 50. 51. 52. 53.
179
VI, p. 419. VI, p. 426. VI, p. 430. VI, p. 437. VI, p. 472.
Chapter Four: The Destruction of the Western Tradition 1. The transcendental creation of value. Beyond Good and Evil
1. XV, p. 102. 2. XV, p. 101. 3. VI, p. 347. 4. XV, p. 103. 5. VII, p. 14. 6. VH,p.36. 7. VII, p. 36. 8. VII, p. 54. 9. VII, p. 63. 10. VII, p. 60. 11. VII, p. 87. 12. VII, p. 130. 13. VII, p. 135. 14. VII, p. 271.
2. The Genealogy of Morals

15. VII, p. 312. 16. VII,p. 313. 17. VII, p. 317. 18. VII, p. 336. 19. VII, p. 337. 20. VH,p. 379. 21. VII, p. 380. 22. VII, p. 419. 23. VII, p. 430. 24. VII, p. 436. 25. VII, p. 483. 26. VII, p. 484.
3. The Antichrist and The Twilight of the Idols

27. VHI, p. 235. 28.' VIII, p. 256. 29. VIII, p. 270. 30. VIII, p. 312. 31. VIE, p. 313.
180
32. VII, p. 5. 33. IX, p. 190. 34. XVI, p. 402. 35. VIII, p. 68. 36. VIII, p. 70. 37. VIII, p. 74. 38. VIII, p. 75. 39. VIII, p. 76. 40. VHI, p. 78. 41. VIII, p. 79. 42. VHI, p. 80.
Notes
4. The ontological idea and the moral ideal 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. VIII, p. 83. Vm,p. 81. XIV, p. 353. XV, p. 141. XV, p. 145. XV, p. 146. 5. The posthumous work The Will to Power. The problem of nihilism
49. XV, p. 150. 50. XV, p. 152. 51. XV, p. 153. 52. XV, p. 187. 53. XV, p. 222. 54. XV, p. 241. 55. XV, p. 489. 56. XV, p. 442. 57. XV, p. 446.
6. The negative ontology of the thing 58. VIII, p. 94. 59. XVI, p. 47. 60. XVI, p. 73. 61. XVI, p. 77. 62. XVI, p. 101. 63. XVI, p. 101. 64. XVI, p. 19. 65. XVI, p. 179. 66. XVI, p. 225. 67. XVI, p. 272.
Notes 7. Discipline and Breeding - the Dionysian world 68. Fragment B 15, Diels-Kranz. 69. XVI, p. 292. 70. XVI, p. 277. 71. XVI, p. 279. 72. XVI, p. 285. 73. XVI, p. 336. 74. XVI, p. 338. 75. XVI, p. 351. 76. XVI, p. 347. 77. XVI, p. 359. 78. XVI, p. 386. 79. F. Hoelderlin, In lieblicherBlaeue. 80. XVI, p. 391. 81. XVI, p. 389. 82. XVI, p. 399. 83. Diels-Kranz, Fragment B 8,4: 42. 84. In Heidegger translations this is frequently referred to as 'Lighting'. 85. XVI, p. 401.
181
Chapter Five: Nietzsche's Relationship to Metaphysics as Imprisonment and Liberation 1. The four transcendental dimensions of the problem of being and the basic principles of Nietzsche's philosophy 1. VIII, p. 428. 2. XV, p. 125. 3. XVI, p. 168. 4. Hegel, Erste Druckschriften (Lasson 1928), p. 128. 5. Heraclitus, Fragment B 11 (Diels-Kranz). 6. XIV, p. 365. 7. XV, p. 47. 8. VTII, p. 436.
Index
affirmation 10,43,73,125 altruism 146 Antichrist, The 8,111,144 aphorism 5 Apollo 12,15-20,22,23, 30, 32,157, 172 Apollonian 11,15,17,24,28,33, 34, 134,157,160,161,168,169,171, 172 appearance 16,18,19,22,23,28,34,36, 38,44, 62, 85,95,127,128,130-3, 135,143,148,154,157,166-9 Aristotle 151,160,161,167 art 9,12,14-20,22,24,26,34,36-41, 43, 53,105, 134,147,154,157,168, 169 tragic 23,134,135,154,172 artist 26, 134 atheism 122,160 Attempt at a Self-Criticism 11 Augustine 92 becoming 24, 28, 32,33, 66, 73, 74, 88, 90,96,114,125-7,130,132,134, 139,140,148-53,157,166,167,169, 170, 172 Being 12,22,23,31,69,70,127,128, 130 being 19,22,31-3,54,66,67,69,73,79, 80, 81,84,85,87,90-2,94,95, 109, 110,114,115,125, 128,129,132, 134, 135,143-53,155,157,158,160, 162,164-72 question of 52,128 Beyond Good and Evil 8,111, 117 Birth of Tragedy, The 8, 9,12-14,16,19, 20,24,28,29,37 Caesar 113 Case of Wagner, The 8 categories 149-51 Christianity, Christian 10,18,68, 81,86,
93,98, 108,110,112,113,117, 118, 121,122,124,129,132-4,136, 138, 141,147, 154,165,166 cognition 147-51,153,154 concept 25,33,55,127,128, 148-50, 169 Concerning Truth and Deception in the extramoral sense 24 conscience 118,119 cosmos 21,54,74,79,82-5,92-5,97-9, 101,102, 139,150,152,153,157, 158,160-2,166, 169,171,172 see also world creator, creativity 63, 65,85, 92,94,100, 143,144 culture 26-30,41,109,119,137 Daybreak 8, 9,42,45-7, 49, 50-2,116 death of God 37, 50, 57-9, 60, 62,63, 65, 66, 72, 73, 81, 100,102-8,116, 117,122,125,133,135,136,138-40, 142,154, 155,164,165,168,169 decadence 140-2 Descartes 112 Dionysian 11-13,15,17,24,27,28, 33, 34, 62, 88, 96, 110,134,135, 145,149, 157,160,161,168,169, 172 Dionysos 10,12,15,17-23,30,32, 96, 114,147, 154,157,158,160,162, 165,166,172 dream 15,18,19,22 earth 59,60, 63-9,83,85,86,95,98, 99, 102,105, 125,130,131,133,135, 155,156,160 Ecce Homo 7,11,38,52, 53, 55, 58, 69, 111,144,166,172 egoism 63, 64,83 eternal recurrence, eternal return 50, 56, 57,72-4,77,79-82, 86-94,96-103, 105-8,110,115,116, 117,133,135,
Index eternal recurrence, eternal return (continued) 136, 141,146,147, 152-8,160-2,164,165, 169,170, 172 eternity 44,66,76,78-82,87-91,98,99, 100-2,157,161,173 evil 55,104,114,145,154 existence (human) 46, 63,81,84,85,93, 101, 104,110,122,132,135,136, 139,143,144, 147, 154-7,161 free spirit 41-4,46,48,49,51,52,62, 104,111,112 freedom 88,93,94 Gay Science, The 8,9, 42, 44, 45-7, 50, 51,52,116 genius 27,29,40,41,52,62 see also overman, higher man God 51,57,59,63-5,67,74,85,92-4, 100,104,121, 122, 125,128,129, 131-4,136-40,143, 147,160 good and evil 55,100,113,146,162,172 Good, The (Agathori) 46, 49,124,129, 130,132,169 Hegel 1,49, 54,139,145, 157,161,171 Heidegger 170,171 Heraclitus 6,10,12,22,24,30-2,62, 66, 100,129, 130,158,161,171 herd 113,123,159 Highermen 103,105,121,158,159 history 28,37,65,111,120,136,141, 142,153,157 home, homeless, homelessness 83, 104, 139 Human, All too Human 8, 34,35,36,42, 45,46,111,116 idea 130,131, ideal, ascetic ideal 58,119,120, 121 idealism 38,44,49, 50, 56, 59-61, 64, 66, 140 inverted 58,60,61,67 infinity 75,76,77,81, 82, 85,94,95, 100, 102, 128, 155,157 inspiration 54 interpretations, of Nietzsche 3 intoxication 18,22 Introduction to the study of Plato's dialogues 30 intuition 14,26,30-32, 54,127,147, 150,151,165,166,169 Jesus, (the Crucified) 166 56,122, 123, 133, justice 68
183
Kant 134,135,147,151,168,170,171 language 25,128 last man 56-8,104 life 12,24,27,32-34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 49, 51, 58, 59,61, 64, 66-71, 73,85, 93, 97, 103,109-12,115,117,11924, 132,134,135,138,140-2,144, 145,147, 148,150-8,161,165, 166, 168,170,172 lust 84 lyric poetry 17 master-slave (morality) 68,81,112,113, 115-18 metaphysics 6, 8,36-40,43,44,46, 54, 55, 80, 81,107,108,112,114,115, 117,124-9,136,140, 141,143,144, 147,151,154,165-7, 169,171 Miscellaneous Beliefs and Sayings 8 morality 38,39,43,44,46-8, 55, 56, 61, 73, 80, 82, 85,107,108,110, 111, 114,115,117, 124,132,133,136, 137,139-44,154, 165,166 music 17 Napoleon 113,118 necessity 88, 94, 99,100,173 negative ontology 150,151,153 Nietzsche Contra Wagner 8 nihilism, nihilistic, nihilist 2, 56,103, 104.120,123, 136-42,147,155 non-being, nothing (see also being) 125, 129,138,166,167,168 On the Genealogy of Morals 8,111, 117 ontological difference 129, 131,133 openness 83,85,91,92,95,100,101 otherworld, other-world 46, 50, 59,63, 85, 93, 120, 123,127,129,133, 139 overman 27,46,50,56-8,60, 62, 64,66, 67,71-3, 75, 78, 81, 82, 86,88,94, 102, 105-8, 116,121,136,154,155, 164, 165,169,171 Parmenides 32,33,129,130,151, 161 Paul,Paulus 123 pessimism 10,140 Philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks 30 Plato 6,29,30,126,129-33, 151,160, 162,166-9 Platonism, inverted Platonism 81, 90, 108.122,124, 125,131
184
Index time 16,18,23,28, 32,35, 65,67,71- 3, 75-7,79-81,84-93,95-9, 101,102, 125,127,130,131, 151, 155-7, 162, 166,168 tragedy 9,13,18,22,30,96,172 tragic experience, tragic view, tragic , pathos 12,102,156 transience 97,99,161 truth 24-7,33,37,38,40,41,54,103, 112,114,115,132,135, 144,145, 150-2,155,157,170 Twilight of the Idols, The 8,111,125,144, 145 Untimely Meditation (David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer) 8,28 Untimely Meditation (On the Use and Abuse of History) 8,28 Untimely Meditation (Richard Wagner in Bayreuth) 8,29 Untimely Meditation (Schopenhauer as Educator) 8,29 value 11,32,49,62,74,80,86,109,110, 113-15,121,124,125,130,134,138, 141,142,144, 147,155,159,164, 168-70,172 the question of 8,107,108,111,114 Wagner 4, 9,19,20,27,29,34-6, 42,53 Wanderer and his Shadow, The 8 Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 14 will 23,26, 62, 66, 69, 88, 94, 99,100, 111,120,128,149,156,171 will to power 50,57, 59, 64, 68-74,76, 78,81,102,103,105, 106,108-12, 115-17,121,122,125,133,135,136, 144-8,150-65, 167-71 Will to Power, The 8, 107, 135, 141, 145 world 14,19,22,23,27,65,79,80,82, 83,85,86,89,91,92,95,97,98,100, 101, 111, 125, 127,133,149,154, 161-3, 170, 173 see also cosmos yearning 83, 85, 86, 89,91-6,100, 103-5,119,164 Zarathustra 20,50,51,55,57,62,66,69, 72,74,76-8,80,82, 86, 88, 96,102, 103,104-6, 108
play 24, 30, 32, 62, 87, 88, 94,96,154, 160,161,169,171,172 pleasure (hedone) 98 positivism 45-7,51,55,111, 116,151 Pre-Socratic 30,31,35,125 Prince Vogelfrei 41,44,46,49,51 psychological analysis 3 psychology 16,37,46,108,112,117, 119,142 rank order 27,143,144,158 reason 25,40,43, 80, 81,120,126, 128, 151,162,171 redemption 10,17,18,38,63,71,76,96, 154 Ree, Paul 35 religion 36-40,43,44, 50, 80, 107,111, 112,116, 117,122, 124,137,140, 141,143,144,154 resentment 7, 118,120, 121,146 revaluation 49,74,80,84,108,114,121, 123-5,132,155,162,166 revenge 67,68,134 scepticism 6,43, 54,144-6,151,152 Schiller 76 Schopenhauer 10,16,17,19,22, 26-30, 34,35,36,38,42,51,98 science 12, 36,41-6,52,104,112,114 scientist 26,41 self 85, 171 self-alienation 48, 50, 61, 62, 73, 81, 85, 103,109,114-16,143,153 Socrates 13,21,22,29, 30,126, 166 Socratism 11,12,24,26, 36 soul 78,86,87,90,92,93,95,96,122 space 16, 18,23, 65, 67, 79, 85,92, 93, 95, 98, 101,102,125,130, 131, 166 spirit of heaviness 84-6,93 style 2,4,54,55 temporality 73, 89, 90, 91,126,133,157 theory 21,22 thing, thing itself, thing as such, thing in itself 22,25,36,38, 61, 67,79,85, 108,125,146,150-3,157,161, 166-168 Thus spoke Zaraihustra 8,45,47, 53, 54, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68,70, 75, 81, 90,102, 107,110,115,121

Eugen Fink - Nietzsche&#39;s Philosophy

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Nietzsche's Philosophy

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\ O N D O N NEW YORK A W Lcontinuum

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The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

1. NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY BEHIND MASKS

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Nietzsche's philosophy behind masks

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The fundamental equation of being and value

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The fundamental equation of being and value

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The fundamental equation of being and value

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world

3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART AND ART AS COGNITION OF THE WORLD

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

The psychology of art and art as cognition of the world

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

'Socratism' against tragic wisdom

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

'Socratism' against tragic wisdom

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

'Socratism' against tragic wisdom

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius

The 'Metaphysics of the Artist'

Untimely Meditations. Culture and Genius

The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective

The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective

The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective

The psychology of unmasking and the scientific perspective

2. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MORNING (DAWN AND THE GAY SCIENCE)

The philosophy of the morning

The philosophy of the morning

The philosophy of the morning

The philosophy of the morning

1. FORM, STYLE AND STRUCTURE OF THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

Form, style and structure of Thus spoke Zarathustra

Form, style and structure of Thus spoke Zarathustra

The overman and the death of God

2. THE OVERMAN AND THE DEATH OF GOD

The overman and the death of God

The overman and the death of God

The overman and the death of God

The will to power

3. THE WILL TO POWER

The will to power

The will to power

The will to power

The eternal return

Eugen Fink - Nietzsche's Philosophy

Eugen Fink - Nietzsche's Philosophy