THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

The Eternal Recurrence of the Same: A Historical Account

Of Nietzsches Philosophy of History
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
School of Philosophy
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Copyright
All Rights Reserved
By
Gregory R. Canning
Washington, D.C.

2011

The Eternal Recurrence of the Same: A Historical Account

Of Nietzsches Philosophy of History

Gregory R. Canning, Ph.D.

Director: Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil.

The interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsches philosophy has been a source of

controversy ever since his lapse into insanity at the beginning of 1889. One aspect of his
thought, in particular, has been a point of contention among scholars since the 1930shis
thought of the eternal recurrence. This is when scholars first devoted considerable attention
to the difficulty of interpreting this teaching within the context of his philosophy as a whole.
The works of Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Lwith were instrumental in
establishing the eternal recurrence as an important part of Nietzsches philosophy. Among
the three, Lwiths interpretation of the eternal recurrence has been most influential: for
Lwith, the recurrence breaks apart into two incommensurable halves, a cosmological
doctrine regarding the eternity of the world and an anthropological doctrine regarding human
life. These halves contradict one another and cannot be brought together to form a coherent
unitya position largely accepted in the scholarship since Lwiths time.

This dissertation seeks to correct this interpretation by examining Nietzsches works,

beginning with the earliest and working its way toward his final writings (the opposite of
Lwiths procedure). The result is a new interpretation of the eternal recurrence that
illuminates the coherence of the doctrine.
The source of the thought lies in Nietzsches reflection on the nature of science and
its detrimental influence on life in The Birth of Tragedy and, significantly, the History
essay (1874). Nietzsches struggle to find a life-affirming scientific position results in what
he calls the gay science, which unifies science and life in the eternal recurrence. While this
thought remains central in such works as The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it
seems to fade to the background in his later works. Careful examination of these later works,
however, demonstrates that Nietzsches critiques of truth, science, and religion in the
revaluation of all values are dependent on the foundation of the eternal recurrence.
Reading Nietzsches works chronologically not only yields an interpretation that
demonstrates the coherence of the eternal recurrence, but also demonstrates the unity of his
philosophy of history and philosophy of science.

This dissertation by Gregory R. Canning fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral
degree in philosophy approved by Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., as Director, and by Michael
Rohlf, Ph.D., and Richard Hassing, Ph.D., as Readers.

_______________________________________
Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., Director

_______________________________________
Michael Rohlf, Ph.D., Reader

_______________________________________
Richard Hassing, Ph.D., Reader

ii

Table of Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Chapter 1: The Inchoate Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy 21
1862-1872: Philology as Philosophy 21
Fate, Free Will, and History 25
Greek Tragedy 31
The Pre-Platonics: Tragic vs. Socratic Wisdom 45
Thoughts on Education 55
Philosophy of the Future 62
3. Chapter 2: The Transitional Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy 64
Introduction 64
Nietzsche and Hegel 66
Nietzsches Quasi-Hegelianism 73
The Shattering of Hegels Dialectic of History 77
Preface 78
Advantages (1-3) 81
Interlude on German Culture (4) 90
Disadvantages (5-9) 97
Conclusion (10) 111
Conclusion 115
4. Chapter 3: The Scientific Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy 119
Introduction 119
Nietzsche and Science 121
The Gay Science 123
Eternal Recurrence as Scientific Hypothesis 138
Zarathustra, Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence 147
First and Second Parts 152
Third Part 160
Fourth and Final Part 170
A New Vision: Recurrence and Revaluation 174
5. Chapter 4: The Critical Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy 178
Introduction 178
After Zarathustra 180
Negative Works 183
The Value of Truth 188
The Problem of Science 196
Nietzsches Critique of Religion 205
Freedom: Beyond Morality? 211
iii

Nihilism and Eternal Recurrence 216

6. Chapter 5: The Dynamic Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy 221
The Will to Power: Nietzsche as Dynamite 222
Nietzsche, the Hyperborean 229
Pauline Christianity vs. Dionysus 235
Amor Fati: Love of Necessity 240
Nietzsches Explosion 245
7. Conclusion 248
Bibliography 257

iv

Introduction
There is a definite temptation in the study of philosophy to reduce the thought of a
philosopher to the conditions under which he or she wrote and thought. This danger
increases exponentially when it comes to a careful consideration of the thought and writings
of Friedrich Nietzsche. Since the onset of his insanity in 1889, those who studied
Nietzsches thoughts attempted to provide a biographical contextualization in order to
understand his thinking. Due to his methodological insights in some of his writings, scholars
have considered Nietzsches philosophy as conditioned by the successes and failures, and
even the mundane details, of his life: Every philosophy is a philosophy of a certain stage of
life. The stage of life at which a philosopher discovered his teaching is audible within it:
he cannot prevent it, however exalted above time and the hour he may feel himself to be.1
His intellectual career can be divided into different stages or periods in accordance with
the vicissitudes of his life and the ever-changing direction and content of his thinking. Each
scholar has his or her own determination of the number of these stages (and when one ends
and the other begins)a fact that indicates the arbitrariness of such a practice. Their guide
to understanding Nietzsches philosophy is, therefore, largely biographical and
psychologicala point of integrity for those who adhere to the methods of the master
himself.2

All citations from Nietzsches works (published and unpublished) are from Nietzsche Werke: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967ff)shortened to
KGW, followed by the division, volume, then page number. For example, the citation for this quotation would
be: KGW IV/3: 130. From Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 277. Unless otherwise cited, all translations are my own. The translation information will always
follow that of KGW.
2
One can see this in the following passage from Alexander Nehamass otherwise excellent book: When I
claim that we must pay attention to Nietzsches style, I am claiming only that his changing styles convey

2
The spirit of the biographical/psychological approach found more recently in the
work of Alexander Nehamas has its source in Karl Jasperss book Nietzsche: An Introduction
to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity [Nietzsche: Einfhrung in das
Verstndnis seines Philosophierens] published in 1936. As Jaspers indicates, his main
intention in the book was to marshal against the National Socialists the world of thought of
the man whom they had proclaimed as their own philosopher.3 For this reason, Jaspers has
the same goal as his contemporaries Martin Heidegger and Karl Lwith, who also wrote
books and delivered lectures on the topic of Nietzsches philosophy in the 1930s. All three
of these scholars hoped to show that not only was Nietzsche a rigorous thinkerand not
simply a poet-philosopherbut also that his thought could not be appropriated by the Nazis.
Each had his own methodology proper to his investigationin the case of Jaspers, it was the
search for his whole way of thinking throughout his Existenz that provided the key to the
interpretation of Nietzsches thought.4
The foundation for Jasperss understanding of Nietzsche, therefore, derives from a
careful consideration of Nietzsches life and thought, and how they complement one another.
Insofar as he takes them as conjoined, Jasperss approach is able to grasp certain aspects of
Nietzsches thought that would otherwise remain obscure. What is most important about this
approach is that it affords one a glimpse of the whole of Nietzsches thoughtit provides

significant information to his readers. The point is not that we must pay attention to the (ill-characterized)
literary aspects of his work but that in addition to presenting his views, Nietzsches varying, self-conscious
writing enables the practiced reader always to be aware of who it is whose views are being presented, what
personality these views express and constitute. From Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985), 37.
3
Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, trans. Charles F.
Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997), xiii.
4
Ibid., 15. Jasperss emphasis.

3
one with the background of his thought. Life is indeed the context for all thought; one would
be a bad reader of Nietzsche if one did not grasp this major theme in his works. The strength
of Jasperss interpretation, thus, lies in its capacity to present a general view of Nietzsches
thought. However, the misunderstanding of the relation between life and thought, which is a
simple mistake, results in a superficial approach to Nietzsches philosophy that misses the
point.5 Context then becomes the tyrant. Thought is reduced to life or even the influences on
Nietzsche (the books he happened to be reading). Nietzsches claim to be untimely is
dismissed because of the scholars complete distrust of Nietzsche as a reliable source for
information on his own life and thought in Ecce Homocaution would be a better guide in
this situation.
More recently, this contextualizing approach to Nietzsches thinking has gained
momentum among some scholars. The biographer Rdiger Safranski, following the
guidelines of this approach, tries to reduce Nietzsches thinking to the various stages in his
life in his work Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography.6 Biography itself is problematic
when it is applied to the philosopher: it will invariably attempt to undercut the thinkers
claim to innovation by concentrating on the historical influences. Nietzsche himself warns
that the overabundance of history will kill the subject so that it is no longer livingthis is the
demand of objectivity, which freezes Nietzsche in his proper historical place in the
history of 19th century German philosophy. Even as careful a scholar as Thomas Brobjer

This also leads to the tendency to mythologize Nietzsches life and, therefore, misconstrue his status in the
history of philosophy. To a certain extent, then, biographers of him run the risk of aggrandizing Nietzsche
thus, following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Frster-Nietzsche, Nietzsches sister, who manipulated her
brothers literary estate for the pursuit of personal gain.
6
Rdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York & London: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2003).

4
falls prey to this superficial approach in his most recent book, Nietzsches Philosophical
Context: An Intellectual Biography. Despite his claim that he will not reduce Nietzsches
thinking to a string of excerpts from books, Brobjer nevertheless works within the same
framework of contextualization: More fundamental is the attempt to better understand and
make known the general context in which Nietzsche thought and wrote and his dependence
on this context.7 The massive list of Nietzsches reading at the back of the book, while
helpful for research, gives one the impression that his thought is determined by the books he
read.8 Those whose books he checked out from libraries or owned himself (Brobjer names
the six major influences: Emerson, Plato, Schopenhauer, Lange, Kant, and Re) constitute
Nietzsches horizon of philosophical thought. The point is not that this may be trueI think
that each of these thinkers had a decisive impact on Nietzsches philosophybut that this
attempts to make Nietzsche all too timely. His thought is reduced to his time (in the form
of the books that he read); in this way, thought is reduced to life.9
As Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink remind us, this diluted approach is
psychologistic and, hence, only grazes the surface of Nietzsches thought. It does not
actually penetrate into the depth of his thinking and the variegated nature of his writing, but
remains content with superficial psychological analyses that do not provide an exhaustive
7

Thomas H. Brobjer, Nietzsches Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2008), 2.
8
Nietzsche himself warns against the reduction of culture and education to tables in one of the Prefaces to
Unwritten Works, entitled Thoughts on the Future of Our Educational Institution, composed as a Christmas
present for Cosima Wagner in 1872.
9
A notable exception to this general trend is Julian Youngs Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). In general, Young does a good job of pointing out differences
between the life Nietzsche actually lead and his philosophy; and he also indicates the points of convergence
between the two. However, there are also points at which he repeats the tired old phrases about Nietzsche: for
example, that his later works (those of 1888) were the products of megalomania, and Nietzsche was beginning
to lose his mindhence, they do not contain important material for an overall interpretation of Nietzsches
thought and may be ignored. For a discussion of the importance of these final works, see Chapter 5 below.

5
explanation of his thought. To the extent that one focuses on the thinker, one loses sight of
the thought. This does not diminish the importance of Nietzsches insight that ones thinking
is invariably conditioned by the relation to a given society, political establishment, or other
authoritative institutioni.e., the condition of life that is necessary for thinking. These
conditions are always present but to varying degrees at different times and places. What
never changes is the content of ones thinking when one does philosophy in the way that
Nietzsche does. Heidegger believes that each philosopher thinks one thought in his lifetime
despite the various conditions of his life; the conditions only turn the thought to one side or
the other, reveal one aspect or the other, focus the readers attention on one moment or the
other. The thought itself transcends all of these changeseven in the case of someone who
would deny that thinking has this kind of transcendence.10 This is no less true of someone
like Nietzsche, whom Heidegger suggested ought to be studied as carefully and rigorously as
Aristotle.
Fink emphasizes the fact that we need to immerse ourselves in Nietzsches works so
that we can engage his thought properly. The approach to his thought through his life has the
tendency to obscure the focus of his work in some cases. No one would bother with
10

Heideggers caution in regard to the interpretation of the various plans for The Will to Power in the Nachlass
serves as a reminder for the proper interpretation of all of Nietzsches writings: These are not stages of
development. Neither can the three fundamental positions be distinguished according to their scope: each is
concerned with the whole of philosophy and in each one the other two are implied, although in each case the
inner configuration and the location of the center which determines the form vary. And it was nothing else than
the question of the center that genuinely maltreated Nietzsche. Of course, it was not the extrinsic question of
finding a suitable connection or link among the handwritten materials available; it was, without Nietzsches
coming to know of it or stumbling across it, the question of philosophys self grounding. It concerns the fact
that, whatever philosophy is, and however it may exist at any given time, it defines itself solely on its own
terms; but also that such self-determination is possible only inasmuch as philosophy always has already
grounded itself. Its proper essence turns ever toward itself, and the more original a philosophy is, the more
purely it soars in turning about itself, and therefore the farther the circumference of its circle presses outward to
the brink of nothingness. From his lecture The Will to Power as Art, Nietzsche Volumes One and Two,
trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), 15-16.

6
Nietzsche if his work were simply the expression of his tormented life; he would only be an
interesting person at best. He could then be brushed aside as a man whose experiments in
thought pushed him to the extremes of rationality and, from there, over the edge into insanity.
One would not need to take his thought seriously. But what if Nietzsche is a philosopher,
i.e., someone who spiritually safeguards our humanity and the truth of our existence
through his thinking? We would then be unable to avoid an engagement with him and would
have to ask ourselves: Where does he stand as a thinker? We can never find an answer to
this question by focusing intently on Nietzsches 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.11 We need to meet
Nietzsche in terms of his thought primarily. His life will always remain a secondary
phenomenon that is connected to his thought, one which can never adequately serve as a
substitute for his work. To follow the path of his thought through his writings rather than the
course of his life leads one to the question of whether Nietzsche is merely an inverted
metaphysician or someone who achieves a new ontological understanding.12
Philosophy is a lifelong endeavor, as Nietzsche rightly recognizes. One would be
more true to Nietzsches thinking if one remained on the path of his thinking, the entire time
keeping his main thought within ones view. The main thought that guides his way of
thinking and structures all of his later philosophy is that of the eternal recurrence of the

11
12

Eugen Fink, Nietzsches Philosophy, trans. Goetz Richter (London & New York: Continuum, 2003), 5.
Ibid., 6.

13

same.

7
This thought is present in all of the stages of his philosophyeven from the

earliest days at Schulpforta. It may only be inchoate (i.e., a question rather than an answer, a
doctrine [Lehre]) at this point in his life, but the outlines of his most abysmal thought are
already present when Nietzsche is young. Of course, this does not change the fact that the
same thought finds its most precise articulation in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Nachlass
of the 1880s. All that changes is that Nietzsches thinking can be seen to have a definite
direction and coherence of structure. If one pursues the diluted biographical and
psychological methodology of stages of thinking, one exchanges the grandeur and unity of
Nietzsches vision for details of his life.14 (Although to a certain extent this approach is
unavoidable.)
Among the three scholars writing on Nietzsche in the 1930s, Karl Lwith devotes
himself to the task of a detailed explanation of the nature of the doctrine of the eternal
recurrence. As the first book-length study of the eternal recurrence, Lwiths approach has
cast a long shadow over developments in the scholarship on this topic since its publication
anyone who wants to understand this is indebted to the groundwork of this scholar.
However, there is a flaw in his approach since it results in the conclusion that the doctrine is
incoherent. As the work stands, it remains backwards because he ignores Nietzsches own
advice about reading and understanding his thought as it is presented in his works. Lwith
believes that Nietzsches genuine philosophy, the doctrine of the eternal recurrence, can

13

The thought of the eternal return is the foundation for Nietzsches main thoughts. These are the doctrine of
the will to power, the death of God and the overman. Ibid., 102.
14
In his, unfortunately, overlooked work on the philosopher, Friedrich Georg Jnger comes to a similar
conclusion with regard to the unity of Nietzsches thinking: Whoever returns from reading the last works to
Birth of Tragedy will be surprised about the unity of this thinking, which is absolutely one with the
determination of this thinker. From his book Nietzsche (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1949), 2-3.

only be found in the third period of his philosophizing after Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

15

8
He

begins with the doctrine as it is formulated in Zarathustra and then proceeds to read this
doctrine back into Nietzsches earlier writings (including his high school essays Fate and
History [Fatum und Geschichte] and Free Will and Fate [Willensfreiheit und Fatum]).
However, such a procedure is backwards according to Nietzsches own warning16 and no
interpretation of Nietzsches thought ever surfaces from this. Lwiths methodology reduces
the doctrine to contradiction between cosmology and anthropology: On the one hand the
idea of the eternal recurrence teaches a new purpose of human existence beyond human
existence, a will to self-eternalization; but it also teaches the exact opposite: a revolving of
the natural world in itself, a revolving that is just as selfless as it is goalless, and that includes
human life. The cosmic meaning clashes with the anthropological meaning, so that the one
contradicts the other.17 Under the influence of this assumption, scholarship for the past 70
years has been left in the awkward position of affirming the eternal recurrence as either
practical or theoretical, but not both.
But in defense of Lwith, he never said that the doctrine of the eternal recurrence
breaks into two sides: the practical and the theoretical. He said that it breaks apart into an
anthropological and cosmological aspect. It is all too easy to make the elision from Lwiths

15

The third period [of Nietzsches intellectual career] begins on the foundation of the idea of the eternal
recurrence, with Zarathustra, and ends with Ecce Homo. This period alone contains Nietzsches genuine
philosophy. From Nietzsches Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. J. Harvey Lomax
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 23.
16
Nietzsches warning concerning the difficulty of reading his polemic in the Preface to On the Genealogy of
Morality is applicable to all of his later writings: If anyone finds this script incomprehensible and hard on the
ears, I do not think the fault necessarily lies with me. It is clear enough, assuming as I do, that people have first
read my earlier works without sparing themselves some effort: because they really are not easy to approach.
KGW VI/2: 267. On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 9.
17
Nietzsches Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, 60.

9
distinction to that of the everyday distinction between theory and practice, which all too
many scholars have done. One can already sense this elision in Gilles Deleuzes study
Nietzsche et la philosophie (1962) when he divides the eternal recurrence between physical
theory (speculation) and an ethical doctrine (practice): The eternal return gives the will a
rule as rigorous as the Kantian one. We have noted that the eternal return, as a physical
doctrine, was the new formulation of a speculative synthesis [la synthse spculative]. As an
ethical thought [pense thique] the eternal return is the new formulation of the practical
synthesis: whatever you will, will it in such a way that you also will its eternal return.18
Whether intentional or not, this elision of the cosmological/anthropological into the
theoretical/practical has nevertheless come to color the subsequent discussions of the
meaning and validity of the eternal recurrence. The specter of Lwiths interpretation
remains in the background of these discussions (even if it goes unacknowledged in the
bibliographies), and so does his thought that the eternal recurrence is incoherent if one tries
to affirm simultaneously its theoretical and practical aspects.
Despite all the subtle distinctions and quibbling over the meaning and validity of the
doctrine, all the interpretations within the past decades operate within the framework
established by Lwith in his distinction between the cosmological and anthropological sides
of the teaching. The vast majority of scholars have rejected the validity of the theoretical
side of the doctrine and, for the most part, agreed that the doctrine only has practical/ethical
meaninga fact that attests to their agreement (albeit tacit) with Lwiths conclusion that the
two sides cannot be combined in a coherent way. Ivan Solls account agrees substantially
18

From Nietzsche et la philosophie, 5th ed. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2007), 77. Deleuzes
emphasis.

10
with that of the ethical/anthropological interpretation when he says: The presentation of the
eternal recurrence in the published works without any substantive argumentation for its truth
indicates that it was not primarily the doctrines truth or theoretical content that concerned
Nietzsche but rather peoples attitudes and reactions to this theory.19 A paradigmatic
representation of the doctrine as ethically (or anthropologically) significant is Bernd
Magnuss Nietzsches Existential Imperative. Work by Arthur Danto and Arnold Zuboff is in
a similar vein (see bibliography for full references). J. Kreuger is also in agreement with this
general line of interpretation.20 Even more recently, Bernard Reginster has unwittingly
contributed to the interpretation of the doctrine as practical: My proposal is decidedly
practical: the eternal recurrence tells us something about the nature of affirmation, rather
than about the life to be affirmed.21 The list could (and does) go on.
One should also note that Lwiths teleological view of Nietzsches teaching of the
eternal recurrence harbors ideological presuppositions that were the product of his
experiences in Germany after the rise of Nazism. Those who know Nietzsches
significance for Germany can easily find the bridge that spans the abyss between the before
and after. It is indeed impossible to understand the development of Germany without this
last German philosopher.22 His keen insight into Nietzsches thought is, therefore,
dependent on his own standpoint in 20th century history and, more importantly, his own

19

From Reflections on Recurrence: A Re-Examination of Nietzsches Doctrine, Die Ewige Wiederkehr Des
Gleichen, in Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert C. Solomon (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
20
Nietzschean Recurrence as a Cosmological Hypothesis, Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978),
435-44.
21
From The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2006), 205.
22
Karl Lwith, My Life in Germany Before and After 1933: A Report, trans. Elizabeth King (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1994), 6. See also Another Epilogue in this book for confirmation of this.

11
critical encounter with Heideggerian philosophy (especially in Heideggers esoteric
interpretation of Nietzsche).23 Hans-Georg Gadamers critique of Lwiths accusation that
Heidegger goes beyond the statements to provide a skewed interpretation is apt:
We cannot, as in a recent transposition, again play off nature against history if we are
seeking to understand the unity of Nietzsches thought. Lwith himself does not get past
establishing the unresolved conflict in Nietzsche. But must we not, in view of this, ask the
further question how it was possible to get caught in this blind alleyi.e., why was it not
for Nietzsche himself an imprisonment and a failure but the great discovery and
liberation? The reader finds no answer in Lwith to this further question. But this is
precisely what one would like to understand, that is, to carry out, through ones own
thinking.24
One should seek the coherence and unity in a thinker rather than strive to illustrate only
conflict and incoherency in his or her thoughtthe latter is no real interpretation at all
because it does not strive for the whole in relation to its parts. This criticism is equally
applicable to those scholars who believe that only half of the teaching of the eternal
recurrence is coherent. The question of why Nietzsche considered this thought to be the
great liberation, as he puts it in a section from Twilight of the Idols, is of the utmost
importance for a proper understanding of his philosophy as a whole.
The following interpretation of the teaching of the eternal recurrence will avoid the
basic errors that have resulted from the two main approaches prevalent in the scholarship on
the eternal recurrence since the 1930s: the biographical/psychological approach of stages
23

Ironically, Lwiths criticism of the interpretations offered by both Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger
applies equally in the case of his own: The contemporary reader will draw the conclusion that Jaspers
Nietzsche is not Heideggers Nietzsche, and that both interpreted Nietzsche in their own way, just as one does
generally in order to understand others, namely from the standpoint of ones own presuppositions, on which
each must decide for himself. In spite of all the historiological reflection on the part of modern understanding,
the question of how Nietzsche himself decided and understood remains unasked because it is assumed that only
such a presuppositionless movement beyond the text is capable of interpreting it. From The Unsaid in
Nietzsches Word God is Dead, in Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, trans. Gary Steiner (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 104.
24
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New
York and London: Continuum, 1986), 500. Emphasis added.

12
and the approach of Karl Lwith (and its diluted forms). If one uses an historical approach,
one avoids these two extremes of superficiality, on the one hand, and the incompatibility
between the theoretical and practical aspects of the doctrine, on the other. It is possible to
see that Nietzsches lifelong endeavor is the proper articulation of his most abysmal
thought, the eternal return. Remaining true to his path of thinking, from the earliest
expression to the most mature articulation, renders a different reading from those that have
been offered so far: the eternal recurrence is Nietzsches philosophy of history. Much like
Hegel and Schelling, Nietzsche formulates a rational approach to time and the human
perception of it in the doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Rather than it being teleological and
linear, time for Nietzsche is cyclicala fact which completely transfigures the usual
perception of time in terms of past, present, and future.
A historical approach to Nietzsches writings places him within the tradition of
Western thought in general and German philosophy in particular. Not only does it
demonstrate that Nietzsche has a philosophy of history in the doctrine of the eternal
recurrencesomething that is not usually associated with his thinking, but it also shows that
the teaching is coherent. Thus, my thesis is twofold: 1) Nietzsche is heir to the legacy of
German philosophy from Leibniz to Schopenhauer and his work, therefore, constitutes a
contribution to philosophy of history; 2) To read his works in chronological order results in a
different conclusion regarding the coherence of the doctrine of the eternal recurrence than
that of Karl Lwith. Thus, Lwiths reading forms the contrast of my own even though our
procedures are mirror images of one anothers: his goes from later to earlier writings while

13
mine goes from earlier to later. The entire purpose of this dissertation is to show how a
different conclusion derives from standing Nietzsches works on their feet, so to speak.
Although much of the secondary literature on this most ambiguous idea of
Nietzsches is unsatisfactory, there are two interpretations that illuminate his thinking. One
of these is Martin Heideggers; the other is that of Wolfgang Mller-Lauter. Both
interpretations are impressive due to their scope and the seriousness with which the scholars
treat their subject. Within the past 30 years, Heideggers interpretation has gone out of
vogue thanks in part to the influence of analytic interpretations of Nietzsche that have
breathed new life into the psychological/biographical approach. However much scholars
drift away from the approach of Heidegger, it is nonetheless true that his interpretation is
helpful methodologicallyhe strives after the whole of Nietzsches philosophy without
leaving parts behind as irrelevant.25 One need not share his main concern with the history
of being in order to derive useful insights into Nietzsches thought, as Mller-Lauter advises:
Heideggers metaphysical/historical [metaphysikgeschichtliche] interpretation of
Nietzsches philosophizing is undoubtedly unfair; nonetheless, it gains him the fundamental
thing, and whats more, it goes away entirely from it. In the treatise I attempt to
acknowledge Heideggers thinking in his interpretations of Nietzsche even by its own
claims.26 Here, one can see that one of the most respected Nietzsche scholars acknowledges
the debt owed to Heidegger for his own interpretation even though his philological approach
25

For example, Heidegger was one of the first scholars to insist that the doctrine of the eternal recurrence was
crucial for a proper understanding of Nietzsches thought. Prior to his lecture courses on Nietzsche, Alfred
Baeumler argued that the will to power was all that one needed in order to understand Nietzsche in his book
Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker (1931). For Baeumler, the official Nietzsche scholar of the Nazi party,
the eternal recurrence was inessential.
26
Wolfgang Mller-Lauter, Nietzsche Interpretationen III: Heidegger und Nietzsche (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 2000), ix.

14
differs from that of Heidegger. The philological approach of Mller-Lauter has its merits in
that it strives for historical accuracy while maintaining the coherence of Nietzsches thought.
Insofar as his interpretation achieves accuracy, Mller-Lauter achieves what Lwith
demanded of a true understanding of Nietzsche.27
There is a point in common between Heidegger and Mller-Lautertheir mutual
disdain for the psychological approach to Nietzsches thought. For those who follow
Jasperss methodology, Nietzsches life is the proper gateway to his thought. Everything that
he writes (both published and unpublished material) needs to be considered from the
perspective of his life. The inherent problem with this approach is that it assumes that one
can know Nietzsche as well as (if not better than) he knew himself. Heidegger and MllerLauter, on the other hand, believe that Nietzsches life can only be known through his works.
This is what Heidegger advised those attending his seminar in 1938/9 on Nietzsches second
Untimely Meditation: It is essential to grasp once and in all decisiveness his thinking; but, at
the same time, his life story must be observed, although not in a biographical-psychological
intention.28 We are not in a position to determine the significance of Nietzsches works
within the context of his life since no one of us is the particular man, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Anything that can be ascertained about Nietzsche the man can only be derived from his

27

The need to interpret a text as it was understood by its author, and to clarify what he himself said more or
less clearly as well as what he did not say, is grounded in the authority of the matter to be interpreted, a matter
which was at issue for the author. Whoever does not attempt to understand the ideas of another in the way that
the other understood them himself, can also not adopt a critical posture toward the other in which one
distinguishes oneself from the other, but instead will carry out the critique within an interpretation which is
really a reinterpretation. One may call such a reinterpretation a productive transformation, but this changes
nothing in the fact that it is not a proper, critical interpretation. The requirement of understanding another as he
understood himself, apart from its difficulty, remains justified if one does not assume a priori that the process of
history places us beyond all prior thinking, (Lwith, Unsaid, 104).
28
Martin Heidegger, Zur Auslegung von Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemer Betrachtung, Gestamtausgabe:
Abteilung II, Band 46 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003), 7.

15
writings. For Heidegger, then, we need to read carefully Nietzsches works if we are to
understand anything about the man. And this is especially true for his second Untimely
Meditation, the only work of Nietzsches to which Heidegger devoted an entire seminar
course in 1938/9. Heideggers thought here is the starting point for Mller-Lauters own
philological interpretation.
My hope in this work will be to combine these considerations of Nietzsches thought
in general so as to obtain a coherent interpretation of the thought of the eternal recurrence. In
this way, I will preserve the profound insights afforded in Heideggers consideration of the
eternal recurrence while also avoiding the danger of transforming Nietzsches thought into
something that it is not. Mller-Lauters sober approach to the subject is what preserves the
integrity of Nietzsches thinking as he himself understood it. The successful combination of
these two methods is what I have already called the historical approach, one feature of
which is the chronological reading of Nietzsches works (published and unpublished) and
letters. Thus, I do discuss Nietzsches thought in stages, but these are stages of work (not of
life). My methodology is based largely on what Nietzsche himself advises concerning the
reading of his philosophy in the Preface to Daybreak (added in 1886). His instructions are
worth quoting at length:
It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to
say a teacher of slow reading:in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my
habit, it is also to my tastea malicious taste, perhaps?no longer to write anything
which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is in a hurry. For philology is
that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take
time, to become still, to become slowit is a goldsmiths art and connoisseurship of the
word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does
not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by
precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of
work, that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to get

16
everything done at once, including every old or new book:this art does not so easily get
anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say to read slowly deeply, looking
cautiously before and aft with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and
fingers . . . My patient friends, this book desires for itself only readers and philologists:
learn to read me well!29
According to Nietzsche, the reader is to blame if he or she does not understand what is being
said in his works. It is for this reason that he admonishes his audience to read his earlier
writings before taking on his later ones in the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morality (see
n. 16 above). Any other approach to his thought is bad philology, for it does not look
forward and backwardit does not look at the proper context for his thoughts within the
whole of his published material.30 If one does not read carefully in the manner prescribed,
there is the risk of misunderstanding Nietzsche (something that he was well aware of, but
nevertheless feared). The danger of misreading him on the eternal recurrence (like Lwith),
as I have attempted to illustrate, cannot be avoided if one does not follow his instructions.
Following Nietzsches own instructions for reading and understanding his
philosophy, I will attempt to reconstruct his teaching of the eternal recurrence so that it is
possible to see it as a coherent philosophy of history. For this reason, I begin with his earliest
unpublished and published writings and work my way toward his later works. Each chapter
of this dissertation deals with his works in chronological orderlooking cautiously before
and aft in order to show that even in his earliest writings Nietzsche had the thought of the
eternal recurrence in mind (even if it was in the form of a question).

29

KGW V/1: 9. From Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 5.
Emphasis added.
30
It would be bad philology to take aphorisms or quotations from Nietzsches works and interpret them from
the perspective of his life. Under his own instructions, as Babette Babich writes, it is absolutely necessary to
have read all of it [Nietzsches works] in order to understand his philosophy. From her article, Between
Hlderlin and Heidegger: Nietzsches Transfiguration of Philosophy, Nietzsche-Studien 29 (2000): 278.

17
The first chapter of this dissertation will examine a little more than a decade (18621872) of Nietzsches writings. I will examine several different kinds of writings. First I will
consider carefully Fate and History and Freedom of the Will and Fate, two essays that
Nietzsche wrote during his Easter break from Schulpforta in 1862. Next I will look at the
major themes of his first publication The Birth of Tragedy (1872). The complexity and
nuance of this work prevent an exhaustive analysis so I will only pursue the task of
examining this work in its relation to the thought of the eternal return as it is presented in its
earliest expression. Then I will incorporate some of Nietzsches writings in the mid-1870s
that focus on the history of ancient Greek philosophy. The philologica and his unpublished
material from this period are indispensable for a proper understanding of the doctrine of the
eternal recurrence. Nietzsches lecture The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (1872) and the
unfinished work Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873) both point toward
Heraclitus as the teacher of this doctrine. All of these works are connected in that they
express the thought of the eternal recurrence in a similar inchoate wayas the question
What is Dionysian? Most importantly, this chapter will point out how the problem of
science was first approached in The Birth of Tragedy, a problem that Nietzsche considers to
be of the utmost importance throughout his career. His contrast between the Dionysian,
artistic interpretation of existence and the Socratic, moral interpretation that he first poses
here sets the stage for his teaching of the eternal recurrence as a Dionysian philosophy.
In the second chapter, I will focus on Nietzsches thoughts about history as presented
in On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, the second of the Untimely
Meditations (1873). This work is crucial for a proper understanding of Nietzsches teaching

18
of the eternal recurrence as a philosophy of history. Contained in this short essay is the
essential thought that history should serve life, which means that the distinction between
theory and practice should be overcome through a proper relation to the temporal dimensions
of past, present, and future. It is no mistake that Nietzsche is concerned with the status of
educational institutions and how historicism has lead to a domination of theory over practice
(i.e., life serves history), for education as conceived by Plato ought to strive to eliminate the
distinction between theory and practice in the way one led ones life [ethos]. The turning
point for understanding the later articulation of the eternal recurrence comes from this short
essay on history. This short, but most untimely, essay is the anti-Hegelian text par
excellenceprecisely because it reveals the negation of the negation as nihil. Its main idea is
what shatters the Hegelian dialectic of history, but leaves what will take its place ambiguous.
The unarticulated in this essay is the idea of the innocence of becoming, the eternal
recurrence. This essay sets the stage for Nietzsches answer to the question What is
Dionysian? If one does not begin with this essay before examining the doctrine in its
mature formulation, then one must arrive at the conclusion of Karl Lwith: the eternal
recurrence is an incoherent doctrine that cannot reconcile theory and practice.
The third chapter examines the writings of the middle period of Nietzsches
philosophybeginning with Human, All Too Human (1878-9) and ending with Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883-1885). It was here that Lwith thought the genuine philosophy of
Nietzsche was located. And it was from the perspective of the mature articulation of the
doctrine of the eternal recurrence at this point in Nietzsches career that Lwith judged the
earlier works concerned with this teaching as periods of development. This approach,

19
however, results in a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the teaching. The
investigation in the previous chapter provides a foundation for the proper understanding of
the teaching of the eternal recurrence as it is presented in 341 of The Gay Science (1882)
and the oracular pronouncements and exhortations of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85).
The radicalization of science in Nietzsches gay science is what makes the eternal
recurrence inevitable, as the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. It will be in this
chapter that the internal coherence of Nietzsches thought as a whole will be demonstrated
through an examination of the relation between the thought of the eternal recurrence, the
death of God, the rise of nihilism, the overman, and the will to power.
Next, the writings of the later Nietzsche will be examined. Beyond Good and Evil
(1886) and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) contain sustained critiques of Christianity
as a religion that devalues life in the present by positing all meaning of existence in a
beyond. Nietzsches critical powers attain their height in these two works: he questions the
value of truth and, along with it, the value of science, morality, and religion (especially
Christianity). The force of his critique of the Western intellectual tradition derives its
strength from his teaching of the eternal recurrence. As an ateleological philosophy of
history, it is a standpoint beyond the moral interpretation of existence and is, therefore,
capable of a radical critique of morality from the perspective of life. The linear-teleological
view of historyas articulated in Christian eschatology and the Hegelian philosophy of
historyis no longer feasible because it undermines life. The foundation for his overall
project of dismantling Christianity, which divides the human being in two, is the eternal
recurrence, a teaching that unifies and provides coherence to the human experience of this

20
world. The fervor with which he attacks Christianity in his last year of sanity (in works like
The Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols, and Ecce Homo) can be explained by the faith he placed
in his teaching to overcome all divisions in life that would devalue the present, the earth.
Finally, in the last chapter, I will discuss a few of the key themes of Nietzsches most
rhetorical, and popular, writings, those of 1888. One of the most important of these is his
critique of the virtue of intellectual honesty/integrity [Redlichkeit]. The eternal recurrence
is the product of this virtue, which has its origins in the Socratic endeavor to know thyself,
because it is characterized by Nietzsche as most scientific. However, it is also the point of
critique for all that came before it. It serves the dual function of creation and destruction
this makes it Dionysianbecause it destroys all that came before and creates the possibility
for a new view of the world. The question of happiness becomes central once a new view of
the world is opened up. This may explain why Nietzsche begins to speak of happiness in a
physiological sense in The Antichrist. I will also discuss the reasons for Nietzsches critical
attitude toward St. Paul and his radical Protestant interpretation of Jesus.
After reading Nietzsche philologically, as he himself recommends, I will discuss
some of the implications this may have for the recent surge in studies on Nietzsches
philosophy of science. This study of Nietzsche may necessitate a change in our attitude
toward his philosophy and the way that he is studied. I think that Nietzsches philosophy
presents a positive challenge to think once more about the roots of philosophical thought in
the West. But, more importantly, reading and thinking through his philosophy encourages
the reader to engage freely in philosophy.

Chapter 1: The Inchoate Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy

In this first chapter, I will discuss some of the early themes in Nietzsches philosophy
by briefly discussing a few of the works written between 1862 and 1872. It was during this
decade that he produced the greatest variety of worksthis makes interpretation of his
thought difficult at this stage. Within these years he wrote essays for high school, articles for
professional philological journals, lectures for classes on ancient Greek philosophy, and
published his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). His first born is the fruit of
the labor of nearly a decade of intense study. In this work, he sets up the terms and
distinctions that will govern his thinking until the first days of 1889 when he lost his sanity.
The two major terms that are set up as formal markers are the Socratic and the
Dionysian. The difference between these two approaches to the nature of existence is first
outlined in detail in this seminal work. It is the task of this chapter to trace the genealogy of
these two opposed views of the world and Nietzsches thoughts on Socratism, science, art,
and the Dionysian.

1862-1872: Philology as Philosophy

As a prominent student at the illustrious Schulpforta, Nietzsches education compared
to the standards of today was excellent. He was taught by some of the best educators in
Europe at the time. However, he was not limited to what was taught in the classroomhe
wrote continuously as a young man even when there was no assignment. This is clear from
two essays that he wrote over Easter break in 1862 entitled Fate and History [Fatum und
Geschichte] and Freedom of the Will and Fate [Willensfreiheit und Fatum]. His
21

22
education continued at Bonn and then Leipzig before he was awarded his doctorate in
philology under Friedrich Ritschl and became a professor at the University of Basel in 1869.
His popularity waned after his first major publication in 1872 The Birth of Tragedy [Die
Geburt der Tragdie]; nevertheless, he persisted in his professional duties in the early 1870s,
teaching courses on the pre-Platonic philosophers among other topics. During this time in
his career he wrote short philosophical treatises imbued with a philological-historical bent for
friends, like Richard and Cosima Wagner. And he wrote on topics for his own edification
like Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter]
that were never meant for publication.
Despite the variety in the topics that he discusses in this decade, Nietzsches thought
remains concerned with history and the nature of historical education. Philosophy, as a topic
of discussion or as a part of his methodology, is always present in his juvenile writings and
his first book. A close examination of these writings reveals continuity between his prephilosophical essays and publications and his philosophical writings (those works that
were published after Nietzsche left Basel including Human, All too Human [Menschliches,
Allzumenschliches] in 1878). It is, therefore, time to move beyond the theory of stages or
periods in Nietzsches thought because he is always doing philosophy even when he is
writing for philological journals.31 This is clear from the limited range of topics discussed in
his philological writingsmost, if not all, touch on the subject of ancient philosophy in one

31

James I. Porter has been a voice for the view that Nietzsches career is not divided in half between philology
and philosophy. He argues that even Nietzsches philology is a kind of philosophy: Nietzsches early motto,
which he coined in 1869, is likewise an inversion of a phrase borrowed from a philosopher (Seneca), and it
likewise addresses the relation of philosophy to philology. Only, now the inversion goes the other way:
philosophia facta est quae philologia fuit (what was once philology has now been made into philosophy).
From Porters book Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 14.

23
way or another. Contributions to the Source Science and Criticism of Diogenes Laertius
[Beitrge zur Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes] (1869-70) 32, The PrePlatonic Philosophers (lecture first delivered in the summer semester of 1872 but first
composed in 1869), and the Democritea (notes from the late 1860s) are obviously concerned
with the topic of ancient philosophy and its meaning in Nietzsches time.
Considering the amount of time that he spent with the ancient sources, Nietzsche can
be said to have immersed himself in the teachings of the ancient philosophersespecially his
favorite pre-Platonic, Heraclitus.33 Nevertheless, his approach to the figures of the ancient
philosophers remains historicalthe eternal recurrence, for example, is understood as a
teaching of Heraclitus, a doctrine that a historical figure might possibly have taught. His
perspective of such a teaching is dictated by his formal historical training as a classical
philologist. This does not mean that Nietzsche has no philosophical insights into the eternal
recurrence at this stage in his career. What is significant is that Nietzsche has a profound
interest in the nature of mans relation to time, i.e., history, even from an early age. History
forms the background of all of Nietzsches philosophizing so that one can go so far as to
claim that his most profound insights are in the area of the philosophy of history.

32

Diogenes Laertius is crucial for adequate comprehension of Nietzsches relationship to pre-Platonic

philosophy: What is Diogenes to us? No-one would waste a word on the philistine features of this writer were
he not, by chance, the guardian of jewels whose value he does not recognize. He is in fact night-porter to the
history of Greek philosophy: no-one can enter unless Diogenes has given him the key. Nietzsche learned a
great deal from this hasty and careless Diogenes Laertiusso much so that he is one of Nietzsches constant
reference points (even when he does not cite him directly) and whose approach to the history of philosophy
influenced Nietzsche profoundly.
33
It is surprising to hear Lwith affirm that the philological papers, especially on the philosophy of Heraclitus,
as well as the philosophical revision of these for the planned work on pre-Socratic philosophy, already contain
all the principal features of his teaching that emerged ten years later. Nietzsches Philosophy of the Eternal
Recurrence of the Same, 115. If he thinks this, why would he start with Zarathustra and work his way
backwards?

24
Nietzsches philosophy is always a philosophy of history for the reason that his main
teachingthe eternal recurrencedeals with time and the human relation to time.
This chapter explores a vast terrain of uncharted territorya decades worth of
materials both published and unpublished that seem to have little in common with each other.
However, this only seems to be the case. Upon closer inspection, one can discern a pervasive
interest in mans relation to time and the meaning of history (directly or indirectly) within
these articles, lectures, essays, and works. This is especially true when one considers the
main opposition he introduces in The Birth of Tragedy: the Socratic vs. the Dionysian.
Adopting the historical approach outlined in the Introduction, I will begin with the two
high school essays noted above and work my way toward the incomplete and unpublished
essay on Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. The chapter is divided into three main
sections. The first section deals with the two high school essays exclusively; Nietzsches
letters to his friends, which concerns his break with Christianity, supplements the
commentary on these essays. The second section jumps ahead to 1872 to examine The Birth
of Tragedy and its significance for the development of a tragic worldview opposed to that of
the perspective of Western science. I will then examine Nietzsches philological essays and
lectures on the pre-Platonic philosophers (both the 1872 lecture course and the unfinished
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks).
The series of lectures delivered in the winter semester of 1872 entitled On the Future
of Our Educational Institutions is an important link between the seemingly incongruent
concerns of Nietzsche in his philological work on the ancient Greek philosophers and in the
second of the Untimely Meditations [Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen], which he was

25
composing at the same time he was delivering his lectures. A discussion of these lectures
prepares the way for the detailed examination of On the Uses and Disadvantages of History
for Life [Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie fr das Leben] (or more simply, the
History essay). The affinity of the lectures and the later work, the latter of which mainly
focuses on the deleterious effects of an education that gravitates around the historical, needs
elucidation if what will be said in the next chapter is to make any sense. All that Nietzsche
worked on between his first publication and the Untimely Meditations is essential to
understand the transition his thinking undergoes in 1873.

Fate, Free Will, and History

As early as the age of eighteen, Nietzsche had lost his faith in Christianity. He
ascribed his unbelief to the application of the historical-critical method to the tenets of faith.
This was especially the case when it came to David Strausss The Life of Jesus [Das Leben
Jesu] (1835)a work that Nietzsche read as a young man at Schulpforta and which was
largely responsible for his loss of faith in the transcendent claims of Western monotheism. In
the first essay from Easter break of 1862, he writes: Great revolutions are still imminent if
the crowd has first grasped that Christianity as a whole is grounded on assumptions.34
Historical scrutiny of the ancient sources opens the door for serious criticism of the apodictic
assertions of Christianity. For many of those in the 19th century, belief was undermined
because the truth claims of the religion could be reduced to their historical origins. Rather
than being transcendent in nature, the truth of Christianity actually derived from all too
34

KGW I/2: 433. Emphasis added. Compare this thought to his later reflections in 343 of the second edition
of The Gay Science (1887). See Ch. 4 below.

26
human sources. This is what Nietzsche accepted, albeit with reservations, by the end of his
rigorous training at Schulpforta.
At this time for Nietzsche, the world beyond this one is merely an imaginative
construct, which means that the truth of Christianity is unfounded. He expresses a thought
that would grow in intensity until the end of his career in a letter to his friends Krug and
Pinder during the time the high school essays were written:
Once we recognize that we are responsible to ourselves alone, that we have only ourselves
to blame and not any sort of higher powers for our failings in life, then we finally will strip
the foundational ideas of Christianity of their outer covering and get at its core. [ . . . ]
That God became man only indicates that man should not search for blessedness in the
infinite; rather, he should ground his heaven on earth. The delusion of a world beyond has
cast human spirits and minds in a false relation to the earthly world: this was the product
of a childhood of peoples.35
At a later date, the thought captured here will resound in Zarathustras saying: Remain true
to the earth! Thus, at an early age, Nietzsche is faced with a problem that will occupy him
throughout the remainder of his intellectual career: how does the individual fit into a cosmos
that lacks any transcendence while maintaining his superiority in the hierarchy of being?
For Nietzsche, the answer is already present in the essay Fate and History:
Thoughts. History provides the human being with a solid foundation so that he or she does
not slip away into the ceaseless becoming of the universe. History and natural science, the
wonderful legacies of our entire past, the heralds of our future, they alone are the secure
foundations on which we can build the tower of our speculations.36 History is important in

35

All citations of letters are from Nietzsche Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and
Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975). Citations of letters, to or from Nietzsche, follows the
same pattern as citations from his published or unpublished work: The date, KGB, followed by the division,
volume, page, and letter number. For example, the citation for this letter would be: April 27, 1862, KGB I/1:
202 (no. 301). Unless otherwise noted, all translations of letters are my own.
36
KGW I/2: 432.

27
that it firmly roots man in the past and (should) open him up to limitless possibilities in the
future. Once one realizes that the true world, or the divine, no longer holds sway in the
present, the possibilities in the future are truly limitlessone is no longer held back by
divine sanctions. This presents an incredible danger and a fantastic opportunity
simultaneously, as the young Nietzsche was well aware: either one loses all orientation and
slips into nothingness or one affirms the limitless possibilities for creativity.
Freedom of creativity (and self-creation) becomes central in Nietzsches perspective
from an early age until the end of his sanity. History simply provides the individual with the
proper orientation so that he does not view his existence as absolutely arbitrary and, hence,
meaningless. It is with this in mind that he offers a thought for reflection. To summarize: it
is impossible to know if humanity is nothing more than a stage in becoming; it might be
possible that the human being is a rock developed through the animal stage; if this is so, the
human beings perfection lay in this history of development (and not in a world beyond).
Does this eternal becoming never end? What are the motivating forces of these great clock
mechanisms? They are hidden, but they are the same in the great hour that we call history.
The events are the dial. From time to time the hand moves again to begin at 12 its course
anew; a new period of the world dawns.37 What seems contradictory in all of this is that
freedom can still be spoken of even if transcendence has been abolished. Since history is the
sole ground from which the human being grows, we are thoroughly determined by the forces
of the past. Free will, conceived as absolute, arbitrary freedom, is simply an illusion because

37

KGW I/2: 433-434.

28
ones freedom is limited by fate (or the ebb and flow of past, present, and future events that
are irrevocably tied together at a single point).38
The young Nietzsche was, therefore, well aware of the problem that confronts man in
the absence of the transcendent God (even if he was unaware of the far reaching
consequences of this event at this time). Adrift in the modern world with no stable ground,
one latches onto history in order to provide a sense of security and a feeling of
belongingness. However, as Jacob Burckhardt well understood, this would mean that one
would be completely determined by history and possess no freedomthis is the tyranny of
the historical.39 His soon-to-be younger colleague at the University of Basel was also aware
of this aporia. One of Nietzsches main tasks is already found in these early essays: How can
one maintain the delicate balance between necessity and freedom without allowing the
former to displace the latter completely (as was the general tendency in 19th century German
philosophy since Hegel)? The answer to this question ultimately can be found in the doctrine
of the eternal recurrence. Nietzsches later philosophy of history reconfigures the nature and
relation of freedom and necessity by overcoming the distinction between theory and
practiceas I will maintain in Chapters 4 and 5. This grounds the human being while
simultaneously allowing one the freedom of creation (and self-creation).
Some indications that Nietzsche already had such a solution in mind in 1862 are
found in the complementary essay, Freedom of the Will and Fate. His goal in this short
writing is to alter his thinking about the nature of freedom and necessity so that they can be

38

Fate is the infinite power of resistance against the free will; free will without fate is just as little thinkable as
spirit without the real, good without evil. KGW I/2: 436.
39
This is something that Nietzsche would later argue in the second of the Untimely Meditations, especially
8-9. Discussion of his thoughts on this problem follows in the next chapter.

29
combined without resulting in contradictions. Fate is not simply the inevitability of world
history. We must remind ourselves that fate is only an abstract concept, a force without
substance, that there is only an individual fate for the individual, that fate is nothing but a
chain of events, that manas soon as he acts and, thus, creates his own eventsdetermines
his own fate, that in general the events, as they affect man, make him conscious or
unconscious and must be suitable to him.40 Similarly, freedom of the will is an abstraction
and designates only conscious behavior (as opposed to the unconscious behavior that derives
from fate). These two seemingly incommensurable concepts become blurred in the idea of
individuality.41 His prime example of an individual in this sense is Goethea man who
remained creative despite the ever-changing conditions of his life. Thus, fatum is not
reducible to a simple determinism but, rather, designates the necessary complement to free
will.42 It is ingredient to the wholeness of the human being. Ones fate needs to be made
actual through creativitysomething that Nietzsche thought he achieved through his
rigorous experimentation, which is why Nietzsche will later say that amor fati43 is his
innermost nature. Freedom becomes necessity and necessity becomes freedom in selfcreation.
Nietzsche is here already treading on a path that Friedrich Schiller traveled down in
his On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters (1795). The unity of freedom
and necessity can be found in the play-drive [Spieltrieb] found in aesthetic educationthis
40

KGW I/2: 438.

KGW I/2: 439.
42
Perhaps . . . free will [is] nothing other than the highest potency of fate. KGW I/2: 437.
43
My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that you do not want anything to be different, not forwards,
not backwards, not for all eternity. No just to tolerate necessity, still less to conceal itall idealism is
hypocrisy towards necessity,but to love it . . . KGW VI/3: 297. From Ecce Homo in The Anti-Christ, Ecce
Homo, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 99.
41

30
is an important theme that Nietzsche developed throughout his intellectual career. It will be
in this vein of thought that he will argue against the current conditions of education, echoing
Schillers thoughts on the transition from the Greek polis to the modern nation-state. The
play-drive, as Schiller notes in the Fourteenth Letter, unites what is apparently
incommensurablein this case, time and timelessness:
The sense-drive demands that there shall be change and that time shall have a content; the
form-drive demands that time shall be annulled and that there shall be no change. That
drive, therefore, in which both the others work in concert (permit me for the time being,
until I have justified the term, to call it the play-drive), the play-drive, therefore, would be
directed towards annulling time within time, reconciling becoming with absolute being and
change with identity.44
The forgetfulness of time, the it was, which necessarily goes along with play (especially
that of the child) is something that Nietzsche believes is necessary for happiness in 1 of the
History essay. Here, despite the obvious differences between Schiller and Nietzsche on the
issue of the relation between becoming and being, one is also reminded of what he says in
one of his later notebooks: To imprint upon becoming the character of beingthat is the
highest will to power . . . That everything recurs is the most extreme approximation of a
world of becoming to one of being: pinnacle of contemplation.45 His thoughts on the
possible fusion of freedom and necessity (and being and becoming) in an aesthetic vision of
the world paves the way for the mature articulation of his doctrine of the eternal recurrence
the highest degree of unification of these two apparently incommensurate concepts.

44

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 97.
45
KGW VIII/1: 320. From Writings from the Late Notebooks, trans. Kate Sturge (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 138. Nietzsches emphasis.

31
Greek Tragedy
Aesthetic education, the logical conclusion of Nietzsches earliest views in these two
essays, is highlighted in his first publication, The Birth of Tragedy.46 Fourteen years after its
first publication, in 1872, Nietzsche wrote a new preface for his first born that explains his
relation to it. Commenting on the unwieldy nature of the book, Nietzsche says: A strange
voice was speaking here, the disciple of an as yet unknown god who concealed himself
beneath the cowl of a scholar, beneath the ponderousness and dialectical disinclination of the
Germans, even beneath the bad manners of a Wagnerite . . . here one heardas people
remarked distrustfullysomething like the voice of a mystical and almost maenadic soul
which stammers in a strange tongue, with great difficulty and capriciously, almost as if
undecided whether to communicate or conceal itself.47 The book attempts to answer a novel
question, albeit in a groping and fragmentary kind of way, the question What is
Dionysian?48 This is the question that will occupy Nietzsche for the rest of his career and
whose answer will be summed up in the eternal recurrence of the samethis doctrine is the
highest level of affirmation of existence because it affirms everything as necessary for the
46

In spite of the prevalent view that Nietzsche disliked the moralizing Schiller, the Birth of Tragedy owes a
great deal to Schillers On the Aesthetic Education of Man. The later work has certain parallels and shares
similar concerns with the earlier work, as a recent scholar has noted. Die Geburt der Tragdie engages in a
constructive and at times even deferential manner with Schillers aesthetic theory, and the work as a whole
relies heavily on idealist aesthetics. From Nicholas Martins Nietzsche and Schiller: Untimely Aesthetics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 2. Both works are concerned with the education of the individual and each
wants to make a change in the way that the individual sees the world. They are, therefore, both infused with the
Kantian spirit insofar as they see aesthetic education as a prerequisite to the cultural change that each wants to
effect. See Martins excellent study for more detail on the affinity between these two works.
47
KGW III/1: 8-9. From The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 6. Nietzsches emphasis.
48
Max L. Baeumer notes that Nietzsche was not the first to direct attention toward the concept of the
Dionysian, but since he was the most vocal, he is largely identified as the originator of this concept. For a
concise history of this concept in the 19th century see Baeumers article Nietzsche and the Tradition of the
Dionysian, in Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1976).

32
meaningfulness of ones existence. As for now, Nietzsche remains content with pointing out
the difference between the Socratic/scientific view of the world (i.e., the moral interpretation)
and the Dionysian/tragic view (i.e., the aesthetic interpretation).
In short, the concept of the Dionysian signifies for Nietzsche an immediate ecstatic
vision of the whole that cannot be attained through the dialectical art of Socrates (and the rest
of the philosophical tradition). One must be inspired or intoxicated. In 1888, in Twilight
of the Idols, Nietzsche speaks of the kind of intoxication experienced by the artist under the
influence of Dionysus: all modes of expression are discharged simultaneously, the artist
himself is transformed by this intoxication and his understanding is attuned in a such a way
that he cannot fail to understand those in a similar state. It is impossible for a Dionysian to
fail to understand any suggestion, he will not miss any affective signal, he has the most
highly developed instinct for understanding and guessing, just as he possesses the art of
communication to the highest degree. He enters into any skin, into any affect: he constantly
transforms himself.49 Dionysus, in a sense, enters into the prophet and transforms him in
such a way that his communication takes on all of these various subtle tones. Nietzsche
considers both Heraclitus and Zarathustra (and Nietzsche himself) to possess this symphonic
form of communication, which means that they have been overcome by a Dionysian kind of
intoxication.50 What would this mean for a proper interpretation of Nietzsches earliest
publication, which he offered as a sacrifice to the god Dionysus?

49

KGW VI/3: 111-112. From Twilight of the Idols, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 197. Emphasis added.
50
Reflecting on his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his autobiography, Nietzsche speaks of his inspiration in
the following way: The idea of revelation in the sense of something suddenly becoming visible and audible
with unspeakable assurance and subtlety, something that throws you down and leaves you deeply shakenthis
simply describes the facts of the case. You listen, you do not look for anything, you take, you do not ask who is

33
The first, but most certainly not the last, time Dionysus crossed my path, Nietzsche
says, was in The Birth of Tragedy. Once this work is closely examined, it is easy to see that
there are traces of the doctrine of the eternal recurrence (which is the core of Dionysian
philosophy) in the work as a whole. Heraclitus, as a possible teacher of this doctrine, figures
in the background of this premature work51the connection between the philosophical
type Heraclitus and the god Dionysus, though, is not made explicit at this point in
Nietzsches thought. Ultimately, the several strands of thought present in his early lectures
and publications (and this is especially true in the case of the eternal recurrence) are only
later tied together in his mature works through his insight into the nature of science as a
passion.52 The names Heraclitus and Zarathustra become intertwined in his last publications
to such an extent that they signify the same thing, for they have both been transformed by
Dionysus.
To answer the question raised in the preceding paragraph: Nietzsches thoughts on
inspiration indicate that it was not Nietzsche who was speaking in The Birth of Tragedy, but
rather the great tempter god himself. Nietzsches inspirationone might even say
possessionhere is what allows him to understand both Heraclitus and Zarathustra;

there; a thought lights up in a flash, with necessity, without hesitation as to its form,I never had any choice.
A delight whose incredible tension sometimes triggers a burst of tears, sometimes automatically hurries your
pace and sometimes slows it down; a perfect state of being outside yourself, with the most distinct
consciousness of a host of subtle shudders and shiverings down to the tips of your toes; a profound joy where
the bleakest and most painful things do not have the character of opposites, but instead act as its conditions, as
welcome components, as necessary shades within this sort of excess of light . . . All of this is involuntary to the
highest degree, but takes place as if in a storm of feelings of freedom, of unrestricted activity, of power, of
divinity . . . KGW VI/3: 337-338. From Ecce Homo, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 126-27. Emphasis added.
51
By the time of the publication of his first work, Nietzsche was already composing his lectures on the PrePlatonic Philosophers and was in correspondence with Erwin Rohde concerning Heraclituss philosophy as a
cosmodicy.
52
See Chapter 3, especially.

34
Dionysus, the daimon, literally enters into each of these figures just as he did in the case of
the actors on stage in ancient Attic tragedy. As Nietzsche says in an early version of his first
work: The dithyrambic servant of Dionysus can be understood only by those who are like
him.53 This explains the immediate affinity Nietzsche feels with Heraclitus (and
Zarathustra) from such an early stage in his professional career. Moreover, this may also
indicate that the eternal recurrence could already be present in his first published work (albeit
in an inchoate fashion). It will require a careful examination of the main thought in The Birth
of Tragedy in order to make this point clearbut it is worth the effort since Nietzsche
himself considers the thought contained in this work to be the zenith in the orbit of his
intellectual career.
So, what is Dionysian according to Nietzsche at the time of 1872? If one can
answer this question, it will be possible to see in what way the eternal recurrence lingers like
a shadow in the background of Nietzsches first work. It is the answer to the question that he
asks but is unable to articulate. Everything is announced in advance in this essay: the
imminent return of the Greek spirit, the need for counter-Alexanders to retie the Gordian
knot of Greek culture after it had been undone . . .54 The harmonious unity of humanity
with nature in the age of Greek tragedyas a paradigm of cultureis the true topic of this
essay. It only appears to be philological, but in reality it is a philosophical exposition on the
nature of mans being at home in the world.55 Nietzsches prolonged attack on Socratism and

53

KGW III/2: 69.

KGW VI/3: 312.. Ecce Homo, 111. Nietzsches emphasis.
55
The rejection of Nietzsches treatise by traditional philologists is in some degree justified. No less than
Wilamowitz-Mllendorf 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
54

35
scientific optimism (12-19) is intertwined with this exposition because he thinks that
science is responsible for the human beings sense of homelessness in the world. The human
being only feels at home in a world that is unified (even if that means that it is a tragic
world). He begins to describe such a view in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. by reflecting on
the two main deities of artistic creation in Greece: Apollo and Dionysus.
The juxtaposition of the Apollonian and Dionysian in the sphere of art is something
that goes largely unexplained because they are only symbols for two different states of being.
Apollonian art is represented by the epic poetry of Homer whereas Dionysus is represented
by lyrical poetry and music. For Nietzsche, the two artist gods must be joined in order to
render whole what has hitherto been fragmented: their unification results in the highest art
form, Greek music drama. Apollo without Dionysus is simply appearance, an outer
shimmering without any depth; Dionysus without Apollo is self-destructive knowledge.
Dionysian wisdom needs to be tempered by the principium individuationis, as the tale of
Oedipus suggests: Wisdom, the myth seems to whisper to us, and Dionysiac wisdom in
particular, is an unnatural abomination: whoever plunges nature into the abyss of destruction
by what he knows must in turn experience the dissolution of nature in his own person.56
Thus, the powerful, destructive inner tide of Dionysian pathos needs to be formed and
controlled by the Apollonian love of outward appearance.57

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 Nietzsches first tentative attempt to articulate his philosophical
understanding of the world. Nietzsches Philosophy, 14.
56
KGW III/1: 63. The Birth of Tragedy, 48.
57
Thus, Apollo and Dionysus are not annihilating opposites (as sometimes thought) but competing drives. See
Helmut Rehders The Reluctant Disciple, in Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, eds. James C.
OFlaherty, Timothy F. Sellner, and Robert M. Helm (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1976).

36
The Dionysian, according to Nietzsche, is a surging, dark power that is in contact
with the primordial essence of the One through music (the original language of the world of
eternal becoming). Ones existence is seen to be itself an injustice against the Oneas
Nietzsche believes Anaximander already realized in the tragic age of the Greek
philosophers before Socrates.58 Knowledge of this leads to despair, especially in the case of
those who do not believe in divine redemption. Their tragic worldview notwithstanding,
the Greeks are still able to affirm existence despite the impossibility of salvation from their
finitude (necessary contingency). Once the Dionysian is tempered by the Apollonian, and
the two grow into an organic whole onstage, the Greeks are able to affirm their own
moribund existence because they know that they will rejoin the One.59
Artistic interpretation, or aesthetic vision, is what makes this kind of affirmation
possible in Nietzsches view. Not only does art approach as a saving sorceress with the
power to heal, but it is what makes action possible after one has gazed into the terrible heart
of the cosmos: Knowledge [Erkenntniss] kills action; action requires one to be shrouded in
a veil of illusionthis is the lesson of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom about Jack the
Dreamer who does not get around to acting because he reflects too much, out of an excess of
possibilities, as it were. No, it is not reflection, it is true knowledge, insight into the terrible
truth, which outweighs every motive for action, both in the case of Hamlet and in that of

58

See Nietzsches discussion of the philosophy of Anaximander in 4 of Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the
Greeks.
59
Tragic affirmation (including even the affirmation of ones 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. Nietzsches
Philosophy, 10.

60

Dionysiac man.

37
Intuitive insight into the nature of existence renders all action ineffective

in the eyes of the one who has experienced Dionysian wisdom. Expressed in the terms of the
philosophical tradition: there exists an insurmountable void between theory (Dionysian
wisdom) and practice (action). The god of light needs to be joined to the god of darkness if
existence is going to be justifiedi.e., if man is going to be at home in the world. This is
why Nietzsche maintains that only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world
eternally justified.61
Art, therefore, is not simply something that the spectator is meant to enjoy
objectively. Aesthetic experience, especially in tragedy, is itself a kind of education in that
it unifies theory and practicethe spectator is drawn into the action onstage in such a way
that he forgets himself and takes a personal interest in the happenings of the main character.62
It does not help one live well, in the sense that art is a secluded haven from the burdens of
the rest of life; rather, it provides a coherent whole within which one can live and act with a
certain degree of confidence. It makes man feel at home in the world. Greek tragedy, as the
highest level of art in Nietzsches opinion, affirms the necessity of destruction while
retaining freedom as the highest potency of fate. Without the individual on stage, which is
introduced only through the form-giving power of Apollo, existence can never be affirmed
evil is just as much a part of the world as good. Tragedy itself is an example of how men like
60

KGW III/1: 53. The Birth of Tragedy, 40.

KGW III/1: 43. The Birth of Tragedy, 33.
62
The fact that tragedy begins with the satyr, and that Dionysiac wisdom of tragedy speak out of him, is
something which now surprises us just as much as the fact that tragedy originated in the chorus. Perhaps it will
serve as a starting-point for thinking about this if I now assert that the satyr, the fictious creature of nature, bears
the same relation to the cultured human beings as Dionysiac music bears to civilization . . . I believe that, when
faced with the chorus of satyrs, cultured Greeks felt themselves absorbed, elevated, and extinguished in exactly
the same way. This is the first effect of Dionysiac tragedy: state and society, indeed all divisions between one
human being and another, give way to an overwhelming feeling of unity which leads men back to the heart of
nature. KGW III/1: 51-52. The Birth of Tragedy, 39.
61

38
Aeschylus and Sophocles are able to create despite the apparent conflict between fate and
freewill in a world without transcendence (i.e., the possibility of redemption).
Individual characters onstage, e.g., Oedipus or Prometheus, are nothing but masks for
the suffering god, Dionysus, according to Nietzsche. The audience is able to see the
individual character only because Apollo is present. But it is individuation that is the primal
evil, and tragedy offers a glimpse of the original unity within the One: In the views
described here we already have all the constituent elements of a profound and pessimistic
way of looking at the world and thus, at the same time, of the doctrine of the Mysteries
taught by tragedy: the fundamental recognition that everything which exists is a unity; the
view that individuation is the primal source of all evil; and art as the joyous hope that the
spell of individuation can be broken, a premonition of unity restored.63 Tragedy, therefore,
provides a vision of primordial unity in which man and world, good and evil, becoming and
being, are ultimately reconciled. This is what Nietzsche, following the insights of his friend
Erwin Rohde, calls a cosmodicy: there is no final victory (as in a theodicy) of good over
evil in the tragic vision of the world, which would justify evils existence, but only an
acknowledgement of the necessity of both. Eugen Fink aptly articulates this as the world as
play between two competing forces (Apollo and Dionysus), neither of which can do without
the other. Tragic wisdom, or Dionysian philosophy, is what grasps the fact that the world is
play, which has no end and no specific player.64

63

KGW III/1: 68-69. The Birth of Tragedy, 52-53.

For an excellent presentation of Finks interpretation of Nietzsche see Babette Babichs article Nietzsches
Artists Metaphysics and Finks Ontological World-Play International Studies in Philosophy 37 (2005):
163-180.
64

39
Despite his insistence that metaphysics is itself a prejudice, Nietzsche consciously
puts forward an aesthetic/tragic view of the world, which he thought fostered a new form of
Wagnerian Wahn [illusion]: an acknowledgement and indulgence of the need to find a higher
meaning in existence, however illusory that meaning may be.65 Thus, Nietzsche is on par
with David Hume as an anti-metaphysical metaphysician. After the Kantian critique of
metaphysics, he realized that it is unlikely that this [resurrection of religious and
metaphysical belief] will ever happen again.66 An aesthetic view of the world remained the
only alternative and he sought to rekindle this in the modern era through an appeal to the
philhellenism of the Germansalbeit in a fashion to which they were unaccustomed. But
such a view required illusions such as the Greeks enjoyed. Like Schiller, who heralded the
Olympians as beautiful beings out of the land of fables [schne Wesen aus dem Fabelland],
Nietzsche thought that the Greeks did not actually believe in their gods but pretended that
they did all the same. Their tragic culture, which was really another metaphysical prejudice,
was supported by profound illusionsthis is what Nietzsche thought was necessarily true of
every healthy culture.67 They delighted in the appearances of things as a cover over the
disturbing truth that there is nothing at the bottom of existence68only endless becoming in
the play of an indifferent cosmos.
65

Katherine Harloe, Metaphysical and Historical Claims in The Birth of Tragedy, in Nietzsche on Time and
History, ed. Manuel Dries (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 285-286. For a similar view, see James I. Porters
The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on The Birth of Tragedy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
66
KGW III/3: 19.
67
Without myth . . . all cultures lose their healthy, creative, natural energy; only a horizon surrounded by
myths encloses and unifies a cultural movement. KGW III/1: 141. The Birth of Tragedy, 108. This is a view
that he maintained also in the second Untimely Meditation; see Chapter 2 below.
68
Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: what is needed for that is to stop bravely at the surface, the fold,
the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in shapes, tones, wordsin the whole Olympus of appearance!
Those Greeks were superficialout of profundity! KGW V/2: 20. The Gay Science, trans. Josephine
Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 8-9.

40
Nietzsche thought that Heraclitus was one of the few who recognized the unity of
opposites within the cosmosi.e., that the Ephesian had a tragic conception of the world.
The importance of Heraclitus for the conception of the eternal recurrence will be discussed
below. However, the tragic conception of the world embodied in Heraclituss philosophical
fragments was destroyed by the world historical figure of Socrates. Nietzsche thinks that by
the time Euripides was composing his plays, tragedy was declining due to the moralizing
influence of Socrates. Once Euripides had realized that he had fallen under the spell of
Socrates it was already too late to undo what had been done: Dionysus had already been
chased from the tragic stage, and, what is more, by a daemonic power speaking out of the
mouth of Euripides. In a certain sense Euripides, too, was merely a mask; the deity who
spoke out of him was not Dionysus, nor Apollo, but an altogether newborn daemon called
Socrates.69 The Dionysiac, or the tragic aesthetic view of the world, was replaced by the
moral interpretation of Socrates, which eventually breathed life into early Christianity. For
Nietzsche, the Dionysian and the Socratic are polar opposites: one affirms existence just as it
is whereas the other believes that one is obliged to correct existence70 because it does not
conform to the standards of rational thought. It is theoretical man that Socrates introduced
through his willingness to sacrifice himself for the examined life, and it is this kind of man
that Nietzsche thought dominated the landscape of Europe for the past two millennia.
Socratic (or Alexandrian) culture, which cut the Gordian knot of tragic culture, is
what today gives rise to the modern scientific man. According to Nietzsche, the wisdom of

69

KGW III/1: 79. The Birth of Tragedy, 60.

KGW III/1: 85. The Birth of Tragedy, 66. However, it is important to note that Nietzsche refers to morality
as a non-Dionysiac art. Morality/science has the capacity to be infused with passionthis is what Nietzsche
tries to accomplish in his gay science.
70

41
Silenusi.e., that ones existence is necessarily contingentcan be converted into
affirmation only through the mythical (illusion). Tragic culture is capable of this only
because it stays on the surface and does not try to penetrate to the heart of the world: it
acknowledges illusion as illusion through the redemptive power of artistic vision. No less
than the tragic culture of the ancient Greeks, the culture of the modern world confronts the
revolting truth that the world is at bottom chaos (eternal becoming) through the powerful
illusion that our concepts match up to reality as it is. Modern science attempts to control
nature through concepts in order to put it to work for manin this way, it is no less lifedenying than Socratic morality. Hence, modern science remains as un-Dionysian as Socrates
was:
It fights against Dionysiac wisdom and art; it strives to dissolve myth; it puts in the place
of metaphysical solace a form of earthly harmony, indeed its very own deus ex machina,
namely the god of machines and smelting furnaces, i.e. the energies of the spirits of nature,
understood and applied in the service of a higher egotism; it believes in correcting the
world through knowledge, in life led by science; and it is truly capable of confining the
individual within the smallest circle of solvable tasks, in the midst of which he cheerfully
says to life: I will you: you are worth understanding.71
The illusion of modern science, and Alexandrian culture tout court, is that its foundations are
completely transparent.72 The difference between a tragic conception of the world and that
of the scientific (Socratic) is that the former recognizes that myth is a necessary part of life,
which bestows wholeness and coherence to life, whereas the latter is ignorant of its own
foundation in myth. Science believes that it is a self-certifying project: its foundations are

71

KGW III/1: 111. The Birth of Tragedy, 85.

One such illusion that the Alexandrian culture denies but is nonetheless still a part of it is the necessity of a
class of slaves to do menial tasks. It should be noted that Alexandrian culture needs a slave-class in order to
exist in the long term; as it views existence optimistically, however, it denies the necessity of such a class and is
therefore heading towards horrifying extinction when the effects of its fine words of seduction and pacification,
such as human dignity and the dignity of labor, are exhausted. KGW III/1: 113. The Birth of Tragedy, 86.
72

42
clear and distinct, as Descartes demanded in the early 17 century. However, it is precluded
th

from pursuing the truth because it does not know the truth about its foundations (namely, that
its foundation is not pure).
By the time Nietzsche published The Birth of Tragedy, the prevailing culture of
science [Wissenschaft], especially in the German academic institutions, had begun to teeter
on its own foundationsit was losing confidence in its supposedly unshakeable axioms.
Under the drive of science, the demand for truth at all costs, the foundation of the modern
world is presently being revealed (namely, that there is nothing supporting this drive). In
spite of the promise of logical thinking, men are incapable of rendering their own existence
transparent. Man finally comes to accept the limits of scientific knowledge and when he
sees how logic curls up around itself at these limits and finally bites its own tail, then a new
form of knowledge breaks through, tragic knowledge, which, simply to be endured, needs art
for protection and as medicine.73 Ultimately, science coils back on itself once theoretical
man realizes that it is not all comprehensive. Far from being anti-scientific (or proscientific), as many commentators think,74 Nietzsche is interested in bringing science to its
completion. He wants to do this by taking science itself as something problematic and
questionable; in doing so, he hopes that there will be a transformation of science into an
infinite project that is self-conscious of its own limits (i.e., that it become aware of the
inevitable tenability of its axioms and the need for constant revision in the light of new
73

KGW III/1. The Birth of Tragedy, 75.

One notable exception to this general trend is Babette Babich. For a refreshing, and accurate interpretation
of Nietzsches relation to science, see Babichs Nietzsches Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the
Ground of Art and Life (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). Also see Babichs more
recent study of this topic in Nietzsches Gay Science, in Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and
Poetry, Music and Eros in Hlderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 2006), pp. 55-74.
74

43
evidence). Once science is made self-conscious it will see the need for art as a protective
barrier against the horrors of existence (in particular, suffering). This is what Nietzsche
hopes to accomplish in The Gay Science [Die frhliche Wissenschaft]: to make science into
art, to make it passionate.75 The possibility of a rebirth of tragedy, or a tragic culture, can
only come out of the fertile ground of modern scientific (Socratic/Alexandrian) culture. In
Nietzsches words, we are waiting for the music-making Socrates, the one who will turn
science into art. Thus far, however, this perfection of science has not yet been realized
Nietzsche thinks it will be realized in gay science, as I will show in Chapter 3.
Nietzsches presentation of Socrates in his first work is, therefore, only a caricature:
he is using Socrates as a magnifying glass to bring his readers attention to a certain kind of
attitudethe optimism of the theoretical man concerning the possibility of the correction of
existence through the mastery of natureone that is so pervasive that no one is able to
recognize it.76 Throughout his career, Nietzsches attitude toward Socrates remained
ambiguous. This is certainly true at the time that he published his first work, for in a lecture
series delivered in the summer of 1872, he counts Socrates among the pure and unmixed
types of philosophers. Plato, on the other hand, is the first grand mixed character,
because he mixes the teachings of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus. All philosophers
after Plato fall into this mold. But the pre-Platonics were all unique, pure and unmixed
75

As Babich notes, the method of modern science has the potential to make science into art: For Nietzsche, as
for the rest of us, the method at workstipulation, mechanism, and above all delimitation, that is, the working
practice of method as suchis the key to the modern scientific age. The same methodification is also the
means whereby science becomes art, but to say this is also to say that science departs from theory alone, from
its metaphysical heaven or perfection, to become practicable and livable, viable, as such. Words in Blood, Like
Flowers, 61.
76
The ad hominem argument is one of Nietzsches favorites as he notes at the end of his sanity: I never attack
people,I treat people as if they were high-intensity magnifying glasses that can illuminate a general, though
insidious and barely noticeable, predicament. KGW VI/3: 272. Ecce Homo, 82.

44
types. Socrates is the last in this series of pure types within philosophy: Whoever wishes
to do so may call them all one-sided. In any case, they are genuine discoverers. For all
those afterward, it became infinitely easier to philosophize. They [the pre-Platonics] had to
find the path from myth to laws of nature, from image to concept, from religion to science.77
Socrates is a daring questioner and philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph] insofar as he puts
knowledge at the service of life. In his equation of knowledge with virtue and happiness,
Nietzsche believes that Socrates brings about a new way to look at the world hitherto
unknown in the age of the Greeks. He remains a great man in Nietzsches eyes even though
the latter fundamentally disagrees with Socratess conception of the world (and its
transmission in European history).
The diametric opposition of the Socratic (moral) and Dionysian interpretations of
existence is what drives Nietzsches philosophy for the rest of his intellectual career. But
even this opposition is illusory because these two positions are two sides of the same coin.
The Dionysian can only be revealed through the prism of the Socratic (and vice-versa): the
rebirth of tragic culture can only come about through the perfection of modern science. For
Nietzsche, then, the Dionysian is the affirmation of existence as it is without subtraction; the
Socratic, on the other hand, is the attitude that seeks to correct existence and then affirm this
contracted version of the world. There are two existential possibilities: one is an unrestrained
Yes-saying to existence; the other is a No-saying to existence because it is affirmed
conditionally (i.e., existence without suffering).78 In this vein, Babette Babich notes that the

77

KGW II/4: 214. From The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2001), 5.
78
This is the real opposition for Nietzsche; art and science are not opposed because it is possible for either of
these to serve or hinder affirmation of existence. See, again, Babich Nietzsches Gay Science, 72.

45
dramatic or heroic view of life requires an extraordinary, originally powerful individual: the
type capable of surviving a life lived as a spectacle. The capacity to survive the agony of
existence in its full tragic expressionthat is also to say, with grace and styleis the
cultured ideal of Dionysian ecstasy and the art of tragedy itself.79 The ability to incorporate
all aspects of existence (including suffering) so as to give ones own being form or style
depends on ones attitudethis attitude is what education should aim to inculcate.
According to Nietzsche, only once has there been an unconditional affirmation of existence
of this kindfound in his own philosophy. Heraclitus among the pre-Platonics was one of
the few who came closest before Nietzsche introduced the eternal recurrence as the ultimate
affirmation of existence.

The Pre-Platonics: Tragic vs. Socratic Wisdom

According to Nietzsche, the heyday of the tragic vision of the world was not in the 5th
century BC (in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles) but rather the 6th century when
tragedy was first born. Through Euripides the slavish serenity [Heiterkeit] of the Greeks
came to color the rest of antiquity as if there had never been a sixth century, with its birth of
tragedy, its Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heraclitus, as if indeed the works of art of the
period simply did not exist.80 Although Nietzsche only names Heraclitus in passing in his
first published work, the Ephesian was on his mind during the composition of The Birth of
Tragedy. Due to his heavy workload at the Gymnasium and University in Basel, he was
regularly busy preparing for the courses he was teaching. One of the university courses he
79

Babette Babich, Nietzsches Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 247.
80
KGW III/1: 74. The Birth of Tragedy, 57.

46
taught in the summer of 1872 was The Pre-Platonic Philosophers [Die vorplatonischen
Philosophen], which includes a long section on Heraclitus.
Commenting on his first writing sixteen years after its publication, Nietzsche says in
Ecce Homo that he himself must be understood as the first tragic philosopher. He was the
one responsible for turning the Dionysian into a philosophical passion. Still, he admits that
he doubted the case of Heraclitus insofar as the Ephesian philosopher may also have had a
tragic/aesthetic view of the world. The affirmation of passing away and destruction that is
crucial for a Dionysian philosophy, saying yes to opposition and war, becoming along with a
radical rejection of the very concept of beingall these are more closely related to me than
anything else people have thought so far. The doctrine of the eternal return, which is to say
the unconditional and infinitely repeated cycle of all thingsthis is Zarathustras doctrine,
but ultimately it is nothing Heraclitus couldnt have said too.81 Although Nietzsche claims
that he is the first tragic philosopher, Heraclitus (and, for that matter, Zarathustra) are
extremely close to his own understanding. As he noted in passing in The Birth of Tragedy,
Heraclitus comes from the tragic century in ancient Greek history. Tragic wisdom, or the
aesthetic vision of the world, which is articulated best in the doctrine of the eternal
recurrence, belongs just as much to Heraclitus as it does to Nietzsche. Heraclitus might have
already taught it, but this information is lost to history. For Nietzsche, the possibility is
enough to suggest an affinity between them even though they are separated by millennia:
they both affirm existence in the face of ceaseless becoming. Therefore, to understand the

81

KGW VI/3: 310-311. Ecce Homo, 110. Emphasis added.

47
doctrine of the eternal recurrence, one must examine Nietzsches writings on this prePlatonic philosopher.
Out of all of Nietzsches writings the two longest considerations of the philosophy of
Heraclitus are found early in his professional career at the University of Basel: the first in the
lectures on the pre-Platonics and the second in an unpublished work entitled, Philosophy in
the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873). The detail that can be found in both of these
expositions are evidence of his preference for Heraclitus among all of the pre-Platonic
philosophers.82 However, both of these unpublished works have peculiarities that flow from
Nietzsches idiosyncratic reading of the ancient sourcesespecially Diogenes Laertiuss
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Before examining Nietzsches thoughts on Heraclitus, it
is necessary to understand his philological method in these lectures.
The ancient sources from which we glean the fragments of the early Greek
philosophers are, at best, tenuous: it is difficult to determine whether or not a source like
Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, etc., can be trusted to give an accurate presentation of the
philosophical thought of one of their predecessors. The primary ancient source on which
Nietzsche most depended was Diogenes Laertius (a 3rd century A.D. compiler of anecdotal,
biographical, and doctrinal information of the Greek philosophers).83 This is significant
because he rejects Theophrastuss succession theorythe idea that the early Greek
philosophers formed a chain of student-teacher relationships until the emergence of Socrates,

82

See Ludwig von Schefflers personal account of Nietzsches admiration for Heraclitus in the lecture series.
From Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries, ed. Sander L. Gilman (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 73.
83
He acknowledges this in a letter to Erwin Rohde signing his name Diogenes Laertides (the son of
Laertius). August 26, 1872, KGB I/3: 48 (no. 252).

84

Plato, and Aristotle.

48
His title of his lecture course is, therefore, apt: The Pre-Platonic

Philosophers. Nietzsche emphasizes the independence of thought of each of these

philosophers; they were all able to educate themselves without the assistance of teachers. Of
course, this does not mean that the pre-Platonics had no relationship to one another
whatsoever.85
As noted in the last section, Socrates is the last of the pure and unmixed
philosophical types, which is why he is included among what has been called Presocratic
philosophy since the publication of Hermann Dielss Fragments of the Presocratics [Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker] in 1901. Socrates is separated from Plato because the latter
founded the first place in which philosophy was taught. After Socrates it became infinitely
easier to philosophize.86 Nietzsche preserves Socrates from his scathing critique of the
tradition since the latter did not belong to any schoolthough he is sometimes attacked
separately. Plato, on the other hand, remains a constant object of scorn for Nietzsche since
he founded the first school of philosophy and, thus, gave rise to the Western philosophical
tradition that Nietzsche despised. To found a school for the sake of preserving and protecting
ones own intellectual activity is a sign that they [founders of schools] are not in accord with
their world.87 The gulf between theory and practice ironically grows wider with the
84

This is what he relates in a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde: In the chronologies of Apollodorus I have a
principle trust: he has already discovered the entirely arbitrary nature of the old [student-teacher
succession theory of Theophrastus] and thereby destroyed its numbers. June 11, 1872, KGB II/3: 10 (no. 229).
85
All of them together form what Schopenhauer in contrast to the republic of scholars has called the republic
of creative minds: each giant calling to his brother through the desolate intervals of time. KGW III/2: 302.
From Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 1962), 32.
86
KGW II/4: 214. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, 5.
87
Richard Velkley, Primal Truth, Errant Tradition, and Crisis: The Pre-Socratics in Late Modernity, in Early
Greek Philosophy: Reason at the Beginning of Philosophy, ed. Joseph McCoy (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, forthcoming), 11.

49
establishment of the first schoolscience is pursued for its own sake instead of proper
cultivation. All of this is evidence of the fact that Nietzsche thinks that traditional education
cannot give form [Bildung], that is, unity, purity, and style, to ones nature.
All of the pre-Platonics were self-educated men, and this is especially true in the case
of Heraclitus, who scorned learning from others as polymathy.88 This is important because it
forms another aspect of the Dionysian as Nietzsche understood it: self-transcendence through
genuine education. In paradoxical fashion Dionysian wisdom combines affirmation of the
world as it isthe rejection of any telos beyond the Nowwith the hope of the radical
transformation of man. This apparent contradiction between affirming and transcending is
present in the willing of the eternal recurrence, not as theoretical doctrine but as means for
the wills self-transformation.89 Heraclitus (and Zarathustra) is able to rise above himself
through the ultimate affirmation of existence, i.e., the tragic/aesthetic view of the world,
which is akin to the eternal recurrence. At this point in his career, he refers to Heraclituss
teaching as cosmodicy, a term coined by his friend Erwin Rohde. The goodness and
beauty of existence is, thus, affirmed despite the presence of evil and ugliness in the cosmos.
Becoming and passing away, which the precursor Anaximander thought were an injustice,
are affirmed in the aesthetic vision of Heraclitus.
Anaximanders vision of Time as the judge that doles out punishment for becoming
(i.e., generation) is the archetype of the spirit of revenge, as Nietzsche calls it in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, which permeates the moral, Christian conception of time and history.
Existence is viewed as blameworthy and in need of redemption; becoming, or history, is the
88
89

See Diels-Kranz fragment 40.

Primal Truth, Errant Tradition, and Crisis, 9.

50
dialectical process that comes to justify and, ultimately, redeem existence. One can find this
in the Christian conception of history (Fall Incarnation and Resurrection Redemption)
as well as the Hegelian, teleological view of history that Nietzsche thought derived from
Christianity. In such an interpretation, Becoming is a sign of guilt: time is seen as a judge.
This is the origin of the concept of theodicy, the justification of injustice in existence
through the dialectic process of history. As opposed to Anaximander, Gilles Deleuze notes,
Heraclitus is the one for whom life is radically innocent and just. He understands existence
on the basis of an instinct of play. He makes existence an aesthetic phenomenon rather than a
moral or religious one.90 Play is the essence of existence/the cosmos; there is no need for
external justification, for existence is a never-ending game and this play itself is justice.
Once again the concept of play is active within Nietzsches exposition of Heraclitean
philosophy in order to show that there is no need to interpret becoming and passing away
morally. The cosmos is the playground of the world-child Zeus,91 who is always engaged in
creation and destruction. Only in the play of the child (or that of the artist) does there exist
a Becoming and Passing Away without any moralistic calculations. He conceives of the play
of children as that of spontaneous human beings: here is innocence and yet coming into being
and destruction: not one droplet of injustice should remain in the world. There is a similar
passage to this one in 24 of The Birth of Tragedy, which suggests that the Heraclitean view
of the world as play was in the back of Nietzsches mind during the composition of his first
work.92 In that section, Nietzsche notes that the Dionysiac phenomenon is similar to the
90

Nietzsche et la philosohie, 27.

See Diels-Kranz fragment 52.
92
That striving towards infinity, that wing-beat of longing even as we feel supreme delight in a clearly
perceived reality, these things indicate that in both these states of mind we are to recognize a Dionysiac
91

51
view of Heraclitus. This may be the reason why Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo that the
eternal recurrence is something that Heraclitus might have taught. Nietzsche maintains that
he is the first to have transformed the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos.93 Nevertheless,
he thought the necessary elements of the eternal recurrence were already present within the
teaching of Heraclitus.
In an unpublished essay presented to Cosima Wagner for Christmas in 1872,
Nietzsche had first considered the pride of the wise Heraclitus as something that could not
be conceived idly. He presents a brief portrait of the obscure philosopher: Among human
beings Heraclitus, as a human being, was unbelievable; and if he was perhaps seen, as he
gave respect to the play of noisy children, thus had he thereby in any case considered what a
mortal had never considered on such an occasionthe play of the great world-child Zeus and
the eternal sport of a world demolition and a world emergence.94 The philosophical type
outlined here is given greater detail in Nietzsches writing Philosophy in the Tragic Age of
the Greeks. More importantly, however, Nietzsche discusses the teaching of Heraclitus that
most closely approximates his own doctrine of the eternal recurrence in this short work.
Incidentally, Nietzsche points out that the neo-Pythagoreans developed a theory of
time that will later resemble his own doctrine of the eternal recurrence. The following
passage resonates with his discussion of monumental history in the History essay of the
phenomenon, one which reveals to us the playful construction and demolition of the world of individuality as
the overflow of a primal pleasure and delight, a process similar to Heraclitus the Obscures comparison of the
force that shapes the world to a playing child who sets down stones here, there, and the next place, and who
builds up piles of sand only to knock them down again. KGW III/1: 149. The Birth of Tragedy, 114.
93
Heraclitus transposes the Dionysian-poetic vision into philosophic concepts, but does so incompletely. One
can surmise that Heraclitus lacks a concept of will to ground the cosmic activity of world-building. But no
ancient thinker could have had that concept, nor the historical consciousness resulting from insight into the
wills power of self-transformation. Primal Truth, Errant Tradition, and Crisis, 8.
94
KGW III/2: 252. From Prefaces to Unwritten Works, trans. Michael W. Grenke (South Bend, IN: St.
Augustines Press, 2005), 24-25.

52
next year: Whenever the stars once more attain the same position, not only the same people
but also the same behavior will again occur.95 Nietzsche believes that the neoPythagoreans derived this idea from the teaching of Heraclitus, who might very well have
taught the eternal recurrence. Although this sounds like the eternal recurrence, it is the
dwarfs theory of time from On the Vision and the Riddle in Part III of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. But this is too easy, for both Zarathustra and Nietzsche. It is only a
caricature of Dionysian philosophyit is a watered-down version of what Heraclitus might
have taught. (One could also say that this is the cosmological aspect of the doctrine, using
the terms of Karl Lwith.)
Continuous with his lectures on the pre-Platonic philosophers of the previous year,
Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks presents the pure philosophical types of the
pre-Platonics. (Nietzsche had planned to continue an exposition on each of these selfeducated men up to Socrates but never completed it.) In these sketches of the character of
Heraclitus, Nietzsche goes into greater detail connecting the thought of eternal becoming
with the Dionysian, tragic wisdom discussed in The Birth of Tragedy. Heraclituss insight
into the actual nature of the world as nothing but a whirlwind of ceaseless becomingso
much so that he distrusts the report of the senses96is commensurate with tragic wisdom:
The everlasting and exclusive coming-to-be, the impermanence of everything actual, which
constantly acts and comes-to-be but never is, as Heraclitus teaches it, is a terrible, paralyzing
thought. Its impact on men can most nearly be likened to the sensation during an earthquake

95

KGW II/4: 349. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, 139. Emphasis added.

When all the other philosophical folk threw out the testimony of the senses because it showed multiplicity
and change, Heraclitus threw it out because it made things look permanent and unified. KGW VI/3: 69.
Twilight of the Idols, 167.
96

53
when one loses ones familiar confidence in a firmly grounded earth. It takes astonishing
strength to transform this reaction into its opposite, into sublimity and the feeling of blessed
astonishment.97 What aligns Heraclitus with Nietzsche, though, is the ability to overcome
the sense of revulsion at the prospect of an indifferent cosmos always engaged in a game
with itself. This transformation of revulsion into cheerfulness and overflowing desire is what
makes Heraclitus an initiate and disciple of Dionysus (even if he does not teach the eternal
recurrence).
According to Nietzsche, Heraclitus views the world not merely as the playground of
the world-child Zeus, but also as an arena of opposites locked in an eternal contest. The
world is the agon in which one thing (e.g., sweetness) triumphs over its opposite (bitterness),
only to be cast down at a moments notice, and to rise up once more in victory. Everything
that happens, happens in accordance with this strife, and it is just in the strife that eternal
justice is revealed.98 He affirms the ceaseless act of destruction and creation in the cosmos
because it is just: the goodness of the cosmos is vindicated despite the existence of evil
within itevil is a necessary part within the whole. Heraclituss aesthetic view of the world
as the play of the Aeon is what prevents him from succumbing to the conclusion of Silenus,
that it is better not to exist.99 Only in the aesthetic vision of the whole is existence justified
as what it is, the eternal contest of opposites, the ever-renewed fire: In this world only play,
play as artists and children engage in it, exhibits coming-to-be and passing away, structuring
and destroying, without any moral additive, in forever equal innocence. And as children and

97

KGW III/2: 318-319. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 54.
KGW III/2: 319. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 55.
99
See 3 in The Birth of Tragedy.
98

54
artists play, so plays the ever-living fire. It constructs and destroys, all in innocence. Such is
the game that the aeon plays with itself.100 This view of Heraclitusa view impossible
without the prior understanding of Schillers program of aesthetic educationmakes
Nietzsche feel warmer in the Ephesians presence.
Nevertheless, in 1888, Nietzsche believes that he is the only one in the history of
Western philosophy to give a proper articulation of the eternal recurrence. Heraclitus comes
close but still does not achieve the perfect vision of the absolute unity of world and man
afforded by the eternal recurrence. This might be due to the fact that the Greek philosopher
had no conception of the will. If this is the case, Heraclituss alleged teacher, the historical
figure Zoroaster (better known by his Persian name Zarathustra), was even further removed
from the eternal recurrence since he was the first to introduce dualism to the world. Perhaps
Heraclitus transformed this dualism into the struggle of opposites with each other in a game
that has no end; thereby he came closer to Nietzsches own conception. Whatever the case
may be, Heraclitus (like the other pre-Platonics) was able to pick up the spear and throw it
onward from the point where others had left it.101
Heraclitus and Zarathustra remain constant companions of Nietzsche since they share
his intoxication: their philosophy is the expression of the affirmation of existence as it is
without subtraction or adjustment. This does not change the fact that his predecessors did not
achieve the ultimate affirmation of existence in the doctrine of the eternal recurrence. They
still share an affinity. In fact, Zarathustra is the vehicle by which the teaching is
disseminated in the 1880s. Is this perhaps because Zarathustra as the first teacher of dualism
100
101

KGW III/2: 324-325. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 62.
KGW III/2: 300. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 30.

55
(and, hence, life-denying values) needs to overcome his previous teaching through its exact
opposite? Transformation from negation to affirmation is made possible only through the
conversion of Zarathustra. This is a topic that will be discussed in the third chapter. In the
meantime, it is important to note the unconscious connection Nietzsche makes between
Heraclitus and Zarathustra, the latter of whom Nietzsche calls that Dionysiac monster,102
by mentioning them in the same breath in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

Thoughts on Education
There is some difficulty in attempting to tie together Nietzsches earliest
compositions so as to render a coherent picture of his thought. This is due to the diversity of
his writings during the decade of 1862-1872: he wrote high school essays that are
philosophical; he wrote a work that challenged the presuppositions of classical philology and
called for a rejuvenation of culture through aesthetic education; he delivered lectures that
were primarily concerned with the pre-Platonic philosophers; and he continued his work on
these same philosophers in a private writing. What unites all of them? It seems likely that
Nietzsches concern with education [Bildung] is the unifying factor at this stage in his
intellectual career. It is possible to see this in a series of lectures that he delivered in the
spring of 1872 entitled On the Future of Our Educational Institutions [ber die Zukunft
unserer Bildungsanstalten]. These lectures prepared the groundwork for Nietzsches most
untimely meditation on history in the following year, so it will be helpful to examine these
in order to make a connection between his earlier and later concerns.

102

KGW III/1: 16. The Birth of Tragedy, 12.

56
As Nietzsche makes clear in his earliest writings, education is primarily concerned
with the formation of the individual.103 Aesthetic education is especially valuable in this
regard because it provides the highest degree of unity by allowing the individual to act (and
live). It combines freedom and necessity through a powerful illusion or myth. Tragic
wisdom, the knowledge that the world is the game of the world-child Zeus without goal or
end, is tempered by the mythical. Opposed to this, modern scientific culture (the descendent
of Alexandrian or Socratic culture) believes that its foundations are transparenti.e., that it
has no presuppositions. Not only is Alexandrian culture founded on a slave class, which it
insistently denies as a necessary presupposition of its own existence, but it also requires a
horde of state functionaries prepared by an educational system at the service of the state.
Nietzsche and his colleague at Basel Jacob Burckhardt feared that higher education would be
subsumed by the modern nation-state so that the university would no longer be a free space
devoted to the cultivation of the individual. In the place of the traditional European
university there would be an institution designed to produce as many functionaries of the
state as quickly as possible.
Nietzsches fear that the higher educational institutions would eventually become
another apparatus for the aggrandizement of the nation-state had come true in Germany by
1888. As he notes in Twilight of the Idols, German higher schooling is in fact a brutal
103

Lionel Gossman summarizes Nietzsches position well: To the neohumanists [like Friedrich August Wolf,
Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe], as to Nietzsche, education
meant above all the development of the individual, to the highest degree possible, of a free and creative spirit,
and it was best achieved through study of the Greek language and literature. The idea was not to copy the
Greeks in a servile way but, through study of their language and literature, to appropriate their free, original,
and creative spirit (thus circumventing the secondary and dependent classicism of the French). In this way, the
young German student might in turn create a free, original, and authentic culture. The critical utopian character
of early neohumanism remained essential to Nietzsches view of education and underlies his repeated attacks on
the states subordination of education to its own ends. From Gossmans Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A
Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 427.

57
form of training that tries to process a horde of young men as quickly as possible for use
and abusein the civil service. Higher education and hordethese are in contradiction
from the outset. Any higher education is only for the exceptions: you have to be privileged
to have the right to such a high privilege. Nothing great or beautiful could ever be common
property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum.104 While this fear remained a real (but
unrealized) threat for Nietzsche in 1872, he thought that it could be diverted through the
reform of educational institutions. This is the ultimate goal of his lecture series in the spring
of that year: he wanted to make his audience see that true education is about the cultivation
of the individual and not about the creation of a class of state functionaries. Eventually,
however, he saw that there was no stopping the march of democracy and that education
would be regulated by the massesmost likely the real reason that he abandoned his post at
the University of Basel in 1879.105
But in 1872 Nietzsche viewed the situation more optimistically than in his wandering
years. Education can be reformed so that its genuine goalthe cultivation of a select number
of individualscould be realized. Wholeness, or unity, is the goal both of Nietzsche and
Schiller in their respective attempts at the reformation of education through the aesthetics of
play. Culture is opposed to the modern scientific drive for Nietzsche. The latter inclines
toward specialization and compartmentalizationsomething that Nietzsche thought was
characteristic of Alexandrian culture. His analysis in 18-23 of The Birth of Tragedy is
meant to show how culture has been surpassed by the rise of technical science at the
beginning of the end of Greek culture. This trend continues to his own time and has been
104
105

KGW VI/3: 101. Twilight of the Idols, 189.

Officially the reason he listed was his quickly deteriorating health.

58
exacerbated by the interference of the state. Specialization makes itself readily amenable to
manipulation by the state. One can combat the advance of the state into the arena of
education only by first despising ones education thus far. The saving power of the
educational institutions will come from this realization that ones education has not been
directed toward wholeness but only toward the development of a specialized skill set to be
used for the aggrandizement of the state.
For Nietzsche, culture is what strives after the wholeness of the individual in On the
Future of Our Educational Institutions. Wholeness and perfection, or unity and purity, are
the goals of a select set of educational institutions, the gymnasium and the university.
Specialized skills, which have immediate practical application, are not to be despised in
themselves; their proper place is in the technical schools. It is a problem when the
gymnasiums and universities forget their express purpose and become the lackeys of the
state. It is the classical Gymnasium, claiming to promote culture or Bildung, rather than
provide a practical education, and to form men and leaders rather than efficient workers or
cogs in a bureaucratic machine, that is the problem: this is so because the Gymnasium, which
ought to be a constant challenge to the prevailing culture of the market and of modernity, has
opted to become their servant.106 Young men no longer expect to be formed freely by the
study of classics, but expect an education that will prepare them for material and social
success. The gymnasium and the university have become disingenuous in the execution of
their professed duties: they no longer strive after the perfection of the individual in which all
aspects of ones self are integrated into a coherent whole. He traces this to two separate, but

106

Basel in the Age of Burckhardt, 428.

59
not incommensurable, drives: the highest possible extension of education, on the one hand,
and the diminution and weakening of the same, on the other: According to the first drive
education should be carried into an ever wider circle; in the mind of the other tendency it will
be expected of education that it give up its highest claim to self-mastery and subordinate
itself serving another form of life, namely that of the state.107
In Nietzsches view, the first of these drives is problematic not only because it
exchanges wholeness and perfection (the true goal of education) for specialization and
fragmentation, but also because it tends toward the democratization of knowledge. True
education is a reserved privilege for the few, as Nietzsche constantly reminds his audience in
these five lectures and in the History essay in the following year. In fact, democratization
and specialization feed off one another, as the fictional character of the philosopher reminds
his old friend in tones that resonate in Nietzsches later works:
For the study of science is now so expanded in breadth that whoever, with good, although
not extreme talents, still wants to achieve something in them, will pursue a completely
specialized field, and then remain untroubled, however, by everything left over. If he
should even now in his field stand above the vulgus, in everything left over he indeed
belongs to them, i.e., in all main things. Thus one learned in an exclusive field is then
similar to a factory worker, who, his life long, makes nothing other than a specific screw
or handle to a specific tool or to a machine, in which he then, to be sure, attains an
unbelievable virtuosity.108
The over-expansion of the methods of modern science is what makes possible the myopic
specialist, who sees nothing beyond his own limited task. Ultimately, Nietzsches problem
with this emphasis on scientific specialization in the gymnasiums and universities in
Germany is that theory and practice become further and further separated from one another.
107

KGW III/2: 139. From On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, trans. Michael W. Grenke (South
Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2004), 17.
108
KGW III/2: 161-162. On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, 39.

109

In true education theory and practice are supposed to dissolve into one another.

60
Modern

scientific culture, as Nietzsche argued in The Birth of Tragedy, is incapable of this kind of
integration of all parts into a coherent whole because it refuses to accept the fact that it is
based on myth.
According to Nietzsche, proper education is the precondition for the revitalization of
German culture. Great individuals are the standards of any culture, for they are the true goal
of all education. The masses do not actually matter: Education of the mass cannot be our
goal: rather education of the individual, selected human beings, equipped for great and
lasting works: we know now for once that a just posterity will deliver its judgment on the
collective level of education of a people only and completely exclusively according to those
great heroes of a time, who walk in solitude, and according to the manner these same were
recognized, promoted, honored or made secret, mistreated, destroyed.110 The education of
the people is a lie spread about by the state, which attempts to bend the gymnasiums and
universities to its will. The state needs a vast number of specialists, bureaucrats, in order to
function at a certain level in the modern world. The state presents itself as a mystagogue of
culture and while it advances its purposes, it compels each of its servants to appear before it
only with the torch of universal state education in their hands: in whose restless light they are
supposed to recognize again it itself as the highest goal, as the reward of all their educational
exertions.111 Thus, the second drive is the natural complement to the first.

109

Instead science begins to turn on the condition for its possibility, i.e., life, and thus bites its own tail: For
now the exploitation of the human being for the sake of the sciences is without objection the overall accepted
presupposition: who still asks himself what a science may be worth which so vampire-like consumes its
creatures? KGW III/2: 162. On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, 39.
110
KGW III/2: 190-191. On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, 66.
111
KGW III/2: 199-200. On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, 75.

61
Nietzsches purpose in these lectures is to indicate to his audience that in
contemporary society there is something fundamentally at odds with the supposed goal of all
education, i.e., wholeness. Reformation of the educational institutions is possible, but he
does not give them a specific program to achieve this goal. Out of the seven proposed
lectures, only five were written and delivered in the spring of 1872. His solution is
formulated in the History essay in the following year. Nevertheless, his thoughts on
education in these lectures best articulate his overall position during the decade 1862-1872
and give us a clue about the significance of the teaching of the eternal recurrence. True
culture is named as the goal of education in these lecturesproper cultivation requires the
nourishing soil of myth, a solid ground from which one can speculate. Tragic wisdom
requires a powerful illusion that protects us from the self-destructive tendencies inherent to
the knowledge that the world is in a constant state of becoming (the cosmos is the playground
of the world-child Zeus). Human beings need an illusion so powerful that it allows them to
affirm the world as it is without subtraction or alterationthis is what Nietzsche thought
Wagners total artwork [Gesamtkunstwerk] was capable of doing (a re-birth of tragic
culture). Myth is the means necessary to the achievement of this affirmation; and only a
horizon surrounded by myths encloses and unifies a cultural movement.112 Thus, true
education involves recognition of the limits of human knowledge; myth (illusion) is what
closes off the horizon and grants wholeness to an individual.

112

KGW III/1: 141. The Birth of Tragedy, 108.

62
However, what has occurred in the educational institutions of 19 century Germany is
th

the elimination of myth by science, by the demand that history should be a science.113 But
as Nietzsche noted in The Birth of Tragedy, modern science (the descendent of Socrates and
his theoretical man) denies that it is based on myth. History, by becoming a science, has lost
its ability to provide a unified, stable ground, which Nietzsche in Fate and History thought
was the only alternative for stability in a world that had lost its contact with the transcendent.
Historys becoming a science is a result of the second drive Nietzsche listed in his lectures:
historical science is being used to illustrate how the German victory over France in the
Franco-Prussian War (1871) was cultural. Historical revisionism, based on a diluted form of
Hegels philosophy of history, distorts the past in order to serve the ends of the state. Thus,
the state has an interest in interfering as much as possible in the academic institutions; the
irony of this, as Nietzsche insistently points out, is that this is the exact opposite of the
purpose of education, which is meant to ground the individual in the world, i.e., make him
feel at home in the world, by dissolving the distinction between theory and practice.

Philosophy of the Future

Of all Nietzsches writings between 1873 and 1878, the History essay forms the
direct link between the issues raised within The Birth of Tragedy and their reappearance in
more mature form in his later works (especially The Gay Science and Thus Spoke
Zarathustra). The main problem of science that he deals with in 12-20 in his first work
is preserved in this short essay of 1873. It transforms these original insights (Socratic vs.
113

KGW III/1: 267. From Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 77.

63
Dionysian wisdom; the moral/scientific interpretation of existence vs. the tragic/aesthetic
interpretation) into more mature and precise formulations. The History essay is the true
heir to the questions that Nietzsche raises in his early writings because it is a powerful
critique of modern scienceit criticizes the methods and aims of modern historical science.
However, without the formulation of the problem of science that is first raised in The Birth
of Tragedy, and the notion of the Dionysian, Nietzsches critique of historical science would
make no sense. The value of science for life is ultimately questioned in this next work.
Nietzsche asks of his readers: Can the life dominated by wisdom (science) be affirmed? Or,
is this kind of life detrimental to the human being and must be shunned? The kind of
affirmation of life, in its brutality and beauty, achieved in the Dionysian form of intoxication
is the crucial test of the thought of the eternal recurrence. But before Nietzsche can articulate
this thought, he must confront several issues that arise in the wake of the overcoming of life
by scientific rationalityincluding the death of God (covered in the Chapter 3)already
in progress at the end of the 19th century. It is to his critique of scientific rationality, as
expressed in the dominant science of his day, historical science, that I shall now turn.

Chapter 2: The Transitional Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy

The purpose of this chapter is to determine Nietzsches relation to the prevailing
philosophy of his time, Hegelian philosophy in its cultural form. His reaction to the cultural
philistines in Germany is simultaneously an attack on a superficial understanding of Hegels
philosophy. While he is able to purge himself of the crude interpretation of the historical
dialectic, Nietzsche retains some aspects of Hegel (largely the dynamism found in the works
of the young Hegel). Nevertheless, it remains true that Nietzsche rends asunder his
predecessors static system of reality found in the older Hegels Science of Logic. To
understand Nietzsches ambivalent relation to Hegel is essential for comprehending the
ambiguous nature of the doctrine of the eternal recurrence. Nowhere is this relation
stressed more heavily than in On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life.
History is no longer a science for Nietzsche, but rather a lived experiencethis is evident in
the three kinds of history discussed in this essay.

Introduction
The year 1873 marks an important change in Nietzsches thinking. From this point
onward, the trajectory of Nietzsches thought is establishedwhat he writes after 1873 until
his loss of sanity in January 1889 has already been cursorily sketched out in his transitional
writings. Of the four meditations, the first two essays from Untimely Meditations
[Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen], David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer and On the
Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, are continuous with the concerns present within
The Birth of Tragedy of the previous year. Within these essays, Nietzsche confronts the
64

65
culture of his day in the figure of David Straussthe author of The Old Faith and the New
[Der Alte und der Neue Glaube]and the prevalent historicism that grounds the presumption
of a German cultural victory in Europe. When one reads these essays for the first time, one
can see that Nietzsches discussion of Greek tragic culture stands in the background. The
topic of culture, and its criticism, remains of constant concern to Nietzsche in 1872-1873.
Thus, there is a sense of continuity in the writings of the early period due to the overriding
concerns of their author.
Nietzsche is not only concerned with the status of culture in both the ancient and
modern worlds, and the possibility of a rejuvenation of tragic culture in the 19th century at
this time; he is also concerned with reforms in the educational institutions. The series of
lectures that he delivered at the University of Basel in the spring of 1872, On the Future of
Our Educational Institutions, provided material for the argument that he puts forward in the
History essay of the following year. In the later essay, Nietzsche spends a great deal of
time considering the relation between knowledge (theory) and life (practice)it is, in fact,
what preoccupies him from his ceterum censeo in the Preface until the conclusion of his
argument in 10. He is also occupied with the relation between the state (politics) and
education (philosophy) in Schopenhauer as Educatoranother point of importance in the
earlier lecture series.
The reason for the real change between The Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely
Meditations can be isolated in a single name: Hegel. While Hegel, and his philosophy, are
not named anywhere in the earlier writing, he pops up everywhere in the later writing. Hegel
stands in the background of David Strauss and all of the sections of the History essay.

66
The question naturally arises: Why does Hegel suddenly become so important for Nietzsche
as a philosopher who needs to be criticized? Prior to 1873, there is only one indication that
he read Hegel first hand: he read an unidentified essay of Hegels while at the University of
Bonn.114 Nietzsche does not dwell anywhere at length on Hegels philosophy in the
intervening years of 1865-1873. Then, without prior warning, Hegel becomes the object of
Nietzsches unremitting scorn in the Untimely Mediations. The purpose of this chapter will
be to determine the influence Hegel had on Nietzsche and the reason for the latters rejection
of the philosophical system of his predecessor.

Nietzsche and Hegel

Hegel died in 1831; Nietzsche was born thirteen years later in 1844. Despite the
similarity between the world in which Hegel died and the world in which Nietzsche was
born, one cannot deny that the thought of these two philosophers could not be more different.
It is not without reason that Gilles Deleuze notes that Anti-Hegelianism runs through
Nietzsches work as its cutting edge [Lanti-hglianisme traverse luvre de Nietzsche,
comme le fil de lagressivit].115 This is certainly true of the works after Untimely
Meditations wherein Hegel, and the academic style of philosophy his work engendered,
became a perpetual target of Nietzsches criticism. But the question that needs to be
answered is: Why does Hegel suddenly become the target of Nietzsches ire in the Untimely

114

According to Thomas H. Brobjers chronology of Nietzsches philosophical reading, Nietzsche read an

unidentified work by Hegel in 1865. Suddenly in 1873 (around the time of the composition of the History
essay), Nietzsche started to quote from Hegels Lectures on the Philosophy of History in his notes. See
Brobjers Nietzsches Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 2008).
115
Nietzsche et la philosophie, 9.

67
Meditations? It is not only necessary to determine who is the target of his philosophy, but
also equally important to determine why this is the case.116 One should, therefore, begin with
the question of Nietzsches familiarity with Hegelif he did have any extensive knowledge
at firsthand.
Nietzsches education began at home, in a Lutheran vicarage in Rcken (in the
Prussian province of Saxony). After the death of his father and his younger brother,
Nietzsches mother moved the family to Naumberg in 1850. Eight years later, the young
Nietzsche was accepted on full scholarship to Schulpfortathe prestigious boarding school
that had been attended by Leopold von Ranke, the brothers Schlegel, and Hegels friend J.G.
Fichte. A great deal had changed since these men attended the school. In particular, the
influence of Hegelian philosophy had a profound hold over the members of the faculty. It
was at Pforta that Nietzsche first encountered Hegel, transmitted through the influence of his
teachers. The school was firmly encamped in the humanist tradition, as Curt Paul Janz notes:
The spirit of Pforta, however, was not purely Prussian-conservative and militaristic, like
the cadet corps, but rather had been fully informed by the spirit of humanism, as the
German classicists had cultivated it and the philology of the 19th century further developed
it. One attached importance to the German language and literature and nurtured the dream
of German unity in teachers and students; of course, one occupied oneself more heavily
with the spirit of antiquity.117
During the time that he attended the school, the approach to the study of the ancients was
largely influenced by Hegels Lectures on the History of Philosopy, Lectures on the
Philosophy of History, and his many other works that touch on the subject of classical
antiquity (like Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right). The Plato scholar Karl
116

If we do not discover its target the whole of Nietzsches philosophy remains abstract and barely
comprehensible. Nietzsche et la philosophie, 9.
117
Curt Paul Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche Biographie: Band 1 (Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1981),
66.

68
Steinhart, who first introduced the Symposium to Nietzsche, was certainly influenced by
Hegel. This is only one casethere are several others.118
Whether Nietzsche realized it or not before 1873, his education had been set in the
fashion prescribed by Hegel. Of course, this was not only the case at Pforta; Hegels
presence at the universities (especially at the University of Berlin) and the gymnasiums
throughout the German-speaking world could not be ignored.119 Even a popular brand of
Hegelianism had begun to penetrate into non-academic spheres: works like Max Stirners
The Ego and His Own (1845) had introduced the German bourgeoisie to the rudimentary
notions of Hegelian philosophy. In his day, Stirner was identified with the Left Hegelians of
his dayand this was how he was taken up in the bourgeoisie, as another Hegelian. Stirner
speaks the language of Hegel, transforming the concepts of private individual and private
property into absolutes. He concretizes Hegels categories so that the bourgeoisie, who saw
Stirners philosophy as a confirmation of their own economic and political success, more
easily grasps them.120 However, they neglected the conclusion of his book: All things are

118

Dennis Schmidt also notes how Hegel had come to dominate the interpretation of Greek tragedy long before
Nietzsche began writing The Birth of Tragedy: By the time Nietzsche broaches the question of tragedy and its
relation to the modern world, the history of the second life of this question [as presented in the scholarly
journals of 19th century Germany] is, by and large, for better or worse, owned by Hegel. When the young
Nietzsche begins to take an interest in Greek art, especially Greek tragedy, Hegels argument (or, better, the
Hegelian argument as it was canonized by his epigones) that the structre of tragedy was ultimately a dialectical
structure had become something of a commonplace. From Schmidts On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy
and Ethical Life (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 191-192. While I agree with
Schmidts hypothesis, I do not think that Nietzsche fully realized the necessary implications of his thoughts on
tragedy in his first workin particular, the conscious break with Hegelian dialectics. Nietzsche only later
realizes the radical nature of his first born.
119
He already noted this in his lectures On the Future of Our Educational Institutions.
120
Nietzsches Untimely Meditations can be read as a prolonged attack on cultural Hegelianism. I only take
up the first two Meditations in this chapter as proof of thisit would be possible to include the latter two
Meditations as Gary Shapiro does in his recent article, Nietzsches Unmodern Thinking: Globalization, the
End of History, and Great Events, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84/2 (2010): 205-230.

121

nothing to me.

69
Stirner brings Hegelian philosophy to its logical conclusion, a conclusion

that could be interpreted in a way so that it turns against Hegel.

If Ida Overbeck (the wife of the theologian and friend of Nietzsche at the University
of Basel) can be trusted, sometime in the early 1880s Nietzsche is said to have mentioned
Stirners philosophy in passing. Nietzsche said that he had some kind of intellectual affinity
with Stirner in his conversation with Frau Overbeck, but was then embarrassed to have
admitted this.122 It may be the case that Nietzsche was embarrassed to have identified
himself with a supposed Hegelian, or that he did not want someone to confuse him with a
supposed Hegelian. Although no one knows where or when Nietzsche read Stirner, it must
have been sometime around the time of the publication of the Untimely Meditations.123
Whatever the case may be, the fact remains true that Nietzsche paid innermost
attention to Stirner.124 Stirners philosophy interested him, and he must have read Stirner
intently, for he seems to have interpreted Stirner as anti-Hegelian. The affinity that exists
between Stirner and Nietzsche, as he understood it, is their rejection of Hegelian philosophy,
which claimed to have been the standpoint of the present day in which the Spirit knows
itself as absolute in scientific knowledge.125 In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
delivered intermittently over the course of the 1820s, Hegel claimed that the Spirit reached

121

Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.,
2005), 366.
122
Conversations with Nietzsche, 113-114.
123
Nietzsches embarrassment can be explained as follows: Stirner was not considered to be an academic
philosopher in his own time (one reason that Nietzsche may have liked himhe was radical). The fact that no
one knows where or when Nietzsche read Stirner can most likely be explained by the fact that he did not want
anyone to know that he checked out the latters books from the library.
124
Conversations with Nietzsche, 114.
125
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, trans. E.S.
Haldane and Frances H. Simson (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 552.

70
full consciousness of itself as the Absolute Idea in his own work. There will not be any new
developments in the consciousness of the Ideaas the endpoint of the history of Western
philosophy, Hegels philosophy brings on an unlimited stasis. Hegel completes the history
of the spirit in the sense of its ultimate fulfillment, in which everything which has taken place
hitherto or has been conceived is comprehended in unity; but he completes it also in the sense
of an eschatological end, in which the history of the spirit is finally realized.126 Thus, as
Nietzsche would say (repeating Hegel), the culmination of all history (and philosophy)
coincided with Hegels Berlin existence.127 In other words, Hegel had stated that absolute
idealism is the philosophy of its time and placehis philosophy is timely. This was true in
more ways than one.
First in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and again in his Lectures on the
Philosophy of History, first delivered in 1822 and then revised for 1830, Hegel makes the
claim that world history represents the progress in the consciousness of freedom. The end
state of this progress is found in the Germanic world, where the divine spirit has come
into the world and taken up its abode in the individual, who is now completely free and
endowed with substantial freedom.128 The freedom bestowed on the individual, however, is
not the idea of being free from restraints, i.e., negative freedom; rather, freedom is made
manifest through the emergence of the state in its laws. Hegel notes in The Philosophy of
Right (1825):

126

Karl Lwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought, trans. David E.
Green (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 32.
127
KGW III/1: 304.
128
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1975), 131.

71
The state is absolutely rational inasmuch as it is the actuality of the substantial will which
it possesses in the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to
consciousness of its universality. This substantial unity is an absolute unmoved end in
itself, in which freedom comes into its supreme right. On the other hand this final end has
supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.129
One is free to follow the (rational) laws decreed by the state, or suffer the consequences. For
Hegel, the state in which the ultimate consciousness of freedom has emerged is Prussia,
whose laws he believed adhered to the Kantian notion of positive freedom. It just so
happened that Hegel was present in Berlin when the manifestation of the ultimate
consciousness of freedom occurred and his philosophy comprehended this truth.
The deification of the present situation occurs in Hegels philosophy because he
crowns his philosophy (and the Prussian state) as the endpoint of history. The Spirit reaches
its Sabbath in Prussia, the state that forms the culmination of the development over the
course of several millennia. Even the Germanic culture is considered to be superior to all
that came beforea point that Nietzsche hotly contested in David Strauss, the Confessor
and the Writer. According to Nietzsche, Strauss has gradually become Hegels lackey over
the years, and unwittingly remained in a state of absolute dependence on Hegel and
Schleiermacher because he groveled before the realities of the day.130 Like many of his day,
Strauss glorified the present German military victory as a victory of German culture. In this
way, he was following the path already established by Hegel, who viewed the present as the
culminating point of history, and it was difficult not to have a kind of philistine optimism
during a time of German economic prosperity and military power. He who has once
contracted Hegelism and Schleiermacherism is never quite cured of them [Wer einmal an
129

G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 155-156.
KGW III/1: 187. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27.
130

131

der Hegelei und Schleiermacherei erkrankte, wird nie wieder ganz curirt].

72
Anyone who

encounters Hegelian philosophy has the difficult task of disentangling themselves from the
labyrinth of his logic of dialectics. Might this not also be the case for Nietzsche himself, who
encountered Hegel (albeit mostly in a mediated way) during his high school days at Pforta?
Nietzsche found himself in a situation that was similar to that of his target Strauss in
the first of the Untimely Meditations. By 1873, he realized that his thought had been
structured by Hegelian philosophy even though he rarely encountered Hegel firsthand during
his time at Pforta and then the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig. Nietzsche points out that
the young Strauss had been pulled in by Hegel and had fallen back into the use of Hegelian
jargon much later in his life:
At least Strauss does not write like the most infamous of all corrupters of German, the
Hegelians and their deformed offspring. At least he wants to get back out of this swamp
and he has partly succeeded, though he is as yet very far from being on firm land; it is still
noticeable that in his youth he stuttered Hegelian: something in him become dislocated at
that time, some muscle got stretched; his ear became dulled, like the ear of a boy brought
up amid the beating of drums, so that thereafter he became deaf to the subtle and mighty
laws of sound under whose rule every writer lives who has been strictly trained to follow
good models.132
Nietzsches reaction against Strauss is actually an attack on Hegelian philosophyhe admits
that Strauss was not the real target of his polemic in Ecce Homo.133 The polemic was so
vicious that Nietzsches critics could not see whom he was actually attacking. In fact, he
praises Strauss for attempting to disentangle himself from the dangerous influence of Hegel

131

KGW III/1: 187. Untimely Meditations, 27. Emphasis added.

KGW III/1: 224. Untimely Meditations, 54.
133
He mentions this in the third proposition of his practice of war: I never attack people,I treat people as if
they were high-intensity magnifying glasses that can illuminate a general, though insidious and barely
noticeable, predicament. This is how I attacked David Strauss or, more precisely, the success of an old and
decrepit book in German culture,I caught this culture in the act . . . KGW VI/3: 272. Ecce Homo, 82.
Nietzsches emphasis.
132

73
in the middle of his life and reserves his ire for the self-satisfied cultural philistinism born out
of Hegelian philosophy. Nietzsche is like Strauss who wants to escape from Hegels
labyrinth. Both want to avoid slipping back into the Hegelian sludge [Hegelschen
Schlamm], that is, the dialectical logic of absolute idealism (and, for Nietzsche, its
incomprehensible language and impossible style).
We are left with two questions. The first question is: If Nietzsche wants to avoid
slipping back into the crude dialectics of Hegel, when and where did he extricate himself
from Hegel in the first place? My attempt in this chapter will be to answer this question.
The focus will be first, on when Nietzsche purges himself of the Hegelian dialectical logic,
and second, how he believes he accomplishes this. The second question is: How does
Nietzsches self-extrication from the limits of Hegelian philosophy in the second Untimely
Meditation change the way we should understand the teaching of the eternal recurrence?
This question will be answered in the three chapters that follow this one.

Nietzsches Quasi-Hegelianism
The distance that Nietzsche puts between himself and Hegel must come sometime
after The Birth of Tragedy but before he started writing the Untimely Meditations. His first
work contains no mention of Hegel or his philosophy; however, the way it views past,
present, and future is dialectical. During the 5th century B.C., tragedy and the tragic
worldview thrived in ancient Athens. Once Socrates and Euripides arrived, the tragic
worldview was replaced by that of the optimism of science and the theoretical man
Nietzsches time was the culmination of this optimism. According to Nietzsche, his age is

74
moving toward a rebirth of tragedy, especially in the form of Wagnerian opera. This
position is peculiar to the Germans: We feel that the birth of a tragic age means the return of
the German spirit to itself, a blissful reunion with its own being after the German spirit,
which had been living in hopeless formal barbarism, had been tyrannized for too long by
forms introduced from outside by a vast invading force.134 The language is that of dialectics.
If read outside of its context, such a sentence could easily be mistaken for something from
Hegels corpus!
Nietzsche reflected on his first publication that it appears to be very untimely. In
fact, The Birth of Tragedy was not untimely at alla great portion of its formulations are
influenced by the prevailing Hegelian philosophy of the time. For example, he says that
Greek tragedy is the synthesis of two opposed views of art, Apollo and Dionysus. It is not
without reason that Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo that you would sooner believe that the
essay was fifty years older [Man knnte eher schon glauben, dass die Schrift fnfzig Jahre
lter sei]. If the work was published in 1872, that would mean that it sounded as though it
was from 1822. What is going on in the early 1820s when it comes to philosophy and
tragedy? Idealism certainly took center stage in Germany and the rest of Europe. Which
idealists were around at the time? Hegel was the main proponent of idealism at this time
Fichte was already dead by the 1820s and Schelling had lapsed into his long silence.
Nietzsche seems to be saying that his first work was a product of German idealism, that, in
his words, it smells offensively Hegelian.135 As Nietzsche himself saw it, the problem with

134
135

KGW III/1: 124. The Birth of Tragedy, 95.

KGW VI/1: 308. Ecce Homo, 108.

75
The Birth of Tragedy was that it was not only Romantic (it was addressed to one man,
Richard Wagner), but also that it was idealistic, Hegelian.
The Romanticism and idealism of his first work was not only responsible for its
rejection as being unscientific by the philological community. These features also
prevented Nietzsche from answering the main question of the work: What is Dionysian?
Romanticism and idealism are twins born from the same motherthe modern world.
Nietzsche identifies Romanticism and idealism in The Case of Wagner, calling Wagner
Hegels heir. For him, Wagners music is another formulation of the Idea, it is the Idea
in the disguise of music. He notes further: The same type of people who enthused over
Hegel get enthusiastic about Wagner these days; in Wagners school, people even write in
HegelGerman young men understood him better than anyone else did.136 The young
Nietzsche understood what Wagner wanted to express only because they spoke the same
language, Hegelian. Of course, he did not realize this at the time. Under the influence of
Wagner, who was hammering Hegel into Nietzsche during the composition of The Birth of
Tragedy, the articulation of the question was tainted.137 Therefore, the untimeliness of his
first work is only apparent: Nietzsches question is an ancient one, in this way it is
untimely; however, no answer is forthcoming because of the way in which the question is
posed (i.e., in the terms of Hegels idealism). The answer was supposed to resound from
Wagnerian tragic opera; but the answer Nietzsche received was the Bayreuth Festival, an

136

KGW VI/3: 30. The Case of Wagner, 252. Emphasis added.

Julian Young also takes note of this in greater length in his book Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical
Biography (see Ch. 7 Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy).
137

76
answer that shattered Nietzsches (and other peoples) hopes for a proper rejuvenation of
culture.138
Since his first work was tainted by Hegelian thought, Nietzsches break must come
sometime after 1872. One already sees signs of it in 1872 in his lecture series, On the Future
of Our Educational Institutions. Nietzsches purging of Hegelian philosophy is completed in
the History essay of 1873this precipitates Nietzsches later break with Wagner. One
cannot hold onto Wagner once one has broken with what Nietzsche soon came to see as
Wagners intellectual foundation in Hegel.139 The appearance of the Untimely Meditations
indicates a radical transformation in Nietzsches philosophy. It sets the course for all of what
comes after; it changes the way in which the question What is Dionysian? is posed. An
answer can come forth in The Gay Science when he changes the trajectory (and nature) of
science as traditionally conceived, one which Nietzsche will call the eternal recurrence. In
this way, the Untimely Meditations, and especially the History essay, should be considered
a transitional work. Most scholars, on the contrary, agree that Human, All Too Human is
the point of transition in Nietzsches philosophy. But this is due to a misinterpretation of his
comments on the work in Ecce Homo, namely that it is a monument [Denkmal] to a

138

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes of The Birth of Tragedy: The book owed its effectiveness and even its
fascination to what was wrong with itits practical application to Wagnerianism, as if that were a symptom of
ascent. This is why the book was an event in Wagners life: it was at this point that Wagners name began to
give rise to great hopes. People still remind me of this, sometimes in the context of Parsifal . . . KGW VI/3:
307. Ecce Homo, 107. Nietzsches emphasis.
139
In a letter to George Brandes in which he discusses how he is responsible for the now present unity of
Schopenhauer and Wagner in the German mind, Nietzsche notes: I was the first person to distill a sort of unity
out of both of them; this erroneous belief is now very much in the forefront of German cultureall Wagnerites
are adherents of Schopenhauer. This was not true when I was young. In those days it was the last Hegelians
who adhered to Wagner, and even in the fifties the slogan was Wagner and Hegel. February 19, 1888 KGW
III/5: 260 (no. 997). From Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Christopher Middleton (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996), 286.

140

crisis.

77
Monuments are only erected after the factthe crisis in his thinking had already

occurred long before. Human, All Too Human is a book in which some of the details of the
break with Hegelian idealism are worked out.141
The middle stage of Nietzsches philosophy, as some scholars call it, begins with
Human, All Too Human and lasts until The Gay Science. During this period, Nietzsches
thinking drives toward a definite point, an articulation of the eternal recurrence in 341342, the last sections of the first edition of The Gay Science (1882). However, the
preparatory work, which makes this articulation of a philosophy of history possible, begins in
the History essay. This often-overlooked essay is the point where Nietzsches philosophy
of history coincides with his philosophy of science (the problem of science)his criticism
of Hegelian dialectical logic, Science, sets the stage for the advent of the eternal
recurrence. It is necessary at this point to see how Nietzsche purges himself of the
dialectical logic of Hegeland the historicism to which it gives risein this transitional
essay. In turn, this will give one a sense to what extent Nietzsche was able to eliminate
elements of Hegels system of philosophy from his own thinking about history and what he
was unable to uproot fully.

The Shattering of Hegels Dialectic of History

The History essay was composed over the course of 1873 and finally published
early in 1874. On the surface, it is straightforward: Nietzsche will be talking about the
140

KGW VI/3: 320. Ecce Homo, 115.

Nietzsche says of the book: It calls itself a book for free spirits: almost every sentence is the manifestation
of a victoryI used it to liberate myself from things that did not belong to my nature. Idealism is one of them:
the title says where you see ideal things, I seehuman, oh, only all to human! KGW VI/3: 320. Ecce Homo,
115-116. Nietzsches emphasis.
141

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advantages and disadvantages of history [Historie] for life. Although the structure of the
work is not spelled out in a table of contents, one can easily determine the different parts of
the essay. There is a Preface, which gives Nietzsches ceterum censeo for the essay, three
sections that discuss the advantages of history for life (1-3), an interlude on German
culture (4), five sections on the disadvantages of history for life (5-9), and a
concluding section that indicates his hopes for the future (10). Its structure is simple and
the topics addressed are in a natural order: one cannot see what the disadvantages of
history are for life without first knowing its advantages. Even the simple way in which it
has been structured indicates that the work is unacademicin Nietzsches mind, nonHegelian. One follows the thread of the argument from the beginning until the end, and the
reader ends up in a different place than he or she began. The essay is instructive, but it opens
up a new horizon of life and action for its reader. To get a sense of its unacademic quality
one would need to compare it with one of Hegels works (like Science of Logic), wherein the
reader moves in a large circle, never moving to a new vista. According to Nietzsche, Hegel
merely instructs his readers, he never moves them to anywhere new.142

Preface
The closed, perfect system of the mature Hegel does not allow for a new horizon.
Everything is brought to stasis in absolute idealism. Goethes main point of criticism of
Hegels system of philosophy is that it merely instructs but does not encourage action: In

142

Such a view is debatable. One certainly cannot say this of the younger Hegel in his Phenomenology of
Spirit since it is a work that outlines the actual movement of Spirit from one form of consciousness/knowledge
to the next. In fact, the dynamism of Hegels earlier works matches those of Nietzsches (throughout his
career).

79
any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly
invigorating my activity [brigens ist mir alles verhat, was mich blo belehrt, ohne meine
Ttigkeit zu vermehren order unmittelbar zu beleben]. These words were written in a letter
to Schiller on December 18, 1798. Although Goethe had not come into contact with Hegel at
this point, they nicely summarize his later criticism of Hegels philosophy. Prior to these
words, Goethe was telling Schiller how he had been reading Kants Anthropology and
enjoyed it in small doses. However, on the whole it is not refreshing [ist es nicht
erquicklich].143 One does not find refreshment in anything that is merely speculative because
it stands beyond the concerns of the everyday, human world. Speculation that does not have
any effect on human behavior is not the purpose of education. In other words, Goethe is
reminding Schiller of the old teaching that education consists in overcoming the distinction
between theory and practice.
Nietzsche rightly picks up on this in the Preface. History needs to be studied for
the purpose of refreshing and invigorating usi.e., we need it for the sake of life and action,
not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action.144 The study of history serves life,
it gives us perspective on our place in time and directs us toward the future. However,
history studied for its own sakei.e., historicism, history made into a scienceresults in the
degeneration and decay of life and action. But, as Nietzsche sadly notes, such is the case for
historical studies in modern Europe (especially Germany). History has become a refuge from
ones responsibilities and pressing concerns: however one does history in the modern world,
it no longer moves its investigator. Historical science is the ultimate sign of the degeneration
143

Siegfried Seidel, ed., Der Briefwechsel Zwischen Schiller und Goethe, Zweiter Band: Briefe der Jahre 17981805 (Mnchen: C.H. Beck, 1984), 181.
144
KGW III/1: 241. Untimely Meditations, 59.

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of a culture, as Nietzsche notes in 23 of The Birth of Tragedy, because the historical sense
uproots the unhistorical foundation of myth.145
He has had the feeling that the historical sense has slowly come to reign among the
Germans particularly for the past two generations. In other words, history studied for its
own sake is a phenomenon that first appears at the beginning of the 19th century, when
Hegels system of philosophy dominated the intellectual landscape. His philosophy is the
height of the optimism of theoretical man because it claims to make everything intelligible.
It was within the Hegelian dialectica Socratic device originally intended for educational
purposes promoted to the level of the highest speculationthat history portrayed the pattern
of infinite progress. However, his logic of history forms a self-enclosed circlenothing lies
outside of the domain of history, it is all-inclusive. Hegelian idealism is the conclusion of the
two thousand year drive to encompass the entire world of appearances in the net of
theoretical man because it casts its reach the furthest: it attempts to grasp everything and pull
it all together via history. The promotion of history to the level of science is, therefore, the
last page in the book of Alexandrian culture; Nietzsche and his contemporaries live in a time
at which logic [Logik] curls up around itself and finally bites its own tail,146 i.e., the time
of the closed, all-comprehensive system. Nothing new can happen, no change can take
placeeverything has already been subsumed in the Absolute Idea of Hegels system.
145

The 19th century, according to Nietzsche, is the conclusion of the rediscovery of Alexandrian-Roman
antiquity in the 15th century. What he says here foreshadows his indictment of historical science in the
History essay: On the heights we find the same excessive lust for knowledge, the same unsatisfied delight in
discovery, the same enormous growth in worldliness, and alongside these things a homeless roaming-about, a
greedy scramble to grab a place at the tables of others, frivolous deification of the present, or a dull, numbed
turning away from it, all of this sub specie saeculiof the here and now; these same symptoms all suggest
that at the heart of this culture there is the same lack: the destruction of myth. KGW III/1: 144-145. The Birth
of Tragedy, 111.
146
KGW III/1: 97. The Birth of Tragedy, 75.

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Optimism in Germany concerning historical education as the best form of education
available was at an all-time high. When Nietzsche wrote, history as the ultimate (because
all-inclusive) science not only deified the present as the necessary conclusion and summit of
the past, but it also encouraged education in history for its own sake. In Nietzsches view,
despite what Marx may say to the contrary about his own philosophy, this was due to the
Hegelian influence: as a self-enclosed, all-encompassing system of reality, absolute idealism
does not promote action. One moves in circles in the dialectic, according to Nietzsche, one
does not move from point A to point B. The ideal of historical education cannot be that
found in Hegels philosophy. Nietzsche notes at the end of his Preface that the meaning of
classical studies (philology) is to be untimelythat is to say, acting counter to our time
and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come.147 One
should not come to rest in studying history, but be moved toward the future. In other words,
study of any kind should promote right action and right living.

Advantages (1-3)
Nietzsche begins his reflection on history with a discussion of the difference between
human beings and animals.148 Animals do not know what is meant by yesterday or today,
for they live permanently in a series of disconnected moments in which the past and the
147

KGW III/1: 243. Untimely Meditations, 60.

For an excellent interpretation of the difference between animals and human beings, and how this difference
determines the course of Nietzsches argument in the History essay, see Vanessa Lemms Animality,
Creativity and Historicity: A Reading of Friedrich Nietzsches Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie fr das
Leben, Nietzsche-Studien 36 (2007): 169-200. (I came across this essay after I had written my interpretation of
Nietzsches essay and it has confirmed much of what I had originally written; but it also has led me to include
other points that strengthen my position.) For an extension of the principles in this essay to other parts of
Nietzsches philosophy see Vanessa Lemms Nietzsches Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the
Animality of the Human Being (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009).
148

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future never arise. In other words, animals have no concept of time, and it is in this that their
complete happiness subsists. The flow of time can never disturb the animal, who
immediately forgets each moment after it passes. In this way, the animal lives
unhistorically: It is contained in the present, like a number without any awkward fraction
left over. 149 The animal lives wholly in the moment and leaves nothing behind in the jump
from moment to moment. Man is another story. He remembers, the past haunts his steps
all the days of his life, his existence is an imperfect tense that can never become a perfect
one.150 Something of man is always left behind in the past, which can return to him at any
given moment without warning. Man is a historical being, his past is an invisible burden that
he always carries with him even during his time unawares.
The remembrance of the past makes man aware of his timethat someday he will
die. His envy of the animal is natural: the animal does not remember and, therefore, can live
completely unawares of the fact that it is finite. Animals remain active because they do not
suffer from knowledge of the past. However, it is also true that man can temporarily live in
the moment because he does acthis eye cannot penetrate every part of the past. To have
the power of seeing all the past before oneself is unnatural. The conditions of both animal,
which is completely unhistorical, and man, who is historical and unhistorical, are good:
It is possible to live almost without memory, and to live happily moreover, as the animal
demonstrates; but it is altogether impossible to live at all without forgetting. Or, to express
my theme even more simply: there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the
historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the living thing, whether this
living thing be a man or a people or a culture.151

149

KGW III/1: 245. Untimely Meditations, 61.

KGW III/1: 245. Untimely Meditations, 61.
151
KGW III/1: 246. Untimely Meditations, 62.
150

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The human being needs to be able to forget things from the past, or else the past will literally
bury the present. No actions will be possible if man does not forgetas Nietzsche noted in
The Birth of Tragedy, this is like the case of Hamlet, whose knowledge makes action
loathsome to him.152 Having turned around toward the past with his back to the future, man
cannot act and create. A horizon needs to surround man so that he will be able to know and
act; thus, there needs to be the correct balance between the unhistorical and historical,
forgetting and remembering. All of the advantages of history consist in their capacity to
strike the proper balance between knowledge and action.
Among the two ways of feeling, the priority goes to the unhistorical because it is what
allows life (and action) to flourish. One need only look to the animal for confirmation of
thisit is also true that it constitutes the only foundation on which anything truly human,
can grow. History, then, is founded on life and action. It is also true that man only
becomes man when he draws a boundary around himself (his horizon) of that which he
knows and that which he has forgotten. If the historical element tries to extend itself beyond
the limits set by mans need for forgetfulness, one becomes incapable of acting. Action
requires being unjust to the past for the sake of the future; even though ones memory
revolves unwearingly in a circle and yet is too weak and weary to take even a single leap out
of this circle, the darkness that lies outside this circle is what allows one to perform any
deed whatsoever.153 But what would happen if mans memory extended to every corner of
the past? He would undoubtedly revolve in an enormous circle, but would never be able to

152

The need of forgetfulness for action is even true of that creator of all creators, God: Luther himself once
opined that the world existed only through a piece of forgetful negligence on Gods part. KGW III/1: 265.
Untimely Meditations, 76.
153
KGW III/1: 249. Untimely Meditations, 64.

84
act. Such is the case of Hegel and his students who adhere to the logic of dialectics, as
Nietzsche makes clear in 8-9 of the essay, who have become self-satisfied cynics.
Everything that can happen has already happened; therefore, there is no need to act because
the future will work itself out regardless of what one might do. The Spirits cunning of
reason cannot be countered by a similar cunning on the part of the individual. All of this
derives from the all-comprehensive system of Hegel in which one can see everything.
The suprahistorical viewpoint, which is embodied best in Hegels philosophy of
history, is that of the unclosing eye. Suprahistorical men are incapable of acting, for the
simple reason that they see no salvation in the process and regard the world as an
achievement of finality at each and every moment.154 Their wisdom makes them nauseated
and complacent because the overabundance of history paralyzes them and makes them
incapable of acting. Nietzsche proposes to leave them behind and concentrate only on those
who suffer from an excess of historical knowledge. Opposed to this, Nietzsche will propose
the unwisdom [Unweisheit] of the unhistorical, which allows us to act and makes a future
possible for us. There is in this an antithesis [Gegensatzes] of life and wisdom, one which
cannot be resolved based on Nietzsches three stated theses. At the end of 1, he leaves us
with a choice: either life will be subordinated to wisdom or wisdom will be subordinated to
life. There is no possibility of reconciliation of the two in a higher synthesis. Nietzsche
forces his audience to make a decision, i.e., to act; wisdom at any cost, which would mean
the consumption of the entire past, or life and its open horizon of the not yet determined
future.

154

KGW III/1: 251. Untimely Meditations, 66.

85
The advantages of history for life, those in which wisdom is subordinate, are
outlined in the next two sections. Here, Nietzsche discusses the three different kinds of
historymonumental, antiquarian, and criticaland how each serves life. History pertains
to the living man in three respects: it pertains to him as a being who acts and strives, as a
being who preserves and reveres, as a being who suffers and seeks deliverance.155
However, even in his list of the three kinds of history, Nietzsche is following Hegel, for the
latter listed three ways of dealing with history in his lecture course Lectures on the
Philosophy of History: original, reflective, and philosophical. It is possible to see elements
of monumental, antiquarian, and critical history in Hegels descriptions. For example,
original history and reflective pragmatic history have some things in common with
monumental history; Hegel even calls one of the kinds of reflective history critical. What
makes Nietzsche different from Hegel is that the three kinds of history listed by Hegel are all
ways of writing history, as opposed to living in relation to the past. It is important to keep
this in mind while reading 2-3.
According to Nietzsche, the most important of the three kinds of history is
monumental, the kind of history for the man of action. Nietzsche begins with it in 2.
Monumental history belongs to the powerful man, the creator. For this kind of man, history
serves as a reminder of the possibility of greatness. Alexander the Great served as an
example for Caesar; Caesar, in turn, was an example for Napoleon. The monumental form of
history encourages future greatness and reassures those who are capable of greatness that
their deed is still possible. However, that which was once possible could present itself as a

155

KGW III/1: 254. Untimely Meditations, 67.

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possibility for a second time only if the Pythagoreans were right in believing that when the
constellation of the heavenly bodies is repeated the same things, down to the smallest event,
must also be repeated on earth.156 One cannot expect that monumental history will be
exactthe same event would require that everything else be the same. It would be absurd to
expect this.157 Caesars conquest of the world (i.e., Rome) is a unique act that cannot be
repeated; Napoleons conquest of Europe, although similar, differs greatly. Therefore,
monumental history deals in analogies and dilutes the differences between situations as much
as it can so that they appear to be similar to one another.
Even still, monumental history serves life because it encourages action and striving.
Only those who are great are capable of expanding the concept man and making it more
beautifulthis kind of history is for great individuals. These men carry the weight of the
centuries on their shoulders, and it is these men who are willing to destroy large segments of
the past in order to fulfill their destiny. Even in the hands of good men, monumental history
may still cause unbelievable damage to the past: Whole segments of it are forgotten,
despised, and flow away in an uninterrupted flood, and only individual embellished facts rise
out of it like islands.158 Without the proper reverence for the past (found in antiquarian
history), the monumental historian will end up sacrificing all that surrounds a great deed of

156

KGW III/1: 257. Untimely Meditations, 70.

Nietzsches opinion of this does not change later in his career. For the Pythagoreans, whom Nietzsche
thought were the first teachers of a ridiculous form of the eternal recurrence, everything is cyclical; thus,
everything repeats itself exactly. However, this view of the recurrence is that of the dwarf who says, All that is
straight lies. All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle. Zarathustra immediately rebukes him for making it too
easy. KGW VI/1: 196. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 125. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of this passage of
Zarathustra.
158
KGW III/1: 258. Untimely Meditations, 71.
157

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the past in the hopes that it can be transplanted to the present. Even the great man needs
antiquarian and critical history so that his relation to the past is not one-sided and skewed.
But the greater damage is caused when the masses take hold of monumental history,
for it is unnatural for those who recognize greatness, but who are impotent, to recreate the
greatness of the past in the future. They are faded copies of great men produced on poor
paper with worn-out plates.159 Everything that was great gets leveled-down to a figure that
the masses can recognizethe great of the past are reduced to images of dwarfs. Their
simmering hatred for the great men of the present age is veiled in their respect for great men
of the past and, thus, they invert the real meaning of that mode of regarding history into its
opposite.160 Once the canon of literature, or any other art form, is set no newly inspired
innovation can ariseso the masses say. If the great already exists, why is there need to
attempt greatness again? Any future striving for greatness is unnecessaryso the cynics say.
Nietzsche will return to the issue of the abuse of monumental history in 8-9 and trace it to
the powerful influence of Christianity and, to be more precise, Hegelian philosophy.
Coupled with an antiquarian history run rampant, the abuse of monumental history by the
impotent leads to a permanent stasis in Nietzsches view.
Antiquarian history serves life by preserving and revering the past. He who practices
antiquarian history wants to preserve for those who shall come into existence after him the
conditions under which he himself came into existence.161 The things of the past that make
up a community, city, or nation need to be preservedall of the details that make the present

159

KGW III/1: 316. Untimely Meditations, 113.

KGW III/1: 260. Untimely Meditations, 72.
161
KGW III/1: 261. Untimely Meditations, 73.
160

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what it is are worthy of reverence. However, antiquarian history possesses an extremely
restricted field of vision, it is incapable of placing things in a hierarchy due to its myopia.
Anything and everything from the past needs to be preserved for the future; the corollary of
this is that anything new is immediately rejected. This walks hand in hand with the
displacement of monumental history from those who are great to those who are impotent.
Armed with the stubborn instinct of preservation, the antiquarian historian might forget his
task of preserving the past for the future and demand that the minutiae of the past be forever
preserved. Antiquarian historys piety withers away, the habit of scholarliness continues
without it and rotates in egoistic self-satisfaction around its own axis [Mittelpunkt].162
Thus, the antiquarian historian, who lacks a sense of piety, is merely a collector of facts for
the sake of collecting them. His obsession with preservation leads to the paralysis of life
nothing new can come forward because it will invariably damage something from the past.
To prevent either monumental history or antiquarian history from exceeding their
limits requires a third kind of history to act as a natural buffer between the two. Critical
history serves life by dissolving a part of the past that encumbers the present. The critical
historian dissolves part of the past by bringing it to the bar of judgment: It is not justice
which here sits in judgment; it is even less mercy which pronounces the verdict: it is life
alone, that dark, driving power that insatiably thirsts for itself.163 For life to continue
sometimes requires the destruction of an injusticea privilege, a caste, a dynastythat is
an anchor on the present dragging it down into the past. Critical history attempts to sever the
present from the past so that a future will be possible. However, when this kind of history is
162
163

KGW III/1: 264. Untimely Meditations, 75.

KGW III/1: 265. Untimely Meditations, 76.

89
practiced without a present need, it causes enormous mischief. There is always the risk of
condemning the past in toto so that one is set adrift on the infinite tide of becoming with no
coordinates. Without some kind of link to the past, the human being runs the risk of utter
annihilation. Since we are the products of ages of injustice, it is impossible to free ourselves
completely from the stigma of these crimes. The best that we can do is give ourselves a new
past, one out of which we would have liked to originate, in the hopes that this will replace the
actual past of injustice.
Nietzsche believes that these three kinds of history are all necessary for every man
and nation in their proper balance. In each of the three knowledge is subordinated to the
needs of life: in monumental history knowledge of the past is used as an impetus to strive for
greatness in the future; in antiquarian history knowledge of the past is used to ground one in
the present through its preservation for future generations; and, in critical history knowledge
of the past is used to cut away what hinders the development of man. What would happen,
though, if these kinds of history were transplanted from their natural soil to that of a foreign
place (e.g., monumental history from the great to the impotent)? They would grow into a
devastating weed [Umkraut] that chokes and, ultimately, kills the life on which it is
dependent. The abuse of monumental history, in particular, has the greatest potential for
devastation because this kind of history has the greatest potential for invigorating life. In the
hands of the impotent, knowledge of the great of past ages would strangle life and destroy
itself because it has eliminated the ground for its own existence. The elimination of the
element of the monumental is a constant threat: Where the vital plan, the projection of life
into the future declines the assembly of historical knowledge becomes a burden or even a

90
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.164 But this is exactly what Nietzsche thinks Hegelian philosophy is capable of
this is why he considers it to be dangerous in 8.

Interlude on German Culture (4)

This short section of the essay forms a natural division between the advantages and
disadvantages of history by identifying each with a particular culture. How has history
been used to promote life? How has history been used to the detriment of life? Since times
of old people have utilized history in the correct wayit was used for the promotion of life,
history was always pursued for the ends of life. This was true also for the ancient Greeks,
who, according to Nietzsche, would be considered uncultured by the standards of nineteenth
century man. Why is this the case? Because the natural constellation of knowledge (history)
and life has been altered by the imposition of the hostile star [Gestirn] of science
[Wissenschaft]. Nietzsches readers can see this once they reflect on their own time. What
is now current, what is timely, is the rearrangement of the natural relationship of
knowledge and life through Hegels demand that history be made into an all-comprehensive
science.
Nietzsches choice of wordshostile star and scienceat the beginning of this
section is not merely metaphorical; they indicate at whom he is aiming his criticism. For

164

Nietzsches Philosophy, 29.

91
Hegel, in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit, the scientific system of truth is the
only genuine form in which truth exists. He claims that his phenomenology will bring to
light in successive stages Spirits consciousness of itselfas though it were a child emerging
from the womb into the world of light. The final stage will be absolute consciousness in the
form of the system of Sciencethus, Hegels idea that scientific cognition is the highest
knowing completes the alignment of truth and science begun by Descartes. The appearance
of the new world for the child is like the shining beacon of Enlightenment in which the world
as a whole becomes absolutely intelligible. Knowing and being are unified. Hegel stands in
the long tradition of Neoplatonism with its metaphors of light and the sun for understanding
that ultimately derive from Plato. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Nietzsche had Hegel
in mind when he refers to the hostile star, which he then immediately identifies as the
demand that history should be a science.165 The metaphors of light and understanding (i.e.,
Science) abound in Hegels works, especially his earlier writings where he claims that his
absolute idealism is the antithesis of the darkness (the Night) of Schellings identity
philosophy.
The star of Science, which unifies knowing and being in Hegels philosophy, exists
for its own sakeit shines for itself because everything is brought together through history.
This comes from the idealist demand that philosophy become speculative again. The reason
why the star is hostile is that the Absolute Idea uses individuals for its own fulfillment only
to discard them once they have suited its temporary needsthis is the cunning of Reason

165

KGW III/1: 267. Untimely Meditations, 77.

166

of which Hegel speaks in the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History.

92
History in the

Hegelian understanding is inevitably hostile to the individual, for what matters most is the
self-realization of the universal. In contrast with this view of history, Nietzsches own view
can be abstracted from the first words that Zarathustra speaks at the beginning of his long
journey: You great star [Gestirn]! What would your happiness be if you had not those for
whom you shine?167 History, as a kind of knowledge, is meaningless if it does not do
anything for the individuals who study iti.e., if it does not help them act, preserve, or free
themselves from the chains of the past. For this reason, knowledge must be subordinated to
the ends and purposes of lifeas the Greeks were well aware.
The unnatural synthesis of life and knowledge in Hegels science actually results in
the subordination of life to knowledge, which gives rise to the irreconcilable antithesis of
inner content and outer form in modern man. What has occurred within the last two
generations after Hegel is the turning around toward the pastthe natural horizon provided
by the unhistorical has been smashed, the human being now looks into the infinite. Such an
immense spectacle as the science of universal becoming, history, now displays has never
before been seen by any generation; though it displays it, to be sure, with the perilous daring

166

The particular interests of passion cannot therefore be separated from the realization of the universal; for
the universal arises out of the particular and determinate and its negation. The particular has its own interests in
world history; it is of a finite nature, and as such, it must perish. Particular interests contend with one another,
and some are destroyed in the process. But it is from this very conflict and destruction of particular things that
the universal emerges, and it remains unscathed itself. For it is not the universal Idea which enters into
opposition, conflict, and danger; it keeps itself in the background, untouched and unharmed, and sends forth the
particular interests of passion to fight and wear themselves out in its stead. It is what we may call the cunning
of reason that it sets the passions to work in its service, so that the agents by which it gives itself existence must
pay the penalty and suffer the loss. From Hegels Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 89. His reference to the Anaximander fragment should
not be overlooked in this context, where individuals pay the penalty for their injustice to one another while
Time sits in judgment.
167
KGW VI/1: 5. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 3.

168

of its motto: fiat veritas, pereat vita.

93
In Germany, this new arrangement of life and

knowledge (history) has reached its fulfillment. With the floodgates opened to the past, man
clambers about with an excess of knowledge that can never be given proper expression in his
actions. Thus, his interior grows and the exterior turns into a thin, translucent membrane that
holds everything inside.
However, the contradictions within modern man are no foundation for a true
culturewhich, for Nietzsche, consists of unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the
life of a people.169 Modern man wanders about now filling, and overfilling, himself with the
minutiae from the past as though he were an insatiable monster. He is like a snake that has
swallowed rabbits whole and now lies in the sun and avoids all unnecessary movement.170
Man is only satisfied once he has consumed all other past cultures; but, like a glutton, once
he has devoured them, he no longer has a desire to move or do anything. The
superabundance of his knowledge of the past paralyzes him. He does not know what to do
with his knowledge of the past; therefore, interiority and its slow digestive process take the
leading role in the modern conception of culture. Without the antithesis of inner and outer,
modern culture is incomprehensible. And yet, modern culture is not a real culture at all but
only a kind of knowledge of culture; it has an idea of and feeling for culture but no true

168

KGW III/1: 268. Untimely Meditations, 77-78.

KGW III/1: 159. Untimely Meditations, 5. The problem that Nietzsche is dealing with in all of the Untimely
Meditations when it comes to the question of German culture is an ontological one, as Herman Siemens points
out: The problem is one of absence: absence of a German style, absence of a Fundament for German culture,
and so the absence or non-being of the German . . . The non-existence of the German qua culture . . . means that
Nietzsches fundamental problem is a problem of origin, of giving being or birth, of an unprecedented birth.
From his article, Agonal Configurations in the Unzeitgemsse Betrachtungen. Identity, Mimesis and the
bertragung of Cultures in Nietzsches Early Thought, Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2001): 85.
170
KGW III/1: 269. Untimely Meditations, 78. Emphasis added.
169

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cultural achievement emerges from them.

94
There is no unifying idea, but several shades of

ideals from past ages passing through like various fads. It is no wonder, then, that the
eponymous hero of Thus Spoke Zarathustra refers to the city below his solitary dwelling in
the Prologue as the Motley Cowmodernity is a mixture of competing ideals that have
no structure or hierarchy and these ideals are those of the herd.172
Thanks to Hegel, in Germany, historically educated and educated have become
synonymous (to Nietzsches great dismay). For the Greeks, on the other hand, this would be
considered barbaric, because they embraced the unhistorical aspect and kept the historical
within its proper bounds. The Greeks would take modern men to be nothing more than
walking encyclopedias [wandelnden Encyclopdien], crammed full of knowledge of ages,
customs, arts, philosophies, discoveries of others.173 Hegels Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences is, as its author admits, a cursory overview of his philosophy as a
wholethe Science of Logic forms its other half. For Hegel, the system of science contains
everything within it: one need only read the contents and one will be acquainted with
everything (even if it is only an outline). Since history is the medium of intelligibility,
education must be historical in nature. This is all part of Hegels project of renovating the
Enlightenment from the perspective of philosophical science: more people than any before
171

KGW III/1: 269. Untimely Meditations, 78.

Modernity is motley or many-colored because of its democratic inclination to accept everything from
the past without a sense of discretion. Nietzsches use of the word motley is intended to recall Platos
pejorative use of it to describe the democratic regime in The Republic (558c). Now is not the place for a
discussion of Nietzsches political theorytoo much ink has been spilled on arguing over his political
preferences. But it might be helpful to remember that the discussion within The Republic is always focused on
the individual soul even while the interlocutors are discussing the different kinds of political regimes.
Nietzsche most likely detested the democratic kind of soul, which does not have a discriminating taste, while he
remained politically indifferent toward democracy by the end of his lifephilosophy is, after all, possible in the
best possible city and the democratic city, according to Plato. He was extremely worried by the fact that
modern democracy might eventually lead to tyrannyhis prescience in this regard cannot be denied.
173
KGW III/1: 270. Untimely Meditations, 79.
172

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will be able to study history and be able to consider themselves educated in doing so.
However, according to Nietzsche, all that this results in is the further division of man into
inner and outerand the epicenter of this pseudo-culture is the German university and
gymnasium (see the penultimate section of Chapter 1), over which Hegel casts a long
shadow.
The division of an inner and outer ultimately leads to the first disadvantage of
history for lifethat modern man has a weak personality. For the only way to deal with
the influx of knowledge of everything from the past is to take it all lightly, the real and
existent only makes a slight impression.174 The flood of information is taken in only to be
discharged immediately for the next wave. This encourages the development of an everdeepening interior, an abyss that can never adequately be filled, with a membranous
covering, a flimsy exoskeleton. But the division of man into inner and outer, which comes
about through the influence of Hegelian style history, does not result in a genuine culture
because there is no higher unity. History is abused for the sake of promoting the idea of
the profound inwardness of the Germans as a sign of their cultural superiority.
Nietzsche notes how the Germans have embraced their reputation as being a people
of inwardness and have given up trying to imitate the convention introduced by French
culture. They want to be more natural; but, in doing so, they have become slovenlythe
inwardness has come to dominate the outward form. This is not to say that the Germans do
not have value as people of inwardness, but they are incapable of bringing their knowledge
onto the level of practice. In this way, the Germans are weak because their seriousness,

174

KGW III/1: 271. Untimely Meditations, 79.

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power, and profundity are not wound together into a powerful knot.

96
Their actions are

not the expression of internal unity because they are crammed full of other cultures and ages
from the past, which more often than not come into conflict with one another. Therefore, the
German can only be judged based on what he writeshis actions remain a mystery even to
himself.
Ultimately, the source of all of the disadvantages of history for life can be drawn to
the common source of Hegel, who demanded that history be practiced as a science. The only
hope for Nietzsche remains the unification of the interior of the German so that there will be
a possibility of the rebirth of culture in the modern age. Those like Nietzsche, the few who
do not pride themselves on the historical sense, recognize that the distinction of inner and
outer needs to vanish before a genuine German culture can arise. Out of a vigorous need
there will one day arise a vigorous deed.176 It is not in the political sense that Nietzsche
strives for unity, but rather in the spiritual, cultural sense. In order for this to occur, the
future generation will have to be given the proper tools for its implementation. This is what
Nietzsche leaves up to the youth in 10, who need to be given a blank slate after the
expulsion of the Hegelian influence on education. The disastrous influence of Hegel on
education, and the Germans in particular, is outlined in the following sections, beginning
with what Nietzsche identifies as the weak personality of modern man.

175
176

KGW III/1: 272. Untimely Meditations, 81.

KGW III/1: 274. Untimely Meditations, 82.

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Disadvantages (5-9)
All of the disadvantages of history for life stem from the subordination of life to
knowledge (history). Modern mans division between an ever-expanding interior and evershrinking exteriorboth of which are necessary to accommodate the rapid influx of anything
and everything from the pastbelongs to this unnatural arrangement, the demand that
history be a science on par with physics and chemistry. This is the first disadvantage of
history for life, and Nietzsches criticism of the German pride of inwardness in the last
section continues in 5. There are four others after this first one, each is worse than the one
before. The last of the two, modern mans belief that he is an epigone capable of judging
history because he is the endpoint of the process and his self-satisfied cynicism, are the most
dangerous. These stand as the final product of the reversal of the natural relationship
between life and knowledge. And it is in these two sections where Hegel figures most
prominently.
Modern man has a weak personality, according to Nietzsche, because he is expected
to consume, digest, and expel too much knowledge of the past. He stuffs himself with
obscure knowledge from the past, but like any glutton, he has no taste. His interior expands
while his exterior grows thinthere is no correspondence, no unity between the two. Once
the necessary boundary of the unhistorical has been shattered, everything from the past flies
at the historian. But even that does not satisfy himmodern man dines on the newspapers,
flipping through them for a new item of information. Over sated with knowledge, his deeds
are shortlived explosions, not rolling thunder.177 There is no unity of action for this kind of

177

KGW III/1: 276. Untimely Meditations, 83.

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man; he has lost his simplicity by gazing momentarily at what deserves longer attention, his
instincts are gone. Having lost his childlike simplicity, which demands the unity of life and
knowledge (unhistorical and historical), modern man sinks into the abyss of his interiority
and puts on a mask.
Nietzsche claims that with the inundation of history, man is no longer capable of
acting freely on his own. His instincts have been dulled by history and turned man into a
shadow. No one dares to appear as he is, but masks himself as a cultivated man, as a
scholar, as a poet, as a politician. Modern man has become an imitator of actions; he is an
actor. But this actor is not born an actor, i.e., he is not the Dionysian actor. He is rather a
counterfeit actorand this is not rare in a society wherein the individual is leveled down by
the quantitative power of the masses, which are contented with their place in history (see
especially 9). Thus, as Friedrich Georg Jnger describes it, it is a mark of man, who no
longer acts spontaneously and actively, but only reacts to actions, that he needs stand-ins
everywhere, and a mark of the stand-in that he needs reactions in order to act.178 The actor
stands in for the real person and performs the action; everyone has become an actor because
the overfilling of the interior with historical knowledge prevents a deed to emerge from ones
knowing. The thin membrane that suffices for an outer form in modern man is really only a
mask that hides the true person underneath. Like the actor, modern man can only ever
reacti.e., do something based on his cues from the outside.
People are becoming more alike on the outside, their differences are only contained
within. Modern men have become less honest because they are all actors on the outside. The

178

Nietzsche, 146. See the entire discussion for a thorough examination of Nietzsches thoughts on the actor.

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task of everyone is the preservation of the past at all costs in its objective formthus, man
has been turned into a eunuch since history is no longer able to have an effect on him. It
almost seems that the task is to stand guard over history to see that nothing comes out of it
except more history, and certainly no real events!to take care that history does not make
any personality free, that is to say truthful towards itself, truthful towards others, in both
word and deed.179 This is why it does not matter exactly what any of these men study so
long as history itself is kept nice and objective.180 Ones own interests must not come into
the picture, for if they do, there is the risk that the past will never be understood in itself.
The ultimate goal is to transform history into a pure science, on par with modern physics181
this is why Nietzsche refers to those who are historically educated as a race of neuters,
moved neither by the feminine nor the masculine.
Even philosophy no longer moves one to lead a certain way of life outside of the halls
of academia, according to Nietzsche. Philosophy is done on the clock, for in a historical
culture it possesses no rights if it wants to be more than a self-restrained knowing which
leads to no action. One is no longer permitted to live the philosophical way. It is
impossible to tell whether or not those who study philosophy are men, for they are now
subjectless beings, who are impotent to act (they only react). History has corrupted these
weak personalities to the extent that they are only ever able to offer criticism of what other

179

KGW III/1: 277. Untimely Meditations, 84. One can discern in this section of the essay an important theme
in Nietzsches philosophythe virtue of intellectual honesty/integrity. For a discussion of his evolving
relation toward this virtue, see Chapter 5 below.
180
KGW III/1: 280. Untimely Meditations, 86.
181
It is interesting to compare his critique of objectivity here in the History essay with his praise of the
intellectual honesty that compels true knowers to physics in 335 of The Gay Science. Nietzsches change in
attitude toward objectivity can only be explained by his transformation of science into gay science. An
account of this will be offered in Chapters 3 and 4.

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great men can do. Ones objectivity is a sign of ones being a great critic; however, this
historical culture of our critics will no longer permit any effect at all in the proper sense, that
is an effect on life and action.182 Criticism run rampant is a sign of impotentia, it is a sign
that one is an actor because one is only able to react to external stimuli. Thus, one can see
that Hegels influence on the study of history (namely, his demand that it become a universal
science) has already corrupted two kinds of history that serve life: antiquarian tries to
preserve anything and everything, crystallizing the past in objectivity while criticism arises
as the only means for action (i.e., re-action).
Turning from the weakness of modern mans personality, Nietzsche wonders in the
next section (6) whether or not the objectivity of the historical sense is not, as some call
it, the grounds for his strength. For the historically educated, their objectivity is a sign of
their justice: they are in the position to criticize and, ultimately, determine the fate of
everything in the past. But does the modern age possess the virtue of justice more than that
of previous ones simply due to its supposed objectivity? Nietzsches answer is no, modern
man is deluded in his equation of justice with objectivity.
For the ancients, especially Plato and Aristotle, justice was a virtue that was never
easily attained. In the case of Plato, the most just man was also the wisest man; on the other
hand, justice for Aristotle is the highest virtue for the life of the active man within the polis.
Likewise for Nietzsche, as a virtue, justice is reserved for the great man. The man who is
capable of judgment is the most venerable exemplar of the species man; for he desires truth,

182

KGW III/1: 281. Untimely Meditations, 87.

183

not as cold, ineffectual knowledge, but as a regulating and punishing judge.

101
Only the

great are capable of such judgment because they desire the truth not for its own sake but for
the sake of life. Few historians have this kind of virtueNietzsche in Twilight of the Idols
says that Thucydides had the strong, severe, harsh objectivity, he was a great historian
because he was not afraid to condemn what happened in the past.184 It is improbable that
many have the natural talent for critical history, for most men believe that the goal of history
is objectivity. Objectivity to them means the application of the standard of justice in the
present age to the beliefs and deeds of past ages; therefore, what is timely, the everyday
standards of the present moment, serves as the measure of everything from the past.
Pure objectivity is a mythit is the myth of mythlessness, the prevailing myth of the
modern age.185 For the modern historian, in order to comprehend an isolated event requires
an artistic skillone must be able to weave it into the whole pattern of history. He already
has an a priori pattern in his mind, one in which each event must finds its proper place. But
this already undermines the historians sense of detachment from the phenomena he is
dissecting, for he believes that he to whom a moment of the past means nothing at all is the
proper man to describe it.186 That man is the man of the present, the one who is last of all.
This kind of man thinks that coming last in the line of history gives him a right to judge all
the pastbut he does not stand higher than those whom he is judging. Only those who have

183

KGW III/1: 282. Untimely Meditations, 88. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW VI/3: 150. Twilight of the Idols, 226.
185
It is a myth in the sense that it is the driving force behind historical science and also in the sense of an
illusion: For Nietzsche, it is questionable whether pure and objective knowledge of the past is possible at all,
since this would depend on an objective and disinterested perspective on the past. But, as Nietzsche
convincingly shows, such a perspective is impossible for it would not be a perspective of life. Animality,
Creativity and Historicity, 183.
186
KGW III/1: 289. Untimely Meditations, 93.
184

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the rarest minds can become great historiansone needs to think of the Empedoclean
formula: Like to like! According to Nietzsche, history is written only by the great man,
one who is like those who were great in the past, for it is only the great who can divine the
meaning of the past and be an accurate judge of it.
Objectivity, then, is the great leveler in Nietzsches judgment. It makes all who
follow the method outlined in the science of history equally capable of dissecting the past.
Nietzsche believes that this sense of objectivity does not provide equal access to all, for the
past speaks as an oracle and only if you are an architect of the future and know the present
will you understand it.187 Those who are capable of justice, i.e., the great, are the only ones
who can judge the past because they are equal to its greatness. One must draw examples
from the past so that the future can be brought to life out of the present: in other words, one
must do monumental history. The current method of doing history results in a population of
dwarfs, who can only study the great of the past by cutting them down to their own size. The
objectivity of the historians supposedly places them on an equal footing with the great, but
what this actually does is turn the great things of the past into dead ones that no longer have
an effect on how one leads ones life in the present. Nietzsche picks up on this point in the
next section (7).
An artistic drive is necessarily part of the good historianone needs to be creative in
order to bring all of the different threads of the past together into a coherent whole.188 If

187

KGW III/1: 290. Untimely Meditations, 94.

History is an artistic endeavor, not a scientific/epistemological one: To think of all in relation to all others
and weave the isolated event into the whole: always with the presupposition that if a unity of plan does not
already reside in things it must be implanted in them. Thus man spins his web over the past and subdues it, thus
he gives expression to his artistic drivebut not to his drive towards truth or justice. KGW III/1: 286.
Untimely Meditations, 91.
188

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objectivity alone prevails, i.e., if the historical prevails over the unhistorical, then the
instinct for creation will be enfeebled and discouraged, which means that the future has
already been buried by the past.189 History, as it is pursued at the present, does not foster the
growth of the instincts, but rather hinders them and, thus, makes dull those who practice
history. Some believe that they can occupy themselves with history as though it were merely
an innocent occupation; this is especially true of the liberal Protestant theologians.190
Christianity has become reduced to a purely historical phenomenon, one that does not have
an effect on those who study itin a certain sense, God is dead to those who study
Christianity historically. Of course, this idea is propagated by Hegels philosophy, which
teaches one to distinguish the idea of Christianity from its manifold imperfect
phenomenal forms. For Nietzsche, and others, Hegelian philosophy has destroyed
Christianity by resolving it into pure knowledge about Christianity.
That everything needs a shroud of myth, or the unhistorical, about it in order to
flourish is something that can easily be apprehended. Once the mythical has been abolished,
then the past floods the present with the greatest trivialities. It is also at this moment that a
living religion is destroyedand this is what both Christianity and Judaism claimed as the
sign of the power of their God, as the living God of both Jesus and the Old Testament
prophets. The past cannot have an effect on the present once one is ruled by the demand for
historical objectivitylife comes to a grinding halt when history is practiced as a science

189

KGW III/1: 292. Untimely Meditations, 95.

Much of what Nietzsche has to say here about the current state of Christianity derives from Franz
Overbecks How Christian is Our Present Day Theology? [ber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie],
which was published along with Nietzsches David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer. One should
compare what Nietzsche says here about how Christianity is able to find itself in everything with what
Overbeck has to say about the adaptability that certain liberal theologians ascribe to Christianity.
190

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and one remains immature. In this case, the consuming desire for the preservation of the
minutiae of history renders any actio in distans imposible, i.e., the past can never have an
effect on the lives of those in the present. Life itself withers under such conditions because it
has been cut off from future development and maturity.
Everything that grows only does so under the auspices of an enveloping cloud of
illusionthis is a position Nietzsche advocated in The Birth of Tragedy (see Chapter 1).
However, the present rage for history results in the subordination of life to science. But this
does not change the fact that such a life devoted to science is not of much value because it is
far less living and guarantees far less life for the future than did a former life dominated not
by knowledge but by instinct and powerful illusion.191 The demand for the preservation and
criticism of the past requires the greatest number of scholarly laborers, not perfected and
matured personalities, which was the goal of education before the furor historiae. Education
in history is necessary so that the youths of today can be put to use laboring in some remote
corner of the past. Scientific rigor is too much for the young to handle, especially in history,
because they lack the necessary experience to order all that they are being taught. Young
men can only take refuge in stupidity, disgust, or a sense of relativismevery age is
different, it does not matter what you are like, one need not try to do anything differently.192
Eventually the scientific optimism of the historians, their sense of objectivity, turns into this
practical pessimism.
If young men are expected to be proficient scientists before they have matured
completely, they will soon wither under the strains of the rigorous methods of objective
191
192

KGW III/1: 294-295. Untimely Meditations, 97. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW III/1: 295-296. Untimely Meditations, 98.

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historical science. In turn science itself will eventually deteriorate and die. Science has been
transformed into a commodity for consumption on the open marketit has consciously allied
itself to the prevailing egoism of the present. The demand for production in the sciences is
due to the ever-expanding consumption of the masses: The process of leveling down is a
monstrous process of exploitation and consumption. It demands a maximum in consumption
and produces unbelievably little.193 Historians, therefore, produce books that grow ever
worse in quality and ever greater in quantity to suit the demands of the masses need for
consumption. The rule of the day in education is not that young men become whole and
perfect but that they may be transformed into capable functionaries that can serve in the
sweatshop of science (or, alternatively, officials at service in the state). But even the
service rendered to the people is an act, for the man of science cares not a whit about the
future of the people. These men are practical pessimists, who do not care either way what
the future might hold for themselves and the people from whom they emerged. In this way,
the historians live an ironic existencemuch like Socrates, the first theoretical man,
who distanced himself from the corrupt Athenians.194
In the last two sections dealing with the disadvantages (8-9), Nietzsche addresses
the most serious threats to life from the demand that history be made into a science. It is also
in these sections that his anti-Hegelianism is most evident: he names Hegels philosophy as
most dangerous in the first; and, in the second, he continues to attack Hegel via his proxy
Eduard von Hartmann. The key to interpreting these sections lies in Nietzsches
identification of the ironic existence [ironische Existenz] of the historians with Hegels
193
194

Nietzsche, 152.
KGW III/1: 298. Untimely Meditations, 100.

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Berlin existence [Berlin Existenz]. It is his belief that Hegelian idealism is the culmination
of Alexandrian scientific culture, and Socrates, famous for his irony, was the creator of this
culture. Socratess optimism lies in his belief that the ills of existence can be corrected
through reason. Hegel still remains within this logic and pushes it to its furthest limits by
thinking of progress in terms of the historical dialectic. Reality cannot escape the
inevitability of reason: What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.195 This is
why Nietzsche considers Socrates the vortex and turning-point of so-called world
history196 and considers Hegels philosophical system the climax and terminus of the
world-process,197 i.e., the conclusion of world history.
From Nietzsches perspective, Hegels philosophy is a danger to everything living
because it pronounces itself to comprehend all of existence in an all-inclusive system of
reality. Thus, it allows for nothing further to arise. It is especially dangerous because it
inverts the belief of being an epigone of the past ages into the belief that one is the crown and
blossom of the entire world historical process simply because one comes last. The historian
believes that he has come last and is, therefore, in a position to pass judgment on the entire
past. And yet, he has a presentiment that he must die (memento mori) regardless of all that
he knows: this is the grounds for the conversion of Socratic optimism into its opposite,
pessimism (and cynicism). Austere and profoundly serious reflection on the worthlessness
of all that has occurred, on the ripeness of the world for judgment, is dissipated into the
sceptical attitude that it is at any rate as well to know about all that has occurred, since it is

195

Philosophy of Right, 10.

KGW III/1: 96. The Birth of Tragedy, 74.
197
KGW III/1: 304. Untimely Meditations, 104.
196

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too late to do anything better.

107
Such an attitude ultimately derives from Christianity,

which exalts the end of ones life as most important. However, as Nietzsche notes, any
religion like this one is inimical to all new planting, bold experimentation, free aspiration,
and it inculcates the belief that no matter what one does anything new is a latecomer, an
epigone.199 One needs to propose the alternative motto memento vivere to combat the
negative outlook of Christianity (and modern science).
For Nietzsche, and this is a point that he will make at length later in On the
Genealogy of Morality, the scientific drive is the descendent of the asceticism of the priest.
The study of history (and, especially, the philosophy of history) remains a disguised
theology. German idealisms connections to Christianity are well known, and Nietzsche was
one of the more astute to recognize this later in the 19th century: You need only say
Tbingen seminary to understand just what German philosophy really isan underhanded
theology . . .200 Thus, Nietzsches attack on Hegel in this section (and 9) is simultaneously
an attack on Christianitys understanding of the meaning of history: both give rise to the
complacency of coming last and the desire to judge all that came before. Christianitys
reverence for the past and its emphasis on the end or goal gives rise to the teleological view
of history, wherein the end redeems all becoming. Hegelian philosophy of history is built on
this dialectical view of time and puts its faith in the success of the factual.
Rather than remaining content with what has happened and with oneself as the final
outcome of the past, one should use the knowledge that one is an epigone to prepare for an
198

KGW III/1: 301. Untimely Meditations, 102. This is the foundation for Nietzsches accusation that
Christianity (and its values) is nihilistic. See Chapters 4 and 5 for a discussion of this point.
199
KGW III/1: 300. Untimely Meditations, 102.
200
KGW VI/3: 174. The Antichrist, 9.

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even greater future.

108
But the inversion of the belief that one is an epigone accomplished in

Hegelian philosophy results in a form of idolatrythe necessity of the actual. If every

success is a rational necessity, if every event is a victory of the logical or the ideathen
down on your knees quickly and do reverence to the whole stepladder of success!202 Such
a belief is dangerous to every future plan because it makes one feel as though the necessary
progression of history, the Spirits cunning of reason, exempts one from acting. History
will progress, the actual will be made rational out of necessity, no matter what one may do
so think the epigones swindled by the Hegelian philosophy. This is certainly what David
Strauss unwittingly promoted in the book Nietzsche attacked in the first Untimely
Meditation, and this belief is hard to purge for the same reason that one is never quite cured
of Hegelism and Schleiermacherism once they have been contracted.
As Nietzsche says, this sense of the inevitability of things and the glorification of the
actual is proper to the feeling of cynicism. All action, all striving is futile, for the historical
process will work everything out for the best:
What does the historically cultivated man, the modern fanatic of the process swimming
and drowning in the stream of becoming, have left to do if he is one day to harvest that
disgust we have spoken of, the most exquisite grape of the vineyard?He has to do
nothing but go on living as he has lived hitherto, go on loving what he has loved hitherto,
go on hating what he has hated hitherto, and go on reading the newspapers he has read

201

This is something that Nietzsche insists on in 335 (Long live physics!) of The Gay Science: Let us . . .
limit ourselves to the purification of our opinions and value judgments and to the creation of tables of what is
good that are new and all our own: let us stop brooding over the moral value of our actions! Yes, my friends,
it is time to feel naseous about some peoples moral chatter about others. Sitting in moral judgment should
offend our taste. Let us leave such chatter and such bad taste to those who have nothing to do but drag the past
a few steps further through time and who never live in the presentthat is, to the many, the great majority!
KGW V/2: 243. The Gay Science, 189. Physics, the paradigmatic science of the 19th century, compels us to
leave behind the morality of millennia and follow the virtue of intellectual honesty to its conclusion, which may
result in new tables of values after the death of God.
202
KGW III/1: 305. Untimely Meditations, 105.

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hitherto; for him there is only one sinto live differently from the way in which he has
hitherto lived.203
It is not yet time, according to Eduard von Hartmann, to make history consciouslywe have
not yet evolved that far. Our assurance lies in the unconscious process of history, which
guarantees the progress of the species as a whole. However, Nietzsche contends, the masses
are not those who propel culture and history forwardit is, rather, great individuals who do
so. Mathematical necessitystrength in numbersdoes not govern the course of history;
history is forged only by the great individuals, those who can do monumental history.204
History joins these great individuals across the desert intervals of time, and history ought
to be written with this consideration always in mind.
The masses are simply fodder for the great and should not be accorded the honor of
being considered greatthis would be to confuse quality with quantity. The prolonged
existence of something like Christianity, a religion taken up by the masses through the course
of Western history, does not prove its greatness. The success of what is actual, to what
currently prevails, to what is timely does not make that thing great; rather, what is great is
what is untimely, it belongs to those who fight against being consumed by the masses.
Thus, one is wrong to believe that great men are no more than the clearest expression of
203

KGW III/1: 311-312. Untimely Meditations, 110.

Friedrich Georg Jnger contends that the masses are mechanized through the event of technological
organization and their progress is simply the progress of the means of ever-greater consumption. The masses
are in a variable movement of mechanical lawfulness. Historical and mechanical movement coincide in it and
run with one another so that an ever more rigorous automatism develops. Formation of the masses and
mechanical progress are identical events. The technical progress continues no longer than the formation of the
masses itself; it ends wherever it [the masses] has an end. The limits of the formation of the masses and
technical progress coincide exactly. To drive further this technology wherever there are no masses anymore
makes no sense. Such a possibility can only occupy the one who still does not recognize that technology is
nothing other than the organizing of the event of consumption, through which the masses are aimed at the
minimal condition, that, thus, with the end of the event of consumption the technical apparatus and
organization, which serves it, become superfluous. This realization is as exact as a mathematical equation.
Nietzsche, 162-163. Thus, it is an illusion that the masses are the moving force behind history.
204

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the great mass-drives. The actual existence of the masses does not prove its success, for
the goal of humanity cannot lie in its end [the triumph of the actual, the masses] but only in
its highest exemplars.205 This is what is untimely about these great men: they are not the
end goal of historyas the masses believe about themselvesbut stand above the process.
For them, the real is not the rational and the rational is not the real; in fact, the real is what is
not rational and what is not rational is the real.
To describe history in terms of the movements of the masses does not make any sense
to Nietzsche. The masses themselves lack all history; they have no destiny for the simple
reason that their goal is to bring all suffering to an end. In the end, the masses want to
descend to the level of the animal, which lives completely unhistorically. They want to
drop the burden of all forms, all historical purposes, in which the pain of life exists. It [the
masses] grasps suffering as senseless and would like to live pain free. It expresses in it its
yearning for death, which is a pure nothing for it, in that respect its yearning for all euphoric,
anaesthetized, narcotic happy conditions.206 Like the animal, which they envy (albeit in the
wrong way), the masses want to live in stasis, knowing no pain and, therefore, undergoing no
suffering or strivingthey are, as Zarathustra will call the dwellers of the Motley Cow,
quite literally the last men. Their goal is to end history by becoming animal again. As
thoroughgoing nihilists, they want death, the ultimate end of pain. Thus, those who practice
history in the way of the masses are like old men on the verge of death, like those in second
childishness, and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.207

205

KGW III/1: 313. Untimely Meditations, 111.

Nietzsche, 167.
207
KGW III/1: 318. Untimely Meditations, 115.
206

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Conclusion (10)
Opposed to the old age of man and its cynicism, Nietzsche places his hopes in the
youth, the future. He believes that the excess of the historical sense destroys youth because it
forces young men to go through the gauntlet of history in order to prepare them for a job in
the factory of science. It would be better to be rid of this kind of man, who simply return
from the infinite horizon of history and wither and dry up into a shriveled husk of a man.
The world would certainly be more redeemed if it were redeemed from these men and
greybeards. For then there would come the empire of youth.208 If redemption will come
from this historical education and the pseudo-culture that it supports, it will only come from
those whose instincts have not yet been corrupted. These are, of course, the youth.
Nietzsche looks toward them for guidance, for he recognizes that his own treatise reveals its
modern character since Nietzsche himself is a product of his philological-historical
education. He can only trust in their guidance, when it compels him to protest at the
historical education of modern man and when he demands that man should above all learn
to live and should employ history only in the service of the life he has learned to live.209
The arrival of the future forces Nietzsche to make a decision: either wisdom will be in the
service of life or life will be subordinated to wisdom. There is no possibility of overcoming
the antithesis in a higher synthesis.
Nietzsche admits that he can only prepare the grounds for the future, for he is still
able to recognize that historical education (and culture) is anti-natural. It is unnatural for
young men to be crammed with a tremendous number of ideas derived from a highly
208
209

KGW III/1: 320. Untimely Meditations, 116.

KGW III/1: 321. Untimely Meditations, 116.

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indirect knowledge of past ages and peoples, to condense two thousand years of history into
the course of two years. Life suffers because it is put in service of science, of this mass
cataloguing of data. At the same time, culture contracts into a kind of knowledge about
culture. Nietzsche plans on uprooting the German culture through the destruction of its
foundational lie: the idea that German culture can arise only through historical education.
Most Germans, those whom Nietzsche points out in his Preface, believe in the aeterna
veritas of the educational system as the ground for their superior culture. There needs to be a
necessary truth to combat this lie before any change can ever be madethe truth that the
Germans have no culture in the true sense of the term, but only a superabundant knowledge
of culture.210
The liberating quality of youth is its immediate connection with life through its
instincts; education has not yet corrupted these young men of the next generation. They
know that life deteriorates at the rate at which the unhistorical and suprahistorical are
consumed by the historical drive. Man needs to be able to forget so that he can live, act, and
create. But he also needs art and religion, suprahistorical forces, so that he will not become
overwhelmed by the eternal wheel of becoming exposed by history.211 Science is currently
hostile toward art and religion, for it . . . lives in a profound antagonism towards the
eternalizing powers of art and religion, for it hates forgetting, which is the death of
knowledge, and seeks to abolish all limitations of horizon and launch mankind upon an
210

The ideal would be the artistic drive of a culture with taste, like the Greeks, who knew what and what not to
incorporate, i.e., what to remember and what to forget (and, therefore, had a healthy relation with history):
There are some things we now know too well, we knowing ones: oh, how we nowadays learn as artists to
forget well, to be good at not knowing! KGW V/2: 19. The Gay Science, 8.
211
Nietzsche recognizes the necessity of art and religion for the health of a culture. By the end of his
productive career, in 1888, he begins to recognize in the eternal recurrence a new religious perspective. For a
discussion of this, see Chapter 5.

212

infinite and unbounded sea of light whose light is knowledge of all becoming.

113
However,

no one is able to bear the kind of burden that is demanded by historical sciencei.e., one
must have an unblinking eye. History as a science attempts to undermine its own foundation
in life, but once that is gone, so too is science! Opposed to this, Nietzsche insists that history
must become an art (an art of interpretation) in order to have any future whatsoever, because
it is only as an art that history will perhaps be able to preserve instincts or even evoke
them.213 Works of art provide a grounding in the present through a mythical (or illusory)
pastsuch a grounding in the unknown, the unhistorical, is necessary for the possibility of
future life (otherwise nothing will be forgotten and, thus, there will be no action/striving).
The transformation of history from a pure science into an art form is inevitable because the
self-overcoming of history is already contained within its own principles.214 History as a
science will destroy itself and will make way for a future generation in Germany guided by
instincts rather than historical facts.
Nietzsches History essay, then, forms one of the first, and most powerful, critiques
of modern science. The ideal of objectivity goes back to Descartess attempt to find an
Archimedean point beyond the worldhe tries to find an absolute perspective. Of course,
this ideal is not the main target of his criticism. The indubitable foundation for modern
science, with the subjective turn in philosophy, rests in the identification of thought with
existence. To think requires that the thinker must also existDescartes cannot doubt the
212

KGW III/1: 326. Untimely Meditations, 120.

KGW III/1: 295. Untimely Meditations, 95-96.
214
The origin of historical cultureits quite radical conflict with the spirit of any new age, any modern
awarenessthis origin must itself be known historically, history must itself resolve the problem of history,
knowledge must turn its sting against itselfthis threefold must is the imperative of the new age, supposing
this age really does contain anything new, powerful, original and promising more life. KGW III/1: 302.
Untimely Meditations, 102-103. Nietzsches emphasis.
213

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immediacy of this truth in the Second Meditation. But Nietzsche points out that this
assumption of modern science is dangerous:
Fragmented and in pieces, dissociated almost mechanically into an inner and an outer,
sown with concepts as with dragons teeth, bringing forth conceptual dragons, suffering
from the malady of words and mistrusting any feeling of our own which has not yet been
stamped with words: being such an unliving and yet uncannily active concept- and wordfactory, perhaps I still have the right to say of myself cogito, ergo sum, but not vivo, ergo
cogito. Empty being is granted me, but not full and green life; the feeling that tells me
I exist warrants to me only that I am a thinking creature, not that I am a living one, not that
I am an animal but at most a cogital.215
It is not mistaken that Nietzsche references Descartess most famous phrase at the end of this
essayHegel is the culmination of modern, Cartesian science. Life must be the foundation
for thought of any kind; the reversal of this natural relation results in a ghostlike condition of
living death. Wherever thought dominates over life, life is on the decline because it has been
made subservient. If this is the case, as it is in present day Germany, the value of science is
very little because it undermines life (its own precondition).
The problem of science, which Nietzsche says was his original problem in The
Birth of Tragedy, is that science eventually coils up and bites its own tail, like a serpent.
Science strives for a closed system that encompasses all of realityit reaches out toward
infinity when it tries to comprehend the whole. However, in this untiring search for
knowledge of any and every kind, science ultimately reaches an end and turns against itself.
This is what happened after Hegel brought two thousand years of science to a close when he
grasped everything through history. Hegels philosophy represents a crisis [Wendung], for
when science finally satisfies its voracious hunger for knowledge, it finds that the life, which
has supported it, has withered away. Nietzsche will later call such a condition nihilism.
215

KGW III/1: 325. Untimely Meditations, 119. Nietzsches emphasis.

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Thus, in order to avoid this dangerous condition, he proposes that science should be at the
service of life and a hygiene of life should accompany science. One of the rules of this
hygiene would read: the unhistorical and the suprahistorical are the natural antidotes to the
stifling of life by the historical, by the malady of history.216 The work as a whole is also
another one of the rules of the hygiene of life; it is supposed to work as an antidote to the
consuming desire for knowledge for its own sake. The reader has undergone a change, has
been given orientation in the chaos of the past, while reading through the advantages and
disadvantages. There has been movement from the past to the future.
The task of the youth is to organize the chaos with which they are presented in the
malady of history. Through their efforts in this organization, the youth will lose much
knowledge but gain a unity of life, thought, appearance, and will. They will become human
once more (with a unified inner and outer) and not merely an aggregate of human like
qualities. Culture will then be viewed not merely as an outward decoration but rather as a
creative, artistic force.

Conclusion
From beginning until end, Nietzsches second Untimely Meditation is a challenge to
the Alexandrian, scientific culture of his day. Within his discussion of the advantages and
disadvantages of history for life, Nietzsche forces his readers to come to a decision: either
knowledge (history) will serve life or life will be subordinated (and destroyed) to knowledge.
The resulting decision ought to lead one to the break with Hegelian dialecticsto view time,

216

KGW III/1: 327. Untimely Meditations, 121.

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and mans relation to time, outside of the realm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Nietzsche
himself breaks out of a crude form of Hegelian thinking with this work. It also signals
Nietzsches decisive break with Christianity: Hegelian philosophy is the scientific (and more
rigorous) form of Christianity, from which Hegel took his understanding of time. His
quotation of Goethe, which forms his ceterum censeo, at the very beginning of the work
should indicate to his readers on which side his allegiance lies: life and becoming.
Christianity and in Hegels absolute idealism life is threatened by the drive for knowledge.
This is the basis for Nietzsches claim that morality killed God.
For Nietzsche, Hegels philosophy remains an underhanded theology because he
understands it as Christian metaphysics. He is the most radical Protestant, which means he
goes further than anyone else to the roots of Christianitydialectics. Overall, Nietzsches
attack on Hegel is an attack on the dialectical understanding of time that belongs to
Christianity. The Christian view of time is linear and teleological: original sin (man falls into
history) Incarnation of the Savior Redemption of sin. The immanent teleology in
Hegels philosophy of history redeems all becoming, which is viewed as a sign of guilt.
According to Nietzsche, both Christianity and Hegel focus on the goal (redemption) and not
on all the other aspects of life. The goal redeems all becoming and that is the only way to
understand becoming. After he is cured of his cultural Hegelism, Nietzsche attempts to
speak of becoming outside of the realm of dialectics (i.e., metaphysics) and speak of the
innocence of becoming in the thought of the eternal recurrence.
The second Untimely Meditation is the proper starting place to understand
Nietzsches philosophy as a whole. It is here that he strikes out on his own for the first time

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against the entire Western tradition of metaphysics. Dialectics is shattered through
Nietzsches ultimatum: knowledge will be subordinated to the needs of life. He forces his
readers to make a decision against Hegel (and Christianity). It is unnatural for life to be
consumed by the past, for man to be a cataloguer and organizer of knowledge about the past.
Cultural Hegelianism and even Hegel himself, who demanded that history be made into a
systematic science, think that the only approach to history is through science. This is why
the historical malady, as Nietzsche describes it, ultimately derives from the push toward
antiquarian and critical history among German scholars. Nietzsche wants his readers to see
that there is an approach to history that lies outside of the demand for history to be a
sciencehistory can be a lived experience (an art that gives unity to ones life). For
Nietzsche, metaphysics in the highest form of Hegelian dialectic undermines its own
foundations and results in the condition of nihilism. Like a snake, logic (the science of
science!) bites its own tail when pushed to the most extreme limits. At this point one must
make a decision between science and lifethe only natural choice is that of life. The
question is then: What happens to science in Nietzsches reorganization of Hegelian thought
in regard to history? This is the question that will be answered in the following chapter.
The importance of the History essay in Nietzsches thought cannot be underrated,
and this is especially true when it comes to the thought of the eternal return. His turn against
science and the scientific culture of his day, which began in The Birth of Tragedy, underlines
his basic position that science has become routine and is governed by the rule of
methodology.217 As it is currently practiced, the life of science is divorced from the life of
217

This is best captured in Heideggers provocative phrase from What is Called Thinking?, Science does not
think. Science, as governed by methodology, does not require thought about its own foundations; science has

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action: one man inhabits two spheres, the life in his laboratory (the life of theory) and that of
his everyday, petty existence. Nietzsches problem with the condition of science in his day is
that theory does not come in contact with the way in which one leads ones life. Modern
science no longer makes any demands on its practitioners in the way that the theoretical life
of the ancient world made specific and difficult demandsone only needs to think of
Socratess insistence on leading the examined life even if it leads to ones death. (As I
noted in the previous chapter, Nietzsche maintains a lifelong relation to Socrates that is
ambiguous; one thing is certainhis complete ire is reserved for Socratism, the
unquestioned belief in the superiority of the method of science, as distinguished from
Socratess willingness to question radically.) As a scientific theory about the nature of
history, the eternal recurrence places absolute demands on those who think it. It is not the
dry, grey historical science of his day (that of Hegel), which offers clear and immediate
answers; the eternal recurrence only poses questions marksnamely, and most importantly,
the question about how ones life will be lived under its shadow.

become calculative and mathematical. It has ceased to be (or, more likely still, never was) radically
questioning. It is for this reason that science cannot question its own foundations, whereas from the perspective
of life (or art) science can be questioned: Since science cannot subject itself to critiquethat is, as the problem
of science cannot be posed on the ground of scienceNietzsche proposes the perspective of the healing power
of art. From Babette Babichs article Nietzsches Critique of Scientific Reason and Scientific Culture: On
Science as a Problem and Nature as Chaos, in Nietzsche and Science, eds. Gregory Moore and Thomas H.
Brobjer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 151. See also Babichs article, The Problem of Science in
Nietzsche and Heidegger, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 63 (2007): 205-237.

Chapter 3: The Scientific Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy

In this chapter I will discuss Nietzsches conception of science after the second
Untimely Meditation, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. The
traditional understanding of science derives from Socrates and is necessarily tied to his
distinction between the apparent and transcendent worlds: the Good (or God) is the final goal
of scientific knowledge. Also, in the Socratic conception, the theoretical life is the best
kind of life, the life devoted to science. This ultimately leads to the situation described in the
History essay in which science destroys life and, thereby, undermines its own foundation.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, sees the need for science to serve life; but this fundamentally
alters the nature of science. Science and life indeed coincide for himlife becomes the
ground for testing hypotheses, science is concerned with the affirmation of life. Without God
(Truth), i.e., without the ultimate goal of theoretical knowledge, science is freed from its
tether and is transformed into a matter of ever-new discovery of truths. It is within the
context of his changing relation toward science where he is most explicit about the thought of
the eternal recurrence. His excitement over his discovery of this thought is palpable in the
letters he sent to friends and other correspondents. The question is: Why does Nietzsche
place so much emphasis on the eternal recurrence in connection to his thoughts on the new
nature of science?

Introduction
After his departure from the University of Basel in 1879, Nietzsche assumed more of
the persona that the world is familiar with todayi.e., the Romantic vision of Nietzsche as
119

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the poor and yet brilliant writer who lived alone in the Engadine. His abandonment of the
university, which most believe to derive from health issues, signifies much more than that.
He leaves because of his dissatisfaction with the tradition of Western educationhe sees that
it no longer forms the individual but rather focuses on scientific specialization. One is now
transformed into a future worker in the insatiable factory of science. For this reason,
Nietzsche leaves the university never to return. He lives out the rest of his days of sanity
traveling from Alpine hostel to hostel with no citizenship, and occasionally would make
visits to friends in Germany and Italy. It was also during the last decade of his intellectual
life that Nietzsche was most prolific in his writing and correspondence.
With this drastic change in his life, there also seems to be a transformation in his
philosophical interests. Most scholars view it in the following light: after spending a great
deal of time on cultural criticism in the Untimely Meditations, the works that immediately
follow show concern for the state of science. In fact, the opening section of Human, All Too
Human (1878-1879) is entitled Chemistry of concepts and sensations. Thus, there seems
to be a switch of focus from art to science after Nietzsche leaves the university permanently
(which means he also abandons Hegel and, therewith, Wagner). Along with Human, All Too
Human, a work concerned with overcoming idealism, and Daybreak [Morgenrthe] (1881),
the work in which morality overcomes itself, Nietzsche wrote The Gay Science [Die
frhliche Wissenschaft] (1882), the work that is a turning point in his career. It is in this last
work that science undergoes a transformation in its very nature. Nietzsche says of the work,
In almost every sentence, profundity lovingly joins hands with headstrong passion

218

[Mutwillen].

121
Can passion really be an important component of science after two

thousand years of the scientific ideal of objectivity and theoretical activity? What change
has occurred that now permits one to think of science in this way, as a passion?

Nietzsche and Science

Science remains a constant concern of Nietzsches throughout his entire intellectual
career.219 He makes this point clear in the Attempt at Self-Criticism, which serves as his
new Preface to the second edition of The Birth of Tragedy:
I shall not suppress entirely just how unpleasant it [his first work] now seems to me, how
alien it seems, standing there before me sixteen years laterbefore eyes which are older
and a hundred times more spoiled, but by no means colder, nor grown any more a stranger
to the task which this reckless book first dared to approach: to look at science through the
prism [Optik] of the artist, but also to look at art through the prism of life.220
In 1886, Nietzsches task has not changedthe criticism of science from the perspective of
life. Therefore, it is wrong to think that he had a scientific stage because every stage was
somehow concerned with the state of science. In the History essay, one can see
Nietzsches concern for science in that he demands a hygiene of life that needs to be close
to science at all times to ensure that science does not undermine its own foundation (i.e.,
life). He forces his readers to make a choice: either science will serve life or life will serve
science. By the end of the essay, he has shown how history destroys life when it is turned
into a science. However, this is not only true of the burgeoning historical sciencesit is true
of all science because the understanding of science ultimately derives from Socrates. The
218

KGW VI/3: 331.

The fact that Nietzsche devotes a great deal of time to the critique of science in Beyond Good and Evil and,
especially, the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morality supports this. For a discussion of his later critique
of science see Chapter 4 below.
220
KGW III/1: 8. The Birth of Tragedy, 5.
219

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choice is clearone must choose life over science for the reason that science presupposes
life.
If this is the case, then the nature of science will change fundamentally. As it was
originally conceived by Socrates, the theoretical life (i.e., the life subordinated to science)
was an end in itself; thus, science came to be seen as an end in itself. Scientific knowledge is
the aim of philosophers from Socrates all the way to Hegelit operates under the delusion
that thought, as it follows the thread of causality, reaches down into the deepest abysses of
being, and that it is capable, not simply of understanding existence, but even of correcting
it.221 One can comprehend the totality of existence through systematic knowledge, thus
closing the gap between life and science (but subordinating life to science). As I mentioned
in the previous chapter, for Nietzsche, Hegels Science of Logic is the culmination of 2500
years of the scientific tradition, for it tries to comprehend all of existence by casting the net
of history to capture past, present, and future in its system. If Nietzsche demands a change in
the conception of science, then its current configuration of science and life will change. The
key to determining how it will change, I believe, lies in his conception of gay science. It
therefore also involves the eternal recurrencethe central teaching of The Gay Science and
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The purpose of this chapter will be to determine why Nietzsche places so much
importance on the eternal recurrence and how it is involved in his transformation of the
nature of science. To answer these questions requires detailed interpretation of several
passages from The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1884). Reference to

221

KGW III/1: 95. The Birth of Tragedy, 73.

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other works of this period is also necessary for proper understanding of the importance of the
teaching of the eternal recurrence. Due to the difficulty of interpreting Zarathustra, I will
treat The Gay Science as a gateway to the more difficult work. Even though Nietzsche
elsewhere insists that the eternal recurrence is Zarathustras teaching, it is first mentioned in
341 of Book IV of The Gay Science. The next section (342) serves as the introduction to
Zarathustrathus, these two works belong together in Nietzsches mind. It is for this reason
that I consider Zarathustra a scientific work, with a scientific teachingthe eternal
recurrence.

The Gay Science

Although Nietzsche was declared, in the words of an older colleague, dead to
science after his first publication, his interest in science never abated. Even while
discussing cultural issues in The Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Meditations he was
criticizing contemporary science from the perspective of art and life. The problem of
science, as it was slowly becoming clear to Nietzsche, was that science gradually erodes its
own foundation in life. As Nietzsche would later say, the scientific drive is nihilistic (it is
self-destructive). The History essay proposes the solution of subordinating science to
lifethis is Nietzsches escape from dialectical (i.e., scientific) thinking, a way of thinking
that he believes Socrates introduced to the Western intellectual tradition and that has
persisted until its perfection in Hegels system. In the works immediately following this
transitional essay, science as a problem becomes more intense because Nietzsche sees that
it is impossible to get rid of science completelyit exists as an ineradicable drive of the

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human beingbut science in the Socratic conception remains self-destructive. The question
is: How can science be redirected so that it does not undermine its own foundation and,
hence, destroy itself?222
One of the first attempts to solve this problem can be found in Human, All Too
Human in a section titled Future of Science (251). Here, Nietzsche predicts a time when
science will no longer afford any pleasure whatsoever because of the banality of its results.
The desire for intellectual satisfaction is no longer being fulfilled by the results of science,
which become ever more commonplace. If this is the case, then science will eventually
become impoverished and will lead to a new barbarism prompted by the neglect of science.
For Nietzsche, it is to science that mankind owes almost all its humanity,223 and without it
we would be like a herd animal. Far from rejecting outright the contributions of
Alexandrian, scientific culture, Nietzsche would be among the first to note how decisive
Socrates (and the other philosophers) has been for the formation of the human being. For the
sake of culture, he thinks that science must be preserved because it encourages a spirit of
rigor, which gives depth to the human being.
He proposes a segregation of the perceptions of science from those of nonscience in order to ensure the health of the human being. Just as humans have a heart with
two ventricles, we need to think of having a brain with two ventricles. They lie parallel to

222

To say this another way: How can science be transformed into art? The possibility for such a transformation
goes back to Socrates, ironically, for Nietzsche notes that morality/science itself is a non-Dionysian art.
Babette Babich takes note of the possibility of such a transformation: For Nietzsche, as for the rest of us, the
method at workstipulation, mechanism, and above all delimitation, that is, the working practice of method as
suchis the key to the modern scientific age. The same methodification is also the means whereby science
becomes arts, but to say this is also to say that science departs from theory alone, from its metaphysical heaven
or perfection, to become practicable and livable, viable, as such. Words in Blood, Like Flowers, 61.
223
KGW IV/2: 213. Human, All Too Human, 119.

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one another but do not intersectscience needs to be separated from life for the time being.
In one domain lies the power-source, in the other the regulator: it must be heated with
illusions, onesidedness, passions, the evil and perilous consequences of overheating must be
obviated with the aid of the knowledge furnished by science.224 Life and science need only
interact when illusion starts to gain too much ground. As he says, science is a regulator of
the drives and passions that give rise to science in the first place. Higher culture requires a
rigorous science in order to focus energy on the development of individualswe need to
abandon science in the sense of results, for such a science is based on the pleasure that can be
derived from knowledge.
According to Nietzsche, pleasure in science is, on the whole, steadily decreasing
because of the banality of its results. The moment we stop taking an interest in science is the
beginning of the end of higher culture and the future of science can easily be foretold:
Interest in truth will cease the less pleasure it gives: because they are associated with
pleasure, illusion, error and fantasy will regain step by step the ground they formerly held:
the ruination of science, a sinking back into barbarism, will be the immediate
consequence.225 The spirit of rigor in science is the key to maintaining higher culture,
according to Nietzsche. In a section titled Science furthers ability, not knowledge (256),
he notes that the value of pursuing a rigorous science for a time is that there will eventuate
an increase in energy, in reasoning capacity, in toughness and endurance; one will have
learned how to achieve an objective by the appropriate means.226 Science is valuable only

224

KGW IV/2: 213. Human, All Too Human, 119. Emphasis added.
KGW IV/2: 213. Human, All Too Human, 119.
226
KGW IV/2: 216. Human, All Too Human, 121. Nietzsches emphasis.
225

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insofar as it teaches self-discipline, which is a prerequisite for higher culture. And this is the
value of schooling also, it teaches rigorous thinking (Reason in school 265). It is no
mistake that Nietzsches longest discussion of science in Human, All Too Human occurs in
the chapter Tokens of Higher and Lower Culture.
Nietzsches immediate solution to the problem of science, which he identified and
discussed at length in the History essay, is to keep science isolated from life out of fear that
the drives of life will overpower rigorous and careful thinking, leading to a new barbarism.
However, as he notes in Daybreak, there is a constant danger that science will overstep its
boundaries and overwhelm the practical lifethe danger he identified in the earlier essay.
Men of the vita contemplativa have always threatened the health and stability of men of the
vita activa through their meddling. This is especially true of the most common member
among those who lead the contemplative lifethe religious. The so-called religious
natures, whose numbers preponderate among the contemplative and who consequently
constitute their commonest species, have at all times had the effect of making life hard for
practical men and, where possible, intolerable to them.227 The other contemplative
naturesthe artists, the philosophers, and the thinkers and workers in sciencehave been
no less annoying than the religious natures. But the scientists have often been subject to the
mockery of the common man so that they have sometimes alleviated the plight of those
whom they supposedly serve. Whatever the case, there is a disjoint between the results of
science, which often cause discomfort at first, and everyday life. Separation of these two
spheres, the contemplative (science) and the practical (life), is the solution that Nietzsche

227

KGW V/1: 44. Daybreak, 28.

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arrives at after his demand that life be chosen over science in the History essay. Science
remains as a regulator of life and is, therefore, subordinated to lifebut yet, the danger of
science consuming life remains ever-present in this configuration.
Nietzsches task during this second stage, as Lwith and others after him have
called it, is to find a reconfiguration of science and life so that there is no longer the danger
of one overwhelming the other. This reconfiguration takes place in The Gay Science,
wherein Nietzsche proposes the coincidence of science and life.228 This is what he calls the
gay sciencethe joining of profundity and great passion, or wisdom and laughter in 1
The teachers of the purpose of existence. His new conception of science and life is made
possible by the death of the old science through the murder of its highest object, God (108
New battles and 125 The madman). Without a goal, science falters and begins to
undermine its own foundation. The purpose of science needs to be reconsidered as a means
to ever-new discoveries (truths) and, thus, the affirmation of life. Life becomes a grand
experiment and those who dare to set out on this adventure are like Columbus. According to
Nietzsche, the highest scientific experiment is the eternal recurrence, for it is the test of
whether or not one would affirm life unconditionally. Only in the affirmation of the
recurrence is the distinction between life and science overcomeas an open hypothesis it
transforms the very nature of existence. It is for this reason that the first edition of The Gay

228

Nietzsche foreshadows this new configuration in a section from Human, All Too Human, wherein he claims
that science would have no appeal whatsoever unless it were capable of fulfilling some immediate need of life:
If science were not united with the joy [Lust] of knowledge and the utility of what is known, what interest
would we have in science? If a little faith, hope and charity did not lead our soul towards knowledge, what else
would draw us to science? [ . . . ] If we had not remained to some extent unscientific men what meaning could
science possibly have for us? Taken as a whole and expressed without qualification: to a purely cognitive being
knowledge would be a matter of indifference. KGW IV/3: 53-54. Human, All Too Human, 235. Nietzsches
emphasis. The Gay Science simply elaborates on this fundamental insight, drawing conclusions that are spelled
out in greater detail.

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Science concludes with the first formulation of the doctrine and the introduction of its
teacher, Zarathustra (341 The heaviest weight and 342 Incipit tragoedia).
At the beginning of the work, Nietzsche surmises that the single consistent drive
within the human species is that of the preservation of humanity. It would be all too easy to
divide human beings into good and evil, useful and harmful because it is impossible
to know whether those who are labeled evil and harmful are not also necessary for the
sake of the preservation of the species. Whatever the case might be, one cannot tell if the
harmful might not be at the same time the useful. Everyone then is a eulogist and
mocker of the promoter and benefactor of humanity because everyone is both useful and
harmful. Nevertheless, people are too insipid to realize their wretchedness even if someone
were to mock one of them to their faces. Truthfulness is what has been lacking so far
something that Nietzsche affirms about philosophy in the second Preface, but which is just as
true for human beings as knowers.229 As Nietzsche will point out later in On the
Genealogy of Morality, human beings do not know themselves because they do not know the
truth. Their situation is far more uncertain than it has ever been before.
For Nietzsche, the truth is that man is wretched and nothing special, his existence
does not mean all that much. To understand this truth would require that one laugh at
oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh from the whole truth.230 The utter
seriousness [Ernst] with which human existence is treated derives from the teachers of the
meaning of existence, who, from time to time, appear to forge the instinct of the preservation
of the species into a reason for existence, a purpose. As it stands now, however, tragedy
229

What was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all truth but rather something elselet us say
health, future, growth, power, life . . . KGW V/2: 17. The Gay Science, 6.
230
KGW V/2: 27. The Gay Science, 27. Nietzsches emphasis.

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takes center stagecomedy, laughter, lies on the periphery because human existence is
something that is taken seriously. Human beings have been taught not to laugh at
themselvespeople believe that the individual has a purpose outside of the preservation of
the species and is, therefore, nothing to laugh about. Every so often these teachers of the
meaning of existence appear to fulfill mans artificial need to have faith in the reason in
life. And every time they appear, they are soon afterwards vanquished by laughter, reason
and nature.231 Thus, tragedy and comedy are complementary necessities of the human
being.
Only once humans can laugh at themselves does hope remain for science, which has
been allied with morality and religion (i.e., seriousness about existence).232 At present, the
comedy of existence has not yet become conscious of itself; at present, we still live in the
age of tragedy, in the age of moralities and religions. Mans liberation from morality and
religion will come once he realizes that the species is everything and the individual is
nothinghis tension will be relaxed and he will not take himself so seriously. Laughter will
then have formed an alliance with science: perhaps only gay science will remain.233
However, the steadily loosening grip of morality and religion foretells a time when the
human being will soon no longer be something one is absolutely forbidden to laugh at. All
of existence will be revealed as a farceincluding the human being, who has been
considered taboo for much of Western history. As a philosopher, Nietzsche too will have his
time, he will have his gay sciencethe science in which passion is the driving force of
231

KGW V/2: 46. The Gay Science, 29.

This might be why Nietzsche begins the Preface of Beyond Good and Evil with a mockery of the grotesque
seriousness with which philosophers have approached truthand failed to court her. See Chapter 4 below.
233
KGW V/2: 44. The Gay Science, 28.
232

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scientific inquiry. Science in the traditional sense will fade away once its foundation in
religion and morality are destroyed.
This short reflection of 1 of the work points toward the structure of The Gay Science
as a whole. Nietzsche opens the work with an exhortation to corrective laughter but the
first edition of 1882 ends with 342 at the end of Book IV, a section titled Incipit tragoedia
[The tragedy begins]. What does this mean? Comedy and tragedy are joined in gay
science. From one perspective, an event like the death of God is tragic; from another, it is
comic. Science is now a matter of varying perspectives within the whole since there is no
absolute standard anymore. This new nature of science is brought into sharpest focus upon
careful reflection on this most important event in history, an event that only one or two
people have realized along with Nietzsche. The announcement of Gods death is the central
passage of The Gay Science and the implications this event has for the nature of science is
the most important theme of the work. The implications for science are discussed at length
in Book IV St. Januarius. Nietzsches first response to this event is the teaching of the
eternal recurrence in 341, which is the actual conclusion of the work and what I will
discuss at length in the next section.
The passage in which Gods death is proclaimed is titled The madman (125) and
lies near the beginning of Book III. Nietzsche tells the story of the madman, who lit a lantern
in the early morning and ran around the marketplace looking for God. His search is futile
everyone in the marketplace stands around watching the madman with amusement. After
failing to find God, the madman gives a long speech about how God is dead, saying We

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have killed himyou and I! The rest of the speech consists of a long lament and a series of
challenges that the madman poses to the crowd.
It is necessary to discuss briefly the style in which the madmans message of Gods
death is presented. 125 is essentially a story within a storythere is a narrator (Nietzsche?)
who is telling the story of a madman, who has his own story to tell. Ultimately, the message
of the madman remains at an unbridgeable distance from both the audience in the
marketplace and the readers of the passage. This is why the madman throws his lantern on
the ground and says, I come too early . . . It is also why Nietzsche will say later, at the
beginning of Book V (published with the second edition of The Gay Science in 1887): For
many peoples power of comprehension, the event [Gods death] is itself far too great,
distant, and out of the way even for its tidings to be thought of as having arrived yet.234
Gods death is held at a distance from most peopleexcept, of course, those few exceptions
(like Nietzsche himself). In order to try and approach the madmans message, I will ask what
seem to be the most obvious questions a reader might have after first reading the passage.
Answers to these questions will provide an interpretation to this dense and rather cryptic
passage.
The first question that arises after reading the passage is: Why is the madman [Der
tolle Mensch] the one who announces the death of God? The equation of God and truth in
the Christian conception makes God the absolute standard of all rationality. If God is dead,
then that means that the distinction between rational (sane) and irrational (insane) is
abolished. Could not the madman not also be the great man now, for it is only the mad

234

KGW V/2: 255. The Gay Science, 199.

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who recognize what has actually occurred? Everyone else stands idly around. In fact,
Nietzsche believes that it must be a madman who announces the death of God. New ideas
and conceptions are always attended by a dreadful companion, madness. These shifts in the
way of thinking, though rare, are out of step with the usual and the everyday. Madness is the
necessary attendant of the new idea: All superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw
off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually
mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be madand this indeed applies to
innovators in every domain and not only in the domain of priestly and political dogma.235 It
cannot be anyone other than the madman who announces the death of God, for this is an
event the magnitude of which has not been fully comprehended. In fact, everyone born after
this event belongs to a higher history than all history up to now.236 The idea of Gods
death must be accompanied by madness because of its earth-shattering importance.
The second question that arises is: Who is the madman? From what one can tell
from the passage, the madman is running around the marketplace looking for God and
carrying a lantern in the early morning. It is the dawn of a new daythe dawn of a world
without morality because God is dead. This entire opening scene recalls the story of
Diogenes the Cynic (404-323 B.C.) in the Lives of Eminent Philosophers.237 Diogenes
Laertius, the compiler of these lives, writes how Diogenes the Cynic went out in the middle
of the day with a lantern looking for an honest (truthful) man in Athens. He did not find one,
235

KGW V/1: 23. Daybreak, 14. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW V/2: 159. The Gay Science, 120.
237
I had written this interpretation of this section of The Gay Science before Charles Bambachs essay on the
cynicism in this passage was published. Much of what I say here is in agreement with Bambachs position, but
he goes into much greater detail than is permitted in the space of this chapter. I refer the reader to his excellent
analysis in the essay Nietzsches Madman Parable: A Cynical Reading in American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 84/2 (2010): 441-456.
236

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but the fact that he searched shows how he is himself a truthful man. Diogenes the Cynic
was a man concerned with truthin other words, a scientist. However, he is also considered
mad. When asked about Diogenes, Plato is said to have responded: He is a Socrates gone
mad (VI, 54). The madman is, therefore, the only one who thinks that searching for truth is
worthwhile anymore even if it might happen that there is no truth (i.e., God). The gay
science is more about the search than about the goalit is science detached from a fixed
goal, science infused with passion (i.e., science transformed into art). Without a set purpose
or goal, the quest for knowledge is a temptation [Versuch] akin to that of Columbus, who
dared to sail on open waters not knowing exactly where he would end up.
The madman is also the subject of ridicule of those idlers in the marketplace, who
mock him openly for searching for what does not exist for them.238 After enduring their
mockery, the madman reveals the truth: Where is God? he cried; Ill tell you! We have
killed himyou and I! But how can something that is eternal be killed? Truth, the demand
for truthfulness at all costs, kills Godin other words, science itself kills God. At one time,
faith and reason were joined by St. Thomas Aquinas in the highest science, divine science;
shortly afterward, though, faith and science were dislocatedscience gained autonomy;
science, as an independent pursuit, has reached a point where it calls into question the articles
of Christian faith, especially the belief in God. Truth was identified with God; now, truth is
identified with science, whose basis was in God. This has been forgotten by both the
238

It is interesting to compare the immediate reaction of the idlers in the marketplace to the message of the
madman with that of a group of prisoners in another allegory in a section from Human, All Too Human: the
prisoners do not laugh at the message of the supposed son of the prison warder, who told the prisoners that only
if they believed in him would he save them; after the news of the death of the prison warder reaches the
prisoners, the supposed son says, I will set everyone who believes in me free, as surely as my father still lives;
again, the prisoners did not laugh at him, but only shrugged their shoulders and left him standing. KGW IV/3:
228-229. Human, All Too Human, 331.

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scientific community and the faithful who say to themselves: Science cannot be true, for it
denies God. Consequently it does not come from God; consequently it is not truefor God
is the truth.239 Nietzsche writes this in a section of Daybreak titled What is truth?a
reference to Johns Gospel in which Pilate asks the same question of Jesus before he
sentences him to death.240 The allusion is clear: science kills God and thus undermines its
own foundation.
Now that human beings have liberated themselves from God, they have no
metaphysical ground to support them: No longer can the human being assume its role as the
measure of all things since the very standard of measure has been undermined by the death of
God.241 They may have retained the moral teachings of Christianity, which elevated the
human being above everything else in the natural world, but it is impossible to hold onto
these once you have eliminated belief in God.242 Even after people stopped believing in God,
they could not let go of His longest shadow: the belief that the human being was created in
Gods image (a rational and scientific being) and is, therefore, above ridicule (see 1). This
is the cause of the disconcerted silence of the bystanderstheir incomprehension concerning
the conclusions the madman draws from the death of God. There is then a sense of falling

239

KGW V/1: 82. Daybreak, 54.

Showing his disdain for Christianity, Nietzsche writes the following passage in The Antichrist: Do I still
need to say that in the whole of the New Testament there is only one honorable figure? Pilate, the Roman
governor. To take Jewish affairs seriouslyhe could not convince himself to do this. One Jew more or less
what does it matter? . . . The noble scorn of a Roman when faced with an unashamed mangling of the word
truth gave the New Testament its only statement of any value,its critique, even its annihilation: What is
truth! KGW VI/3: 223. The Antichrist, 45. Nietzsches emphasis. For his criticism of religion see Chapters 4
and 5.
241
Nietzsches Madman Parable, 452.
242
Nietzsche notes this in several places in his works: One should notice that Christianity has . . . crossed over
into a gentle moralism: it is not so much God, freedom and immortality that have remained, as benevolence
and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition
will prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity. KGW V/1: 81-82. Daybreak, 53-54. Nietzsches emphasis.
240

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after all of the old boundaries have been smashed: How were we able to drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we
unchained this earth from its sun?243 There is no longer an up and a down with the ultimate
reference point of Godhuman beings have fallen into a world of infinite becoming, and
into history. It is also the case that we no longer have a coherent morality once the ultimate
pillar has been removed.244 An insidious form of nihilism breaks out, which threatens to
reduce everything to ashes. All that remains as a source of structure for the human being is
the discipline of science, which, now that it has been freed from its tether, God, turns back
upon itself in an unending circle. Science, therefore, needs to be embraced as more than a
means to the salvation of the soulthe Christian estimation of science.245
There is something that is both comic and tragic in The madman. From the
perspective of the crowd idling in the marketplace, the madman is a comic figurein the
same way that Diogenes the Cynic is depicted in the Lives of Eminent Philosophers as a
rather ridiculous man. The scene as a whole is tragic, for the reason that the madman is the
only person who realizes that God has ceased to be the living God of the Old Testament
prophets. God no longer influences our practical decisions because we have severed our
connection to himthe grounding of morality in human autonomy makes God
unnecessary.246 The fact that the idlers do not understand what they have done is also tragic:

243

KGW V/2: 159. The Gay Science, 120.

Christianity is a system, a carefully considered, integrated view of things. If you break off a main tenet,
the belief in God, you smash the whole system along with it: you lose your grip on anything necessary. KGW
VI/3: 108. Twilight of the Idols, 194.
245
KGW V/2: 158. The Gay Science, 119.
246
Heidegger notes this in his essay on this passage, saying: That suprasensory world of purposes and norms
no longer quickens and supports life. That world has itself become lifeless, dead. There will be Christian faith
here and there. But the love holding sway in that world is not the effectively working and operative principle of
244

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Lightning and thunder need time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even
after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote to them than
the remotest starsand yet they have done it themselves!247 The disjunction between what
people are aware of and what is actually the case in the present is what makes the situation so
tragic. The world as we know it (and take for granted), our everyday assumptions about right
and wrong, is completely changed after one takes to heart the madmans message.248
As Nietzsche notes in 108, belief in God may still flicker in some places, but these
places will become more rare until the day there is finally none. Only the shadows of God
will remain, mere images of Gode.g., utilitarian morality, the idea of perpetual human
progress, and scientific optimism. But even these images of God need to be eliminated. In
his own way, Nietzsche is following the logic of Plato here. If the real or true world (i.e.,
God) is no longer there, the shadows (or appearances) of that world cannot exist. There is
nothing to reflect on the wall of the cave anymore if the real thing does not also exist.
Given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his
shadow.249 The puppet show will go on because of the way people are. Most are like
those idlers in the marketplace, ones who say they believe but do not actually believe. If they
do believe, they believe in shadows. Eventually the shadows will disappear along with their
what is happening now. From his The Word of Nietzsche, in The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977), 98-99.
247
KGW V/2: 159-160. The Gay Science, 120. Nietzsches emphasis.
248
The greatest recent eventhat God is dead; that belief in the Christian God has become unbelievableis
already starting to cast its first shadow over Europe . . . for many peoples power of comprehension, the event is
itself far too great, distant, and out of the way even for its tidings to be thought of as having arrived yet. Even
less may one suppose many to know at all what this event really meansand, now that this faith has been
undermined, how much must collapse because it was built on this faith, leaned on it, had grown into itfor
example, our entire European morality. KGW V/2: 255. The Gay Science, 199. Also, see Joseph Cardinal
Ratzingers insightful comments on this thought in Introduction to Christianity, trans. Michael J. Miller (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 17-18.
249
KGW V/2: 145. The Gay Science, 109.

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source. Science will then have completed its taskand then it too will disappear. But this is
something that Nietzsche believes must not be permitted to happen.
Ultimately, the message of the madman, God is dead, is something that cannot be
proven or refuted. Just as Gods existence was shown to be hypothetical with Kant, so the
same must be true for his death. Now that God is dead, the belief in the supersensory world
will gradually disappear. Gods existence functioned as the grounding hypothesis that gave
order to all of our other beliefsthe world became less frightening and more reliable, more
rational. But science turned against its own supposed ground when it questioned what it had
taken for granted for over two millenniait made clear to itself that Gods existence was a
hypothesis, and, as it were, an unnecessary one. God, as a hypothesis, is dead.250 Gods
death is also a hypothesis, but a more reliable hypothesis now that Europe has in actual
practice stopped believing in God, according to Nietzsche. What will become of the science
that demonstrated that the hypothesis of Gods existence was superfluous?
Without a goal, science is an end in itselfit is now about ever-new discovery. This
is the theme of Book IV of The Gay Science, which discusses the new nature of science as
gay, as a passion for knowledge. Nietzsche tells us in one section (289), Get on the
ships! The world is an open sea ready for our discovery. (This exhortation is not without
reason considering that Nietzsche composed much of the work in Genoawhence Columbus
sailed to the New World for the first time.)

250

This is how I interpret Werner Stegmaiers claim: A God that men can kill, can only be a God, which men
have created. This means that God functioned as a hypothesis for science long after actual practices of faith
had gradually been shed. See his article Der Tod Gottes und das Leben der Wissenschaft: Nietzsches
Aphorismus vom tollen Menschen im Kontext seiner Frhliche Wissenschaft in Der Tod Gottes und die
Wissenschaft (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 1-16.

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Eternal Recurrence as Scientific Hypothesis
In a world without God, who was both the goal and foundation of knowledge/science,
science is turned into a pursuit for its own sake. This is why Nietzsche can speak of a gay
science in which passion [Leidenschaft] can be joined with wisdom. However, it is not
exactly clear how this science will work and in what way it will be able to save human being
from the growing threat of nihilism. To answer both of these questions requires a close look
at Book IV of The Gay Science, wherein Nietzsche speaks several times about the new nature
of science. The conclusion of Book IV is where the eternal recurrence is first articulated, the
culminating point of the entire work342 Incipit tragoedia is the gateway to Thus Spoke
Zarathustra and is therefore both a beginning and an ending. Zarathustra, who will be
discussed in the next section, is the teacher of the recurrencethis is why Nietzsche ends
The Gay Science with Zarathustras going under.
Nietzsche opens Book IV with a poem to Sanctus Januarius. His invocation of
January, the first month of a new year, indicates a new beginning after the madmans
announcement of Gods death. The title of the opening section, For the new year (276),
confirms this. Nietzsche makes his resolution here: I want to learn more and more how to
see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in themthus I will be one of those who
make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!251 Necessity is brought
back down to earth. At one time God was conceived as the only necessary being, everything
else being contingent; now that God is dead everything is made necessary again. This also
brings the dialectic of Spirit to an endone can only affirm or deny existence in its entirety.

251

KGW V/2: 201. The Gay Science, 157. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of amor fati.

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Negation is nihilism because it denies everything; for this reason Nietzsche says, Let
looking away be my only negation!252 Book IV is devoted to the goal of showing how the
affirmation of existence on the whole (including the evil, harmful, and ugly aspects) is
possible in the coincidence of life and science, in gay science. All in all and on the
whole: some day I want only to be a Yes-sayer!
Since God is no longer living in the modern world, science has become detached
from its end. This also dislodges the life of science from the religious life: The time is past
when the Church had a monopoly on contemplation, when the vita contemplativa always had
to be first and foremost a vita religiosa.253 Contemplation can now be considered an end in
itself rather than as a mere means to what was considered the most important thingthe
salvation of the soul in the afterlife (see 123).254 In fact, Nietzsche wants to move thought
away from the concern with what occurs after death to what is going on in the present, so that
it can be affirmed as necessary. It makes me happy to see that people do not at all want to
think the thought of death! I would very much like to do something that would make the
thought of life even a hundred times more worth being thought to them.255 Contemplation
of life and the life of contemplation need to coincideit is the eternal recurrence that will
bring about this union for Nietzsche.

252

KGW V/2: 201. The Gay Science, 157. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW V/2: 204. The Gay Science, 159.
254
For Nietzsche, contemplation has turned into psychology (the queen of the sciences, as he calls it in 23
of Beyond Good and Evil). In turn, psychology has turned on the goal of the salvation of the soul: Hubris
characterizes our attitude toward ourselves,for we experiment on ourselves in a way in which we would never
allow on animals, we merrily vivisect our souls out of curiosity: that is how much we care about the salvation
of the soul! KGW VI/2: 375. On the Genealogy of Morality, 87.
255
KGW V/2: 203. The Gay Science, 158.
253

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Despite the change in the nature of science brought on by the death of God, there still
remains the danger that the life of science will be devoured by the life of the active man.
This is the vice of the New World, which is gradually spreading throughout Europe in the
19th century. Leisure, the prerequisite for the contemplative life, is now viewed as a
necessary evilit is the repose that is necessary so that one can continue working later.
Joy [Freude] is no longer associated with intellectual discovery, but rather with rest from
the labors of the dayit has become passive rather than active.
How frugal our educated and uneducated have become concerning joy! How they are
becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work gets all good
conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a need to recuperate and is
starting to be ashamed of itself . . . Soon we may well reach the point where one cant give
in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends)
without self-contempt and bad conscience.256
Work, the active life, is starting to consume the contemplative lifethe demand for
production, which is dependent on the technological drive of the modern age, is a byproduct
of the shift in science effected by the likes of Descartes, Bacon, and Galileo. Science has
become a means to something elsein the case of Descartes in the Discourse on Method, the
alleviation of the suffering of mankind through the mastery of nature. This moral end has
ultimately subordinated science to itself so that it remains a secondary phenomenon (as it was
in the Christian Middle Ages). Nietzsches demand that science become more than a
means is the key to his reconfiguration of science and lifescience coincides with life, life
itself is a means to knowledge.

256

KGW V/2: 237. The Gay Science, 184.

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To speak of life as science is to speak of science as a passion, as a very erotic drive:
a drive for possession.257 This is, of course, not the way that modern science wants to be
portrayed, for it presents itself as objective and neutral and takes its axioms as
demonstrated truths. However, with the death of God, objectivity also tumbles to the
groundscience itself must undergo a drastic change. Scienceas Nietzsches
contemporaries understood ithas become a problem, it has turned on itself because there is
no predetermined goal anymore. The presupposition of science (that it can correct life, i.e.,
Socratess basic assumption) is problematic, for the reason that it presupposes life. One can
eliminate this problem if life itself becomes an experimental ground for testing hypotheses
rather than that which science needs to correct. Knowledge, then, is not a bed to rest on or
the way to one, or a diversion or a form of idleness, but rather a world of dangers and
victories in which heroic feelings also have their dance- and playgrounds.258 Passion for
science is playful; anyone who says otherwise is prejudiced by the old conception of science
as joyless (see 327).
With the ever-present danger that man will fall off into nothingness because God is
dead, Nietzsche believes that there needs to be something to restore a sense of balance to the
human being. He poses this question to himself at the end of Book III: What do you believe
in?In this: that the weight [Gewichte] of all things must be determined anew.259 The
hierarchy of being, which the tradition has held fast to for two millennia, has collapsed and
there is the danger that in the process of leveling down man will slide back into the animal.

257

Words in Blood, Like Flowers, 63.

KGW V/2: 233. The Gay Science, 181.
259
KGW V/2: 197. The Gay Science, 152.
258

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Man needs a new weight to give him a sense of orientation. What is this weight? For
Nietzsche, the greatest, or heaviest, weight [das grte Schwergewicht] is the eternal
recurrence, which affirms all existence without addition or subtraction. Indeed, it restores the
greatest sense of the importance of existence because life is regarded as the most important
experiment. The passage 341, The heaviest weight, needs to be examined in detail under
the light of what Nietzsche considers to be gay science.
It begins with a hypothetical statement, a what if. What if some demon [Dmon]
confronted you in your loneliness and challenged you with the thought that you would have
to live your life an infinite number of times over again? Would you affirm this and say
Yes! Or, would you say No! This is the challenge of Nietzsches experiment. The first
thing to notice about this whole challenge is its hypothetical nature. The eternal recurrence is
a hypothesis that can only be worked out within ones lifetimeand it is something that
requires a great deal of courage.260 Its challenge comes from a hypothetical demon, which
recalls Descartes malign genius [genius malignus] in the Meditations on First Philosophy.
The difference between Descartess genius and Nietzsches demon is not only the fact that
Descartes supposes the genius to be evil, but also that the geniuss power is finite.
Descartess experiment in the Meditations, therefore, is of a limited durationit lasts six
days. Nietzsches experiment consumes the entirety of ones existenceit would transform
and possibly crush you.261

260

The sense of truth.I approve of any form of suspicion to which I can reply, Lets try it! [Versuchen
wirs!] But I want to hear nothing more about all the things and questions that dont admit of experiment. This
is the limit of my sense of truth; for there, courage has lost its right. KGW V/2: 89-90. The Gay Science, 62.
261
KGW V/2: 250. The Gay Science, 194.

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It is no mistake that Nietzsche begins Book IV with a reference to Descarteshe is
seeking to change the nature of science just as Descartes did at the beginning of the 17th
century. The concluding section of The Gay Science best formulates this change: life is the
playground of science; life and science coincide in the teaching of the eternal recurrence.
One can see this in Nietzsches circular expression in 276: Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo
sum [I am, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am].262 Nietzsche completes Descartess
conception of science by bringing it to its perfection: life and thought coincide instead of
existence being determined by thought. Life, then, is an experiment (and a temptation). If
you had to live again and innumerable times again, how well disposed would you have to
become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal
confirmation and seal?263 The thought of the eternal recurrence transforms ones life into a
grand experimentit is all-comprehensive because it leaves no detail of life untouched,
everything is made necessary to becoming who you are. Eternal recurrence is the way to
ground the human being and establish a new hierarchy of values now that the old hierarchy
of values (being) has been buried with God. This is also where Nietzsches conception of
science and life is seen in its proper perspective.
If God is dead, then the old science is also gonethis is why Nietzsche talks about
The dying Socrates (340) before talking about the new science (341) and its teacher,
Zarathustra (342). Science must be conceived anew in terms of its relation to life; in its old
configuration, life was threatened with destruction by the demand that life serve science.
Life and science must coincide if both are to be rescued from the pervading darkness of
262

One should compare this to Nietzsches earlier reference to Descartes in 10 of the History essay. See
previous chapter.
263
KGW V/2: 250. The Gay Science, 194-195. Nietzsches emphasis.

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nihilism. Theory and practice must be reconsidered after the death of God because the
intelligible world has been detached from the sensible world. Thus, the teaching of the
eternal recurrence, which seeks to join life and science, cannot be conceived as either
practical or theoretical. It overcomes this distinction entirely. Nietzsches philosophy of
history seeks to give a place to the human being in a world of infinite becoming, nothing
more. It is something that cannot be proved or demonstrated because the argumentative tools
of the old science are no longer effective. This is why he says: What decides against
Christianity now is our taste, not our reasons [Grnde].264 The ground of our reason has
been taken awayone cannot argue, i.e., demonstrate, for or against the existence of God.
Similarly, one cannot demonstrate the truth or falsity of the eternal recurrence.
Nietzsche stopped trying to give scientific proofs for the truth of the eternal
recurrence in 1881those he wrote in the notes that comprise The Will to Power differ only
slightly.265 The change in the nature of science brought on by the death of God makes
demonstration impossible anymoreall that is left are varying perspectives within the world
(not an all-comprehensive one). As the guarantor of truth and reason, God is what ensured
the validity of ones reasoning. This is not the case now. Proofs and demonstrations do not
make sense without the ground of reasoning to ensure their validity. Nietzsche realized this
early onthis is why he stopped trying to make up proofs to demonstrate the truth of the

264

KGW V/2: 163. The Gay Science, 123.

I do not regard the proof of the eternal recurrence in 1066 of The Will to Power as something Nietzsche
took seriously because he never published any of these demonstrations. The fact that he never offered a proof
of the eternal recurrence in any of his published materials should show that he did not think that a proof could
be offered. David Allison confirms this when he notes that Nietzsche does not advance the eternal return as a
verifiable truth at all. From Allisons Reading the New Nietzsche (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, 2001), 124.
265

266

eternal recurrence.

145
He does not include these proofs anywhere in the first or second

edition of The Gay Science, which indicates that he did not think that highly of them.
However, his formulation of the teaching of recurrence is hypotheticalwhat if . . . It
remains an open hypothesis, one that transforms existence making for the innocence of
becoming (a non-dialectical view of history). Nietzsches philosophy of science is
experimental; it is the science of possibility that is brought about through the eternal
recurrence. Passion lovingly [zrtlich] joins hand with profundity, life lovingly joins
hands with science in the eternal recurrenceone is not forced on the other as in the old
configuration (in Alexandrian, Socratic culture). Nietzsches science is one beyond good and
evil because it is a matter of passion, a labor of love.267
Reflecting back on the new nature of science for Nietzsche, one can detect a
continuation in his disdain for Hegelthe paragon of the old joyless science. The dialectic
of Spirit, as Hegel describes it in the Preface of the Phenomenology of Spririt, is an
arduous, painful process. The Spirit evolves from the contradiction of opposites, from the
interplay of pain and pleasure. For Hegel, Spirits becoming is viewed in terms of the
gradual alleviation of guilt just as in the Christian conception of time and history. In
contrast, Nietzsches perception of becoming is that of innocencemorality, the knowledge
of good and evil, is not the origin of the movement of time. This is why Nietzsche considers

266

His basic position on the teaching of the eternal recurrence is best expressed in the opening line from the
Preface to the second edition of the work: This book might need more than one preface; and in the end there
would still be room for doubting whether someone who has not experienced something similar, could by means
of prefaces, be brought closer to the experiences of this book. KGW V/2: 13. The Gay Science, 3. Nietzsches
emphasis. No amount of explanation could ever be sufficient for this kind of lived experience.
267
Whatever is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil. KGW VI/2: 99. Beyond Good and Evil,
70.

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himself an immoralist, for he views becoming beyond good and evil. The eternal recurrence
is the non-dialectical, anti-Hegelian view of history.
The appearance of Zarathustra at the end of the work is not mistaken. The final
section of The Gay Science forms the portal to Nietzsches most enigmatic book, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra. Coming directly on the heels of The Gay Science, Zarathustra is imbued with a
scientific character: Zarathustra rigorously determines his taskit is mine as well,and
there can be no mistake about what he means: he is affirmative to the point of justification, to
the point of salvation, even for everything past.268 Zarathustra is the teacher of the eternal
recurrence. As the first person to see the interplay between good and evil as the driving force
behind history, Zarathustra must be the first to recognize this fateful error of morality.269
The dialectic of good and evil is transferred not only to Judaism and Christianity, but also to
Platonic idealism. It pervades Western thought to the coretherefore, Nietzsche can say that
thought since Plato has been determined morally. As the first immoralist, he wants to think
beyond the terms of good and evil, to see the innocence of becoming.
Nietzsche concludes The Gay Science with tragedy. It concludes with Zarathustras
going under, his return to human beings in order to teach them the eternal recurrence. To
return to the consideration of 1: tragedy and comedy are a matter of perspective within the
whole since there is no absolute standard (i.e., God) anymore; this means that the human
being is now something to be ridiculed and treated with dignity; the gay science allows this
type of questioningit is the deepest, most profound, questioning because it leaves nothing
unquestioned. Zarathustra is also the one who leaves nothing unquestioned: Zarathustra is
268
269

KGW VI/3: 346. Ecce Homo, 133. Emphasis added.

KGW VI/3: 365. Ecce Homo, 145.

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more truthful than any other thinker.

147
Unlike other philosophers, he is not lead astray by

health, future, growth, power, life . . . but rigorously pursues the truth in the teaching of the
return. Zarathustra is, therefore, not only a tragedy, as the concluding section of The Gay
Science would seem to indicate, but also a comedy.271 Human being is something that must
be overcome.272 The human being is no longer taboothe value of human existence can be
questioned. (In fact, human existence must be questioned or else ones silence on the matter
condemns humans to a place of no value since they are no longer worthy of being
questioned.)273 This is the task of Zarathustra, the teacher of the eternal recurrence and the
overman [bermensch].

Zarathustra, Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) is arguably one of the most difficult works in
the history of Western philosophy to interpret. It has multiple layers; its author, who is not
always clear in his other works when it comes to his references, gives little to no clues about
what or who the character Zarathustra is talking about; it is not clear how the three first parts
of the work relate to the fourth and final part; and, perhaps worst of all, there is no indication
about how Zarathustra should be read (whether as a disconnected series of speeches or as a
coherent whole). Nietzsche often declares in his later writings and letters to friends that this
270

KGW VI/3: 365. Ecce Homo, 145.

Incipit tragoedia, we read at the end of this suspiciously innocent book. Beware! Something utterly
wicked and mischievous is being announced here: incipit parodia [the parody begins], no doubt. KGW V/2:
14. The Gay Science, 4.
272
KGW VI/1: 8. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 5.
273
Perhaps this is why Nietzsche says later in the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morality: We are unknown
to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves to ourselves, and there is a good reason for this. We have never looked
for ourselves,so how are we ever supposed to find ourselves? KGW VI/2: 259. On the Genealogy of
Morality, 3. See the following chapter for a more detailed discussion of this passage.
271

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is his most important work and that it contains his most important thoughts. He goes on to
say in Ecce Homo, This work stands entirely on its own.274 This gives the impression that
one need only read Thus Spoke Zarathustra in order to understand Nietzsches philosophy
a mistake to which too many scholars fall prey, beginning with Lwiths misdirected
interpretation. Nearly every Nietzsche scholar feels compelled to say something about this
work and, thereby, no one really has anything to say about itin this way, its subtitle is
prophetic A Book for All and None [Ein Buch fr Alle und Keinen]. A closer look at his
discussion of Zarathustra in the section of Ecce Homo Why I Write Such Good Books
shows that the work needs to be considered in relation to what came before (The Gay
Science) and what came after (Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals).
The main thing to notice about what Nietzsche has to say about Zarathustra is that
the whole of Zarathustra can be considered music;certainly a rebirth in the art of hearing
was one of its preconditions.275 The work is a piece of musici.e., something inspired by
the Muses. It will become clear through the interpretation that follows that Nietzsches
inspiration for this work came from the Greek god of music, art, and fertility, Dionysus.
Nietzsche notes that The Gay Science had hints of this change in his taste for music,
especially when one considers the poem that opens Book Four. Nietzsches highest
dreams are the words that end the first work and begin the next workthe music of
Zarathustra. In fact, music is a large part of the gay science, which combines the roles of
singer, knight, and free spirit into one. His poetry is reminiscent of the Provenal culture
of the Middle Ages, which combined tones of mockery with the heartfelt longing for courtly
274
275

KGW VI/3: 341. Ecce Homo, 129.

KGW VI/3: 333. Ecce Homo, 123.

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love (tragedy). He admits that at some points the poetry in The Gay Science can be
considered exuberant dance songs.276
The significant shift in the style of Zarathustra is indicative of a change in
Nietzsches musical tastes. By this time, he had stopped listening to Wagners music most
likely because he viewed it as being infected by Hegels influence (see previous chapter on
this). As early as The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche recognized that music had undeniable
communicative power. Music can tell us things about ourselves and the world more
effectively than a logical statementit attunes us to the world in a certain way, a fact that
Socrates takes note of in The Republic (398c-403c, especially 401d-402a) and that Heidegger
also points out later in Being and Time (especially 29). Nietzsche wants us to see the world
in a different light, under the aspect of the eternal recurrence; therefore, music must form an
important part of the gay science. Zarathustra is, in fact, the application of gay science,
which means that it is a work of music. Nietzsches seemingly outrageous claims about the
lack of poetic skill in the likes of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe now seem less so. His
expression of gay science as the coincidence of life and wisdom takes the form of music.
Wisdom, investigations of the soul, the art of speakingnone of this existed before
Zarathustra; here, what is closest and most everyday speaks about things the likes of which
have never been heard. Sayings trembling with passion; eloquence become music; bold
strokes of lightening hurled forwards into futures never before anticipated.277
The coincidence of statement and its melody makes Zarathustra so importantits entire
rhythm is unlike any other work in the history of the West. This change in music transforms
the relation between life and wisdom because it is the unity of the two. Zarathustra is the

276
277

KGW VI/3: 332. Ecce Homo, 123.

KGW VI/3: 341-342. Ecce Homo, 130.

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unity of science and life in an unprecedented, coherent view of the world, for it is there that
sayings (logos) are trembling with passion (pathos). The music of this work is where
profundity lovingly joins hands with headstrong passion.
Zarathustra is indeed the culminating point of Nietzsches creative and scientific
powers. His declaration that the work must be considered as a piece of music only makes
sense in light of the opening line of 25 of The Birth of Tragedy: Music and tragic myth
both express, in the same way, the Dionysiac capacity of a people, and they cannot be
separated from one another.278 This work is the combination of music and tragic myththe
enigmatic phrase Incipit tragoedia, which opens 342 of The Gay Science, now makes
sense. The death of music, and therewith tragedy, at the hands of Socratic scientific
optimism is overcome by Nietzsches gay science in which the tragic aspects of existence
are combined with the comic ones. Once Alexandrian culture had reached its completion in
Hegels system, it has already begun to decline. The first tremors within the sciences of the
19th century indicated that a crisis was on the horizon for Western culture. Nietzsche was
one of the first to diagnose this problem and offer a new vision of the world that was
independent of the current scientific attitude. Zarathustra is the combination of music and
tragic myth that he thought would constitute an alternative, coherent view of the world.
Nietzsches reason for saying that the work stands entirely on its own [Dieses Werk
steht durchaus fr sich] becomes clear when one considers its relation to his later works.
Zarathustra stands on its own because it contains Nietzsches fundamental thought, the
eternal recurrence. This thought is the foundation for the project of the revaluation of all

278

KGW III/1: 150. The Birth of Tragedy, 115.

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values that Nietzsche takes up in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality.
The style of these later works returns to that of The Gay Science. In regard to Beyond Good
and Evil, Nietzsche says: In every respect, particularly in its form, you will find a deliberate
turning away from the sort of instincts that make a Zarathustra possible. He states that this
was his recuperation from his grandest creation just as the serpent was Gods recuperation
after the seven days of creation. He [God] had made everything too nice.279 This is where
the hard work of revaluation begins after Nietzsche had been tempted to posit the eternal
recurrence. How the eternal recurrence is connected to these later works is the task of the
following chapter.
With good reason, then, whenever one talks about the teaching of the eternal
recurrence, it is inevitable that the discussion will lead to Nietzsches most enigmatic work.
Eternal recurrence and Zarathustra must go together, according to Nietzsche, for the reason
that this is Zarathustras doctrine.280 For the most part, Nietzsche always claimed that the
eternal recurrence was Zarathustras teachingnot his own. Only at the end of Twilight of
the Idols (1888) does Nietzsche assert that he is the last disciple of the philosopher
Dionysus and the teacher of the eternal return . . .281 In the same line, he identifies
discipleship to Dionysus with the teaching of the eternal recurrence. The question that I will
work out in this section is: How does Zarathustra relate to Dionysus, the Greek god of
music? If this question can be answered, I think that a few of the key passages of

279

KGW VI/3: 349. Ecce Homo, 135.

KGW VI/3: 311. Ecce Homo, 110.
281
KGW VI/3: 154. Twilight of the Idols, 229.
280

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Zarathustra will become clearer. In turn, this will further elucidate the scientific nature of
the eternal recurrence and the nature of its teacher, Zarathustra, as the last scientist.
In regard to the structure of the rest of this section, I have divided Zarathustra
according to Nietzsches own division of it into four parts. The passages that I have chosen
to highlight in Zarathustra all bear some connection to Nietzsches reconfiguration of
wisdom and life in the gay science. These passages all point toward this new harmony that
is achieved in the eternal recurrence. I will treat the work as a continuous and connected
whole. The narrative structure of the work is based on Zarathustras own development away
from the dominance of science (wisdom) over life (Parts I-II) to a point of crisis where he
chooses the gay science (Part III). Finally, Zarathustra turns toward his work in Part
IVi.e., the project of revaluation after accepting the eternal recurrence as his destiny. At
several points through his development, Zarathustra makes profound statements about the
nature of wisdom and life, but he is not prepared to draw the necessary conclusion until the
closing sections of Part III. Thus, the parallel between these inchoate pronouncements in
Parts I and II and the reconfiguration of life and wisdom in The Gay Science will be noted
along the way. They merely serve as guideposts.

First and Second Parts

In the final speech of Part I of Zarathustra, On the Bestowing Virtue, Zarathustra
speaks to his disciples about the need to purify themselves of thousands of years of error in
spirit and virtue. He exhorts them to be creators and to fight the sickness within themselves.
Knowingly the body purifies itself; experimenting with knowledge it elevates itself; all

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instincts become sacred in the seeker of knowledge; the soul of the elevated one becomes
gay [Wissend reinigt sich der Leib; mit Wissen versuchend erhht er sich; dem
Erkennenden heiligen sich alle Triebe; dem Erhhten wird die Seele frlich].282 Only
through experimentation will anyone come to knowledge of himself and make ready the path
of the overmanhuman being is merely an experiment, a failed one at that. Experimentation
is key to the production of the overman, that being which gives meaning to the earth after the
death of God. The greatest experiment is the one that calls for the total affirmation of life,
the eternal recurrenceZarathustra, though, does not go this far yet. Affirmation is the sign
of the overmanthus, Nietzsche connects the overman with the eternal recurrence in
Zarathustras teaching.
By the end of Part I of Zarathustra, he has given away [schenken] the wisdom he has
collected over the years in his mountain cave. He was weary of his wisdom. Now that it has
been distributed he wants to return to his solitude. He now wants to walk alone. However,
he makes a promise to his disciples to return to be with you a third time, to celebrate the
great noon with you.283 Zarathustras last word concerns the great noon where human
beings stand at the midpoint of their course between animal and overman and celebrate their
way to evening as their highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.284 Noon is the
joining of morning and evening, the beginning and ending of the day. The going under of
human being is at the same time the overcoming of human being in the overman. Noon is
also the time when the sun, the metaphor for wisdom in Platonic philosophy, reaches its

282

KGW VI/1: 96. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 58.

KGW VI/1: 98. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 59.
284
KGW VI/1: 98. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 59.
283

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zeniththe eternal recurrence is then the height of wisdom. Zarathustras language in this
closing passage of Part I suggests that noon is where life and wisdom coincide. At the age of
40, Zarathustra returned to dispense his wisdom; now that his wisdom is gone, so too has his
life run its course. He will return in Part II to grapple with life.
The teaching of the eternal recurrence is already suggested then in the first Part of
Zarathustra. Zarathustra must return two more times, though, before he is able to work out
the eternal recurrence fully. In Part II, he struggles with the problem of the inevitability of
sufferingthe fact that the will does not have power over the past. The main focus of Part II
is on the passive dimension of human existence whereas the focus in Part I was on the active
dimension. Sufferingpathe in Greek, from which we get the term passionthen
receives special attention from Zarathustra in this part. T.K. Seung points out the dialectical
nature of Zarathustras thought in his excellent work, Nietzsches Epic of the Soul: Thus
Spoke Zarathustra:
The more deeply we get involved in the active dimension of our existence, the more
keenly we feel its passive dimension or our vulnerability to suffering. Thus, the problem
of the creative will inevitably leads to the problem of suffering. This dialectical
development between the active will and the passive feeling may have led to the birth of
Zarathustras new wisdom, which was conceived and delivered as a young cub after his
return to his cave from his first teaching mission. In that case, his new wisdom is an
essential complement to his old wisdom.285
If the eternal recurrence is to transform every aspect of existence, it must also account for
that over which the will has no powerthe past. Human beings want revenge on the past
because it determines the present and the future. This is the overwhelming power of life to

285

59.

T.K. Seung, Nietzsches Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005),

155
which everything that exists is subject. Zarathustra must contend with this power in Part II
and learn from it.
Zarathustra begins to speak of life in the section, On the Tarantulas. This is also
the first time that he speaks of the spirit of revenge. Justice for the tarantulasi.e., the
preachers of equalityis itself revenge on those who deny the equality of all men and
women. However, justice was not always restricted to the sense of equality, as it is in the
modern age. One of the first times justice is mentioned in the Western philosophical
tradition is in the Anaximander fragment (B2), which speaks of Time sitting like a judge.
Justice then has been connected with Time for over 2500 years in the Western mind.
Zarathustras speech in this section reveals more than the speaker currently realizes
revenge is something that is connected to what has been called justice and, therefore, also to
time. The actual condition of things is that of injustice, of inequality between opposites
struggling to overcome each other. Life itself wants to build itself into the heights with
pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into vast distances and out upon halcyon beauties
therefore it needs height! And because it needs height, it needs steps and contradiction
between steps and climbers!286 Life cares not for equality; thus, it has no sense of revenge
but is innocent.
In the section On the Famous Wise Men, Zarathustra continues his reflections on
the nature of life. Those who are famous for their wisdom have always served the people
they are not true seekers for the reason that they will not venture beyond what is known.
They do not know what spirit is: Spirit is life that itself cuts into life; by its own agony it

286

KGW VI/1: 126. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 78.

287

increases its own knowledge.

156
Only by experimentation on oneself will ones knowledge

ever increase. It is life that makes knowledge possiblelife plays a game with itself. Life is
related to wisdom as night is related to day. One cannot have life without wisdom nor
wisdom without life, for, as Heraclitus says, they are one. Zarathustra makes the
connection between wisdom and the sun in the Prologue; the natural correlate between life
and night comes in the next section, The Night Song. In fact, the second Part of
Zarathustra reaches its most profound point during the cycle of songs found in the center:
The Night Song, The Dance Song, and The Grave Song. It is at this point that the
connection between life and Dionysus is made explicit for the first time.
The first thing to notice about these passages is that they are all songs. Nietzsche had
identified the origin of tragedy, Dionysuss traditional domain of art, in music in The Birth of
Tragedy twelve years earlier. All of the themes are Dionysian: night was the time that the
initiates of the cult gathered for the ceremonies; dancing is the natural complement to the
music making god, whom the maenads (the female retinue of the god) honored; and death
was an important component in the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, who was torn apart and
miraculously resurrected. Night is the time when everything is unitedeverything that is
distinguished in the light is returned to the one at night. Day is the time of loneliness: I am
light; oh that I were night! But this is my loneliness, that I am girded by light.288 Light is
also the metaphor for wisdom. Zarathustra, the one who wanted to give away his wisdom in
the Prologue, has become isolated because of it. He has become calloused from his
bestowinghe no longer wants to bestow, his thoughts have now turned malicious because
287
288

KGW VI/1: 130. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 80.

KGW VI/1: 132. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 81.

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of his hatred of the receiver. Only lovers know how to reciprocate, and night is the only time
that the songs of the lovers awaken. Life joins everything just as night makes everything
indistinguishable.
In the following passage, Zarathustra happens upon a group of dancing girls, who are
accompanied by Cupid (Eros). He sings the tale of his encounter with life, the
unfathomable [unergrndlich], his only love. However, he is also enamored with wisdom,
which resembles so much life with her eyes, her laugh and even her little golden fishing
rod. When life asks Zarathustra about wisdom, he replies that no one can resist her because
of her seductive ways. Life responds: Whom are you talking about? Surely about me?289
Both wisdom and life are seducingin other words, they are tempting. Gay science is itself
a temptation and experiment [Versuch], life and wisdom lovingly join hands. Zarathustra
joins the two because he is the teacher of the eternal recurrence, the greatest temptation and
the greatest experiment.
Life is itself wisdom for Zarathustra. He is one of the few (along with Nietzsche)
who knows what Ariadne is.290 It is likely that Zarathustra is speaking to
Ariadne/Dionysus when he talks to life in The Dance Song. Ariadne and Dionysus are said
to be loverslife is love, which is beyond good and evil. Dionysus, however, remains in the
background here (he comes to the foreground in Part IIIs The Other Dance Song).
Although life is feminine and Dionysus is masculine, one can identify the two for the reason
that Dionysus is the ancient Greek god of fertility. Nietzsches identification makes sense

289
290

KGW VI/1: 137. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 85.

KGW VI/3: 346. Ecce Homo, 133.

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because he notes that life is that which must always overcome itself. In other words, life is
both masculine and feminine, for it has the power to create itself from out of itself.
Life is a riddle because it is both comic and tragic at the same time. Like every good
riddle, life is multifaceted. There are several answers that can be given to this riddle; the
most profound answer, however, is also the one that goes deepest into the labyrinth of the
Minotaur. Whenever Nietzsche speaks of truth (wisdom), he also identifies it as a woman:
Suppose that truth is a womanand why not? Arent there reasons for suspecting that all
philosophers, to the extent that they have been dogmatists, have not really understood
women?291 There is good reason for his identification of life and truth with women. For
better or worse, Nietzsche thinks of women as having several different layers. They have
their surface beauty but are full of tricks and games underneath. Women, according to
Nietzsche, are subtler than menthey have a depth to them that men lack. They are also
more devious; they are capable of greater evil than men.292 This is precisely what Dionysus
wants of the human being in his dialogue at the end of Beyond Good and Evil: he wants
humans to be more evil, in other words, wiser. Life is amoral and it does not care for
morality.
The Grave Song is the natural complement to The Dance Song that immediately
precedes it. In the earlier song, Zarathustra sings to the girls while they dance with Cupid
(Eros). For the Greeks, Eros had a special connection with Death (Thanatos). These are the
two basic motivations for human actionlove of life and fear of losing life are two sides of

291

KGW VI/2: 3. Beyond Good and Evil, 3. For a more detailed discussion of Nietzsches association of truth
with woman see the following chapter.
292
Where neither love nor hate are in play, woman is a mediocre player. KGW VI/2: 93. Beyond Good and
Evil, 65.

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the same coin. In his song, Zarathustra reflects on the damage done to his earlier teaching by
his enemies. He had once said Godlike shall all beings be to me and All days shall be
holy to me. The project of making divine everything that was once profane is a large part of
the project of the gay science. But what has happened to Zarathustras gay wisdom
[frhliche Weisheit]? His past visions and apparitions of youth have been driven off by his
enemies, thus cutting short Zarathustras eternity. The playfulness of youth has been
destroyed by serious thoughts, ones about death (especially the death of his youthful dreams
and desires). How was Zarathustra able to arise from the death of his youth? It was through
his will, something that is invulnerable and unburiable [Unbegrabbares]. No matter what
Zarathustras will cannot be snuffed out: his dreams and desires may die out, but not his will.
The will is a key component to Zarathustras teaching of the eternal recurrence. Life
is that which must always overcome itself.293 The struggle for power among the living is
infiniteno one gives up the struggle, stronger or weaker. Life sacrifices itself for more
power. Schopenhauer did not conceive of the will correctly, according to Nietzsche; there is
no will to existence for the reason that one cannot will until one already exists. Only where
life is, is there also will; but not will to life, insteadthus I teach youthe will to power!294
Unfortunately, mankind is no longer willing to will the future. Their gaze is focused on the
inescapability of the past. In this sense, the will flounders when it comes to the past and its
it was. From its impotence in regard to the past, the will turns on everything else in the
spirit of revenge. Living and willing must proceed from past to present to futurethe will
suffers because it is caught within the net of time. Existence has been conceived morally as a
293
294

KGW VI/1: 144. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 89. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW VI/1: 145. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 90.

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form of punishment; the will has no power over the past, and it suffers from its lack of
power.
On Redemption points toward the full articulation of the eternal recurrence in Part
III of Zarathustra. Zarathustra already hints at the nature of the eternal recurrence, which is
like a shadow that follows him around. The only way to redeem all existence would be for
the will to turn the it was into a thus I willed it! In other words, the will must will
backward in the way that it wills forward. But how would this ever be possible unless time
were not linear? Only if the past were also the futureonly if time were cyclicalwould
this ever be possible. He does not want the will to be reconciled with time; he does not want
the will to resign itself to the force of time. Who would teach it [the will] to also will
backward?295 At this point in his speech before the cripples and his disciples, Zarathustra
suddenly breaks off. He has become frightened to the extreme [auf das uerste
erschrickt] and cannot speak anymore. He is not prepared to give voice to his abysmal
thought. Zarathustra cannot respond to the hunchbacks inquiry: Why does Zarathustra
speak otherwise to his pupilsthan to himself?296 Zarathustra must be alone before he can
grapple with his most abysmal thought, the one that he is afraid to speak of before his pupils.

Third Part
Part III of Zarathustra is the culminating point of the work, for it is there that
Zarathustra finally comes to terms with his teaching, the eternal recurrence. In the opening
section of Part III, The Wanderer, Zarathustra walks alone across the Blessed Isles in order
295
296

KGW VI/1: 177. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 112.

KGW VI/1: 178. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 112.

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to reach the coast where he intends to board a ship. However, he must cross over the
mountains. Zarathustra is a mountain climber and is constantly restless. His existence no
longer seems to be an accident. And he speaks to himself, saying: I am standing now before
my last peak and before what has been saved for me for the longest time. Indeed, I must start
my hardest path! Indeed, I have begun my loneliest hike!297 While Zarathustra kept
company with his disciples in both Parts I and II, he goes alone in Part III. His fear of
speaking his darkest thought before others is confirmed because his speech is essentially a
monologue.298 He also knows that his steepest hike requires that he go down deeper than he
has ever descended before. He affirms it as his destiny [Schicksal]. Another difference
between the first two parts of Zarathustra and the third part is what Zarathustra teaches. In
Part I, he teaches the possibility of willing the overman as the meaning of the earth after the
death of God. In Part II, he learns from life and teaches the will to power as the nature of
reality. It is also in this part that Zarathustra takes note of the spirit of revenge in the will
and what needs to be done to redeem existence. However, he is unwilling to speak this
thought because he is frightened by it. In Part III, his sole concern is the eternal recurrence.
His earlier teachingsthe overman, the death of God, and the will to powerare all
predicated on the eternal recurrence in Part III, which dominates the entire action of Part III
beginning with the second section.
In this section, entitled On the Vision and the Riddle, Zarathustra relates his riddle
after keeping silent for two days on board the ship. He is among those who are friends, those

297

KGW VI/1: 189-190. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 121.

Fink also takes note of this: 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. Nietzsches Philosophy,
72.
298

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who make distant journeys and do not like to live without danger. He addresses these
sailors and travelers, who were once strangers to him, as searchers [Sucher] and researchers
[Versucher]but they can also be considered tempters, attempters, and experimenters. He
does not actually talk to them about the nature of the eternal recurrence, for it is something
that only the individual can grasp. It is his destiny, no one elses. All that he does is speak to
the voyagers in riddles. His listeners cannot deduce [erschlieen] his meaning, they are
only able to guess [erraten] his meaning in the riddle. Just as he refuses to speak of his
hidden thought with his disciples in Part II (as the hunchback guessed) likewise he will not
tell the voyagers on the ship the meaning of his vision/riddle. This should indicate to the
reader that the eternal recurrence is only implied. Zarathustra never actually communicates
his teaching/thought with anyone elseeven his animals are playfully rebuked in The
Convalescent when they try to interpret his thought for him.299 Part III is Zarathustras
circling around the abysmal thought until he accepts it as his fatehe never communicates it
explicitly, though.
Zarathustra tells the tale of his climbing up a desolate mountain, forcing himself
upward at every step. However, something is dragging him down, making it difficult for him
to find his way up the mountain path. It is his archenemy, or what he refers to as the spirit
of gravity [der Geist der Schwere]. He refers to this archenemy as a dwarf that sits upon his
back, following him wherever he goes. The dwarf mocks Zarathustras efforts to climb:
Oh Zarathustra, he murmured scornfully, syllable by syllable. You stone of wisdom!
You hurled yourself high, but every hurled stone mustfall! Oh Zarathustra, you stone of
wisdom, you sling stone, you star crusher! You hurled yourself so highbut every hurled
299

You do not love your knowledge enough anymore, as soon as you communicate it. KGW VI/2: 100.
Beyond Good and Evil, 71.

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stonemust fall! Sentenced to yourself and to your own stoning; oh Zarathustra, far
indeed you hurled the stonebut it will fall back down upon you!300
Zarathustras wisdom, his unspoken thought, will ultimately crush him for seven days as he
sits in his cave later in Part III. The weight of it will prove to be nearly too heavy for him to
bear. His wisdom has reached its peakit is only a matter of time before it falls back down
upon him with all of its force. After testing his wisdom with life in Part II, he has become
wiser. But will Zarathustra not be crushed by his thought?
It is significant that the dwarf is the only one who mentions the teaching of the eternal
recurrence in this section, albeit in a terse, gnomic form. All that is straight lies,
murmured the dwarf contemptuously. All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.301 T.K.
Seung has identified the dwarf as Zarathustras animal selfthe part of him that he must
come to terms with later in Part III. This is true on another level. The dwarf [Zwerg] is the
spirit of gravity, one who has been squished by the thought of the eternal recurrence due to
its weight [Gewicht]. The dwarf is Zarathustra made small by the weight of the thought of
the eternal recurrence. Later in The Convalescent Zarathustra feels compelled to lie
downhe is brought closer to the earth. He is literally made small by the thought of the
eternal recurrence; his thought falls back down upon him and he is not strong enough yet to
bear it.
In his vision, the dwarf jumps off his back and sits upon a rock. Zarathustra gives a
speech to the dwarf on the nature of time. The past and future collide in the gateway
Moment. Both past and future flow away from the gateway into eternity. After this the

300
301

KGW VI/1: 194. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 124.

KGW VI/1: 196. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 125.

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dwarf utters his statement that time is a circle. Zarathustra then becomes angry with the
dwarf because he claims that the dwarf is making it too easy for himself. However, it seems
that Zarathustra is merely frightened of this thoughthis courage fails him. He is so
frightened by this thought that he begins to whisper with the dwarf:
Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can
happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before? And if everything has
already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway
too not alreadyhave been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a
way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Thereforeitself as well? For
whatever can run, even in this long lane outwardmust run it once more!And this slow
spider that creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway
whispering together, whispering of eternal thingsmust not all of us have been here
before?302
Zarathustras rant takes the form of a series of questions posed to the dwarf, who does not
respond. He never makes a direct statement about the eternal recurrence; all of his questions,
though, indicate that he is talking about it. Just as in 341 of The Gay Science the eternal
recurrence takes the form of hypothetical statements here.303 Its power to lie on ones actions
as the heaviest weight is so great that it runs the risk of crushing everything. It is the most
powerful scientific hypothesis because of its extreme weightit will transform ones
existence (life) through this thought. Life and wisdom are united at this point to such an

302

KGW VI/1: 196. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 126.

Heidegger is careful to note the unscientific (i.e., according to the standards of science of Nietzsches day)
character of the eternal recurrence. The fact that the recurrence puts everything into question, rather than
assuming to provide answers for everything (like the positive sciences at the end of the 19th century), clearly
indicates that the doctrine is not scientific in this sense. In one case, Heidegger writes: In order to hold at bay
the scientific misconception of Nietzsches train of thought it is not even necessary to refer to the
straightforward state of affairs represented in Nietzsches reflectionsnamely, the fact that he never limits
those reflections to the region of knowledge attained by physics or the other natural sciences. On the contrary,
he is concerned with the totality of beings: Everything has returned: Sirius and the spider and your thoughts
during this past hour and this very thought of yours, that everything recurs (XII, 62). Since when are
thoughts and hours objects of physics or biology? Nietzsche, Volume Two, 114. Again, the eternal
recurrence does not admit of scientific proof.
303

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extent that one cannot tell the difference between the twojust as Zarathustra was confused
about the two in The Dance Song of Part II.
Immediately after asking the dwarf these questions, and as Zarathustras voice
becomes more and more quiet, he is left alone. He then has a horrific vision of a shepherd
with a snake hanging out of his mouth. The snake has bit itself fast inside the shepherds
throat. Zarathustra tries to tear the snake out of the shepherds throat but he is unable to do
so. He commands the shepherd to bite off the head of the snake and spit it out. Once he does
this the shepherd is no longer full of nausea and dread; he begins to laugh. Never yet on
earth had I heard a human being laugh as he laughed!304 Zarathustra notes that this was a
transformed being. The riddle he poses for his fellow searchers and researches (and
experimenters) concerns the identity of the shepherd, who stood before him laughing. Since
he asks this question, it is clear that he does not recognize himself in the shepherd at this
point in Part III. The shepherd is a transformed, illuminated, laughing being, he is the
perfect practitioner of the gay science. Laughter is an integral part of the new science that
Nietzsche outlines in 1 of The Gay Science. Zarathustra has never heard a laughter that
mocks existence as a whole and it gnaws [frit] at him. It agitates him; he feels drawn
toward this laughter, but does not understand it. The riddle is like that of Oedipus, one who
does not know his own identity. Zarathustra is dwarf, shepherd, and the laughing beingbut
he does not make the connection.
No one ventures an answer to Zarathustras riddle, for the reason that he must solve it
himself (like Oedipus). He sails on for four more days on the ship. There he promises to

304

KGW VI/1: 198. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 127.

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work on himself in order to prepare for the arrival of his children, whom he will say are
about to arrive at the end of Part IV. He must remain alone in order to accomplish his
completion. Once he reaches dry land, Zarathustra does not go directly to his mountain cave
where his eagle and snake await him. He decides to wander among the people and through
various towns. He eventually returns to his cave after a period of wandering. Back in his
cave, once he is completely alone, he confronts his most abysmal thought in The
Convalescent.
A few days after his return to the cave, Zarathustra jumps up like a madman [ein
Toller] and screams as though someone else were lying in bed with him. He summons his
abysmal thought: I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate
of the circleyou I summon, my most abysmal thought!305 However, he is immediately
seized by nausea and collapses under the weight of this thought. For a long time he remained
as though he were dead; but when he finally regains himself, he refuses food and drink for
seven days. In the meanwhile, his eagle gathered food for him, which he does not touch until
the seventh day. The first thing he picks up is an applethe traditional symbol of
knowledge/wisdom. He does not eat the fruit; he only smells it. This is an inversion of the
story of Genesis. Instead of eating the fruit and being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and
thus inaugurating a history that is driven by the forces of good and evil, Zarathustra smells
the apple and is invited to return to the garden by his animals (one of which is a snake).306
Nietzsches inversion of this beginning point of the Western intellectual tradition trades a

305

KGW VI/1: 267. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 174.

Paul S. Loeb also notes the fact that this is a parody of the story of Genesis in his article The Dwarf, The
Dragon, and the Ring of Eternal Recurrence: A Wagnerian Key to the Riddle of Nietzsches Zarathustra,
Nietzsche-Studien 31 (2002): 109. But he does not note the connection this story has to morality/science.
306

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dialectical understanding of history (in which becoming, or history, is a sign of guilt) for that
of the innocence of becoming.
The animals please Zarathustra with their babbling, and he asks them to continue
talking with him. They speak to him, saying: Everything goes, everything comes back; the
wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again, the year of
beings runs eternally.307 Zarathustra laughs at his animals and responds that they know that
a monster crawled into his throat and choked him for seven days. He was finally able to bit
off its head and spit it away. He cries that the animals are cruel for watching his agony
they are like human beings in this way. But human beings are not cruel enough for him: Oh
my animals, this alone have I learned so far, that for mankind their most evil is necessary for
their bestthat whatever is most evil is their best power and the hardest stone for the highest
creator; and that mankind must become better and more evil.308 Zarathustras demand that
human beings become more evil is a sign of his Dionysian wisdom, for this is what Dionysus
asks for at the end of Beyond Good and Evil. He wants humans to be amoral in the same
way that life is amoral (and in the same way that the eternal recurrence is an amoral
conception of history). However, mankind is not evil enough yet; human beings are too
smalleven those who are considered great. This thought makes him shudder again.
The animals speak again, commanding Zarathustra to go outside where the world
awaits you like a garden. Zarathustra must sing again and he must fashion a lyre so that he
can make music. It is significant that Zarathustras animals are the ones who remind him of
his destiny [Schicksal], which he was trying to determine in the opening scene of Part III. In
307
308

KGW VI/1: 268. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 175.

KGW VI/1: 270. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 176. Nietzsches emphasis.

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The Wanderer, Zarathustra says: I stand before my highest mountains and before my
longest hike: therefore I must descend deeper than I ever climbed before:descend deeper
into suffering than I ever climbed before, down into its blackest flood! My destiny wills it
so: Well then! I am ready.309 His abysmal thought is the greatest weight, i.e., the eternal
recurrence, which drags him down further than any other thought. His animals remind him
of his destiny: Behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrencethat now is your
destiny!310 The difficulty for him is that this was never before a humans destiny.
Zarathustra has reached the deepest point, his going under is now his coming over. All
existence has been questioned in the experiment of the eternal recurrencethis is why
Zarathustra laughs at his animals.
After the long speech of his animals, Zarathustra remains silent because he is
conversing with his soul. He speaks of his thought of recurrence with no one but himself.
When he asks his soul to sing to him, his soul responds with the two songs that conclude Part
III, The Other Dance Song and The Seven Seals (Or: the Yes and Amen Song). His soul
has become Dionysian, for it can only sing now. Thus he goes about praising life in the first
song. After his song, life responds that Zarathustra does not love her enough and that he will
abandon her between the hours of midnight and one. He answers, Yes, but you also
know His thought breaks off into a whisper so that only life can hear it. She responds:
You know that, oh Zarathustra? No one knows that. It is at this point that Zarathustra
loves life more than all of his wisdom. He loves life in its wisdom, for she knows what no
one else knowsthe eternal recurrence of the same. Here is gay science where
309
310

KGW VI/1: 191. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 122.

KGW VI/1: 271. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 177. Nietzsches emphasis.

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profundity lovingly joins hands with passion, where life and wisdom commingle and dwell
in unity. Once the clock strikes twelve, there is silence; it would seem that Zarathustra and
life have parted ways.
In The Seven Seals (Or: The Yes and Amen Song) it is unclear who is speaking.
The passage does not end with the characteristic Thus spoke Zarathustra (or even its
alternative Thus sang Zarathustra). Paradoxically, in his parting with life, Zarathustra has
been irrevocably joined to life, the eternal one. The voice that speaks is lifes (Dionysuss).
All of the seven seals end with the following lines: Oh how then could I not lust for eternity
and for the nuptial ring of ringsthe ring of recurrence! Never yet have I found the woman
from whom I wanted children, unless it were this woman whom I love: for I love you, oh
eternity! For I love you, oh eternity!311 As the conclusion of the original edition of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, it would seem that Zarathustra has been consumed by the earth, which he
sought to sanctify with the teaching of the overman in the Prologue. Zarathustra follows
the path of Empedocles, who was reputed to have tossed himself into the volcano of Mt.
Etna. However, Zarathustra emerges again and again in the same way that life emerges again
and again only to overcome itself.
Parts I-III of Zarathustra track the change in language of the character of Zarathustra,
which is indicative of the changing nature of Zarathustra. Friedrich Georg Jnger notes how
Nietzsche continues the work of freeing oneself from the constraint of dead concepts that he
began in The Birth of Tragedy.312 Throughout the originally published parts of the work,

311

KGW VI/1: 283. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 184-185.

The precariousness of Zarathustra lies in an in-between, in the move back from intellectuality to poetry,
from the sharp, penetrating prose of concepts and thoughts to the language of picture and symbol, which is
somehow solemn and ceremonial, without advancing to the pure dithyramb, to a rigorous, pure metrical and
312

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Zarathustra teeters between didactic statements and poetry. He does not move to the pure
dithyramb, to singing until the conclusion of Part III when he surrenders himself to life by
parting with it. His animals notice that he still has not mastered the full, sharp, penetrating
sounds of the flute of Dionysian music; theres too much instruction, admonition, lecture, and
argument in his sermon.313 They do not understand why he still speaks when he should
make a lyre and sing. Zarathustra eventually does dissolve into song, but only once he is
joined to life in The Seven Seals. Music finally overcomes the stifling effect of cold
concepts and the constraints of language (logos); Dionysus/life is served at this point. As
Zarathustra dissolves into song, the tragedy/comedy concludes.

Fourth and Final Part

The nature of Part IV is ambiguous, for it remains a matter of debate among
Nietzsche scholars to this day. Nietzsche wrote the Fourth and Final Part of Zarathustra in
1885 and distributed a few copies among his close friends. Since it was not published along
with the other three parts during his lifetime, some scholars think of Part IV as a burlesque,
something tacked on as an afterthought. Others insist on the structural integrity of
Zarathustra as a wholePart IV must be considered along with the other three parts.
Nietzsche would not have published the final part of Zarathustra and distributed it privately
if he had not intended it to form the proper conclusion to the work. This is true even if he

musical form . . . Zarathustra as preacherthat is somehow ambiguous. Is it still necessary to preach? Why
doesnt he dance and sing, why doesnt he make music? Nietzsche, 13.
313
Ibid., 14-15.

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only wanted his close friends to read it.

171
The relation of the fourth part to the rest of the

work is that of the revaluation of all values to the eternal recurrence. Parts I-III build up to
the climax of the eternal recurrence, which Nietzsche admits is the central thought of the
work. Part IV already begins the project that Nietzsche will be engrossed in for the
remaining years of his productive career, the revaluation of all values. A brief discussion of
Part IV is necessary to see how the eternal recurrence forms the basis for the project of
revaluation.
Part IV opens with the section titled The Honey Sacrifice. Zarathustra has become
older but remains in his cave with his animals. The eagle and the snake ask him if he is on
the watch for his happiness. He responds: What does happiness matter! I havent strived
for happiness for a long time, I strive for my work.315 His first words concern his
abandonment of the goal of happiness. What this indicates is Zarathustras break with the
Western intellectual tradition. Socrates equated happiness with virtue, and virtue was
considered to be a special kind of knowledge. Plato went further stating that the wisest man
was the just man (and the just man was always happier than the unjust man). What matters
to Zarathustra is his work, for he wants honey to use as bait to catch the oddest human
fishes. Just as life had a golden fishing rod in both The Dance Song of Part II and The
Other Dance Song of Part III, Zarathustra now has the fishing rod. He wants to use it to
raise human beings up to himself; he is not ready to descend among them.

314

In his recent biography of Nietzsche, Julian Young insists that Nietzsche believed that he wrote only for the
fewthose with similar thoughts and philosophical dispositions. Part IV of Zarathustra forms the natural
dnouement to the book as a whole even if it were only privately distributed among Nietzsches friends and
family.
315
KGW VI/1: 291. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 191.

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In the next section, The Cry of Distress, Zarathustras wish is granted. He will not
descend to find the oddest human fishes because they are coming to his territory, the
mountains (his Hazar, a chain of mountains in eastern Persia). The old soothsayer has come
to Zarathustra to tempt him to his final sin, pity for these higher men. While speaking with
the soothsayer by his mountain cave, Zarathustra hears the cry of distress of the higher men.
He leaves to search for these higher men and ensure their safety while the old soothsayer
remains in his cave. In the following sections, Zarathustra travels in his territory and comes
across several different characters: the two kings; the conscientious of spirit; the magician;
the last pope; the ugliest human being; the voluntary beggar; and the shadow. Finally, after
encountering all of these characters in his territory, he wants to quench his thirst because it is
now noonthe hour when all shadows are shortest. Instead of plucking grapes, though, he
decides to sleep under the tree. He finally arises and returns to his cave where he finds all of
the men he encountered during his walk that day.
The cry of distress he hears from his own cave, and he knows that all of the men he
had encountered were higher men. However, he is displeased with them and says: You may
indeed be higher men, collectively. But for meyou are not high and strong enough.316 He
tells them that they are merely steps over which still higher and greater men will pass on their
way to Zarathustras height. These men are distorted images of Zarathustra, which cannot be
made to reflect him rightly. Zarathustra advises the higher men in On the Higher Man to
learn to laugh over and past yourselves.317 They do not know how to do this, however,
because they do not practice the gay science like Zarathustra. The higher mens attempt to
316
317

KGW VI/1: 346. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 228.

KGW VI/1: 363. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 240.

173
take the eternal recurrence to heart falterseven they are not ready for it. All of the higher
men are on the run from the last man and they seek protection from the highest man,
Zarathustra, in his cave. The process of leveling-down, which was on the rise in the 19th
century, threatens to reduce everything to sameness. The teaching of the soothsayer is what
these higher men are afraid of: Everything is empty, everything is the same, everything
was!318 The hierarchy of being has been reduced to the lowest common denominatorthe
last man cuts everything down to his own contemptible size.
Zarathustra demands a revaluation of all values. He wants to smash the old table of
values and make a new oneonly through the destruction of the old can the new be created.
In the Preface to The Antichrist, Nietzsche says that those who will understand the work
are those who understand Zarathustra. The project of revaluation begins with Zarathustra
his work [Werke] is foundational for this task. It is important to think of why Zarathustra
emphasizes his work over happiness. In the Aristotelian tradition, happiness was an activity
that was already contained within the activitythe telos was already always present. In this
way, happiness must be considered the completion/perfection of human life. It would be all
too easy to think of the eternal recurrence as an activitysomething self-enclosed.
Zarathustra, on the other hand, is concerned with his work, a process that aims at something
beyond itself. The eternal recurrence is self-containedbut it is self-contained becoming, it
is not static and always complete. It is his work that points beyond the traditional framework
of Western thinking. This is why he finds contemptible the higher men. They may be the
highest specimens of humanity but they are still not high enough because they have not

318

KGW VI/1: 168. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 105.

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transcended the tradition like Zarathustra. Zarathustra awaits his children at the end of Part
IV: My children are near, my children. His children are the ones who have gone beyond
even Zarathustra to a place beyond humanity.

A New Vision: Recurrence and Revaluation

The relation between The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not that
difficult if one pays attention to what Nietzsche has to say about both of these works. Both
works constitute a decisive change in the way Nietzsche does philosophyespecially
Zarathustra. The death of God results in the crumbling of the edifice of Alexandrian
culture. Its myth of mythlessness (i.e., objectivity) evaporates along with scientific
optimism. For this reason, Nietzsche wants to sing a new myth in his Zarathustra; he wants
to give human existence the most solid foundation in the eternal recurrence. The gay
science, with its emphasis on song and the combination of wisdom and life, must, therefore,
be considered along with Zarathustra for a proper interpretation.
Throughout his later writings, Nietzsche usually says that Zarathustra is the teacher of
the eternal recurrence. But what does it mean to be a teacher after the death of God? For
Nietzsche, the teacher is the questioner, the one who pushes questioning to the furthest
extreme (e.g., Zarathustras questioning of existence as a whole). The traditional sense of
teachingthe dialectic between student and teacherno longer holds for the simple reason
that traditional science no longer holds. Science has crumbled since the ultimate pillar of
God (the guarantor of truth and the ground of logical reasoning) has been removed.
Traditional teaching also begins to falter because there are no longer the same common

termsthe death of God literally changes everything about our existence.

319

175
Therefore,

teaching too necessarily changes. This may explain why Zarathustra never directly states his
doctrine throughout Zarathustra: he becomes frightened by his thought and refuses to tell his
disciples about it in On Redemption; his conversation with the dwarf in On the Vision and
the Riddle is in the subjunctive (he only asks questions); his animals in The Convalescent
tell him that he is the teacher of the eternal recurrence; he whispers into the ear of life about
what he knows. The eternal recurrence is only ever implied in all of these encounters.
According to Nietzsche, the teacher is no longer the source and communicator of
knowledge, the philosopher who descends to the cave in order to turn others around toward
the light. In Nietzsches inversion of Plato, the wise man leaves the people and is called the
teacher. Zarathustra only converses with his own soul about the eternal recurrence. I believe
the reason for this can be found in what has already been said about the nature of gay
science. Nietzsches new vision of science entails hypothesis and experimentation.
Zarathustra is his own teacher because he is an experimenter [Versucher], and his own nature
is the subject of his investigations. It is unclear what the nature of human being is after the
death of God. Zarathustra establishes his own identity through his experiment of the eternal
recurrenceZarathustra teaches himself about the nature of Zarathustra through suffering
from the greatest experiment. His acceptance of this teaching, his own teaching, unifies
Zarathustra through his affirmation of existence as a whole (even the ugly, bad aspects of it).
Thus, the eternal recurrence is Nietzsches fundamental thought because it revalues

319

Language is also included in this transformation. Grammatical structures can no longer reflect the world
around us and yet we still hold fast to them: I am afraid that we have not got rid of God because we still have
faith in grammar . . . KGW VI/3: 72. Twilight of the Idols, 170.

176
everything in existence. It is this thought that forms the basis of his criticism of the Western
intellectual tradition in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.320
Everything, including the human perception of time, needs to be revaluated once the
truth of the death of God is taken to heart. This is because everything changes. The linear,
teleological view of time as a dialectic, as the guilt of becoming, striving toward reunification
with the source of things, collapses once the madmans proclamation is realized: We have
killed himyou and I!321 The synthesis of all opposites and contradiction in the highest
being (the conceit of Hegelian idealism) is impossible now that the third term within Hegels
logic is absent. All that remains is the eternal recurrence of war and peacei.e., war
followed by peace, followed by war, followed by peace, ad infinitum. The perpetual conflict
of opposites with no resolution results in the unending struggle for power over opposites
this is why life proclaims that the world is the will to power in On Self-Overcoming in Part
II of Zarathustra. The tension between opposites with no possibility for resolution in a
higher synthesis results in a deepening in the well of power: There is a lake that one day
refused to let itself flow off and formed a dam where it used to flow off: ever since, this lake
rises higher and higher. Perhaps this very renunciation will lend us the strength to bear
renunciation; perhaps man will rise ever higher when he no longer flows off into a god.322

320

Lwith also understands the significance of the recurrence for Nietzsches project of revaluation: From
Zarathustra on, everything further fits easily into a philosophy of the eternal recurrence as the self-overcoming
of extreme nihilism. The critique of all values so far that is contained in The Will to Power, the No to
modernity, presupposes the already gained Yes to the eternal cycle of things. Nietzsches Philosophy of the
Eternal Recurrence of the Same, 24. He does not, however, consider the teaching within the context of
Nietzsches gay science.
321
KGW V/2: 159. The Gay Science, 120.
322
KGW V/2: 208. The Gay Science, 162.

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The tension that comes from the strife of the opposites generates ever-newer
possibilities within reality. This is why there is tension within the eternal recurrencethis is
why the experiment of the recurrence has the capacity to transform and possibly crush
those who are tempted by it. Eternal recurrence has the potential to bring one to the height of
joy by bringing one to the depth of despair. Zarathustras going under is at the same time his
coming over.
Nietzsches thought of the eternal recurrence constitutes his foundation for the
critique of the moral interpretation of existence. The unification of wisdom/science and life
in this thought is crucial: ones knowledge (theory) is not used as a correction to ones life
(practice). Wisdom and life lovingly [zrtlich] join hands in an eternal dance, in the dance
of Dionysus. Life is itself a means to knowledge if one considers life as the testing ground
for hypotheses. To experiment on oneself will result in the discovery of ever-new truths,
ones that were not within our grasp because of the taboo placed on the human being. Gay
science, or the response to existence after the death of God, is the ability to question all
existenceits fundamental hypothesis, the eternal recurrence, questions (or revalues)
everything. Anything other than the total affirmation of existence, including the ugly,
monstrous, and evil parts of existence, is a form of nihilism. This means that Christianity,
and its secular offspring, idealism are nihilistic because they deny the absolute importance of
the present life in favor of the eternal life afterwards.

Chapter 4: The Critical Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy

Shortly after completing Zarathustra Nietzsche seems to change the direction of his
thinking. In his next two works, Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Genealogy of
Morality (1887), he criticizes everything from Christianity and otherworldly religions to
idealism and modern science. His critical gaze pierces to the core of Western thinking,
which he believes has succumbed to a moral interpretation of reality. Morality, good and
evil, becomes the target of his all-comprehensive critique of the Western intellectual
tradition. This stage of his thought has often been said to come at the height of his
philosophical powersit is the time when he questions most radically and most thoroughly.
Scholars breathe a sigh of relief after the ambiguous nature of Zarathustra and are glad to see
Nietzsche return to the themes of his earlier works (such as The Birth of Tragedy and
Untimely Meditations). However, there is a necessary connection between his most
ambiguous work and those that follow. Without a proper understanding of the central
teaching of Zarathustra, the eternal recurrence, the power of his critique is diminished. My
purpose in this chapter is to show how his later critical works draw the strength of their
arguments from a carefully considered positive position (i.e., his philosophy of history).

Introduction
From the late 1870s until his descent into insanity a decade later, Nietzsche lived
alone, traveling throughout the Alps. As his personal contact with friends and relatives
gradually dwindled, his correspondence with complete strangers slowly began to increase.
Men and women whom he had never met began to take an interest in the hermit Nietzsche.
178

179
His intellectual integrity and rigor impressed them; his critique of morality in earlier works
such as Daybreak and The Gay Science had piqued their curiosity. Scholars from other
countries began to seek out Nietzsche.323 This included the Danish professor Georg Brandes
and the American journalist Karl Knortz, both of whom attempted to give an outline of
Nietzsches thought. Knortz had requested Nietzsches works in early 1888 in order to write
an essay on his philosophy in English. Writing to Knortz on June 21, 1888, Nietzsche gives
him some peculiar advice when it comes to reading his works: I would almost like to advise
you to begin with the latest works, which are the most far-reaching and important ones
(Jenseits von Gut und Bse and Genealogie der Moral).324 This seems like an odd
suggestion, especially in light of the fact that in the Preface of the later work Nietzsche
tells his audience to do the opposite.325 He says that people should start with his earlier
works and wind their way toward this most recent work. Why would he contradict himself?
The most probable reason for advising Knortz to do the opposite of what is said in the
Preface to the Genealogy is that his later works deal with the same topics as his earlier
works except in greater detail and rigor. In his Attempt at Self-Criticism, which he wrote
as a second preface to The Birth of Tragedy in 1886, Nietzsche notes how he had gotten hold
of a problem with horns, not necessarily a bull, but at any rate a new problem; today I would
say that it was the problem of science itself, science grasped for the first time as something
323

I have readers everywhere else [but Germany]nothing but select intelligences and proven characters,
educated to high positions and duties; I even have real geniuses among my readers. In Vienna, in St.
Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris and New YorkI have been discovered everywhere: not,
however, in Germany, the flatlands of Europe . . . KGW VI/3: 299. Ecce Homo, 102. Although this might be
an exaggeration on Nietzsches part, his correspondence confirms that some outsiders were beginning to take an
interest in his work.
324
June 21, 1888, KGB III/5: 340 (no. 1050). Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, 299.
325
This also would appear to contradict the methodology at work in this dissertationsee the Introduction
above (footnote no. 16).

326

problematic and questionable.

180
His main problem in his first born was that of science, a

difficulty that plagued him in his later works from the History essay up to The Gay Science
(as I have already noted). However, Nietzsche says that his latest works are the most farreaching and important ones [weitgreifendsten und wichtigsten]. Also, in 1886, he notes
that The Birth of Tragedy is a first book in every bad sense of the word despite its old mans
problem [seines greisenhaften Problems].327 The problem he dealt with as a young man was
too mature for him in 1872now he is mature enough for it. It seems that Nietzsche has
turned in a circle in his writings, returning to where he first begana critique of science.
What would make Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality different from
his first works? Why does he consider them the most far-reaching and important? I
believe that both of these questions can be answered if one places the two works in the
context of Nietzsches overall developmenti.e., after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and its main
teaching, the eternal recurrence.

After Zarathustra
In the years that followed his most ambiguous work (1886-1887) it seems that
Nietzsche changes the direction of his thinking. While he was concerned with finding the
correct expression for his most abysmal thought between 1882 and 1885, he came to the
conclusion that the eternal recurrence is the highest possible formula of affirmation. The
emphasis he places on this teaching is appropriate: it is his task, for the recurrence affirms
every aspect of existence without subtraction or alteration. It is, then, the positive ground for
326
327

KGW III/1: 7. The Birth of Tragedy, 4-5. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW III/1: 7. The Birth of Tragedy, 5.

181
his attack on the Western intellectual and religious tradition, which he identifies as the root of
nihilism. His excitement over Zarathustras teaching is well founded. But, suddenly, the
eternal recurrence drops out completely from his published works. He stops talking about it
in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, instead he seems to shift his
focus to critiques of modern science, truth, and morality/religion. This begs the question:
What happened to the eternal recurrence, which seemed to be everywhere in his previous
work, Zarathustra?
Most scholars in response to this question would simply say that Nietzsche does not
have a systematic approach (like Lwith and Jaspers). Nietzsches denial of truth results in a
fragmented view of realityand this is reflected in the disorder of his aphorisms and topics
among his various publications. Evidence for this claim can be found in one of his later
works: I distrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of
integrity.328 In their interpretation of his project, the eternal recurrence drops out because
Nietzsche arbitrarily turns his attention toward criticism. However, such an interpretation is
an oversimplification of Nietzsches philosophyit is all too easy to interpret his thought in
this way. This aphorism may apply to Hegel and the all-encompassing systems of the
German Idealists (and others like them), but it does not eliminate the possibility of a
systematic approach and rigorous thinking. In reality, Nietzsche is a systematic thinker; he is
an unaphoristic writer of aphorisms. There is a specific method to the structure and ordering
of his aphorisms within the individual works; and there is a specific order to the topics he
covers among his works considered as a whole. He does not jump around from topic to topic

328

KGW VI/3: 57. Twilight of the Idols, 159.

329

at whim, but has a specific goal in mind.

182
This should indicate that Nietzsche has a

coherent view of things.

With this in mind, it can be said that the eternal recurrence is preparatory for the
project of the revaluation of all values. Acceptance of this teaching necessarily entails a
monumental shiftand the possibility of this change is prepared for by tearing down all of
the earlier values found within the Western intellectual and religious tradition. Nietzsche
writes in Ecce Homo that his task is two-fold: The task for the years that followed [18861887] was as clear as could be. After the yea-saying part of my task had been solved it was
time for the no-saying, no-doing half: the revaluation of all values so far, the great war,
summoning a day of decision.330 The affirmative, positive part of his task was that of the
articulation of the eternal recurrence; the negative part of the task comes after the ground has
been laid by his new science. For Nietzsche, then, the eternal recurrence and the revaluation
of all values go together like two sides of the same coin; once you say yes you must then
say no. Dionysus is not only eternally creative, he is also eternally destructive: One of the
preconditions of a Dionysian task is, most crucially, the hardness of a hammer, the joy even
in destruction.331 Creation of values in the eternal recurrence entails the destruction of the

329

Karl Jaspers also considers Nietzsches thought to have a specific goal and definite pattern, although it takes
a great deal of effort to understand the point of Nietzsches thinking. He goes on, though, to say that there can
only be a guiding idea in interpreting Nietzsches thinking, for it [his thinking] will always elude all attempts
at a well-ordered presentation. An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, 13. Jaspers
grasps one of the largest difficulties in interpreting Nietzsche: that Nietzsche can only be understood by
referring to both his life and thought (writings) at the same time. But doing this never results in the harmony of
the whole, in Jaspers opinion. To a certain extent Jaspers is making the same claim as Lwith in regard to the
teaching of the eternal recurrencei.e., it is self-contradictory. Nevertheless, I still claim that Nietzsche is a
systematic thinker.
330
KGW VI/3: 348. Ecce Homo, 134.
331
KGW VI/3: 347. Ecce Homo, 134.

183
old values. Nietzsche awaits the creation of new values based on the eternal recurrence after
he destroys the old values in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality.

Negative Works
The style and structure of these two works differs drastically from The Gay Science
and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Considering what he had just written, it is surprising to see
Nietzsche return with a magnifying glass to what had started his career as a writerthe
problem of science. What is even more surprising is that Beyond Good and Evil and On
the Genealogy of Morality are arguably the most similar of Nietzsches works.332 (His other
works are distinctive in their differences in style from all the rest.) These later two are
similar in three respects: they are both polemical; they are both preparatory in nature; and,
they share a similar methodology. Instead of treating these two works chronologically (as I
would have done in earlier chapters), I will consider them together since they share so much
in common. For a proper understanding of his arguments in these two works, it is necessary
to examine the polemical, preparatory, and methodological aspects of these works in more
detail.
Although he only identifies one of the two works as a Polemic (Genealogy),
Nietzsche says Beyond Good and Evil can also be considered a polemical work. This book
(1886) is in essence a critique of modernity, including modern science, modern arteven
modern politics, along with indications of an opposite type who is as un-modern as
332

In fact, as Julian Young points out, Nietzsche intended the Genealogy to be an expansion and elaboration
of Beyond Good and Evilan expression that was on the back of the title page in the first edition (no longer in
the Colli and Montinari collected works). In his correspondence with his publisher, Nietzsche also toyed with
the idea of using the catchier title of Beyond Good and Evil with Appendix: Three Essays following the
subtitle. See Youngs Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, 459.

333

possible, a noble, affirmative type.

184
In both of these works, he is on the attack especially

against modern ideas, whose roots lie within the Judeo-Christian (and Platonic) tradition.
His demolition of these ideas does not take the form of a disinterested critiqueNietzsche is
an interested party to the demise of the Western intellectual tradition. In fact, his destruction
of morality (and everything that stems from it) comes from within. He often describes his
work as the manifestation of the self-overcoming of morality, morality turning into
immorality. This is especially true in these two works, wherein he criticizes his former virtue
of intellectual integrity/honesty [Redlichkeit] and attempts to replace it with the expression
of his will.334 His description of himself as dynamite is, therefore, appropriateby his will,
he is going to implode the tradition (everything will crumble inward).
Even though the launching point for his critique of modernity is the eternal
recurrence, it remains hypothetical in nature. Of course, as I have explained in the previous
chapter, this does not dilute its significance for Nietzsches thinking as a whole. Eternal
recurrence remains the fundamental, heaviest, thought for him. Nevertheless, it is true that
both Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality must be considered
preparatory works. Nietzsche says so in regard to the latter: A psychologists three crucial
preparatory works [entscheidende Vorarbeiten] for a revaluation of all values.335 Similarly,
the first work can be considered preliminary based on the subtitle: A Prelude to the
Philosophy of the Future. His thought of the eternal recurrence is key in the preparatory
nature of these two works. Nietzsche begins to tear down the old values based on this new

333

KGW VI/3: 348. Ecce Homo, 135.

I will discuss Nietzsches rejection of this virtue in greater detail in the next chapter.
335
KGW VI/3: 351. Ecce Homo, 136.
334

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teachinghe calls Zarathustra a counter-idealin order to make room for the new values.
This may explain why he says that Beyond Good and Evil contains indications [Fingerzeige]
of the new noble type that will be responsible for forming the new tables of values. Both of
these works use the counter-ideal of Zarathustra (and his teaching) as a hypothetical basis for
the critique of modernity.
Since his goal is the destruction of the old values, it is necessary to consider
Nietzsches methodology in these two works. One must pay careful attention to the kind of
arguments he offers because he is imploding the tradition. Just as in the demolition of a
building, for this implosion to work, one must set the charges in the appropriate locations so
that nothing is left standing. (The foundation was ripped up when God died.) All that
Nietzsche has to do is place his charges on the main pillars of the tradition in order to make
them collapsethe rest of the edifice will fall immediately to the ground. His order of attack
is important: he first goes after truth (and, therewith, philosophy as a whole), then he attacks
science, and finally religion. Science includes not only modern science, which has its
foundation in the new conception of nature articulated in the works of Bacon and Descartes,
but also the tradition that stretches all the way back to Socrates and his optimism. His
critique of religion includes Judaism, Christianity, and any other religion that posits a world
beyond this one. The conception of truth is the supporting column for both science and
religion, which may explain why Nietzsche starts Beyond Good and Evil with a critique of
truth in the first section. It is for this reason that I will follow the thematic order within these
two works in the three sections that follow this one.

186
Nietzsches preferred argument within these two works is genealogical. A
genealogical argument combines three separate elements: philological, historical, and
psychological analyses of a phenomenon.336 Making use of the skills he acquired as a
philologist, Nietzsche observes the origin of moral concepts in languageand how that
language has changed based on who was using the terms. His use of philological analysis is
most evident in the first essay in the Genealogy, Good and Evil, Good and Bad, and it
ultimately enlarges into the larger circles of historical and psychological analysis. People
remain unknown to themselves because they have not sought themselvesmuch like a
genealogy functions as a source of knowledge about ones past (and, thus, allows one to
know who one is), Nietzsches use of this genre does the same. Nietzsches genealogical
arguments show how things are interconnected as forms of life that constantly flow away and
back into one another; they show that things like our moral values are not absolute, but have
specific historical, all-too-human, origins and continue to evolve (and devolve). No one
knows what good and evil are because we have taken the origin of moral concepts in a
metaphysical realm on trust; therefore, from the Socratic perspective, we do not know
ourselves.
When I came to mankind, I found them sitting on an old conceit: they all conceited to have
known for a long time what is good and evil for humanity. To them all talk of virtue
seemed an old worn out thing; and whoever wanted to sleep well even spoke about good
336

Another way to say what Nietzsche is doing in this work is expressed by James I. Porter when he says:
Nietzsches genealogy has as its primary aim to unsettle the claims of moral reason by unsettling those of
historical reason. And the latter is accomplished by illustrating how fragile any product of historical sense can
be. One need only consider what Nietzsche says in 357 of The Gay Science to see that this is true. But I
think that Porter overreads the Genealogy when he says (next): Genealogy mimics the fragility and confusion
of historical sense. It is meant to be a symptom of the modern cultural subject and of the cunning artistry of its
unconscious mechanisms. See Porters article, Theater of the Absurd: Genealogy as Cultural Critique in
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84/2 (2010): 319-320. It would seem strange for the Genealogy to
function in this way when placed in context with Beyond Good and Evil (Porter does not connect the claims
about truth and science in the latter with those in the former).

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and evil before going to bed. I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and
evil no one knows yetexcept for the creator!337
According to Zarathustras speech in On Old and New Tablets, only those who are creators
(of values) know the meaning of good and evil. One needs to examine the history of
humankind to find the origin of moral concepts because, Nietzsche believes, it is all-toohuman.
The Genealogy thus already takes aim at the tradition because Socrates and Plato
thought the study of the idea of the Good was the highest form of contemplation, which
leads men away from the earthly (and human) and toward the metaphysical. Psychology is
all-important to Nietzsches critique because of its focus on the human minds potential for
creativity and passivity. As he notes at the end of the first part of Beyond Good and Evil,
psychology must be recognized as the queen of the sciences, all the other sciences exist
and prepare for it. From now on, psychology is again the path to the fundamental
problems [Denn Psychologie ist nunmehr wieder der Weg zu den Grundproblemen].338
Now that God is dead, psychology has taken the place of metaphysics because human being
is now the highest being. Nietzsches philosophy is a philosophy of values, which means it is
essentially a psychology of the value-positing being.339 Since all values are subjective, one
must examine the human subject who posits values. The main problem shifts away from the
traditional one of the Westi.e., What is truth?to a new questionWhat is the value of
337

KGW VI/1: 242-243. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 157. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW VI/2: 33. Beyond Good and Evil, 24.
339
This is something that Eugen Fink points out: The basic equation being equals value characterizes his
[Nietzsches] philosophy. It cannot be ignored without ignoring Nietzsche on the whole. It is his basic,
operative presupposition. Perhaps all human psychology is a finite patchwork where fundamental assumptions
always remain obscure. Nietzsches Philosophy, 11. Perhaps this is why Nietzsche says that we are unknown
to ourselvesscience does not take into account its own assumptions (which are posited values) concerning the
nature of reality.
338

188
truth? or What does truth mean to me? Truth can become a problem only after its highest
manifestation is no longer livingtruth does not hold sway anymore, which may mean that
falsity is a necessary condition of all life. Nietzsches genealogical argument begins here
with truth and shows how moral concepts originate out of their opposites; thus, there are no
oppositions in valuations with any metaphysical basis.

The Value of Truth

Nietzsches opening reflection in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil sets the tone
for the development of his thought in the years 1886-1888. Suppose that truth is a
womanand why not? Arent there reasons for suspecting that all philosophers, to the
extent that they have been dogmatists, have not really understood women? That the
grotesque seriousness [schauerliche Ernst] of their approach towards the truth and the clumsy
advances they have made so far are unsuitable ways of pressing their suit with a woman?340
Truth, as is often forgotten by those in the English speaking world, is gendered in several
languages (both ancient and modern) such as Greek, Latin, French, and German [,
veritas, vrit, and Wahrheit]. Thus, Nietzsche is saying that truth has eluded thinkers in the
ancient, the medieval, and the modern world. The reason that truth has spurned
philosophers from all times is that their grotesque seriousness is not the proper approach to
a woman. Dogmatism, or the belief in the unquestionable nature of truth, is dying because
truth continually turns philosophers away. Perhaps nobody has ever been truthful enough

340

KGW VI/2: 3. Beyond Good and Evil, 3.

341

about what truthfulness is.

189
Has no one ever questioned the value of truth before and

might this not be the reason why truth constantly eludes thinkers?
The scientific seriousness that is the cornerstone of dogmatism is really built on the
ground of superstition (or assumptions, such as the value of the good, and truth). So far no
one in the West has been rigorous enough to escape this all-too-human prejudice toward
truth. Philosophers are serious when it comes to the truththere is an assumed connection
between the approach (seriousness) and the object of pursuit (truth). (It should be noted that
seriousness [Ernst] is masculine while truth [Wahrheit] is feminine in German,
something of which Nietzsche would undoubtedly be aware, and is perhaps intentional on his
part. Is the proper way to approach a woman with serious, dry demeanor or one of
playfulness?) But what if truth is a womani.e., an actor, who plays with appearances?342
What if truth is playful, hiding behind various masks, and vindictive like a woman? What if
truth is not good, but exists beyond good and evil? These are questions that Nietzsche poses
in Beyond Good and Evil. This work is really a continuation of the gay science he had
developed earlierbut it is pushed to the most extreme when all of his truths at the end of
the book are open to laughter (see 296). Everything is susceptible to mockery and parody,
even existence as a whole (including the human being, which was considered a serious thing
for the past two millennia). The correct approach to a woman, then, is not that of being
straightforward (i.e., objectivity) but one of a back and forth, paying attention to appearances

341

KGW VI/2: 103. Beyond Good and Evil, 73.

In a section of Book V of The Gay Science (in its second edition of 1887), Nietzsche talks about the
problem of the actor. At the end of the section he speaks about women: Women: consider the whole history of
womenmustnt they be actresses first and foremost? KGW V/2: 291. The Gay Science, 226.
342

343

and flourishesof a dance.

190
One assumes too much when one supposes that the way one

pursues something is the only way; dancing entails the back and forth movement of two (the
seeker and the truth) and not the movement of only one. Can everyone approach truthdo
all have the essential qualities of the truth-seeker?
Socrates was the first to make truth something boring, according to Nietzsche, by
identifying it with simplicity of speech in the Apology (see 17a-18a). His own defense before
the court in Athens is a testament to his conception of truth. Nietzsche took note of this
defense in his first born, saying that Socrates had a notion of the relation between himself
and the drive-wheel of logic in motion behind him. This relationship is articulated in the
dignified seriousness [wrdevollen Ernst] with which Socrates asserted his divine calling
before his judges. Plato took this a step further in his doctrine of the eternal, immutable
Forms. He, and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, made truth immobiletruth has
become something static that can be studied in a disinterested manner. Truth cannot dance if
her feet are not planted on the ground: Talking about the spirit and the Good like Plato did
meant standing truth on its head and disowning even perspectivism, which is the fundamental
condition of all life.344 Dogmatism demands that truth stand still so that it can be observed
under the microscope. Its seriousness and bungling efforts to seduce truth have been
exhaustedand this is the problem, spiritual, intellectual exhaustion. (Perhaps God is dead
because everyone is bored with a neutered, objective, truth?) Nietzsche is not mocking
343

Learning to think: our schools do not have any idea what this means. Even in the universities, even among
genuine philosophy scholars, logic is beginning to die out as a theory, a practice, a craft. Just look at German
books: there is not even a dim recollection of the fact that thought requires a technique, a plan of study, a will to
mastery,that thinking wants to be learned like dancing, as a type of dancing. KGW VI/3: 103. Twilight of
the Idols, 191. One should remember Nietzsches critique of scientific objectivity in 6 of the History
essay. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of this.
344
KGW VI/2: 4. Beyond Good and Evil, 4.

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dogmatism and its truth simply for the sake of mockeryhe is interested in truth (albeit not
the same boring truth of the Western tradition). New questions open up a new sea for
exploration, one that thinkers had not dared set sail on before. These questions will shatter
the entire structure of the Western intellectual tradition.
One of these questions comes at the beginning of the first part of Beyond Good and
Evil, titled On the Prejudices of Philosophers [Von den Vorurteilen der Philosophen].
Truth is often opposed to ignorance and prejudicewhy would those who profess to seek
truth be prejudiced? Philosophers are prejudiced because they have never questioned the
value of truth.345 Truth was never allowed to be a problem because it was presumed to be the
highest authority (God) in the same way that modern science is now viewed as an authority.
To call science into question, i.e., to make it a problem as Nietzsche did in The Birth of
Tragedy, entails questioning God and truth. In his latest work, Nietzsche puts things in their
correct order: he starts with truth because it is fundamental to the traditional conception of
science and religion.
What in us really wills the truth? In fact, we paused for a long time before the question of
the cause of this willuntil we finally came to a complete standstill in front of an even
more fundamental question. We ask about the value of this will. Granted, we will truth:
why not untruth instead? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of
truth came before us,or was it we who came before the problem?346

345

In the preface for Daybreak, a book whose subtitle is Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Nietzsche
writes: For as long as there has been speech and persuasion on earth, morality has shown itself to be the
greatest of all mistresses of seductionand, so far as we philosophers are concerned, the actual Circe of the
philosophers. KGW V/1: 5. Daybreak, 2. Nietzsches emphasis. In 1886, when this preface was written and
affixed to the front of the second edition of the book, Nietzsche had seen clearly the connection between
morality and truth; no philosopher before him had escaped from the moral interpretation of truth and existence;
no one was willing to question the value of truth, for it was always presupposed and existed beyond (behind) all
serious questioning.
346
KGW VI/2: 9. Beyond Good and Evil, 5. Nietzsches emphasis.

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The problem of the value of truth arises once the faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is
denied (GM III, 24). Lack of concern with or denial of Gods existence turns truth into a
problem because God was equated with truth; if God is dead, what happens to truth?
It is the greatest risk to question the value of truth. There is danger in this endeavor
because such radical questioning entails one to call into question the entire Western
intellectual project (all the way down to Socrates). Two millennia of thoughtthe moral
interpretation of existencewould be overthrown with this single question. Nietzsche is not
opposed to truth as such, but rather the prejudice that truth and morality are coextensive and
coeval. One could summarize his philosophical project in one phrase: to dislodge truth from
the confines of the moral interpretation of existence through the self-overcoming of morality
in his own work (and person).347 He wants to see what truth would be like beyond good and
evili.e., morality. Thus, he begins with a criticism of truth with good reason: Knowledge
for its own sakethis is the final snare morality has laid; with it, we become completely
entangled in morals again.348 The last temptation of morality is also the strongest since it
comes from modern science, which Nietzsche calls the most recent and noble
manifestation of the ascetic ideal.349 To remove truth from the dominion of morality,
though, necessitates the emergence of an entirely new way of thinking (and valuing)it calls
on us to revalue all values hitherto. And this poses a grave danger for the West as a whole.

347

His obvious hostility to Plato in the Preface is well founded: Plato identified the True with the Good and,
thus, engendered the greatest error in the history of the West. This may also be why Nietzsche later considers
the truth to be dangerous (even to the point of destruction): How much truth can a spirit tolerate, how much
truth is it willing to risk? This increasingly became the real measure of value for me. Error (the belief in the
ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Nitimur in vetitum: my philosophy will triumph under this sign,
because it is precisely the truth that has been absolutely forbidden so far. KGW VI/3: 257. Ecce Homo, 72.
348
KGW VI/2: 85. Beyond Good and Evil, 58.
349
KGW VI/2: 414. On the Genealogy of Morality, 116. Nietzsches emphasis.

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Such a risk in this question leads to great danger. Who would be willing to risk great
danger by questioning this radically? Certainly it would not be the metaphysicians, whose tie
to Plato and Aristotle is just as strong in the 19th century as it was in the medieval era despite
the subtlety of their reasoning.350 Nietzsche thinks that the basic belief of the metaphysicians
is the belief in the opposition of values, an unquestioned assumption (or prejudice) among
all philosophers in the Western tradition. For them, good and evil are distinct because they
have an ideal origin; but what if good and evil do not have an ideal origin, but are human, alltoo-human? It might be the case the good and evil are connected, even the same:
Perhaps!But who is willing to take charge of such a dangerous Perhaps! For this we must
await the arrival of a new breed of philosophers, ones whose taste and inclination are
somehow the reverse of those we have seen so farphilosophers of the dangerous Perhaps in
every sense.351 These new philosophers, who are not afraid of danger, are the only ones
willing to see that value is part of human creativityvalues are not absolute and given from
above.
Nietzsches anticipation of the new philosophers goes hand in hand with his view of
Dionysus as a divine philosopher. One of the sure signs of these new philosophers will be
their capacity for golden laughter [goldnes Gelchter], a superhuman way of laughing at
the expense of everything serious.352 Laughter is of course fundamental to the gay
science that Nietzsche had proposed earlier. It is a mockery of all that had been held taboo
350

Morality has always been the fuel for the fire of intellectual activity in the West, from Plato all the way to
Schopenhauer: I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of
faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral
(or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has
always grown. KGW VI/2: 13-14. Beyond Good and Evil, 8.
351
KGW VI/2: 11. Beyond Good and Evil, 6.
352
KGW VI/2: 246. Beyond Good and Evil, 175. Nietzsches emphasis.

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(the human being and God) through philosophical seriousness. Real questions and problems
have not even been posed yet, according to Nietzsche. After surveying the inland sea of
ideals, and taking them to their logical conclusion, the new explorers, these future
philosophers, want a new seriousness. They demand the great seriousness [der groe Ernst]
because the real question mark is posed for the first time, the destiny of the soul changes,
the hand of the clock moves forward; the tragedy begins when the old values fall away.353
All of this indicates that Nietzsche is concerned with truth, for these philosophers will
question and doubt more radically than any other thinker has so far. They question because
they want to find truth (or truths). Laughter is the most effective argument against what
was previously held to be serious; it prepares the ground for a new seriousness when real
questions are asked for the first time.
But will these new philosophers not also be prejudiced in the same way that past
philosophers were? No, for the simple reason that prejudice is dependent on moral
valuationand these new philosophers will be beyond good and evil. One can speak of the
past philosophers as being prejudiced because they were always biased toward morality.
More often than not, these older philosophers based their rationalizations on some old
superstition and tried to pass it off as though it were calm and cool reasoninga truth for
everyone. For the most part, they are sly spokesmen for prejudices that they christen as
truths.354 The new philosophers, on the other hand, will be the great experimenters and
tempters [Versucher]; they will risk danger by setting sail again on open seas in order to
circumnavigate the soul. In fact, the new philosophers will be the psychologists par
353
354

KGW V/2: 319. The Gay Science, 247.

KGW VI/2: 13. Beyond Good and Evil, 8.

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excellence, for they will be condemned to invention [erfinden] and perhaps to discovery
[finden].355 The denial of the soul-hypothesis may lead to new perspectives on the nature of
human being and perhaps discovery of the greater depths in the human psyche.
All of what Nietzsche promises his audience here is only possible if the True and the
Good are dissociated. Platos identification of the two has denied perspectivism, which
Nietzsche believes is a basic condition of all life. Perhaps falsehood, and not truth, is a
necessary precondition of life. The falsity of judgments does not count then as objections
against themit might be the case that such judgments are necessarily preservative of a
certain kind of life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life: this clearly means
resisting the usual value feelings in a dangerous manner; and a philosophy that risks such a
thing would by that gesture alone place itself beyond good and evil.356 The false might be
identified with the good because it is what preserves lifeconversely, the true might be what
is actually harmful to us. Prejudice toward the truth as good has prevented us from seeing
that this might be the case. Nietzsches criticism of judgments here paves the way for his
criticism of science, which is based on the philosophical conception of truth. Although most
positivist scientists would object to this, Nietzsche recognizes that science is really dependent
on a certain conception of truth: It is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in
science reststhat even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our
fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year old faith, the Christian faith which was also
Platos faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.357 After he sets about dissociating truth

355

KGW VI/2: 21. Beyond Good and Evil, 15.

KGW VI/2: 12. Beyond Good and Evil, 7.
357
KGW V/2: 259. The Gay Science, 201.
356

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from the good, he turns his gaze toward science, which he had turned into a problem in his
firstborn, The Birth of Tragedy.

The Problem of Science358

As Nietzsche has insisted, the ascetic ideal (morality, life negation) lies at the bottom
of every philosophy so far. He also thinks that science is the most recent and noble
manifestation of this ascetic idealthus, it remains chained to the moral conception of
truth. Modern science is dependent on a specific kind of truth that is derived from
Descartess subjective turn in philosophy in the early 17th century, which limited the scope
of truth to the certainty of the thinking human subject. No matter how hard modern science
may try to escape its roots through positivism, it remains true that all the sciences are
dependent on this conception of truth. In a certain respect, modern science is the heir of the
Socratic optimism that Nietzsche identified as the murderer of ancient Greek tragedy (as
Nietzsche outlines it in The Birth of Tragedysee Chapter 1). The world can be altered and
changed according to the dictates and standards imposed on it by reason (in this sense, then,
the mastery of nature is Socratism brought to its logical conclusion). The original problem
with which Nietzsche began his publishing career returns here after he finishes his critique of

358

Babette Babich clarifies what Nietzsche means by the problem of science nicely: Nietzsches
philosophical critique of scientific reason puts the critical rationality of science in question. Thus Nietzsche
means to pose the question of science as a critical problem rather than as a patent or resolvable problem. This
critical project involves the articulation of the problem of science as such, which means that Nietzsche adverts
to the prime difficulty of putting science in question as the difficulty of questioning what is ordinarily
unquestionable. Indeed, science as authority and as method is the means of critique or critical questioning.
For this reason, Nietzsche regards raising the problem of science itself . . . as a problem, as questionable (BT
Self-Criticism 2), as a task to be accomplished over time, not merely as a point to be made or a problem to be
remedied. Nietzsches Critique of Scientific Reason and Scientific Culture, 140. Babichs emphasis. As
should be clear by now, Nietzsches entire career revolves around this one questionhis questioning of science
remains with him from his first to last publications.

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truthand it comes back with devastating force now that he has put things in their proper
order.
There is something odd about Nietzsches critique of science in both Beyond Good
and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality. Kant is quite often the target of Nietzsches
criticism, something to which modern scientists in both the 19th and 20th centuries would
immediately object. (Such scientists insist on the necessary independence of science from
the earlier domination of metaphysics.) However, this makes sense after one examines
passages from The Birth of Tragedy, wherein Nietzsche identifies Kant as one of the thinkers
who tried to limit the scope of science.
The hardest-fought victory of all was won by the enormous courage and wisdom of Kant
and Schopenhauer, a victory over the optimism which lies hidden in the nature of logic
and which in turn is the hidden foundation of our culture. Whereas this optimism once
believed in our ability to grasp and solve, with the help of the seemingly reliable aeternae
veritates, all the puzzles of the universe, and treated space, time, and causality as entirely
unconditional laws of the most general validity, Kant showed that these things actually
only served to raise mere appearance, the work of maya, to the status of the sole and
supreme reality and to put this in the place of the innermost and true essence of things,
thereby making it impossible really to understand this essenceputting the dreamer even
more deeply to sleep, as Schopenhauer put it.359
Under the spell of the neo-Kantian Friedrich Lange, Nietzsche understood Kant to be
someone whose primary interest was in the boundaries of scientific knowledge. For the
young Nietzsche, Kant was primarily a theoretician, who opened the doors for a new way of
understandinga tragic understanding. According to the passage above, he viewed Kant as
the one who showed that causality was the result of synthetic a priori judgments that the
mind is forced to make. These are the same kinds of judgments that Nietzsche attacks so

359

KGW III/1: 114. The Birth of Tragedy, 87.

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vigorously in the first part of Beyond Good and Evil. What has made Nietzsche change his
opinion of Kant in the meantime?
Although there has been much recent debate concerning whether or not Nietzsche had
actually read Kant, there are indications within the works of the 1880s that he had a good
grasp on his predecessors philosophical project as a whole. (It would have been highly
unlikely for someone with Nietzsches educational background in the mid-1800s not to have
read some Kant or been instructed in his philosophy.) A little after the time of his
permanent departure from the University of Basel Nietzsches opinion of Kant changes. We
can see evidence of this in The Gay Science: Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would
dumbfound the whole world, that the whole world was right: that was the secret joke of his
soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of popular prejudice [Volks-Vorurteil], but for
scholars and not for people.360 According to the older Nietzsche, Kant is a backdoor
moralist who, instead of bringing scientific optimism to an end, has merely used language to
preserve the common peoples prejudice. Eventually Nietzsche came to realize that Kants
project was merely an extension and refinement of the scientific/moral worldview that was
inaugurated by Socrates (and Plato), complete with the belief in the true world.361 Instead
of drawing the curtain on scientific optimism, Kant merely made it possible under more
rigorous (and less nave) conditions. Let us see how this plays out in Nietzsches critique of
causality.

360

KGW V/2: 182. The Gay Science, 140.

This is confirmed by Nietzsches inclusion of Kant within a section of Twilight of the Idols titled How the
True World Finally Became a Fable: The true world, unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable, but the very
thought of it a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (Basically the old sun but through fog and skepticism;
the idea become elusive, pale, Nordic, Knigsbergian.) KGW VI/3: 74. Twilight of the Idols, 171.
361

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Nietzsches assault on modern science begins with its most prominent root in Kants
critical philosophysynthetic a priori judgments, which are essential to the ordering of the
natural world according to the rules of cause and effect. According to Nietzsche, judgments
concerning cause and effect are only necessary from the perspective of life: Such judgments
[synthetic a priori judgments] must be believed true for the purpose of preserving beings of
our type; which is why these judgments could of course still be false! Or, to be blunt, basic
and clearer still: synthetic judgments a priori do not have to be possible at all: we have no
right to them, and in our mouths, they are nothing but false judgments.362 Judgments a
priori do not necessarily need to be true, as Kant thought, because one only needs to believe
them to be true in order for them to be effective. This does not mean that they need to be
rejected (see 4 of Beyond Good and Evil)life can only be sustained through these errors.
Science, which is dependent on the validity of the causal relation, must be operating based on
a false assumption. Perhaps the causal relation has no validity but is, nevertheless, useful for
the maintenance of a specific kind of lifehuman life.363 By posing such a question,
Nietzsche is attempting to show how it might be possible that the good (preservation of life)
need not be identified with the true; in other words, falsity might be a condition for life.
To renounce these kinds of judgments for the reason that they may be false would
necessarily entail the degeneration and stagnation of life, according to Nietzsche. (Our
knowledge needs to serve life, not vice-versahe retains this view from his History
essay.) Such judgments belong to the perspectival optics of life [Perspektiven-Optik des
Lebens]: from the perspective of life, these judgments are absolutely necessary. But this
362

KGW VI/2: 19-20. Beyond Good and Evil, 13.

Ultimately, according to Nietzsche, science cannot be rejected (as I argued in the previous chapter). Science
needs to be transformed into a kind of art, gay science, that deals in affirmative/productive illusions.
363

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does not mean that they must be true. Thus, scientific optimism, which is the noblest form of
the ascetic ideal, is blind to the coreit demands truth as a panacea to the ills of life, but it
does not recognize that it is already based on the presupposition that truth is good. What if it
is not good? Its virtue is one that makes life small. The conservative power of science and
morality stems from its stubborn insistence on the truth of the causal relation. Science, then,
is an automatic reflex to the environment within which certain humans find themselves.
The ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of a degenerating life
which uses every means to maintain itself and struggles for its existence . . . The ascetic ideal
is one such method: the situation is therefore the precise opposite of what the worshippers of
this ideal imagine,in it and through it, life struggles with death and against death, the
ascetic ideal is a trick for the preservation of life.364 So, it is not as though Nietzsche denies
the significance of science and morality (a non-Dionysian art, as he calls it in The Birth of
Tragedy) in the conservation of life, but he does note that it is not the only possibility. And it
might be the case that the ascetic ideal of science and morality results in the current problem
of nihilism in Europe.
With good reason, then, Nietzsche attacks Kants insistence on the validity of
synthetic a priori judgments in the Critique of Pure Reason. He realized what was at stake in
the Kantian, critical project: the entire purpose of rescuing these kinds of judgments was to
protect the domain of morality and religion from the assault of David Humes skeptical
philosophy in which the causal relation was a matter of custom. If custom is the basis for our
positing of causes and effects, then there is no objective, universal ground for morality.

364

KGW VI/2: 384. On the Genealogy of Morality, 93. Nietzsches emphasis.

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Kants interest in morality and religion is clear when one considers the works that he
published in the interim between the first and second Critique (1781 and 1788): Grounding
for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and What is Orientation in Thinking? (1786) to
name only two of the more important (and one of the most overlooked).
Why did the world of German scholars, three-quarters of whom are pastors and teachers
sons go into such fits of delight at the appearance of Kant, why were Germans so
convinced (you can still find echoes of this conviction) that Kant marked a change for the
better? The theological instinct of the German scholar had guessed just what was possible
again . . . A hidden path to the old ideal lay open; the concept of a true world, the
concept of morality as the essence of the world (the two most vicious errors in
existence!) were once again (thanks to an exceedingly canny skepticism), if not provable,
then at least no longer refutable . . .365
The root of Kants project is the preservation of the domain of morality in the possibility of
freedom as it might exist in the noumenal world. Members of the Tbingen Stift
(Schelling, Hegel, and Hlderlin) recognized this, which is why the Kantian conception of
freedom is the foundation for German Idealism. By positing the thing in itself, Kant saves
causality for the sake of morality/science.
The purpose of Kants distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds
was to preserve the insights of both morality and science (faith and reason). Writing of his
overall purpose in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, he notes:
I have . . . found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.366
Knowledge that purports to be of that which is not an object of experiencethe
unconditionedmust be criticized because of the possible threat it poses to morality/faith.
Pure reason generates inevitable antinomies whenever it tries to grasp ideas such as freedom,
365

KGW VI/3: 174. The Antichrist, 9. Nietzsches emphasis.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003), 29. Kants emphasis.
366

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the soul, and God. Kant limited the scope of the possible application of the pure categories
of the understanding to experience and, therefore, saved both knowledge and faith from
destroying one another. He is the modern Plato since he was able to prevent the world of
ideas from being reduced to the world of physical phenomena by dividing noumena from
phenomena. (One could think of the phenomenal world as the domain proper to science
while the noumenal world was the world of freedom.) Science and faith could be courteous
to one another thanks to Kant since their domains had been properly delimited; however,
their pre-established harmony gradually turned into open hostility on the part of science
when truth was confined to the limits of scientific reason. God was dead because the demand
for truthfulness at all costs killed Him.
Soon afterwards science forgot its own origins in morality and religion while it busied
itself with the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake. Its self-forgetfulness is a sign to
Nietzsche that it has forgotten its purpose (as it was instituted by its founder, Socrates). In
reality, modern science still works within the framework established by the predominating
morality of good and evil (the ascetic ideal): This modern science is, for the time being,
the best ally for the ascetic ideal, for the simple reason that it is the most unconscious,
involuntary, secret and subterranean!367 Modern science still believes in the unconditional
value of truth and is, therefore, incapable of creating its own valuesthis is why Nietzsche
wanted to push science beyond the limits prescribed by the moral conception of truth in gay
science. For Nietzsche, wherever science does not have a goal (as it once did in the
Platonic/Christian conception) or a passion of great faith [eine Leidenschaft des grossen

367

KGW VI/2: 421. On the Genealogy of Morality, 121. Emphasis added.

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Glaubens], it is a hiding place for all kinds of ill-humor, unbelief, nagging worms, despectio
sui, bad conscienceit is the disquiet of lack of ideals itself, the suffering from a lack of
great love, the discontent over enforced contentment.368 Science has been reduced to a
mechanical activitysomething that Nietzsche took note of earlier in 7 of the History
essay. It remains ascetic even if the goal (Truth or God) is lacking.
Although modern science insists on its independence from philosophy, it is confined
to the limits of the Cartesian conception of truth (as I noted earlier in this chapter). For this
reason, it remains a specific kind of morality because it seeks to correct existence through
reason and technological innovation.369 Since modern science still requires one to posit
causes and effects (or subjects and deeds), it follows the same pattern as earlier conceptions
of science in Nietzsches view. Modern scientists, then, are no different from the common
people when it comes to the explanation of phenomena: Basically the common people
double a deed; when they see lightning, they make a doing-a-deed out of it: they posit the
same event, first as cause and then as its effect. The scientists do no better when they say
force moves, force causes and such like.370 In order for science to be effective it must
examine the phenomena and search for causesit presupposes the necessary connection
between causes and effects. Kant had done the world of science a favor by positing subjects,

368

KGW VI/2: 415. On the Genealogy of Morality, 117. Nietzsches emphasis.

This was a point that Nietzsche made earlier in The Birth of Tragedy, especially when it comes to the recent
innovation of machines in the 19th century. The optimism of theoretical man fights against Dionysiac wisdom
and art; it strives to dissolve myth; it puts in the place of metaphysical solace a form of earthly harmony, indeed
its very own deus ex machina, namely the god of machines and smelting furnaces, i.e., the energies of the spirits
of nature, understood and applied in the service of a higher egotism; it believes in correcting the world through
knowledge, in life led by science; and it is truly capable of confining the individual within the smallest circle of
solvable tasks, in the midst of which he cheerfully says to life: I will you: you are worth understanding.
KGW III/1: 111. The Birth of Tragedy, 85. The ascetic tendency of modern science is already touched on in
this passage from his earliest published work.
370
KGW VI/2: 293. On the Genealogy of Morality, 28.
369

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things-in-themselves, because then science could continue its hunt for causes. What the
scientific community of the 19th century did not recognize, though, is that Kants purpose
was to save the possibility of freedom from the pervading spread of determinism. And by
saving morality/faith, he unwittingly saved science.
Nietzsches critique of science (via his scathing criticism of Kant) is at the same time
a critique of morality since modern science is the most recent and noble manifestation of
the ascetic ideal. Despite all of its postures of independence from both philosophy and
religion, the older forms which the ascetic ideal assumed, it remains tied to the ascetic ideal:
Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation . . . that is to
say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be
assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies,so that, if they must be
fought, they can only be fought and called into question together.371 According to what
Nietzsche says here, the criticism of science necessarily entails the criticism of morality (and
religion). The refusal to question the value of truth is what unites these now antagonistic
positionshowever, they are really on the same footing. Nietzsches willingness to call into
question one of these spheres naturally entails the criticism of the other. After his critique of
science, religion will inevitably come crashing to the ground. The two are tied together in
the idea of the moral Godit is only this God that Nietzsche says is dead, i.e., He has
become untenable (He does not stand to reason), because he cannot disprove the God of
revelation. So Nietzsches critique of religion, which I will discuss next, is a critique of
natural theology with its identification of God with the Platonic Good.

371

KGW VI/2: 420. On the Genealogy of Morality, 120-121. Nietzsches emphasis.

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Nietzsches Critique of Religion
Nietzsche continues his devastating criticism of the Western tradition by turning to
look at religion/morality. These areas are also entangled within the nets of truththis is
especially true of Christianity, a religion that identifies the God of revelation with the God of
philosophy in the grand medieval synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas. The fusion of science
and religion/morality results in a limitation of the amount of questions that can be asked:
some questions are simply taboo (such as Nietzsches question at the beginning of Beyond
Good and Evil). Science, therefore, suffers from the influence of morality; but the same is
true for religion. Morality and religion can be exhaustively accounted for by the psychology
of error: in every single case, cause and effect are confused; or truth is confused with the
effects of believing that something is true; or a state of consciousness is confused with its
causes.372 Sciences insistence on finding causes and linking them with effects certainly has
a negative effect on the way in which we think about the divine. God is reduced to the causa
sui, a completely impersonal being that takes no interest in human affairs. With the
Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, God simply becomes a constant, a
stopgap, within a long equation. It reaches the point of crisis in the 19th century when God
no longer matters at all to the idlers in the marketplace (as portrayed in 125 of The Gay
Science).
Not only is the synthesis of science and morality problematic, but also the fusion of
morality and religion is ultimately destructive. The glue that holds science, religion, and
morality together is the concept of truth. As Nietzsche notes in Book V of The Gay Science,

372

KGW VI/3: 89. Twilight of the Idols, 181. Nietzsches emphasis.

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which was attached to the end of the second edition in 1887, morality destroyed belief in the
divine because it demanded truth above everything else:
One can see what it was that actually triumphed over the Christian god: Christian morality
itself, the concept of truthfulness that was taken ever more rigorously; the father
confessors refinement of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated into a
scientific conscience, into intellectual cleanliness at any price. Looking at nature as if it
were proof of the goodness and care of a god; interpreting history in honor of some divine
reason, as a continual testimony of a moral world order and ultimate moral purposes;
interpreting ones own experiences as a pious people have long interpreted theirs, as if
everything were providential, a hint, designed and ordained for the sake of the salvation of
the soulthat is over now; that has conscience against it; every refined conscience
considers it to be indecent, dishonest, a form of mendacity, effeminacy, weakness,
cowardice.373
The moral interpretation of truth has developed to a point where the belief in an omnipotent
and good God has become unbelievable. Morality (truth) ultimately undermines itself
Nietzsches existence as the first immoralist is the last step in the evolution of morality.
Morality finally draws its own conclusion against itself and destroys itself therebyit is,
therefore, nihilistic. Its demand for truthfulness at all costs paves the way for moralitys
destruction because, in the end, it will have to put itself into question. When it does, it will
see that its foundations are not solidthey are based in presuppositions. In other words, the
moral interpretation of truth is suicidal, the moral God is destroyed by his own pity for
humankind.
The alignment of God and Truth, which occurs in the Christian faith (and also
Platos), leads to the current state of nihilism. It does not allow anything else to claim to be
the origin of truth: Christian morality is a command; it has a transcendent origin; it is
beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth,it stands or

373

KGW V/2: 282. The Gay Science, 219. Emphasis added.

374

falls along with belief in God.

207
Since it is a monotheistic religion, Christianity claims that

its God is Truth; this means that there can be no other origin of truth. Within the Christian
conception, its morality is right (or good) and everything that diverges from it wrong (or
evil). If God exists and is Truth, then the Christians are correct in their assessment; this is the
presupposition on which all of their conclusions (their theology) depend. It, therefore, does
not recognize various moralities as viableanything that falls outside of the scope of the
prescribed morality is immoral (and false). But was it always the case that morality was
identified with a specific notion of truth, i.e., God as Truth?
Nietzsche believes that it was not always the case that morality was dependent on the
One Truth. In fact, at any given time in the ancient pagan world of Greece and Rome, there
were several competing moralities looking for ascendancy. Christianity came along and
subverted this original relationship in which truth and morality were not related in a dogmatic
fashion. Pilates incomprehension of Jesus answer to his question and his own response to
Jesus (What is truth?) are indicative of the pagan conception of things. Likewise,
Zarathustra distinguishes truth and goodness: Thisit turns outis my waywhere is
yours?That is how I answered those who asked me the way. The way after allit does
not exist!375 There are several waysthere is no one right way. To posit the way proposed
by Christianity as the only right way is a prejudice. What if truth and the good are not the
same, as the ancient pagans understood it?
First, though, one must ask how Christianity came to offer the dominant interpretation
of the good as the true (moral interpretation of existence). In the third part of Beyond Good
374
375

KGW VI/3: 108. Twilight of the Idols, 194.

KGW VI/1: 241. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 156. Nietzsches emphasis.

208
and Evil, The religious character, Nietzsche describes how the priests of Christianity
devoted themselves to the preservation of the weak and sick. The priests wanted to return to
power after their supposed service to the lowly of spirit, and that in good conscience;
therefore, they had to stand all valuations on their head so that unworldly, unsensuous,
and higher man finally melted together into a single feeling.376 Christianity had to reverse
the definitions of what had originally constituted the higher, better man to suit its own
outlookit had to revalue all previous values. One need only examine Jesus Sermon on
the Mount and compare it with Aristotles magnanimous man in Book IV of the
Nicomachean Ethics to get an idea of the difference between the exemplars in the Christian
perspective and the exemplars in the ancient pagan view. Virtue was once the strength and
power of the human being; with the advent of Christianity, virtue degenerated into something
evilpride is the first sin. For Christianity to have effected such a monumental change in
values required that a set of values had already existed; these values then had to be
reconfigured based on the demands of the priests in Nietzsches interpretation. Essentially
the triumph of Christianity consists in its reversal of values through the negative power of
resentment.
The moral interpretation of truth (in which God is Truth) has come to dominate over
other possible interpretations. Different tables of values existed in the ancient world (and
continue to exist today): There is a master morality and a slave morality;I will
immediately add that in all higher and more mixed cultures attempts to negotiate between
these moralities appear, although more frequently the two are confused and there are mutual

376

KGW VI/2: 80. Beyond Good and Evil, 56. Nietzsches emphasis.

misunderstandings.

377

209
These are the two main kinds of morality that can exist anywhere

and at any time, according to Nietzsche. Master morality is ontologically prior to slave
morality because it is creative. Slave morality is reactive and can only create values through
the reversal of pre-established valuations. The original values that can be found in society
are those that come from an overflowing abundance of vitality and power: masters evaluate
people as either good (noble, rare, well-born, virtuous) or bad (vulgar, common, ill-born,
vicious). Master morality, then, creates values based on the strength or weakness of various
persons; ancient Greek and Roman aristocrats had a feeling of power that discharged of itself
sometimes destroying the weakerhowever, their destruction was not done in malice.378
Those who are weaker, which makes up the majority of people, are the bad, vulgar, or
common. It is important to note that the master morality not only affirms its own existence
but also the existence of another type of morality as necessary.
Nietzsche believes that slave morality is parasitic on the master morality because it is
not naturally creativeits power derives from its reactivity. Existing alongside the master
morality, it draws its lifeblood from it. As long as the slaves are kept in their place, the two
moralities are able to coexist; it is certainly not the case that the masters want to do away
with the slaves otherwise their own existence is threatened. Problems arise, however, when
the slaves try their hand at creativity. It is important to note that Nietzsche believes that the

377

KGW VI/2: 218. Beyond Good and Evil, 153. Nietzsches emphasis.
The essential feature of a good, healthy aristocracy is that it does not feel that it is a function (whether of
the kingdom or of the community) but instead feels itself to be the meaning and highest justification (of the
kingdom or community),and, consequently, that it accepts in good conscience the sacrifice of countless
people who have to be pushed down and shrunk into incomplete human beings, into slaves, into tools, all for the
sake of the aristocracy. KGW VI/2: 216. Beyond Good and Evil, 152. Nietzsches emphasis.
378

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slave revolt in morality begins with the Jews.

210
The Jewish people, with their insistence on

the One God (Yahweh), brought about a tremendous change in the relation between the two
moralities. Instead of accepting the coexistence of the two moralities, the Jews align truth
with their God, which makes all other gods (and moralities) false. This movement is
continued and expanded through the rise of Christianity (see 24 of The Antichrist), and its
priest par excellence, Paul. Pauls desire for power is that of a priest over a herd. His
genius is predicated on the ability to reverse the original values: slave morality takes what
was originally good in the perspective of the master morality and turns it into evil; what
was originally bad has become good in this reversal.380 Since slave morality is the only
true one, every other morality must perish; it, therefore, undermines itself because the
original valuation of the masters is the ground for slave morality. Properly speaking,
according to Nietzsche, this is the condition of nihilism.
In Nietzsches psychological analysis, the slaves have convinced themselves that the
happiness of the nobility is not real, rather it is the appearance of happiness. For the slaves,
whatever protects and secures the survival of the herd is that which is good. The concept of
the common good, which has been handed down from Christianity, informs modern moral
theories like utilitarianism and deontological ethics. Themes that were once prominent parts
of Christianity have remained in these modern moral theories: selflessness, love of neighbor,
pity, and truthfulness, for example. Since these theories are derivatives of Christianity, they
too are nihilistic. The morality of pity is self-defeating, as Nietzsche notes in the Preface
to On the Genealogy of Morality: I understood the morality of pity, casting around ever
379
380

KGW VI/2: 119. Beyond Good and Evil, 84. Nietzsches emphasis.
See the next chapter for a discussion of Nietzsches criticism of Pauline Christianity.

211
wider to catch even philosophers and make them ill, as the most uncanny symptom of our
European culture which has itself become uncanny, as its detour to a new Buddhism? to a
new Euro-Buddhism? tonihilism?381 The newest expressions of slave morality, the
morality of pity, are leading down a dark paththe path of nihilism, the will to nothingness,
which is the child of sympathy with man and nausea of him.382 Nietzsches proposed remedy
for this now rampant disease is the revaluation of values as it is based in his teaching of the
eternal recurrence.

Freedom: Beyond Morality?

Nietzsches critique of religion must also include a criticism of freedom. This is
because of the identification of freedom and truth in the Gospel of John, the Evangelist
whom many German Idealists regarded as a Platonist. The following quote from John 8:32 is
of particular interest, wherein Jesus is speaking to a larger Jewish audience: If you remain in
my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free. Within the Christian mind, the identification of truth and freedom is natural
because Jesus had identified the Truth (i.e., God) with the highest freedom. Nietzsches
rejection of a Platonic conception of truth necessarily entails the repudiation of this
conception of freedom that goes along with it. The sharpest edge of Nietzsches critique is
381

KGW VI/2: 264. On the Genealogy of Morality, 7.

Peter Sedgwick captures the Christian sense of worthlessness that arises from the sense of the vanity of all
human endeavors: We are faced with a humanity that exists in a state of eternal guilt where the punishment
itself is never equal to the crime, where the debt can never be annulled. The Christian concept of God becomes
in this way susceptible to being interpreted as symptomatic of the dominance of a desire to feel worthless. This
desire engenders inactivity and the values that emanate from it reflect this by placing the highest value on
passivity and self-abnegation. Christian morality is in this way rendered an expression of the human capacity to
suffer from itself transformed into its guiding purpose. From his article, Violence, Economy and
Temporality. Plotting the Political Terrain of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche-Studien 34 (2005): 176.
382

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again leveled against Kant and his moral theology that had taken firm root in Protestant
seminaries throughout Germany. Since morality was grounded in the autonomous rational
subject, i.e., in freedom, Nietzsches overcoming of morality necessitates an overcoming of
freedom in its most recent, Kantian formulation. This also entails the disintegration of the
all-comprehensive systems of the German Idealists (especially Hegel), who grounded their
program in the concept of freedom.
The practical/moral system that had replaced the speculative system undermines its
own foundation in freedom, according to Nietzsche. Although God and immortality remain
necessary postulates of practical reason, according to Kant, freedom forms the foundation for
his system. He makes this clear in the section the Canon of Pure Reason in the Critique of
Pure Reason (1781) and also in his writings on religion and the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788). However, Nietzsche asks, if the freedom of the rational subject is the ground for this
system, and we are capable of acting on our own because we are capable of thinking for
ourselves without the authority of God, why do we need to postulate God? This is the
question to which one is inevitably drawn and explains much about the event of the death of
God. Since freedom is essentially connected to truth, one must say that not only did mans
pursuit of truth at all costs kill God, but also the evolution of the concept of freedom. Kants
development of the concept of freedomdifferentiating negative freedom from positive, true
freedomis a necessary step in the self-overcoming of morality. Nietzsche will go on to say
that Gods death results in true human freedom for the creation of new values. Even though
he considers Kant to have advanced the concept of freedom, he still considers Kants

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thoughts on freedom to be intrinsically linked to the slave morality because freedom is still
attached to morality and is not the freedom of creation (and destruction).
Freedom is something that is believed to be an essential component of the human
beingeveryone has freedom of will, according to the slaves. This belief derives from the
slaves evaluation of actions (and not people). For the slave in Nietzsches view, actions are
good or evil, and these actions are then traced back to their causesgood men or evil men.
Causality is absolutely necessary in order for slave morality to work at all because one must
first posit the efficacy of the will. It is also true that one needs to posit the subject (an I or
the soul) in order for slave morality to be consistent. The reason the subject (or, as we
more colloquially say, the soul) has been, until now, the best doctrine on earth, is perhaps
because it facilitated that sublime self-deception whereby the majority of the dying, the weak
and the oppressed of every kind could construe weakness itself as freedom, and their
particular mode of existence as an accomplishment.383 Not only is the base man able to act
in such a way that is good, but also he is able to blame the evil man for his actions. Praise
and blame only make sense within the logic of freedomone cannot blame someone for
behaving in a certain way if that person was constrained to do so by an external force
(Nicomachean Ethics, 1109b30-1111b). Since the evil man has control over his actions, so
reasons the slave, he can be praised or blamed for them; conversely, since the slave has the
power over his actions, he can be praised or blamed for them. The distinction between an
acting subject and his or her actions is necessary for punishment (whether in the present life
or, more gruesomely according to Nietzsche, in the after life).

383

KGW VI/2: 294-295. On the Genealogy of Morality, 29. Nietzsches emphasis.

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As Nietzsches genealogical argument attempts to show, the current valuations of
good and evil, which are key components of the Western religious tradition, do not in
fact derive from some hidden, metaphysical basis. Values themselves are posited by
subjectsit is, therefore, nonsense to speak about absolute distinctions between values or
objective values. Thus, values such as good and bad or good and evil are products
of human creativity (either positive or negative); they are not commands from the realm of
the divine. His survey of history and ancient texts illustrates the fluidity of these concepts:
there were huge changes in what was considered to be good and evil from the ancient,
medieval, and modern time periods. But will there not be a similar transfiguration of values
after the people take to heart the madmans cry, God is dead? Nietzsches madman does
say: There was never a greater deedand whoever is born after us will on account of this
deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!384 Convulsions will shake
Europe to its core and there will be a day of decision when men will have to revaluate the
current values, or perish. But this day is still very distant as Nietzsche notes several times
throughout the late 1880s.
Morality, the insistence on truthfulness at all costs, in Nietzsches understanding is
ultimately responsible for the death of God, i.e., Truth. Religion is suffocated by
truth/morality. This explains why the madman accuses everyone of murdering God: We
have killed himyou and I! Everyone is guilty of this crime because they all exist within
the framework of Platos identification of truth with goodness. Nietzsches critique of
morality takes the form of the survey of the history of the self-overcoming of morality.

384

KGW V/2: 159. The Gay Science, 120.

215
Christianity as a dogma (Gods existence) was destroyed by Christianity as morality (the
Good is identical with the True); soon the same thing will happen with Christianity as
morality. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after another, it will finally
draw the strongest conclusion, that against itself; this will, however, happen when it asks
itself, What does all will to truth mean?385 (This is Nietzsches own question at the
beginning of Beyond Good and Evil.) Nietzsche, then, stands at the end of this history and at
the threshold of a new history. Thus, the history of the West is the same thing as the
development and gradual expansion of nihilism. Nietzsches arrival spells the end of this
history and prepares the way for the new philosophers who will create a new table of
valuesvalues that affirm life, values that are founded on the teaching of the eternal
recurrence. His time (since he was born posthumously) lies in the future.
But what does this mean for freedom since Nietzsche identifies freedom with creation
(and destruction)? Once the moral God has died, there is the question of freedom and
necessity. If the ground for morality has been uprooted, the distinction between freedom and
necessity no longer holds. Nietzsche must mean something different when he speaks of
freedom in a positive way. Freedom could only mean creation and destructionit could not
signify the traditional moral conception. In other words, the eternal recurrence allows for the
freedom of the will as creative and destructive. Martin Heidegger notes: The question of
freedom, and hence of necessity too and of the relation between these two, is posed anew by
the teaching of the eternal return of the same. For that reason we go astray when we reverse
matters and try to cram the doctrine of return into some long-ossified schema of the question

385

KGW VI/2: 428. On the Genealogy of Morality, 127. Nietzsches emphasis.

386

of freedom.

216
Since the teaching of the eternal recurrence is foundational, it transforms all

of the old, rigid distinctions in the philosophical tradition. To attempt to understand the
teaching of the eternal recurrence in terms of the traditional conceptions of freedom and
necessity results in a confused interpretation of it, an interpretation in which the cosmological
and anthropological aspects necessarily contradict one another. But this is to put things
backwards.

Nihilism and Eternal Recurrence

Nietzsches critique of morality touches on the very foundation of the Western
intellectual tradition, stretching all the way from Socrates and Plato up to the German
Idealists and (in his view) even Schopenhauer. Everyone in between these philosophers is
merely a stage in the development of the history of morality (i.e., nihilism).387 Nietzsches
own arrival signals the demise of the identification of the Good with the Truewithin his
work (and person), morality is overcome (this is why he is as dangerous as dynamite). He
believes that the longest error in Western history, the belief in God and the true world, is
now drawing to a close and there is the possibility for a new understanding of existence.
Nihilism stems from the alignment of truth and morality, which affects every possible aspect
of human life and thought (including science and religion). Once morality becomes
impossible, does the pantheistic affirmative stance towards all things become impossible as
386

Nietzsche: Volume Two, 138. This is the bone of contention between Heidegger and Lwith when it comes
to interpreting the eternal recurrence.
387
Heidegger carefully expresses Nietzsches thought about nihilism: Nihilism is history. In Nietzsches
sense it co-constitutes the essence of Western history because it co-determines the lawfulness of the
fundamental metaphysical positions and their relationships. Nietzsche: Volume Four, 53. The past is devoured
by the present never to return; in Anaximanders sense of time, we must pay penalty for transgressions; time has
been determined morally, as I haved said in past chapters.

217
well? After all, fundamentally its only the moral God that has been overcome. Does it
make sense to conceive of a God beyond good and evil? Would a pantheism in this sense
be possible?388 The possibility of such an affirmative stance depends on the unifying
thought of the eternal recurrence; however, Nietzsche still speaks of this thought as perfect
nihilism. What does he mean by this? How can the eternal recurrence be the central
thought of a new vision of the world and the perfection of nihilism?
An answer to this question can be found in some of Nietzsches notes from the
summer of 1887. In a note from June 10, titled European Nihilism, he outlines in sixteen
steps the meaning of nihilism.389 From the very beginning, the otherworldly religions
(Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity) had sought to give human being a sense of importance
within the flux of unceasing becoming. This is what constituted one of its main advantages
[Vorteile]. Morality, taking the guise of religion, was able to give man a sense of orientation,
a sense of dignity, and, perhaps most importantly, a sense of meaning to suffering and evil.
However, morality cultivated the will to truth, which ultimately turns against moralitythe
demand for truth at all costs kills God, the foundation for the entire moral system.
Christianity in the West (and Buddhism in the East) has bred a more insidious form of

388

KGW VIII/1: 217. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 118. Nietzsches emphasis.
This note is also known as the Lenzer Heide outline, as it was written there on a train stop between Nice
and Sils-Maria. Werner Stegmaier points to this outline as evidence that the eternal recurrence plays no role in
Nietzsches thinking after Zarathustra: The late justification of the thought of return has forgotten that it had
become questionable for Nietzsche in 1887 on the return from Nice to Sils-Maria, so questionable that he makes
no use of it anymore from then in his publications. One needs to seek no will to secrecy, to the esoteric behind
it. The reasons for the renunciation of the thought of return are clearly recognizable in the Lenzer Heide
outline. From his Von Nizza nach Sils-Maria: Nietzsches Abweg vom Gedanken der ewigen Wiederkehr des
Gleichen, in Entdecken und Verraten: Zu Leben und Werk Friedrich Nietzsches, eds. Andreas Shirmer and
Rdiger Schmidt (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Bhlaus, 1999), 297. The problem with Stegmaiers claim, as it is
based on this brief outline, is that it ignores the important distinction between science [Wissenschaft] and the
scholarly [gelehrt], a distinction that Nietzsche introduces in the History essay and makes ever wider after
The Gay Science. This and the preceding chapter are sufficient to refute Stegmaiers claim.
389

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nihilism that has been unleashed within the 19 century: Nihilism appears now not because
th

unpleasure in existence is greater than it used to be, but because we have become more
generally mistrustful of a meaning in evil, indeed in existence itself.390 The one
interpretation of existence that gave meaning to the presence of evil in the world has
perished, but since it was regarded as the only possible interpretation, existence seems
absolutely meaningless. And it appears that the news of Gods death is now beginning to
spread ever further, which means that the time for a new vision of existence is ripe.
The vanity of every striving and undertaking is the essence of present day nihilism,
according to Nietzsche. What would this vanity look like if it were concentrated and brought
to its logical conclusion? It would be the eternal recurrence: Existence as it is, without
meaning or goal, but inevitably recurring, without any finale into nothingness: eternal
recurrence. That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (meaninglessness)
eternally!391 The acceptance of this teaching requires the strongest will and it necessitates
the rigor of gay science because Nietzsche believes that it is the most scientific of all
possible hypotheses [wissenschaftlichste aller mglichen Hypothesen]. Only the strongest
will and self-discipline can contend with the possibility of the most extreme form of nihilism.
The temptation of the eternal recurrence is that it calls on one to form ones own table of
valuesi.e., to identify oneself with the innocence of becoming, the stream of becoming. It
brings the entire history of the West to a conclusion in order to make way for a new
understanding of existence.

390
391

KGW VIII/1: 216. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 117.

KGW VIII/1: 217. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 118.

219
For this reason, Nietzsche is able to call the eternal recurrence perfect nihilism and
a new vision of existence, the highest possible formula of affirmation. It is the nexus point
between the old and the new just as Nietzsche considers himself to have a dual nature of
creator and destroyer. Eternal recurrence is both the launching point for his negation of all
previous values (including the value of truth) and the affirmation of the new table of values
that will be established by the philosophers of the future. Everything will fall into a profound
crisis the likes of which the world has never seen before; however, the positive value of this
eventthe collapse of the moral interpretation of existencewill be that it brings about the
great cleansing. Antagonistic forces, the extremes, will be brought into collision with one
another and obliterate each other. Only the strongest men who are sure of their power and
who represent with conscious pride the strength man has achieved will survive this crisis of
conscienceeveryone else will perish. What would such a man think of eternal
recurrence?392 Surely it would be nothing other than: You are a god, and never have I
heard anything more divine. Existence would be made sacred once more through the
hypothesis of eternal recurrence.
As the ground for the revaluation of all values, the eternal recurrence must be thought
of as the heaviest weight [das grte Schwergewicht]. Not only is it heaviest in the sense
that it gives importance again to existence, to suffering and evil, it is the center of gravity
for the other values. To speak analogically, the eternal recurrence is the unifying element of
the new interpretation of existence that Nietzsche puts forward from the time of The Gay
Science until his final publications. It is the nucleus that holds all of his other thoughts

392

KGW VIII/1: 221. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 121.

220
together and puts them in their proper order, thoughts like the death of God, the selfovercoming of morality, the rise of nihilism, the revaluation of all values, and the overman.
(His critique of things like truth, science, and religion are thus motivated by this revaluation
of all values. The eternal recurrence itself is the revaluation of sciencethe move from
understanding science as distinct from the practical affairs of life to science as a passionate
enterprise that entails a transformation of ones life.) The ultimate collapse of the moral
interpretation of existence puts an end to all guilt and bad conscience. Human being falls
once more into the ceaseless flow of becoming, history, and is at its whim. This brings an
end to teleology, whether natural, biblical, or historical, which is why Nietzsche repudiates
purposes and final causes in the section of Twilight of the Idols called The Four Great
Errors. There he notes how a rejection of final causes will change everything:
The fact that nobody is held responsible any more, that being is not the sort of thing that
can be traced back to a causa prima, that the world is not unified as either a sensorium or a
spirit, only this can constitute the great liberation,only this begins to restore the
innocence of becoming . . . The concept of God has been the biggest objection to
existence so far . . . We reject God, we reject the responsibility in God: this is how we
begin to redeem the world.393
The rejection of God results in the redemption of the world, the return of the innocence of
becoming. But has Nietzsche actually escaped beyond good and evil when he says that the
repudiation of God and final causality will result in the great liberation, i.e., freedom?

393

KGW VI/3: 90-91. Twilight of the Idols, 182.

Chapter 5: The Dynamic Stage of Nietzsches Philosophy

The year 1888 for Nietzsche, his final year of sanity, was dynamic in the fullest sense
of the term. Interest in Nietzsches philosophy, which had been growing for some time after
1882, exploded across the continent of Europe after the publication of Beyond Good and Evil
and On the Genealogy of Morality. In more than one sense, his philosophy (and his person)
was dynamitean expression of his will to power. Artists, making up by far the largest
group, were the first to take notice of the force of Nietzsches thoughts. Thomas Mann was
one among the first generation of artists to be influenced by his reading of Nietzsche. No
doubt the power of Nietzsches use of the German language impressed many of these artists,
and continues to do so to this day. However, the works of 1888 (like The Antichrist, Twilight
of the Idols, and Ecce Homo) have a rhetorical force that seems unprecedented in Nietzsches
works. Some scholars would like to ascribe this to Nietzsches imminent decline into
madness. The problem with such an interpretation is that it ignores the fact that Nietzsches
rhetorical style gradually develops from the time of the early 1880s onwards. What would be
the criterion for determining exactly when Nietzsches madness arose? I believe that there is
no valid criterion for such a determination. Also, one misses the point of Nietzsches later
works if one concentrates on only their rhetorical dimension. Within this chapter, I would
like to discuss briefly a few of the themes of the works of his last year of sanity and see how
they connect to the eternal recurrence and his critique of morality.

221

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The Will to Power: Nietzsche as Dynamite
Nietzsches transformative use of the German language, forcing into ever-newer
forms and turning out sentences and paragraphs that had been thought incapable in a nonRomantic language, immediately catches the eye of the reader. (Even in English translation,
his works maintain their natural beauty.) However, it is all too easy to get lost in this
superficial flash and forget the meaning of what Nietzsche is saying.394 This is especially
true when one turns their attention to the most popular of Nietzsches worksthose of the
last year of his sanity. The content of what he is saying often gets lost in the vortex of his
rhetoric, something that several readers of Nietzsche have pointed out. Thomas Mann was
one of the first to take note of this:
No matter how much his primarily aphoristic writings gambol in a thousand colorful
facets, no matter how many superficial contradictions can be shown in himhe was all
there from the very beginning, was always the same; and the writings of the youthful
professor, the Thoughts out of Season [Untimely Meditations], the Birth of Tragedy,
the essay The Philosopher of 1873, not only contain the seeds of his later doctrinary
message, but this message, a joyful one as he believes, is already contained in them,
finished and complete. The things that change are only the accentuation, growing ever
more frenetical, the key of his voice, growing ever more shrill, the gesticulation, growing
ever more grotesque and frightful. The thing that changes is the mode of writing which . .
. slowly degenerates into an awesomely mundane and hectically humorous superfeuilletonism, decorating itself with the comic jesters cap and bells.395
Throughout his career, Nietzsche remains focused on a set of problems that one could say
forms a constellation: each problem directs itself toward all of the others and calls to mind all
of the others. (The only question is how to enter into this constellation to see it from
Nietzsches perspectiveI believe the correct entry point is the eternal recurrence because of
394

David Allison notes this: Perhaps more than any other philosopher who readily comes to mind, Nietzsche
writes exclusively for you. Not at you, but for you. For you, the reader. Only you. At least this is the feeling
one has when reading him. From Reading the New Nietzsche, vii.
395
Thomas Mann, Nietzsches Philosophy in the Light of Contemporary Events, in Thomas Manns
Addresses (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1963), 77-78.

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its unifying character as the heaviest weight.) His problems at the end of this productive
life in the year 1888 remain the same as they were sixteen years earlier in The Birth of
Tragedy. All that has changed is the rhetorical flare of Nietzsches writings.
But this change in style requires careful attention.396 The more scholarly form of his
earlier works, and even some of his aphoristic writings, is indicative of the intellectual
integrity that Nietzsche had characterized as paradigmatic of the modern scientific
conscience. The willingness to follow ones own reasoning, to dare to discover new worlds,
no matter the consequences, belongs to modern science. Our virtue of intellectual
honesty/integrity [Redlichkeit] is tied up with the entire scientific project of modernity (see
335 of The Gay Science). Nietzsche simply takes this virtue and pushes it to its extreme in
his conception of gay science. However, this necessarily entails the overturning of the
concept of intellectual integrity because it turns to examine itself critically. After publishing
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche becomes ever more critical of the new virtue that he had
once promoted in his earlier works. Gradually Nietzsche became aware that the impetus of
intellectual integrity (in its modern formulation) remained moral: although it does not
advocate telling the truth to others, it does demand that one tell the truth to oneself. I believe
that this development needs to be examined thoroughly in order to understand the content of
his last writings.
During the time in which Nietzsche remained true to his sense of integrity, he
demands the unity of theory and practice. The scathing glance of his eye on everything in the

396

Much of what I say in the following about Nietzsches evolving relation to the virtue of intellectual integrity
is thanks to Holger Zaborowskis essay, From Modesty to Dynamite, from Socrates to Dionysus: Friedrich
Nietzsche on Intellectual Honesty, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84/2 (2010): 337-356. My
thanks to Prof. Zaborowski for sharing his essay with me before its publication.

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modern world is only possible because he has turned his critical gaze on himselfall in the
effort to be truthful to himself. The motto of Nietzsches later philosophy can be
characterized as nitimur in vetitum [We strive for the forbidden]. One must strive to
question more radically than anyone has so far. But Nietzsche notes that this willingness to
question, this curiosity, appears to be nothing more than hubris: Hubris today characterizes
our whole attitude towards nature, our rape of nature with the help of machines and the
completely unscrupulous inventiveness of technicians and engineers . . . hubris characterizes
our attitude towards ourselves,for we experiment on ourselves in a way which we would
never allow on animals, we merrily vivisect our souls out of curiosity: that is how much we
care about the salvation of the soul!397 Intellectual integrity is nothing more than a vice
(from the perspective of the current morality), it is hubris. This is necessarily the case
because being honest, whether to oneself or to others (or both),398 which was highly
commended by the Western intellectual tradition, can no longer maintain its status as a virtue
after the death of God. In the revaluation of all values, honesty must be counted among the
vices.

397

KGW VI/2: 375. On the Genealogy of Morality, 86-87. Nietzsches emphasis.

The ability to be true to oneself, to remain identical, ossifies the human being from ever reaching beyond
itself to further possibilities, as Vanessa Lemm notes: The possibility of the human self-overcoming (becoming
overhuman) reflects the idea that the human being is not a function of what it is, moral or rational, but of what
else it could become, if only it keeps overcoming itself. In other words, what is promising about the human
being is the possibility of its infinite self-overcomings. Becoming overhuman, therefore, does not reflect an
attempt to stabilize human life into some sort of ideal superhuman form but, rather, to provoke a countermovement against that which stabilizes itself into a fixed identity and nature. It does not entail remaining
identical to oneself, but altering oneself, becoming untruthful to oneself. From Lemms Nietzsches Animal
Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being (New York: Fordham University Press,
2009), 23.
398

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Intellectual integrity, which has its beginnings in Socratess quest for self-knowledge
and thus pervades every development of science (including Nietzsches),399 undermines its
own foundations. Around the time of Human, All too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay
Science, Nietzsche followed his intellectual conscience to reach the point of the eternal
recurrence. Within his next work, however, Zarathustra rebukes the conscientious of spirit
(the scientist) saying that science has reached its completion in Zarathustra himself, courage
made incarnate, the teacher of the eternal recurrence. All scientific striving has developed
toward the ultimate goal of this teaching, which is why Nietzsche characterizes it as the
most scientific of all possible hypotheses in one of his notebooks. One way to interpret this
is that this teaching is the necessary conclusion of the drive of theoretical man to
understand existence as a whole. As the most scientific hypothesis, it both ends the moral
interpretation of existencethe teaching is thoroughly amoraland inaugurates a new
conception of the world. It is, therefore, the center of gravity, which holds Nietzsches
other thoughts together in a coherent fashion. The eternal recurrence can perform these two
roles as destructive and creative because of its Dionysian quality, beyond good and evil.
Morality undermines itself, as is evident when one looks at the genealogy of the virtue of
intellectual integrity, so that the recurrence can perform this dual function.
Since the teaching of recurrence has finally arrived, it is fair to say that history can
now be divided into two halves. Everything that happened between the arrival of Socrates,
whom Nietzsche once called the vortex and turning-point of so-called world history,
leading up to Nietzsches philosophy belongs to one half of history. The second half of
399

Know yourself is the whole of science.Only when he has attained a final knowledge of all things will
man have come to know himself. For things are only the boundaries of man. KGW V/1: 49. Daybreak, 32.

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history comes after Nietzsche in the revaluation of all values that will inevitably occur once
the new philosophers arrive.400 For this reason, it is possible to consider Nietzsche to be the
Socrates gone mad because he returns everything to its proper placei.e., he corrects the
error of morality that had been playing out within Western intellectual history. I know my
lot. One day my name will be connected with the memory of something tremendous,a
crisis such as the earth has never seen, the deepest collision of conscience, a decision made
against everything that has been believed, demand, held sacred so far. I am not a human
being, I am dynamite.401 Nietzsches own existence is a destiny or fate [Schicksal], one that
is necessitated by the intellectual tradition itself (based on its prevailing assumptions). Thus,
his statements about how there needs to be a new organization of time and history after his
appearance on earth are not merely rhetoricalthey derive from his thought of eternal
recurrence. He is the Antichrist, and he demands a new ordering of time at the conclusion of
The Antichrist when he gives his Law against Christianity: Given on the Day of Salvation,
on the first day of the year one (30 September 1888, according to the false calculation of
time).402 The false calculation of time is the Christian, the linear, teleological one; the true
calculation is that of the eternal recurrence.
The title of his autobiography, Ecce Homo, has a definite biblical connotation: this is
what Pilate said in Johns Gospel when he presented Jesus to the Jewish crowd, Ecce
homo! [Behold, this man.] It is not mistaken that Nietzsche references this passage in the

400

Might not Nietzsche consider himself to be the music-making Socrates [musiktreibenden Sokrates], which
he said the world was waiting for now that logic bites its own tail and allows tragic wisdom to break through?
His invention of the gay science would seem to indicate that Nietzsche has found a new vision of the world
through the eternal recurrence, which reconciles science and art. KGW III/1: 98. The Birth of Tragedy, 75.
401
KGW VI/3: 363. Ecce Homo, 143-144. Nietzsches emphasis.
402
KGW VI/3: 252. The Antichrist, 66.

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Bible because he views himself as playing a role similar to Jesus. The audience must make
up their minds for themselves about the character (and nature?) of the man who has become
what he is. One must also consider that Nietzsche thinks that he is the dividing point of
history in a way in which the advent of Jesus was the turning point of history in the Christian,
moral conception. The difference between the two could not be greater, though. Christ came
to bring a message of peace and goodwill toward men, as the angel Gabriel announced.
Nietzsches message is much different, as he hints in a poem affixed to the beginning of The
Gay Science:
Ecce Homo
Yes! I know now whence I came!
Unsatiated like a flame
my glowing ember squanders me.
Light to all on which I seize,
ashen everything I leave:
Flame am I most certainly!403
Nietzsche announces himself as the flame that leaves everything in ashes. Rather than the
peace that is the Savior, Nietzsche thinks that war404 (the conflict between forces for
supremacy, the will to power) will inevitably break out for the total domination of the earth.
403

KGW V/2: 39. The Gay Science, 23.

The revaluation of all values does not mean that Nietzsche is done with truth, as we will see shortly, but that
new conceptions are allowed to exist in competition with one another. His kind of war does not seek the
annihilation of the opposing party: Nietzschean Umwertung is a philosophical war-praxis that serves, not to
establish victory or a personal hegemony over his opponents, not to destroy and be finished with truth, good and
evil, equality, or whatever values he is contesting; it serves rather to resist and limit their tyranny, so as to open
and re-open the question of overcoming: what would be the overcoming of these values? What would a
standpoint beyond good and evil look like? What would constitute an affirmative practice beyond the hostility
to life? The principal orientation of Umwertung is not destructive, but productive and experimental: to
inaugurate new challenges to hegemonic ideals and stimulate others to do [sic] the same, so as to multiply new
positions and countervalues. From Herman Siemens article, Umwertung: Nietzsches War-Praxis and the
Problem of Yes-Saying and No-Saying in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche-Studien 38 (2009): 197. New positions open
up that can then be used to question the Christian, moral ideal. Since there is no perspective that exists outside
of life, according to Nietzsche, this is necessary for questioning the value of moral values. Which set of values
are better for the enhancement of lifethe new or the old?
404

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There will be wars such as the earth has never seen. Starting with me, the earth will know
great politics405 The will to master the earth is the final phase in the movement of
modernity, bringing the logic of subjectivity to its necessary conclusion, and it is indicative
of the nature of the world as will to powerand nothing else. One of his last works, Twilight
of the Idols, is a great declaration of war on everything that had come beforethe eternal
idols of humanity. He even has a code of rules for making war in Ecce Homo.
Nietzsches truths are no longer the radical discoveries that are the fruit of his
exploration of the human psyche. They cannot be the products of his intellectual honesty,
which is why he often refers to his thoughts as my truths. These are merely the expressions
of his will to power, and nothing more. Truth has become effective or dynamic, as
Friedrich Jnger formulates it. Everyone else does not have their truths, they want to remain
honest, as Nietzsche notes in a section of Twilight of the Idols called On the intellectual
conscience [Zum intellektuellen Gewissen]:
Nothing seems rarer to me these days than genuine hypocrisy. I really suspect that the
gentle air of our culture is not good for this plant. Hypocrisy belongs to an age of strong
faith: where people do not give up their faith even when they are forced into pretending to
adopt another. People will just drop their own faith these days; or, more likely, they will
take on an additional one,in either case they stay honest [ehrlich].406
People want to remain honest despite the conflicting, and competing, positions that they
assume; it is a sign of his toleration that modern man can accommodate all of this conflict
within himself, but it is also a sign that he has no unity to the form of the expressions in his
life (as he noted in 4-5 of the History essay).407 Nietzsche, on the other hand, believes
405

KGW VI/3: 364. Ecce Homo, 144. Nietzsches emphasis.

KGW VI/3: 116. Twilight of the Idols, 200. Nietzsches emphasis.
407
In other words, modern man is afraid of himself, the truth about who he is: These good people,all of
them now moralized root and branch and disgraced as far as honesty [Ehrlichkeit] is concerned and ruined for
406

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he has mastered the various forces and strains of thought within himself so as to have
become who he is. He has fashioned himself out of all of the different errors and
contradictions of spirit, he has freed himself from the entire history of idealism. Philosophy,
as experimentation in the forbidden, has allowed Nietzsche to transform himself into that
which he is. He is no longer a human being, a man, but he is dynamitea force so powerful
that he changes the very course of history.

Nietzsche, the Hyperborean

Nietzsche considered The Antichrist the first book of the revaluation of all values.
In this short essay, he builds on his previous arguments concerning the origin of Christian
morality in On the Genealogy of Morality of the previous year. The appearance of the
Antichrist is what calls for a reconsideration of the values of Christian morality. According
to Nietzsche, these values are all life-negating. The fact that ascetic ideals, as he described
them in the Third Essay of the Genealogy, mean so much to man reveals a basic fact of
human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than
not will.408 As far back as the History essay, Nietzsche noted how the drive to
knowledge, when taken to the extreme, ultimately undermines (and destroys) itself because it
removes its own foundation in life. This drive is the most recent and noblest manifestation
of the ascetic ideal, which means that modern science, despite its often open hostility to
religion, is the true heir to religion/morality because it still pursues truth.

all eternity: which of them could stand a single truth about man! . . . Or, to ask more pertinently: which of
them could bear a true biography! KGW VI/2: 404. On the Genealogy of Morality, 108. Could these people
even bear Nietzsches autobiography?
408
KGW VI/2: 357. On the Genealogy of Morality, 72. Nietzsches emphasis.

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Even those who say no to everything that has come before remain within the
framework established by Christian morality. All these pale atheists, Antichrists,
immoralists, nihilists, these skeptics, ephectics, hectics of the mind think that they are all
free spirits, liberated from the Christian morality. I will tell them what they themselves
cannot seebecause they are standing too close to themselvesthis ideal is quite simply
their ideal as well . . . These are very far from being free spirits: because they still believe in
truth.409 The problem that opens the Genealogy is the problem that Nietzsche points out
here: these people do not know themselves; they try to understand themselves, but they have
never sought themselves; because they insist on the need for this search (even if they never
do search) they remain within the confines of the moral interpretation of existence (the
unexamined life is not worth living).410 The beginning of The Antichrist signifies a change
in his situation, though: instead of telling us that we are unknown to ourselves (i.e., we are
still scientists looking for ourselves), he says, Let us look ourselves in the face [Sehen wir
uns ins Gesicht]. To look oneself in the face means to have found oneself, i.e., to know
oneself. This must mean that science has come to its completion, and is now over. It is now
time for a new understanding of existenceone free of the moral interpretation. But what
then happens to happiness, which was the goal of all science (i.e., knowledge)?
In 1 of The Antichrist, Nietzsche identifies himself as a Hyperborean, one who lives
off the beaten track, beyond the North, ice, and death. This beyond is what constitutes
his life and happiness and distinguishes him from all of the other, supposed free thinkers of

409

KGW VI/2: 417. On the Genealogy of Morality, 118. Nietzsches emphasis.

Does this not also apply to Nietzsche since he identifies himself as the Antichrist in 1888? As the antithesis
of Christ, he remains within the dialectic of good and evil; he still has an intellectual conscience
[intellektuelle Gewissen].
410

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his day. Although the Hyperboreans (lit. those above the Boreas [north wind]) were often
associated with Apollo in Greek myth, Dionysus played an important role also. During the
time that Apollo spent half of the year with the Hyperboreans (in the winter), Dionysus is
said to have reigned at Delphi. In fact, Dionysus had a shrine there. The connection between
these two gods recalls Nietzsches claims about the birth of tragedy several years earlier.
A tragic understanding of existence is about to break out from the writings of Nietzsche
themselves, not from the operatic works of Wagner. In 25 of The Birth of Tragedy,
Nietzsche notes that music cannot be separated from tragic myth. Increasingly he refers to
his own writings as musicespeically Zarathustra. His own works lead to a new
understanding of existence since he believes that he has moved beyond good and evil. If this
is the case, then there must be a new understanding of happiness (a topic that arises
frequently in his later works).
Nietzsche does not call happiness contentedness, nor does he think that it is an
activity. Rather, it is the feeling that power is growing, that some resistance has been
overcome. Not contentedness, but more power; not peace, but war, not virtue, but prowess
(virtue in the style of the Renaissance, virt, moraline-free virtue).411 Virtue used to be the
link to happiness from knowledge, and the paradigmatic virtue of Christianity was pity (in
Nietzsches understanding of morality influenced by his reading of Schopenhauer). But now,
according to Nietzsche, pity cannot be a virtue because it does not enhance lifeas a true
virtue should do. It is rather the practice of nihilism [die Praxis des Nihilismus], the
negation of life, life undermining itself. What does Nietzsche mean by this? Christian

411

KGW VI/3: 168. The Antichrist, 4.

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morality, the religion of pity, destroys life through its ideals/values. His argument against
Christianity takes the position of an argument concerning the value that such moral values
serve in regard to life. Atheism is still conditioned by the opposing position of the belief in
God (theism); therefore, it is impossible for Nietzsche to prove that God does not exist, as
other atheists attempted, because such a proof ultimately depends on the conception of truth
that is derived from Plato/Christianity. This is why he says, I have no sense of atheism as a
result [Ergebniss], and even less as an event: for me it is an instinct.412 It may also explain
why the subtitle of The Antichrist is not An Argument Against Christianity but is instead
A Curse on Christianity [Fluch auf das Christentum]. Nietzsche is not, then, an atheist in
the sense of the term as commonly understood in the 19th centurythe denial of Gods ever
having existed. He is simply against the valuations that strip the present life of its meaning,
which assume their most potent form in Christianity.
If there is a god that exists for Nietzsche, it is the god Dionysusthe god of eternal
destruction and creation. While discussing Goethe, Nietzsche notes that Goethe was a man
who strived for wholeness, completeness and was able to create himself. A spirit like this
who has become free stands in the middle of the world with a cheerful and trusting fatalism
in the belief that only the individual is reprehensible, that everything is redeemed and
affirmed in the wholehe does not negate anymore . . . But a belief like this is the highest of
all possible beliefs: I have christened it with the name Dionysus.413 Dionysus is the
antithesis of Christ, according to Nietzsche, for he is the god who affirms life even though it
is painful (in one myth he was dismembered and then restored to life). This is the god whose
412
413

KGW VI/3: 276. Ecce Homo, 85.

KGW VI/3: 146. Twilight of the Idols, 222-223. Nietzsches emphasis.

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worship guaranteed the eternal return of life; the triumphal yes to life over and above all
death and change; the true life as the overall continuation of life through procreation, through
the mysteries of sexuality.414 Much like Christianity, the cult of Dionysus started off
underground in ancient Greece; both guaranteed eternal life; and, both admitted women to
participate in their mysteries.415 However, their valuations of the present life could not be
more different: Christianity negates this world in favor of a world to come whereas the
Dionysian cult affirmed this life as the only life that eternally returns.
Happiness can no longer be understood, as it once was, within the context of
knowledge and virtue. It no longer has a connection to science. One of the promises of
Christianity was the perfect happiness, or beatitude, which came with the union of the soul
with God. In part, this explains why Christianity had such a strong attraction for the slaves
they might not be able to achieve happiness now (i.e., in the present life), but they hope for
happiness in the future state. The negation of life now was for the sake of happiness in the
afterlife. Not only that, but the slaves strive with all their force for a universal green-pasture
happiness on earth, namely security, harmlessness, comfort, easy living, and which in the
end, if all goes well, also hopes to rid itself of all kinds of shepherds and bellwethers.416
They want perpetual peacelife free from the domination of masters, the life of the
unorganized herd. The drive toward happiness is something that cannot be eliminated, it
remains a necessary end for human existencean unlikely point of agreement between Kant
414

KGW VI/3: 153. Twilight of the Idols, 228.

There is good reason for this connection, for Nietzsche mentions the following in The Birth of Tragedy
while discussing how Socratism drove Dionysus from the stage of Greek tragedy: As before, when he fled
from Lykurgus, King of the Edonians, Dionysus now sought refuge in the depths of the sea, namely in the
mystical waters of a secret cult which gradually spread across the entire world. KGW III/1: 84. The Birth of
Tragedy, 64.
416
KGW VII/3: 307. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 31-32.
415

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and Nietzsche. But what would happiness be if it is not the desire for comfortable existence
(either here, in the modern sense, or in the afterlife, in the Christian sense)?
For Nietzsche, happiness consists in the growth of power, the overcoming of
resistance. Since happiness cannot be determined spiritually/intellectually, the only
possibility is that happiness must be determined physiologically. This makes sense if one
considers that Nietzsche characterized his philosophy as inverted Platonism, an attack on
the true world. (He even gives a formula for his happiness [Glck]: a yes, a no, a straight
line, a goal [ein Ziel] . . .417) In a passage from one of his notebooks, Nietzsche points out
that the Greeks identified happiness with the god Dionysus. The god of intoxication and
sexuality, both physiological functions, returns to this position after having been homeless
for over two millennia. The eternal return of life through the mysteries of procreation
constitutes happiness, according to Nietzsche. In fact, the eternal recurrence plays an
important role in this happiness, as he notes in one of the most famous passages from his
later notebooks:
This, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creating, of eternal self-destroying, this mystery
world of dual delights, this my beyond good and evil, without goal, unless there is a goal
in happiness of the circle [wenn nicht im Glck des Kreises ein Ziel liegt], without will,
unless a ring feels good will towards itselfdo you want a name for this world? A
solution to all its riddles? A light for you too, for you, the most secret, strongest, most
intrepid, most midnightly?This world is the will to powerand nothing besides! And
your yourselves too are this will to powerand nothing besides!418
Happiness comes from the goal of the circle, the eternal recurrence of birth and death through
the mystery of sexuality. For Nietzsche, the highest will to power, i.e., the increase of power,
consists in the power of imprinting upon becoming the character of being. In other words,
417
418

KGW VI/3: 60. Twilight of the Idols, 161.

KGW VII/3: 339. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 38-39. Emphasis added.

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happiness consists in the eternal recurrence: That everything recurs is the most extreme
approximation of a world of becoming to one of being.419

Pauline Christianity vs. Dionysus

Nietzsches most powerful criticism of Christianity does not even target the historical
person of Christ. This is surprising considering how influential David Strausss The Life of
Jesus was for the young Nietzsche (as I noted in Chapter 2). By this point, Nietzsche had
developed a new approachhe looks at the psychology of the messiah figure. His model for
this investigation is Fyodor Dostoevskys novel, The Idiot, in which the protagonist leads a
simple life unaware of proper etiquette in St. Petersburg society. Christ, like Prince
Myshkin, is a holy fool, or an idiot (in the classical sense of the term, one in a private
station, as opposed to one who takes part in public affairs). The way that Christ lived is the
Christian life, the kingdom of God is this way of life: The kingdom of God is not
something that you wait for; it does not have a yesterday or a day after tomorrow, it will not
arrive in a thousand yearsit is an experience of the heart; it is everywhere and it is
nowhere . . .420 Ultimately, what Christ left behind after his death was not a set of doctrines,
not a precise morality, but rather a practiceperhaps the practice of nihilism? Only the
practice of Christianity is really Christian, living like the man who died on the cross.421
How then did Christs way of life turn into a religious system with belief in God (theism) as
its foundation and the story of Christ having died for the redemption of all sin? Who was

419

KGW VII. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 138. Nietzsches emphasis.
KGW VI/3: 205. The Antichrist, 32.
421
KGW VI/3: 209. The Antichrist, 35. Nietzsches emphasis.
420

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actually responsible for turning the evangel, the good news of a new way of life, into this
system, this religion of slave resentment?
Nietzsches answer to the second of these questions is Paul. St. Paul turned the
evangel into a message of revenge during his missionary travels throughout the Roman
Empire. Paul was responsible for turning the kingdom of God, as Christ understood it, into
a kingdom to comea future state. Friedrich Jnger notes Nietzsches method in The
Antichrist, one part of which includes a separation of Christianity from Christ, the founder
from the foundation. Nietzsche seeks to bring the entire historical construction to
collapsethis goal requires a concentration on the distorting effect of Paul on the original
evangel.
The teaching of Christ has been distorted insofar as dogma, formulas, and rites have been
put in the place of the practice of living. The kingdom of God, which for Christ was a
heavenly kingdom of the heart, was taken chronologically-historically. A teaching of
reward and punishment, a teaching of transgression, penance, and forgiveness smuggled in
. . . The evangelists, and furthermore Paul, have distorted the teaching of Christ.422
For Nietzsche, as Jnger notes, Paul is responsible for turning Jesus into the messiah, the
redeemer that had been promised by the Jewish prophets in the Old Testament. Thus, Paul
had to reinterpret history in a new way, i.e., linearly or teleologically: history develops
toward a definite goal after the Fall of Adam and Eve, the redemption of humankind at the
end of time. Christ fits into the center of this schemehe is seen as the redeemer, one who
had to make the ultimate sacrifice for all of humankinds sins.
According to Nietzsche, Paul is the priest par excellence, for he was able to give
power back to the priestly class. Pauls reinterpretation of Christs message is ultimately

422

Nietzsche, 88.

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responsible for the formation and hierarchy to be found within the Church. He is the true
founder of what can today be called Christianitythus, Nietzsche reveals the actual origin
of Christianity, not in Christ, but in Pauls epistles.423 While his influence can be felt
throughout Christendom to this day, his most lasting contribution is the transformation of the
concept of time. He poured his resentment, his hatred, into everythingincluding his
conception of time, which Nietzsche refers to as the spirit of revenge. The past is
interpreted as leading to the current generation, and ending there in stasis; the future remains
an open possibility, but the past has been closed off to the power of the will in the Christian
view of time.424 For the Christian, the will remains powerless against the past and rails
against the determination of the past with futility. But what if time were not linear? What
kind of power would the will attain then?
Nietzsches attack on Pauline (counterfeited) Christianity is so powerful because it
goes for the main teaching, that of the kingdom of God as a historical one. The true
founder of Christianity, as it had been known for 19 centuries, was not Christ, but Paul. The
life and death of Jesus was misinterpreted by his followers: The small congregation [of
Christians] had evidently failed to understand the main point, the exemplary character of
dying in this way, the freedom, the superiority over every feeling of ressentiment:a sign of

423

Heidegger disputes this vigorously in an early lecture of 1920-1921 with his commentary on Pauls Letter to
the Galatians: Paul wants to say further that he has come to Christianity not through a historical tradition, but
through an original experience. A theory that is controversial in Protestant theology connects with this: [it is
asserted that] Paul had not historical consciousness of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather he has grounded a new
Christian religion, a new primordial Christianity which dominates the future: the Pauline religion, not the
religion of Jesus. One thus does not need to refer back to the historical Jesus. The life of Jesus is entirely
indifferent. Of course that may not be read out of a single passage. From Martin Heideggers The
Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 49.
424
I have pointed out in Chapter 2 that Nietzsche believes that Christian eschatology turns into Hegels
philosophy of history, and thus leads to the sense of being an epigone.

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how little they understood about him in general!

238
Revenge returned because the small

congregation would have been the laughing stock of the entire ancient world. If Jesus did not
rise from the dead and promise a final judgment at the end of time, the Christians would have
no claim over anything. For the first Christians, Jesus came in order to sacrifice himself for
the sins of the guilty, i.e., to redeem those who had been tainted by original sin. This was the
first part of the misinterpretation of Christ. The second part involved Pauls guarantee of the
priests return to power through the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
Philology arises again as one of Nietzsches methods of attack against the New
Testament; his praise for the Old Testament is well known. His argument against the first
Christians and Paul revolves around the issue of counterfeiting. In order to arrive at the
original type of the redeemer one had to go through several layers of false interpretation
that had piled up around the original text. Nietzsche believes that he was the first to
understand the type of the redeemer because he is primarily a psychologist. He unearthed the
type of the redeemer through psychological analysis, he returned to the original, true message
of Jesusthat to be free is to live without resentment, to die as he did. Looking at the
historical context of his argument, one can say that Nietzsche is the most radical Protestant.
Beginning with Luther, there was an attempt to return to the actual word of the Bible, reading
the original texts in their original languages (Hebrew and Greek). Nietzsche goes even
further than this: he wants to return to the original message of Jesus, a message he thinks has
been covered over by various layers of misinterpretation. According to Nietzsche, the central
issue concerns the historical/chronological misinterpretation of the kingdom of God,

425

KGW VI/3: 211. The Antichrist, 37. Nietzsches emphasis.

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making this kingdom something that will come in the future. In turn, this requires a
reinterpretation of the past, the Fall, and the nature of Jesus himself (he is made into the
Redeemer of humankinds sins). All of this falls away when Nietzsche turns his
psychological gaze toward Jesus to find that his true message concerned a way of life.
Moreover, one can speak of Nietzsche as the most radical Protestant in another sense.
He turns the will to truth against itself by negating the divinity of Jesus. His protest is the
most radical because he seeks a new conception of freedomnot freedom for the individual
to have an unmediated relation with God (Luther), not freedom for the individual to give
himself the moral law (Kant), but the freedom for the individual no longer to be constrained
by morality. It is, therefore, the opposite of Kants conception of positive freedom. His
conception of freedom includes as its most prominent feature the liberation from the linear,
teleological (moral) conception of time. This may explain why Nietzsche concludes The
Antichrist with a call for the reconsideration of the nature of time: And time is counted from
the dies nefastus when this catastrophe began [Christs death],from the first day of
Christianity!Why not count from its last day instead?From today?Revaluation of all
values! . . .426 A new evaluation of time is necessary at this point, one that is affirmative for
lifei.e., the eternal recurrence as an ateleological philosophy of history. This is the ground
for the opposition between Pauline Christianity and Dionysus, and the reason why Nietzsche
considers himself a disciple of Dionysus.
Nietzsches attitude toward Christianity is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand,
he denounces it as a curse upon humanityhe accuses it of being the worst catastrophe ever

426

KGW VI/3: 251. The Antichrist, 67. Nietzsches emphasis.

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to have befallen humankind. It is a religion of nihilism, which deprives the meaning of this
life to the extent that it stresses the importance of the next life. It shifts the center of gravity
out of this life and puts it nowherethe goal of the religion is nothingness. On the other
hand, he speaks of the depth of spirit that Christianity granted to its adherents. It was
responsible for the rigor of science, which Nietzsche approves of so highly. He also goes on
to speak of Christ as a necessary component in his conception of the overman in one of the
later notebooks: Caesar with Christs soul. Nietzsches conception of Christ is based on
that of Dionysus Zagreusthe god who was torn apart and reborn, the god without
resentment but with the superabundance of life. (Nietzsches signatures on the last few
letters he wrote confirm their relation in his mindsee below for this.) As a holy fool,
Christ loves the evil ones and shows them no resentment, no hatred. To be a Christian means
to follow Christ in the way that he lived and, just as importantly, in the way that he died. His
death is rebirth into life, the eternal becoming of life.

Amor Fati: Love of Necessity

It might seem odd that in his last work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wants to tell himself
the story of his own life. What prompts this retelling of his own life is the following
question: How could I not be grateful to my whole life?427 The point of the work seems to
be Nietzsches convincing of himself that his entire life is worthy of gratitude, a life without
alteration or subtraction. His own life is the only proof necessary for the value of the
thought of the eternal recurrence. His gratitude, his happiness, is the only evidence

427

KGW VI/3: 261. Ecce Homo, 74. Nietzsches emphasis.

428

available for its truth.

241
This raises another question about Nietzsches self-knowledge:

does he not know himself? The retelling of his life illustrates that Nietzsche not only can
tolerate the true story of man (a specific man), but rejoices in the life of this man, himself.
He has no pity for all that he suffered in his illness and isolation from friends and family; nor
does he feel nauseated by the past. Nietzsche described pity and nausea as the main
ingredients in nihilism; therefore, by speaking only of his gratitude toward the entirety of his
life, he shows that he is not a nihilist.
One of the main difficulties for interpreting Ecce Homo concerns the issue of
reliability. To what extent should we trust what Nietzsche reports about himself? His
exuberance and apparent arrogance concerning his life and his writing would seem to
preclude any trust on the part of the reader. But his uninhibited praise of himself and his
accomplishments (i.e., his books) are signs of the gratitude that he has toward his lifehe is
affirmative without restraint. The liberty he takes with self-praise is a sign of the level of
freedom he has attained: he is free from resentment toward the past. Ecce Homo is a
testament to a life lived free from resentment. Even Nietzsches sickness has its place within
the whole: Freedom from ressentiment, lucidity about ressentimentwho knows how much
I ultimately have to thank my long sickness for these as well!429 No longer to be determined
by the past is the ultimate freedom and happiness for man, as Nietzsche pointed out in 1 of
the History essay.430 To accept and affirm the past, to live without resentment toward it,

428

As I noted in Chapter 3, the eternal recurrence does not admit of proof and, therefore, is not verifiable. One
can only speak of Nietzsches happiness analogously as evidence.
429
KGW VI/3: 270. Ecce Homo, 80.
430
Man . . . braces himself against the great and ever greater pressure of what is past: it pushes him down or
bends him sideways, it encumbers his steps as a dark, invisible burden which he can sometimes appear to

242
constitutes the great liberation of which Nietzsche spoke in Twilight of the Idols. The
greatest fetter that had been placed on humanity was that great deed of rebellionoriginal
sinthat tied us irrevocably to God in our shared responsibility for this crime. But if God is
dead, then this, the greatest event from the past that weighed down on our conscience, can no
longer bind us.
The fact that the moral world no longer holds sway in the present is testament to the
growing realization that we are no longer bound by moral absolutes. At one time, wisdom
[Weisheit] was connected with knowledge of good and evilit is said in Genesis that the
wisdom that comes from the tree of knowledge will be concerned with good and evil. This
held for millennia, and it included those like Descartes who tried to reconfigure the relation
of the sciences in the 16th and 17th centuries. The most important science for Descartes was
that of moralsso, wisdom and morality remained connected even in such a radical
transformation of the sciences. Based on ones knowledge, one would try to correct the
flaws one saw in oneself and the world. This view goes back to Socrates, and ultimately to
Zarathustra (in his first appearance on earth). In the first subsection of Ecce Homo, titled
Why I am so Wise [Warum ich so weise bin], Nietzsche instead speaks of fatalism as the
most superior kind of reason. To accept yourself as fate, not to want to change yourself
in situations like this [his sickness], that is reason par excellence.431 To let things be as they
are is the ultimate freedom because one is not trying to change the situation; one is no longer
determined by anything outside of oneself. This is the ultimate will to power.

disown and which in traffic with his fellow men he is only too glad to disown, so as to excite their envy. KGW
III/3: 245. Untimely Meditations, 61.
431
KGW VI/3: 271. Ecce Homo, 82.

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Everything that Nietzsche presents about himself in his autobiography consists in
necessities. This is clear when one surveys the titles of the subsections in the work: Why I
Am So Wise, Why I Am So Clever, Why I Write Such Good Books, and Why I Am a
Destiny. He makes it clear that becoming who you are sometimes requires the occasional
tangent: Becoming what you are presupposes that you do not have the slightest idea what
you are. If you look at it this way, even lifes mistakes have their own meaning and value,
the occasional side roads and wrong turns, the delays, the modesties, the seriousness wasted
on tasks that lie beyond the task.432 The task he speaks of here is to become who you are
the subtitle of Ecce Homo and its only directive to the reader. Ultimately, the goal of the
work is to present a picture of a complete human being and how this wholeness was
achieved. Mans division between inner and outer, which begins with the dual substance
theory of Descartes, and the arbitrariness of his condition, must be overcome. One way to do
this would have been through intellectual integrity/honestytelling the truth to oneself is a
way of achieving ontological unity. Nietzsche opts for the retelling of his life to himself, as
necessary (parts of which conflict with the information about himself provided by family,
friends, and acquaintances).
The amount of space that he devotes to the description of the food he eats, the proper
locations for thinking, and the purpose of selfishness, is not without good reason. He feels
that these things are necessary. Such concerns are far more important than the usual things
most people consider important: God, immortality, and freedom. Without
considerations of this kind, these concepts would not be possible at allfor there would be

432

KGW VI/3: 291. Ecce Homo, 96. Nietzsches emphasis.

244
no life to support them. For Nietzsche, the great man is the one who embraces necessity:
My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that you do not want anything to be different,
not forwards, not backwards, not for all eternity. Not just to tolerate necessity, still less to
conceal itall idealism is hypocrisy towards necessity, but to love it . . .433 Nietzsche
eliminates the constitutive experience of wishing for human being.434 At one time wishing
was necessary for a certain worldview, that of idealism and Christianity; since that time has
passed, wishing is no longer an essential component of human being. A wish desires for
things to be otherwise; the hypothetical nature of the eternal recurrence does not allow for
things to be different from the way that they are. This is why Nietzsche calls his teaching the
eternal recurrence of the same.
The kind of attitude required for the affirmation of existence as a whole, so as not to
be crushed by the hypothesis of the eternal recurrence, can be located in amor fati. It is here
that the eternal recurrence appears in its proper light. To think that the eternal recurrence is
determined by the relation of freedom and necessity (and not the other way round) means
that one is still within the moral interpretation of existence.435 The love of necessity is
where freedom and necessity are joined in a new configuration under the light of the eternal
433

KGW VI/3: 295. Ecce Homo, 99.

See Aristotle on the importance of wishing in the Nicomachean Ethics (1113a15-1113b). For a
phenomenological account of the nature of wishing see Robert Sokolowskis Phenomenology of the Human
Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Ch. 15-16.
435
By and large, this is the source of Lwiths problem with the eternal recurrence: Whoever wishes to
generate a communicable philosophic teaching cannot satisfy himself with a mere reference to an ecstatic vision
or a plan; he must attempt to clarify and solve in his teaching the riddle of his vision and to justify his vision in
a carefully reasoned way. The attempt at a natural-scientific justification of the eternal recurrence as the
temporal structure of the physical world should not be taken any less seriously than the other attempt, that is, to
develop the eternal recurrence as an ethical postulate. Both attempts show that in the seeming unity of worldconstitution and self-conduct, the two sides that that unity is supposed to unify are poles apart. Nietzsches
Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, 94. Lwith still lies on this side of good and evil, and has
not moved to a position beyond the moral interpretation of existenceit remains a vision, a new way of looking
at the world.
434

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recurrence. As the most scientific of all hypotheses, the eternal recurrence is what is most
necessary; however, its necessity is not that of a law, which dictates that given certain
conditions, something must occur in a specific way. The necessity that is included within the
eternal recurrence is that of the highest freedomor to put it another way, as Nietzsche did
in his high school essay of 1862 (see Chapter 1), Perhaps . . . free will [is] nothing other
than the highest potency of fate.436 Freedom and necessity must be transformed in order for
their joining to be coherent. This would mean that necessity could not be what it had been
traditionally. Freedom and necessity are not polar opposites, but have been brought together
under a single headingthe eternal recurrence.

Nietzsches Explosion
Dynamite, even in large quantities, makes a loud noise and a powerful explosion, but
its force quickly dissipates after ignition. The same may be said for Nietzsche: in 1888 he
made a big noise (wrote 5 books) and fell into silence for the next 11 years of his life until his
death in 1900. Madness overtook him like his hero Hlderlin and he never wrote another
bookThe Will to Power was composed by his sister, Elizabeth Frster-Nietzsche in order to
make money from her brothers extensive literary estate in Weimar, over which she had
gained control. For someone who insisted that a grain of the spice of madness437 was
always joined to any innovation moral or political (see 14 of Daybreak, Significance of
madness in the history of morality), it should have been no surprise when Nietzsche himself
went madas the great explorer of the human psyche and tempter/experimenter of
436
437

KGW I/2: 437.

KGW V/1: 23. Daybreak, 14.

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conventional European morality. As someone who called for a vast change in the current
(Christian) morality, his madness sealed and confirmed his teaching for the coming
generation.438 (Zarathustra and the Bible were distributed among the German troops during
the First World War.)
If this is the case, then Nietzsches conception of the eternal recurrence is imbued
with religious significance. Far from being opposed to religion per se, Nietzsche always
thought highly of the religion that was able to provide a unifying structure to society. The
main opposition he sets up on the final page of Ecce Homo confirms this: Have I been
understood?Dionysus versus the crucified . . . Of course, the crucified he means here is
not the historical Jesus, but rather the Jesus of institutionalized, Pauline Christianity. This is
the only way one can explain the reason why, in his final letters to friends, publishers, and
educators, Nietzsche signs his name in one of two ways: Dionysus or the Crucified [Der
Gekreuzigte]. In those final letters he scribbled and shot off, he alternates between these two
names. The alteration (or joining?)439 of these two figures, I think, underlines Nietzsches
belief that he had established a new religious perspective, one in which life is affirmed and
suffering is given meaning. What is essential to this new perspective is the teaching of the
eternal recurrence: the teaching that signals the overcoming of the distinction between theory
and practice, the teaching that embodies the true nature of science, gay science, the
438

Thomas Mann picks up on this theme and develops it in his artistic reconfiguration of Nietzsches life in the
novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkhn as Told by a Friend. During the
pact between the devil and Leverkhn, the devil makes the composer this promise: You will lead, you will set
the march for the future, lads will swear by your name, who thanks to your madness will no longer need to be
mad. In their health they will gnaw at your madness, and you will become healthy in them. From John E.
Woods translation of Manns novel (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 258-259. Mann was right to make the
Nietzsche-figure of this novel into a composer, for Nietzsche himself thought that he had created a new vision
of the worldmusic and myth go hand in hand, according to what Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy.
439
One may well ask if this distinction, or any other for that matter, makes sense anymore in a world after the
death of God.

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teaching that places absolute demands on those who think it. It is also the teaching that
destroys the old, Christian religious worldview (see The Antichrist); simultaneously, this
teaching accomplishes the unity of life, of which only art and religion are capable (according
to Nietzsche in the History essay).
In the final note that he wrote to Georg Brandes, Nietzsche says: Once you
discovered me, it was no great feat to find me: the difficulty now is to lose me . . . the
Crucified.440 Brandes had spent much time trying to find the nomad Nietzsche in order to
offer the first lectures on his philosophy in Copenhagen. The reason why Nietzsche advised
Brandes to lose me might be explained by the nature of the eternal recurrenceit is the
only teaching of Zarathustras that is not spoken aloud to anyone. In fact, Zarathustra
retreats from the human world in order to be alone with this thought; it magnifies the
significance of the individual outside the context of his/her function in society. Since the
eternal recurrence makes demands on the individual, it might be the case that one must lose
the teacher (Nietzsche/Zarathustra) in order to find the eternal recurrence. Nietzsche in fact
loses himself in this way. In his madness there is also a grain of genius and wisdom
something divine, as one whispered to oneself.441 That which is whispered to himself (and
Life in Part III of Zarathustra) is the eternal recurrence; Brandes, and anyone else who is
looking for Nietzsches teaching, must lose Nietzsche and find himself/herself.

440
441

January 4, 1889, KGB III/5: 573 (no. 1243). Selected Letters, 345.
KGW V/1: 23. Daybreak, 14.

Conclusion
Friedrich Nietzsches philosophy has often been considered to serve a negative
purpose: he delimits the range of the tradition of Western philosophy, demarcating the
extreme limits of rational thought. At least in this sense he is viewed as a necessary
component of any introductory course in philosophy. This is, of course, an important insight:
to follow Nietzsche in his thinking allows one to look over the entire Western intellectual
tradition and see why (and how) it developed in a definite pattern; after nearly 2500 years of
philosophy, Nietzsche draws our attention to the sources for thought in the West. This is
what Heidegger means when he says: Nietzsche sees clearly that in the history of Western
man something is coming to an end: what until now and long since has remained
uncompleted. Nietzsche sees the necessity to carry it to a completion. But completion does
not mean that a part is added which was missing before; this completion does not make
whole by patching; it makes whole by achieving at last the wholeness of the whole, by thus
transforming what has been so far, in virtue of the whole.442 In other words, Nietzsche
brings Western thinking, i.e., metaphysics, to a close by thinking it to its logical conclusion.
By so doing, he marks out for us the realm of thought that belongs to Western philosophy.
Nietzsche makes us think about the basic assumptions of thought that we hold in the
West by calling them all into question. He questions all of these things by putting them in
terms of their value for or against lifethis begins with the History essay. In this sense, he
is often called a diagnostician, one of unsurpassed caliber, for he can identify the ills within
European culture like none other before or after. And yet, when most people call him a
442

Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper Collins, 1968), 5556. Heideggers emphasis.

248

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diagnostician, they think that he is simply the critic of modernity. It is true that Nietzsche
had a distaste for modern thinking and ideasthis is undeniable. But when one looks at his
critique of science, one must recognize that he is criticizing all of science, beginning with
Socrates and leading up to (and including) positivism. His attack is focused on modern
science because it is necessarily the conclusion of Socratic optimism, the idea that one can
correct existence through knowledge. It is impossible to separate Nietzsches diagnosis from
his prognosis, one cannot break off Nietzsches critique of science from his other ideas
most certainly not the eternal recurrence. In other words, one cannot separate Nietzsches
philosophy of science (critique of science) from his philosophy of history (the eternal
recurrence). This is a point that needs some development.
To return to Heideggers remarks on Nietzsches thinking, there is another important
point. Nietzsches philosophy must be thought of simultaneously as both positive and
negative. The negative role is touched on constantly throughout academia and is manifested
in the addition of Nietzsche to the curriculum in the introductory philosophy class. His
philosophy is often cited as an example of what not to do when it comes to philosophy. It is
often also used to point out that his thinking necessarily led to his insanity for the last 11
years of his life. (This kind of claim is one of those that I pointed out at the beginning that is
a superficial form of psychologismNietzsches thought can be resolved into his life, or, in
this case, his thought has a negative effect on his life. In either case, one simply tries to
avoid addressing the content of Nietzsches philosophy.) The only proper response to such
claims is silence. One can merely point out that Nietzsche himself did not advise anyone to
follow him lightly:

250
VademecumVadetecum
My way and language speak to you,
you follow me, pursue me too?
To thine own self and way be true:
Thus follow me, but gently do!443
Nietzsches writings serve a positive purpose in that they inspire thinking, they are a
challenge to his readers and ought to be read in that way. He wants no disciples because
disciples do not have the freedom to think for themselvesthey must adhere to the teachings
of another. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil only. And why would
you not want to pluck at my wreath? You revere me, but what if your reverence falls down
some day? Beware that you are not killed by a statue!444 This is a point that should be
noted by some of his readersthey are in danger of turning Nietzsche into a prophet whose
message is to be taken as absolute truth.
A middle way is needed between the extreme poles of complete rejection and
unhesitant, unquestioning acceptance of Nietzsches philosophy. His philosophy is both
positive and negative, and it requires careful reading to determine his actual teaching. As it
is, one can echo Nietzsches own assertion about his works: they are for the few. Few are
willing to take the time to sift through his various writings and aphorisms to determine the
meaning of his work. And his works (and he intends for all of them to be read) demand
careful attention if one wants to understand him. One must follow his directions on how to
read himmoving slowly from The Birth of Tragedy step by step to his autobiography (and

443
444

KGW V/2: 26. The Gay Science, 12.

KGW VI/1: 97. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 59.

251
autobibliography) Ecce Homobut one must watch where one is walking. The method of
reading Nietzsche carefully is philological: one begins with the oldest document and looks at
the extra layers of interpretation and variation that have accrued over time. Following
Nietzsche in the course of his writing career, lets the reader see the important points of his
thinking and whence they came. It also enables us to see an important transitional point in
his thinking wherein his position begins to solidify. I believe that this point can be located in
his essay, On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (1874), as I have sought to
argue throughout the course of this dissertation.
The significance of this essay for Nietzsches philosophical development is often
overlooked. Within this short essay, one can find traces of his later teachings, like the eternal
recurrence.445 But the real importance of this work does not simply consist in these traces of
ideas that are fleshed out in later works. The History essay is the point of convergence
between Nietzsches philosophy of science and his philosophy of history. For him, there is
no distinction between these two. In a certain sense, then, Nietzsche remains quasi-Hegelian,
because, for Hegel, the ultimate science was that of history. Indeed, Nietzsches essay on the
problems of historical science is a condemnation of the tradition of Western science as a
whole (includingbut not limited toSocrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Descartes, Bacon, and, most prominently, Hegel). Hegels emphasis on history as the highest
science, the study of Spirits self-realization over the course of many ages, makes him the

445

Only if, when the fifth act of the earths drama ended, the whole play every time began again from the
beginning, if it was certain that the same complex of motives, the same deus ex machina, the same catastrophe
were repeated at definite intervals, could the man of power venture to desire monumental history in full iconlike veracity, that is to say with every individual peculiarity depicted in precise detail: but that will no doubt
happen only when the astronomers have again become astrologers. KGW III/1: 257. Untimely Meditations,
70.

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logical conclusion of 2500 years of a specific scientific tradition. History, as science,
determines every aspect of man; it can, therefore, tell us the most about our world and
ourselves.446 Like Hegel, whose philosophy of history was at the same time a philosophy of
science, Nietzsches philosophy of science is at the same time his philosophy of history.
Nietzsche remains anti-Hegelian to the core, as Gilles Deleuze correctly points out, but his
own position is structured somewhat by Hegels.
The development of Nietzsches gay science derives directly from his attempt to
free himself from dialectical thinking in the History essay. This short work ultimately asks
the question that will be the focus of his later career (What is the value of truth?): Does
the practice of science help or harm the way that we live? After this work, he sets about
reformulating the nature and scope of science; and in the process, he believes that he has
brought science and art together in the gay science (the music-making Socrates). And
the highest product of this new science is the teaching of the eternal recurrencewhat
Nietzsche refers to as the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. It is true that he
drastically alters the nature of science here, but, nevertheless, science remains bound up with
historythus, there is a residue of Hegelian philosophy in Nietzsches thought. One can see
this when Nietzsche says in a later notebook that he only lets philosophy stand as the most
general form of history, as an attempt somehow to describe Heraclitean becoming and to
abbreviate it into signs (so to speak, to translate and mummify it into a kind of illusory
being).447 Such a phrase is comparable to one of the most famous passages of
Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface: On Scientific Cognition, 27-29) in which Hegel
446

Know yourself is the whole of science.Only when he has attained a final knowledge of all things will
man have come to know himself. For things are only the boundaries of man. KGW V/2: 49. Daybreak, 32.
447
KGW VII. Writings from the Late Notebooks, 26. Nietzsches emphasis.

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speaks of the labor of Spirit to reach self-consciousness through several phases. Becoming is
brought into the center of his thought, as he tries to reconcile it with being. Nietzsche
attempts to do the same thing, to a certain extent, with his doctrine of the eternal recurrence;
however, Nietzsche believes that he has dropped all pretenses of teleology.448
Eternal recurrence is Nietzsches fundamental teaching, the roots of which can
already be detected in the History essay even if this doctrine is not articulated there. The
doctrine of the eternal recurrence is central to a proper understanding of Nietzsches
philosophy as a whole. Without knowledge of this ambiguous teaching, it is difficult to
provide a coherent picture of Nietzsches other ideas like the rise of nihilism, his critique of
morality, the overman, and the death of God. It plays a grounding role in his thought, as
Heidegger has pointed out: In opposition to all the disparate kinds of confusion and
perplexity vis--vis Nietzsches doctrine of return, we must say at the outset, and initially
purely in the form of an assertion, that the doctrine of the eternal return of the same is the
fundamental doctrine in Nietzsches philosophy. Bereft of this teaching as its ground,
Nietzsches philosophy is like a tree without roots.449 He goes on to say that if the doctrine
of return is sundered and removed to one side as a theory, what will inevitably happen is
that it will no longer serve as a fundamental teaching. It will only be regarded as an
eccentricity. To separate the doctrine as theoretical (or cosmological), or alternatively as
practical (or anthropological), results in a misunderstanding concerning the nature of
Nietzsches philosophy. As I noted in the Introduction of this dissertation, this is precisely
448

Nietzsches self-assessment is one thing, but it is fair to ask the question: does he actually overcome
teleology or is there a crypto-teleology at work in the eternal recurrence? This is a question that I raised in a
paper recently presented for the conference Examining Teleology in March 2010 at the Catholic University of
America, titled The Eternal Recurrence: Nietzsches Ateleological Philosophy of History.
449
Nietzsche: Volumes Two, 6.

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what came about through the influence of Lwiths understanding (interpretation?) of the
eternal recurrence.
The purpose of Nietzsches philosophy is to overcome the distinction between theory
and practice after the event of Gods death in order to ground human being in a world of
infinite, eternal becoming. His radicalization of science in his gay science makes science
self-reflexiveit performs an auto-critique. The importance of Nietzsches contribution to
the philosophy of science has been well defended within the past two decades (after a
welcome revival of Continental style approaches to Nietzsche).450 However, what has been
lacking has been a proper appreciation of Nietzsches philosophy of history and its implicit
connection to his philosophy of science. It is here that his philosophy has the potential to
have a positive influence on his readers, which will drive them to try to understand what
Nietzsche is saying. Such an influence does not equate with unquestioning acceptance of his
philosophyjust as the negative influence I spoke of above does not equate with an absolute
rejection of Nietzsches philosophy. A true comprehension of his thought requires the virtue
of patience and it cannot be achieved through a cursory glance at his aphorisms: I admit that
you need one thing above all in order to practice the requisite art of reading, a thing which
today people have been so good at forgettingand so it will be some time before my

450

Leading this front has been Babette Babich with such works as Nietzsches Philosophy of Science:Reflecting
Science on the Ground of Art and Life; Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros
in Hlderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger; plus the many articles published in New Nietzsche Studies over the past
decade. See also the collection of essays edited by Babich and Richard S. Cohen, Nietzsche, Theories of
Knowledge, and Critical Theory and Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science both of which
appeared in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series (nos. 203-204) in 1999.

255
writings are readable, you almost need to be a cow for this one thing and certainly not a
modern man: it is rumination . . .451
More than any other philosopher of the past two centuries, Nietzsche stands closest to
us. He speaks directly to us on an individual, conversational level, as David Allison has
pointed out. Hence, he is one of the philosophers that has the capacity still to excite us about
thinking, in its rigor and joy. His importance for contemporary Continental philosophy is
undeniableHeidegger, Gadamer, Fink, Foucault, and Derrida (to name only a few of the
most important philosophers of the 20th century) all publicly acknowledge their debt to
Nietzsche. That his philosophy has been a stimulus for finding new ways to philosophize
among these (and other) thinkers demonstrates that Nietzsches longest lasting legacy is the
demand to think for oneself, freely. As much as he denies it, he remains a free thinker, in
the truest sense of the term: no one else can think for you, this is why he proclaims his
thoughts as his own in his last years of sanityno one else has the right to them. No matter
how much he raged against Kant and Hegel, he is the fullest manifestation of the Kantian
command Sapere aude [Dare to know]! Have the courage to use your own
understanding!452 Nietzsche betrays himself in the opening lines of his autobiography when
he says: Listen to me! I am the one who I am! Above all, do not mistake me for anyone
else!453 His message is one of revelation, a message of the highest enlightenment.
Nietzsches philosophy is a positive impetus to thought because it encourages thinking for
oneself; thinking remains a task that is freely chosen for its own sake. In this sense,
451

KGW VI/2: 268. On the Genealogy of Morality, 10. Nietzsches emphasis.

Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? in Political Writings, trans. H.B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 54.
453
KGW VI/3: 255. Ecce Homo, 71. Nietzsches emphasis.
452

256
Nietzsche remains a part of the Western tradition as a whole, and an important part of
German philosophy.
Nietzsche is able to function as an impetus to thinking for us, and for anyone willing
to take the time to read him carefully, because of his untimeliness.454 His thoughts and
insights are as novel as they were over a century ago, which is why he constantly attracts new
readers to him through his writing. One can see that he thought about himself (and his
thought) in this way when he says in Ecce Homo: I am living off my own credit, perhaps it
is just a prejudice that I am living at all?455 To live on ones own credit means to be
constantly pawning something that one does not have, but which one soon will. It is a
strange play between presence and absence, between the present and the future. Nietzsche is
only able to live in the present because he has already borrowed from the futureand this
remains true at any time, he is only able to excite us because of his orientation and concern
for the future (where his thought still remains). Despite what some postmodern interpreters
believe, Nietzsche is not a philosopher who was far ahead of his time and whose time has
now come.456 This is why in one of his last writings, Twilight of the Idols, he has a
subsection entitled, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man. It would not be surprising if he
would engage in such attacks even todayon anyone and everyone.

454

This is a point that Heidegger makes about philosophy in general in his 1935 lecture series, Introduction to
Metaphysics: philosophy itself is essentially untimely, it can never become fashionable (or timely) if it is
true philosophy.
455
KGW VI/3: 255. Ecce Homo, 71.
456
This is a point that is made in Alenka Zupancics The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsches Philosophy of the Two
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003). One wonders, however, whether it is even necessary to appeal to the
authority of Jacques Lacan in order to make such a simple point when it can be extrapolated from Nietzsches
writings themselves, as Heideggers own reading of Nietzsche demonstrates.

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