Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 10:15:51 -0800
From: Kenneth Johnson <kenn-AT-beef.sparks.nv.us>
Subject: ok henry n et al, 1st salvo: "reading Nietzsche"



Nietzsche [himself] provides us with several rather specific indications as
to how we should approach his work. We know, for example, that he addresses
a particular audience. He never tires of invoking the classical distinction
between "the few" and "the many," and this results in a two-tiered, if not
duplicitous, text: one level, the esoteric, for those few who are capable
of understanding it (whom he calls _we_ "opposite men," "free thinkers,"
"attempters," "wanderers," "immoralists"), and another, an exoteric text,
for "the others." Indeed, it is on the basis of this distinction of
audience that he will construct the whole argumentation for 'The Genealogy
of Morals', the distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of
humanity - active and reactive - together with their different systems of
moral valuation: aristocratic morality, and slave (or  "herd") morality.
And it is with the latter, he claims, that the _need_ arises for
postulating every form of transcendence: an otherworldly religion, the
metaphysical ideals of unchanging being, permanence, unity, soul, the moral
ideals of ascetic virtue, absolute truth, and divine justice. As to the
former: "What can it matter to _us_ with what kind of tinsel an invalid
decks out his weakness?"

Even granting this distinction of audience, Nietzsche knew his contemporary
readers were few indeed. To construct a text, much less to have it
understood, on some basis other than the reactive tradition of theology,
metaphysics, and moralty - this requires both a new style of expression and
a new audience. Indeed, Nietzsche described himself throughout his life as
a posthumous writer, one who writes for the future, one who will live only
in the future - as a ghost.

"We, too, associate with "people:" we, too, modestly don the dress in which
(_as_ which) others know us, respect us, look for us . . . We, too, do what
all prudent masks do . . . But there are also other ways and tricks when it
comes to associating with or passing among men - for example, as a ghost,
which is altogether advisable if one wants to get rid of them quickly and
make them afraid. Example: One reaches out for us but gets no hold of us.
That is frightening. Or we enter through a closed door. Or after all lights
have been extinguished. Or after we have died. The last is the trick of
_posthumous_ people par excellence. . . . It is only after death that we
shall enter _our_ life and become alive, oh, very much alive, we posthumous
people!"

Nietzsche's text, therefore, is necessarily ambiguous. There is no simple
face or surface value to it. Thus, Nietzsche will call his own works
"questions," "hieroglyphs", or "masks", just as he would call any other
thing, person, or tradition.

But a tension seems to arise here between the styled ambiguity of
Nietzsche's writing and the intensely personal tone of his expression. He
repeatedly asserts that his texts are the inscriptions of intense personal
experiences, sometimes of elevated moods, feelings, or states, sometimes of
the greatest intellectual inspiration. What accounts for this apparent
discrepancy, then, this transfer of the text from its "source" in the
contracted, individuated personal experience to its "emergence" as an
ambiguous text? If the text is a testament to the life of its author, we
must be cautious not to judge such a life according to the narrow
biographical sense of the term, as if the author's life were itself an open
book, an explicit and comprehensive bibliography of sorts.

Rather, Nietzsche asks the reader to consider the general condtions of life
- its prognosis for advance and decline, its strength or weakness, its
general etiology - as well as that of its sustaining culture and values.
Thus, the innermost part of an author - what is most personal - must be
understood as having its genesis in conditions outside himself. The texture
of the text, therefore, is itself woven from "the hieroglyphic chains" of
these universal conditions of forms of existence. Indeed, it is in this
sense that Nietzsche will repeatedly criticize the very notion of a
personal self or ego as being a "grammatical fiction," or state that the
individual consciousness is merely "the surface phenomena" of unconscious
forces and drives - and in the same breath claim, "I am every name in
history."

The demands imposed on his readers are thus considerable, and if few
thinkers have been so maligned and abused as Nietzsche, fewer still have
lent themselves to precisely this kind of misinterpretation: "My writings
are difficult; I hope this is not considered an objection." Everywhere
Nietzsche's style is to write in excess, in extravagance, or, as he says,
"in blood." His thought issues in total profusion, and resists every
attempt to make it systematic. Indeed, "It is not easily possible to
understand the blood of another."

Nowere, then, has the _style_ of a philosopher's expression so forcefully
reflected its content. What he says and how he says it are so much the
same. Both style and world, for Nietzsche, emerge as a play of appearances
- what he calls the Will to Power, the will to will, to form and create -
and the dynamism of this play expresses an overabundance of force, energy,
life - teeming and recurrent affirmation.

"How greedily this wave approaches . . . But already another wave is
approaching, still more greedily and savagely than the first, and its soul,
too, seems to be full of secrets and the lust to dig up treasures. Thus
live waves - thuse live we who will . . . Carry on as you like, roaring
with overweening pleasure and malice - or dive again, pouring your emeralds
down into the deepest depths, and throw your infinite white mane of foam
and spray over them: Everything suits me, for everything suits you so well,
and I am so well-disposed toward you for everything; how could I think of
betraying you? For - mark my word! - I know you and your secret, I know
your kind! You and I - are we not of one kind? - You and I - do we not have
_one secret?"_"

It is this kind of fertility or richness that refuses to be systematized,
discretely categorized, and, ultimately, calcified by some ruse or device
of language, some simple definition, or essence, or form. His use of the
aphorism or apothegm, for instance, is fully crucial to this dynamics; in
fact, it is probably his most distinctive stylistic feature:

(to be continued, barring comment. From: "The New Nietzsche")

regards,
kenneth omnigaard




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