Basic writings of Nietzsche - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche & Walter Arnold Kaufmann
Editor’s Introduction
1
Ecce Homo is one of the treasures of world literature. Written in 1888 and first published in 1908, it has been largely ignored or misunderstood. Yet it is Nietzsche’s own interpretation of his development, his works, and his significance; and we should gladly trade the whole vast literature on Nietzsche for this one small book. Who would not rather have Shakespeare on Shakespeare, including the poet’s own reflections on his plays and poems, than the exegeses and conjectures of thousands of critics and professors?
Socrates said in the Apology that the poets are among the worst interpreters of their own works: they create without understanding, on the wings of inspiration; but when they discuss their works they rely on their uninspired reason and falter. But Ecce Homo is clearly not the work of a pedant whose genius has quit him. It is itself a work of art and marks one of the high points of German prose.
There are those who like Nietzsche’s early works best—especially The Birth of Tragedy and the “untimely” meditation on historiography; but they are few by now and no longer a force to reckon with. Others have always preferred the aphoristic works in which Nietzsche emerged as Germany’s greatest master of prose. By far the larger number of his readers have most admired Zarathustra. And the rest, including the greater part of the Anglo-American philosophers who take him seriously at all, have little doubt that Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals are his finest books. I am assuredly in a minority—perhaps of one—when I confess that I love best the five books Nietzsche wrote during his last productive year, 1888—not least because they are such brilliant works of art.
The Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo present a crescendo without equal in prose. Then comes the final work, Nietzsche contra Wagner, Nietzsche’s briefest and most beautiful book—a selection of passages from his earlier works, admittedly very slightly revised and improved in a few places—an attempt to approximate perfection. The preface to that book was dated Christmas 1888. A few days later, during the first week of January, he collapsed on the street, recovered sufficient lucidity to dispatch a few mad but strangely beautiful letters1—and then darkness closed in and extinguished passion and intelligence. He suffered and thought no more. He had burnt himself out.
Was the vegetating body that survived another decade and more, until August 1900, still the poet and philosopher, artist and Antichrist? Socrates gently ridiculed disciples who thought that the body that remained after his death would still be Socrates. But reproductions of portraits of Nietzsche in the eighteen-nineties, commissioned by his, sister who let his mustache grow as he himself never had, who clad him in white robes and fancied his vacant stare—portraits that show no glimpse of Nietzsche’s vanished spirit—these appear with his books to this day.
Of Nietzsche’s last works, none has proved harder to understand than Ecce Homo, The self-portrait is not naturalistic; hence, it was widely felt, it is clearly insane and to be disregarded. This prevalent view is doubly false. The lack of naturalism is not proof of insanity but a triumph of style—of a piece with the best paintings of that time. And even if what might be interpreted as signs of madness do occasionally flicker in a passage, that does not mean that the portrait can therefore be ignored. In both respects Nietzsche should be compared with Van Gogh.
Ecce Homo does not fit any ordinary conception of philosophers. It is not only remote from the world of professorial or donnish philosophy, from tomes and articles, footnotes and jargon—in brief, from the modern image. It is equally far from the popular notion of the wise man: serene, past passion, temperate, and Apollinian. But this is plainly part of Nietzsche’s point: to offer a new image—a philosopher who is not an Alexandrian academician, nor an Apollinian sage, but Dionysian.
While Van Gogh, having fled his native north, burnt himself out in southern France, creating an incredible number of works without any public recognition, fighting time till 1890, when madness could no longer be held off and he shot himself, Nietzsche spent himself with comparable passion just a few miles further east, writing feverishly—not even pausing, as in keeping with his own ideas he ought to have done, to take his life before his spirit quit it. Freud used to say of him that “he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live”;2 yet Nietzsche was not aware of his impending madness and therefore, unable to forestall it.
In his first book Nietzsche had traced the “birth of tragedy” to the creative fusion of the Apollinian and the Dionysian, and the death of tragedy to the imperious rationalism for which he found the most impressive symbol in Socrates. Then he had found a rebirth of tragedy in Wagner’s work and had looked forward to the advent of an “artistic Socrates”—Nietzsche himself. The critical passion, the revolt against hallowed pieties, the demand for clarity, and the fusion of life and thought need not always remain opposed to the spirit of art and need not inspire such confidence in the unaided reason that one’s heir would proceed to proscribe all tragedy, as Plato did; rather, all this might be merged with a vision of the world that would be closer to Sophocles, and with a poetic temperament partaking more of Pindar than of Plato, more of Dionysus than Apollo. Ecce Homo is the Apology of this “artistic Socrates:”
Plato’s Socrates had claimed in his Apology that he was the wisest of men, not because he was so wise but because his fellow men were so stupid, especially those who were considered the wisest—for they thought they knew what in fact they did not know. And Socrates, accused of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, argued that he was actually the city’s greatest benefactor and deserving of the highest honors. Thus, Ecce Homo could have been entitled “Variations on a Theme by Socrates.” That would have been an artistic title, but out of the question for a writer who had just finished The Antichrist. Ecce Homo—the words Pilate had, according to John (19:5), spoken of Jesus: “Behold the man!”—seemed more to the point. But that point was not to suggest any close similarity between himself and Jesus; more nearly the opposite. Here is a man! Here is a new, a different image of humanity: not a saint or holy man any more than a traditional sage, but a modern version.
In the text Nietzsche said he wished to prevent any mischievous use of himself—doss man Unfug mit mir treibt. Our knowledge that two months after finishing the first draft of the book, and less than four weeks after he had gone over the whole work once more, he became insane gives the book a tragic dimension that is heightened almost intolerably if we bear in mind how he failed to prevent the mischief he feared. The first section of the Preface ends: “Above all, do not mistake me for someone else!” He underlined this cry—but soon his sister imposed her exceedingly unsubtle notion of hero and prophet on a mindless invalid—and in her sign he triumphed.
That was but the beginning. Far worse mischief followed. Nietzsche’s voice was drowned out as misinterpretations that he had explicitly repudiated with much wit and malice were accepted and repeated, and repeated and accepted, until most readers knew what to expect before they read Nietzsche, and so read nothing but what they had long expected.
2
What of Nietzsche’s comments on his own works? Can his interpretations really be taken seriously?
The very question smacks of an obscene revaluation of all values, through which, soon after the book was written, everything was turned upside down. Nietzsche’s sister had mocked her brother’s claims to fame, but then, switching to his cause after her husband’s suicide, she took private lessons in Nietzsche’s philosophy from Rudolf Steiner, a Goethe scholar who later became famous as the founder of anthroposophy. Soon Steiner gave her up as simply incapable of understanding Nietzsche. Meanwhile she became her brother’s official exegete and biographer, tampered with his letters—and was taken seriously by almost everyone. And who was not taken seriously? Even the most unscrupulous Nazi interpretations were taken seriously not only inside Germany, but by a host of foreign scholars who did not bother to check Nazi quotations.
Earlier, Ernst Bertram had frankly subtitled his interpretation “Attempt at a Mythology”: but who checked his quotations? And whose Nietzsche image, except the sister’s, was taken more seriously from 1918, when Bertram’s Nietzsche appeared, until 1933 when Hitler broke out? Or who checked Jaspers’ quotations in their context? (The English translation of his Nietzsche omits all source references, as Bertram had done.)
It would be pointless to rescue from their imminent oblivion many lesser figures who have also associated their names with Nietzsche’s, writing about him without having read carefully the works they discuss, or editing him by selecting passages from hopeless mistranslations that these professors lacked the German or the patience to check. Yet such publications are taken seriously and used as the basis for many discussions in colleges and universities.
While some of Nietzsche’s self-interpretations are much less persuasive than others, all of them have several inestimable advantages over almost everything that passes as serious literature about him: he did not discuss any of his works without having read them carefully, more than once; indeed, he did not discuss any without knowing all of them, in the sequence in which they were written—and, of course, in the original. He also knew all of his letters, as well as his unpublished fragments and notes. And he wrote about his oeuvre with singular penetration, wit, and style.
Let us be specific: Do his comments on The Birth of Tragedy make sense? Very little written on that book is as illuminating, and most discussions of the book are dated by Nietzsche’s own discussion, which long antedates them.
Yet Ecce Homo has its faults. It contains all too many references to Zarathustra—most of them embarrassing—and the numerous long quotations from that book are almost rendered pointless by Zarathustra’s great posthumous success: the quotations were intended for readers who did not know that book. And although Nietzsche has often been linked with German nationalism, his remarks about the Germans are open to criticism for being too extreme in stressing what he finds abominable.
We return to the question of naturalism. Nietzsche’s portrait of the Germans is not meant to be objective. It partakes more nearly of the spirit of George Grosz, who, after World War I, entitled a collection of his graphic attacks on his countrymen, Ecce Homo. But we also hear the anguished cry of one who sees—foresees—himself mistaken for a writer he is not: for an apostle of military power and empire, a nationalist, and even a racist. In order to define himself emphatically, Nietzsche underlines (too often) and shrieks—to no avail. Those who construe the overman in evolutionary terms he calls “oxen”—in vain. Respected professors still write books in which Nietzsche’s ethics is presented as “evolutionary.”
The break with Wagner? Nietzsche’s picture is stylized, not false. There is, of course, hindsight in it; but readers of Sartre should know, if they have not learned it firsthand from Nietzsche himself, that an act is one event, and the way we interpret it afterward and relate ourselves to it is another. Looking back on the year in which he resigned from the university, published Human, All-Too-Human with a dedication to Voltaire—turning from German romanticism to the French enlightenment, and from Wagner to independence—he felt, more clearly than he had felt it at the time, that this had been his Rubicon, the turning point in his life. Can one deny that it was?
For all that, is Wagner represented in a Manichaean spirit, as the force of evil, as a dragon? On the contrary, the portrait is imbued with gratitude and love—with amor fati, love of fate. There is no “if only” in this autobiography, and there are no excuses. A man who was in physical agony much of his adult life and warned by his doctors not to read or write much lest he strain his half-blind eyes, does not once complain. He is thankful for his illness and tells us how it made his life better.
The philosophical and religious literature of the world does not contain many sayings that equal the wisdom and nobility of Zarathustra’s challenge: “If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.”3 In Ecce Homo Nietzsche embodies this attitude, this triumph over ressentiment. Instead of bearing a grudge toward the world that treated him so cruelly, instead of succumbing to the rancor of sickness, he relates the story of his life and work in a spirit of gratitude—and goes out of his way to pay his respects to Paul Rée and Lou Salomé,4 with whom he had fallen out.
Ecce Homo, “Dionysus versus the Crucified”: the contrast with the Jesus of the Gospels is central. The Jesus of the Gospels—who, Nietzsche argued in The Antichrist, is different in this respect from the historic Jesus—is far from being above resentment: not only does he obsessively slander his enemies, he stands opposed to this world and this life, and neither takes nor teaches any joy in small pleasures and beauties. The strange emphasis on little things, material factors generally thought beneath the notice of philosophers and sages, that distinguishes the first two chapters of Ecce Homo has to be seen in this light, too. This theme was picked up by Camus, also with an anti-Christian pathos, but restrained by lyricism and his distinctive charm. Nietzsche, like Socrates who was said to look like a satyr, disdains charm and embraces irony and sarcasm: he is not ingratiating, but wants to give offense. Is there no resentment in that?
In the case of Socrates, Nietzsche emphasized the element of rancor in his sarcasm—what he called Bosheit, malice. And in that case many did not wish to see Socrates in this light and, because Socrates was felt to be ideal, tranquil, the perfect sage, took offense at Nietzsche’s portrait. Only the safe distance of more than twenty centuries could make the hero of the Apology look saintly. No doubt, those who had heard his apology, felt what Nietzsche saw—and had smarted under it for years. After all, what Socrates boasted of was perfectly true: he had taken pleasure in engaging men of reputation in the marketplace to humiliate them before the crowd that gathered—often (assuming, as is surely fair, that Plato did not mean to slander Socrates) by using clever debater’s tricks. He had a wicked sense of humor and found all this very funny; those he bested certainly did not.
Goethe, too, possessed not only the serenity of amor fati5 but also an Olympian malice. But even if Nietzsche is in noble company, was there not after all resentment in him, even in Ecce Homo? It is a matter of what Nietzsche called in The Gay Science “giving style to one’s character.” The negative feelings, he taught, should not be suppressed, much less extirpated; they should be sublimated. And in Ecce Homo he discusses how he was both a No-saying and a Yes-saying spirit. The negative feelings are not vented on individuals or directed against life or the world; they are mobilized in the service of life and creativity against obstructions, movements, causes.
Ultimate nobility must rise above rancor and must yet be capable of echoing Voltaire’s cry, écrasez l’infame.6 Resentment is reprehensible, but so is the failure to engage in the fight against infamy. It is only when the infamy to be crushed turns out to be Christianity that most readers recoil. But Nietzsche’s attack, of course, depends on his conception of Christianity and—as he himself insists—cannot be understood at all except as a part of his campaign against resentment.
Indeed, this attack seems to me much more successfully stylized than Nietzsche’s denunciations of the Germans. Since World War II the Germans may seem fair game, but Nietzsche’s indictments are sometimes stained by his own wounds: in more than one passage he falls short of his own standards, and resentment clings to him like a leech.
Nietzsche’s ties to the pre-Christian world are stronger than is usually supposed, though this should not surprise us in a classical philologist who, even in his teens, nourished his spirit and emotions on Greek literature and thought. This is not the place for a lengthy survey of classical inspirations, but in addition to Socrates’ Apology we must mention Aristotle’s portrait of the great-souled man in the Nicomachean Ethics. It is a commonplace that Aristotle’s ethics was based in large measure on the morality of Athenian gentlemen, and that the man described in this passage represents not merely Aristotle’s ideal but a type very much admired in Athens. It has not been widely noticed—and for all I know, I may have been the first to point this out some years ago—that Aristotle’s portrait was probably inspired in part by Socrates’ Apology. In any case, both left their mark on Ecce Homo.
“A person is thought to be great-souled if he claims much and deserves much.” Aristotle’s words—antithetical as they are to the Christian influence on modern morality—represent one of the leitmotifs of Ecce Homo. “He does not bear a grudge” represents another. That he does not speak evil “even of his enemies, except when he deliberately intends to give offense,” is a third. But Aristotle’s whole portrait is relevant.7 And to Nietzsche’s central contrast of the New Testament and the Greeks, Greek tragedy, Thucydides, and the Iliad are relevant, too. And so is Greek comedy; so are the satyrs, the companions of Dionysus; so are Greek laughter and Socratic irony. It should not be assumed that the chapter titles of Ecce Homo are devoid of all humor. Neither, of course, is Nietzsche only speaking in jest when he explains, “Why I Write Such Good Books”—any more than George Bernard Shaw was only jesting when he spoke in a similar vein.
Looking for a pre-Christian, Greek symbol that he might oppose to “the Crucified,” Nietzsche found Dionysus. His “Dionysus” is neither the god of the ancient Dionysian festivals nor the god Nietzsche had played off against Apollo in The Birth of Tragedy, although he does, of course, bear some of the features of both. In the later works of Nietzsche, “Dionysus” is no longer the spirit of unrestrained passion, but the symbol of the affirmation of life with all its suffering and terror. “The problem,” Nietzsche explained in a note that was later included in the posthumous Will to Power (section 1052), “is that of the meaning of suffering: whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning…. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering.” And Ecce Homo is, not least of all, Nietzsche’s final affirmation of his own cruel life.
1See, e.g., Portable Nietzsche (New York, Viking, 1954), pp. 684-87.
2Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. II, (New York, Basic Books, 1953), p. 344.
3Part One, “On the Adder’s Bite” (Portable Nietzsche, p. 180).
4Both are discussed briefly in my Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950; 2nd rev. ed., 1956; 3rd rev. ed., 1968). Chapter 1, section III. For a much more comprehensive treatment that embodies a vast amount of original research, see Rudolph Binion’s Frau Lou (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
5Cf. p. 714, note 4.
6Crush the infamy.
7Nicomachean Ethics, IV. 3. Most of the description is quoted in my Nietzsche, Chapter 12, section VI; much of it also in my note on Beyond Good and Evil, section 212.