Posted in Book Reviews, Philosophy on November 14, 2020 15 min read
Darwinism & Thermodynamics
Friedrich Nietzsche is often thought of as an untimely original thinker, standing apart from the intellectual propensities of the time. However, two contemporary theories carry significant similarities to his philosophy of The Gay Science. First, Darwin’s 1859 On the Origin of Species, which at the time was a recent scientific theory popular in philosophical discourse that not only reordered and extended the classical sciences, but naturalized humanity by casting it as just one amongst countless other lifeforms. Yet, another debate had also risen to prominence in philosophy after Hermann von Helmholtz’s 1854 lecture “On the interaction of Natural Forces”. Wherein he stated that the succeeding elimination of thermal differences would ultimately lead to the heat death of the universe, a physical conception starkly opposing philosophical and theological finalities. At the time of Nietzsche’s writing both ideas captured the concern of German writers, and feature in his work. Nietzsche combined these developments with the thought of ancient Greece’s Heraclitus, a thinker of becoming rather than being. Therefore, a central Nietzschean belief is that reality is characterized by constant change, ruling out any stable being (Small, 2017, p. XVII).
The True World
Nietzsche sees himself as a successor of other writers, in the unique position to conclude a thought that had developed over centuries, one about the “true world”.
The mission of the gay science is in part to remedy the ancient error of the true world. Nietzsche, believes that in pre-Socratic society ‘The Greeks were superficial – out of profundity!” (Williams, 2001, p. 9). By this he means to say, that they were content to find profound delight in surfaces, appearances, shapes, tones, and words. For them, the body still had epistemic legitimacy (Perez, 2014, p. 559). Yet, with Plato, an error had been committed, for he and his successors, created the notion of a true world, namely the one of ideal forms next to that of appearances, which could be arrived at by means of logic. Whereas, the Epicureans still worked with the idea that all knowledge and happiness originate in the bodily senses, and therefore affirmed the body’s position in the quest for knowledge, believing that the soul itself is material and a product of the body, this changed with the advent of Christianity (Perez, 2014, p. 561). The Christians reworked Plato’s idea of the true world but attached to it an ascetic hatred of the body, treating it as a merely material vessel animated by the soul (Perez, 2014, p. 559). Consequently, the true world became Christianized, meaning it was still out there but “for the moment” unattainable, and admission would only be granted in the afterlife. Nietzsche posits, that this Christian doctrine, has survived until today, and has produced the effect, that today, the great majority believe that utilizing their intellect must be a serious endeavor devoid of bodily pleasures (Williams, 2001, ¶327). Yet, recently with Kant’s “thing-in-itself” the true world had become something unattainable, but still served as an imperative. In effect, Nietzsche believes that many great minds have but taken a fundamental error further and further. They have constructed ever higher worlds to flee reality. Yet, the search for the true world would end with him, and the development of the error stop.
The Gay Science is about breaking the foundations of the concept of intellect produced by Judeo-Christian morality and the Cartesian split between mind and body. Nietzsche himself being both a philosopher and a philologist, against the backdrop of a scientific positivist age, felt the need to bring words and wisdom closer together. That is interweave, and re-reconcile art and science, rationality and the affective knowledge of the body, grammar and parole, to remedy the Christian error (Perez, 2014, p. 567).
The Gay Science comes after his work Daybreak, in which Nietzsche had already experimented with an aphoristic style and criticism of Christian morality. It also comes just before his work Thus spoke Zarathustra, one of his most popular works that would significantly develop on thoughts already presented in The Gay Science.
On Nietzsche’s Style
His writing style in aphorisms plenty with contrafactures, mixtures of chiastic and anaphoric form, lavish use of hyperbole and German puns seeks to support his belief of bringing bodily knowledge back into the sciences. One may critique his lack of clarity in writing and his stalking of concepts, where he circles around them rather than present them in a clear manner, yet he justifies himself by saying that to get his voices heard by the individuals he wishes to reach he must simultaneously erect barriers of understanding against others (Williams, 2001, ¶381). His rejection of traditional philosophical thought with its systematic construction of theories about the true world is another cause for his idiosyncratic writing style. It is precisely for his rejection of traditional philosophy that he writes in aphorisms, an effective device of style, wherein single thoughts in their abrupt particularity become much more appealing and sharp than if they were placed in a usual order or sequence. It is due to the ambiguity this style creates that there remains space for interpretation in the reader. Moreover, the reader is forced to reflect insofar that the aphoristic style leaves the reader impelled to continue working with the presented notions, signifying that the reevaluation of all values is a personal project too. Additionally, his writing accomplishes to elicit emotive responses from the reader. For example, in Aphorism 305, where he presents self-control as a disease, that makes all personal inclinations become like an itch one must not scratch (Williams, 2001, ¶305). This deliberate use of emotion directly opposes the likes of Plato or Locke who believed that writing should rid itself of emotive language, supporting Nietzsche’s advocacy for a gay scientific approach.
Contents
Book I of the Gay Science generally deals with the inconsistencies in Christian and humanist doctrines. What stands out here is Nietzsche’s use of dichotomies wherein he posits a humanist virtue against a vice, but then gradually starts eroding the differences between them, to either show, that they are one and the same, or that the remaining difference is amoral. At the example of love and greed he says that in love, the lover is willing to make any sacrifice to stay in possession of his significant other. Yet, the deathly sin of greed would be just the same, only that the one making any sacrifice is not yet in possession of what he wants. In another movement, he asks readers to consider who benefits from their virtues and concludes it is the preachers of virtues, and that they themselves do not adhere to their own preaching. The greatness of these aphorisms lies in the fact that they arouse and cultivate a certain suspicion in the reader towards any prescribed values. Most important, however, is the books first aphorism, which proudly proclaims, that any action whether Judeo-Christian morals would consider it virtuous or vicious, nevertheless, contributes in the ‘amazing economy of the preservation of the species’ (Williams, 2001, ¶1). This statement is meant to relativize all moralities and portray them as entirely contingent. Yet because it is based on a Darwinist argument, it favours a Christian morality for it has, over the centuries, been very useful in preserving the species. Indeed, Nietzsche agrees that this has been the case for the longest time, but meanwhile other drives have increased in usefulness, and are now displacing Christianity (Sedgwick, 2009, p. 42).
In Book II, the writings on women can safely be left aside, for they only apply Nietzsche’s general outlook on the relationship between men and women. Instead we would do well to focus on his conception of art and its purpose. Based on Nietzsche’s denial of the existence of a purpose to life, he seeks to render visible how this has been obscured so far and finds his culprit in art. Art, in all its forms seems to alleviate the tension we experience when we recognize that the world is meaningless, it is therefore essential to human existence. When religious founders propose their religions, they are engaging in making an artwork that is creating a structure within which infinitely complex and unintelligible existence can fit. However, Nietzsche believes that these structures are but a consolation and make us into mild and weak human beings, because our energies “flow off” into others. Instead, he proposes that we must become our own goddesses to preserve the glory of our lives. This means creating our own individual religion wherein, we do not perceive ourselves naturally anymore, but idealize ourselves within eternal perspectives of heroism and glory (Williams, 2001, ¶78, ¶107).
Nietzsche is at his best, when he introduces the death and shadow of god in Book III. It is here that he relativizes all philosophy to date, by creating a difference between his endeavour and that of all other philosophers. They, he thinks, have already declared god to be a fiction, yet they do not want to perceive that their other teleological drives, finalities, their allegiance to humanism, and most importantly their belief in metaphysics are of the same fictional nature (Sedgwick, 2009, p. 30). He lays out a case for how despite being able to grasp with rationality that there are no such things as ‘identities’, ‘causes’, that processes have no beginnings or ends, the death of god is unable to be perceived by many (Williams, 2001, ¶109, ¶115). However, the shadows of god are and remain useful in the task he laid out in the first aphorism, that of the economy survival of the species. Only the real meaningless nature of the world had not been incorporated, and Nietzsche wants to see whether that is useful, whether his truth can become useful (Williams, 2001, ¶110-¶111).
However, he thinks that humans have a need for some sort of meaning or narrative for their life’s. Book IV explores how to combine the knowledge of a meaningless existence with living. From the deconstructions before Nietzsche now moves to affirmations. This affirmation is introduced in an individualistic manner, for he says we must not live by the judgements of others, as we would always have to fear that a part of our nature could shine through which would make us contemptible according to their standards. Heteronomously given constraints would always inhibit us from attaining freedom. Instead, Nietzsche posits, we must first realize that we cannot change existence, and rather than wishing aspects of our life to be different, we must take existence as a whole and love every single part of it whether good or bad. This is amorfati, the precondition for his concept of the eternal recurrence (Sedgwick, 2009, p. 3). There is, however, more we can do to affirm life, such as engaging in self-styling. This means making ourselves into an aesthetic phenomenon which involves interpreting and shaping our characteristics, qualities, and weakness according to our individual liking. Only by becoming our own lawmakers and judges can we reach our full potential and freedom (Williams, 2001, ¶293-¶294). However, only by adhering to them as Epicureans rather than Stoicists, for the immunizing of the latter towards the pleasures and displeasures that oppose one to one’s inclinations constitutes a self-denial (Williams, 2001, ¶290). Yet, his claim that one only becomes free by creating one’s own values, is grounded on shaky foundation. It presupposes the possibility that there is such a thing as an unencumbered individual that can create values apart from those of society. Furthermore, Nietzsche displays that freedom as something that one should strive towards, however, it may be starkly opposed to something that most people truly value: happiness. He himself acknowledges that the multitude of persons with weak natures would not be happy.
Book V, titled ‘We Fearless Ones” of the gay science was only added in 1887, five years after the others, to the whole work, and for this reason contains more mature thought and considers the wider implications of Nietzsche’s philosophical approach. For example, those of the ‘death of god’ on European Society. He, for example, posits that he is merely the last instance of a movement towards truth that many German philosophers before him have laid the steppingstones towards. Leibniz and Kant questioned consciousness to the degree it lost its authority whereas Hegel proposed that concepts ‘develop out of each other’ and thus overturned the world of being into one of becoming, which would consequently lead to Darwinism and Nietzsche’s philosophy (Williams, 2001, ¶357). Additionally, his argument that consciousness is not individual but a collective drive of the herd, that aids survival by transmitting concepts and helping allocate roles, carries wide ranging implication. He goes on to argue, that it leads people to become a function as they start identifying themselves with their profession. This belief of one’s profession as a durable characteristic of the self, aids in constructing a firm society (Williams, 2001, ¶356). However, he posits this against the American faith, which is increasingly becoming present in Europe, where one becomes an “actor”, that means one constantly forcibly readapts. In the same book he also develops a dichotomy for art, that is art before witness and monological art, which serves as a finer distinction on how to create individual values. Insofar, the form of art he considers good is monological art, meaning the artist only creates the art and must not consider how a public would conceive of it. That means artists must not use their consciousness to assess the art, for then they would engage in art before witness, which always involves a leveling down and is made for the benefit of the herd (Williams, 2001, ¶368). In that case, one’s art is only service towards the needs of the herd.
Nietzsche’s stylistic choice of writing in aphorisms comes from the intention to not create another new structure or ‘true world’. The main problem with a book review such as this is that in order to assess The Gay Science, one aims to draw parallels and trace thoughts throughout the text and engages in system building oneself and may present the book as forming a coherent system. The gay science does, however, not aspire to be that. Rather, it recognizes that its readers may be deeply emotionally blinded and committed to Judeo-Christian morality, making them unable to hear criticisms of self-denial, compassion or altruism. The book does not seek to crusade against these values. Rather, it is a series of forays, a deployment of Nietzschean guerrilla forces, launching attacks against the Christian dome of truth that still envelops us to expose its cracks. Also, it aims to show us the vastness of this dome that has determined all our scientific endeavors to date. What remains intriguing is whether the dichotomy between the purposelessness of the world and our systems of meaning and truth can itself be overcome.
Nietzsche seems not so much as an untimely thinker, but an observer of change. He was a witness of how faith in Europe changed and was able to interpret this as a constant change as the search for truth was increasingly deconstructing religious faith, insofar, he was able to rip a hole into the horizon, to go beyond truth, wherein he realized that any given morality was but a law of agreement to guide the a herd of people. In this sense, he took Darwin’s naturalization of man one step further by also naturalizing the moralities and meanings we have created.
However, his advocacy to leave the herd morality and make an individual one, seems to me to not lead to a great and tragic life, but rather to a desolate and bitter one. Much rather, I’d advocate readers to only implement his philosophy in a Machiavellian manner, meaning that we should follow the herd morality, but step outside it when necessary. The herd morality is both useful and pleasurable as long as one can exceed within it. Yet, we must be ready to at least internally distance ourselves from those conventional moral standards that seek to render ourselves insufficient, whilst towards the outside pretend to adhere to them. Then, for example, feelings of guiltiness or shame could not stick to us and we could still partly stand outside morality.
References
Aumann, A. (2014). Emotion, Cognition, and the Value of Literature: The Case of Nietzsche’s Genealogy. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 45(2), 182-195
Pérez, R. (2014). Towards a Genealogy of the Gay Science: From Toulouse and Barcelona to Nietzsche and Beyond
Sedgwick, P. R. (2009). Nietzsche: the key concepts. Routledge.
Small, R. (2017). Nietzsche in context. Routledge.
Williams, B. A., Nauckhoff, J., & Del Caro, A. (2001). Nietzsche: The Gay Science (B. A. Williams, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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