Table Of ContentNIETZSCHE AS AFFIRMATIVE THINKER
Nietzsche as
Affirmative Thinker
Papers Presented at the Fifth Jerusalem
Philosophical Encounter, April 1983
edited by
Yirmiyahu Yovel
(Professor of Philosophy
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
1986 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS .-
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter (5th: 1983)
Nietzsche as affirmative thinker.
(Martinus Nijhoff philosophy library; v. 13)
Includes index.
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1884-1900-
Congresses. I. Yovel, Yirmiahu. II. Title.
Ill. Series.
B3317.J39 1983 193 85-26019
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-8439-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-4360-5
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-4360-5
Copyright
© 1986 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1986
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publishers,
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, P.O. Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht,
The Netherlands.
Walter Kaufmann in Memoriam
Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations Xl
I. Nietzsche and the Method of Philosophy
Richard Schacht: Nietzsche on Philosophy, Interpretation, and
Truth
David C. Hoy: Nietzsche, Hume, and the Genealogical Method 20
Bernd Magnus: Nietzsche and the Project of Bringing
Philosophy to an End 39
Gianni Vattimo: Nietzsche and Contemporary Hermeneutics 58
II. Varieties of Nietzsche's Affirmation
Robert C. Solomon: A More Severe Morality: Nietzsche's Affir
mative Ethics 69
Alexander Nehamas:· .Will to Knowledge, Will to Ignorance, and Will
to Power in Beyond Good and Evil 90
Ran Sigad: The Socratic Nietzsche 109
Eliyahu Rosenow: Nietzsche's Concept of Education 119
Eric B1ondel: Nietzsche's Style of Affirmation: The
Metaphors of Genealogy 132
Shlomo Pines: Nietzsche: Psychology vs. Philosophy, and
Freedom 147
Jacob Golomb: Nietzsche's Enticing Psychology of Power 160
III. Nietzschean Affinities and Confrontations
Yirmiyahu Yovel: Nietzsche and Spinoza: amor fati and amor dei 183
Eugen Biser: Nietzsche und Heine. Kritik des christ lichen
Gottesbegriffs 204
Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche-Wagner im Sommer 1878 219
Index 229
vii
Preface
The full century that has elapsed since Nietzsche was at the height of his work
did not obliterate his impact. In many ways he is still a contemporary
philosopher, even in that sense of 'contemporary' which points to the future.
We may have outgrown his style (always, however, admirable and exciting to
read), his sense of drama, his creative exaggeration, his sometimes flamboy
ant posture of a rebel wavering between the heroic and the puerile. Yet
Nietzsche's critique of transcendental values and, especially, his attack on the
inherited conceptions of rationality remain pertinent and continue to pro
voke anew cultural critique or dissent.
Today Nietzsche is no longer discussed apologetically, nor is his radicalism
shunned or suppressed. That his work remains the object of extremely diverse
readings is befitting a philosopher who replaced the concept of truth with that
of interpretation. It is, indeed, around the concept of interpretation that much
of the rem:wed interest in Nietzsche seems to center today. Special emphasis is
being laid on his manner of doing philosophy, and his views on interpretation
and the genealogical method are often re-read in the context of contemporary
hermeneutics and "deconstructionist" positions.
Even more significantly, the need is growingly felt to consider Nietzsche not
as a critic or a "negative" reformer merely, but to take his role as an
affirmative thinker more seriously. Nietzsche insists that his Dionysian mes
sage is fundamentally an affirmation, a new kind of "yes." What is sometimes
improperly called his "nihilism" was rather, on Nietzsche's own program, a
cali for a new affirmative position, free of the self-deceptive images of perman
ence, transcendental grounding, eternal truth, and value. Nietzsche was
groping for a "revaluation of all values" whose axis was to lie in the rejoicing
acceptance of immanent existence as all there is, an existence marked by "will
to power" and lacking inherent order, value, or permanence. What philoso
phical tradition had always abhorred - the flux, the transience, and indeter
minacy which govern existence - was made into the cornerstone of a new
culture and evaluative approach to life. This difficult affirmation even held for
Nietzsche a sober promise of emancipation and indicated an avenue for
human perfectibility.
Yet Nietzsche did not spell out his new affirmation and, to most readers, it
remained obscured by the more noticeable blows of his critical hammer.
The aim of this volume is to help reassess Nietzsche's work from a contem
porary viewpoint while throwing the affirmative dimension of his thought
into stronger relief.
ix
x Preface
The essays in this book were first presented at the Fifth Jerusalem Philosophi
cal Encounter, held in April 1983 in memory of the late Walter Kaufmann.
The Jerusalem Philosophical Encounters is a series of bi-annual symposia in
which philosophers of different backgrounds meet in Jerusalem to discuss a
common theme. The Encounters are organized by the S.H. Bergman Center
for Philosophical Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Former
Encounters were concerned with the philosophy of history, the philosophy of
language (meaning and use), the works of Spinoza, and Franz Rosenzweig.l
(As this volume goes to print, a Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter has
taken place, devoted to Maimonides and medieval philosophy).
Cordial thanks are due to the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation for its
cooperation in organizing the Nietzsche Encounter, along with the S.H.
Bergman Center of the Hebrew University. Mrs. Rivka Raam of the Van Leer
staff has particularly contributed to the success of the Encounter by ably
attending to all its organizational needs. Ms. Eva Shorr, managing editor of
the Hebrew philosophical quarterly Iyyun, has supervised the editing of the
present volume with her usual care and dedication.
In dedicating this volume to the memory of Walter Kaufmann, I wish to pay
hom mage to a courageous and independent thinker whose premature death
deprived the contemporary intellectual scene of an avid critic and Nietzsche
studies of a prominent scholar and translator. Kaufmann had also been an
adviser or a senior colleague of some of the participants in the present volume,
and helped produce a new generation of Nietzsche students who, even when
taking other paths than his, will recognize his merit and pioneering
contribution.
Yirmiyahu Yovel
The s.H. Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(1) Philosophy of History and Action, ed. Y. Yovel, Reidel, 1978 (with papers by P.
I
Ricoeur, C. Taylor,D. Davidson, I. Berlin, J. D'Hondt, N. Rotenstreich, and others).
(2) Meaning and Use, ed. A. Margalit, Reidel, 1979 (with papers by W.V. Quine, D.
Davidson, J. Hintikka, M. Dummett, J. Searle, H. Putnam, P. Strawson, E.M.
Zemach, S. Kripke, and others). (3) Spinoza - His Thought and Work. ed. N. Roten
streich, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1983 (with papers by R.
McKeon, P. Strawson, S. Hampshire, G. Funke, R. Barcan-Marcus, S. Pines, L.
Kolakowski, Y. Yovel, and others). (4) The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig. ed. P.
Mendes-Flohr, New England University Press, forthcoming(with papers by E. Facken
heim, O. Poggeler, N. Glatzer, E. Levinas, and others).
List of Abbreviations
Unless otherwise noted, citations from Nietzsche's writings are identified by
the use of the acronyms of their English titles, by Arabic numbers referring to
the paragraphs or sections in which the passages appear, and, where
appropriate, by Roman numerals indicating the parts of the works in which
they are to be found.
As a convenience to English-speaking readers, most of the contributors
have followed Walter Kaufmann's renderings in the translations he
published.
Citations from the other works listed are based on the texts as they appear
in the Colli-Montinari Kritische Gesamtausgabe (KGA) or the Kritische
Studienausgabe (KSA), unless otherwise noted.
PT A - Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
BT -The Birth of Tragedy, in: The Basic Writings oJNietzsche (New York:
Random House, 1968)
SE - Schopenhauer as Educator
HH - Human, AII-Too-Human
D - Dawn (or Daybreak)
GS - The Gay Science (New York: Random House, 1974)
Z - Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in: The Portable Nietzsche (New York:
Viking, 1968)
BGE - Beyond Good and Evil, in: The Basic Writings
GM - On the Genealogy of Morals, in: The Basic Writings
TI - Twilight of the Idols, in: The Portable Nietzsche
A - The Antichrist, in: The Portable Nietzsche
EH - Ecce Homo, in: The Basic Writings
WP -The Will to Power (New York: Random House, 1968)
Xl
Richard Schacht
Nietzsche on Philosophy, Interpretation and
Truthl
"Interpretation," according to Nietzsche, has always been the actual - if
generally unacknowledged - activity of philosophers and other thinkers, at
least to the extent that they have been more than mere philosophical and
intellectual "laborers" content to work within and with the framework of
interpretations developed by others. And it is his further contention that
genuine philosophers - including the "new philosophers" he envisions and
calls for - will not and should not abandon interpretation in favor of some
more "exact" form of thinking and reasoning, but rather must engage more
self-consciously and deliberately and less.dogmatically in it. So he character
izes his own philosophical activity as interpretive, despite the fact that this
would appear to place his own positions on a par with those he rejects and
brands as "lies," "errors," and "fictions." "Supposing that this also is only
interpretation - and you will be eager enough to make this objection? -
well, so much the better" (BGE 22).
This might lead one to wonder whether, by allowing and indeed insisting
that "interpretation" (or more fully, the devising and making of cases for and
against various "interpretations") is at the heart of all genuine philosophical
activity, Nietzsche does not in fact lower philosophy as he conceives and
commends it to the level of the mere mongering of Weltanschauungen, thus
reducing it to a kind of quasi-literary enterprise of little or no cognitive
significance. Some interpreters and many readers have in fact taken this to be
precisely his intention, or at any rate the upshot of his treatment of the matter;
For a much more extensive treatment of issues dealt with in this paper, and of others
I
related to them, see the Introduction and first two chapters of my Nietzsche (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), from which several paragraphs in this paper have
been taken. See also my "Nietzsche and Nihilism," Journal oft he History ofP hilosophy
11 (January, 1973), which appears as Chapter 8 of my Hegel and After (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975).
Y. Yovel (ed.), Niet~che as Affirmative Thinker, 1-19.
© 1986, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster.
2 Richard Schacht
and they have then proceeded to praise or condemn him, as this conclusion
agrees or conflicts with their own sentiments. This is especially common
among those inclined to suppose that "interpretation" is a very subjective sort
of affair; and that, to the extent that it can be shown to be involved in the
development of a position being advanced, its presence undermines any
appearance the positions may have of credibility. Once something becomes a
matter of one interpretation against another, the idea runs, "it is all relative"
- relative to the feelings and attitudes of those advancing the conflicting
interpretations; and thus the discussion has left the ground on which serious
argument can alone be based and cognitively significant conclusions reached.
Incipit Zarathustra, exit scientia.
As I read him, however, this is not at all Nietzsche's view of the matter.
"Interpretation" as he understands it is by no means an affair so hopelessly
"relative" and "subjective" that to construe philosophical activity in terms of
it is tantamount to depriving it of all cognitive import. Indeed, it seems to me
that he is on to something important in taking the enterprise of philosophy
properly understood and carried on - to be fundamentally (although per
haps not exclusively) a matter of engaging in the complementary activities of
critically examining received or proposed interpretations and developing
(and making cases for) others which might improve upon them. And if this is
so, the question of what constitutes and counts as a philosophical argument
largely becomes the question of what is involved in the establishment of the
relative soundness and adequacy of such interpretations.
To be sure, Nietzsche does take the value of different interpretations in most
human contexts to be primarily a function of considerations of other sorts
relating above all to the preservation and enhancement of life. He also
suggests that interpretations are of considerable symptomatic significance,
serving to reveal a great deal about those who advance them. It by no means
follows, however, that he holds the relative soundness or tenability of differ
ent interpretations to be conceivable only along one or both of these lines.
Indeed, an attentive reading of him reveals that he not only allows but
moreover insists that some interpretations may be better than others, where
"better" is construed not in terms of such cognitively neutral notions as that
of "value for life," but rather in terms of soundness and adequacy. This is a
matter of considerable importance for the understanding of his entire philo
sophical enterprise; and so I shall offer some comments upon it, before
turning to a fuller characterization of that enterprise as he conceives and
engages in it.
Description:The full century that has elapsed since Nietzsche was at the height of his work did not obliterate his impact. In many ways he is still a contemporary philosopher, even in that sense of 'contemporary' which points to the future. We may have outgrown his style (always, however, admirable and exciting
