Like such a weary ship in the
stillest
bay, thus I too rest now close to the earth, faithfully, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads.
Sloterdijk - Nietzsche Apostle
It would consider itself to have failed were it to be said it had obtained a monopoly.
To be as it would like to be, it must posit competition.
It would prefer to lay itself open to rejection, than it would to subordinate imitations.
The generous, then, stand in opposition to the good, who for Nietzsche are rightly called decadents, since they-as we have known since the Genealogy ofMoratS-pursue the dream of monopolizing merely good sentiments.
For them, bad is anything that expects that they prove their goodness; while anything which belabors their consensus with questions and exits their circle of blackmail strikes them as immediately devilish.
In Nietzsche, decadence represents the epitome of conditions in which resentment is guaranteed it will always hit upon its ideal lan guage situation.
The relations bearing witness to
62 I Nietzsche Apcs1le
decadence are those in which "the yes-man [Mucker] is in charge"-to put it in Nietzsche's words. If the good are so good, it is onlyfaute de mieux. The decadence ideal holds power only so long as, and because, "it has not had any competi- tion. "12 That is why if one wants to oppose the better to the good in questions of gospel, one must
resolve to count to five.
4
OF SUNS AND HUMANS
If, today, one hundred years after Nietzsche's death, we look back at this author for authors and non-authors and grasp his place in his time, we become aware that Nietzsche-for all his claims to originality and despite his pride at being the first in essential things-was in many respects actually only a privileged medium for the execution of tendencies that in one way or another would have forged ahead without him. His achievement consists in knowing how to transform an accident of the name Friedrich Nietzsche into an event, provided that we understand by event the poten tiation of the accidental into the destinal. Destiny might also be spoken of in the case where a designer latches onto that something that is going to happen in any event, impelling it further, and stamping his name on it. In this sense Nietzsche is
65
a destiny-or, as one would say today, a trend designer. The trend which he embodied and gave form to was the individualist wave, which, since the Industrial Revolution and its cultural projec tions in romanticism, had proceeded inexorably through modern civil society and has not ceased doing so. Individualism, then, is to be understood not as an accidental or avoidable current in the history of mentalities, but rather as an anthropo logical break which first made possible the emer gence of a type of human being surrounded by enough media and means ofdischarge to be able to individualize counter to its "societal precondi tions. " In individualism is articulated the third post-historical insulation of "human beings" after the first, prehistorical in nature, led to its emancipation from nature, and the second, his torical one, led to the "reign of man over man. "1 Individualism constantly forges changing alliances with all that has made up the modern world: with progress and reaction, with left-wing and right-wing political programs, with national and transnational motives, with masculinist, femi nist and infantilist projects, with technophile and technophobe sentiments, with ascetic and hedo nist moralities, with avant-gardist and conservative conceptions of art, with analytical and cathartic therapies, with sporty and non-sporty lifestyles,
with performance readiness and refusal of per formance, with belief in success as well as unbelief in it, with still Christian as well as no-longer Christian forms of life, with ecumenical openings and local closings, with humanist and post humanist ethics, with the ego necessarily able to accompany all my representations, as well as with the dissolved self, which exists only as the hall of mirrors of its masks. Individualism is capable of alliances with all sides, and Nietzsche is its designer, its prophet.
Nietzsche's pretention to be an artist and much more than an artist is grounded in his radical, modern concept ofsuccess: for him, at stake is not only to throw products on today's market, but instead to create the market wave itself, by which the work is belatedly carried to success. In this way he anticipated the strategies of the avant-garde, which Boris Groys has described in his already classic work on The TotalArt ofStalinism. If one wants to be a market leader, one must first operate as a market maker. And to be successful as a mar ket maker, one must anticipate and endorse what many will choose once they learn they are allowed to want. Nietzsche had understood that the phenome non that would emerge irresistibly in tomorrow's culture was the need to distinguish oneself from the mass. It was immediately present to him that
CJt Suns
the stuff out of which the future would be made, could be found in individuals' demands to be better and other than the rest, and thereby precisely better than all others. The theme of the 20th century is self-referentiality, in the systemic as well as the psychological senses. Only: self-referential systems are autological and self-eulogistic systems. The author Nietzsche still has this knowledge in advance over contemporary theory. On his under standing, or rather intuition, he created, in his lifetime, the conditions for his twofold posthu mous success: he inscribed his name in the list of classics, which throughout culture are handed down as reference points of approval and critique. This is what he described as his fulfilled need for immortality; in addition, however, through the detour of his first interpreters and intermediaries, he above all imposed his name as a brand name for a successful immaterial product, for a literary lifestyle-drug or an elevated way-of-life. This is the Nietzschean design of individualism: We free spirits! We who live dangerously! When the author iden tifies himself as author, the self-eulogistic melody appears; when the market-maker launches the brand, the advertisement appears. Nietzsche libe rated modern language in associating eulogies with publicity. Only a jester, only a poet, only a copywriter. This connection alone enables us to
understand how that most resolute proponent of high culture could have yielded effects on mass culture. It is undeniable that Nietzsche's second success, his seduction as brand, or as ethos and attitude, in the field of individualism, by far con stitutes his greatest effect-and also contains his more distant future possibilities. Indeed, it is pre cisely because the Nietzsche life-style-brand, far more than the name of the author, still radiates an almost irresistible attraction, that, over the course ofthe last third ofthe 20th century, with the onset of the overtly individualist conjuncture of the post-May '68 period, it could recover from the incursions of fascist redactors and their copies. Doubtless, the author Nietzsche, even given the then dire state of editing, was unacceptable to national-socialist collectivism and that the brand Nietzsche alone-and indeed only in rare and par ticular aspects-suggested itself for reproduction in national pop culture. To understand this point, we have to factor in the fact that, procedurally, fascism is nothing other than the incursion of pop and kitsch-procedures into politics. As Clement Greenberg already showed in 1939-confronting the critical case-kitsch is the world language of triumphant mass culture. It depends on the mechanized forgery ofsuccess. Pop and kitsch are, culturally as politically, short-cut procedures to get
Of Suns and Humans I 69
to the apparent taste of the masses. With this they content themselves with copying success and, with copies of the successful in hand, with triumphing once again. Hitler's success strategy as pop and kitsch politician consisted in tying a pop-nationalism with an event-militarism, as the simplest way to have the narcissism of the masses effervesce. In doing so, radiophone acquisition techniques and open-air paramilitary liturgies played the key roles. Through them, the population learned that it shall be a people and that it had to listen to the rabble rousing voices of its projected self. In this sense, all fascism is an effect of redaction. It is deutero fascistic from the start, since it has no original; if a derivative can be insurrectionary, it is precisely by way of an insurrection of scissors, which always know what they must cut, how, and to what ends. From the energetic aspect, fascism is the event culture of resentment-a definition, incidentally, which renders intelligible the shocking convertibility of leftwing affects into rightwing ones, and vice versa. So long as publicness functions as a director's theater of resentment, the ability to rape texts and to seduce the public as a "mass" is presupposed. Brand Nietzsche could play a role in the semantic advertising drives of the NS-Movement insofar as their imitations omitted his basic assessments, as implacably individualistic and avant-gardist as
they are, and retained only the "fast climber" atti tudes, along with a martial decor of the dictum. Hitler's clique edited Nietzsche with scissors and pasted him into a collectivist gospel-shortly before, moreover, Nietzsche's sister had employed her scissors to prepare a ready-made of brand Nietzsche. To the shame of German academic phi losophy after 1933, one is forced to remark that it did exactly the same thing on its level, as did the anti-Nietzscheans, who are still today unable to do more than merely compile their self-pasted incrimination files-but how far must one reach back to find university philosophers who do not philosophize with scissors? The National Socialists, resolute editors of everything that guaranteed social and national success, were able to retain far less of Nietzsche than Jefferson could of Jesus-most of his writings were too inappropriate for their kitsch system, too anti-nationalist, too anti-German, too anti-philistine, too anti-revanchist, too anti-collec tivist, too anti-militarist, too anti-antirationalist, too disdainful of every concept of "national self-interest" [Volker-Selbstsucht],2 and, finally, to mention the decisive barrier, too incompatible with any politics of resentment, regardless of whether this presents itselfas nationalist or socialist or as a multi-purpose form ofvengeance politics; national/socialist. That there is no path leading from Nietzsche to the
German's posing as masters must be obvious to
anyone who's come into contact with his writings too incisive was Nietzsche's insight that Germans, whether they have graduated or not, have as their temptation not to feel good if they cannot belittle others-but what else is Nietzsche's moral philo sophical oeuvre if not a single exercise in overcoming the need to disparage others? That nationalist politics rests on the pathetic propensity to humiliate foreigners-who has brought this into sharper focus than Nietzsche, and who was able to trace hooliganism to Wilhelmina? Nietzsche, to be sure, is anti-egalitarian, but this is not in order to make common cause with revenge-hungry populists, as German moral philosophers, whose differences can no longer impress, avidly continue to assert in the wisdom of their years. Instead, it is in order to defend the freedom of self-enhancement against the consumerdom of the last men. From one per spective only is a concession to be made to those who disparage Nietzsche and attempt to guard against his influence. It is correct that Nietzsche, as the designer of a brand of "destiny," was obliged to ask himself whether his products should not have been endowed with better copy protection and whether the brand should even have been allowed to appear next to the authorial name. Could he not have known that from the riff-raff he repelled,
l2 I
his most tenacious clientele could emerge? Proof that these questions did not escape Nietzsche's consideration can be seen-that is, apart from Zarathustra's prophetic sayings, more or less criti cal of the Church, about the parasites of the noble soul3-in certain letters and work notes in which he pondered, in dread of the monstrousness of his insights, whether to abdicate from his authorship. However, even if he had done this, it would have been imperative to disclose why he gave up being an author-and the result would have been nearly the same. Perhaps Nietzsche knew the answer to such objections in advance, as he did for nearly everything else: "I am not on my guard for deceivers, I have to be without caution-my fate wants it so. "4
In order to gauge what was unique in Nietzsche's great success as individualism's trend designer, a comparison with alternative designs suggests itself There are only a few strong versions of his epoch-making expression "become what you are" and the corresponding "do what you will. " Ultimately the work of one single author can serve as a rival project and foil to Nietzsche's own, one
who the author of The Gay Science himself inci dentally named "a glorious, great nature," not without adding that to date the most ingenious philosophical writer of the 1 9th century had been
/ 73
an American, namely Ralph Waldo Emerson. If Nietzsche's design of life in self-creating individu ality is presented under the title "Free spirits," Emerson brings his product on the market under the brand name "non-conformism. " It is to this that the greatest of Emerson's early essays are devoted; the beacon with whom American philoso phy yielded to its first astonished witnesses the proof of its existence. Not coincidentally, this was under the heading Self-Reliance, a prose piece of barely thirty pages, incomparable in its a-systemic density, the declaration of independence of the American essay and the revocation of American servitude to the European canon, and to every canon in general. What takes shape in him is an anti-humility program which, over the course of the next one hundred and fifty years, would reveal itself as the specific timbre ofAmerican freedom a color that dominated until the '70s of last century, before US academia dedicated itself to the import of European maso-theories. But in the year of 1841, the inundation of critical theory was still a ways off:
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for
the inmost in due time becomes the outmost and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. ( . . . ) Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say (. . . ) precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
(. . . ) but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. ( . . . ) Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a noncon formist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at
last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world
Your goodness must have some edge to it else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. (. . . ) I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. ( . . . ) we cannot spend the day in explanation.
Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
To be great is to be misunderstood. (. . . ) Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul . . . history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
"To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift. "5
Emerson possesses a temporal advance over Nietzsche, in addition to a psycho-political one. Since while Emerson's non-conformism seems as if it were made to unfold, against a certain resistance, toward an ambivalent narcissism of the mass, one
still balanced by democracy at the end of the day, Nietzsche's free spirit brand ran a greater risk of being imitated by a success-hungry movement of losers. Fascisms, past and future, are politically nothing other than insurrections ofenergy-charged losers, who, for a time of exception, change the rules in order to appear as victors. The Nietzsche brand was recuperated by losers and loser-redactors, because it promised to be the brand of winners. As this horrific episode did not and could not last, Emerson's project won out over Nietzsche's on the brand front. That's why most of us today are non conformists, not free spirits. Our average thoughts and feelings are all made in the USA, not made in Sils-Maria.
The significance of this difference can be seen by returning again to Nietzsche, the author. When, in the euphoric productions of the first parts ofZarathustra, he undertook the most radical short circuit between self-praising discourse and evangelical discourse, his concept of "Dionysian" had necessarily; according to the author, become the "highest fact. " In these colorful episodes ofwriting, Nietzsche, as never before or after, amended lan guage use by producing a discourse that was a pure self-advert of creative ecstasy. Even so, he was not exactly correct in exclusively reserving the predi cate "Dionysian" for his "highest deed. " What
Of Suns and Humans I 77
came to light in these expression-eruptions, rather were more Apollonian irradiations, in which Dionysian fragmentations appeared to have been overcome. It is not by chance that, in the gospel according to Zarathustra, the sun-the star of Apollo-plays the role of the exemplary Being, and it falls to the new prophet to perfect himself in imitation of the sun. ''All that I touch becomes light"-only suns can talk in this way about them selves. This applies above all to their most important gestures and talents-the readiness to over-expend themselves unconditionally and the ability to set without regret. In both respects the teachings of the late Nietzsche point to an imitation solis. The sun alone is heroic right to the moment of setting and remains generous until it goes down. "Heroism is the good will to absolute self-demise," the author had once written for his young Russian girlfriend. Only suns can be so profligate that they can be placed under the guardianship of rational heirs, when the economic ideas ofthe latter manage to prevail. Only the sun has a giving virtue as first nature; only suns care nothing for the sym metry between giving and taking; only suns shine sovereignly over proponents and opponents; and only suns read no critiques. On this last point the author Nietzsche did not totally succeed in his becoming-sun. Moreover, there are also some other
78 I Nietzsche Apostle
respects that give ground for suspIC10n that Nietzsche's sun participates far more in humanity than the metaphor betrays. This begins with Zarathustra's first address to it: "You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine? (. . . ) we. . . took your overflow from you and blessed you for it. "6 And it culminates in Zarathustra's prayer to his will:
That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon;
-ready for myself and for my most hidden will; a bow burning for its arrow, an arrow burning for its star-
-a star ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, skewered, blissful with annihilating arrows of the sun-
-a sun itself and an inexorable will of the sun. . . 7
One sees in these phrases that the author sympa thizes neither with philosophical hallucinations, which proclaim the flight into identity in the name of the "subject," nor with the philosophy of dia logue, in which subjects address each other face to face or accuse each other of turning away from dialogue. Nietzsche's interests are directed at a theory of the penetrated penetration, an ethics of
overflowing into and entering into others, a logic of absorption and of new-radiation. He does not know of symmetrical discussions, negotiation, of the middle-value between banalities, but instead of inter-solar relations, the traffic of rays from start to star, the penetration from viscera to viscera, being pregnant and making-pregnant. "In the belly ofthe whale I become the herald oflife. "8 His interest lies not in opinions but in emanations. On an intellec tual level he is a radical bisexual, a star which fevers to be penetrated, and a sun which penetrates and "prevails. " I am penetrated, therefore I am; I radiate in you, therefore you are. By sexualizing the sun, he reverses the direction of imitation and compels the sun to become the imitator ofpeople, provided that the individual is an author-that is, one who is penetrated by language, by music, a voice, which seeks ears and creates them.
From this point it is possible to give yet another twist to the interpretation of Nietzsche's work from within the critique oflanguage. IfNietzsche's evangelical operation liberates self-praise, then a transformed light falls on the self of this praise. In noting that Nietzsche's poetics abolishes the rules of indirect eulogy and substitutes praise of the foreigner with self-praise, we see only the outer layer of the turmoil created. On a deeper level, Nietzsche's affirmative language remains obliged to
80 I
praise the foreigner-better, it praises the non-self such as it has never been celebrated before. However, it devotes itself to a foreignness that is more than the otherness of another person. It exposes itself to a foreignness that traverses the speaker as it would a reverberant corridor, a foreign ness that penetrates him and makes him possible it is exposed to the foreigner's culture, language, educators, illnesses, contaminations, temptations, friends, indeed even the self which places paren theses it ostensibly owns around phenomena. It celebrates in itself a fullness of foreignness called the world. Whatever Nietzsche alleges about these magnitudes is transformed into praise of the foreigner in itself: ''As my father I am already dead and as my mother I am still alive. . . "9 Thus Nietzsche's selflessness must be sought beneath the level of apparent self-praise-in his opening to the inner foreignness, in his excessive mediality, in his indulgent curiosity for everything, and in his never totally compensated imbecility. This is why the author is no simple sun, but a resonance-body. As my mother I still speak, as my future friends I am still to be heard. Nietzsche could be described as the discoverer of hetero-narcissism: what he ulti mately affirms in himself are the othernesses which gather in him and make him up like a composi tion, which penetrate him, delight him, torture
I 81
him and surprise him. Without surprise life would
be a fallacy. There must be something in the world that is faster than causes. What comes to be dis cussed under the title of "the will to power" is the prelude to a composition qua theory of pure positings. The theory of the will was a detour on the way to the unwritten, complete teaching, to that critique of eulogistic reason which describes the world as an objection and its overcoming.
Perhaps we ought to permit ourselves to remark that, as an author of German language and European syntax:, Nietzsche reached the pinnacle. In his culminations as thinker-singer, he could feel himself to be an organon of the universe, creating sites of self-affirmation in individuals. As a philosopher, he would have rejoiced too early, had he assembled the sketches ofhis theory ofwill into a work and published it himself But we know that the exploiters, recyclers, and accelerators did this for him, using his authorial name as a brand. They did this rather unbeknownst to the author, who often came to the point in his research at which the alleged system, the supposed fundamental theory, cancelled itself out: there is no will, and therefore no will to power. Will is only an idiom. There is only a multiplicity of forces, speech, gestures, and their being composed under the direction of an ego, which gets affirmed, lost, and transformed.
On this precise point the author contradicts his own brand, and his statements on this are explicit. Perhaps we can do no better, then, on the hun dredth anniversary of his death, than to repeat these statements, in the hope that no future redac tion can excise them:
The whole surface of consciousness-conscious ness is a surface-has to be kept free from all of the great imperatives. Be careful even of great words, great attitudes . . . . I have no memory of ever having made an effort-you will not detect any trace of struggle in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. To "will" anything, to "strive" after anything, to have a "goal," a "wish" in mind I have never experienced this. Right now I am still looking out over my future-an immense future! -as if it were a calm sea: there is not a ripple of longing. I do not have the slightest wish for anything to be different from how it is; I do not want to become anything other than what I am. But this is how my life has always been. 10
This idyll ofthe author responds once again to the Zarathustra idyll of noon, the recumbent ovation on the perfect earth. Here the earth seems to answer in advance to the question ofwhom it takes itself for.
Like such a weary ship in the stillest bay, thus I too rest now close to the earth, faithfully, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads. Oh happiness, oh happiness! Do you want to sing, oh my soul? You lie in the grass. But this is the secret solemn hour when no shepherd plays his flute. Stand back! Hot noon sleeps on the meadows. Do not sing! Still! The world is perfect. 1 1
Here the author himself is called upon to stop being an author. Where the world has become everything that may not be awakened, the writer is no more. Let's leave him in his old noon. We must picture the author who ceases a happy person.
NOTES
Introduction
1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, TheAnti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight ofthe Idols, and Other Writings, edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, No. 16, p. 13. [translation modified]
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "The Conva lescent," edited by Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin, translated by Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 173.
1. Gospels-Redactions
1. Otfried von Weissenburg, Evangelienbuch (extracts), ed. , translated into modern German and commented by Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Stuttgart 1987, p. 37.
2. Translator's note: in German "feiern," to celebrate, can also mean "to take holidays. " Cf. Wittgenstein's phrase "die Sprachefeiert. "
3. Translator's note: oldest known form of the word deutsch (i. e. , German) .
4. Dedication to Luitbert, Archbishop ofMainz, op. cit. , pp. 19-21.
5 . The Jefferson Bible, with a n introduction b y F. Forrester Church and an afterword by Jaroslav Pelikan, Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, p. 17.
85
6. Ibid. , p. 28.
7. Cf. The Gospel According to Tolstoy, translated and edited by
David Patterson, London and Tuscaloosa, 1 992. 8. Ibid. , p. 30.
2. The Fifth
1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Sdmtliche Briefe, Kritischen Studienausgabe,
Vol. 6, Munich, 1986, p. 327. 2. Ibid. , p. 363.
3. Ibid. , p. 380.
4. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited and translated by Christopher Middleton, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge 1996, p. 223 (German original, p. 497).
5. TheAnti-ChristandOtherWritings, op. cit. , "TheAntichrist,"45, p. 42.
6. SelectedLetters, op. cit. , p. 223 (German edition, p. 497). 7. TheAnti-ChristandOtherWritings,op. cit. ,p. 137.
3. Total Sponsoring
1 . Ecce Homo, Cambridge, p. 105. 2. Ibid, pp. 126-7.
3. Ibid, p. 72.
4. Ibid, pp. 129-30.
5. Ibid, p. 143.
6. Ibid, p. 98.
7. Ibid, p. 144.
8. "Ecce Homo" in Basic Writings ofNietzsche, translated and edited, with Commentaries by Walter Kaufmann, New York: The Modern Library, 1968, p. 677.
86 ! A<Jcst! o
9. Ibid. , p. 103.
10. Ibid. , p. 82.
1 1 . Th u s Sp o k e Za r a t h u s t r a , o p . c i t . , I V, p . 2 1 8 . 12. EcceHomo,Cambridge,p. 136.
4. OfSuns and Humans
1. On the concept of "insulation" as anthropological mecha nism, see Dieter Classens, Das Konkrete und das Abstrakte. Soziologische Skizzen zur Anthropologie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 980, pp. 60-92.
2. TheAntichrist, op. cit. , p. 3.
3. ThusSpokeZarathustra,op. cit. ,III, OfOldandNewTablets
19,p. 167ff.
4 . Th u s Sp o k e Za r a t h u s t r a , op . c i t . , I V, T h e M a g i c i a n , 2 , p . 2 0 7 .
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Vol. One, "Self-Reliance," accessed online at www. rwe. org/complete/complete-works/ii essays-i/ii-self-reliance. html.
6. ThusSpokeZarathustra,p. 3.
7. Ibid, p. 173.
8. NachgelasseneSchriften, Kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. , 10, p. 428. 9. EcceHomo, p. 74.
10. Ibid, p. 97.
11. ThusSpokeZarathustra,p. 224.
!
62 I Nietzsche Apcs1le
decadence are those in which "the yes-man [Mucker] is in charge"-to put it in Nietzsche's words. If the good are so good, it is onlyfaute de mieux. The decadence ideal holds power only so long as, and because, "it has not had any competi- tion. "12 That is why if one wants to oppose the better to the good in questions of gospel, one must
resolve to count to five.
4
OF SUNS AND HUMANS
If, today, one hundred years after Nietzsche's death, we look back at this author for authors and non-authors and grasp his place in his time, we become aware that Nietzsche-for all his claims to originality and despite his pride at being the first in essential things-was in many respects actually only a privileged medium for the execution of tendencies that in one way or another would have forged ahead without him. His achievement consists in knowing how to transform an accident of the name Friedrich Nietzsche into an event, provided that we understand by event the poten tiation of the accidental into the destinal. Destiny might also be spoken of in the case where a designer latches onto that something that is going to happen in any event, impelling it further, and stamping his name on it. In this sense Nietzsche is
65
a destiny-or, as one would say today, a trend designer. The trend which he embodied and gave form to was the individualist wave, which, since the Industrial Revolution and its cultural projec tions in romanticism, had proceeded inexorably through modern civil society and has not ceased doing so. Individualism, then, is to be understood not as an accidental or avoidable current in the history of mentalities, but rather as an anthropo logical break which first made possible the emer gence of a type of human being surrounded by enough media and means ofdischarge to be able to individualize counter to its "societal precondi tions. " In individualism is articulated the third post-historical insulation of "human beings" after the first, prehistorical in nature, led to its emancipation from nature, and the second, his torical one, led to the "reign of man over man. "1 Individualism constantly forges changing alliances with all that has made up the modern world: with progress and reaction, with left-wing and right-wing political programs, with national and transnational motives, with masculinist, femi nist and infantilist projects, with technophile and technophobe sentiments, with ascetic and hedo nist moralities, with avant-gardist and conservative conceptions of art, with analytical and cathartic therapies, with sporty and non-sporty lifestyles,
with performance readiness and refusal of per formance, with belief in success as well as unbelief in it, with still Christian as well as no-longer Christian forms of life, with ecumenical openings and local closings, with humanist and post humanist ethics, with the ego necessarily able to accompany all my representations, as well as with the dissolved self, which exists only as the hall of mirrors of its masks. Individualism is capable of alliances with all sides, and Nietzsche is its designer, its prophet.
Nietzsche's pretention to be an artist and much more than an artist is grounded in his radical, modern concept ofsuccess: for him, at stake is not only to throw products on today's market, but instead to create the market wave itself, by which the work is belatedly carried to success. In this way he anticipated the strategies of the avant-garde, which Boris Groys has described in his already classic work on The TotalArt ofStalinism. If one wants to be a market leader, one must first operate as a market maker. And to be successful as a mar ket maker, one must anticipate and endorse what many will choose once they learn they are allowed to want. Nietzsche had understood that the phenome non that would emerge irresistibly in tomorrow's culture was the need to distinguish oneself from the mass. It was immediately present to him that
CJt Suns
the stuff out of which the future would be made, could be found in individuals' demands to be better and other than the rest, and thereby precisely better than all others. The theme of the 20th century is self-referentiality, in the systemic as well as the psychological senses. Only: self-referential systems are autological and self-eulogistic systems. The author Nietzsche still has this knowledge in advance over contemporary theory. On his under standing, or rather intuition, he created, in his lifetime, the conditions for his twofold posthu mous success: he inscribed his name in the list of classics, which throughout culture are handed down as reference points of approval and critique. This is what he described as his fulfilled need for immortality; in addition, however, through the detour of his first interpreters and intermediaries, he above all imposed his name as a brand name for a successful immaterial product, for a literary lifestyle-drug or an elevated way-of-life. This is the Nietzschean design of individualism: We free spirits! We who live dangerously! When the author iden tifies himself as author, the self-eulogistic melody appears; when the market-maker launches the brand, the advertisement appears. Nietzsche libe rated modern language in associating eulogies with publicity. Only a jester, only a poet, only a copywriter. This connection alone enables us to
understand how that most resolute proponent of high culture could have yielded effects on mass culture. It is undeniable that Nietzsche's second success, his seduction as brand, or as ethos and attitude, in the field of individualism, by far con stitutes his greatest effect-and also contains his more distant future possibilities. Indeed, it is pre cisely because the Nietzsche life-style-brand, far more than the name of the author, still radiates an almost irresistible attraction, that, over the course ofthe last third ofthe 20th century, with the onset of the overtly individualist conjuncture of the post-May '68 period, it could recover from the incursions of fascist redactors and their copies. Doubtless, the author Nietzsche, even given the then dire state of editing, was unacceptable to national-socialist collectivism and that the brand Nietzsche alone-and indeed only in rare and par ticular aspects-suggested itself for reproduction in national pop culture. To understand this point, we have to factor in the fact that, procedurally, fascism is nothing other than the incursion of pop and kitsch-procedures into politics. As Clement Greenberg already showed in 1939-confronting the critical case-kitsch is the world language of triumphant mass culture. It depends on the mechanized forgery ofsuccess. Pop and kitsch are, culturally as politically, short-cut procedures to get
Of Suns and Humans I 69
to the apparent taste of the masses. With this they content themselves with copying success and, with copies of the successful in hand, with triumphing once again. Hitler's success strategy as pop and kitsch politician consisted in tying a pop-nationalism with an event-militarism, as the simplest way to have the narcissism of the masses effervesce. In doing so, radiophone acquisition techniques and open-air paramilitary liturgies played the key roles. Through them, the population learned that it shall be a people and that it had to listen to the rabble rousing voices of its projected self. In this sense, all fascism is an effect of redaction. It is deutero fascistic from the start, since it has no original; if a derivative can be insurrectionary, it is precisely by way of an insurrection of scissors, which always know what they must cut, how, and to what ends. From the energetic aspect, fascism is the event culture of resentment-a definition, incidentally, which renders intelligible the shocking convertibility of leftwing affects into rightwing ones, and vice versa. So long as publicness functions as a director's theater of resentment, the ability to rape texts and to seduce the public as a "mass" is presupposed. Brand Nietzsche could play a role in the semantic advertising drives of the NS-Movement insofar as their imitations omitted his basic assessments, as implacably individualistic and avant-gardist as
they are, and retained only the "fast climber" atti tudes, along with a martial decor of the dictum. Hitler's clique edited Nietzsche with scissors and pasted him into a collectivist gospel-shortly before, moreover, Nietzsche's sister had employed her scissors to prepare a ready-made of brand Nietzsche. To the shame of German academic phi losophy after 1933, one is forced to remark that it did exactly the same thing on its level, as did the anti-Nietzscheans, who are still today unable to do more than merely compile their self-pasted incrimination files-but how far must one reach back to find university philosophers who do not philosophize with scissors? The National Socialists, resolute editors of everything that guaranteed social and national success, were able to retain far less of Nietzsche than Jefferson could of Jesus-most of his writings were too inappropriate for their kitsch system, too anti-nationalist, too anti-German, too anti-philistine, too anti-revanchist, too anti-collec tivist, too anti-militarist, too anti-antirationalist, too disdainful of every concept of "national self-interest" [Volker-Selbstsucht],2 and, finally, to mention the decisive barrier, too incompatible with any politics of resentment, regardless of whether this presents itselfas nationalist or socialist or as a multi-purpose form ofvengeance politics; national/socialist. That there is no path leading from Nietzsche to the
German's posing as masters must be obvious to
anyone who's come into contact with his writings too incisive was Nietzsche's insight that Germans, whether they have graduated or not, have as their temptation not to feel good if they cannot belittle others-but what else is Nietzsche's moral philo sophical oeuvre if not a single exercise in overcoming the need to disparage others? That nationalist politics rests on the pathetic propensity to humiliate foreigners-who has brought this into sharper focus than Nietzsche, and who was able to trace hooliganism to Wilhelmina? Nietzsche, to be sure, is anti-egalitarian, but this is not in order to make common cause with revenge-hungry populists, as German moral philosophers, whose differences can no longer impress, avidly continue to assert in the wisdom of their years. Instead, it is in order to defend the freedom of self-enhancement against the consumerdom of the last men. From one per spective only is a concession to be made to those who disparage Nietzsche and attempt to guard against his influence. It is correct that Nietzsche, as the designer of a brand of "destiny," was obliged to ask himself whether his products should not have been endowed with better copy protection and whether the brand should even have been allowed to appear next to the authorial name. Could he not have known that from the riff-raff he repelled,
l2 I
his most tenacious clientele could emerge? Proof that these questions did not escape Nietzsche's consideration can be seen-that is, apart from Zarathustra's prophetic sayings, more or less criti cal of the Church, about the parasites of the noble soul3-in certain letters and work notes in which he pondered, in dread of the monstrousness of his insights, whether to abdicate from his authorship. However, even if he had done this, it would have been imperative to disclose why he gave up being an author-and the result would have been nearly the same. Perhaps Nietzsche knew the answer to such objections in advance, as he did for nearly everything else: "I am not on my guard for deceivers, I have to be without caution-my fate wants it so. "4
In order to gauge what was unique in Nietzsche's great success as individualism's trend designer, a comparison with alternative designs suggests itself There are only a few strong versions of his epoch-making expression "become what you are" and the corresponding "do what you will. " Ultimately the work of one single author can serve as a rival project and foil to Nietzsche's own, one
who the author of The Gay Science himself inci dentally named "a glorious, great nature," not without adding that to date the most ingenious philosophical writer of the 1 9th century had been
/ 73
an American, namely Ralph Waldo Emerson. If Nietzsche's design of life in self-creating individu ality is presented under the title "Free spirits," Emerson brings his product on the market under the brand name "non-conformism. " It is to this that the greatest of Emerson's early essays are devoted; the beacon with whom American philoso phy yielded to its first astonished witnesses the proof of its existence. Not coincidentally, this was under the heading Self-Reliance, a prose piece of barely thirty pages, incomparable in its a-systemic density, the declaration of independence of the American essay and the revocation of American servitude to the European canon, and to every canon in general. What takes shape in him is an anti-humility program which, over the course of the next one hundred and fifty years, would reveal itself as the specific timbre ofAmerican freedom a color that dominated until the '70s of last century, before US academia dedicated itself to the import of European maso-theories. But in the year of 1841, the inundation of critical theory was still a ways off:
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for
the inmost in due time becomes the outmost and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. ( . . . ) Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say (. . . ) precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
(. . . ) but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. ( . . . ) Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a noncon formist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at
last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world
Your goodness must have some edge to it else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. (. . . ) I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. ( . . . ) we cannot spend the day in explanation.
Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
To be great is to be misunderstood. (. . . ) Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now.
The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul . . . history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.
"To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift. "5
Emerson possesses a temporal advance over Nietzsche, in addition to a psycho-political one. Since while Emerson's non-conformism seems as if it were made to unfold, against a certain resistance, toward an ambivalent narcissism of the mass, one
still balanced by democracy at the end of the day, Nietzsche's free spirit brand ran a greater risk of being imitated by a success-hungry movement of losers. Fascisms, past and future, are politically nothing other than insurrections ofenergy-charged losers, who, for a time of exception, change the rules in order to appear as victors. The Nietzsche brand was recuperated by losers and loser-redactors, because it promised to be the brand of winners. As this horrific episode did not and could not last, Emerson's project won out over Nietzsche's on the brand front. That's why most of us today are non conformists, not free spirits. Our average thoughts and feelings are all made in the USA, not made in Sils-Maria.
The significance of this difference can be seen by returning again to Nietzsche, the author. When, in the euphoric productions of the first parts ofZarathustra, he undertook the most radical short circuit between self-praising discourse and evangelical discourse, his concept of "Dionysian" had necessarily; according to the author, become the "highest fact. " In these colorful episodes ofwriting, Nietzsche, as never before or after, amended lan guage use by producing a discourse that was a pure self-advert of creative ecstasy. Even so, he was not exactly correct in exclusively reserving the predi cate "Dionysian" for his "highest deed. " What
Of Suns and Humans I 77
came to light in these expression-eruptions, rather were more Apollonian irradiations, in which Dionysian fragmentations appeared to have been overcome. It is not by chance that, in the gospel according to Zarathustra, the sun-the star of Apollo-plays the role of the exemplary Being, and it falls to the new prophet to perfect himself in imitation of the sun. ''All that I touch becomes light"-only suns can talk in this way about them selves. This applies above all to their most important gestures and talents-the readiness to over-expend themselves unconditionally and the ability to set without regret. In both respects the teachings of the late Nietzsche point to an imitation solis. The sun alone is heroic right to the moment of setting and remains generous until it goes down. "Heroism is the good will to absolute self-demise," the author had once written for his young Russian girlfriend. Only suns can be so profligate that they can be placed under the guardianship of rational heirs, when the economic ideas ofthe latter manage to prevail. Only the sun has a giving virtue as first nature; only suns care nothing for the sym metry between giving and taking; only suns shine sovereignly over proponents and opponents; and only suns read no critiques. On this last point the author Nietzsche did not totally succeed in his becoming-sun. Moreover, there are also some other
78 I Nietzsche Apostle
respects that give ground for suspIC10n that Nietzsche's sun participates far more in humanity than the metaphor betrays. This begins with Zarathustra's first address to it: "You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine? (. . . ) we. . . took your overflow from you and blessed you for it. "6 And it culminates in Zarathustra's prayer to his will:
That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon;
-ready for myself and for my most hidden will; a bow burning for its arrow, an arrow burning for its star-
-a star ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, skewered, blissful with annihilating arrows of the sun-
-a sun itself and an inexorable will of the sun. . . 7
One sees in these phrases that the author sympa thizes neither with philosophical hallucinations, which proclaim the flight into identity in the name of the "subject," nor with the philosophy of dia logue, in which subjects address each other face to face or accuse each other of turning away from dialogue. Nietzsche's interests are directed at a theory of the penetrated penetration, an ethics of
overflowing into and entering into others, a logic of absorption and of new-radiation. He does not know of symmetrical discussions, negotiation, of the middle-value between banalities, but instead of inter-solar relations, the traffic of rays from start to star, the penetration from viscera to viscera, being pregnant and making-pregnant. "In the belly ofthe whale I become the herald oflife. "8 His interest lies not in opinions but in emanations. On an intellec tual level he is a radical bisexual, a star which fevers to be penetrated, and a sun which penetrates and "prevails. " I am penetrated, therefore I am; I radiate in you, therefore you are. By sexualizing the sun, he reverses the direction of imitation and compels the sun to become the imitator ofpeople, provided that the individual is an author-that is, one who is penetrated by language, by music, a voice, which seeks ears and creates them.
From this point it is possible to give yet another twist to the interpretation of Nietzsche's work from within the critique oflanguage. IfNietzsche's evangelical operation liberates self-praise, then a transformed light falls on the self of this praise. In noting that Nietzsche's poetics abolishes the rules of indirect eulogy and substitutes praise of the foreigner with self-praise, we see only the outer layer of the turmoil created. On a deeper level, Nietzsche's affirmative language remains obliged to
80 I
praise the foreigner-better, it praises the non-self such as it has never been celebrated before. However, it devotes itself to a foreignness that is more than the otherness of another person. It exposes itself to a foreignness that traverses the speaker as it would a reverberant corridor, a foreign ness that penetrates him and makes him possible it is exposed to the foreigner's culture, language, educators, illnesses, contaminations, temptations, friends, indeed even the self which places paren theses it ostensibly owns around phenomena. It celebrates in itself a fullness of foreignness called the world. Whatever Nietzsche alleges about these magnitudes is transformed into praise of the foreigner in itself: ''As my father I am already dead and as my mother I am still alive. . . "9 Thus Nietzsche's selflessness must be sought beneath the level of apparent self-praise-in his opening to the inner foreignness, in his excessive mediality, in his indulgent curiosity for everything, and in his never totally compensated imbecility. This is why the author is no simple sun, but a resonance-body. As my mother I still speak, as my future friends I am still to be heard. Nietzsche could be described as the discoverer of hetero-narcissism: what he ulti mately affirms in himself are the othernesses which gather in him and make him up like a composi tion, which penetrate him, delight him, torture
I 81
him and surprise him. Without surprise life would
be a fallacy. There must be something in the world that is faster than causes. What comes to be dis cussed under the title of "the will to power" is the prelude to a composition qua theory of pure positings. The theory of the will was a detour on the way to the unwritten, complete teaching, to that critique of eulogistic reason which describes the world as an objection and its overcoming.
Perhaps we ought to permit ourselves to remark that, as an author of German language and European syntax:, Nietzsche reached the pinnacle. In his culminations as thinker-singer, he could feel himself to be an organon of the universe, creating sites of self-affirmation in individuals. As a philosopher, he would have rejoiced too early, had he assembled the sketches ofhis theory ofwill into a work and published it himself But we know that the exploiters, recyclers, and accelerators did this for him, using his authorial name as a brand. They did this rather unbeknownst to the author, who often came to the point in his research at which the alleged system, the supposed fundamental theory, cancelled itself out: there is no will, and therefore no will to power. Will is only an idiom. There is only a multiplicity of forces, speech, gestures, and their being composed under the direction of an ego, which gets affirmed, lost, and transformed.
On this precise point the author contradicts his own brand, and his statements on this are explicit. Perhaps we can do no better, then, on the hun dredth anniversary of his death, than to repeat these statements, in the hope that no future redac tion can excise them:
The whole surface of consciousness-conscious ness is a surface-has to be kept free from all of the great imperatives. Be careful even of great words, great attitudes . . . . I have no memory of ever having made an effort-you will not detect any trace of struggle in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. To "will" anything, to "strive" after anything, to have a "goal," a "wish" in mind I have never experienced this. Right now I am still looking out over my future-an immense future! -as if it were a calm sea: there is not a ripple of longing. I do not have the slightest wish for anything to be different from how it is; I do not want to become anything other than what I am. But this is how my life has always been. 10
This idyll ofthe author responds once again to the Zarathustra idyll of noon, the recumbent ovation on the perfect earth. Here the earth seems to answer in advance to the question ofwhom it takes itself for.
Like such a weary ship in the stillest bay, thus I too rest now close to the earth, faithfully, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads. Oh happiness, oh happiness! Do you want to sing, oh my soul? You lie in the grass. But this is the secret solemn hour when no shepherd plays his flute. Stand back! Hot noon sleeps on the meadows. Do not sing! Still! The world is perfect. 1 1
Here the author himself is called upon to stop being an author. Where the world has become everything that may not be awakened, the writer is no more. Let's leave him in his old noon. We must picture the author who ceases a happy person.
NOTES
Introduction
1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, TheAnti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight ofthe Idols, and Other Writings, edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, No. 16, p. 13. [translation modified]
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "The Conva lescent," edited by Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin, translated by Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 173.
1. Gospels-Redactions
1. Otfried von Weissenburg, Evangelienbuch (extracts), ed. , translated into modern German and commented by Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Stuttgart 1987, p. 37.
2. Translator's note: in German "feiern," to celebrate, can also mean "to take holidays. " Cf. Wittgenstein's phrase "die Sprachefeiert. "
3. Translator's note: oldest known form of the word deutsch (i. e. , German) .
4. Dedication to Luitbert, Archbishop ofMainz, op. cit. , pp. 19-21.
5 . The Jefferson Bible, with a n introduction b y F. Forrester Church and an afterword by Jaroslav Pelikan, Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, p. 17.
85
6. Ibid. , p. 28.
7. Cf. The Gospel According to Tolstoy, translated and edited by
David Patterson, London and Tuscaloosa, 1 992. 8. Ibid. , p. 30.
2. The Fifth
1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Sdmtliche Briefe, Kritischen Studienausgabe,
Vol. 6, Munich, 1986, p. 327. 2. Ibid. , p. 363.
3. Ibid. , p. 380.
4. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited and translated by Christopher Middleton, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge 1996, p. 223 (German original, p. 497).
5. TheAnti-ChristandOtherWritings, op. cit. , "TheAntichrist,"45, p. 42.
6. SelectedLetters, op. cit. , p. 223 (German edition, p. 497). 7. TheAnti-ChristandOtherWritings,op. cit. ,p. 137.
3. Total Sponsoring
1 . Ecce Homo, Cambridge, p. 105. 2. Ibid, pp. 126-7.
3. Ibid, p. 72.
4. Ibid, pp. 129-30.
5. Ibid, p. 143.
6. Ibid, p. 98.
7. Ibid, p. 144.
8. "Ecce Homo" in Basic Writings ofNietzsche, translated and edited, with Commentaries by Walter Kaufmann, New York: The Modern Library, 1968, p. 677.
86 ! A<Jcst! o
9. Ibid. , p. 103.
10. Ibid. , p. 82.
1 1 . Th u s Sp o k e Za r a t h u s t r a , o p . c i t . , I V, p . 2 1 8 . 12. EcceHomo,Cambridge,p. 136.
4. OfSuns and Humans
1. On the concept of "insulation" as anthropological mecha nism, see Dieter Classens, Das Konkrete und das Abstrakte. Soziologische Skizzen zur Anthropologie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 980, pp. 60-92.
2. TheAntichrist, op. cit. , p. 3.
3. ThusSpokeZarathustra,op. cit. ,III, OfOldandNewTablets
19,p. 167ff.
4 . Th u s Sp o k e Za r a t h u s t r a , op . c i t . , I V, T h e M a g i c i a n , 2 , p . 2 0 7 .
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Vol. One, "Self-Reliance," accessed online at www. rwe. org/complete/complete-works/ii essays-i/ii-self-reliance. html.
6. ThusSpokeZarathustra,p. 3.
7. Ibid, p. 173.
8. NachgelasseneSchriften, Kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. , 10, p. 428. 9. EcceHomo, p. 74.
10. Ibid, p. 97.
11. ThusSpokeZarathustra,p. 224.
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