Philosopher views

THE “NEW” NIETZSCHE

During the second half of the Twentieth Century, Nietzsche’s readers started to become more sophisticated in their approach to his admittedly complex style and ideas. Having had the benefit of seeing the fruits of Nietzsche’s work, they began to wonder whether he was really as absolutist as he claimed to be, or whether that absolutism, that blind adherence to the power paradigm, was not in fact another of Nietzsche’s tricks of irony and hyperbole.

AUTHENTICITY

Being true to ourselves means being aware of our connection to classical values. Michael Pantazakos suggests in his recent article on Nietzsche and legal literature that classicism includes an appreciation of the forms of excellence in cultural and intellectual expression:

The idea of the direct association of the Good and the Beautiful with the Harmony and Order of diverse relations both human and celestial, typified in the "balanced" individual as a mikrokosmos, has been traditionally considered perfected during the so-called Classical era of Athenian hegemony, when the maxims "nothing in excess" and "all in good measure" were considered the models of a virtuous life. Thus, the general scope of the term "classicism" denotes in any context -- musical, historical, or personal -- an aesthetic principle of formal perfection, purity of design, and simple elegance, of restraint, proportion, and dignity. (Michael Pantazakos, "The Form of Ambiguity: Law, Literature, and the Meaning of Meaning," CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE, Winter 1998, pp. 229-230.)
Authenticity, however, requires that we recognize our limits as well as our strengths, and Pantazakos suggests that pretending to be virtuous when we are not capable of such “virtue” can only lead to the duplicity of an inauthentic society:
The idea of the fundamental liberty of the individual soul, the inalienable value of but one man's life, this peculiar conceptual gift of the West to the progress of the human endeavor, enshrined in our laws in the noblest words imaginable, we have in our actions betrayed again and again -- indeed, so often and with such murderous consequence, that the origin of this recurrent ethical duplicity, played out essentially as a hermeneutic process, demands investigation. (Michael Pantazakos, "The Form of Ambiguity: Law, Literature, and the Meaning of Meaning," CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE, Winter 1998, p. 206.)
For those wishing to apply Nietzschean philosophy to current questions of society, the problem of authenticity means the problem of being “politically correct” in a world where people naturally resist being told how to think and feel. It means the problem of calling for inclusion as a device to increase one’s political viability, when one really doesn’t want inclusion in their own lives. Nietzsche’s critique of authenticity would ask why Bill Clinton belonged to an all-white country club prior to being elected president, or why Newt Gingrich calls for family values after walking out on his own family. The point is, we publicly make virtuous pronouncements, then turn around and violate those ethics in private. Why? For Nietzsche, it doesn’t represent a failure of our own will; it represents the absurdity of pronouncing those values in the first place. Instead of pretending to respect such moral codes, we ought to celebrate our own excellence, truth, and beauty, and stop pretending to be who we are not.
Because the alternative to immorality, for Nietzsche, is not a moral life, but an honest life. Although he is accused of fostering totalitarianism, Nietzsche actually fights against it, by arguing that any moral code that is supposed to apply to everyone can only be a totalitarian gesture. As John Wild points out, supposing that one can rationalize universal morality is really an attempt to absorb all otherness into sameness:
Totalitarian thinking accepts vision rather than language as its model. It aims to gain an all-inclusive, panoramic view of all things, including the other, in a neutral, impersonal light like the Hegelian Geist (Spirit), or the Heideggerian Being. It sees the dangers of an uncontrolled, individual freedom, and puts itself forth as the only rational answer to anarchy. To be free is the same as to be rational, and to be rational is to give oneself over to the total system that is developing in world history. Since the essential self is also rational, the development of this system will coincide with the interests of the self. All otherness will be absorbed in this total system of harmony and order. (John Wild, “Introduction,” in Emmanuel Levinas, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, 1969, p. 15.)
As we will see below when we discuss Nietzsche’s relation to the feminine, respect for otherness may be the real reason why his philosophy is important to contemporary democracy. In any event, authenticity cannot exist without a respect for otherness.

FEMINISM

Nobody is seriously arguing that Friedrich Nietzsche was a feminist. But many of his seemingly notorious statements about women may hide larger truths. The main truth is that a split has occurred in humanity, between nature and culture, and women have been placed more closely to nature than have men.

The impacts of the split between nature and culture are mainly centered around the weakening of human spirit by making everything “political,” “economic,” or social. Since men control all those realms, and since those realms actually serve to remove us from nature, women are closer to nature than men, and hence are closer to the life force of all existence. Culture is death, nature is life.
While these distinctions may be too absolute, they can tell us a great deal about how humanity has become weaker as it has attempted to gain strength through such unnatural activities as philosophy and morality. Katrin Froese interprets Nietzsche’s analysis by drawing a parallel between the split between nature and culture and the split between male and female:
Nietzsche's analysis of resentment and the master-slave dynamic can be a fruitful starting point for explaining why man engineered this split between nature and culture and relegated the sexes to separate realms. The master-slave scenario is used by Nietzsche to explain the shift towards moral behavior. He maintains that it was human weakness and the inability to act that prompted slaves to invent moral values which would curtail the actions of the physically overpowering master. Yet, because the slave shared the natural inclinations of the master, the restrictive moral codes would gnaw at his own natural impulses, creating a soul that was divided against itself. It is the fact that the slave used his perceived weakness to create another world in which he himself could become master that proves to be significant when examining the relationship between man and woman. (Katrin Froese, "Bodies and Eternity: Nietzsche's Relation to the Feminine," PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol. 26: 1, 2000, p. 30.)
Remember: there is no “morality” in nature, so far as Nietzsche is concerned. Thus, being closer to nature, abandoning one’s cultural constraints in favor of the life force, means being closer to what women are than what men are.
True, one must disregard a great deal of Nietzsche’s rhetoric in order to appreciate his “respect” for the feminine. But it is undeniably there. Women represent, for Nietzsche, a transcendence of philosophy’s totalizing gaze. The feminine represents a demand that one respect the other-ness of others, including the way in which people think outside of philosophy. A Nietzschean feminism, if it is possible, could be a feminism which neither elevates women’s roles to that of a goddess, nor demands that women act like and be treated as men. Instead, two concepts emerge as forerunners of a Nietzschean feminism: First, respect for bodies, and second, a respect for other-ness.
Nietzsche reminds us that bodies exist. This is important because most of philosophy is concerned with the mind. But for Nietzsche, the mind is simply an extension of the body, with all of the body’s passions. A Nietzschean feminism reminds us that passions are a large part of people’s physical relationships with one another. Liberal feminism assumes women can act like men because they think like men. Nietzsche’s view of the feminine is that it is other-than-male, and hence is worthy of respect as such. The female body is different, thus the female is different.
This overwhelming reminder of difference ought to affect the relations between people. As Katrin Froese writes: Sexual difference can become an important reminder of the importance of difference itself. Men and women cannot be reduced to each other, and the continuity of the species depends on the irreconcilable differences between them. At the same time, the differences between them can also impel them to see contradictions within. The woman sees the man in herself, while the man sees the woman in himself. (Katrin Froese, "Bodies and Eternity: Nietzsche's Relation to the Feminine," PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol. 26: 1, 2000, p. 40.)

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