I wrote this paper at the tail end of last year!
I recently read over it again and decided to share it.
I was given the task of trying to synthesize the work of Nietzsche.
This is what I came up with!
What, after all, does the death of God entail? What has been murdered if not the Ethical, the transcendent guarantor of right action? Is this not why the sublime man is not equal with his deed, is this not why “his deed itself is still the shadow upon him: the hand darkens the doer.”1 If man still lives in the shadow of the death of God, does man not live in terms of the shadow, in the wake of the absence of the transcendental signified? The examination that follows will attempt to deal with Nietzschean ethics in the wake of the death of the Ethical. Nietzsche’s task, as I have read it, seems to be threefold; firstly, he must point to the vacated place of the absolute, the death of the realm of transcendence. Secondly, working in the wake of the death of transcendence he must construct an immanent ontology, which posits no outside, or rather does not attempt to create a new transcendence in place of the old. Finally, he must demonstrate how redemption and the affirmation of life are possible in spite of a lack of transcendence. By demonstrating this movement, which I will call an immanent ethics of creation, I hope to demonstrate how the Nietzschean teachings of The Overman,2 The Will to Power, and The Eternal Return, are intimately intertwined and complementary. Furthermore, I would like to argue that through the development of these three specific doctrines we ultimately have the task of becoming worthy of life, and this is brought about, though never completed, through the affirmation of chance as the affirmation of life. As such, and for the purposes of this task, I will focus on sections from Thus Spoke Zarathustra in support of my argument.
The Will To Power.3
The will to power, heavily indebted to the Schopenhauerian conception of the Will, differs in at least one very important respect, namely, that it is not a singularity but rather the dynamic movement of combative forces.4 The will to power is not the reconciliation of these forces, but rather the overcoming of one force by another: “The will that is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation—but how shall that happen?"5 Furthermore, the will to power is not subject to representation, but rather, much in the same way as Schopenhauer’s Will, the will to power takes place on a level outside of representation, what becomes apparent, therefore is nothing but the effects of these overcomings. It is therefore the case that all willing is the action of a will upon a will, such that Zarathustra is correct when he says: "And you too, enlightened man, are only a path and footstep of my will: truly, my will to power walks with the feet of your will to truth!”6 This movement of competing forces, which Nietzsche calls the will to power, is blind, it is nothing but a constant movement of overcoming. It is the case, therefore, when Zarathustra proclaims: “Whatever I create and however much I love it—soon I have to oppose it and my love: thus will my will have it”7, that he is gesturing toward the dynamic conflict of forces which are the essence of the will to power. As such Nietzsche’s ontology resides in the movement of the will to power, which seems to be mirrored in the movement of life itself, which tells Zarathustra its secret: “‘Behold’ it said, ‘I am that which must overcome itself again and again.”8 We must be clear therefore, in order to shed light on the ethics that seems to come about in Nietzsche’s writing that the very life he seeks to affirm is the will to power.
What of the Overman?
The [i]Overman[/i], emerging from the lips of Zarathustra, is brought forth on the heels of a statement that: “this old saint has not yet heard in his forest that God is Dead!” Zarathustra attempts to speak the doctrine of the [i]Overman[/i] to the people, as the promise of a man to come. The [i]Overman[/i] is the possibility of filling the gap, left by the death of God, with something life affirming. The Overman is not a transcendental entity but an immanent possibility: “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to over come him?”9 I read the [i]Overman[/i] as an immanent promise, as the opening of possibility, as a name which does not name, but rather animates the passage towards a proper name. The [i]Overman[/i] holds the promise of the future, to be sure it is an impossible promise, but one which maintains itself in the immanence of life, because the [i]Overman[/i] remains a possibility of the [i]will to power[/i]. The [i]Overman[/i] is not an entity which exists that we might simply look for, but rather an act of creation that might actively be brought about.
The Overman, therefore, has the status of a regulating ideal, which seeks not to synthesize the tensions, which it subsumes under its guidance, but rather, maintains the tensions as tensions in the process of overcoming man. We are, as it were, playing in the space liberated by the death of God, or perhaps the space was always open, we simply did not have eyes to see it. This space is the gap11 that animates, the differing differed, that which perpetuates the Heraclitean flux of life. More than anything, as a kind of forward-looking ideal, the Overman as an active force combats a kind of conservative satisfaction in the ways of man.
The Eternal Return
The [i]eternal return[/i], understood in terms of Nietzsche’s ontology, is the affirmation of the movement towards the [i]Overman[/i]; it is the affirmation, of the active force of self-creation, of the overcoming man. It is the thought of the [i]eternal return[/i] which redeems in the wake of the death of transcendence, or rather, in the wake of illusory redemption, the eternal return, for those able to bear it, is able to redeem the chance movement of becoming. The [i]eternal return[/i] affirms the active forces of life in the affirmation of life in the moment.
Courage lies in willing the eternal recurrence. “Courage, however, is the best destroyer, courage that attacks: it destroys even death, for it says, ‘Was that life? Well then! Once more!”13 Eternal return, as a repetition of all that is in every moment, undermines all reactive forces. The eternal return undermines the Christian notion of transcendence, of origins, of judgement, of another world beyond our own. In the return there is only the moment, which repeats eternally, a moment, which has never begun, nor will it cease, to repeat. Eternal becoming is the result, not as a negation of being but rather as the affirmation of being as becoming.
The nausea, which must be overcome, resides in the affirmation of chance.
Redemption
With the affirmation of chance we have the ultimate redemptive gesture, a gesture which opens up a new sort of time, by overcoming the time of old. The ultimate suffering and punishment was: “in the willer himself, since he cannot will backwards.”15 The eternal return does not need to will backwards, but rather, it allows the will to take up the whole of history, as a creative force, and repeat it in the eternally repeating moment. The whole of history, in the single individual, lived as possibility in the moment.
The ‘it was’ refers to all the dynamic forces of history, the ancient wills to power, coupled with the will to power of the present, which in turn constitute the valuations of individuals and the valuations of the herd. As such, the act of affirmation re-opens the “it was” into a “thus I willed it,” which re-activates the reactive forces. The eternal recurrence brings with it a new conception of time, allowing every existing individual to assert its reactive forces, making the past an active possibility into the future. Life is affirmed as a movement, the movement of chance17 is affirmed by the will as a “thus I willed it.”
We are left, as it were, with the Heraclitean flux of becoming, which through the interrelation of the Will to Power, the Overman, and the Eternal Return, we are able to maintain as flux, and affirm the existence taking place within it. The truly creative type, perhaps only the Overman himself, would be capable of achieving this movement. For us, the human all too human, we must maintain ourselves as an opening in view of this possibility. If we cease to bow down to reactive forces, forces of the herd, forces of the lowest, the weakest parts of society, we will need to rely upon our creative energies, the active forces, which while both scary and isolating, create true movements, or at least further reactions, allowing us to overcome the will to power of the herd. Perhaps, more than anything else the social implications of the Nietzschean account, point to the possibility of becoming worthy of the world which lies on the horizon.
Endnotes
1 Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone and No One. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books, 1971. pg. 140.
2 I will use the Kaufmann translation of Overman instead of Hollingdale’s use of Superman, out of a sense that Kaufmann’s translation is loyal to the “spirit” of Nietzsche’s writings.
3 The conception of the Will To Power that follows is perhaps as much Deleuzian as it is Nietzschean, following as it does in the wake of my engagement with Gilles Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
4 Nietzsche gives a fairly detailed account of high and low, noble and slavish forces.
5 Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Pg. 163.
6 Ibid., pg. 138.
7 Ibid., pg. 138.
8 Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. pg. 138.
9 Ibid., pg. 41.
10 Ibid., pg. 110.
11The Gap, the abyss, Chiasm, difference it seems that we have many ways of characterizing this space, some seem to over greater hope than others.
12Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. pg. 178.
13Ibid., pg. 178.
14Ibid., pg. 236.
15Ibid., pg 162.
16Ibid., pg 163.
17Zarathustra speaks of the “Lord Chance—he is the worlds oldest nobility, which I have given back to all things; I have released them from servitude under purpose.” Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. pg. 186.