1.
Against the value of that which remains eternally the same […], the values of the briefest and most transient, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita [“life”]—
[The Will to Power, section 577.]
Nietzsche repeatedly expressed this idea. I was reminded of it while reading Heidegger’s commentary on ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ (from Twilight; the commentary can be found in Volume I, chapter 24, of Heidegger’s ‘Nietzsche’). I will use Krell’s translation here.
(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
[‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’, step 6 of 6.]
I re-turned to Heidegger’s study in the course of my recent study of truthfulness in Nietzsche. In the light of that study, I can now offer the following interpretation of this section from Twilight.
The abolition of the true world—and with it, the apparent one—follows from Platonic/Christian morality’s turning against itself. I like to liken Christianity to a scorpion which has stung itself. A scorpion has eight legs (two of which have claws), a tail, and a head. These make ten extremities in total. Christianity has ten commandments.
It doesn’t really matter which commandment corresponds to which extremity—with one exception. That exception, incidentally, is the only one of which I’m certain: the tail is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”—the commandment to truthfulness.
Now the tail has killed the scorpion’s body—the Christian God—, how long will its extremities survive? Without the Christian God to sanction it, Christian morality will perish sooner or later. And this will include the commandment to truthfulness! I contend that midday, the moment (‘Augenblick’, literally “glance of an eye”) of the shortest shadow, is the period in which God is dead but the tail still lives. This period is, from a Nietzschean perspective, the highpoint of humanity: it is the period of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (as Heidegger says, step 5 of ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ describes Nietzsche’s positivistic period, not his mature philosophy). And what happens at that point? INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA, Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra?) begins… And how does Zarathustra begin?
Incipit tragoedia.—When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and Lake Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,— […] Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
[Joyful Wisdom, section 342.]
The highpoint of humanity is the wisdom of Zarathustra. But in the course of TSZ, Zarathustra chooses Life over Wisdom. This is already prefigured in the Prologue:
And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:—alas! it loveth to fly away!—may my pride then fly with my folly!
[Zarathustra’s Prologue, 10.]
And so it does. Indeed, at the end of Part IV, Zarathustra says:
Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also mid-day,—
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,—go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.
[The Drunken Song (a.k.a. The Nightwanderer’s Song), section 10.]
This feeling of perfection, however, is also called “wisdom” by Nietzsche on occasion:
Philosophy as love of wisdom, up to the sage as the most blessed, most powerful one, who justifies all Becoming and wants to have it again,—not love of men, or of gods, or of truth, but love of a condition, of a spiritual and sensual feeling of perfection: an Affirming and Benedicting out of an overflowing feeling of shaping power. The great distinction.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass, found in Umwertung aller Werte.]
And indeed, the word translated by Common as “wisdom” in section 10 of the Prologue is not ‘Weisheit’ (as in ‘Weiser’, “sage”), but ‘Klugheit’, “cleverness” (compare the first two chapter titles of Ecce Homo). And yet Zarathustra chooses Life over ‘Weisheit’:
And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o’er which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together. Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom [‘Weisheit’] had ever been.
[TSZ, The Second Dance Song.]
I think the Wisdom sacrificed by Zarathustra isn’t the condition mentioned above; it’s rather to attain that condition that he sacrifices it. The “wisdom” he sacrifices is truth, which is indeed (a) god.
2.
The first thing Zarathustra says to the hermit in the Prologue is: “I love mankind” [‘Ich liebe die Menschen’, “I love men”]. And I think all the Wisdom Zarathustra possesses in the Prologue (after having spent ten years in solitude) is sacrificed to said feeling of perfection in the course of the book. But the crucial sacrifice is not his love of men or of gods, unless it be the divine truth. The crucial sacrifice is his love of truth.
3.
Now I will, in true War God style (see http://www.nietzscheforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1225#p1225), introduce a new “clock”—one corresponding to ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’:
00:00 Plato (step 1);
02:24 Christianity (step 2);
04:48 Kant (3);
07:12 cockcrow of positivism (4);
09:36 Nietzsche’s positivism (5);
12:00 Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (6).
(I have chosen these times to correspond with Nietzsche’s own division into six of the history of Platonism. In history, however, there has not nearly elapsed an equal amount of time between Plato and the advent of Christianity on the one hand and between that advent and Kant on the other (not to mention between the other steps); indeed, it seems the historical succession of these stages became ever more rapid.)
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote:
Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine and his alone posits truthfulness as the highest virtue[.]
[EH Destiny, 3.]
And Peter Berkowitz wrote about this:
Dearer to Zarathustra than friends, honor, dignity, or even the intellectual conscience that Nietzsche praised so extravagantly and the truthfulness he insisted was prized by Zarathustra as the highest virtue, is life and the myth of redemption that makes life bearable.
[Berkowitz, ‘Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist’, page 206.]
Zarathustra’s down-going is a down-going of truthfulness—which attained its highpoint when it stung to death the God who alone sanctioned it.
From the beginning of Zarathustra, the sun sinks; and the history of Platonism suggests that the history of Nietzscheanism will be as follows:
12:00 Nietzsche’s mature philosophy;
14:24 Nietzscheanism for the people (as Christianity was Platonism for the people);
16:48 the Antikant;
19:12 owl’s hoot of negativism;
21:36 a new Plato’s negativism;
00:00 said new Plato’s mature philosophy.
At 12:00, Zarathustra begins—that is, the tragedy begins, a new tragic age (and with it a new history of Philosophy in the Tragic Age) begins… With the setting of the Nietzschean sun (around 18:00), nothing can prevent the recurrence of Platonism anymore. At 02:24 of the new day, a new Christianity may arise.
Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!
[TSZ, The Convalescent.]
This is Zarathustra’s last objection to the eternal recurrence. But he overcomes even that for the sake of said feeling of perfection: even the return of the smallest man, the Christian, is not too high a price to pay for said condition!
4.
(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
[Twilight, “True World”, 6.]
Midday, the flash of gold on the belly of the ouroboros (the serpent biting its own tail), is the moment of the shortest shadow. (Ironically, the “moment” (‘Augenblick’) is also the time segment in which the eternal recurrence is affirmed.) It is not a moment of no shadow. The shadow (and note that night is the shadow of the earth) is still present at midday, even as the darkness of Yin is still present at the core of Yang at its highpoint. Likewise, at midnight there is no complete darkness (there is no such thing, as darkness is a relative lack of light). In looking up to the “sun” of the ideal, Plato looked away from the “shadow” beneath his feet.
5.
Logically, if God is dead, the faith in science will perish, too. People’s faith in science will never perish only if their faith in God will never perish. And logically, if their faith in God does not perish, this God’s commandment to truthfulness must make them kill him. Paradox, paradox. I would agree, though, that most people are inconsistent. The Jews of the Diaspora are the most prominent example of that. But if one is inconsistent in this regard, there is no question of truthfulness! If God commands truthfulness, and one does not kill him, one sins against his commandment! Modern science’s truthfulness is like a beheaded chicken: as long as it runs on, it will exist; and while it exists, it’ll have to acknowledge that it is headless, and will therefore soon perish.—What’s “soon”, though? “Soon”'s a relative term. So enjoy it while it lasts! Embrace the moment…