Nietzsche’s Stance toward Music. Intermezzo and Part IV.
Intermezzo
These essays are essays in the literal sense in that they are attempts. This is especially evident in the case of my essay on ‘music’. By inquiring into the connection between aimlessness and the absence of happiness, I entered much deeper waters than I thought.
As an apropos(?): the man whom Nietzsche presents as an example of “[w]hat is lacking and has always been lacking in England” [4], Carlyle, was a Scot, not an Englishman—and bagpipes are most commonly associated with Scotland, of course. I have no idea as to the relevance of these facts in this context.
I also do not know yet how I will return to the topic of music.—
IV
Though English ‘philosophy’ has corrupted all the West [9], the Englishman is “stronger-willed” than the German. [4] Thus the happiness of the Englishman should not lie in resigning, but in having a goal. Because the Englishman does not have a goal, however, he thinks the natural goal of mankind is happiness. [3]
Because he has no why? of life, he thinks his why? of life must be to ‘improve’ his how? of life, so as to be able to answer that question with: “happily!”. If he had a why? of life, however, he would hardly care whether that answer be “happily” or “unhappily”: for he would then derive his happiness from his why?, not from his how?.
The paradox is easy to see. The goal of happiness, of being able to answer “how?” with “happily”, is a goal—an answer to the question “why?”. Thus the Englishman, in striving for happiness, is already happy: he hardly cares whether the answer to the question “how?” be “happily” or “unhappily”! This paradox is of a kind with the paradox George Morgan discerns:
[size=95]Nietzsche charges that liberalism defeats its own end. As long as liberal institutions are still being fought for, real freedom is indeed obtained:
[/size][size=85]Looked at more exactly, war produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as war, makes the illiberal instincts endure. And war educates to freedom. For what is freedom? … becoming more indifferent to hardship, severity, deprivation, even to life; readiness to sacrifice men for one’s cause, oneself not excepted.[/size][size=95]
As soon as liberal institutions are won they become the worst enemies of freedom, undermining will to power, levelling, trivializing—“they make men petty, cowardly and self-indulgent—with them the herd-animal triumphs every time.”[/size] [12]
- What Nietzsche Means, page 355, quoting from Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, aphorism # 38.