Hello - i’m a current student studying Nietzsche in an introductory course for philosophy and i’m having difficulty understand what Nietzsche means when he speaks of ‘spiritualization of passion’ in the second paragraph of Twilight of the Idols.
I understand Nietzsche criticizes the manner in which we ‘kill the passions’ out of fear over our inability to properly control them, but I cannot see the link, nor am I able to properly interpret the above phrase. Could someone explain it to me or point me to a work that does?
Does he mean we should harness the power of our passions toward our own productive good instead of fearing them and acting openly hostile toward them out of fear of what they could lead to?
First you must absolutely understand what Nietzsche means by “spiritual”. This is geistig in the German, from the noun Geist, which may also be translated as “mind” or “intellect”, not just as “spirit”. Consider the second example Nietzsche gives:
[size=95][O]ur spiritualization of hostility. It consists in a profound appreciation of the value of having enemies: in short, it means acting and thinking in the opposite way from that which has been the rule. The church always wanted the destruction of its enemies; we, we immoralists and Antichristians, find our advantage in this, that the church exists. In the political realm too, hostility has now become more spiritual—much more sensible, much more thoughtful, much more considerate. Almost every party understands how it is in the interest of its own self-preservation that the opposition should not lose all strength; the same is true of power politics. A new creation in particular—the new Reich, for example—needs enemies more than friends: in opposition alone does it feel itself necessary, in opposition alone does it become necessary.
Our attitude to the “internal enemy” is no different: here too we have spiritualized hostility; here too we have come to appreciate its value. The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition; one remains young only as long as the soul does not stretch itself and desire peace. Nothing has become more alien to us than that desideratum of former times, “peace of soul,” the Christian desideratum; there is nothing we envy less than the moralistic cow and the fat happiness of the good conscience. One has renounced the great life when one renounces war.
[Twilight of the Idols, “Morality as Anti-Nature”, paragraph 3, with my emphasis.][/size]
Thank you both for your reply. I have to think on it some more, but I feel closer to an understanding now - especially with the definition of ‘spirit.’ I wonder though, does his idea of passion correlate to a modern understanding of passion? We always say ‘do something you’re passionate about’ which to me means to do something we get ‘geeked up’ about, and then perhaps in his words to channel the intellect to harness those passionate energies toward those productive ends…
Spiritualizing the passions would be to refine them, divide the raw flow of passional energy into more focused and minute channels, placing one’s psychial outpouring of excess energy under the “law” of one’s own “will”. We all have passions, it is a basic animal function, to block psychial-instinctive energy and let the build up overflow to produce motive power for action, thought, sentiment – drive. Humans have so much drive because more so than any other animal humans generate and trap this sort of energy (instinctive and unconscious psychological forces).
So, spiritualize this excess, give form to it, shape the catharsis rather than be shaped by it. This of course requires developing a sufficient sense of self - one’s own subjectivity - that is not only an immediate reactionary product of pathos. This touches on why reason, despite its antithetical nature to the deeper Being of the pathos of the subject, is also so essential to the cultivation of this subject.
When I wrote this, I did not yet understand the first example he gives. And he does not explain it. But his explanation of his second example may also serve to explain his first:
[size=95]The spiritualization of sensuality is called love[.]
[ibid.][/size]
I think the explanation is something along these lines: Sensuality is one’s indulgement in one’s pleasurable sense perceptions of somebody (typically somebody else). It’s indulgement in one’s pleasurable actual seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and/or touching somebody. Love on the other hand is indulgement in one’s pleasurable imagined seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and/or touching somebody.
P.S.: As Freud’s concept of “infantile sexuality” illustrates, which is really infantile sensuality (it’s only called “sexuality” because according to Freud it’s later repressed/sublimated into “adult sexuality”, i.e., genital-focused sensuality), sensuality need not even be indulgement in one’s pleasurable sense perceptions of a person: thus in the oral phase, infants put all kinds of lifeless objects into their mouth.