Nietzsche's Legacy: "Ecce Homo" and "The Antichrist," Two Books on Nature and Politics 022675197X, 9780226751979

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Nietzsche’s Legacy

Nietzsche’s Legacy Ecce Homo and The Antichrist, Two Books on Nature and Politics heinrich meier Translated by Justin Gottschalk

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2024 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2024 Printed in the United States of America 33  32  31  30  29  28  27  26  25  24  1  2  3  4  5 isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­75197-­9 (cloth) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­75202-­0 (e-­book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226752020.001.0001 Originally published as Nietzsches Vermächtnis: Ecce homo und Der Antichrist. Zwei Bücher über Natur und Politik, by Heinrich Meier, © Verlag C.H.Beck oHG, München 2019 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Meier, Heinrich, 1953– author. | Gottschalk, Justin, translator. Title: Nietzsche’s legacy : Ecce homo and the Antichrist, two books on nature and politics / Heinrich Meier ; translated by Justin Gottschalk. Other titles: Nietzsches Vermächtnis. English Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2024. | Translation of: Nietzsches Vermächtnis. München : C.H. Beck, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2023029770 | isbn 9780226751979 (cloth) | isbn 9780226752020 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900—Criticism and interpretation. | Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. Ecce homo. | Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. Antichrist. Classification: lcc pt2440.n72 z73313 2024 | ddc 838/.809—dc23/eng/20230817 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023029770 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Was ein Philosoph ist, das ist deshalb schlecht zu lernen, weil es nicht zu lehren ist. f r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e ,  Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Contents

Preface  ix Note on Citations  xi

f i r s t b o o k   Nature and Politics I Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is i Life 3 ii Wisdom 17 iii Task 32 iv Crisis 59 v Knowledge 86 vi Conflict 112

s e c o n d b o o k   Nature and Politics II The Antichrist: Curse on Christianity i Friends 129 ii Enlightenment 149 iii History 160 iv Faith 182 v Rulership 205 vi Enemies 224

a p pe n d i x   Twilight of the Idols, or, How One Philosophizes with the Hammer The Philosopher among Nonphilosophers  241 Translator’s Notes  271 Index of Names  273

Preface

“Revaluation of all values” is Friedrich Nietzsche’s name for the new orientation of life toward a type that represents the highest affirmation, which he claims to bring about with Ecce Homo and The Antichrist. At the same time, however, the pair in which his œuvre concludes places itself in the service of the most resolute negation. It presents the sharpest critique to which a philosopher has subjected Christianity. The author appears with the gesture of a founder and lawgiver who breaks the history of mankind into two pieces. But in both books, he is primarily interested in the nature of the philosopher. How the Yes and the No go together, how nature and politics are determined more precisely, how Nietzsche’s intention governs the political-­philosophical double-­face, this is the subject of the present writing. Nietzsche’s Legacy comprehends the dyad of Ecce Homo and The Antichrist as the late major work that takes the place of the Will to Power, which Nietzsche rejected in full awareness and with good reason. My confrontation with Ecce Homo and The Antichrist, which draws on Nietzsche’s œuvre as a whole, ties in with the interpretation of his major poetic work that I published in What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? This applies not only to the teachings of the Overman, the Will to Power, and the Eternal Return, but above all to the reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as an endeavor of self-­understanding. The clarification and division that Nietzsche achieved with the Zarathustra experiment, from the critique of futurism to the overcoming of tragedy, from the rejection of redemption to the separation of the philosopher from the prophet, were presupposed in the “revaluation of all values” and found their expression in the presentation of the dyad. On Nature and Politics not only continues the investigation of which What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? is a part. It is also the previously announced

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counterpart to the writing On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, in which I confronted Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire. That both Rousseau and Nietzsche used their last books for a presentation of the philosophic life is a correspondence to which no attention has so far been paid. That the Rêveries and Ecce Homo have long remained the least understood writings of Rousseau and Nietzsche is not a mere historical coincidence. It is caused, on the one hand, by the rhetoric that the authors chose in each case for the special task. On the other, by the readers’ expectation that a serious philosophical work is proved by its doctrinal content, an expectation that applies all the more to a major work, which has to be a “major systematic work.” When Nietzsche decided not to add another system to the systems of which the “history of metaphysics” is not in need, he included in Twilight of the Idols, the book that immediately precedes the concluding dyad, this judgment about the will to power, under the heading “Sayings and Arrows”: “The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” Nietzsche’s Legacy: Two Books on Nature and Politics was prepared in sixteen seminars on Nietzsche that I have given since 2001 at Ludwig-­Maximilians-­ Universität in Munich. I taught Ecce Homo in Winter 2004–­5 and in Winter 2015–­16, the Antichrist in Winter 2005–­6 and in Winter 2012–­13. In the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago I made Ecce Homo and the Antichrist the subject of seminars in Spring 2009 and Spring 2013, respectively. The first chapter of the First Book was the basis of a lecture I gave at the invitation of the Max Beckmann Society in February 2018 at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. The title read: “Ecce Homo: Nietzsche on the Philosophic Life.” H. M. Munich, April 8, 2019

Note on Citations

The acronyms KGW, KGB, and KSA designate the editions of Nietzsche edited or established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari: Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin–­New York, 1967 ff.); Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin–­New York, 1975ff.); Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1999). Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is and The Antichrist: Curse on Christianity are cited according to the Colli-­Montinari edition (KSA 6) using the acronyms EH and AC. For Ecce Homo, the edition of Karl-­Heinz Hahn and Mazzino Montinari, Ecce homo. Faksimile der Handschrift (Leipzig, 1985) (Faksimile), received constant consideration and is occasionally drawn on. Passages from this edition make use of angle brackets (< >) to indicate deletions from the manuscript made by Nietzsche himself. The passages from Ecce Homo are given respectively by part (preface, chap­ter I, II, III, IV), number (section), and subsection, with the pages of the KSA in parentheses. The sections on Nietzsche’s ten books in Ecce Homo, chap­ter  III are designated by the titles without italics: EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 8, 3 (349). The passages from The Antichrist are given by paragraph and subsection, with the pages of the KSA in parentheses. The abbreviation P. for page and the term “Footnote” refer, respectively, to pages and footnotes within this book. The abbreviations p. and n. are used for citing other publications.

first book

Nature and Politics I: Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is

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Life

Ecce Homo and The Antichrist have the nature of the philosopher as their subject. The dyad deals with the closely related questions of what a philosopher is and what constitutes a philosophic life. Nietzsche does not use his last books for the presentation of a doctrinal system, which most readers associate with philosophy, but instead follows to its end the path that he chose with Beyond Good and Evil and then pursued through We Fearless Ones, On the Genealogy of Morals, and The Case of Wagner, up to Twilight of the Idols: He endeavors to determine the philosopher by way of critique and contrast and, step by step, to draw the conclusions of the self-­understanding that he achieved with Thus Spoke Zarathustra.1 In accordance with their primary subject, the two books have future philosophers as their addressee. Already in their prefaces Nietzsche leaves no doubt that he wrote the Antichrist and Ecce Homo for readers who are suited to leading a philosophic life. Yet at the same time, he turns toward nonphilosophers. Not in the sense in which the author of a carefully written philosophical work is conscious that, beyond the preeminent addressee, he will find other readers to whom he can speak and whom he in any case may not disregard. Rather, so emphatically that as a result the first addresseei seems to be forgotten. Nietzsche directs his speech to the public, to mankind, to man. It stands expressly in the service of a historical task: the revaluation of all values. Ecce Homo and The Antichrist are part of Nietzsche’s politics. “Revaluation of all values” is Nietzsche’s name for the new orientation of life toward a type representing the highest affirmation, which he claims 1. The first publication in which Nietzsche speaks in his own name after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the last that prepares the ground for the pair Ecce Homo and Antichrist are the only books in whose subtitles Nietzsche mentions philosophy or philosophizing.

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to bring about with Ecce Homo and The Antichrist. In Ecce Homo, the book known to us under the title The Antichrist also figures as the Revaluation of All Values [Umwerthung aller Werthe]. Nietzsche finished it—­as he takes care to inform the public twice, in Twilight of the Idols and in Ecce Homo—­on September 30, 1888. It was ready to be submitted for typesetting when Nietzsche began to write Ecce Homo two weeks later. But according to the will of the author it was not supposed to be published until one year after Ecce Homo—­in wide circulation and in several languages simultaneously—­so that the reader would first have the opportunity to engage with Ecce Homo before being presented with the book and having its true title unveiled to him. The program of the “revaluation of all values,” with which the revolutionary steps onto the world-­historical stage, refers back to the revaluation that Christianity brought about and declared to be the turning point in time. The headings that Nietz­ sche chooses for the two books accentuate the oppositional stance toward Christianity more sharply and vividly than any philosopher did before. With the Antichrist, he obviously appropriates Christianity’s most extreme declaration of enmity. And with Ecce Homo, he requests that readers direct their gaze toward him instead of toward Christ and turn away from the model of the Passion, which is familiar to them from the Gospels, churches, or museums, in order to concern themselves with the account of the life that his writing contains. The polemical character of the two books must, and is supposed to, leap to Everyman’s eye. It has contributed significantly to the fact that for nearly a century, the philosophical enterprise that distinguishes them—­not only among Nietzsche’s writings—­has not received the attention it deserves. Two other obstacles over which Nietzsche had no control—­unlike in the rhetorical armamenting of his books—­impeded access. Nietzsche’s sister ignored the author’s intention and disregarded his directions. Instead of publishing the eccentric masterwork that she held in her hands in the designated sequence and the form specified for printing, she occupied herself with a compilation of posthumous fragments that would be suitable for meeting the expectations, harbored by nonphilosophers, of a philosophical “major work.” The Antichrist was published in 1895. Ecce Homo did not precede it, but instead followed it in 1908, twenty years after Nietzsche had sent the manuscript to the publisher Naumann and seven years after the posthumous publication of The Will to Power, which Nietzsche rejected in 1888 for perfectly intelligible reasons. The dyad was torn apart.2 Nietzsche’s illness did the rest to ensure that the two 2. The Antichrist did not appear as an independent publication, as Nietzsche had wished, but was instead printed in Nietzsche’s Werke, Erste Abtheilung, Band VIII, Der Fall Wagner. Götzen-­

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books’ philosophical rank remained unrecognized. As “works of the collapse,” they did not seem to deserve the engagement that Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Beyond Good and Evil obviously demand. Their offensive rhetoric, which was meant to shield the enterprise’s true offensiveness, was now regarded by moderate readers as a sign of the onset of madness. In the shadow cast by the sickness, the polemical headings The Antichrist and Ecce Homo were taken to be symptoms of the author’s megalomania or expressions of his hubris. Philosophical natures are not to be deterred by the obstructed access, but rather stimulated to heighten their efforts and challenged to exert their abilities. Especially since the subtitle of the first book of Nietzsche’s double-­work can put them on the right track. For How One Becomes What One Is, unlike the subtitle of the second book, Curse on Christianity, points to the center of the philosophical project. Appealing to Pindar’s wordii “You shall become who you are,” which Nietzsche makes his own as the call of conscience in the Gay Science, it conveys to the first addressee: Your cause is being discussed.3 Ecce Homo will not only explain how Nietzsche became who he is today, but show how he became what he is supposed to be. The book promises to answer the question of how Nietzsche, or someone of Nietzsche’s kind, becomes what he is according to his nature, i.e., what he can be in accordance with his highest possibilities. The answer outlined by Ecce Homo, reduced to a brief formula, is: Becoming-­oneself requires the correct determination of the task. If the reader has become aware of the inner connection between the polemical orientation indicated by the main titles and the philosophical question contained in the subtitle of Ecce Homo, he can reasonably assume that the task of the “revaluation of all values” belongs essentially to the project of the Dämmerung. Nietzsche contra Wagner. Der Antichrist. Gedichte (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1895), pp. 211–­313. The subtitle of the edition, prepared by Fritz Koegel, read Attempt at a Critique of Christianity, and not, as Nietzsche directed, Curse on Christianity. The text’s final paragraph was not reproduced, nor was the “Law Against Christianity.” The first standalone editions were issued in the year 1932 by two small publishing houses in Hanover (Licht) and Nuremberg (Hoffritz). Ecce Homo appeared in 1908, published by Insel Verlag, Leipzig, in an edition of 1,250 copies and with an afterword furnished by Raoul Richter. The first reliable editions, which corrected the falsifications and omissions made by Nietzsche’s sister, were presented in 1969 by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari in Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter) VI 3, pp. 253–­372, as well as in 1985 by Karl-­Heinz Hahn and Mazzino Montinari in the box set Ecce homo. Faksimile der Handschrift (Leipzig, Edition Leipzig). On January 2, 1889, two days before his collapse in Turin, Nietzsche had requested a swift printing from Constantin Georg Naumann: “Onward with Ecce!” (KGB III 5, p. 571). On the title, cf. John 19:5. 3. Pindar, Pythian Odes II, 72. The Gay Science 270, cf. 186, 335, and 338 (KSA 3, pp. 519, 503, 563, 567–­68). See also Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None IV, 1, 14 (KSA 4, p. 297).

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author’s clarification, explanation, enlightenment. The offensive rhetoric will then not lead him astray. And if he has engaged with the two books and convinced himself of the lucidity of their structure, he will find that Nietzsche was lacking in neither perspicacity nor an overall view when he wrote them, and that the force of his thinking and the subtlety of his communication were far from exhibiting any diminution.4 Ecce Homo and The Antichrist are books in the most demanding sense, and their author is at the height of his ability. Ecce Homo begins with a blast of fanfare: “Foreseeing that in a short time I will have to approach mankind with the heaviest demand that has ever been made of it, it seems to me indispensable to say who I am.” In the first sentence Nietzsche signals that he will speak to the most comprehensive addressee and demand of it what is heaviest, something for which history provides no example. Also in the first sentence, it seems, he establishes the double-­work’s inner order. The present book is supposed to prepare the one that is to follow “in a short time,” which he already announced in Twilight of the Idols.5 Ecce Homo apparently serves the Antichrist. Or expressed more pointedly, the dyad’s two parts are related to each other as means and end. To gain a hearing for his demand, Nietzsche must attest the authority with which he speaks. Indeed, he says of himself what Paul said of the Christian God, that he has not left himself “without witness.” Yet the works on whose basis one could know who he is, with what right and from what knowledge he makes the “heaviest demand,” are not sufficient to authorize him. For they are unknown to mankind. He is unknown to it. The “disproportion” between the “greatness” of his task and the “smallness” of his contemporaries, who have neither heard nor seen him, could not be more glaring. To close the gap, Nietzsche must enter the stage so loudly and compellingly, so winningly and shockingly, that it will no longer be possible not to hear or see him. From the greatness of the task—­ the “Revaluation” or the Antichrist—­there arises the duty that justifies Ecce Homo: “Under these circumstances there is a duty against which my habit, even more the pride of my instincts, at bottom revolts—­namely, to say: Hear me! for I am so and so. Above all do not mistake me for another!” With Ecce Homo, Nietzsche performs his duty of drawing the eye to himself: Behold this 4. Half a year after the appearance of Ecce Homo, on October 28, 1908, in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association’s Wednesday Society, Sigmund Freud said of the book: “The indication that this work of Nietzsche’s is fully valid and to be taken seriously is the maintaining of the mastery of form.” Andreas Urs Sommer: Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, Ecce homo, Dionysos-­Dithyramben, Nietzsche contra Wagner. Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken (= NK), vol. 6/2 (Berlin, 2013), p. 347. 5. Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with the Hammer, Preface, and Forays of an Untimely One 51, 2 (KSA 6, pp. 58 and 153).

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man. Before he confronts mankind with the “heaviest demand,” with commandments or prohibitions, he will show who he is, what he is. Unlike the God of Moses, he will not gather his being into one question mark and deliver it over to time or to the event that is yet to come. He will say to mankind: I am so and so. Which does not mean that he does not, on closer inspection, know how to say to the reader: I am so and so. Under no circumstances does he want to be mistaken for another. For the answer to the question: Who is speaking? will remain external to the understanding of Nietzsche’s speech neither for the first nor for the broadest addressee.6 To protect the intention of the demand announced by the first section, the character of the task that it introduces, and the appeal to duty that it has follow, against misunderstandings, Nietzsche devotes the second section to making sharp demarcations: He is no “monster of morality,” does not want to be regarded as a “saint,” and does not think of speaking out in favor of “new idols.” At the head he puts the separation from the morality that he will later call the “morality of unselfing oneself ”: “I am even of an opposite nature to the kind of man that has hitherto been revered as virtuous. Between us, it seems to me that precisely this is part of my pride.” The “revaluation” is reflected in what is understood to be virtuous. It allows a new pride. But above all, it decides which kind of man is revered, most revered, most highly revered. It topples the old rank-­order and erects a new one. The second demarcation gives Nietzsche the opportunity for the first time to determine his nature through a positive reference: “I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysos, I would rather even be a satyr than a saint. But one has only to read this writing.” The first mention of the philosopher coincides with the first mention of a God. Who can be regarded as a “saint,” and what it means to call him such, depends on who is granted the highest rank, or, more precisely, on what is recognized to be the highest kind of all being.7 Nietzsche goes so far as to give the reader to consider that Ecce Homo could “perhaps” have “no other meaning at all” than “to give expression” to the opposition of satyr and saint, the distinction between the discipleship of the one God and the discipleship of the other, “in a cheerful and philanthropic way.” What the cheerfulness and philanthropy of Ecce Homo might be all about can be said only when we have reached the end. Nietzsche’s relationship to the God who is a philosopher will occupy us—­this much may be anticipated—­until the writing’s last line. After the author has brought his philanthropy into play, 6. EH Preface, 1 (257). Acts 14:15–­17. Exodus 3:14; cf. 33:19. 7. Consider Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 12.19, 6–­11 (p. 261); cf. Prologue, 2, 8–­21 (pp. 13–­14) and IV, 6, 13 (p. 322) as well as I, 10, 4 (p. 58).

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he hastens to trace out the third dividing line: “The last thing I would promise would be to ‘improve’ mankind. By me no new idols are erected.” The thrust is clear. That Nietzsche does not want to “improve” mankind in the sense intended by the prevailing valuations, that he establishes a front against world-­negating ideals and unfounded wishes, that he does not condescend to placing a “motley brood” upon clouds—­all this is not surprising. It should also be noted that not promising something need not preclude attempting it. Nevertheless, the last demarcation does raise questions. Has Nietzsche not repeatedly appeared as an advocate of a new, noble ideal? Will the “revaluation of all values” actually manage without “idols”? Can it dispense with the lie? Or does the task of whose greatness the preface speaks not aim at improving mankind after all, whether with quotation marks or without? Would the announced demand be the heaviest one precisely because it does not promise any such improvement? What if the rejection of every kind of futurism were to find its final and deepest expression in it? “Overthrowing idols (my word for ‘ideals’)—­that belongs rather more to my craft. One has deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to the degree that one has made up an ideal world . . .” The craft of which he is master is critique; the activity that suits him is philosophizing. Nietzsche had called attention to philosophizing a short time before, in the subtitle of Twilight of the Idols. When he overturns “ideals,” he is freeing up the view of reality, whose meaning is not to be sought over or behind it, and is in need neither of a founding of meaning in the past, nor of a giving of meaning by the future. When he attacks the “ideal world,” he is concerned with the knowledge of the world as it is. The turn against idealism becomes the emblem of the turn toward philosophy. But the turn toward philosophy cannot do without a political justification. Nietzsche must not get too far away from the tension that he has built up in the first section with the triad demand, task, duty. In the last sentence of the second section, he circles back to mankind. It has been corrupted “down to its bottommost instincts” by the “lie of the ideal,” “to the point of worshipping values the reverse of those which would alone guarantee it a flourishing, a future, the high right to a future.” The reversal of the reversal, the revaluation of values that stands in the service of knowledge, will—­thus runs Nietzsche’s promise to mankind—­be the guarantor of its right to a future.8

8. EH Preface, 2 (257–­58). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 17, 23 (p. 164). On the philosopher Dionysos, see my Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra? Eine philosophische Auseinandersetzung (Munich, 2017), p. 236 with n. 231 and pp. 58–­59 with n. 66 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? A Philosophical Confrontation, (Chicago, 2021), p. 190 with n. 231 and p. 45 with n. 66].

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In the center of the preface mankind does not appear. The center belongs entirely to philosophy. Or to the author and his first addressee.9 Nietzsche speaks of philosophy as he has never spoken of it before. Contrary to what the announcement of the “heaviest demand” might suggest, he does not focus on philosophy’s vocation for legislation, its power to create values, or its responsibility for the future of the species. He does not emphasize its ruling authority but instead stresses its fundamental subversiveness. With unparalleled clarity, he determines philosophy as a way of life. He underscores its solitary character and leaves no doubt that it cannot be Everyman’s cause. Just as “this writing” will provide the reader for whom it is written information on what the “disciple of the philosopher Dionysos” is all about, Nietzsche’s writings as a whole can serve as a test for the reader as to whether or not he is suited for philosophy: “Whoever knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is an air of the heights, a strong air. One must be made for it, otherwise there is no small danger of catching cold in it. The ice is near, the solitude is tremendous.” Nietzsche warns and lures at the same time: “—­but how placidly all things lie in the light! how freely one breathes! how many things one feels beneath oneself.” The pathos of distance goes together with solitude, and between them the two encompass serenity and freedom. This is the place to call philosophy, to which his writings bear witness, by name: “Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is the voluntary life in ice and high mountains—­the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything that has hitherto been banned by morality.” Nietzsche introduces philosophy as a life, as a distinct form of life. The region to which he assigns it has in common with the sea and the desert—­which he invokes elsewhere to metaphorically characterize the philosophic life, its beginning or its transformation—­the inhospitability, the extreme conditions under which the life has to be led and to prove itself. One can range into ice 9. The preface consists of four numbers, but on closer inspection is divided into three parts: In terms of content, sections 1 and 2 belong together. Section 2 is also identified as a continuation of section 1 by its beginning: “I am for example by no means a boogeyman . . .” The third number, as the central part, is clearly separated from sections 1 and 2 on one side and from section 4 on the other by a dash at the beginning and a dash at the end. It is the only one of the four numbers to be divided itself into three subsections by the usage of further dashes—­a device Nietzsche frequently employs to mark the structure of paragraphs or aphorisms, not only in Ecce Homo but in his other writings as well. Philosophy is mentioned for the first time in the second of the central part’s three subsections, and additionally occurs as my philosophy in the third subsection. In the first part (numbers 1 and 2) and third part (number 4), it remains unmentioned. Mankind appears four times in the first and third parts (once each in numbers 1 and 4, twice in num­ber 2). In the second part it finds no mention.

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and high mountains, just as one can go into the desert or set out onto the high seas. But one cannot stay there permanently, exclusively, without interruption. Ice and high mountains, the open sea, the barrenness of the desert, all indicate the alternation of ascent and descent, the necessary back and forth, the sequence of departure, return, and new departure. All three are characterized by the wide, unobstructed horizon, though the metaphor of ice and high mountains has over the other two the natural articulation of differences in height and the association with the free overlook. All three stand for turning away from common prudence, for leaving behind the realm of settled statutes, for taking one’s distance from opinion, belief, tradition, for breaking with convention. What determines philosophy as a distinct form of life is its orientation toward seeking and attempting, which does not let it stop before any authority because it cannot content itself with any answer that owes its authentication to an authority. Philosophy is the life that is based on radical questioning and knows itself to be grounded in radical questioning. Inherent in this is the tension in principles with morality, politics, religion. Nietzsche is not lacking in sharpness. If in the first move he has made philosophy visible to the reader as the voluntary life in ice and high mountains, in the second he characterizes it as wandering in the prohibited. Philosophy does not only seek out what is prohibited when it occupies itself with what has been outlawed and banned. As a distinct form of life that is in conflict with a prohibition, it is itself part of what is prohibited.10 The insight into the fundamental conflict has far-­reaching consequences for the understanding of the philosophers of the past. On the basis of the experience that his “wandering in the prohibited” gave him, “the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of their great names, came to light” for Nietzsche, as he relates, because he learned to see “the causes hitherto of moralizing and idealizing” differently “than might be wished.” Two readings are conceivable: (1) The great names of philosophy did not dare to venture far enough into the prohibited because they lacked courage for it or because they could not endure solitude. In this case they would not be philosophers in Nietzsche’s sense and their hidden history would essentially be the history of a deficiency. (2) Or else the great philosophers moralized and idealized because they were at home in the prohibited and had recognized very precisely the conflict in principles with politics, morality, religion. What would be reflected in the conventional history, then, would be the teachings, deeds, and institutions by means of which the famous names took the conflict into 10. Consider the first prohibition that appears in the text of Ecce Homo explicitly as a prohibition, as the “prohibition on us: you shall not think!” II, 1, 4 (279).

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account. Whereas it would fall to the hidden history to shed light on the philosophers’ actions: their efforts to protect the philosophic life, to develop an educational effect, to influence the public, to serve the people. In the one reading as well as the other, the philosophers’ hidden history involves a truth that the philosopher owes to himself. Nietzsche does not say another word about the hidden history. Instead, following a dash that separates the central part’s middle subsection from its last, he introduces truth into the preface: “How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? more and more, this became the real measure of value for me.” The revaluation of all values is obviously supposed to designate the capacity for truth, and not the usefulness to life, as the standard of rank-­order. What is under discussion here is the truth to which one exposes oneself, not the truth one expects others to endure. It is a matter of knowing the truth, not of proclaiming it. Nietzsche addresses the reader who can dare and endure much truth, who is suited to knowledge, with an adhortative speech that might sound “moralizing” to the ears of those who are more remote or of future historians: “Error (—­the belief in the ideal—­) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness toward oneself, from cleanliness toward oneself.” After the appeal to the virtues without which a philosophic life cannot be thought, Nietzsche demonstrates the allure of the prohibited with a grand gesture in which, by means of a word from Ovid’s Amores, he at the same time recalls the force that supports, spurs on, and maintains this life to the end: “Nitimur in vetitum: in this sign my philosophy will be victorious one day, for hitherto one has always in principle prohibited only the truth.” Nietzsche is not the first “corrupter of the young” who knows how to lure with the forbidden fruit. But no one before him combined the striving for the prohibited with the proclamation: In hoc signo vincam. The trust Nietzsche puts in the strength of the force that Plato conceived of as eros and that he himself, after the great caesura in his life, calls “the passion of knowledge”—­his trust, in particular, that it is not deterred but goaded on by prohibitions—­speaks against the first reading of the “hidden history.” The Nitimur in vetitum can claim no less validity for the philosophers of the past than for the philosophers of the future. If hitherto one has, in Nietzsche’s equally hyperbolic and precise formulation, always in principle prohibited only the truth, the prohibition obviously concerns not this or that truth, but the truth that matters to the voluntary life in ice and high mountains. The truth that is the aim of unreserved questioning.11 11. EH Preface, 3, 1–­3 (258–­59). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 126–­27 with n. 135 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 101 with n. 135]. “Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque

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Yet what does Nietzsche promise when he expresses the confidence that his philosophy will someday be victorious? Does he expect the teachings that one associates with him, and with which he will go down in history as a great name, to gain universal acceptance? Does he assume that the future philosophers will make the doctrine of the Will to Power their own, or share the belief in the Eternal Return? Does he perhaps predict that the revaluation of all values will create institutions that seal nothing less than the end of philosophy as he has “hitherto understood and lived” it? Does the four-­time usage of the qualifying “hitherto” indicate the hope for a fundamental change, the sublation of the tension with morality, politics, and religion? Will the victory of his philosophy in the future relieve philosophers of the necessity of wandering in the prohibited? Or will his presentation of philosophy win those suitable for it—­because they have in common with him what is most important—­over to philosophy as he understood, understands, and will understand it? The third part of the preface provides the first clues. Nietzsche devotes it to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and repeats the movement, condensed and abridged in the extreme, from the general to the preeminent addressee, which he has accomplished in parts 1 and 2. About the Book for All and None—­as reads the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra—­he says that among his writings, it stands “apart.” “With it I have given mankind the greatest gift it has hitherto been given.” He calls it the highest and the deepest book. It speaks “with a voice across millennia,” and “the whole fact of man” lies “immensely far beneath it.” Just as he brings mankind back into the preface only to immediately distance himself from it, he introduces his parody of the Bible only to separate it, in the same breath, from the likely understanding that it is the book of a new faith. “Here no ‘prophet’ speaks, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power whom one calls religion-­founders.” Not only has Nietzsche given the hero of his poem the name of a religion-­founder from the Orient. There is no doubt that he also has him appear as a prophet and speak like a prophet, although not as a “prophet” who wants to understand himself out of the obedience of faith. By his own admission, Zarathustra suffers from a sickness: disgust accompanies him for at least as long as he seeks to teach mankind the overman as the “meaning of the earth.” And who could deny Zarathustra’s will to power? It is all the more remarkable that at the beginning of Ecce Homo, Nietzsche focuses entirely on what Zarathustra is supposed to become. Instead of emphasizing the will to power belonging to the prophet negata” (“We always strive for the prohibited and desire what is denied us”), Ovid, Amores III 4, 17. Consider The Gay Science 152 and 292 (pp. 495 and 533). See also Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future 227 (KSA 5, p. 162).

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and to the philosopher, he emphasizes Zarathustra’s wisdom: “Above all one must rightly hear the tone that comes from this mouth, this halcyon tone, in order not to do pathetic injustice to the meaning of his wisdom.”12 The eleven verses that Nietzsche subsequently makes audible to the reader in order to draw his attention to the meaning of Zarathustra’s wisdom are taken from neither the famous “prologue,” in which Zarathustra addresses the people in the market, nor the book’s longest speech, “On Old and New Tablets” (III, 12), in which Zarathustra imagines speaking to absent “brothers” who, in an indeterminate future, are to “carry” tables of laws with him “to the valley and into hearts of flesh.” Rather, they are taken, in reverse chronological order, from three speeches Zarathustra addresses to his disciples: when he parts from them for the last time (“The Stillest Hour”), when he returns to them after having spent years in solitude (“Upon the Blessed Isles”), and when he leaves them for the first time (“On the Gift-­Giving Virtue”). The three passages Nietzsche selects from Zarathustra do not deal with the overman and the last man. They also do not call for the creation of a new nobility. They are silent on doctrinal content. The first—­a word Zarathustra’s soul whispers to itself in a conversation with itself—­is connected in its own way to the loudly resounding opening of Ecce Homo: “Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world.” The central passage praises the happiness of ripening. The third and by far longest finally points the “man of knowledge” toward himself and to a path that he must follow alone. With regard to the “heaviest demand” that he has announced to mankind, Nietzsche’s explanation of the “greatest gift” mankind has “hitherto” been given may be astonishing: Not only no Holy Scripture, no call to decision, no promise of the great reversal. Also no stressing of hardness, seriousness, or going-­under, but instead of goodness, cheerfulness, and happiness. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche asserts, there is “no ‘preaching,’ ” “no belief is required: out of an infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness falls drop after drop, word after word—­a tender slowness is the tempo of these speeches.” But the reader must be made for them. “Such things reach only the most select; it is a privilege without equal to be a listener here; no one is free to have ears for Zarathustra . . .” The gift for mankind proves to be a gift for the fewest. In his presentation of Zarathustra, Nietzsche has the first addressee in view from the beginning. This also remains the decisive aspect in the contrasting of Zarathustra with Jesus, for which he employs the third citation and with which the 12. The will to power and wisdom are introduced into the text in close proximity to each other. The will to power that characterizes the prophet is the first of four usages of will to power in Ecce Homo. The wisdom ascribed to Zarathustra points ahead to the first chapter.

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preface ends—­“He not only speaks differently, he is different as well . . .” Zarathustra urges his disciples not to follow him, to liberate themselves from the condition of reverence for him, and to break free of his authority. “You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter! You are my believers: but what do all believers matter! / You had not yet sought yourselves: then you found me. Thus do all believers; that is why all belief amounts to so little. / Now I bid you, lose me and find yourselves.” The Zarathustra that Nietzsche sets against the “world-­redeemer” wants disciples to become philosophers. Or those who are kindred to him to become what they are.13 Nietzsche places his name beneath the preface, in which Zarathustra, with eight verses, spoke last. With the signature, he transfers to the first addressee the request to walk alone that Zarathustra directed at the disciples. The investigation of how one becomes what one is can begin. Yet the preface, which held several surprises ready, is followed by a new surprise. Between the “Contents” and the first chapter, “Why I Am So Wise,” the author interpolates a second preface, which has no heading and is also not mentioned in the table of contents. With an extraordinary preface, he prepares the reader for an extraordinary book. The preamble comprises five sentences and is unique in Nietzsche’s œuvre: “On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape is turning brown, a sun’s glance just fell on my life: I saw backward, I saw forward and outward, I never saw so many and such good things at once.” Here obviously none of those “gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power” is speaking, who would not know how to live if they were not also seers of what must first of all be created and if they did not imagine themselves to be in the advent of what is supposed to bring about the overturning of all need. The perfect day of which Nietzsche speaks is not the object of longing and hope. It is also not reserved for transfiguring memory. It belongs to the present. In it, Nietzsche’s contemplation and becoming-­aware coalesce into the judgment of perfection. The judgment is the fruit of knowing the good in his life, which the “sun’s glance” strikes as a whole. Nietzsche looks backward and forward in time, and at the same time he looks outward from the course of becoming, pausing to contemplate what is—­as it were vertically with respect to the action—­in order to collect and divide what he is. “It was not in vain that I buried my forty-­fourth year today, I was entitled to bury it—­what was life in it is saved, is immortal.” The perfect day is today. Nietzsche dates the inner preface to the forty-­fourth recurrence of his birth. He links Ecce Homo to a natural date, and not, like the 13. EH Preface, 4, 1–­2 (259–­61). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 22, 30 (p. 189). II, 2, 1–­2 (p. 109). I, 22.3, 2–­9 (p. 101). Cf. III, 12.4, 1 and 12.11, 6–­7; 12.12, 1–­11 (pp. 249, 254–­55). See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra? pp. 44–­45 and 49 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra? pp. 33 and 37].

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Antichrist, a historical one. Whereas mankind is to commit September 30, 1888, the day of the “great victory” Nietzsche achieved with the completion of the “Revaluation,” to memory as the inception of a new way of reckoning time, October 15, 1888, which for Nietzsche is a perfect day, is not to be marked on its calendar. Nietzsche “was entitled to” bury his forty-­fourth year, he was authorized to do so in accordance with his own good, because he extracted from the span of time the best that he was capable of extracting from it. What was life in the emphatic sense in the year lived—­for life demands that a distinction be made—­the life that aims over and beyond itself, the life of the highest intensity and deepest immersion, is salvaged. It is “saved” in the experiences and insights that Nietzsche gathered and acquired in the course of becoming. It is “immortal” in the works in which he has preserved these experiences and insights for himself and for others. “The Revaluation of All Values, the Dionysos-­Dithyrambs and, for recuperation, the Twilight of the Idols—­all gifts of this year, indeed of its last quarter!” The three works that Nietzsche names do not exhaust the list of books from his forty-­fourth year (The Case of Wagner, written in the spring and published in September 1888, remains unnamed), nor does the sequence in which they are mentioned follow the chronology of their origin or their appearance (Twilight of the Idols was already at press, the Revaluation was supposed to follow Ecce Homo after one year, and there were no directions yet to print the Dionysos-­Dithyrambs, parts of which date back to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the time before). At the front Nietzsche places the title that indicates his demand of and his gift to mankind, at the back the one that points without further ado to his craft and his principal activity. The two works mark the polarity of task and recuperation, which will play an important role in Ecce Homo. Whereas the first preface introduces the task with a view to the Revaluation/the Antichrist, the second introduces recuperation, linking it to the Twilight of the Idols. The Dionysos-­Dithyrambs, in the middle, might stand for the author who dances alone.14 Because Nietzsche describes the three books as gifts, we may surmise that he considers all three to be works with which he succeeded in creating something on which “time” will test out “its teeth” in vain, and that in both form and substance they satisfied his efforts “at a little immortality.” Before he makes a gift of them to others, they are gifts to himself.15 “How should I not be grateful to my whole life?” The recipient of 14. Cf. Xenophon, Symposium II, 19. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 7, 22 and 26 (pp. 49–­50); Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 237–­39). 15. See Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 51, 1 (p. 153). Until the final redac­­ tion  at the end of December 1888, the preamble’s third sentence read: “The first book of the

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Nietzsche’s gratitude, which relates directly to the gifts of the last year, is his whole life. The way of life that he chose and adhered to, the adversities that strengthened him, the events that stimulated him, the friends to whom he turned, the enemies who challenged him, his life as a whole made possible the experiences and insights of the year he has buried. The nondisposabilityiii of the interplay between necessity and chance is taken into account by the gratitude that expands the soul. A nondisposability that concerns one’s own nature and becomes conspicuous in the successful accomplishment of a work. “And so I recount my life to myself.” Grateful to his life, Nietzsche reviews it for himself. From the first sentence of the outer preface to the last sentence of the inner one, we have traversed the arc of tension that determines Ecce Homo: From mankind, to whom the future lawgiver owes an answer to the question of who is speaking, to the author, who gives to himself an account of what his life is. From the heaviest demand to self-­knowledge. The fifth sentence of the preamble gains even sharper contours when we recall, as we should, a similar-­sounding statement that Nietzsche put in the mouth of Zarathustra years before, at the beginning of the speech “On Old and New Tablets.” Sitting on his mountain and awaiting “the laughing lion with the swarm of doves” that are supposed to show him one day that his hour has come, Zarathustra says: “Meanwhile I speak, as one who has time, to myself. No one recounts anything new to me: so I recount myself to myself.” Nietzsche does not wait for the “signs” of a promised “going-­under.” He does not recount his life to himself in order to pass the time until the occurrence of the consummatory event. In a word: he does not, unlike the prophet, await his redemption.16 As the Prefatory Note testifies, Nietzsche is with and for himself [bei sich selbst].iv He writes the book for himself and for those like him, giving thanks for the good on which his “sun’s glance” fell. He begins working on Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is on a perfect day.17 Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with the hammer—all gifts of this year, indeed of its last quarter!” (Faksimile, p. 7). The change is of interest not only because—­in accord with a corresponding statement in another place (III, Twilight of the Idols 3)—­it proves that Nietzsche abandoned a follow-­ up project to the Will to Power, itself rejected in the summer of 1888, that would have gone over and beyond the Antichrist. It also shows—­in agreement with changes to other passages—­that to the very end Nietzsche improved the manuscript that had already been submitted for printing, i.e., that he himself chose recognizably superior solutions. 16. Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 12.1, 1–­3; 12.3, 9–­13; 12.4, 1 (pp. 246, 2­49). 17. EH Prefatory Note, 1–­5 (263). –­At an earlier point in time, Nietzsche had considered the subtitle A Gift to My Friends. In this case too, he found a superior solution. For the final subtitle speaks to the matter of concern and, along with the Prefatory Note, tells the friends in so many words that Ecce Homo is a gift for them. See Pp. 5–6.

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Wisdom

Ecce Homo is divided into four chapters whose headings begin in the same way. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that underlying the book’s quadripartition is a tripartition, no different from the case of the four-­part division of the preface: The first two chapters especially relate to Nietzsche’s being, the third to Nietzsche’s work, and the fourth to Nietzsche’s effect. The author marks the cohesiveness of the first and second chapters by the opening of the third: “I am one thing, my writings are another.” It is expressed no less in the inner interweaving of chapters I and II. The eight sections of “Why I Am So Wise” are followed by eight sections also in “Why I Am So Prudent”—­ the only one of the four chapters that begins with a dash—­while sections II, 9 and II, 10 belong to both chapters. Nietzsche sets off the conclusion of the first part with two dashes at the end of II, 8 and takes up the subtitle of Ecce Homo at the beginning of II, 9, bringing the chapters together: “At this point the real answer to the question of how one becomes what one is can no longer be avoided.” The fact that in Ecce Homo almost everything of importance is governed by the number four or occurs in multiples of four draws our attention to the play of tripartition and quadripartition. Why does Nietzsche deal with the One in two attempts? Why does he devote two chapters to his virtues? How does his wisdom differ from his prudence? And how do both relate to the “Revaluation of All Values”? Wisdom is not mentioned in either the first or the second chapter. Wise also does not appear there after the heading of chapter I. In contrast, chapter II repeatedly speaks of prudence, and already in the second sentence Nietz­ sche expressly confirms the heading’s self-­ascription of being prudent. Nietz­ sche implies to the reader that he comprehends prudence as a knowing, and that this knowing concerns the particulars and circumstances of the

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conduct of life: he speaks of “my morality.” With the understanding of prudence as a practical knowing and as a virtue that provides orientation for action, he draws on the tradition, reaching back to Aristotle, of distinguishing sapientia and prudentia, sophia and phronesis. However, he uses prudence also in the sense of an expediency that is not based on knowing or brought about consciously, but can be discerned only in retrospect. Thus, for example, he attributes prudence to instinct, to a detour or delay in development.1 Since prudence is elucidated by the term’s usage in the second chapter, it leaps all the more to the eye that in the first chapter Nietzsche did not do anything similar with regard to wisdom. Whoever wants to gain clarity about wisdom has to rely on his own capacities. Wisdom does not admit of being taught the way prudence admits of being taught. The reader who seriously poses the question of wisdom can find the answer by reflecting on the structure of the two chapters, on their apartness and togetherness. The determinations of prudence—­ practical knowing and expediency—­held ready by “Why I Am So Prudent” give him more accurate information about the architectonic precedence of wisdom and suggest to him that he return to the beginning of “Why I Am So Wise,” which demands a second reading in light of the insight that has been gained or the supposition that has been corroborated. Knowing both chapters, the reader now sees clearly that the four words with which Nietzsche begins, “The happiness of my existence,” hit on the leitmotif of Ecce Homo’s first part. Obviously wisdom is directed toward happiness. Or happiness, rightly understood, is a work of wisdom.2 At first glance, the prelude Nietzsche chooses seems to point in another direction: “The happiness of my existence, its uniqueness perhaps, lies in its fatefulness: I am, to express it in the form of a riddle, as my father already dead, as my mother I still live and grow old.” With his first breath Nietz­ sche calls not on wisdom but on necessity. The happiness of his existence is grounded in his nondisposable origin. Beatitudo goes back, in the final instance, to fortuna. To show how wisdom situates itself in relation to necessity, and in so doing brings forth its work, is the actual subject of the two chapters in which Nietzsche takes it upon himself to explain why he is so wise and so prudent. He begins with his “double origin, as it were, from the top and bottom rungs on the ladder of life,” which predestines him to be a décadent, following his father, and a beginning, following his mother. A “fatefulness” 1. EH II, 1 (278 and 281); II, 3 (284); II, 8, 1–­2 (291–­93); II, 9 (293). 2. In the preface, where Nietzsche introduces wisdom and happiness into the text, he associates with Zarathustra’s wisdom the “fullness of light and depth of happiness” of Zarathustra’s speech (Preface, 4, 259–­60).

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that his wisdom comprehends as a stroke of good fortune. And indeed as a stroke of good fortune for the philosopher first of all. For the doubling, that “as” his father he is already dead and “as” his mother he is still alive, is supposed to allow him precisely that “neutrality” which Nietzsche formally excluded in “The Problem of Socrates”: the “freedom from party in relation to the total problem of life.”3 This freedom, of which he says that it “perhaps” distinguishes him, puts him in a position to deliver a considered judgment on life. We learn even more about the philosopher in the first section. Nietzsche points out that at the time when Dawn came into being, “perfect brightness and cheerfulness, even exuberance of the spirit” went along in him “not only with the deepest physiological weakness, but even with an excess of painful feelings.” Later he will inform us that Dawn was the first yes-­saying book that he wrote after the beginning of his philosophic life. Yet already here he discloses that at that time he possessed a “dialectician’s clarity par excellence” and “very cold-­bloodedly” thought through things for which “in healthier conditions” he was “not mountain-­climber, not refined, not cold enough.” After this variation on the Socratic theme of the practice of dying and being dead, Nietzsche does not fail to remind his readers that they may know—­from the Twilight of the Idols—­how far he considers dialectics to be a “symptom of decadence, for example in the most famous case of all: the case of Socrates.” After the God Dionysos, Socrates is the first philosopher mentioned by name in Ecce Homo. What links Nietzsche to Socrates goes much deeper that what separates them.4 Yet Nietzsche’s “fatefulness” proves to be a stroke of good fortune not only for the philosopher but for mankind as well: “I have a more refined nose for the signs of rise and decline than any man has ever had, for this I am the teacher par excellence—­I know both, I am both.” Nietzsche’s “double origin” allowed him to become an expert “in questions of décadence,” which he experienced in his own body and ever again “spelled out forward and backward.” It caused in him the refining of observation and of all organs of observation, his becoming practiced in the viewpoint of the sick as well as that of the healthy, and finally, the acquisition of mastery in taking up and rejecting, affirming and negating, opposing perspectives, which made him into the signpost that is needful for mankind: “I now have it in hand, I have the hand for it, to switch perspectives: first reason why a ‘revaluation of values’ 3. “One must thoroughly stretch out one’s fingers and make the attempt to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated. Not by a living one, because he is a party to, even the object of, the quarrel, and not a judge; not by a dead one, for a different reason.” Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, 2 (p. 68). 4. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, 7–­9 (pp. 70–­7 1).

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is perhaps possible for me alone.” This is the third perhaps in the rhetoric of distinction and of singularity, which Nietzsche deploys in order to underpin his authority with regard to the “heaviest demand.”5 If Nietzsche has it “in hand” to switch perspectives, it is not only because he is “a décadent” and at the same time “its opposite,” but also because the two sides he claims in invoking his “double origin” do not confront each other on equal terms. They are instead ordered hierarchically. In Nietzsche’s mode of expression: his “sickness” is part of a more comprehensive, a fundamental “health.” He claims to have chosen “always the right means against dire states.” “As summa summarum I was healthy, as a niche, as a specialty I was décadent.” Nietzsche consequently interrupts the narrative of “father” and “mother” in order to expose—­in the center of the part of the first chapter dedicated to origins (I, 1–­3)—­the “well-­turned-­out-­ness” of his nature. The one that has turned out well is “a selective principle.” He is “always in his company, whether he is associating with books, men, or landscapes.” “He guesses remedies for things that are harmful, he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger.” He necessarily remains oriented to his own good. Looking back on the sickness that afflicted him in his gravest crisis, Nietzsche emphasizes: “out of my will to health, to life, I made my philosophy . . . For one should pay heed: it was in the years of my lowest vitality when I ceased to be a pessimist: the instinct of self-­restoration prohibited me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement.” It belongs to Nietz­ sche’s wisdom that he pushed ahead his philosophy, the working-­out of its conception and the presentation of its doctrinal content, with constant regard to his nature. In doing this, he did not give precedence to appearance or turn away from the supposedly deadly truths, as the young Nietzsche had considered imperative, but on the contrary achieved his periagoge on the condition of the greatest possible “coldness” and proceeded with a “dialectician’s clarity par excellence.” From then on, he believed in neither “misfortune” nor “guilt.” The one that has turned out well, as Nietzsche describes himself in I, 2, “comes to an end, with himself, with others.” Ressentiment does not hold him captive, melancholy does not paralyze him, because he knows how to forget. He remains master on his own path. Nietzsche summarizes the inner necessity that links his nature and his good in the hyperbolic statement: “he is strong enough that everything must turn out for his best.”6

5. EH I, 1 (264–­66). The perhaps in the last sentence is the third perhaps that is used to distinguish Nietzsche, of a total of four instances of perhaps in the first section. 6. EH I, 2 (266–­67); cf. Twilight of the Idols, Sayings and Arrows 8 (p. 60).

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After the exposition of his well-­turned-­out-­ness, without which his wisdom cannot be thought, Nietzsche returns to “father” and “mother.” But he no longer speaks of his “double origin,” and despite what might be expected given the attested precedence of his “health,” he does not have recourse to his mother’s vitality in order to set it off against his father’s decadence. Nietzsche carries out a change in perspective. His origin is no longer treated from the point of view of health and sickness, but rather with regard to the distinction between divineness and baseness. At first Nietzsche seems to follow up on the preceding narrative: “I consider it a great privilege to have had such a father.” Whereas Socrates referred to his mother and recalled her midwifery, Nietzsche praises his father and makes him visible to the reader as a preacher that the peasants to whom he spoke described as having the look of an angel. Nietzsche goes straight from the ethereal appearance to the “question of race,” in order, presumably following the paternal line, to style himself as “a Polish nobleman pur sang in whom not even a drop of bad blood” was “mixed, least of all German.” Yet the Pole or non-­German, just as well as the nobleman or the noble nature, is only a stage on the course to dissociation from all familial associations and political co-­optations. The separation that matters is exemplified by mother and sister: “When I seek the deepest opposite to me, the incalculable baseness of the instincts, I always find my mother and sister—­to believe myself related to such canaille would be a blasphemy of my divineness.” The “physiological contiguity” that connects him to his mother and sister results in a “disharmonia praestabilita” and does not prevent Nietzsche from meeting the divine Plato on the same level as a member of one species. In the new round of determining his nature, Nietzsche assigns his mother a different role. In place of the polarity of a “double origin” that continually unfolds its effect, there emerges a veritable opposition: Only in the awareness of the contrast that separates him from what “mother and sister” stand for does Nietzsche become what he is. Nietzsche goes so far as to elevate “mother and sister” into the obvious challenge to the teaching of the Eternal Return. They were capable of bloodily wounding him in his “highest moments,” when he lacked the strength “to defend himself against poisonous worms.” He “confesses” that “the deepest objection to the ‘eternal return,’” his “truly abysmal thought, is always mother and sister.” In his highest moments he is defenseless against “mother and sister” because his happiness expresses itself in saying yes to the whole. And this very yes-­saying was supposed to find its unsurpassable, its highest expression in the “eternal return.” If, however, “mother and sister” stand always, not to say eternally, in the way of it, the effectiveness and hence the meaning of the teaching of the Eternal Return becomes doubtful. For it was conceived in order to conquer disgust and indignation, which

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Nietzsche now, in almost as many words, declares to be the deepest objection to the “eternal return.” Apparently the noble nature, whether or not it makes the teaching of the Eternal Return its own, is incapable of overcoming its disgust and its indignation in any other way than through an act of will. Nietz­ sche’s wisdom proves itself in placing its Yes to the whole on a foundation that divests him of belief in the Eternal Return. But we have gotten ahead of ourselves.7 Nietzsche achieves the aim of the second round, the detachment from family and race, from society and time, once again with a hyperbolic speech. What Aristotle expressed in the concise formula that a man is begotten by a man and the sun, Nietzsche propounds in his own way in three propositions: “One” is “least related to one’s parents”; the “higher natures” have “their origin infinitely further back”; and the “great individuals” are “the oldest”: “I do not understand it, but Julius Caesar could be my father—­or Alexander, this corporeal Dionysos . . .” Whereas in the first mention of the God we heard that Dionysos is a philosopher, in the second we learn that a man can be Dionysos. The philosopher Nietzsche cannot content himself with being a disciple of Dionysos.8 Wisdom has the whole—­divineness and baseness, origin and belonging—­as its domain. It is concerned with the evaluation of life, the classification and ascertainment of one’s own nature, the perception of the world. Because the perception of the world and the evaluation of life are inseparable from the ascertainment of nature, after Nietzsche has directed the view to his origin in the first part of the chapter, he devotes the second part (I, 4–­8) to the hygiene 7. Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 20, 41–­46 (p. 181) and III, 13.2, 31–­39 (pp. 274–­75); consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 99–­101 as well as 147–­51 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 78–­80 as well as 118–­22]. –­The “eternal return” makes its first appearance in I, 3. It is one of four mentions in Ecce Homo. 8. EH I, 3 (267–­69). Aristotle, Physics II, 2, 194b11; cf. Metaphysics XII, 5, 1071a15; consider Leo Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Social Research 8, no. 4 (November 1941), p. 503 n. 21. Cf. Matthew 12:46–­50 and Mark 3:31–­35. –­Section I, 3 was rewritten by Nietzsche in December 1888. Nietzsche’s sister suppressed the new version of the section, which sharply attacks “mother and sister,” and in the 1908 first edition of Ecce Homo had the previous version published, which featured no such attack. The 1969 Colli-­Montinari Edition published the text for the first time in the form that Nietzsche himself intended. A comparison of the two versions of I, 3 shows that Nietzsche decided for the philosophically much more revealing and weightier version. The only sentence that he took verbatim from the previous version forms the final version’s opening: “I consider it a great privilege to have had such a father.” The last sentence reads: “At this moment, when I am writing this, the post brings me a head of Dionysos . . .” In the earlier version there is no movement from the father to Dionysos. Dionysos is no more named therein than the “eternal return” appears or than there is talk of baseness and divineness.

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recommended to him by his wisdom. Without speaking of the “revaluation of all values,” he shows in concreto the revaluation to which his insight, following the “will to life” and endorsing this will, subscribed. Nietzsche clasps the two parts together through the express reference back to the father, with whom he begins each of the first two sections on hygiene (I, 4 and 5). Where most strive to predispose people for themselves, Nietzsche asserts that he, like his Christian father, has “never” possessed “the art” of predisposing people against himself, not even when it “seemed of great value” to him. With the dyad of Ecce Homo and Antichrist, he will finally succeed in giving a sample of this art. To clarify, Nietzsche follows the first statement regarding value with an ironic postscript: “I am not even, however un-­Christian it may seem, predisposed against myself.” Not only did he not know how to predispose people against himself, he can “discover no traces” in his life of someone’s having had a “bad will” toward him, “that one case excepted,” which, in the discussion of his origin, gave him the opportunity to indicate his true belonging by way of contrast.9 He would rather have “to complain about the good will, which” has caused “no small mischief ” in his life. The first target of Nietzsche’s revaluation is the centerpiece of all morality of conviction, of which the most prominent defender of a “moral world order” in more recent times has attested that it is not possible to think anything, either in-­or outside the world, “which can be regarded as good without qualification” other than “a good will alone.”10 From questioning the goodness, i.e., the good work put in question, of the good will, Nietzsche quickly advances to “mistrust in general of the so-­called ‘selfless’ drives,” in particular the “whole ‘neighbor love’ that is ready to give advice and go into action,” ultimately arriving at pity, which is called “a virtue only among décadents.” In the Case of Wagner, Nietz­ sche himself had declared pity to be the virtue of décadents11 who, as we now hear, make a virtue out of their weakness, out of their “inability to resist stimuli,” in short: out of necessity. “I allege of those who are full of pity that 9. The manuscript for printing originally ran: “One may turn my life this way and that, one will discover in it only rarely, at bottom only one time, traces of someone’s having had a bad will toward me” (Faksimile, p. 9). When Nietzsche replaced the old version of I, 3 with the new one in December 1888, and spoke of the “unspeakable dread” that “mother and sister” instilled in him, he did not neglect to fix the hint, “only rarely, at bottom only one time,” accordingly in I, 4: “that one case excepted.” See Pp. 15–16, Footnote 15. –­The first edition and all editions before Colli and Montinari reproduced the text in the original version. 10. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten 1, first sentence (Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 4, p. 393). 11. The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem, of May 1888, 7 (KSA 6, p. 29).

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they easily lose shame, reverence, sensitivity to distances, that at the snap of a finger pity smells of the mob and looks confusingly similar to bad manners.” Nietzsche levels his critique of pity from an emphatically noble perspective, and he makes the décadent’s antivirtue into the first exemplum of a virtue of the noble ones: “The overcoming of pity I reckon among the noble virtues.” To explain what noble virtue is all about, he draws on the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which he will not mention at all in the later discussion of the book: “I have composed a case, as the ‘Temptation of Zarathustra,’ in which a great cry of need reaches him, in which pity sets upon him like a last sin that wants to entice him away from himself. Remaining master here, keeping the height of one’s task untainted here by the much lower and more shortsighted impulses that are at work in so-­called selfless actions, that is the test, perhaps the last test, a Zarathustra must pass—­his proper proof of strength . . .” Noble virtue, it is clear, is to consist in resisting the temptation of pity. Just as clear is that in it—­as in every virtue—­one’s own strength must prove forceful enough to conquer a weakness. Less clear is the purpose the virtue serves. Do the two expressions not letting oneself be enticed away from oneself and keeping the height of one’s task untainted amount to the same thing? Are the orientation toward one’s own good and the commitment to the task One thing or Two? And if they are Two, in what relation do they stand toward each other? Nietzsche’s ambiguous speech marks the starting point. It draws our attention to the role of the task. It presents us with a question that leads into the center of the book. The key concept of Ecce Homo appears here for the first time in the text after the preface. Thirty-­five usages of task will follow, and the development of the argument will soon pick up speed.12 As concerns pity, it should be noted that although Nietzsche’s critique obviously has the noble addressee of Ecce Homo in view, it is not propounded in the context of the diagnosis of the present, in which Nietzsche’s writings have long assigned pity a prominent place, as a symptom of the time’s weakness of will. Pity instead becomes thematic as one of the affects against which wisdom commands Nietzsche to be on guard in order to preserve his integrity and independence. For the same reason, it advises against retaliation and discourages him, in cases “where a small or very great foolishness” is perpetrated against him, from getting tangled up, through defense or justification, in confrontations 12. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra the term task does not appear. The “temptation” of pity for the “higher men” can entice Zarathustra away from his own good, the height of clarity and self-­sufficiency, as a philosopher, or keep him from fulfilling his mission as a prophet. But the philosopher and the prophet are not One, but Two. See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 230–­ 32 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 185–­87].

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with men who are not like him. “My kind of retaliation consists in sending a bit of prudence after the stupidity as fast as possible: thus one perhaps even catches up to it.” It may be advantageous to give thanks for a “misdeed.” But when it is a matter of avoiding the gnawing of an affect, Nietzsche pleads for a rude reply instead of keeping silent and becoming sick to one’s stomach: “I would not like to underestimate the value of rudeness, it is by far the most humane form of contradiction and, amid the modern mollycoddling, one of our first virtues.” Another revaluation in terms of self-­hygiene. Yet what turns out to be much more challenging still is the valorization of inner richness over all stings of conscience: “If one is rich enough for it, it is even fortunate to be in the wrong.”13 What is at issue in the retaliation counseled against by wisdom, and in an important respect already prior to this in pity, is not getting rid of and not coming to an end with feelings of revenge and reaction: the pity that is not discharged in an act of mercy, the retaliation that is not disposed of by a bit of prudence or done away with by a bit of rudeness. The commandment of self-­hygiene pertains to the ressentiment, born of weakness, that keeps one in a state of dependence. It pertains to the spirit of revenge, which testifies to powerlessness and revolts against the world as it is. Nietzsche also ascribes the “enlightenment about ressentiment” that distinguishes him to his “long sickness,” i.e., to the double perspective of sickness and great health that is particular to him. “The problem is not exactly simple: one must have experienced it out of strength and out of weakness.” As a décadent and as its opposite, Nietzsche claims to have the necessary twofold experience at his disposal. Being sick is itself “a kind of ressentiment.” For, as a sick person, one does not know “how to get rid of anything, one does not know how to come to an end with anything, one does not know how to repel anything—­everything hurts.” As a “great remedy,” Nietzsche shows the sick person fatalism, the renunciation of every revolt, “the reduction of the metabolism, its slowing down, a kind of will to hibernation.” Fatalism is supposed to prevent one from being determined by anger, from being dominated by Unmut,v from falling prey to the “thirst for revenge,” to “poison-­mixing in every sense.” The other therapy, which he points out to the décadent through the example of Buddha’s dietetics, relies on conscious revaluation. The “deep physiologist Buddha” is praised for having comprehended that ressentiment is “the prohibited as such 13. EH I, 4–­5 (269–­7 1). Nietzsche closes the fifth section with an immoralistic counterconcept to the Christian God’s deed of salvation: “A God who would come to earth must not do anything except wrong—­to take upon oneself, not the punishment, but the guilt, would alone be divine.”

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for the sick person—­his evil.” The praise of Buddha for his knowing of nature, physiologia, goes hand in hand with a first attack on the morality of Christianity, which is introduced into the text by way of contrast. The religion of Buddha, “which should rather be described as a hygiene, in order not to mix it up with such pathetic things as Christianity,” was aimed at the health of the soul. It was concerned with the healing effect. And it tied this effect to the “victory over ressentiment: liberating the soul from this—­first step toward convalescence. ‘Not through enmity does enmity come to an end; through friendship enmity comes to an end’: this stands at the inception of Buddha’s teaching—­it is not morality that speaks thus; physiology speaks thus.” Nietzsche does not content himself with the short-­term remedy of fatalism, nor is he satisfied with the practical effect of dietetics. It belongs to Nietzsche’s wisdom that he has taken up “the fight against the feelings of revenge and reaction” in his philosophy. Only the seriousness of his philosophical confrontation gives the fight its full scope—­“the fight against Christianity is only a particular case of it”—­and drives it forward to its decisive point: Nietzsche does not leave it at making his philosophy the instrument of the décadent’s self-­enlightenment for the sake of promoting his convalescence. He makes it into the locus of the philosopher’s self-­critique with a view to his ownmost danger, the spirit of revenge. The spirit of revenge—­another term for the dysfunctionality of the will to power at work in the philosopher’s will to truth—­is most contrary to the philosopher’s most important aim, the knowledge of the world and of himself, because it is capable of misleading the philosopher most tenaciously, by causing the world to appear different from what it is.14 Nietzsche is so wise because he knew how to make the will to life fruitful in his philosophy, and in it carried out the fight against the feelings of revenge and reaction that are of central significance for him as a décadent and as a philosopher. He underscores the connection that exists between his wisdom and his philosophy by speaking emphatically of “my philosophy” twice in “Why I Am So Wise,” in the center of the first part (I, 2) and in the center of the second (I, 6).15 As far as the doctrinal content of his philosophy is concerned, the teaching of the Eternal Return, given as a commission to Zarathustra, can be understood as a recombination of the remedy of fatalism and the dietetics of revaluation: the No of revolt becomes the most extreme Yes to the world as it was, as it is, 14. The connection between the “spirit of revenge” and the “will to power” of the philosopher is treated in greater detail in Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 97–­103 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 76–­81]. 15. In Ecce Homo, my philosophy occurs four times. The two usages in “Why I Am So Wise” are the central ones: Preface, 3 (259); I, 2 (267); I, 6 (273); III, The Case of Wagner 4 (363).

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and as it will be. Nietzsche emphasizes—­altogether a witness to the truth who seeks to attest to his teaching through his life—­the sureness of his “instinct” in the practical handling of ressentiment. Later, at the appropriate place, we will learn that it was his turn toward philosophy that liberated him from no less than a “total aberration” of his “instinct” and led him back to himself. On no account does he say anything to suggest that he would have needed faith in the Eternal Return to become master of the “feelings of revenge and reaction.” “In times of décadence I prohibited them to myself as harmful; as soon as life was again rich and proud enough, I prohibited them to myself as beneath me.” Both times the prohibition was grounded in his insight into physiologia in the term’s eminent sense. In the state of weakness, it was knowing what is detrimental that protected him. In the state of fullness, it was knowing his true belonging.16 The contemplation of the reaction that has the inherent danger of distracting the philosopher from his aim and causing him to be außer sich is followed by a look at the action that corresponds to his nature. Nietzsche calls this action “war.” A provocation that is at least suitable for making clear that “in accordance with his kind,” no fatalism may be imputed to Nietzsche, and that in what is most important, in what for the philosopher is the decisive respect, he is not apprehended by Buddha’s dietetics. However much “great reason” may induce him, in states of weakness—­i.e., exceptionally and in passing—­to take himself “as if fated,” his wisdom consists just as much in wanting to get over and beyond himself, i.e., to distinguish himself from his temporary self and aim over and beyond the status quo, in order to become what he is according to his nature. The “war,” about which Nietzsche says first of all that it is “a different thing” than ressentiment and revenge, is not war in general, in which ressentiment and revenge may very well be of considerable weight. “War” stands here for the struggle begun on one’s own initiative, the confrontation that is chosen consciously, the competition for the purpose of self-­overcoming in the sense of self-­distinguishing. The “war” at issue is a matter not of the enmity that is forced upon one by others, but of the enmity that one is in a position to actively determine. Being able to be an enemy in this sense is the expression of a “strong nature.”17 The strong nature that is 16. EH I, 6 (272–­73); III, Human All-­Too-­Human 3 (324). Cf. I, 2 (267) and P. 20. 17. The political theologian, who believes that enmity goes back to a divine decree and that the enemy is a tool of divine providence (Genesis 3:15), ascribes the action to the enemy. The enemy determines himself as enemy through his attack. It is in consequence of this belief that the Devil takes the place of nature. On this, see my confrontation with Carl Schmitt’s conception of the enemy and of enmity in Die Lehre Carl Schmitts. Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie. Weimar–­Stuttgart, 1994, 4th ed. 2012, pp. 75–­90 and 102–­5;

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to reach its own heights needs resistances, “consequently it seeks resistance: the aggressive pathos belongs as necessarily to strength as feelings of revenge and reaction belong to weakness.” After having brought his philosophy into conjunction with his nature, as a selective principle, and having characterized the latter as a rich nature in the two centers of “Why I Am So Wise” (I, 2 and I, 6), Nietzsche now associates the strong nature with the philosopher, who has his first appearance since the mention of the “philosopher Dionysos” in the preface. What is at issue is the nature of the philosopher, and it is the philosopher’s task that matters when he speaks of “war”: “every growth betrays itself in the seeking out of a more powerful opponent—­or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike also challenges problems to duel. The task is not to become master over resistances in general, but over those on which one has to employ one’s entire force, suppleness and mastery of weapons,—­over equal opponents . . .” The philosopher’s strength has “a kind of measure” in the problems he tackles, in the task that is needful for him. Nietzsche leaves no doubt that the spiritual warfare he is discussing is oriented toward the philosopher’s own good: “Where one is contemptuous, one can not wage war; where one commands, where one sees something beneath oneself, one does not have to wage war.” The “four propositions” of the “practice of war” that establish his self-­hygiene turn out accordingly: (1) I attack only causes that are victorious. (2) I attack only causes where I stand alone. (3) I never attack persons, but I avail myself of the person only as a strong magnifying glass “with which one can make visible a general but creeping, hardly graspable calamity.” (4) I attack only things where every background of bad personal experience is lacking, where the attack is therefore not nourished by ressentiment. “On the contrary, with me attacking is a proof of benevolence, sometimes even of gratitude.” At the bottom of the four maxims lies the One will to promote self-­ enhancement and, in doing so, to preserve independence. Nietzsche elucidates the third maxim by reference to his critique of David Friedrich Strauß, which actually dealt with the lack of standards and judgment in German education, as well as by reference to the attack on Richard Wagner, which had as its object the “falseness” of a culture “that confuses the refined with the rich, the late with the great.” For the fourth and most revealing maxim, he chooses an example that is more than an example. He draws on his confrontation with Christianity, so that the consideration of spiritual warfare comes to a close in his proclaiming himself to be “an opponent of Christianity de rigueur.” consider pp. 44–­47 [The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction Between Political Theology and Political Philosophy. Chicago–­London, 1998. Expanded Edition 2011, pp. 43–­54 and 63–­65; consider pp. 23–­25].

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Nietzsche permits himself the “war” against Christianity because he “experienced no fatalities and inhibitions from this side” and is “far from holding against an individual what is the disaster of millennia.” He claims, in other words, not to harbor any feelings of revenge and reaction against Christians and not to be entangled in any dependence on Christianity. The “disaster” of Christianity did not turn out to be a “fatality” for Nietzsche. His Christian origin was not able to damage his true belonging. Christianity affected him not as an inhibitor, but as a challenge. The prohibition that issues forth from Christianity helped Nietzsche gain clarity about his own path. By the No that it speaks, Nietzsche’s Yes was sharpened. Thus the “opponent de rigueur” is able to give thanks to Christianity. But this means that Christianity must possess strength, that it, in its way, must be a whole.18 If Nietzsche declares “war” on it, it cannot simply be classed among the “pathetic things.” The author of Ecce Homo and The Antichrist states for the record: “I honor, I distinguish by associating my name with that of a cause or a person: for or against—­that is all the same to me on this point.”19 At the beginning of the eighth and final section, Nietzsche names the subject that the chapter has been dealing with from the beginning. He speaks explicitly for the first time of his nature: “May I still dare to suggest one last trait of my nature that causes me no small difficulty in dealings with men?” This trait, the “perfectly uncanny oversensitivity of the instinct for cleanliness” that is proper to him, could appear to be the most reliable support of the self-­hygiene that stands in the foreground in the second part of the chapter (I, 4–­8). Things are, however, more complicated. For the oversensitivity of Nietzsche’s “instinct for cleanliness” in turn requires a kind of hygiene. It represents a special challenge for his wisdom. The argument Nietzsche propounds is strikingly simple: The instinct for cleanliness points him to the path into solitude. It makes “dealings with men” into a “test of patience” for him and 18. Consider Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 5 (p. 114). 19. EH I, 7 (274–­75). –­In the manuscript for printing, Nietzsche had originally formulated his “practice of war” in five propositions: “Fifth and final proposition: I only attack things that I know of from the ground up—­that I have experienced myself, that I have to a certain degree been myself. The Christianity of my ancestors for example draws its conclusion in me—­a strictness of the intellectual conscience, brought up by Christianity itself and finally become sovereign, turns against Christianity: in me Chris­ tianity passes judgment on itself, in me Christianity overcomes itself.—­” (Faksimile, p. 12.) In December 1888 Nietzsche crosses out the “fifth and final proposition” and writes down the new conclusion, with which he identifies himself as “an opponent of Christianity de rigueur.” He thus not only decides once again for the number of four, but also removes the anticipation and doubling of a thought that is propounded in chapter IV, ascribed there to “Zarathustra.”

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demands of him a “constant self-­overcoming”: “my humanity does not consist in feeling with man how he is, but in enduring that I feel with him . . .” In order to escape the compulsion that keeps him außer sich, he has need of solitude, “which is to say, convalescence, return to myself.” Whereas in the first section of the second part it remained open whether for Zarathustra, when he had to resist the temptation of pity, it was in the end a matter of not letting himself be enticed away from himself, or of keeping the height of his task untainted, in the last section it is beyond question that Nietzsche equates solitude with the return to oneself. There is no longer any talk of the task, certainly not of a task that would demand fulfillment as a commission or a mission. Thus Nietzsche can declare, without ceremony, without qualification, and without transition: “My whole Zarathustra is a dithyramb on solitude, or, if one has understood me, on purity . . .” But now comes the complication. In the section’s fourth subsection, which is at the same time the chapter’s final one, Nietzsche confesses: “Disgust at man, at the ‘rabble,’ was always my greatest danger . . .” After this, he makes audible only “the words in which Zarathustra,” as Nietzsche says, “speaks of the redemption from disgust.” In the sixteen verses taken from the chapter “On the Rabble,” Zarathustra speaks of having redeemed himself from disgust by “flying into the heights where no more rabble sits by the well,” with wings created for him by his disgust. In fact, as the further course of the drama shows, at the time of the speech Zarathustra is far from having liberated himself from disgust. The crisis into which his disgust plunges him is still to come. What Zarathustra propounds represents at best a vision whose content awaits philosophical determination. Without such a determination and the allegorical interpretation belonging to it, however, the verses quoted are liable to nourish the illusion that the problem of disgust, i.e., of indignation about the world as it is, could be solved by an itio in partes, by taking distance from the “rabble,” by retreating into solitude. The Unmut toward man does not come to an end when the “small man” disappears from view. An author who says of himself, “an extreme integrity toward myself is the presupposition of my existence, I perish under unclean conditions,” cannot remain clean and clear with himself if he closes himself off against what he knows. What Nietzsche stated in the last section of the first part also applies in the last section of the second: He literally cannot overlook the vulgarity of the “canaille.” It remains “always” an “objection” that he has to face. When it comes to the oversensitivity of his need for cleanliness, dietetics runs up against its limits.20 20. EH I, 8 (275–­77); I, 3 (268); Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 6, 19–­34 (pp. 125–­27); II, 20, 7–­12; 22–­31 (pp. 178–­79, 180); III, 13.2, 31–­39 (pp. 274–­75). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 60–­62

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Nietzsche’s wisdom coordinates his philosophy with his nature. It directs his will to life into the pathways of knowing and determines him to a thoroughgoing confrontation with feelings of revenge and reaction in order to promote his self-­sufficiency. It allows him to cultivate the two poles of his “double origin” and to make them fruitful for the knowledge of himself as well as of his time. It urges him to reach clarity about the richness he contains within himself, and no less about his greatest danger, which he recognizes in disgust at man. And since the disgust Nietzsche is concerned with cannot be shaken off by any evasive movement, Nietzsche’s wisdom turns it over to the custody of his philosophy. The “dithyramb on solitude,” the Zarathustra poem, is in this understanding a large-­scale investigation of disgust, an experiment in regard to its effects, and an exploration of the shoals and snares in its overcoming. Yet why does Nietzsche recognize in disgust at the “rabble” his greatest danger? Nietzsche was “always” highly susceptible to the noble affect.21 This is attested, inter alia, by his hope for the rebirth of tragedy and by the longing for a new myth to conquer optimism in the writings before the philosophical turn. After the periagoge, the noble affect is not just a matter for self-­hygiene, like ressentiment or pity. Disgust at man becomes the greatest danger for the philosopher because it conjures up the spirit of revenge. It would prevent Nietzsche from saying Yes to the whole. Disgust is the greatest obstacle to the knowledge of the world and to Nietzsche’s happiness.

with n. 69. [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 46–­48 with n. 69]. –­Nietzsche added section I, 8 to the manuscript in December 1888 (Faksimile, pp. 13–­14). 21. On disgust at the “small man” or at the “rabble” as the properly noble affect, see Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 13.2, 33–­39 (pp. 274–­75) and IV, 3.1, 11–­15 (p. 305). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 146–­48 and 172 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 117–­19 and 138].

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The task makes its grand entrance at the end of “Why I Am So Prudent,” in the two sections in which the first part of Ecce Homo culminates. Yet already in the preceding eight sections it is the theme of Nietzsche’s prudence, as happiness is the object of his wisdom. Thus the prudence in chapter II is no less related to Nietzsche’s nature than the wisdom in chapter I. The signpost and placeholder thus as I am, i.e., thus as I am according to my nature, which Nietzsche symmetrically inserts twice into the center, marks the axis around which the chapter revolves.1 That wisdom retains the lead is underlined by sections II, 9 and II, 10, in which Nietzsche provides the answer to his greatest danger and in which both chapters find their conclusion. The rank-­order of wisdom and prudence is reflected in the fact that the first chapter twice invokes my philosophy, whereas the second speaks twice of my morality. Nietzsche leaves no doubt that he grasps morality as a means. His morality stands in the service of his good and must be measured by this end. In the first eight sections of chapter II it is occupied with everyday matters of the conduct of life, with type of nourishment, place of residence, and mode of recuperation, with what Nietzsche calls “the whole casuistry of selfishness.” But from the beginning, the discussion of seemingly “small things” raises the question of what relation they stand in toward the “great tasks.” This applies especially to recuperation, which Nietzsche introduced in the Prefatory Note as the counterconcept to task. Again the structure that Nietzsche chooses for the chapter points to the problem. For five of the ten or eight sections are devoted to “recuperation.” “Nourishment” and “place” or “climate” must be 1. Thus as I am is used twice by Nietzsche: In the second of the three subsections of II, 5 and in the second of the three subsections of II, 6 (288 and 290). Cf. EH II, 9, first sentence (293).

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content with one section each. Is recuperation a means to the end which is the task? And, above all, how do things stand with the task itself: Is it end or means?2 At the head of the casuistry of self-­preservation and self-­enhancement that gives orientation to his morality, Nietzsche places the increase and deepening of his knowledge that a prudent economy earned for him. At the beginning of II, 1, the longest and, with eleven subsections, most divided section of “Why I Am So Prudent,” he postulates: “I have never reflected on questions that are none—­I have not squandered myself.” What is at issue in Nietzsche’s hyperbolic statement is not just some “reflection” that in the end turns out to be fruitless. It is instead—­as he gives us to understand in the next step, by means of the assertion that he did not know “properly religious difficulties” from experience—­a reflection that would embrace the whole of existence and demand all of one’s forces. A reflection, for instance, that issues from the tornness of the consciousness of one’s sin, or wrestles with the burden of the evil conscience. Nietzsche rejects the imputation of sinfulness, and against the evil conscience he claims, in full accordance with the teacher of phronesis, that he lacks “a reliable criterion” for “what a sting of conscience is.” With a view to the noble reader, he appends a moral objection: “according to what one hears about it, a sting of conscience seems to me nothing respectable . . . I would not want to turn my back on an action afterward.” When, in order to pit a noble point d’honneur against the sting of conscience, he pleads “for the exclusion in principle of the bad outcome, of the consequences, from the question of value,” he comes precariously close, on a different path, to the ethics of conviction attacked in the first chapter. “To hold in honor with oneself something that fails because it failed—­this more likely belongs to my morality.” Such a point of honor—­Nietzsche’s offering to the heroic consciousness—­more likely belongs to his morality, because it strengthens one’s resistance and, to a certain degree, one’s independence. But it does not really belong to his morality.3 Prudent economy first of all demands learning from failures and correcting errors in order to avoid the squandering of force and attention. In the third step, Nietzsche explains what the questions, of which he said in the first that they were none, relate to. “God,” “immortality of the soul,” “redemption,” “beyond” were, so we hear, among the concepts to which he devoted “no attention, also no time, even as a child—­I was perhaps not childish enough for them?” Again there is an obviously exaggerated statement. Even if we restrict, as we must, the God in the first place of the series 2. EH II, 10 (295). 3. The words more likely were inserted between the lines by Nietzsche (Faksimile, p. 15).

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of four to the God of revealed religion—­who could be convinced that the author of the aphorism “The Madman” in the Gay Science devoted neither attention nor time to “God”? To say nothing of the author of the Antichrist and of Ecce Homo itself. And would Nietzsche not have spelled out the question of “redemption” in the years he spent with Zarathustra? Nietzsche’s extreme exaggeration is obviously supposed to make visible to us the existential distance out of which he reflected on the four Christian concepts. They did not touch him in his innermost, any more than the Christian faith as a whole—­ which, still in the same passage, he reduces to a credo quia absurdum—­is compatible with his being. Just as the second step aids in the understanding of the first, the fourth helps to explain the third. Nietzsche emphasizes that he does not know of atheism “as an event.” Atheism is instead a matter of course for him, “out of instinct.” With respect to what is most important, Nietzsche follows his own necessity: “I am too curious, too questionable, too exuberant to put up with a ham-­fisted answer. God,” nota bene, the almighty God, “is a ham-­fisted answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers—­at bottom even merely a ham-­fisted prohibition on us: thou shalt not think! . . .” It is his philosophic nature that determines Nietzsche to reject Christianity and not to “squander” himself.4 In a sharp cut meant to produce the greatest possible contrast, Nietzsche switches from theology to physiology. Far from being interested in the answer given by religion, he is interested in a question “on which the ‘salvation of mankind’ depends, much more than on any theologians’ curio: the question of nourishment.” With the discussion of nourishment, metabolism, digestion, he draws attention to the body. In the, sit venia verbo, embodiment of “selfness,”vi which cannot be shared with anyone else, he reaches the hard core of his morality. And since the exchange with external nature must turn out differently for different natures, or will have a specific optimum in each case, he can put the “question of nourishment” thus: “how do precisely you have to nourish yourself in order to attain your maximum of force, of virtù in the Renaissance style, of moraline-­free virtue?” The question of place or of climate would be tailored in the same way, so Nietzsche does not need to formulate it specifically later. It is a matter of one thing: the earthly grounding of morality and the critique of idealism’s oblivion of nature. Whether Nietz­sche 4. EH II, 1, 1–­4 and 8 (278–­79 and 280). The Gay Science 125 (pp. 480–­82). See Pp. 9–11. Cf. my Politische Philosophie und die Herausforderung der Offenbarungsreligion (Munich, 2013), pp. 81–­82 and 89 [Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion (Chicago, 2017), pp. 58–­60 and 65].

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is establishing a front against German cuisine and associating it with the “indigestion” of the German spirit, which does not come to an end “with anything”; whether he is reporting on the effects of the wrong type of nourishment, which he experienced in his own body (for while he denies knowing difficulties with religion from experience, this does not apply to difficulties arising from nourishment in every sense);5 whether he is discussing the use of wine, beer, coffee, tea, and advising “all more spiritual natures” to abstain from alcohol (“water will do”)—­he always has in view the physical conditions of becoming-­oneself. “Nourishment” stands for the elementary presuppositions of a successful, enhanced, good life. Knowing physiology is basic to the regimen solitarii. When Nietzsche, quoting himself—­and explicitly indicating as much—­at the end of II, 1 says that “sitzfleisch” is “the sin proper against the holy spirit,” he is circling back to the beginning of the discussion. The ostentatious revaluation reminds the reader that the preface determined philosophy as wandering in the prohibited.6 The question of place and climate, though “most closely related” to the question of nourishment, leads us into a more dangerous zone. For Nietzsche links the exposure to external nature, which he has follow its incorporation, with the exposition of the task. The choice of residence is associated with a considerable risk for one who “has great tasks to solve,” tasks “that challenge the whole of his force.” For him there are prohibited places. Not because a prohibition from the side of religion or of politics prevents him from living there, but because they are unfortunate places for his physiology. “The influence of climate on the metabolism, its inhibition, its acceleration, goes so far that a blunder in place and climate can not only alienate someone from his task, but deprive him of it altogether: he never catches sight of it.” With the choice of residence, what is at stake is not only the task’s accomplishment, but already its determination. The task is not a matter of course. It is also not decreed by an authority and accepted in obedience. The task that concerns Nietzsche, the great task that claims the whole person and requires the deployment of all capacities and faculties, must be found and seen: it must be known. Knowing means at once ascribing to oneself and appropriating. Ascribing to oneself and appropriating the task presupposes confidence in oneself, trust in one’s 5. “Indeed, up to my most mature years I always ate badly—­morally expressed, ‘impersonally,’ ‘selflessly,’ ‘altruistically,’ for the benefit of cooks and other fellow-­Christians. By means of Leipzig cuisine, for example, I very earnestly negated my ‘will to life’ at the same time I was first studying Schopenhauer (1865).” EH II, 1, 6 (279); cf. I, 2 (267) and P. 20. 6. EH II, 1, 4–­11 (279–­81). Twilight of the Idols, Sayings and Arrows 34 (p. 64).

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own faculties and capacities. A feeling of force and strength, of being up to the task. Nietzsche speaks of an “animal vigor” that must have become great enough “to attain that freedom, overflowing into the most spiritual, where someone knows: this I alone can do . . .” The task that alone matters in Ecce Homo is the task that corresponds to one’s own nature, brings out its best possibilities, fosters and shapes them, allows them to become reality. The correct determination of the task is a question of nothing less than the ascertainment of one’s nature, of becoming-­oneself. A “blunder in place and climate”—­to return to Nietzsche’s scenario—­affects not only the “animal vigor” but also the mobility of the “spirit’s feet.” “Assemble the places where there are and have been spirit-­rich men, where wit, refinement, malice belonged to happiness, where genius almost necessarily made itself at home: they all have excellent dry air.” Nietzsche names Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens—­places that may stand for great style, the knights of the Gaya scienza, Machiavelli’s virtù, the religion of revelation, philosophy. Wit, refinement, malice presumably belong to the happiness that accompanies devotion to the task. Or do they belong even more to that happiness that is over and beyond the task? That lies in having gained distance from and looking down upon the task? In any case, genius, Nietzsche asserts, is conditional on dry air, on pure sky, on the possibility “of drawing again and again on great, even immense quantities of force,” in short: on a place of residence and an exchange with the external that make it a beneficiary of nature in every respect. Following his contemplation of the conditions of genius, Nietzsche delivers the most vehement self-­critique that is found in Ecce Homo. He speaks for a second time of a fatefulness or disaster in his life. Now, however, a disaster from which no happiness emerged and that was grounded, not in his nature, but in a lack of knowledge: “the ignorance in physiologicis—­that accursed ‘idealism’—­is the real disaster in my life, that which is superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which nothing good grew, for which there is no compensation, no counter-­tally. From the consequences of this ‘idealism’ I explain to myself all the blunders, all the great aberrations of instinct and ‘modesties’ far from the task of my life, for example, that I became a philologist—­why not at least a physician or something else that is eye-­opening?” The lack of knowledge led to the “blunders” in the choice of residence and dealings, and to the “aberrations of instinct” of a deceptive putting of oneself in the service of something else: to a lack of prudence, through which the task was endangered. Only the sickness, the deep crisis, brought Nietzsche “to reason.” Looking back at the time before, he speaks of the “basic unreason” of his life. “It lacked any refined selfness, any protection by a commanding instinct, it was a setting-­ oneself-­equal to whomever, a ‘selflessness,’ a forgetting of one’s distance.” The

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passion of knowledge, its commandment and its affirmation, will bring about the turn.7 After the chapter’s guiding concept has been exposed with the task, recuperation completes the triad that Nietzsche recommends to prudence: “the third thing about which one must not at any price make a blunder is the choice of one’s kind of recuperation.” As in the cases of nourishment and residence, the discussion of recuperation is not a matter of rules for Everyman. “Here too, the degree to which a spirit is sui generis makes the boundaries of what is allowed, that is to say useful to him, ever narrower.” Recuperation is measured, it seems, by its expediency for the task, toward which it, like the choice of nourishment and residence, must be oriented. Nietzsche elucidates the boundaries of what is allowed to one who stands alone, and who is conscious of what he alone can do, through the example of reading. In his case, “all” reading belongs to his “recuperations,” “consequently to what releases me from myself.” Reading lets him “stroll about in foreign sciences and souls,” which is why he no longer takes it seriously, insofar as it distances him from himself: “Reading provides me recuperation from precisely my seriousness.” This hyperbolic speech—­reading as recuperation and nothing but recuperation—­apparently has its sense also in emphasizing the all-­important seriousness of the task or of the work to be accomplished.8 “In deeply laborious times one sees no books with me: I would beware of letting anyone talk or even think near me. And that is indeed what reading would mean  .  .  .” If the recuperation were to lead to negligence of the task, or if it were able to disturb the pregnancy of the spirit that precedes the work, the bound­ aries of what is allowed would be exceeded. “One must avoid chance, stimulation from outside, as much as possible; a kind of self-­immurement belongs to the first instinctual prudences of spiritual pregnancy. Will I allow a foreign thought to climb secretly over the wall?—­And that is indeed what reading would mean . . .” After having given birth, things are different. The work sets the pace. “Times of laboring and fruitfulness are followed by the time of recuperation: hither with you, you pleasant, you witty, you clever books!” Does Nietzsche see the confrontation with the books that are demanding, deep, or disliked by him as part of the task’s seriousness? So that not “all” reading would count among his “recuperations”? For the pleasant, witty, clever reading that “releases” him from himself, i.e., from his task, he cites exclusively French authors. The first, Victor Brochard, author of Les sceptiques grecs, in 7. EH II, 2 (281–­83). Consider AC 54 (236). 8. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, What the Germans Lack 6–­7 (pp. 108–­10), and AC, Preface, 2 (167).

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which he finds his “Laertiana” “well used,” gives Nietzsche an opportunity to extol the skeptics as the “only honorable type among the so equi-­to quinquivocal people, the philosophers.” At the end of the long series comprising sixteen scholars and writers, he praises Stendhal, whom he calls one of the “most beautiful accidents” of his life, for “the best atheist’s joke.” A joke that could have been his and that allows him to conclude the section on recuperation with the word God. Wherever Nietzsche strolls, he moves within the horizon of his seriousness.9 Recuperation requires that distinctions be made. The task and the work become congruent in the one case with which Nietzsche is concerned in Ecce Homo, that of the revaluation of all values. But they are not the same. Thus Nietzsche can call Twilight of the Idols a “recuperation” with a view to the Revaluation, i.e., the Antichrist, without therefore denying that the Twilight of the Idols, the Dionysos-­Dithyrambs, and Ecce Homo are works whose “gestation” in turn calls for recovery. And if Nietzsche is “recuperating” from the seriousness of his task in laboring on Twilight of the Idols, this neither means that he no longer takes this labor seriously, nor does it imply, for example, that he would not be bei sich while he “is philosophizing with the hammer.” Nietzsche is not One with his task. He has every reason to discuss the relationship between recuperation and task more extensively. That the determination of expediency is not sufficient is shown by the four additional sections (II, 4–­7) Nietzsche devotes to recuperation, by which he gives the reader to understand only afterward that recuperation has continuously and steadfastly remained the subject of the discussion throughout.10 The first of the four above all seems to be about something else. Nietzsche begins with an encomium of Heinrich Heine, who gave him the “highest concept of the lyric poet”: “I seek in all the realms of millennia in vain for an equally sweet and passionate music. He was possessed of that divine malice without which I cannot imagine what is perfect.” Having arrived at what is perfect, the eulogy resumes the talk of God, with which the previous section concluded, and contrasts the “greatest objection to existence” with that God who does not appear or is not to be understood “apart from the satyr.” Dionysos, who has the satyr for his attendant, unites God, man, and animal. His divineness appears 9. EH II, 3 (284–­86). The last sentence reads: “I myself have said somewhere: what has hitherto been the greatest objection to existence? God . . .” See Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors 8 (p. 97) and consider The Gay Science V, 343 (pp. 573–­74). 10. Nietzsche draws attention to the four central sections’ subject twice, in the first sentence of II, 5 (“Here, where I speak of my life’s recuperations”) and in the first sentence of II, 8 (“In all this—­in the choice of nourishment, of place and climate, of recuperation—­there commands an instinct of self-­preservation”). See the first sentence of II, 3.

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under masks of the imperfect.11 The combination of lightness and seriousness forms the perfect prelude to a section in which Nietzsche, by means of emphatic accolades of Heine, Shakespeare, and Bacon, introduces himself, as it were in passing, in three important personae, and briefly touches on a fourth, abortive one in between. The eulogy of Heine introduces Nietzsche the lyric poet and artist of language.12 That of Shakespeare adds the tragic and comic poet, that of Bacon the philosopher. The elevation of Byron’s “Manfred” into a kind of over-­Faust, and an attack on Schumann’s musical rendering, serve Nietzsche to recall his attempts as a composer, which he gave up after Hans von Bülow’s verdict on the “counter-­overture” to “Manfred” as a “rape of Euterpe.”13 Shakespeare provides him with the prompt to bring Zarathustra into play, which, though announced as a tragedy, vaults up into comedy in the fourth part, and to disclose, from his own experience, that the “great poet” who draws entirely on his own reality “can no longer stand his work afterward”: the fruit of his spiritual pregnancy gains independence and detaches itself from the poet’s life. Finally, Bacon, whom Nietzsche declares to be the true author of the œuvre known under the name of Shakespeare, allows him to establish the rank-­order of philosopher and poet, once again with a side-­ glance at Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Associating the personae of the philosopher, the tragic and comic poet, the lyric poet, or even that of the composer, from which Nietzsche turned away years before the beginning of his philosophic life, with recuperation makes good sense if it is a question of marking their difference from the personae that do not appear in II, 4: the teacher of

11. “—­I estimate the value of men, of races, according to how necessary it is for them to conceive of the God not apart from the satyr,” EH II, 4, 1 (286). The atheist’s joke, “God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist,” had as its target the One God, to whom omnipotence is attributed. 12. “One day it will be said that Heine and I were by far the foremost artists of the German language—­at an incalculable remove from everything mere Germans have done with it,” EH II, 4, 2, (286). 13. Nietzsche had sent his composition to Hans von Bülow on July 20, 1872 (KGB II 3, p. 26). Von Bülow’s judgment left nothing to be desired in terms of clarity: “Your Manfred-­Meditation is the most extreme example of fantastical extravagance, the most unedifying and anti-­musical thing I have seen recorded on staff paper in a long time.” And at the end of a longer critique, in summary: “Once again—­no offense—­you have, after all, yourself described your music as ‘appalling’—­it is indeed that, more appalling than you suppose, admittedly not harmful to the public, but worse than that, harmful for you yourself, who could not kill any excess of leisure time in a worse way than to rape Euterpe like this.” Letter of July 24, 1872 (KGB II 4, pp. 51–­54). In his response, Nietzsche assures von Bülow “that since I have been better instructed by you, I will do what is befitting. You have helped me very much—­which is an admission I still make with some pain.” Letter of October 29, 1872 (KGB II 3, pp. 78–­80).

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mankind, the founder, the lawgiver. At the same time, the association suggests that the “recuperation” is not related to the task as a means to an end.14 The consideration of the personae that stand for his life’s “recuperations,” i.e., that belong essentially to the articulation of the life Nietzsche has been leading for about a decade, is followed by the look back at recuperations in his earlier life. The two central sections of “Why I Am So Prudent” are devoted to this look back (II, 5 and 6). Which does not mean that the consideration of the synchronic or structural condition would not find any continuation in them. For when Nietzsche speaks of his gratitude for what in the past provided him “recuperation most deeply and heartily by far,” he expands the series of recuperations in the present by one important link: the yes-­saying that is expressed in gratitude. Both sections deal with Nietzsche’s gratitude. And both, in different ways, pertain to Richard Wagner. What most deeply and heartily provided Nietzsche recuperation was “without any doubt the more intimate relation” with Wagner. “I would let go of the rest of my human relationships cheaply; I would not want to give away out of my life at any price the Tribschen days, days of trust, of cheerfulness, of sublime accidents—­of deep moments . . .” Nietzsche does not say a word about the longings, hopes, and intentions that once bound him to Wagner, and that he encapsulated at that time in the programmatic formulas “rebirth of tragedy” and “rebirth of the German myth.”15 Rather, he assigns Wagner a prominent role in the dissociation from the bonds and influences of his origin, a dissociation that his nature, “thus as I am,” demanded and that he already highlighted in “Why I Am So Wise.” The first contact with Wagner was his life’s first sigh of relief. He revered him as a “foreign land,” a “revolutionary,” a “corporeal protest against all ‘German virtues.’ ” The Wagner who freed him from German narrowness belongs to Paris. Nietzsche associates him with the délicatesse of the artistic sense, with the fingers for nuances, with psychological morbidity, passion in questions of form, seriousness in the mise-­en-­scène: the “Parisian seriousness par excellence.” In the detour on Wagner and France, seriousness returns to the discussion of recuperation. A seriousness that is not to be confused with the seriousness of the task, but is not therefore any less determinative for the author of Ecce Homo. Nietzsche puts Wagner together with Delacroix and Berlioz, in whom he discerns a “fundament of sickness, of essential incurability,” and with Baudelaire, the “typical décadent,” whom he calls Wagner’s first intelligent adherent, all “virtuosos through and through,” 14. EH II, 4, 1–­6 (286–­87). 15. The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music 16, 1; 17, 4; 19, 7; 20, 1; 20, 3; 23, 3; cf. 23, 5; 24, 9; 25, 2 (KSA 1, pp. 103, 111, 129, 130, 132, 146–­47, 148–­49, 154, 155).

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“fanatics of expression.” Neither the morbidity nor the histrionism in Wagner that he points out elsewhere stands in the way of his gratitude. The gratitude is also not limited to the look back, to a past benefit. At the end of the critique entitled The Case of Wagner, published a few months before, Nietzsche stressed that his writing was inspired by gratitude. By the gratitude of one who is interested in the “diagnostics of the modern soul,” who is occupied with the analysis of decadence, who is concerned with self-­knowledge. He expresses his gratitude succinctly by calling the “case of Wagner” [Fall Wagner] a stroke of good fortune [Glücksfall] for the philosopher. —­In accordance with the resolute distancing from Germany and the Germans that Ecce Homo draws as a political line of demarcation, Nietzsche holds against Wagner “that he became reichsdeutsch.” He “never forgave” Wagner for “condescending”—­ like the Christian God to the believers—­to the Germans. From the reproach of condescending to the Germans, which concludes the section on the dealings with Wagner, Nietzsche immediately returns, in the section on Wagner’s music, to the praise of the benefactor of his earlier life. “All things considered, I could not have endured my youth without Wagnerian music.” The praise does not deprive the judgment of “sickness” and “incurability” of its sharpness. On the contrary, it builds on the diagnosis of morbidity and decadence in order to hone it: “Wagner is the counter-­poison against everything German par excellence—­poison, I do not deny it . . .” Wagner’s music was the poison of which Nietzsche “had need” at that time. More precisely, it was the poison of a unique musical drama: of Tristan. “The older works of Wagner’s I saw as beneath me—­still too common, too ‘German’ . . . But to this day I still search for a work that equals the dangerous fascination, the gruesome and sweet infinity, of Tristan—­I search vainly in all the arts.” In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietz­sche had interpreted Tristan and Isolde in terms of the artists’ metaphysics in which he was caught up at the time and elevated it into an exemplum of how the tragic artist “creates his figures, like a lavish divinity of individuatio,” but whose “immense Dionysian drive” then “engulfs this whole world of appearances, in order to adumbrate, behind it and through its annihilation, a highest artistic primordial joy in the bosom of the primordial unity.”16 Now, the neediness of redemption that finds its most seductive artistic expression in Tristan and Isolde stands before his eyes in all clarity. For he long ago made it the cardinal point of his critique. With a view to this very cardinal point, he 16. The Birth of Tragedy 22, 1 (p. 141); see 21, 4–­9 (pp. 135–­40). During the time of Nietzsche’s tragic weltanschauung, the “Dionysian drive” is still under the spell of the “wisdom of Silenus,” according to which it would be best not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. Cf. 3, 2; 4, 1; 4, 3; 7, 8; 8, 1 (pp. 35, 38–­40, 41, 57, 58–­59).

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can say of the work that it is “altogether Wagner’s non plus ultra.” Nietzsche adds: “he recuperated from it with the Meistersinger and the Ring. Becoming healthier—­that is a step backward in a nature like Wagner . . .” We may thus infer that in a nature like Nietzsche, who derives the strength of his philosophy from his will to health, to life, by contrast, becoming healthier signifies an ascent. He recuperates on a new, never-­before-­reached height. The passion of knowledge allows Nietzsche to say yes retrospectively even to life among Germans, which he described shortly before as hardly bearable, unendurable without the encounter with the Tristan. “I take it for a good fortune of the first rank to have lived at the right time and precisely among Germans, so as to be ripe for this work: this is how far the psychologist’s curiosity goes in me.” As the “selective principle” that he is, the nature that knows how to obtain the “remedies” needed for a possible sickness, Nietzsche did not have to plug his ears against the siren sounds of Wagner’s music and to evade the “fifty worlds of foreign ecstasies for which no one apart from him had wings.” In summa, his gratitude’s judgment reads: “thus as I am, strong enough to turn even what is most questionable and most dangerous to my advantage and thereby to become stronger, I call Wagner the great benefactor of my life.”17 With a “word for the choicest ears,” Nietzsche puts his discussion of recuperation into perspective. In the last section that “Why I Am So Prudent” devotes to the subject, and the only one that begins with “I,” he says what he “really” wants from music is that “it be cheerful and deep, like an afternoon in October.” Music should correspond to that perfect day on which Nietzsche recounts his life to himself, and to us. For the few, for whom the word is meant, it will not be difficult to transfer what has been said about music to lyric poetry, to tragic and comic poetry, and to philosophy, all of which Nietz­ sche has introduced into the discussion. Not for nothing did he explicitly assimilate lyric poetry to music at the beginning. Nietzsche’s recuperation is supposed to unite depth with cheerfulness. For his own poetry and philosophy, at least, it is the case that cheerful play is raised above deep seriousness. The “word for the choicest ears” has yet a second part. Nietzsche also wants of music that “it be peculiar, exuberant, tender, a sweet little woman of malice and grace . . .” The wishful image reminds the reader of the characterizations Zarathustra chooses for life in the two dance-­songs. Nietzsche indicates what kind of music he associates with life, and that by depth he does not mean 17. EH II, 5–­6 (288–­90); I, 3 (268). The Case of Wagner, Epilogue 1–­2 (pp. 50–­53). Cf. EH I, 2 (266–­67) and I, 6 (273) as well as Prefatory Note (263); Pp. 19–20 and 27–­28 as well as 15–16. –­On Tristan, cf. Richard Wagner in Bayreuth 8, 5 (KSA 1, p. 479).

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unfathomability, through two pointed mentions. In the center of the composers whose names he invokes stands Chopin; the only composition he names is the Siegfried Idyll.18 Wagner composed the symphony on the occasion of the birth of his son. Nietzsche was present when it was premiered for Cosima’s birthday with a chamber music ensemble at the Wagners’ house in Tribschen on December 25, 1870. In singling the work out, Nietzsche sets strictness and clarity of form against infinite melody, the idyll against heroism, and the celebration of life against the rapture of extinction (“drowning—­sinking—­ unconscious—­highest pleasure!”). But he reserves the last word for his own “music.” The four additional sections on recuperation, which began with a praise of the lyric poet Heine, end with a poem by the lyric poet Nietzsche. The poem—­it is the only one that appears as a poem, rather than as a quotation, in Ecce Homo—­sings of Venice, of music, of water, of the soul’s stringed play, of its bliss. A happiness, of which Nietzsche says that he does not know how to think of it “without a shudder of fearfulness.”19 If Nietzsche is to have at his disposal the greatest strength a philosopher has so far had to expend on a task of world-­historical dimensions, he must not carelessly overexert himself. After the discussion of the prudence governing his choice of nourishment, residence, and recuperation, he resumes the theme of squandering that stood at the very beginning. Self-­enhancement presupposes self-­preservation, and the “instinct of self-­preservation” expresses itself most clearly as an “instinct of self-­defense.” But indeed, the self-­ defense that best preserves the forces is the one that takes care to ensure that 18. “I myself am still Pole enough to give up the rest of music for Chopin: I except, for three reasons, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, perhaps also Liszt, who surpasses all other musicians in noble orchestral accents; and finally, everything that grew beyond the Alps—­on this side . . .” EH II, 7 (291). 19. EH II, 7 (290–­91). Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde in fine; cf. The Birth of Tragedy 22, 1 (p. 141). –­Before Nietzsche newly inserted sections II, 4, 6, and 7 and revised II, 5 in December 1888, the first half of the preceding section read: “Music—­for the heaven’s sake! Let us keep it as recuperation and as nothing else! . . . At no price may it be for us what it has become today, through the most contemptible misuse, a means of excitement, one more stroke of the whip for exhausted nerves, a mere Wagnerei! Nothing is more unhealthy—­crede experto!—­than the Wagnerian misuse of music, it is the worst kind of idealism among every possible idealistic hocus-­pocus. I take few things as amiss as I take the adversity to instinct of having fallen prey at a young age to this vice Wagner. Wagner and youth—­but that is as much as poison and youth . . .” (Faksimile, p. 29.) In this case too, Nietzsche decides for a superior version. He chooses a diachronically discriminating critique that reaches further and accomplishes additional purposes. In particular, it gives him the possibility of making gratitude a theme and of testifying to it in concreto.

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the case of defense does not even arise. “Not to see many things, not to hear them, not to let them approach—­first prudence, first proof that one is no accident, but a necessity.” Necessity denotes the core of the one that has turned out well, who was identified as “a selective principle” in I, 2. “The usual word for this instinct of self-­defense is taste. Its imperative commands not only saying No where Yes would be a ‘selflessness,’ but also saying No as little as possible. Detaching oneself, separating oneself from wherever the No would time and again become necessary.” The taste that Nietzsche adduces as an organon of self-­defense is not borrowed from an aesthetics that aims at disinterestedness, but is instead part of Nietzsche’s teaching on nature. It regulates the economy of forces. “Our great expenses are the most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting things come close, is an expenditure—­one should not deceive oneself here—­a strength squandered on negative ends.” When the “taste” votes for a place that is congenial, or when it chooses a recuperation that corresponds to one’s own nature, when it gives preference to solitude, it counteracts the wearing-­down, the vaporizing of forces, and thus helps to preserve and gather them for the decisive case. Also related to the wasting of one’s own forces is “another prudence and self-­defense” that Nietzsche deals with separately, even though, rightly understood, it is included in the first prudence. He says of it that it consists in “one’s reacting as rarely as possible and one’s withdrawing from situations and conditions in which one would be condemned to, as it were, suspend one’s ‘freedom,’ one’s initiative, and to become a mere reagent.” As a “parable” he uses one’s dealings with books, which he already referred to in the discussion of recuperation. Now with the example of the scholar who, as a décadent, does not know how to protect himself against books. The scholar who only pores over books exhausts “his whole strength in saying Yes and No,” in responding to others, “in critiquing what has already been thought,” and at last completely loses “the capacity to think on his own.” With the second prudence the accent lies no longer on conserving forces, saving them up for the future task, but on applying them correctly in the present, utilizing them for the most important activity. With the critique of the décadent, who lacks the sovereignty of acting and not acting, of combining spontaneity and discipline, Nietzsche finally brings to mind from afar in “Why I Am So Prudent” the “aggressive pathos” to which he gave prominence in “Why I Am So Wise.” Whereas the speech of prudence is devoted to defending against dangers, the speech of wisdom made the taking-­up of dangers into its matter of concern. It emphasized not self-­defense but the challenge to battle, not the preserving but the testing of force—­its growth in the seeking-­out of resistances, its strengthening in the

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attack on a more formidable opponent, one’s self-­enhancement in the agon with the problems.20 At the end of the first part of Ecce Homo, in sections II, 9 and 10, which clasp together chapters I and II and bring wisdom and prudence into agreement, the task returns to the discussion. It becomes the decisive concept as soon as what is at stake is “giving the real answer to the question how one becomes what one is,” as soon as it is a matter of meeting the expectation raised by the book’s subtitle.21 Wisdom holds that becoming-­oneself is bound up with the correct determination of the task. Prudence, also with regard to the task, is responsible above all for protection from dangers. In II, 2 it was assigned the care of the conditions under which one is able to know that this I alone can do, in order to counteract the danger that one will “never catch sight” of one’s task. In II, 9 it falls to prudence to avert the danger of one’s catching sight of the task too soon. The task stands in the twofold danger of not being known at all or else of being known at a time when it would mean a hopeless overexertion and hence the path to disaster. Becoming-­oneself does not take place as an entelechic process. The actualization of one’s own nature according to the standard of its highest possibilities requires the intervention of self-­knowledge, the venturing of anticipation, an act of ascertainment. It is therefore exposed to error, to faulty estimation, to the risk of failure. Following the treatment of the “instinct of self-­defense” in II, 8, Nietzsche stresses the risk of failure associated with taking up the task, a failure not only with respect to the task. He initially focuses entirely on the knowledge’s kairos. And, as before in the contemplation of nourishment, place or climate, and recuperation, he makes clear that he does not have in mind rules for Everyman. “Assuming,” he begins the objection against a premature self-­knowledge, “that the task, the determination, the destiny of the task lies significantly beyond an average measure, no danger would be greater than catching sight of oneself with this task. That one becomes what one is presupposes that one 20. EH II, 8 (291–­93). Cf. I, 7 (274) and II, 1 (278); Pp. 27–29 and 33–34. On the rank-­order of wisdom and prudence see also P. 32. 21. In II, 9, task reaches its highest density in the whole book, with seven usages. In II, 10 two mentions are added, both of which, corresponding to the section’s subject, speak of great tasks. Prior to that, the only section of Why I Am So Prudent in which task appeared was II, 2 (three times). –­Nietzsche marks the belonging-­together and the special status of the two sections by beginning both II, 9 and II, 10 with the words “At this point.” Peter Gast, to whom the structure did not become accessible, deleted the repetition in the manuscript, and the editors of Ecce Homo before Mazzino Montinari silently followed him in this (Faksimile, p. 31). See Pp. 17 and 32.

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does not have the slightest inkling what one is.” For someone like Nietzsche to become what he is according to his nature or what he can be in the best case, the true task must long remain hidden from him or appear to be beyond his reach. “From this point of view even the blunders of life have their own sense and value, the temporary byways and wrong ways, the delays, the ‘modesties,’ the seriousness squandered on tasks that lie beyond the task.” Even in the squanderings and aberrations, which prudence is supposed to prospectively protect against, “a great prudence, even the highest prudence” can retrospectively come to expression: “where nosce te ipsum would be the recipe for going-­under, forgetting oneself, misunderstanding oneself, to make oneself smaller, narrower, more mediocre becomes reason itself.” Being hidden to oneself, confusing oneself with others, misunderstanding oneself, for a time, which Nietzsche praises as “the masterpiece of the art of self-­preservation,” opens up the free space for the development of the most diverse abilities, for the acquisition of proficiencies, for the testing of virtues, for the gathering of experiences in dealing with oneself and the world, for self-­exploration in all directions. The unifying thought that is to rule one day can thus train all the serving capacities “in turn” before it “lets anything be heard of the dominating task, of ‘goal,’ ‘purpose,’ ‘sense.’ ” It is obvious that Nietzsche is able to extol the “masterpiece of the art of self-­preservation” only post festum. The judgment is tied to the decisive event, in whose light the preceding time’s squandering and delaying take on the appearance of a deeper prudence or of a desirable purposiveness. Only self-­knowledge and the task’s ascertainment, which mark out the path, allow the serene and approving look back at byways and wrong ways.22 Stressing the danger involved in the task and the preliminaries that are required for self-­knowledge prepares Nietzsche’s statements about and to himself, which are among the most far-­reaching and, for some readers, surprising in the book. On the basis of contemplating the secondary prudence that lies in taking detours and spending a longer time incubating, Nietzsche concludes that his life is, “considered from this side, simply wonderful.” He not only knows himself to be favored by nature, but presents himself as being destined by his life’s course for the task of revaluation. Picking up the thread from the beginning of the first chapter, he adds to the earlier threefold perhaps in the rhetoric of distinction and singularity, which is supposed to underscore his competence to approach mankind with the “heaviest demand,” a fourth and final perhaps: “For the task of a revaluation of values, more capacities were perhaps needed than have ever dwelt together in one individual, 22. EH II, 9, 1–­2 (293–­94); II, 2 (282–­83).

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above all also contradictory capacities, without their being allowed to disturb or destroy one another. Rank-­order of capacities; distance; the art of separating without making into enemies; to mix nothing, to ‘reconcile’ nothing; an immense multiplicity that is nevertheless the opposite of chaos.” If it is thanks to his “double origin” as a décadent and as its opposite that Nietzsche is in a privileged position when it comes to switching perspectives, it is his life that makes him the “complementary man” who is capable of bringing about and embodying the revaluation.23 At the peak of linking the revaluation with his life, however, Nietzsche marks a separation that could not be deeper. Whereas he carries with him the heaviest demand for mankind, he attests himself to be without demand. He is in harmony with himself. He has reached clarity about what is most important. The author, who has used countless passages in his œuvre to foster the heroism of the noble reader, confesses, in the one passage in which he expresses himself on how he became what he is: “no trace of struggle can be demonstrated in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature.” The philosopher does not want to be confused with a hero any more than he wants to be considered a saint. Least of all with a tragic hero. Nor does he live a life driven by hopes, caught up in expectations, tensely directed toward the future. Nietzsche states that he looks out on his future “as on a smooth sea”: “no desire ripples on it. I do not want in the least for something to become different from what it is; I myself do not want to become different.” With this he takes up the counterposition to the futurist position of Zarathustra, whom he had say at the drama’s turning point that “the now and formerly on earth” were what was “most unbearable” for him and that he “would not know how to live” if he were not “also a seer of that which must come.” In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche negates futurism en pleine connaissance de cause. He negates the neediness of redemption.24 Nietzsche’s assertion that he does not want in the least for something to become different from what it is is a statement of his happiness. It stands for one of the two poles that keep the dyad Ecce Homo and The Antichrist on its track. The other pole, the task, contributes the challenge, the distinction, the negativity, which self-­enhancement requires, on which becoming-­ oneself remains dependent, and without which Nietzsche’s happiness cannot be thought. Nietzsche puts the poles into relation to each other and connects what awaits connection in a discussion of greatness, of the “greatness in man,” and of his own greatness, which concludes the part on wisdom and prudence, 23. EH Preface, 1 (257); I, 1 (264–­66); see Pp. 19–20. Beyond Good and Evil 207 (p. 136). 24. EH II, 9, 3–­4 (294–­95). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 20, 11 (p. 179). See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 92–­96 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 73–­76].

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on his being. At its core, the discussion is “a great reflection” that renounces what conventional judgment considers to be great, important, divine, and with which Nietzsche anticipates what he will first hold out the prospect of to mankind in the second part as a “moment of highest self-­reflection.” The “whole casuistry of selfishness” gone through by “Why I Am So Prudent,” the seemingly small things, from nourishment to recuperation to taste, he declares to be “inconceivably more important than everything one has hitherto taken to be important.” The “greatness of human nature, its ‘divineness,’ ” has been sought in ideas that, as opposed to the “small” things to which he directed attention, are “not even realities”: (1) “God,” (2) “soul,” (3) “virtue,” (4) “sin,” (5) “beyond,” (6) “truth,” (7) “eternal life.” The seven concepts, which Nietzsche traces back to the imagination of “natures that are harmful in the deepest sense,” form a doctrinal edifice, in which the first as causa prima guarantees the coherence of the whole, and the seventh as finis ultimus names the promise to which it owes its world-­historical success. Nietzsche’s revaluation is concerned with a system that anchors human nature’s distinction in its sinfulness and neediness of redemption. It pertains to a valuation that identifies divineness with morality. It aims in particular at those men who, by means of that system’s concepts, became the ruling type and determine the model of mankind. “All questions of politics, of social order, of education, have been falsified through and through because the most harmful men were taken for great men.” To erect a new model, Nietzsche—­in an act that can be understood as an expression of his humanitas—­highlights the greatness that is proper to himself. Thus as he is, and wants to be, he contests those “who were hitherto honored as the first men.” Regarding the greatness he associates with his being, he points to the “healthy instincts” that “Why I Am So Prudent” has stressed time and again. In fact, the “health” of which Nietzsche speaks in his revaluation consists essentially in his proving himself to be immune to the “sickness” of those “who take revenge on life.” He can also claim greatness with a view to his work, to the deed, to the extraordinary thing he has accomplished. Here the discussion of greatness moves for the most part in the horizon of the usual expectations. Unusual, however, is the emphasis that Nietzsche employs in order to expose the superiority of being over work. Thus he says that life became lightest for him when it demanded of him what was heaviest. The task was therefore not a burden for him, but rather lent him wings. Even “in the seventy days of this autumn” when, “without interruption,” he made “nothing but things of the first rank” that “no man” is able to copy or improve upon, there was no trace of tension to be observed in him, “rather an overflowing freshness and cheerfulness.” On the middle level, Nietzsche links greatness to a humanitarian orientation or a philanthropic

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seriousness. For the “things of the first rank” that he created in the “seventy days”—­in the first place the Antichrist—­he claims to have accomplished them “with a responsibility for all millennia after me.” Nietzsche apparently satisfies the demand that he addressed to the philosopher after completing the Zarathustra poem, or, more precisely, to the “new philosopher,” as a “man of the most comprehensive responsibility,” viz., to concern himself with nothing less than the “overall development of man.” A greater task is hardly imaginable. And no one can set his sights on a greater period of time than all millennia after him. Who could speak more greatly?25 The discussion of greatness reaches its peak with its last change in level. Nietzsche adopts neither a broader, nor a longer, but a higher perspective: “I know no other way of dealing with great tasks than as play: this is, as an indication of greatness, an essential presupposition.” The greatness at issue is over and beyond the greatness of devotion and sacrifice, of resonance and effect. It is grounded in a fundamental independence and testifies to a sovereign unfolding of one’s strength. Nietzsche can deal with the task in the manner of play only because he knows how to satisfy the seriousness demanded by the task, only after he has the seriousness he associates with the task beneath him. Of the greatness of him who is able to do justice to the task playfully, Nietzsche says that the “least compulsion, the gloomy mien, any harsh tone in the throat” are objections. “One must not have any nerves . . . Suffering from solitude is also an objection.” He who is over and beyond the task does not encounter it in fear and trembling. He is sufficient unto himself in what is most important. He breathes freedom, cheerfulness, and serenity. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche ascribed playing, and being permitted to play, with great tasks to the high nature and naturalness. Elsewhere he refers to divineness and God. The sentence on his way of dealing with great tasks is an expression of Nietzsche’s magnanimitas.26 Nietzsche’s sentence on play accords with the statement of his happiness. He who enjoys the privilege of being able to deal with great tasks only in the manner of play does not have to want for something to become different from what it is. More precisely, he has no need of change in what is great and important for him, in what for him is decisive. The cheerfulness, freedom, and serenity at which Nietzsche arrived after he caught “sight” of himself with his task include his being in a position to respond to his “greatest danger.” The 25. Beyond Good and Evil 61 (p. 79); cf. 62, 203, and 212 (pp. 81–­83, 126–­28, 145–­47). 26. EH II, 10, 1–­4 (295–­97). Cf. Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 48 (p. 150); Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 237–­39); On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, Preface, 7 (KSA 5, p. 255); EH I, 3 (268–­69); II, 10, 1 (296). –­The prophet does not conform to the determinations of greatness Nietzsche invokes on the highest level. Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface, 1; II, 1; III, 7; IV, 11, 34–­54 (pp. 11–­12, 105–­8, 225, 350–­51).

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highest perspective also has the noble affect beneath it. Whereas at the end of the first chapter, Nietzsche made disgust at man visible to the reader as a fatal way of being outside oneself [Außersichsein], at the end of the second he discloses that he practices affability toward Everyman and treats “even the lowliest with distinction.” He is evidently no longer indignant over the lowly, the small. It is different with contempt, of which he makes no secret. But contempt, as an act of distinguishing and of pushing off, can foster self-­ determination and self-­enhancement. Indignation, by contrast, keeps one in unfreedom. Nietzsche, who made the corrupting effect of indignation a theme of particular seriousness in his philosophy, goes so far as to declare himself—­with a view to the indignation he elicits or will elicit—­a kind of touchstone of uncorrupted access to reality: “through my mere existence I arouse the indignation of everything that has bad blood in its body . . .” Finally, at the very end of his discussion of greatness, wisdom, and prudence, he provides an unobstructed view of what allowed him to occupy the highest perspective and to overcome the greatest danger. “My formula for greatness in man is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not into all eternity.” Nietzsche spoke of amor fati only one time before this in his œuvre: “Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!” he exclaimed to himself in 1882, in the first aphorism of the fourth book of the Gay Science, whose last aphorism anticipated the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra under the heading “Incipit tragoedia.”27 A request to himself becomes, in Ecce Homo, the concluding characterization of greatness and a valid designation of Nietzsche. For, later in the book, at the only place where the term occurs again, Nietzsche succinctly states: “amor fati is my innermost nature.” Taken together, the two passages in Ecce Homo—­they are the central two of the four usages of amor fati in the writings intended for publication—­say in almost as many words: Nietzsche achieves the greatness possible for him, he realizes his nature, he becomes what he is, in the affirmation of the whole, of life, of himself, for which the formula amor fati stands.28 To express the highest affirmation, Nietzsche does not have recourse to the teaching of the Eternal Return. And in contrast to Zarathustra, he does not attempt to make 27. “Amor fati: let that be my love from now on! I do not want to wage any war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let looking away be my only negation! And, all in all and on the whole: I want someday to be only a yes-­sayer!” The Gay Science IV, 276 (p. 521); cf. 307, 313, 321, 324 (pp. 544–­45, 548, 551–­52, 552–­53). 28. Amor fati occurs one time each in The Gay Science IV 276 (p. 521); EH II, 10 (297); EH III, The Case of Wagner 4 (363); and Nietzsche contra Wagner, Epilogue 1 (KSA 6, p. 436). The fourth passage in which Nietzsche uses amor fati repeats the assertion of the third: “Amor fati: this is my innermost nature.”

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the will the source of necessity: “Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less to conceal it—­all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—­but to love it . . .” Nietzsche agrees with Zarathustra, who demanded “something higher than all reconciliation” for the will’s Unmut not to rebel against necessity. But in order to counter the ill will effectively, he does not rely on converting the will to the belief that the will itself is the ground of the world as it is and of its acceptance. Instead, he opts for love as the support of insight. Not to will but to love is the last word of the discussion, the chapter, and the first part. The love of what is necessary, in which he recognizes his innermost nature, stands in the closest connection with the “passion of knowledge,” on which he has conferred the leadership from the beginning of his philosophic life, and on which he could confer the leadership because it is the only passion that drives over and beyond itself and knows how to catch up with itself in insight.29 Since there is no knowledge without necessity, the passion of knowledge affirms its fundamental presupposition in the love of what is necessary. The love of what is necessary is aimed at what makes the happiness of knowledge possible. With respect to the necessity to which this happiness is owed, Thus Spoke Zarathustra introduced the determination “beyond good and evil.” It is the insight into necessity, and it is the happiness accompanying it, which give Nietzsche the support that enables him to deal with his task in the manner of play.30 After Nietzsche has indicated the sovereign perspective, it remains to be considered from up close how the Yes to the whole, to the world, to one’s own nature accords with the No in specifics, without which the philosophic life can neither be begun nor led. The question of how the highest affirmation and the sharpest negation go together is reflected in the duality of Ecce Homo and Antichrist. It may be one of the reasons why Nietzsche decided to reject the One “major work” and instead have his œuvre culminate in a dyad. But it is also expressed in Ecce Homo itself, in whose central part Nietzsche speaks of the “yes-­saying” and the “no-­doing half ” of his task. When he now has his no-­saying books follow his yes-­saying ones, he makes clear that the wish someday to be only a Yes-­sayer, expressed six years earlier in “Sanctus Januarius,” alongside the first usage of the formula amor fati, was no more than a—­wish. The task, the books, require a Yes and a No. The work demands 29. Dawn: Thoughts on the Moral Prejudices 429 and 482 (KSA 3, pp. 264–­65, 286); The Gay Science II, 107; III, 123, 249; IV, 310, 324 (pp. 464–­65, 479–­80, 515, 546, 552–­53); cf. V, 343 (p. 574). 30. EH II, 10, 4 (297). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 20, 22–­31, and 41–­46 (pp. 179–­80 and 181). Consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 97–­101 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 76–­ 80]. –­On the determination beyond good and evil in Thus Spoke Zarathustra see above all III, 4, 25 and III, 15.2, 3 (pp. 209 and 284).

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seriousness, service, devotion. Of all the greater importance are the highest perspective, the order of play and seriousness, the hierarchy of affirmation and negation, which Nietzsche makes known through the pointed statements on dealing with the task and on the superiority of one’s being to the work. The critique of the scholar, who exhausts all of his strength in Yes-­and No-­ saying, and the interpretation of pregnancy as an act of “redemption,” aim at the same distancing as Nietzsche’s sentence on play, which is preceded by that critique and followed by this interpretation: The philosophic life is not absorbed into what it gives rise to or sets forth out of itself. It has its center in itself. In the activity proper to it. In what it is able to keep bei sich in the movement of reaching out and retrieving, of collecting and dividing, of taking possession and squandering, not in the work or child.31 The opening of “Why I Write Such Good Books” marks the dividing line: “I am one thing, my writings are another.” The memorable saying is left without explanation. It stands apart, followed by a dash. Yet a few lines later, Nietzsche, taking up a warning to his readers from the preface, voices the admonition to himself: “I do not want to be mistaken for another—­this includes that I not mistake myself.” The philosopher and his œuvre are not One. Nietzsche’s thought keeps its distance from the books he writes. But it is accessible to us only through the works of art that they are, by means of the ends that they pursue, in going back to the intention that underlies them and determines the play of their parts. This alone would suffice for understanding why Ecce Homo places the books in the center. Added to it is the fact that Nietzsche lives, though not for, to the highest degree with and in his writings. Above all, what has found its way into them is how he caught “sight” of the task and how he coped with it, so that in going through the books he can give an account of himself and make visible to the reader how he became what he is. Now that the task is no longer in question, his final book allows him to look backward and forward serenely. Before drawing on the books in order to make the course of his life into an object of contemplation, Nietz­ sche spends six sections of the third chapter outlining what distinguishes his books in general—­or in any case the books written after the crisis—­and what the author’s attitude toward them is. Not unlike the philosophers before and after him, Nietzsche expects to live over and beyond his own century through his books. The gap between the immense claim that he associates with them—­a responsibility for all millennia—­and the muted resonance they 31. EH II, 8, 2 (293); II, 10, 4 (297); III, 5, 6 (306). See, in contrast: Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 3, 9 (p. 204); cf. IV, 1, 2 and IV, 20, 22–­23 (pp. 295 and 408); Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 117–­20 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 93–­96].

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found with his contemporaries—­most of them sold only a few hundred copies; of the work that would later become the best-­known, initially not more than a few dozen—­is indeed so great that he has reason to refer to future readers in particular as their real addressees. For the question of being understood or not being understood, it is certainly not yet time. “It is not yet time for me, some are born posthumously.” What is most important has been done and is not affected by the reception. This applies also to the prediction that his books will bring about new institutions. “Someday institutions will be needed in which one lives and teaches as I understand living and teaching.” Nietzsche may have in mind a new kind of philosophical school or community of thought to take the place of the Platonic Academy, the Epicurean garden, or the Christian monastery. But the core of the life that in the preface he characterized as “wandering in the prohibited” resists any institutionalizing. When he finally gives us to consider that “Chairs for the interpretation of Zarathustra” will perhaps “also” be established, just as there are still Chairs in many places that are dedicated to the exegesis of the Old and the New Testament, he puts his Book for All and None into the context of a religion of the future. But what does the religion of the future matter to Nietzsche? That one would already have “ears and hands” for his “truths,” i.e., for his teachings, let alone that his thinking would already be understood32—­this in any case he does not expect: “that today one does not hear, that today one does not know how to take from me, is not only comprehensible, it even seems to me to be right.” Having suitable ears is for Nietzsche, as we recall from the preface, not so much a question of diachrony and synchrony as, rather, grounded in a correspondence of natures. He thus would in fact be mistaking himself for another if he were to harbor false expectations with regard to his readers. The future considerably expands the space for the likelihood of the necessary correspondences. The same holds for the events and experiences that, as Nietzsche emphatically adds, will first open up access to his books, since unusual events and extraordinary experiences preceded them. On the tight connection between the books and his life, any further word is at this point superfluous. However, it deserves to be noted that Nietzsche is attempting to put his life’s independence, its self-­reliance, its comprehensive character, in the correct light, a life that, for its part, is to be read. In line with this, he “confesses,” in the hyperbolic manner that has become familiar to us, that he is even more pleased about his “nonreaders,” “those who have never heard my name, nor the word ‘philosophy’; but wherever I go, here in Turin for example, every face is cheered and soothed at the sight of me. 32. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 296 (pp. 239–­40).

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What has hitherto flattered me most is that old hawker women do not rest until they have culled the sweetest of their grapes for me. This is how far one must be a philosopher  .  .  .” The follower of the philosopher Dionysos wins people over through his appearance without being known as what he is. That Nietzsche claims further to have been “discovered everywhere,” except in “Europe’s flatlands, Germany,” is due to the intensified effort at protecting himself against that mistake which he foresees most clearly: “To think German, to feel German—­I can do everything, but this exceeds my forces . . .” While the increasingly sharp demarcation from the Germans belongs to the book’s basic rhetorical equipment, the self-­designation Nietzsche comes up with at the end of the second section of his hints on being understood and not being understood is unique in Ecce Homo: “I am the anti-­ass par excellence and hence a world-­historical monster—­I am, in Greek, and not only in Greek, the Antichrist . . .” The author makes himself known in an enigmatic double-­ figure. He is the one who knows how to say Yes and No. Yes to the whole, No to Christianity. In contrast to the Yea-­Ah of the ass, his Yes is grounded in the capacity to say No, and only this capacity lends weight to his Yes. The No for which the Antichrist stands, in Greek and non-­Greek, says No to Christ and No to the Christian. This is the only passage in Ecce Homo in which the other book with which Ecce Homo forms a dyad is named, though without the title’s being divulged in advance. I will call it the “Ecce” moment. It calls out to the reader: “Look at this man. He confronts the anointed one as a non-­anointed one, without attestation by an authority, without commission or mission, on the basis of his own strength and insight.”33 The reader whom he preeminently addresses and the art that distinguishes his books are dealt with in the central sections of the six that Nietzsche places at the head of the second part. Both begin with I. Nietzsche is conscious of his “privileges as a writer,” and is far from hiding his light under a bushel. Rather, he practices the pathos of distance. To enter into the world opened up by his writings he calls “a distinction without equal,” a distinction that has to be deserved. But to the reader who “is kindred” to him, “by the height of the will,” i.e., by the height of his will to know and to understand, the author promises “true ecstasies of learning: for I come from heights to which no bird has ever flown, I know abysses into which no foot has ever strayed.” What he has explored in his thought and experienced in his life—­out of this his art of writing creates books that enable kindred natures to take part in his inquiries and experiences in their own lives and thought: in the best case gaining them 33. EH III, 1, 1–­11 and 2, 1–­2 (298–­302). Preface, 1, 2, 3, and 4 (257–­60). On the Yea-­Ah of the ass, consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, p. 206 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 166].

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for or having them by themselves.34 “There is altogether no prouder and at the same time more refined kind of books:—­here and there they achieve the highest thing that can be achieved on earth, cynicism”—­a view from outside, above, beyond conventions, mocking what is customary, abbreviating and challenging in their character, shameless and biting: “one must conquer them with the most delicate fingers as well as with the bravest fists.” Nietzsche makes his books into a veritable test of the reader. The discipleship called upon by his “Ecce homo” is not open to Everyman. Or, when seen more precisely, it leads to a hierarchical gradation. “Every frailty of the soul,” states Nietzsche, precludes one from appropriating his writings. And frailty is not tantamount to décadence. He cites poverty of the soul and “secret vengefulness in the entrails” as cornerstones for what denies readers access. At the center of the reasons for being precluded stands cowardice. He who wants to enter the “labyrinth of audacious knowledge” that Nietzsche’s books spread out for the reader must have “never spared himself,” he must “have hardness in his habits,” hardness toward himself, toward his convictions and wishes. Only if he is equipped for necessity and skilled in self-­overcoming in this way can he be “lighthearted and cheerful among nothing but hard truths.” Nietzsche leaves unmentioned the happiness held ready by the labyrinth of knowledge. Just as he left happiness unmentioned when he spoke of the life in ice and high mountains in the preface. There, the emphatic view outward was more than enough: “how placidly all things lie in the light! how freely one breathes! how many things one feels beneath oneself.” Here, the hint “lighthearted and cheerful” must suffice.35 Nietzsche lays the emphasis on the beginning, in which uncertainty is inherent. He sets his sights on the departure, which demands readiness for sacrifice. Accordingly, courage stands at the beginning in the characterization of the first reader and not, responding to cowardice, at the center: “When I think up the image of a perfect reader, what comes out is always a monster of courage and curiosity, moreover something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer.” Supple and cautious cunning occupies the center, just as the central of the three Zarathustra-­ verses from “On the Vision and Riddle,” which Nietzsche quotes to reinforce his image of the perfect reader, evokes the tempter-­soul of Odysseus. The appeal to courage and cunning and the overlapping address to two addressees, 34. In an earlier version of section III, 3, Nietzsche notes: “the opposition of thought and life is lacking with me” (Faksimile, p. 36/43). 35. EH Preface, 3, 2 (258) and see 3, 3 (259) as well as 4, 2 (260). Consider Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 6, 19–­34 (pp. 219–­21) and Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 126–­27 [What Is Nietz­ sche’s Zarathustra?, p. 101].

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the adventurer and the discoverer, comport with Nietzsche’s description of the world of his books as noble and delicate. Not every adventurer becomes a discoverer. Yet without courage there is no departure, and the prospect of a noble self-­image may facilitate the step of venturing out into the open sea. A step that must be taken by anyone who wants to encounter the philosopher Nietzsche. The writer does not leave it at the overlapping address. He deploys the whole “art of style” to communicate the range of what is possible for him, and to set the corresponding strings of the soul in resonance. “To communicate a state, an inner tension of pathos, through signs, including the tempo of these signs—­this is the meaning of every style; and considering that the multiplicity of inner states in me is extraordinary, there are for me many possibilities of style—­the most multifarious art of style that one man has ever had at his disposal.” With this, Nietzsche claims in particular to surpass Plato, whom he called—­with respect to the mixture of “all forms of style”—­a “first-­rate décadent of style” in the book preceding Ecce Homo. The contest for the crown that belongs to the artist of style is part of the competition that Nietzsche carries on at every level with Plato, one that found its most conspicuous testimony in the Zarathustra poem: If with the Socrates that has been made nobler and younger, the poet Plato succeeded in embodying the philosopher as such, his life and thought, in a figure and speech whose effective historical power recalls a religion-­founder, the poet Nietzsche creates for himself a son who is designed to undertake a world-­historical experiment with mankind as a prophet, and who helps the philosopher Nietzsche to gain clarity about his own path. As concerns the art of style, Nietzsche claims for Thus Spoke Zarathustra nothing less than the actual discovery of the dithyramb: “with a dithyramb like the last one of the third Zarathustra, titled ‘The Seven Seals,’ I flew a thousand miles over and beyond what was hitherto called poetry.” At the end of III, 4, Nietzsche circles back to the three personae in which he made himself known in II, 4.36 The third pair of the six introductory sections to “Why I Write Such Good Books” adds two personae. For one, the psychologist, for the other, as it were in passing, the lawgiver. To be sure, the psychologist is already virtually implied in the philosopher. At least in the case of a philosopher who expressly elevated psychology to the “mistress of the sciences” and declared that it was “now again,” i.e., as in Plato long ago, “the path to the fundamental problems.”37 Nevertheless, it is not surprising that an author who occupies 36. EH III, 3 and III, 4, 1–­5 (302–­5). Twilight of the Idols, What I Owe to the Ancients 2 (p. 155). Plato, Second Letter 314c1–­4. 37. Beyond Good and Evil 23, First Main Part in fine (p. 39).

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himself in detail with the different natures to whom he wants to speak, and, in particular, who poses the question of whether “there are ears” to which he “may communicate himself,” specifically makes the reader aware of the psychologist that he is. The same reader whom he lets know that he would like to be read by him with attention and carefulness, “like good old philologists read their Horace.” The reason Nietzsche writes such good books is not least that out of them there speaks a psychologist “who has no equal,” with regard both to what he says and to how and to whom he says it. In the section in which he introduces the psychologist (III, 5), Nietzsche emphasizes the different natures of the sexes, giving him the opportunity to stigmatize any attempt “to poison the good conscience, what is natural in sexual love,” and to bring the lawgiver into play. So as not to leave any doubt about his “very decent and strict attitude,” he imparts to the reader a proposition from his “moral code against vice.” “The proposition reads: ‘the preaching of chastity is a public incitement to antinature. Any contempt of sexual life, any impurification of it by the concept “impure,” is the crime itself against life—­is the real sin against the holy spirit of life.’ ” Nietzsche cites the “Fourth Proposition” of the seven-­proposition “Law Against Christianity,” which he dated Septem­ ber 30, 1888, and intended to be published at the end of the Antichrist. Since, according to the author’s direction, the “Law Against Christianity” was supposed to not yet have been made public at the time of Ecce Homo’s appearance, Nietzsche speaks periphrastically of his “moral code against vice.” The “Law Against Christianity” thus remains unmentioned in Ecce Homo for the same reason that The Antichrist appears in Ecce Homo under the title Revaluation of All Values. By ensuring that the central proposition of the “Law” is present in Ecce Homo in advance of the Antichrist, Nietzsche not only underscores the interweaving of the two books, which point to each other and belong together. He also clarifies the aim of the political-­polemical enterprise of revaluation common to both: the fundamental orientation of morality toward life, and the no less fundamental negation of the morality of Christianity. By silently adding an interpolation—­“is the crime itself against life”—­to the proposition quoted verbatim from the “moral code,” he also indicates that he knows himself sovereign, as a lawgiver, to emend the text of the law for the sake of clarification.38 —­With the appearance of the lawgiver, Nietzsche again, toward the end of the introduction to the second part, directs the view to the task, which remains unmentioned by name in the six sections: the revaluation as both a historical event and the vanishing point of his work. The 38. EH III, 4, 2 and III, 5, 1–­7 (304–­7). AC Law Against Christianity, Fourth Proposition (254). Cf. Nietzsche contra Wagner, Wagner as Apostle of Chastity 3 (p. 431).

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task, to whose determination Nietzsche owes his becoming-­oneself, is, however, no more exhausted in the enterprise of revaluation than is the work he produces as a writer. Nietzsche would not write such good books if these books did not essentially serve the philosopher’s self-­understanding. And self-­understanding, in turn, is an integral component of the task. It is therefore only consistent that the lawgiver does not receive the last word. In order “to give an idea” of himself “as a psychologist,” Nietzsche, as he says at the beginning of the sixth section, calls on “a curious piece of psychology,” which, as a long verbatim quotation without any emending additions, concludes the six sections. It comes from the penultimate aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil, which testifies in every respect to Nietzsche’s art of style. A philosopher on whom Nietzsche exerted a lifelong fascination called the aphorism “perhaps the most beautiful passage in Nietzsche’s work.”39 Hence it is not the fourth proposition from the “Law Against Christianity,” but four sentences from Beyond Good and Evil about the “genius of the heart,” that stand at the end of the introduction to “Why I Write Such Good Books.” About whom he is describing in the “curious piece,” Nietzsche prohibits “any conjecture.” Knowing full well that the prohibition incites thought, and will gain the attention of the reader with whom he is concerned. In fact, the four sentences about the “genius of the heart” form the prelude to the aphorism in which Nietzsche brings the God Dionysos back after fourteen years of silence, into the work in which he comes out with the “news” that “Gods too philosophize,” and in which he introduces himself for the first time as a disciple of that God. After everything we learn in Ecce Homo about the philosopher Dionysos and about the philosopher Nietzsche, it is not difficult to conjecture that Nietzsche is speaking of himself when he describes the “genius of the heart.” The prohibition provides the conjecture with an exclamation mark.40 39. Leo Strauss, “The Problem of Socrates,” Interpretation, vol. 22, n. 3 (1995), p. 324 (lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis, April 17, 1970). 40. EH III, 6 (307–­8). Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 237–­39). See Pp. 7, 15–16, 22. Nietzsche breaks off the quotation from Beyond Good and Evil after the description of the “genius of the heart.” The aphorism continues: “. . . but what am I doing, my friends? Of whom am I speaking to you? Have I forgotten myself so far that I have not yet even told you his name? unless you have already guessed by yourselves who this questionable spirit and God is, who wants to be praised in such a way.” Leo Strauss comments on the passage in the already-­cited lecture “The Problem of Socrates”: “Nietzsche does not mention Socrates there, but Socrates is there.” In his essay “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil,’ ” he glosses the “genius of the heart” as “a super-­Socrates who is in fact the god Dionysos” (Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy [Chicago, 1983], p. 175). This characterization hits the mark as long as—­and only as long as—­we are clear that in the end, Nietzsche considered himself to be a super-­Socrates.

iv

Crisis

The life that Nietzsche recounts to himself is depicted in the ten subchapters devoted to the books. After having distinguished his being from his writings, Nietzsche can draw on the books in order to review his becoming. The discussion of being and the contemplation of becoming are evidently of equal weight. Nietzsche allocates exactly the same number of sections to the ten subchapters as to the other parts of Ecce Homo, excepting the preface.1 The weighting is in accordance with the subtitle, How One Becomes What One Is. It appears all the more logical when we realize that the account of becoming takes place with constant regard to the task. Taking the task as a guiding thread, the chapters on the ten books are divided into three triads and one concluding piece. The first triad comprises the books that prepare the task. Nietzsche looks back to the time when he did not yet recognize himself with his task. The second triad presents the books that stand for the yes-­saying part of the task. The third triad follows with the books that represent the no-­saying part. The tenth book, finally—­the only one assigned a place outside the chronology—­is deployed in order to protect the task. Already in the prefaces he wrote in 1886 for the retitled editions of Human All-­Too-­Human, 1. The subchapters on the books have thirty-­four sections: The Birth of Tragedy (4), The Untimely Ones (3), Human All-­Too-­Human (6), Dawn (2), The Gay Science (1), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (8), Beyond Good and Evil (2), Genealogy of Morals (1), Twilight of the Idols (3), The Case of Wagner (4). Thirty-­four sections are also allotted to the book’s other parts: Prefatory Note (1), Why I Am So Wise (8), Why I Am So Prudent (10), Why I Write Such Good Books (6), Why I Am a Destiny (9). They are preceded by the Preface (4). Ecce Homo is thus divided into seventy-­two or into four and four-­times-­seventeen sections. See P. 17 and cf. P. 13, Footnote 12, P. 22, Footnote 7, P. 26, Footnote 15, P. 29, Footnote 19, and P. 57.

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Dawn, and The Birth of Tragedy as well as for the new, expanded edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche made his life into the object of contemplation, and in the prefaces to the two volumes of Human All-­Too-­Human, which he will refer to in Ecce Homo as “the monument of a crisis,” he emphasized the importance of the task for his reflections. The loss of the task, or the doubt as to whether he still had a right to his task, the loss or deep self-­doubt that forms the core of the crisis, he called the “greatest deprivation” in looking back from the fall of 1886.2 In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche now aims at the whole. The three triads articulate the entire period of time from The Birth of Tragedy to the completion of the Antichrist, with Nietzsche placing the decisive caesura between the first triad and the second. The first triad ends with the crisis in Nietzsche’s becoming. The second and third triads present the philosophic life, which begins with the crisis’s overcoming. The crisis has a prehistory. In Nietzsche’s account, its cornerstones are marked by The Birth of Tragedy on one side, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth on the other. That in the first piece he focuses on both books underscores the ten chapters’ main characteristic: They are not late self-­advertisements or some kind of reviews of the books appearing in the headings—­“The Birth of Tragedy,” “The Untimely Ones,” etc. Instead, we are dealing with stages of life’s course, considered and placed into relation with one another from the single point of view of becoming-­oneself. The books themselves are less objects of reflection than opportunities for it. Nietzsche makes this known also in the first piece, which is far from repeating the “Attempt at a Self-­Critique” with which he furnished the retitled 1886 edition of the Birth of Tragedy. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche presupposes the earlier self-­critique. He invites comparison with it unspokenly, throwing light on what we could expect if in the ten chapters it had been for the author a question of retracting his books. Instead of once again naming the basic error of the “artists’ metaphysics,” or going into the weaknesses of the rhetoric, the composition, and the style, Nietzsche directs attention to the potential for further development harbored by the writing, and to the effect that obscured this potential. The observer who wants to know what is possible must learn to disregard what is actual. Thus Nietzsche opens the part on his becoming with the paradoxical-­seeming request of achieving justice through forgetting, on the heels of which he has follow the reminder of what should sink into oblivion: “To be just to the ‘Birth of Tragedy’ (1872), one has to forget a few things. It had an effect and even fascinated 2. Human All-­Too-­Human: A Book for Free Spirits, vol. 2, Preface, 3 (KSA 2, pp. 372–­73). In the two prefaces to Human All-­Too-­Human, dating from spring 1886 and September 1886, the task appears three and seven times, respectively.

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by what was wrong with it.” It unfolded its effect through its “practical application to Wagnerei” and was before anything else “an event” in Wagner’s life: “only from then on were there great hopes around the name Wagner.” When Nietzsche requests that we forget the hopes of Wagnerism that he has “on his conscience,” he is telling us to disregard the event Wagner was for the author of the Birth of Tragedy. This cannot be Nietzsche’s last word, since the hopes he himself associated with Wagner, and the expectations Wagner placed on him, cannot be left out of the crisis’s prehistory.3 Yet it is his first word, retrospectively divorcing what belongs to him from what does not belong to him and thereby countering the confusion and confounding brought about by the firstling. Nietzsche mentions that he found the book cited several times as “The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music” and remarks: “one had ears only for a new formula for the art, the intention, the task of Wagner.” He leaves unmentioned the fact that the “rebirth of tragedy” is spoken of repeatedly in this writing, and all the more that in its preface the author, formally invoking Richard Wagner, declares himself to be convinced “of art as this life’s highest task and properly metaphysical activity.” Indeed, the phrase “rebirth of tragedy out of the spirit of music” validly expresses the program of 1872.4 The young Nietzsche, however, conceived of this rebirth not as something that had already been done by Wagner or that could be done by him on his own, but rather as a promise for the future whose realization depended essentially on Nietzsche. For it was only Nietzsche, and not Wagner or his source Schopenhauer, who in Nietzsche’s judgment was able to know what tragedy among the Greeks was all about. Since the Greeks did not understand themselves adequately, and since the idea of tragedy known by Nietzsche had never been realized anywhere or by anyone, not even by Sophocles or Aeschylus, the 3. In a letter to Erwin Rohde of February 1870, Nietzsche reports: “I gave a lecture here about Socrates and tragedy that aroused horror and misunderstanding. However, through it the bond with my Tribschen friends has become even tighter. I will yet become a walking hope: Richard Wagner also gave me to understand in the most touching way what destiny he sees set out for me. This is all very frightening.” In a letter to Nietzsche shortly before, Wagner expressed his hope thus: “You could now relieve me of much, even of a whole half portion of my destiny. And in doing this, you would perhaps be entirely pursuing your destiny [. . .] help me bring about the great ‘Renaissance’ in which Plato embraces Homer and Homer, filled with Plato’s ideas, now all the more becomes the greatest Homer.” KGB II 1, p. 95 and II 2, pp. 145–­46. 4. Nietzsche does not mention in his own name, either in the new 1886 edition or in Ecce Homo, the original title, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, which he replaced with The Birth of Tragedy: Or, Hellenism and Pessimism in 1886. (In KGW and KSA neither the original title nor the later one is rendered correctly.) On Nietzsche’s talk of the “rebirth of tragedy” see P. 40, Footnote 15.

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future rebirth would be nothing less than the true birth of tragedy. Nietzsche’s knowledge made the difference, and would help the idea, conceived of in an “objectionably Hegelian” way, become reality at a higher historical stage. Nietz­sche gave expression to his historical self-­confidence by ultimately characterizing his own endeavor in the preface “as a vortex and turning point,” which answered “the one turning point and vortex of so-­called world history” that he labeled Socrates in the book.5 The difference between the role of Wagner, whom he called his “pioneer” in the 1871 preface, and the task that the author of the Birth of Tragedy assigned to himself is not recapitulated by Nietzsche in Ecce Homo. He leaves it at the indication that “one” took away from the book’s title only the determination of Wagner’s task, and thereby “ignored” what the writing contained that was “at bottom valuable.” “Hellenism and Pessimism,” the addition that took the place of the “Spirit of Music” in the new 1886 edition, would “have been a more unambiguous title: namely as the first instruction in how the Greeks came to an end with pessimism—­by what means they overcame it . . .” Nietzsche says not a word about the fact that in the Birth of Tragedy he wanted to keep theoretical pessimism (the negation of the world) separate from practical pessimism (the negation of life), in order to opt for the former, following Schopenhauer, and against the latter, in contrast to Schopenhauer. Instead, after three ellipsis points, he continues: “Precisely tragedy is the proof that the Greeks were no pessimists: Schopenhauer blundered here, as he blundered in everything.” Two subsections in the first section are enough for Nietzsche to notify us of the distance to the two heroes of his youth who play the key parts in the crisis’s prehistory.6 To put into the correct light what he can grasp as remaining, as belonging to him, from the time before the philosophic life or in the early writings, Nietz­ sche must not only clarify the turn away from Wagner and Schopenhauer, as he did in the “Attempt at a Self-­Critique” and more lately in the Case of Wagner and in Twilight of the Idols, by means of the fundamental critique of 5. The Birth of Tragedy, Preface and 15, 5 (pp. 24 and 100). In the preface to the first edition, Nietzsche spoke in quotation marks of a “vortex of their being” (in reference to the “German hopes”). In the revision of the text for the second edition, undertaken soon after publication and still in 1872, it became vortex and turning point without quotation marks, thus the precise inversion of the historical characterization of Socrates. (KGW and KSA follow the wording of the second edition of 1874 and furnish the preface with the dateline “Basel, end of the year 1871,” which is missing in the first edition.) 6. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 1, 1–­2 (309); cf. 1, 3 (310). –­The first usage of task in the part that deals chronologically with Nietzsche’s becoming is reserved for the—­emphasized by Nietzsche—­task of Wagner. Nietzsche begins the contemplation with the confusion of his task with another’s.

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redemption and self-­or interestlessness, the critique of an orientation that, in both respects, for Wagner as well as Schopenhauer, stands in the way of the philosophic life.7 He also extends backward lines that are tied to much later or recently gained insights, and establishes continuities that are based on a determined choice. Saving the Birth of Tragedy does indeed require that “a few things” be “forgotten.” More must be forgotten than its effect on the circle of Wagner-­adherents and Schopenhauer-­reverers, or the contemporary success of the book—­which was the sole book of Nietzsche’s before the writing of Ecce Homo to have elicited a public controversy with prominent participation and undergone a second printing. It goes without saying that the evocation of the “tragic myth” of the Germans must be consigned to oblivion, and with it the announcement made by the firstling, which was not consistently “politically indifferent,” that “one day” the German spirit would “slay dragons, annihilate the vicious dwarves, and awaken Brünnhilde.”8 The oft-­invoked opposition of the Dionysian and the Apollonian is still mentioned by Nietz­ sche, but, as an “idea” in quotation marks, it is added to the “metaphysical” baggage with which the writing was laden. The opposition lost its raison d’être at the moment Nietzsche bade farewell to the idea of a primordial ground of the will which suffers from the necessity of the principium individuationis, and liberated the affirmation of life from the burden of its Schopenhauerian inheritance. Dionysian and Apollonian are thereafter aspects of Nietzsche’s aesthetics, “both comprehended as kinds of rush,”vii which philosophy is capable of integrating and overarching in an architecture of great style, as in Twilight of the Idols; or which Nietzsche, as he now claims for the firstling, wants to psychologically trace back to one phenomenon, namely, the Dionysian, in which he sees “the one root of the whole of Greek art,” as in Ecce Homo.9 To the extent Nietzsche releases the Dionysian from the opposition to the Apollonian, he can insert it into the antagonism on which everything has depended since Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and bring it into position against Christianity. In the “deep, hostile silence about Christianity” that he retrospectively attributes to the Birth of Tragedy, he detects the opposition that has been at issue from the beginning: Christianity “is nihilistic in the deepest sense, whereas in the Dionysian symbol the utmost limit of affirmation is reached.” The first of the “two decisive innovations” Nietzsche ascribes to the 7. The Case of Wagner, Turin Letter of May 1888, 3–­4; Epilogue 1–­2; consider Postscript 5 (pp. 16–­21, 50–­53, 43). Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 21–­24; consider 32 (pp. 125–­28, 130–­31). 8. The Birth of Tragedy 24, 8–­9 (pp. 153–­54); cf. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 1, 3 (310). 9. Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 10–­11 (pp. 117–­19). EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 1, 3 (310).

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Birth of Tragedy, “the understanding of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks,” becomes a landmark that points ahead to the authoritative alternative enunciated in the final version at the end of Ecce Homo: Dionysos against the Crucified. The other innovation concerns the self-­critique of philosophy with regard to its political effects and historical ramifications: “the understanding of Socratism,” “Socrates as a tool of Greek dissolution,” “ ‘rationality’ at any price as a dangerous, as a life-­undermining force.” Here it is the opposition to Socrates as the first “theoretical man” that is to sink into oblivion. The superseded opposition to a type that finds its “infinite satisfaction” with the world in knowledge.10 The saving of what is “at bottom valuable”—­the Dionysian in its oppositional stance toward Christianity and the critique, with a view to life and reason, of “rationality” at any price—­is for the sake of philosophy. Likewise the discontinuities, spoken and unspoken, have bearing on philosophy. How could it be otherwise, if the beginning of the philosophic life is the most important caesura separating Nietzsche from the Birth of Tragedy? The turn away from Wagner’s redemption through art, from Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of will, from mythic transfiguration for the purpose of culture’s resurgence—­all contribute to the result that the artist no longer competes with the philosopher and illusion is no longer to win out over science. The winged words that existence and the world are eternally justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon belong to a past to which no path leads back. Life does not have to be seduced into yes-­saying by art, instinct does not have to be defended against science. From the vantage point achieved in Ecce Homo, the “real opposition” appears thus: On one side stands the instinct “that turns against life with subterranean vengefulness.” Nietzsche names it “the degenerating instinct,” but an instinct nonetheless, with which he associates Christianity, Schopenhauer, “in a certain sense already the philosophy of Plato,” the whole of idealism. The “typical forms” in which the misguided instinct manifests itself have in common that they revolt against reality, negate the world as it is, want to subordinate life to a higher power.11 On the other side, Nietzsche locates “a formula of the highest affirmation, born of fullness, of overfullness, a yes-­saying without reservation, even to suffering, even to guilt, even to all that is questionable and strange in existence . . .” In the ellipsis the reader can insert the denomination of the formula that Nietzsche disclosed at the end of the first part: amor fati. 10. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 1, 4 (310). The Birth of Tragedy 15, 3 (pp. 98–­99). 11. When Nietzsche places Plato’s philosophy “in a certain sense” alongside Christianity and Schopenhauer, he does so with a view to the teaching of the Ideas and with regard to the historical effect of the poetry of the Phaedo in particular.

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The sentence immediately following expresses in all clarity the gap that lies between Ecce Homo and the Birth of Tragedy, that separates the formula amor fati from the aesthetic justification, that yawns between the positions before and after the crisis: “This final, most joyous, extravagantly exuberant Yes to life is not only the highest insight, it is also the deepest, the one most strictly confirmed and maintained by truth and science.”12 The philosopher’s Yes does not contradict but stands in accord with science and truth. For after the caesura, existence and the world are “justified” by knowledge. Nothing has to be exempted from knowledge, everything can be exposed to it. The “yes-­saying without reservation” proves itself in just this. The affirmation of the amor fati, obtained from fullness and aiming at the whole, allows Nietzsche to direct the objection of nihilism, which faith raises against the philosopher’s will to truth, against the Christian faith and any other that makes the justification of the world and the meaning of existence dependent on an otherworldly being or a moral order established by it, with the consequence that such a faith cannot approve of existence as a whole and abandons the world to meaninglessness as soon as the otherworldly being and the moral order lose their credibility. Nietzsche traces nihilism, the devaluation of the world, the evasion of reality, back to an insurmountable weakness that he names the “décadence instinct.” Because he puts knowledge in the center, the opposition between affirming and taking revenge on knowledge is sharpened. Applying the “measure of value” from the preface—­the question “How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?”—­Nietzsche translates strength and weakness with respect to knowledge into courage and cowardice: “precisely as far as courage may venture forward, precisely according to that measure of strength, one approaches the truth. Knowledge, saying yes to reality, is as much of a necessity for the strong as are, for the weak, under the inspiration of weakness, cowardice and flight from reality—­the ‘ideal’ . . .” Courage and cowardice in knowledge follow from different natures. At the end of the discussion Nietzsche seems to rely entirely on the natural evidentness of the opposition, its intensity and its scope: He who comprehends not only the word “Dionysian,” but himself in this word, has no need of a refutation of Plato, of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer. The decline of life, to which Nietzsche 12. To convince oneself that Nietzsche knows how little the sentence corresponds to the position taken by the Birth of Tragedy, it suffices to read the “Attempt at a Self-­Critique.” Something similar applies to the statement a few lines before in Ecce Homo: “How high I had leapt with both,” i.e., with the two innovations claimed for the Birth of Tragedy, “over the pathetic flatheaded chatter of optimism contra pessimism!” Pessimism contra optimism names a pervasive confrontation in the firstling, in which Socrates was not “recognized as a décadent” but made the object of critique as an optimist.

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refers in a provocative final turn—­provided he is not alluding to the death of God—­is apparently refutation enough. However, one should not underestimate the task that has to be fulfilled by him who really wants to comprehend himself in the word “Dionysian,” so that, according to the revised concept of the Dionysian, in affirming life he knows himself to be determined by the highest and the deepest insight.13 What is true of the Dionysian is no less true of the tragic. In the one case as in the other, Nietzsche superimposes the late position onto the early one, and in both cases he is essentially concerned with philosophy and the philosopher. When Nietzsche advances in his contemplation from the Dionysian to the tragic, he no longer draws on the Birth of Tragedy itself, but instead quotes a passage from another look back, which is taken from the last section of Twilight of the Idols. The reader can thus recognize without difficulty that what Nietzsche says about the tragic belongs to the present, also and especially what he is able to say about himself as “the first tragic philosopher.” Nietzsche claims to have found “at last the knowledge of what the psychology of tragedy is.” But what interests him, and what he comments on, is the psychology of the tragic poet. To the tragedian, it is not a matter of “getting rid of terror and pity” or—­as Nietzsche, along with Jacob Bernays, understands Aristotle, who of course is talking about tragedy—­“purging oneself of a dangerous affect through a vehement discharging.”14 For him, it is instead a matter of “being oneself the eternal pleasure of becoming, over and beyond terror and pity, that pleasure which includes even the pleasure in annihilating . . .” The characterization of the tragic poet—­not of the hero or the spectator of the tragedy—­by the eternal pleasure of becoming is followed by Nietzsche’s proclamation: “In this sense I have the right to understand myself as the first tragic philosopher—­that is, the uttermost opposite and antipode of a pessimistic philosopher.” Nietzsche is no longer speaking as a classical philologist, musician, artist, or author propagating a weltanschauung, but as 13. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 2, 1–­3 (311–­12). Preface 3, 3 (259). The Birth of Tragedy 5, 5 and 24, 6 (pp. 47 and 152); cf. Attempt at a Self-­Critique 5 (p. 17). See Pp. 10–11; consider Pp. 25–27 and 31. 14. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1449b27–­30; Jacob Bernays, Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles über die Tragödie (Breslau, 1857), pp. 141, 145, 148–­49, 173; further, the interpretation by Paul Yorck von Wartenburg, building on Bernays but integrated into a Christian perspective, with which Nietzsche was also familiar: Die Katharsis des Aristoteles und der Oedipus Coloneus des Sophokles (Berlin, 1866), pp. 14–­15, 16, 22–­24; consider the conclusion, which is based on a theology of history and diametrically opposed to the early as well as to the late Nietz­ sche, pp. 34–­35 and 37–­38 (Karlfried Gründer edition, pp. 162, 164, 170–­72, 182–­83, 185–­86). See The Birth of Tragedy 22, 1 (p. 142).

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a philosopher. And he formally declares himself to be the antipode of the very philosopher whom the author of the Birth of Tragedy recognized as the sole sworn witness. The tragic philosopher is another name for the Dionysian philosopher. Nietzsche can appear just as well under the one as under the other, since the newly understood Dionysian contains in itself, and brings forth out of itself, the newly understood tragic. “Before me,” he states, “there is not this transposition of the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos: tragic wisdom is lacking.” Tragic wisdom, which recognizes the suffering and destruction in the pleasure of becoming, and includes them in the affirmation of life, does not for a moment make the statement of tragedy its own: I would wish never to have been born.15 It has nothing to do with the “wisdom of Silenus,” which the young Nietzsche put into the words: “Miserable race of a single day, children of chance and of toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is entirely unattainable for you: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—­to die soon.” The attitude suggested to man by Silenus’s speech—­the Birth of Tragedy elevated it alternatively into “Greek folk wisdom” and “bitter folk philosophy”—­may stand very well for the pessimist, whose uttermost opposite the tragic philosopher in Ecce Homo understands himself to be.16 That Nietzsche presents himself as the first tragic philosopher is part of the rhetoric of the new, unheard-­of, unique, which is supposed to orient Ecce Homo toward the great task and prepare the reader for the event of the Antichrist. The first tragic philosopher is joined later by the first immoralist and the first psychologist. All the “firstlings,” which come together in one person, are designed to authenticate the revaluer and his “demand of mankind.” The rhetorical preparation’s hyperbolic manner is apt to cover over or drown out a hint that is of no small importance for the philosopher’s self-­understanding: In connection with the proclamation of the right to understand himself as the first tragic philosopher, and only in this connection, Nietzsche makes known a doubt. Vainly he sought evidence of tragic wisdom among the great philosophers in the two centuries before Socrates. A doubt, however, remained to him regarding Heraclitus. Not only does Nietzsche “at all events” have to “acknowledge” in Heraclitus that which is “most closely related” to him “of what 15. On the statement of tragedy, see Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens. Reflexionen zu Rousseaus «Rêveries» in zwei Büchern (Munich, 2011), p. 167 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life: Reflections on Rousseau’s “Rêveries” in Two Books (Chicago, 2016), p. 123]. 16. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 3 (312). The Birth of Tragedy 3, 2 and 4, 3–­4 (pp. 35, 41); cf. 7, 8; 10, 1; 11, 1 (pp. 57, 73, 75). See Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3rd ed. rev. (Leipzig, 1859), II, 4, chap. 46, “Von der Nichtigkeit und dem Leiden des Lebens,” pp. 670–­ 73. On the philosophical pathos, cf. The Case of Wagner, Turin Letter of May 1888, 1, 3 (p. 14).

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has hitherto been thought.” Over and beyond the thinking that links him to the earlier one, he concedes to him in principle the possibility of historically anticipating the teaching of a later one: “The teaching of the ‘eternal return,’ that is, of the absolute and infinitely repeated circulation of all things—­this teaching of Zarathustra’s might in the end have already been taught by Heraclitus.” If the Eternal Return might have been taught by Heraclitus, this means in so many words that the teaching is not tied to a unique historical constellation. Nietzsche claims no privileged historical moment for the teacher of the Eternal Return. He does not make the doctrine dependent on the history of Platonism, on two thousand years of Christianity, or on modern ideas, to which it would be dialectically bound. With the hint of his “doubt,” he indicates that he does not understand philosophy and himself in terms of historicism. The proclamation of the “first tragic philosopher” in Ecce Homo has its complement in the appearance of the “last disciple of the philosopher Dionysos” at the end of Twilight of the Idols.17 From philosophy and the philosopher, Nietzsche turns his gaze back toward hope. The concluding section, which builds the bridge to Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, begins with the most popular feature of the Birth of Tragedy: “Out of this writing there speaks an immense hope.” The hope was decisively directed toward the collaboration with Wagner, which failed. Nietzsche omits the failure, and at the same time presupposes it, when he continues: “In the end I lack any reason to renounce the hope for a Dionysian future of music.” As the Antichrist will show, however, for Nietzsche hope has in the meantime taken on a different status, and music no longer represents what it signified in the Birth of Tragedy. The hope Nietzsche invokes18 is for a tragic age that is supposed to carry out music’s Dionysian future. “Music” is the placeholder for an activity of mankind that has not yet been determined. For the speech is now aimed at nothing less than the human species. In case his “assassination attempt on two millennia of antinature and defilement of man” should succeed, Nietzsche predicts a “new party of life that takes into its hands the greatest of all tasks, the higher-­breeding of mankind.” Let us give no additional space here to the promise of the tragic age, in which “the highest art of yes-­saying to life, tragedy,” will be reborn. It does not testify to a “responsibility for all millennia,” but is instead likely to provide the Nietzscheanism of the future with keywords for the darkest partisanship in the ambit of the Will 17. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 3 (312–­13). Twilight of the Idols, What I Owe to the Ancients 5 (p. 160). 18. Nietzsche had initially written: “In the end I lack any reason to renounce my hope for a Dionysian future of music.” Later he replaced my with the (Faksimile, p. 51).

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to Power doctrine. That Nietzsche is attempting to retroactively resolve the blunder of the artists’ metaphysics, which was tightly bound up with Wagner, along the lines of an artists’ politics, does not make the matter any better. As a “psychologist” he remarks that what he heard “in Wagnerian music in his early years” had “nothing at all to do with Wagner.” What he conceived as “Dionysian music” described the music that he heard. He had to “instinctively translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit” that he bore within himself. The psychologist goes so far in his teleological interpretation as to have the Wagner celebrated by the early Nietzsche appear as an anticipation of the poet Nietzsche would later become. As a “proof ” he offers the fourth Untimely Meditation: “in all the psychologically decisive passages,” Nietzsche affirms, “it speaks of me alone—­one may without hesitation insert my name or the word ‘Zarathustra’ where the text gives the word ‘Wagner.’ The entire image of the dithyrambic artist is the image of the preexisting poet of Zarathustra, sketched with abysmal depth, and without even touching the Wagnerian reality for a moment.” Even more, the “thought of Bayreuth” is supposed to have been transformed into Zarathustra’s “great midday, where the most select consecrate themselves for the greatest of all tasks.” Indeed, “the event of Zarathustra” is supposed to be expressed already in Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. But when Nietzsche speaks, with a view to Zarathustra’s prophecy, of the “act of an immense purification and consecration of mankind”—­putting his poetry against Wagner’s “sacred stage play”—­it must not be overlooked that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this very “event” gets itself involved in a deep crisis. And when he claims that in his early writings, “absolute certainty about what I am” was projected “onto some accidental reality,” e.g., onto Wagner or Bayreuth, it has to be noted that Nietzsche has not yet taken a step toward the knowledge of what made the caesura in his life necessary. There is no doubt: hope, tragedy, instinct—­Nietzsche attempts to save more than can be saved.19 Continuity is also in the foreground in the contemplation of the Untimely Ones. As in the first piece, the preparation for the task is the guiding point of view. What led to the crisis must, by contrast, be inferred from the account ex post. Nietzsche provides an important hint when he draws attention to the “restoration of the concept of ‘culture’ ” as the vanishing point common to the four books, whose titles he leaves unmentioned at first and, in the case of the first two, to the last. For this vanishing point lies along the extension of the line from the Birth of Tragedy, in the hope and devotion that the author associated with it. Prospectively important to Nietzsche is the “warlike” trait 19. EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 4 (313–­15).

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of the Untimely Ones: “They prove that I was no ‘John-­a-­dreams,’ that it gives me pleasure to draw my sword—­perhaps also that I have a dangerously free wrist.” The four show the stepchild of his time ready and able early on to take up the quarrel with the ruling opinion, the most powerful currents, the faith of the present. Nietzsche explicitly gives himself credit for the fact that in the Untimely Ones—­in Twilight of the Idols he will appear once more as an “Untimely One”—­he countered the decay with “two images of the hardest selfishness, self-­discipline,” embodied by two “untimely types par excellence, full of sovereign contempt toward everything around them that was called ‘Reich,’ ‘education,’ ‘Christianity,’ ‘Bismarck,’ ‘success’—­Schopenhauer and Wagner, or, in one word, Nietzsche . . .” Looking back at the Untimely Ones, he speaks of “four assassination attempts.” He does not, however, go into all four. To the second and by far most weighty writing he devotes only three sentences.20 To the fourth, two are allotted, and these do not deal only with it. Nietzsche concentrates on the first and the third Untimely Ones. David Friedrich Strauß and Arthur Schopenhauer give him the opportunity to sharpen the concept of the philosopher through demarcations, oppositions, and distinctions. To the attack on “the first German free spirit,” which opens the Untimely Meditations, he attaches the assessment: “to this day nothing is more foreign and unrelated to me than the entire European and American species of ‘libres penseurs.’ ” He finds himself to be “in an even deeper conflict with them than with any of their opponents.” They are not free spirits, but partisans of the “modern ideas.” They count among the improvers of mankind, who paint themselves on the wall and say to it, “ecce homo!” They are believers in the ideal, in morality. It is in objection to them more than anyone else that he declares in Ecce Homo: “I am the first immoralist.”21 As little as Nietzsche ever wanted to be confused with the free spirit Strauß, he now wants just as little to be mistaken for the atheist Schopenhauer. Nietzsche confesses: “Atheism was what led me to Schopenhauer.” But atheism is not enough. Nietzsche speaks of Schopenhauer as his “opposite,” not in this or that respect, but in consideration of the concept of the philosopher. The proclamation “I am the first immoralist” again designates the dividing line and recalls a distinction 20. The third sentence on On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life deserves to be recorded, since it is Nietzsche’s last word on the oft-­cited “historical sense”: “In this treatise, the ‘historical sense’ of which this century is proud was recognized for the first time as a sickness, as a typical sign of decay.” EH III, The Untimely Ones 1 (316). Cf. The Gay Science IV, 337 (pp. 564–­65) and V, We Fearless Ones, 357 (p. 599); Beyond Good and Evil 224 (pp. 157–­60). 21. EH III, The Untimely Ones 2 (317–­19). Twilight of the Idols, Morality as Antinature 6 (p. 87). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 44 (pp. 60–­63).

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Nietzsche made elsewhere: Schopenhauer’s atheism is an atheism from probity. It is out of morality that he denies himself belief in God. This goes hand in hand with the fact that he believes he can give up the Christian God and nevertheless retain Christian morality.22 As before in the case of the Birth of Tragedy, the determinations of the philosopher that Nietzsche makes in the treatment of the Untimely Ones are the determinations that have validity for Ecce Homo, from the “immoralist” to the “terrible explosive that puts everything in danger.” Both self-­ characterizations, the immoralist and the explosive, will play a considerable role in “Why I Am a Destiny.” As regards his becoming, Nietzsche stresses that in the third and the fourth Untimely Ones, “a problem of education without equal, a new concept of self-­discipline, self-­defense to the point of hardness, a path to greatness and to world-­historical tasks” craved “its first expression.” It is not by chance or carelessly that he speaks of tasks in the plural. His intuition and his confidence agreed that only a world-­historical task could be in accordance with his nature, could demand it completely, without the One task’s yet being before his eyes. On the “path to greatness” he felt the urgent need to make himself discharge his duty by applying the highest standard. According to this understanding, the Untimely Ones are treatises of education or exercises in self-­testing. At the same time, he construes them as acts of self-­protection and enterprises of self-­preservation. He defended himself, his nature, that which he can be and should be, not only against assimilation to his time and its co-­opting, smoothing-­out, equalizing force, but against overextension through the task’s being prematurely assigned. In short, in Schopenhauer as Educator and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth he sees that very prudence at work which in the first part’s conclusion (II, 9) he praised as a kind of cunning of instinct: the mistaking of oneself for others or the freighting of them with one’s own aspirations. A projection that counters the danger of “catching sight of ” oneself with the task too early. Nietzsche now speaks, not of projection, but of “formulas, signs, linguistic means” that the two “still unascertained types” put into his hands. Schopenhauer he made use of, as Plato made use of Socrates, as a semiotic for himself. This was also suggested “with perfectly uncanny sagacity” in the third Untimely One. In the passage referred to, the young Nietzsche said about Schopenhauer: “For him there was only One task and a hundred thousand means of tackling it: 22. EH III, The Untimely Ones 2–­3 (318–­20). Beyond Good and Evil 55 and 56 (pp. 74–­75). The Gay Science V, We Fearless Ones, 357 (pp. 599–­601). See Footnote 7 and consider Was ist Nietz­ sches Zarathustra?, p. 179 with n. 181 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 143–­44 with n. 181].

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One meaning and innumerable hieroglyphs for expressing it.”23 Looking back at the last two Untimely Ones, Nietzsche comes to the judgment “that they speak at bottom only of me.” In the fourth he wants to identify a “vision” of his future, in the third he sees inscribed his “innermost history,” his becoming. “Above all my vow!” By speaking about Schopenhauer, he outlined the aim that he wanted to reach. Or, as he notes in an earlier version of the manuscript: “What the philosopher is supposed to be, what I was not at all at that time, this I wrote, with impatient hardness toward myself, on the wall.” Nietz­ sche places particular value on the contrasting of the philosopher with the scholar deployed by Schopenhauer as Educator. With what he calls “a bitter piece of the psychology of the scholar,” the scholar and nonphilosopher Nietz­ sche kept his eyes on what he could not remain, what he was not permitted to be content with. Thus the piece on the scholar becomes evidence for the teleological integration that already stamped the chapter on the Birth of Tragedy: “it expresses the feeling of distance, the deep sureness about what could be task for me, what merely means, entr’acte, and secondary work.” The contrast between the scholar and the philosopher, too, is translated from the either-­or of critique into the one-­after-­another of a meaningful development: “It is my prudence to have been many things and in many places in order to become one thing—­in order to be able to come to one thing. I had also to be a scholar for a time.” At the end of the contemplation of the Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Ones, the course from stage to stage appears organic, purposeful, without a break. Nietzsche’s becoming-­oneself was apparently steered by a

23. Nietzsche continues in Schopenhauer as Educator: “It belonged to the glorious conditions of his existence that he could actually live for such a task, in line with his motto, vitam impendere vero, and that none of the actual vulgarities of life’s need oppressed him.” (First edition, p. 93; KSA 1, p. 411.) On Schopenhauer’s motto, which he borrowed from Rousseau, cf. Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens, pp. 200–­202 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, pp. 148–­ 49]. –­Speaking for Nietzsche’s statements about the third Untimely One’s being not only a matter of retrospective stylization is, among other things, a letter to Cosima Wagner from December 19, 1876, that Andreas Urs Sommer has pointed out (NK 6/2, p. 506). Therein it says: “will you be surprised if I admit to you a difference with Schopenhauer’s teaching which arose gradually and came to my awareness almost suddenly? In nearly all general propositions I do not stand on his side; already when I was writing about Sch. I noticed that I was over and beyond everything dogmatic in it; all that mattered to me was the man. In the meantime my ‘reason’ has been very active—­so that life has again become a degree more difficult, the burden greater! How will one even stand it in the end?” (KGB II 5, p. 210.) It cannot be surprising that in the letter for Cosima’s birthday Nietzsche does not touch on the role played by Richard Wagner in Nietzsche’s reason’s becoming “very active” in the preceding months.

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deep instinct or ruled by a great reasonableness. In view of the task, his life looks “simply wonderful.”24 It is the task with which Nietzsche knows himself; through which he ascertains his nature, the rank-­order of his capacities, his passions, his virtues, and his skills; which puts him in a position to become one thing; which allows him to integrate his history and contemplate it as meaningful. Since contemplation of his becoming presupposes knowledge of his task, Nietzsche makes use in the account of a retrospective teleology, which includes the teleology of evil. Before he catches sight of the task, and of himself, the picture is necessarily different. Insight is preceded by hope and intuition. Before knowledge, trial and error reign. The seriousness of the crisis interrupts the narrative in which everything fits together for the best. In the crisis, there is uncertainty about how it is to be overcome, what the right decision is, which path to take, whether there is a path at all. After the crisis is overcome, what began with it can be appreciated, how much good grew out of it, how indispensable it was. It is characteristic of the teleology of evil that the evil that gives birth to the good is not chosen, precisely because it is an evil. It is not at the doer’s disposal. It belongs to the look back, to the contemplator. Nietzsche begins the last piece of the triad on the books that prepared him for the task with a bombshell: “ ‘Human All-­Too-­Human’ is the monument of a crisis.” Unlike what was suggested by the previous two pieces, becoming-­ oneself by no means proceeded without a break. The second blow follows immediately. In the next sentence the author says about the book: “with it I have freed myself from what did not belong to my nature.” The break was necessary for becoming-­oneself. The crisis had to separate what Nietzsche is according to his nature from what he should not be according to his nature. What this is about specifically, Nietzsche once again formulates without delay: “idealism does not belong to me.” Projection or not, the Birth of Tragedy and the Untimely Ones were writings of an author who remained under the spell of idealism. Whatever they may have anticipated, whatever they may have pointed to, they stand no less for Nietzsche’s deviation from himself, for his unfreedom. He does not want the subtitle, A Book for Free Spirits, to be understood in any other sense. “Free spirit” is expressly to be applied to him and indicates the departure from his unfreedom: “a spirit that has become free, that has retaken possession of itself.” Hence the crisis had a cathartic effect. No tragedy contributed to the catharsis. The emblematic usage of the name of Voltaire on 24. EH III, The Untimely Ones 2–­3 (319–­21). II, 2 and 9 (282 and 293–­95). The passage from an earlier version of the manuscript for printing is found in KSA 14, p. 488.

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the cover and the title page points in the direction of mockery and laughter.25 Nietzsche’s mockery and laughter, however, are forms of expression of a great seriousness. Of the resolution to bring the hidden impulses and assumptions of his own ideals and valuations to light, and of the will to gain distance from the objects of his devotion. “If one looks more closely, one discovers a merciless spirit that knows all the hiding-­niches where the ideal is at home—­where it has its castle dungeons and as it were its ultimate security.” Self-­imposed brightness and coldness are the means of choice for liberating oneself from “idealism.” “One error after another is serenely laid on ice, the ideal is not refuted—­it freezes to death . . .” It forfeits its dazzling magic, loses its beguiling force, and can be known as what it is only from a distance. “Here for example ‘the genius’ freezes to death; a corner further on ‘the saint’ freezes to death; under a thick icicle ‘the hero’ freezes to death; in the end, ‘faith,’ so-­called ‘conviction,’ freezes to death, also ‘pity’ cools off significantly—­almost everywhere the ‘thing-­in-­itself ’ freezes to death . . .” The seven subjects selected by Nietzsche all appeared in his early writings—­the thing-­in-­itself, mediated by Schopenhauer, repeatedly so, and likewise, following Wagner and Schopenhauer, pity. In the center stands faith,26 which sums up into One what the merciless spirit has to liberate itself from as soon as it begins wandering in the prohibited. For the decisive distance-­taking and liberation, Nietzsche deliberately uses the metaphors of cooling off and freezing to death. They denote the first act of that voluntary life in ice and high mountains that he described philosophy as in the preface.27 The trigger of the crisis is a disturbing disappointment. Nietzsche connects it with the first Bayreuth Festivals, for which he presented the programmatic writing in the summer of 1876. He counts the vividly experienced estrangement from everything he encountered there among the preconditions of the later book, with which he was to take possession, for the first time, “of 25. After the subtitle A Book for Free Spirits, the first edition’s cover and the title page read: “Dedicated / to the memory of Voltaire / in commemoration of the day of his death / May 30, 1778.” (KSA does not report this part of the title in the edition itself, but only in the commentary volume, KSA 14, in an incorrect rendering.) Nietzsche comments on the addition in Ecce Homo: “The name Voltaire on a writing by me—­that was really progress—­toward me . . .” He calls Voltaire a “grandseigneur of the spirit: precisely what I also am.” The stress here lies on: what I also am—­namely, besides being a philosopher. In the new edition of 1886, the reference to Voltaire is deleted from both the cover and the title page. Consider Beyond Good and Evil 35 (p. 54). 26. In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche formally exhorted his friends and himself to faith: “Only dare now to be tragic men: for you shall be redeemed. You shall conduct the Dionysian procession from India to Greece! Arm yourselves for the hard fight, but have faith in the wonders of your God!” 20, 3 (p. 132). Cf. 24, 9 (p. 154). 27. EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 1 (322–­23). Preface 3, 2 (258).

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himself ”: “I recognized nothing, I hardly recognized Wagner.” He found the artist, whom he, in order to help the idea of tragedy—­for a humanitarian purpose—­someday to become reality, had claimed for the German myth in the Birth of Tragedy, “translated into German” by others, if not by Wagner himself. Wagner did not allow himself to be set straight by Nietzsche. “The Wagnerian had become master over Wagner!” Richard Wagner in Bayreuth proved to be the opposite of the fulfillment of a great hope. A “hair-­raising company” in which “no monster” was missing, “not even the anti-­Semite,” opened Nietzsche’s eyes about Wagner and about himself—­for the most disturbing disappointment concerned himself. How could he have been so blind? How was it possible that he was ever invested in Bayreuth? That he gave himself over to the hope for a renewal of culture through Teutons, Middle Ages, Wagner? That he expected redemption through art, music, tragedy? How was he capable of such a blunder? Nietzsche speaks of nothing less than a total aberration of his instinct. Instinct did not by any means keep the becoming-­ oneself on a secure course. It led Nietzsche away from what he is. It made him lose himself in what “did not belong” to him. The total aberration that Nietzsche felt designates the crisis. The particular blunder, “whether it is now called Wagner or Basel professorship,” he recognized as a mere sign of the aberration as a whole. A recognition that was accompanied by the insight “that it was high time to return to and reflect on myself.” A reversal in the direction of view was needed. Here the laying-­on-­ice comes into play, the distance-­ taking from reverence and devotion. With the “blunder” Wagner, more than one ideal was in question. In the enlightenment about the “blunder” Basel professorship, the task demonstrated its critical capacity even though it had not yet been determined. For as soon as Nietzsche accounted to himself for his doings and refrainings—­for which the “blunder” Wagner gave him every reason—­it was not difficult to perceive that his philologist’s existence did not satisfy the aspirations of a world-­historical task. In evaluating the stretch of road he had covered, he arrived at the estimate of having ten years behind him “where the nourishment of the spirit quite simply” stood still for him, and he learned “nothing useful” in addition. His “idealities” turned out to be unfounded, his knowledge was deficient in “realities.” No way out of the crisis was in sight by continuing this existence. Nietzsche indicates that he not only read the two aforementioned blunders as signs of one aberration, but suspected a causal connection between them: The wrongly chosen professional activity leads to the need for “a numbing of the feeling of desolation and hunger by means of a narcotic art.” Generally spoken and aimed at the many: “One piece of antinature formally compels a second.” It would, however, be a great trivialization of the crisis in which Nietzsche found himself to want

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to reduce the “blunder” Wagner to Nietzsche’s having craved Wagner “as an opiate”—­like “a great number” of his younger contemporaries in the German Reich. The seriousness of the crisis resulted from Nietzsche’s confusing his task with Wagner’s or having interpreted himself in terms of his cooperation with Wagner. The admission that this interpretation was an error, the insight that his hopes were illusions, the disappointment in his own judgment, made every new interpretation doubtful. The failed “ideal” could not be replaced by another—­which might prove to be just as illusory, groundless, doomed to failure. He could not string together faith on faith, lurch from devotion to devotion. The task itself was at stake. This is the meaning of the question Nietzsche asked himself, of whether he still had a right to his task.28 The crisis necessitates the periagoge. It commands, together with the reversal of the direction of view, the questioning of the highest valuations. It requires dissociation from the dearest ideas and the holiest duties. It demands, for a certain time, the suspension of judgment. It asks for what Nietzsche elsewhere refers to as “cruelty toward oneself.” In Ecce Homo he speaks of his “instinct”: “At that time my instinct decided inexorably against any longer giving in, going along, mistaking myself for another.” Instinct turns against the “total aberration” of instinct. It is Nietzsche’s nature that gives him the impulse, force, and means to divest himself of “what did not belong” to him. “Everything seemed to me preferable to that unworthy ‘selflessness’ into which I had at first fallen out of ignorance, out of youth, in which I later remained stuck out of inertia, out of so-­called ‘feeling of duty.’ ” That Nietzsche puts ignorance at the head of the self-­deviation and calls “inertia” what was a feeling of duty to him indicates the disengagement that he brought about by means of cruelty toward his preferences and habits. Yet unlike in the preface to the new edition of Human All-­Too-­Human two years before, he does not emphasize the “decisive event” of the “great disengagement.” He also leaves unmentioned the “dangerous privilege” of the spirit that has become free, i.e., “of being permitted to live for the experiment and offer itself to the adventure.” He refrains from encapsulating the beginning of the philosophic life in the image of the seafarer who sets out onto the open sea. An image that stresses the courage required to push off from solid land, and the awareness of freedom that accompanies the departure.29 Instead, he emphatically draws 28. EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 2, 1–­5 and 3, 1–­3 (323–­25). Cf. Human All-­Too-­Human II, Preface, 3 (pp. 372–­73). 29. Human All-­Too-­Human I, Preface 3 and 4 (pp. 15–­18). Cf. The Gay Science V, We Fearless Ones, 343 (p. 574). See Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens, pp. 77 and 81 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, pp. 51 and 54–­55].

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attention to the distinctiveness of his nature. It not only rendered him capable of withstanding the crisis, but also, as he highlights in a separate subsection, enabled him to accomplish the periagoge in a politically acceptable way, without any adverse impact or repercussions. Taking up the talk of his “double origin” that stood at the beginning of “Why I Am So Wise,” he brings to bear “that bad inheritance” from his father’s side, the susceptibility to sickness and decadence, which came to his aid, in a way he can “not admire enough,” “at exactly the right time”: “Sickness released me slowly: it spared me any break,” i.e., any visible break that would be disturbing to others, “any violent and offensive step. I forfeited no benevolence at that time and gained much more. Sickness likewise gave me a right to a complete reversal of all my habits.” Sickness provided him with the right to the way of life he needed in order to overcome what he had been carrying around with him “like a sickness” after the departure from Bayreuth: “it gave me the gift of necessitating lying still, being idle, waiting and being patient. But that means thinking! . . .” The idleness that is essentially thinking allowed Nietzsche to return to himself, and the Beisichselbstsein he achieved in thinking allowed him to experience a rich happiness.30 The way of life to which the sickness forced him contained the answer to the crisis.31 The endogenous, as it were organic, strand in Nietz­ sche’s account of the beginning of the philosophic life does not replace the voluntative trait, focused on a radical caesura, that was stressed by the ideals’ “merciless” laying-­on-­ice and the “inexorable” decision against mistaking oneself for another. Instead, it joins and underpins it by freeing up the view of the beginning’s fundamental presupposition. Nietzsche again unmistakably brings the voluntative trait to the fore by calling Human All-­Too-­Human, which he called “the monument of a crisis” in the first section’s first sentence, “this monument of a rigorous self-­discipline” in the fifth section’s first sentence. He now credits self-­discipline with having put “a sudden end” for him to “all ‘higher swindle,’ ‘idealism,’ ‘beautiful feeling,’ and other effeminacies that were brought in.” In the 1886 preface to Human All-­Too-­Human II, he 30. “Never have I had so much happiness with myself as in the sickest and most painful times of my life: one has only to take a look at the ‘Dawn’ or something like the ‘Wanderer and His Shadow’ to comprehend what this ‘return to me’ was: a highest kind of convalescence itself! . . .  The other merely followed from this.” EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 4, 3 (326). 31. What results from the crisis for Nietzsche arises for Rousseau out of a long-­cherished resolve, and where the former offers the sickness as a justification of his idleness and his happiness, the latter points for the same purpose to the persecution to which he was exposed. See Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire III, 7–­10 and V, 15 (OCP I, pp. 1014–­15 and 1047) as well as Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens, pp. 74–­76 and 174–­75 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, pp. 48–­50 and 129–­30].

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singled out bravery in a similar way, and expressed the conscious, methodical enterprise of self-­examination in the following way: “Solitary henceforth and badly mistrustful of myself, I thus took sides, not without wrath, against myself and for everything that did harm to and was hard on precisely me.” The periagoge does not come off without self-­discipline, self-­examination, or the capacity for cruelty toward oneself. Nietzsche calls it probity.32 In the final section on Human All-­Too-­Human, Nietzsche stresses “with what tremendous sureness” he at that time “held in hand his task and what is world-­historical in it,” just as in the final section on the Untimely Ones he claimed for himself “deep sureness” about what could be task for him, what merely means, and in the final section on the Birth of Tragedy he retrospectively asserted “absolute certainty about what I am.” The triple insistence on inner certainty about himself underscores the belonging-­together of the pieces in the first triad, which precede knowledge of the task but seem to be oriented toward the task in retrospect through their divination of his nature. At the end of the discussion of the crisis, Nietzsche resumes the teleological account. As in the Birth of Tragedy and the last two Untimely Ones, in Human All-­Too-­Human too he avoided the “little word ‘I’ ” with his “instinctive guile” and lit up someone else “with a world-­historical glory.” In this case, not Schopenhauer or Wagner, who belong to the time before the crisis, but Paul Rée, whom he introduces as one of his friends. The author of the Origin of the Moral Sensations served the author of the Book for Free Spirits as, so to speak, a pseudonym, behind which none other than “Nietzsche, the first immoralist” 32. EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 4, 1–­3; 5, 1 (326–­27); cf. 2, 6 (324). Human All-­Too-­ Human II, Preface 3–­4 (pp. 372–­73). In the time before the crisis, Nietzsche emphatically refers to the periagoge. But he does so en pleine ignorance de cause, the way an admirer of philosophy appeals to an ideal, to something he is familiar with only by hearsay. Of the “Schopenhauerian man,” elevated into a model, who takes upon himself “the voluntary suffering of truthfulness,” he attests that this man prepares “that complete revolution and reversal of his being to which it is the real meaning of life to lead.” And he speaks expressly of the “turning around” of the soul that is needed. At the same time, he says that it is a matter “of extinguishing one’s own will,” that “being truthful” means “believing in an existence that could not be denied anyway,” that nature requires the artist “for a metaphysical purpose,” and even more so the saint, “in whom that miracle of transformation occurs which the play of becoming never hits on, that eventual and highest becoming-­human, toward which all of nature urges and drives onward for its redemption from itself.” Nietzsche speaks with unbroken aplomb of “culture’s” highest duties, of the “heroic man” who puts himself forward as the first sacrifice, of the “forgetting of oneself,” of the “causa finalis,” and, continually, of the need for “redemption.” Of all that will lead him into the crisis and will not withstand the examination, once the periagoge has actually taken place. Schopenhauer as Educator 4, 9; 5, 3; 5, 5–­8 (pp. 371–­75, 377–­78, 380–­83); on this, see inter alia Beyond Good and Evil 25, 30, 47, 51, 207, 227, 230 (pp. 42–­43, 48–­49, 68, 71, 134–­37, 162–­63, 169–­70).

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hid. In support of his interpretation, Nietzsche cites a passage from Human All-­Too-­Human in which he quotes a proposition from Rée’s writing: “ ‘Moral man stands no closer to the intelligible world than does physical man—­for there is no intelligible world . . .’ ”33 The explanation, which the author of Ecce Homo reproduces in full and unqualifiedly makes his own by dispensing with quotation marks, concludes the text of the first triad: “This proposition, hardened and sharpened under the hammer blows of historical knowledge (lisez: Revaluation of All Values), may perhaps one day, in some future—­1890!—­ serve as the ax laid to the root of mankind’s ‘metaphysical need’—­whether as a blessing or as a curse on mankind, who would be able to say? But in any case, as a proposition of the most considerable consequences, fruitful and frightful at the same time, and looking into the world with that double view which all great insights have . . .” Applied to the task he now holds “in hand,” linked to the revaluation that is called by name for the first time in the second part, and pointing ahead parenthetically to the planned year of the Antichrist’s appearance, the ten-­year-­old passage—­the only one from Human All-­Too-­Human that Nietzsche incorporates into Ecce Homo—­gains extraordinary explosiveness. For the sureness Nietzsche claims with regard to his task stands in striking contrast to the unsureness he evinces in regard to its consequences. If he is not able to say whether the revaluation of all values will turn out to be a blessing or a curse for mankind, he is saying in other words that mankind is hardly the task’s first object, and certainly not its ultimate end. Here, indeed, no prophet who understands himself to be the mouthpiece of a mission is speaking. The “heaviest demand” ever placed on mankind neither obeys faith in a holy duty, nor is animated by the hope of a redemptive act. It breathes the spirit of experiment and stands in the service of knowledge.34 The conclusion puts the first triad’s teleological account into a very peculiar light. What if the stressing of the endogenous strand, in particular the 33. “—­for there is no intelligible world . . .” is an addition inserted into the verbatim quotation by Nietzsche in Ecce Homo. In Paul Rée, the proposition, found at the opening of the writing, reads: “But now, ever since La Marck and Darwin have written, moral phenomena can be traced back to natural causes just as well as physical ones can: moral man stands no closer to the intelligible world than does physical man.” Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen (Chemnitz, 1877), pp. VII–­VIII. In Human All-­Too-­Human 37, Nietzsche rendered Rée thus: “Moral man, he says, stands no closer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than does physical man” (p. 61). 34. EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 6 (327–­28). Beyond the obvious insertions, Nietzsche changes the wording of the “passage” from Human All-­Too-­Human in one significant point. Out of “—­whether more as a blessing than as a curse on the general welfare,” he makes: “—­whether as a blessing or as a curse on mankind.” Further, “looking into the world with that double face” becomes: “looking into the world with that double view.” Human All-­Too-­Human 37 (p. 61).

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alternation between instinct and insight in the third piece,35 was aimed first of all at exposing the fundamental difference between Nietzsche and mankind? What drives Nietzsche forward as a divining of his nature and is caught up with, brought to decision, and finally determined by his return and reflection, finds no equivalent on the level of the species. The gap cannot be overcome by means of generalization, because generalization does not take into account the difference of natures and their conflict. Moreover, the species lacks the predetermined lifespan in which the question “How does one become what one is?” looks for its answer. From this results the distance between Nietz­ sche’s certainty about what is good for him and his uncertainty about what is good for mankind. Or the double view of knowledge, by which the knower learns what is beneficial to him and becomes aware of what belongs to him, whereas the effects for mankind, to say nothing of “general welfare,” remain doubtful. At the same time, the triad’s conclusion indicates the vanishing point of the movement that begins in the crisis and finally overcomes it. More precisely, there are two interwoven movements that are conducted in parallel in Nietzsche’s narrative: In one, the disappointment standing at the beginning of the crisis is answered by the return to oneself, which attains the happiness of Beisichselbstsein in thinking, knowing, comprehending; in the other, it is answered by the turn away from all “idealism,” as a consciously propelled liberation from illusions and a distance-­taking from things believed in, directed solely toward what is capable of withstanding the test of suspicion. The two movements lead to the “convalescence” and establish the “right” to the task. In this process the task does not take the place of the earlier “idealism”; it is not the expression of a new “selflessness.” The use Nietzsche makes of the quotation from Human All-­Too-­Human, like the talk of superior play at the end of the first part of Ecce Homo, indicates that the task is understood in its function. The task helps Nietzsche to ascertain his nature and serves his knowledge.36 35. In the sequence of the third piece’s six sections: (1) Crisis of the spirit that has become free, that retakes possession of itself. (2) Disappointment that triggered the crisis. (3) Sensation of a “total aberration” of instinct and return and reflection. (4) Decision of “instinct” against self-­deviation. (5) “Rigorous self-­discipline.” (6) “Immense sureness” with regard to the task, “instinctive guile” against a premature exposure. 36. The movement can be divided into seven steps, of which two occur in parallel: (1) Disappointment. (2) Sensation of total aberration of instinct; loss of the “task.” (3) Insight into the necessity of a radical reversal in the direction of view. (4a) Sickness, which necessitates leisure; suspension of judgment about the task. (5a) Experience of one’s own capacity, of the happiness of knowing, of self-­sufficiency against all expectation. (4b) Laying-­on-­ice of all ideals; suspension of judgment about the task. (5b) Rigorous examination of faith, duty, devotion; cruelty toward

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In silence Nietzsche passes over the role played by Socrates in the crisis and its overcoming—­first as a gadfly or sting, then as a kindred mind whose image conferred force and strength. If in order to characterize the span of development from the Birth of Tragedy to Human All-­Too-­Human, “With Two Sequels,” the first triad’s presentation not only could have drawn upon Schopenhauer and Rée or Wagner and Voltaire, but might just as rightfully have surveyed the path from Socrates I to Socrates II, from the world-­historical adversary to the behind-­the-­scenes friend, then with the treatment of the beginning of the philosophic life a word about the example of Socrates suggested itself for more than one reason. Yet at the advent of his Zarathustra poem, Nietzsche had decided to bring onstage Socrates III, the pessimist, and with him to render Socrates I, the optimist of the early work, forgotten. Nietz­ sche held to this strategic decision all the way to the end.37 For Socrates II, oneself; enlightenment regarding one’s own conjectures and presuppositions. (6) Convalescence and determination of the task. (7) Insight into the task’s function for one’s own good. 37. That it was a strategic decision is made clear by the context in which Nietzsche introduces Socrates III: In the antepenultimate aphorism of 1882’s Gay Science he presents Socrates as a pessimist for the first time under the heading “The dying Socrates,” and makes reference to the ultima verba from Plato’s Phaedo, which he reproduces in a translation conducive to his interpretation: “‘O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius.’ This ridiculous and terrible ‘last word’ means, for him that has ears: ‘O Crito, life is a sickness!’ Is it possible! A man like him, who lived cheerfully and, for all eyes to see, like a soldier—­was a pessimist!” The declaration that Socrates was a pessimist is not based on a new thought about the end of the Phaedo or a new interpretation of the “last words.” Andreas Urs Sommer (NK 6/1, pp. 262–­63) reports that Nietzsche read the Phaedo with his Greek teacher Karl Steinhart in the last years of his gymnasium time at Schulpforta and, as a professor in Basel, repeatedly borrowed Steinhart’s Plato edition from the library. When he wrote the aphorism, Nietzsche had for two decades been familiar with Steinhart’s commentary on the passage, according to which Socrates felt “that he had convalesced from the sickness of earthly life in the moment of dying” and, as having convalesced from this sickness, wanted to bring a sacrifice to the God. He likewise knew the translation of the ultima verba as published by Steinhart: “To Asclepius, dear Crito, we owe a cock.” Nietzsche’s aphorism, which begins with the encomium “I admire the bravery and wisdom of Socrates in all that he did, said—­and did not say,” concludes with the sentence: “Ah, friends! We must also overcome the Greeks!” The conclusion shows how far Nietzsche has moved away from the image of Socrates in the early work, in which Socrates could not be considered the peak of what the Greeks were able to achieve. And it shows, above all, that “Socrates” must now stand for the tradition that is to be overcome, to which Plato’s Phaedo opened the door—­an ascription Nietzsche confirms in 1888’s Twilight of the Idols, by inserting the Savior into the rendering of the last words from the Phaedo. “The Dying Socrates,” which marks the point of pushing off, is immediately followed by the aphorisms “The Heaviest Weight,” which gives the first outline of the thought of the Eternal Return, and “Incipit Tragoedia,” which contains the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Gay Science 340, 341, and 342 (pp. 569–­7 1); cf. Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates 1 and 11 (pp. 67 and 72). Platon’s sämmtliche Werke, trans. Hieronymus Müller, with introductions by

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the “mediator-­wise one” of the time of the periagoge, there thus remained no room in Ecce Homo. A supplement that indicates what Nietzsche is omitting might commence with the talk of the “total aberration of my instinct.” This is the marker that recalls Socrates. For in the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche marked Socrates’s position by nothing more sharply than the admonition that instinct is not enough, which is the reverse side of the Socratic logon didonai, the demand to give oneself a reasoned account of one’s conduct of life and one’s own path. In the center of the writing he placed the sentence: “ ‘Only out of instinct’: with this expression we touch the heart and center of the Socratic tendency.”38 What he ascribed to the antagonist in order—­with a political intention and out of a moral impetus—­to subject him to critique proves in the crisis to be knowing the one thing needful: With the “total aberration” of his instinct, he has to admit to himself the lack of insight and the power of the delusion to which he succumbed. Since he had made the logon didonai into the distinction’s cardinal point, it was altogether impossible for him to forget Socrates’s admonition. It was to prove no less consequential that in the Birth of Tragedy he determined the anthropos theoretikos to be the alternative to the position he himself represented. He attested that solely the theoretical man had, “like the artist,” “infinite satisfaction in what is present,” and, like the artist, was “protected by that satisfaction” from practical pessimism, from the denial of life. In addition, he expressed clearly enough that the aesthetic justification he asserted stood opposed to justification through the knowledge of the world and the comprehension of existence, and he did not shy away from confessing the temptation inherent in the opponent’s position: “He who has experienced in himself the pleasure of a Socratic knowledge, and feels how it seeks to embrace the whole world of appearances in ever wider rings, will never again perceive any sting that could urge one toward existence more vigorously than the desire to complete that conquest and to weave Karl Steinhart (Leipzig, 1854), vol. 4, pp. 546 and 577. On Socrates’s last words in the Phaedo, cf. aphorism 13 of my epilogue “Über Leben und Tod” [“On Life and Death”], in Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Heinrich Meier, eds., Der Tod im Leben. Ein Symposion (Munich, 2004), pp. 336–­37. 38. It is the third sentence of the five-­sentence paragraph; the third paragraph of the five-­ paragraph chapter; and the thirteenth of the Birth of Tragedy’s twenty-­five chapters. Nietzsche continues: “With it, Socratism condemns the existing art as well as the existing ethics: wherever it turns its scrutinizing gaze it sees the deficiency of insight and the power of delusion, and from this deficiency it concludes the inner perversity and reprehensibility of what is present. On the basis of this one point, Socrates believed that he had to correct existence: he, the individual, with a mien of disrespect and superiority, as the precursor of an altogether different culture, art, and morality, enters a world, to touch whose very cusp in reverence would count as our greatest happiness.” The Birth of Tragedy 13, 3 (pp. 89–­90).

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the net impenetrably tight.”39 No teleological construction or retrospective smoothing-­over is required to see the potential that the early counterproject holds ready for Nietzsche in the crisis, or to trace out the lines that, with the beginning of the philosophic life, lead to its being anchored in the “passion of knowledge” and later to the determination of the “will to power” in the will to truth. The outstanding importance that Socrates has for Nietzsche in the decisive phase, with the turn to philosophy, is confirmed by the written testimonies of the second half of the 1870s. In the summer of 1875, Nietzsche notes: “Socrates, to confess it, stands so close to me that I am almost always fighting a battle with him.” Shortly before this, a new preoccupation with Socrates’s “selfness” and the orientation toward one’s own good becomes apparent, when he looks at those “who dare to be for their own sake; like Socrates.”40 A decade later the philosopher Nietzsche, after having sounded the thought out in its heights and depths in the Zarathustra experiment, will speak of the “complementary man.” Socrates II, who strikes Nietzsche existentially and becomes the catalyst of his development, is essentially the Socrates of the Memorabilia. A year before the crisis becomes manifest, Nietzsche states: “I find Xenophon’s Memorabilia very interesting. One must still acknowledge the model of Socrates: it is immediately imitable. The ἀνδραποδισταὶ ἑαυτῶν sting me.” The Socrates of the Memorabilia is not that “turning point and vortex” in whom Nietzsche found his world-­historical antagonist. He suddenly attracts him because he is of immediate concern to him. The sting he receives from the Socratic critique of the sellers of their own independence will not only raise doubts about the “Basel professorship,” but in the end will reach much further: “Wagner,” “Bayreuth,” the “mission”—­whether German or humanitarian—­not excepted. In September 1876, a few weeks after the Bayreuth event, Nietzsche comes back to the Memorabilia and its power to sting the right reader: Xenophon gives a “a really faithful picture” of Socrates, “which is just as ingenious as was the subject of the picture.” However, one has to understand how to read the Memorabilia. “The philologists basically opine that Socrates has nothing to say to them, and are therefore bored by it. Other men feel that this book stings and delights at the same time.” In the notes from late summer 1875 to September 1876, the name Socrates does not appear before the statement on the Memorabilia. All the more remarkable is 39. The Birth of Tragedy 15, 3–­4 and 6 (pp. 98–­99, 100–­101); cf. 5, 5 and 24, 6 (pp. 47 and 152). –­Even before the Birth of Tragedy, the anthropos theoretikos is mentioned in close proximity to “Socratism” in a note. Posthumous Fragments Winter 1869–­70–­Spring 1870 3 [86], KSA 7, p. 83. 40. Posthumous Fragments Summer 1875 6 [3]; March 1875 3 [69], KSA 8, pp. 97 and 34.

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the testimony from a letter that is capable of shedding light on the incubation period. On May 26, 1876, two months before the Bayreuth Festivals, Nietzsche writes to Carl von Gersdorff, a friend from his youth: “More and more, the Greek philosophers come before my eyes as models of the way of life to be attained. I read the Memorabilia of Xenophon with the deepest personal in­terest.—­The philologists find them deadly boring, you see how little of a philologist I am.”41 After the crisis has been surmounted, Nietzsche knows how to give thanks. In July 1879, he confides to his notebook: “The most attractive book in Greek literature: Mem[orabilia] Socr[atis].” He finally makes public his judgment on the Memorabilia at the end of 1879, in an aphorism in The Wanderer and His Shadow. It is the only one of all his aphorisms to be given the laconic heading Socrates: “If all goes well, the time will come when, in order to advance oneself morally and rationally, one will prefer to take in one’s hands the Memorabilia of Socrates, rather than the Bible, and when Montaigne and Horace will be used as forerunners and signposts for understanding the simplest and most imperishable mediator–­wise one, Socrates. Back to him lead the roads of the most diverse philosophic ways of life, which are basically the ways of life of diverse temperaments, ascertained by reason and habit and all directed at their peak toward joy in life and in one’s own self; from which one would like to conclude that what was most peculiar to Socrates was his having a share in all temperaments.”42 Socrates II 41. Posthumous Fragments Spring–­Summer 1875 5 [192], KSA 8, pp. 94–­95; Xenophon, Memorabilia I.2.6. Posthumous Fragments September 1876 18 [47], KSA 8, p. 327. KGB II 5, pp. 163–­64. The letter to Carl von Gersdorff is one of two letters by Nietzsche that contain significant statements on Socrates. 42. Posthumous Fragments July 1879 41 [2], KSA 8, p. 584. The Wanderer and His Shadow 86 (KSA 2, pp. 591–­92); cf. 6 and 72, the other two aphorisms in which the name Socrates appears (pp. 543 and 584–­85). –­As with the rest of the relevant literature on Socrates, Nietzsche was familiar with the Memorabilia long before the Birth of Tragedy. But it was only in the mid-­1870s that the book moved to the center of his philosophical interest. Along with the esteem for the Xenophontic Socrates goes, by contrast, the critique of the Platonic Socrates, whom he considers to be “a carricatura in the proper sense, an overloading.” (Posthumous Fragments Spring–­ Summer 1875 5 [193] and September 1876 18 [47], KSA 8, pp. 95 and 327.) There is, however, an exception. In the wake of the Memorabilia, Nietzsche discovers Plato’s Apology of Socrates for himself. Whereas the dialogue’s “genuineness” still appeared “unestablished” to him in the lecture course of winter semester 1871–­72, Introduction to the Study of the Platonic Dialogues, for his last lecture in summer semester 1878 on the Apology he notes: “In terms of form, perhaps Plato’s highest achievement, grown out of the fullest maturity of his literary art . . . here Plato has most become master of himself, he withholds his philosophy.” Nietzsche adds: “Perhaps in rivalry with the Memorabilia of Xenophon.” (KGW II 4, p. 146; II 5, pp. 523–­24.) A note from the same year says: “Apology of Socrates read with inner movement and explicated. Pleasure in

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appears now as the quintessence of the philosophical “temperaments.” But he is above all the mediator and point of unification of what is most important: The diverse philosophic ways of life of the various “temperaments” meet in the philosophic life, which, however widely the individual realizations of the type might diverge from one another, is common to all of them. Nietzsche introduced the concept in 1878, in Human All-­Too-­Human. Socrates, whom he had described in an earlier lecture course as the “first philosopher of life,” stood alongside him as midwife.43 At the same time, in June 1878, Nietzsche writes in a letter: “In summa and in most minute detail: now I dare to pursue wisdom myself and myself to be a philosopher; previously I revered the philosophers. Much that is enthusiastic and exhilarating faded away: but I have traded them for something far better.”44

the Memorabilia, which I believe I understand better than the philologists” (Posthumous Fragments Spring–­Summer 1878 28 [11], KSA 8, p. 505). 43. Human All-­Too-­Human 261 (p. 217). In the conception of the aphorism “The Tyrants of the Spirit,” Nietzsche draws on notes from the summer of 1875 in which Socrates is measured against the pre-­Socratics and criticized. In the notes before the crisis, the concept of the philosophic life does not yet occur. But they contain a concise formulation of the old wish: “I want to add together Schopenhauer Wagner and the older Hellenism: it gives a view of a glorious culture.” Posthumous Fragments Summer 1875 6 [14] –­ 6 [18], KSA 8, pp. 102–­5. Socrates appears as the “first philosopher of life” in the lecture series The Pre-­Platonic Philosophers, announced at the University of Basel for the winter semester 1869–­70. The young Nietzsche uses the appellation with a critical intention: “He is the first philosopher of life, and all schools that follow him are in the first place philosophies of life. A life ruled by thinking! Thinking serves life, whereas in all earlier philosophers life served thinking and knowing: here the right life appears as the end, there the highest correct knowledge. Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile toward all knowledge that is not associated with ethical consequences. It is for Everyman and popular: for it considers virtue to be teachable,” KGW II 4, p. 354. In a letter of February 1870, Nietzsche writes to Paul Deussen: “Life has nothing at all to do with philosophy: but we are likely to choose and love the philosophy that most explains our nature to us. A transformation of essence through knowledge is the common error of rationalism, with Socrates at the head” (KGB II 1, p. 100). 44. Letter to Carl Fuchs, shortly before the end of June 1878, KGB II 5, p. 335. In the next paragraph Nietzsche employs the metaphor of the seafarer: “You are now sailing into an unknown new sea.” See P. 76.

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Nietzsche strikes a new tone at the opening of the two triads devoted to the philosophic life. On the first page on Dawn, he compares—­anticipating or setting up the movement from book to author—­first the work, then himself, to a “sea animal” that lies, round and happy, in the sun. Of the art that book and author have “ahead” of others, we hear that it consists in “making things that flit by lightly and without noise, moments I call divine lizards, a bit firm.” The reader is subsequently reminded of the Indian inscription “on the door” of the book: “There are so many dawns that have not yet shone.” No doubt, the crisis is over. Nietzsche has set out onto the open sea—­and found firm ground. The prelude breathes happiness and gratitude.1 The self-­description as a sea animal “sunning itself among rocks” is all the more effective because the piece’s first sentence does not lead one to expect it: “With this book my campaign against morality begins.” This recalls the “warlike” character of the Untimely Ones. Nietz­ sche hastens to add that Dawn does not have “the slightest smell of gunpowder to it.” It should by no means be placed next to the “four assassination attempts” from the time before the periagoge, or mistaken for them in respect of what is most important in it. He goes so far as to assert “that in the whole book there occurs no negative word, no attack, no malice.” A campaign and no attack? How, if we take into account the hyperbolic manner proper to the rhetoric of Ecce Homo, can the double-­presentation be understood? Everything for Nietzsche depends upon the correct rank-­order. It is determined by the highest perspective. In the account of becoming-­oneself, Dawn 1. Among the numerous book titles Nietzsche considered after the Zarathustra years, he notes down: “We Lizards of Happiness.” Thoughts of a Grateful One. Posthumous Fragments Fall 1885–­Spring 1886 1 [143], KSA 12, p. 43.

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stands for the decisive breakthrough. With the beginning of the philosophic life, which is directed toward knowledge, the Yes has precedence over the No. The Yes to the whole, at which knowledge aims, is superordinate to action and not dependent on its success or failure on specific issues. This superordination and that breakthrough are reason enough for Nietzsche to make Dawn the first of his books to be distinguished with the epithet yes-­saying. With a view to the same superordination, he calls the Gay Science a yes-­saying book. And he interprets Thus Spoke Zarathustra in terms of the same weighting when he includes it in the yes-­saying triad, even though no reader of the book will entertain the thought that there occurs in it no negative word, no attack, and no malice. Beyond this, however, Nietzsche connects Dawn with the “revaluation of all values.” Thus we have again arrived at the “campaign against morality.” Yet in the course of the opening, it becomes apparent that this “campaign” is first of all concerned with the knower himself: It is a campagne in which it is up to him to sort out victory and defeat with himself. Nietzsche introduces the revaluation of all values as a demand that has him as its addressee, or as an act that he must accomplish. He speaks of “ridding oneself of all moral values,” of “saying yes to and having confidence in everything that has hitherto been prohibited, contemned, cursed.” In the revaluation, too, which cannot be thought without negativity—­precisely in the revaluation—­the primacy should belong to the Yes. The opening-­up, the free view, the unobstructed access to reality are incumbent upon the revaluation of all values. It serves to save being for the knower: “This yes-­saying book streams out its light, its love, its tenderness, on so many bad things, it gives them back ‘the soul,’ the good conscience, the high right and privilege to existence. Morality is not attacked, it just no longer comes into consideration . . .” Morality “no longer comes into consideration” as morality: it has forfeited its categorical character. It goes without saying that it definitely does come “into consideration” as a phenomenon. Dawn makes it into the object of knowledge from the beginning. Nietzsche considers morality from a natural-­ historical perspective and attempts to elucidate its becoming genealogically, based on the interplay of natural necessity and historical chance. Dawn is the first book in which he undertakes a genealogy of morals. The first sentence of the section on Dawn, on the beginning of Nietzsche’s “campaign,” thus has a fundamentum in re. The accent of the final sentence is likewise well placed: “This book closes with an ‘Or?’ ” The life whose beginning Dawn signals is a life of questioning. Doubt does no harm to its yes-­saying.2 2. EH III, Dawn 1 (329–­30). Cf. Dawn 46 (p. 53). –­Nietzsche changes the subtitle of Dawn, Thoughts on the Moral Prejudices, to Thoughts on Morality as a Prejudice in rendering it in Ecce

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Whereas in the first of the two sections on Dawn, Nietzsche speaks essentially of himself, his happiness, his knowledge, in the second he turns to the “destiny” of the species. After having invoked the “revaluation of all values” as a demand on the knower, it is to be expected that he will proceed to the “heaviest demand” of mankind announced by the preface. In point of fact, he begins with the words “My task,” which, as we know, refer to the “revaluation of all values,” in order then to follow with the determination that the task consists in “preparing a moment of mankind’s highest self-­reflection, a great midday, when mankind looks backward and looks forward or outward, when it emerges from the rulership of chance and of priests and poses the question of why? for what? for the first time as a whole.” Hence Nietzsche considered it his task to put mankind in a position to accomplish what he accomplished. Among the passages in which “my task” is spoken of in Ecce Homo, the central passage is the site of the greatest proximity between Nietzsche’s task and the task of mankind.3 About the “great midday,” we have read before that it is to be a celebration “in which the most select consecrate themselves to the greatest of all tasks.” This greatest of all tasks, as we now learn, will be mankind’s highest self-­reflection. Since mankind as such is incapable of self-­reflection, it will be the task of the “most select,” of the fewest. They are Nietz­sche’s preeminent addressees. He prepares their self-­reflection by showing mankind’s self-­reflection in a single case. When he says of the great midday that it is the moment when mankind “looks backward and looks forward or outward,” he reminds the reader of what he said in the Prefatory Note about the “perfect day” on which he began to write Ecce Homo. The comparison raises the question of what the future self-­reflection will be capable of beyond the self-­reflection that has been achieved, or of what Nietzsche is not able to anticipate. It corresponds to the other question, which will occupy us to the very end, of in what relation Ecce Homo stands toward the Antichrist, or of how the dyad’s inner order appears on closer inspection.4 —­The emergence from the “rulership of chance and of priests,” which Nietzsche names in the same breath as mankind’s self-­reflection, signals the practical urgency and political scope of the look backward and forward or outward for philosophers and nonphilosophers. The cooperation of will and insight is demanded. The question of the Why and For What as a Homo. The change in the heading accords with the marking in the text of the caesura signified by the beginning of the philosophic life and by the “campaign” against morality. 3. It is the fourth of seven usages of my task in Ecce Homo: Preface 1; III, Human All-­Too-­ Human 3; Human All-­Too-­Human 6; Dawn 2; Thus Spoke Zarathustra 8; Beyond Good and Evil 1; The Case of Wagner 1. 4. EH III, Dawn 2 (330); The Birth of Tragedy 3 (320). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 48 and 156. [What Is Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 36–­37 and 125–­26].

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whole requires clarity about the aim to be striven for and about the deployment of the available forces. Nietzsche’s discussion of the task “of preparing” the highest self-­reflection gives priority to insight. His task follows “with necessity from the insight that mankind is not by itself on the right path, that it is not at all divinely governed, that instead, precisely among its holiest concepts of value, the instinct of negation, of corruption, the décadence-­instinct has seductively held sway.” The insight into the absence of a providential God, the lack of a reliable instinct, the total aberration under the influence of an illusory faith and a dysfunctional morality, will also have to guide the “most select” on the great midday. In league with the insight stands the will to the future: “The question of the origin of moral values is thus for me a question of the first rank, because it conditions mankind’s future.” Nietzsche brings the will to the future, to the enhancement of life, into the field against the “will to the end,” which he ascribes to the priests—­“including the hidden priests, the philosophers.” He discerns the “decisive sign” of the priests’ rulership to be that “décadence-­ morality is considered to be morality as such,” that absolute value is attached to selflessness, and that the orientation toward one’s own good is everywhere met with enmity. Along with the rulership of the priests, doubts are raised about the rulership of the morality taught by them. “Mankind’s self-­reflection” is in the end concerned with the question of which type of man should determine the rank-­order of ways of life and moralities. That in the quarrel over morality Nietzsche deploys the will to life against the will to the end does not mean that the quarrel is a moral quarrel, in which faith stands against faith. Nietz­ sche objects to the “will to the end” that it negates the life that is, according to the standard of a life that is not, or that it does not stand up to the knowledge of reality. Just as Nietzsche claims that the Yes to life is in agreement with the highest insight, and is confirmed most strictly by “truth and science.”5 —­ The last sentence of the piece refines the first and puts it into perspective: “With ‘Dawn’ I first took up the fight against the morality of unselfing oneself.” The first sentence’s “campaign” pointed to the investigation of the basis and status of morality, which appears in the plural. The last sentence’s “fight” is an expression of the “revaluation of all values,” which Nietzsche anticipates. Nietzsche begins the fight against the morality of unselfing oneself in the book in which he identifies the “passion of knowledge” for the first time as the passion characterizing the philosopher and anchors his Yes to the whole in it.6 5. EH III, Dawn 2 (330–­32); The Birth of Tragedy 2 (311). Cf. Pp. 18–19 and 64–­66. –­On Nietzsche’s talk of “degeneration” see Pp. 68–69. 6. Dawn 429 and 482; cf. The Gay Science 107, 123, 249, 300, 324, and 343 (pp. 264–­65, 286; 464–­65, 479–­80, 515, 539, 552–­53, and 574).

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In the center of the yes-­saying triad the task is omitted. The piece on the Gay Science focuses entirely on the gift Nietzsche considers the book to be. In the first subsection, the text—­it is the shortest of the ten subchapters on the books—­reproduces eight verses in which Nietzsche expressed gratitude for the happiness that befell him; in the last, he adduces a “boisterous dance-­song in which, if you will forgive my saying so, one dances over and beyond morality.” Poem, song, dance, a book in which “profundity and high-­ spiritedness hold each other tenderly by the hand,” gift, thanks, happiness—­ everything points to recuperation.7 Nietzsche strengthens this impression by mentioning—­from the new, 1887 edition, which bears the subtitle “la gaya scienza”—­the Songs of Prince Vogelfrei, whereas he remains silent about the fifth book, We Fearless Ones.8 In the narrative of Ecce Homo, The Gay Science with its lightness prepares via contrast for the irruption of Zarathustra, which it both precedes and follows, the sole writing to do so. Between Dawn, whose characterization as “deep, but bright and gracious” Nietzsche confers on the Gay Science “once more and in the highest degree” as a kind of continuation of Dawn, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which it announces with the “diamantine beauty” of the latter’s first words, The Gay Science almost disappears in its peculiar form and its proper weight. No mention of fight, campaign, or challenge for a work in whose third book Nietzsche has the “madman” proclaim the death of God. But in the second of the three subsections, between Zarathustra and Prince Vogelfrei, Nietzsche draws attention to the “granite sentences at the end of the third book” of the Gay Science, “in which a destiny for the first time” found “formulas for itself, for all times.” In the center of the central yes-­saying piece, Nietzsche points to his destiny, not to Zarathustra, and the most important formula the reader comes across when seeking out Nietzsche’s depositum reads: “What does your conscience say?—­‘You shall become who you are.’ ”9 7. The eight verses of the epigraph to “Sanctus Januarius” are the only poem Nietzsche incorporates into the pieces on the books. The only other poem in Ecce Homo concludes the five sections in which Nietzsche discusses recuperation (II, 3–­7). See P. 43. 8. In the dance song “To the Mistral,” which Nietzsche mentions by name, in the sixth of its eleven stanzas it says: “Let us dance a thousand ways, / Free—­be called our art, / Gay—­our science!” This reference to the title of the book, like the “gaya scienza” that Nietzsche invokes three times, is first found in the 1887 edition. 9. EH III, The Gay Science 1, 1–­3 (333–­34). The Gay Science III, 125; cf. V, 343 (pp. 480–­82, 573–­74). III, 270; consider III, 186 as well as IV, 335 and 338 (pp. 519, 503, 563, 567). –­The central of the eight “granite sentences” announce temptations that are subjected to a thorough contemplation in the drama of Zarathustra: “Where do your greatest dangers lie?—­In pity. What do you love in others?—­My hopes.” The Gay Science III, 271 and 272 (p. 519).

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The gift bestowed on Nietzsche is followed by the “greatest gift” Nietzsche has “hitherto” given to mankind. With eight sections, the longest by far of the ten subchapters is devoted to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The book also has over all the other books the fact that it has its say, several times and in detail, in extensive quotations. Nietzsche puts it in the position of an authoritative writing that, distinct from the author and surpassing him, is supposed to give answer and direction. The exceptional status of the piece on Zarathustra is underlined by its being the only one to begin with “I,” and also the only one to end with the “Dionysian nature.” “I now recount,” Nietzsche commences, “the history of Zarathustra.” In the book in which Nietzsche recounts his life, Zarathustra becomes the subject of a distinct narrative not only because Nietz­ sche lived in the closest proximity to the figure Zarathustra for three years and followed its path with the greatest interest, but also because he is particularly concerned with making the work of the same name visible to the reader as an event. More precisely, it is a matter of instituting and elucidating Thus Spoke Zarathustra as an event of the first rank. Both, the institution and the elucidation, are done with constant regard to the Holy Scripture of the Christian faith, which Nietzsche’s poem parodies from its first verse on. In the piece on Zarathustra, there is therefore more at stake than the description of an outstanding period of life or the explanation of an extraordinary book. In fact, Nietzsche gives hints elsewhere in Ecce Homo—­for example, in the fourth section of the preface, or in the fourth chapter—­that are of at least equal importance for interpreting Thus Spoke Zarathustra. What distinguishes the last piece of the yes-­saying triad is the parallel to the world-­ historical event with which it means to compete. The institution begins with information about time and place of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth, to which future believers can adhere: The “basic conception of the work,” of the thought of the Eternal Return, Nietz­ sche dates to August of the year 1881. He specifies eighteen months for the pregnancy, the gestation period of a “female elephant.” Of the “sudden” childbirth “under the unlikeliest of circumstances,” which occurred in February 1883, he emphasizes that the first part’s ending emerged “at precisely the holy hour in which Richard Wagner died in Venice.” The nexus between the birth of Zarathustra and the death of Wagner is comparable to the coincidence of Eros’s conception and the day of Aphrodite’s birth. With the difference that the priestess Diotima, who recounts the story of Penia, Poros, and their son Eros, knows nothing of any holy hour.10 Nietzsche speaks not only of the “holy hour,” but also of the “holy place” where “the first lightning of the 10. Plato: Symposium 203b–­e. Consider On the Genealogy of Morals II, 22 (p. 332).

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Zarathustra-­thought” flashed for him. To the pilgrims who will one day visit the location on the lake of Silvaplana he points the way to a “powerful pyramidally towering block not far from Surlei.” From there everything took its starting point, to there he returned in order to beget the second part, or, as Nietzsche says in the case of both the second part and the third, in order to “find” it. Viewed in retrospect, the event, which happened against all likelihood and despite every adversity, had its “omens.” Among these he reckons “a sudden and profoundly decisive change” in his taste, “above all in music.” The “music” of Zarathustra, the author informs us, presupposed nothing less than “a rebirth in the art of hearing.” Like faith, the poet’s inspiration comes, it seems, from hearing.11 In the Gay Science, which was written during the “pregnancy,” Nietzsche also discerns “a hundred indications of the proximity of something incomparable.” Finally, he cites the Hymn to Life as a “perhaps not insignificant symptom” of his condition in the year 1882, “when the yes-­ saying pathos par excellence, named by me the tragic pathos,” dwelled in him “to the highest degree.” Nietzsche leaves unmentioned the fact that the music of the Hymn, which he says will someday be sung in memory of him, derives from a composition from the time before the periagoge and dates back to the year 1873. On the other hand, he expressly notes that the text was owed to the “amazing inspiration of a young Russian woman” with whom he “was friendly at that time, Miss Lou von Salomé.” Nietzsche changed the title of the underlying poem, to which the authoress had given the heading Prayer to Life. What matters is the conjunction of yes-­saying pathos and inspiration, introduced into the piece about Thus Spoke Zarathustra along with the female friend.12 The institution achieves its aim and the elucidation has its beginning in the description of the constitutive core of the event: the poet’s revelation or inspiration. Far from denying the phenomenon of revelation, the author of Zarathustra claims to have access to it himself. The experience that prophets and religion-­founders have appealed to for ages is presented by Nietzsche with an intensity unlike that of any philosopher before him: “The concept of revelation, in the sense that suddenly, with unspeakable sureness and subtlety, something becomes visible, audible, something that shakes one to the 11. Paul, Letter to the Romans 10:17. 12. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1, 1–­6; 4 (335–­37, 341). The score of the Hymn to Life for Mixed Choir and Orchestra, Composed by Friedrich Nietzsche was published in 1887 by E. W. Fritsch in Leipzig. Nietzsche drew on 1873–­75’s Hymn to Friendship, his last work as a composer. Peter Gast arranged the parts. On the particulars, see Der musikalische Nachlass, ed. Curt Paul Janz (Basel, 1976), pp. 340–­43.

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last depths and knocks one over, simply describes the facts of the matter. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who is giving; like lightning a thought flashes, with necessity, without hesitation as to its form—­I never had a choice.” In accordance with this, Nietzsche says that the thought of the Eternal Return struck him like “lightning” and that, in a second act, the Zarathustra-­type “set upon” him. The liveliness is increased still more in the description of the blissful happiness that accompanies the inspiration: “A rapture whose immense tension is occasionally released in a flood of tears, in which one’s step involuntarily becomes now storming, now slow; a perfect Ausser-­sich-­sein with the most distinct awareness of countless subtle shudders and trickles down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which what is most painful and dismal appears not as something opposite, but as conditioned, as induced, as a necessary color within such an overflowing of light; an instinct for rhythmic relationships that spans wide spaces of forms—­length, the need for a wide-­spanning rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of the inspiration, a kind of balance against its pressure and tension . . .” This much on the description of the experience in which the prophet and the philosopher can meet. The paths separate in the interpretation of the “facts of the matter.” The prophet traces the irresistibility of the occurrence back to a higher power, which reshapes him in his individuality and makes him into its vessel. From the happiness that overwhelms him and whose source he believes to be outside him, above him, though turned toward him, he derives his calling, a moral commission in which no sacrifice is spared. The event transforms him into a mouthpiece of God.13 The philosopher reverses the direction of view. He sees the source of the intensively experienced happiness in his nature and finds in it the necessity that determines him, including the moment of Außersichsein, of distance from individuality. The fullness of light that illuminates everything, when insights rush together and gain an unsuspected radiance, when a whole suddenly flashes up that was previously perceived only in parts—­this he connects with his own path and his own effect. The event strengthens him in his saying yes to life.14 At the end of the description Nietzsche indicates the world-­historical parallel that he had in view from the beginning in instituting and elucidating the event: “This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back millennia to find someone 13. “With the slightest trace of superstition in one, one would indeed hardly know how to reject the idea of being mere incarnation, mere mouthpiece, mere medium of overpowering forces.” EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3, 2 (339). 14. “Everything happens to the highest degree involuntarily, but as if in a storm of feeling freedom, of being absolute, of power, of divineness . . .” EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3, 2 (340).

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who can say to me ‘it is also mine.’ ” To the reader’s mind comes Paul, Moses, perhaps the Persian namesake of Nietzsche’s poem.15 The institution of the “Zarathustra” event allows Nietzsche to send the poem, which detached and was supposed to detach itself from his life, on its journey through the centuries, equipped with the highest credentials, and to close, as it were in passing, a gap in the elucidation of revealed religions. What was left out of the Curse on Christianity for obvious reasons is subtly made up for in Ecce Homo, with the account of the poet’s inspiration. The mise-­en-­scène, on which Nietzsche spends half of the sections on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, however, has its price. In none of the other nine subchapters is the stylization pushed so far through to every layer, nowhere is what is most important for Nietzsche’s life so dimmed, as in this piece. The stylization ranges—­if we leave aside the high ground and restrict ourselves to the valley floor—­from the association with his namesakes, the Hohenzollern emperor Friedrich the Third and the Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich the Second, by means of the area in which the book originated or even was merely supposed to originate, to the assurance that the author did not need more than ten days for any part, neither for the first or second, nor for the “third and final” one. Details, not to say trivialities, that are designed to impress a wider public, to underscore the majestic character and the ecstatic inspiration.16 The presentation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work in three parts, however, is no triviality. In it, the intention of the staging is conspicuously expressed. For the fourth part, which Nietzsche passes over in silence, is liable to undermine the elevation of the Book for All and None to the authoritative scripture of a new faith. It does not allow Thus Spoke Zarathustra to culminate in the tragedy that had been announced ever since the publication of Zarathustra’s first speech at the end of the Gay Science, and the prospect of which is held out 15. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3, 1–­2 and 1, 8 as well as 4, 2 (339–­40, 337, 341); consider Dawn 68 (pp. 66–­68). Revelation appears twice in Ecce Homo. Both usages are reserved for the subchapter on Thus Spoke Zarathustra: In section 3, revelation is treated as the inspiration of the poet. In section 6, Nietzsche speaks of the revelation of truth in his poem. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, revelation is spoken of once, in the chapter “Before Sunrise” (III, 4, 4); cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 120–­23 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 96–­98]. –­On the possibility of the “overlapping experience” of the prophet and the philosopher, and on their opposing interpretations, see the last section of my essay On the Genealogy of Faith in Revelation, which takes into consideration both the account Nietzsche gives in Ecce Homo and the no less relevant description of Rousseau’s “inspiration subite” on the path to Dijon (Lettres à Malesherbes II, OCP I, pp. 1135–­36): Das theologisch-­politische Problem. Zum Thema von Leo Strauss (Stuttgart-­ Weimar, 2003), pp. 68–­70 [Leo Strauss and the Theologico-­Political Problem (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 41–­43]. 16. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1, 7–­8; 4, 1–­2; 5, 1 (337, 340–­41).

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to the reader again and again from the first part to the third. Instead, it gives the drama a turn toward comedy. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche makes use of the circumstance that the fourth part is not yet generally accessible, even though it has been in print since 1885.17 Obviously, in consideration of the planned appearance of the dyad in 1889 and 1890, Nietzsche decides to postpone publication of the fourth part until Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the form available to the public, had been established as the Book of Books and had taken its effect. At the same time he makes sure to keep the concealed part present in Ecce Homo and thus to direct the attentive reader’s interest all the more to the sequel.18 It comports with the stylization to stress the repercussions on the life of the “poet of Zarathustra.” The “distress without equal” that afflicts him, the solitude that has “seven skins,” the “immense squandering of all defensive forces” that is presupposed by the creative deed—­all this fits seamlessly into the staging: “One pays dearly to be immortal: one dies for it several times 17. Nietzsche had the Fourth Part printed in 1885, in the same typography and layout as the preceding parts, in an edition of 45 copies at his own expense, since he could not find a publisher who wanted to bring out the fourth part of an almost unsaleable book: Of the Third Part’s first edition, no more copies were sold than the number Nietzsche stipulated for the printing of Part Four. In 1886 he made the existence of the sequel known on the cover of Beyond Good and Evil, and in 1887 he quoted from it in the new edition of the Birth of Tragedy, at a prominent place with a precise page reference, five verses about laughter and the “laugher’s rose-­wreathed crown” that are relevant in our context. That the Fourth Part belongs to the poem is beyond question. On page 136, set off from the work’s last verse, Nietzsche had the note printed: “End of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” 18. EH I, 4 (270), see P. 24. The veiling label “Temptation of Zarathustra,” which Nietzsche uses for the Fourth Part, is not a new title or an indication of a changed publication project. Nietzsche already had recourse to it when he was still working on the Fourth Part, in letters to Peter Gast of February 14, 1885, and to Franz Overbeck of February 20, 1885: “Midday and Eternity. First Part: the Temptation of Zarathustra.” On March 14, 1885, he writes to Gast: “In the next few days perhaps a print sheet will reach you: do not be impatient, dear friend, and help me this time as well. It is the fourth and final part of ‘Thus S[poke] Z[arathustra]’; the title, of which I notified you last time by letter, was a bit of makeshift information with a view to a new publisher. Namely, at that time I was seeking a publisher, and I could not rightly have offered a ‘fourth part.’ For what I still have to say comme poète-­prophète, I need a different form than the present one; and it was a hard matter for me to resolve on such a title for the sake of a publisher. Enough, I found no publisher and now print my finale at my own expense.” (KGB III 3, pp. 12, 14, 21.) In December 1888, when Nietzsche is busy revising Ecce Homo, he requests that Peter Gast collect the copies of Part Four, which had been given as gifts to friends, so that the sequel of Thus Spoke Zarathustra could be published at the appropriate moment, “after a couple of decades of world-­historical crises” (letter of December 9, 1888, KGB III 5, pp. 514–­15). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, p. 162 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 129–­30]; on the main title “Midday and Eternity,” which Nietzsche mentions in the letters to Gast and Overbeck, consider pp. 186–­89 [pp. 149–­52].

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while living.”19 Matters are different with the life of the philosopher, who, in the figure he created—­it is no accident that Nietzsche speaks of his “son Zarathustra”—­gained a counterpart for his thinking. In the development of the figure, in its experiences and insights, crises, turns, and revisions, with which he is intensively occupied for years, Nietzsche plays through options and alternatives that the “son” has to test out for him. Through a particular feature of the poem, the philosopher brings the Zarathustra experiment closer to the conditions of life. Because he publishes each part of the book before the following one has been written, he subjects Zarathustra and himself to the necessity of the “It was”: Events cannot be undone retroactively or adapted to later knowledge; speeches, once given, cannot be taken back. Hundreds of pages with drafts, notes, different versions, additions, improvements to the text, all testify that the work is not owed solely to the poet’s inspiration. In Ecce Homo, the event that Zarathustra was for Nietzsche’s thinking recedes behind the event that Zarathustra is supposed to become for mankind. The yield of Nietzsche’s self-­understanding, which is fundamental for the dyad, the insight that the philosopher and the prophet cannot be combined into One, is also not brought out in the piece on Zarathustra.20 Zarathustra is deployed as the embodiment of an ideal and as the representative of a God in Ecce Homo. He is supposed to make vivid that “opposing ideal” which Nietzsche proclaimed as a response to the ascetic ideal in the Genealogy of Morals, the other ideal which would be suitable for displacing the hitherto ruling one.21 To explain the type that “set upon” him in Zarathustra, Nietzsche incorporates into the text on Zarathustra the penultimate aphorism “of the fifth book of the ‘gaya scienza,’ ” a quotation that is twice as long as the entire subchapter he devoted to the Gay Science. In it, the “ideal” is spoken of no fewer than seven times, and the critic of faith in the ideal 19. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 5, 1–­5 (341–­42). Nietzsche inserts the subsection on the squandering of the defensive forces into the text at the end of December 1888. At the same time as he is rewriting section I, 3, he expands III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 5, inter alia, by the sentences: “A third thing is the skin’s absurd oversensitivity to small stings, a kind of helplessness against everything small. This seems to me conditioned on the immense squandering of all defensive forces that is presupposed by every creative deed, every deed from out of one’s ownmost, innermost, bottommost. The small defensive capacities are thus as it were suspended; no more force flows to them” (342 and Faksimile, p. 73). This is one of several examples that demonstrate that in editing the manuscript, Nietzsche retained an overall view of the text in all its details to the end. See Pp. 6 and 21–22 as well as P. 6, Footnote 4; Pp. 15–16, Footnote 15; P. 16, Footnote 17; P. 22, Footnote 8; P. 23, Footnote 9. 20. Consider EH Preface 4 (259) and see Pp. 12–13. 21. On the Genealogy of Morals III, 23, 25, 28 (pp. 395–­98, 402–­5, 411–­12); consider II, 24–­25 (pp. 335–­37).

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formally joins the We of the nameless “argonauts of the ideal” that is evoked by the quotation from “We Fearless Ones.” To these argonauts—­a kind of quintessence of human history who are called “premature births of an as yet unproven future”—­Nietzsche ascribes a “new health”: “he who wants to know from the adventures of his ownmost experience how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal, likewise an artist, a saint, a lawgiver, a wise one, a scholar, a pious one, one who stands divinely apart in the old style: he has need of one thing first of all, the great health—­such as one not only has, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one ever again gives it up, must give it up . . .” The great health, as Nietzsche specifically remarks, is the physiological presupposition of the figure of Zarathustra. And we may assume that the figure is supposed to unite in itself the two personae in the center of the enumeration, the lawgiver and the wise one. The soothsayer, who in the Gay Science had his place between the “pious one” and the “one who stands divinely apart,” Nietzsche deletes as a precaution in the rendering in Ecce Homo. Regarding the ideal for which Zarathustra has to stand, we learn from the characterization of the argonauts that it is “the ideal of a spirit who plays naively, that is, nondeliberately and out of overflowing fullness and powerfulness, with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, untouchable, divine; for whom what is highest, in which the people rightly has its measure of value, would already signify so much danger, decay, debasement, or at least recuperation, blindness, temporary self-­forgetting; the ideal of a human-­ overhuman well-­being and well-­meaning, which will often enough appear inhuman.” Zarathustra is not used as the teacher of the entirely nonidealistic ideal. He is supposed to be it. Just as little does he appear as the teacher of the Overman, who occurs in Ecce Homo only as a quotation or set in quotation marks. He is the teaching. In Zarathustra, as we hear, the concept “overman” became the “highest reality”: “at an infinite distance lies everything that was hitherto called great in man, beneath him.” Nietzsche spares no encomium. He endows Zarathustra with all the attributes imagination can depict in order to make him into the ideal counterfigure of the revaluation: He is someone “who first creates the truth, a world-­governing spirit, a destiny”; “he has seen further, willed further, been able further than any man”; “in him all opposites are joined into a new unity”; he is the “most yes-­saying of all spirits”; in his “revelation of truth” there is no moment “that would have already been anticipated or guessed by a single one of the greatest”; indeed, there is “no wisdom, no investigation of the soul, no art of speaking before Zarathustra” at all; the “most powerful capacity for parables that has hitherto existed is poor and a plaything compared with this return of language to the nature of imagery,” etc. In elevating the figure, Nietzsche takes his measure from what is highest

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simply. He attests that it feels itself “to be the highest kind of all being” and cites as testimony seven verses in which “the highest soul” “defines” this kind and recognizes itself. The determination of the highest species—­it is taken from the peak of the speech “On Old and New Tablets”—­Nietzsche furnishes with the commentary: “But that is the concept of Dionysos himself. ”22 Zarathustra is now introduced to the reader as a forerunner of or placeholder for the God whose name Thus Spoke Zarathustra carefully avoided. The next quotation in which Zarathustra has his say far exceeds the scope of the previous one. “The Night-­Song” is the only one of the poem’s chapters that Nietzsche carries over in full into Ecce Homo. This time the commentary reads: “thus suffers a God, a Dionysos.”23 Dionysos, the God and the philosopher, gives a Janus-­face to Nietzsche’s interpretation and appropriation of the figure of Zarathustra. On one side, Nietzsche sets up Zarathustra as an authority who is supposed to live his own life; on the other, he shows him on a course that has its vanishing point in Dionysos. The Zarathustra of Ecce Homo is turned toward future believers, and at the same time oriented toward Nietzsche’s dyad, for which his creator takes him into service. For the purposes of the dyad, he is particularly called on in the piece’s final three sections, which give hints at philosophic or natural theology. As we have seen, this applies to the determination of the “highest kind of all being.” It applies no less to the “Night-­Song,” in which Zarathustra makes visible that a God’s love, too, cannot be thought otherwise than as neediness, and of which Nietzsche says that it is “the immortal lament” of Dionysos “at being condemned by the overfullness of light and power, by his solar nature,

22. The seven verses go back to five verses in Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 12.19, 7–­11 (p. 261). In Ecce Homo, they say: “[1] the soul which has the longest ladder and can reach down deepest, / [2] the most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam furthest within itself, / [3] the most necessary, which out of pleasure plunges itself into chance, / [4] the being soul, which wants into becoming, the having, which wants willing and desiring, / [5] the one that flees itself, catching up with itself in the widest circles, / [6] the wisest soul, which folly persuades most sweetly, / [7] the one that most loves itself, in which all things have their streaming and counter-­streaming and ebb and flow.” Nietzsche has the eight characterizations ascribed to itself by the highest soul stand out all the more clearly by assigning the second and the third, as well as the sixth and the seventh, each its own verse, unlike in Zarathustra. In addition, he improves the wording of the central verse such that the belonging-­together of the fourth and fifth characterizations is underscored and the central ones appear as two sides of one thing. Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 142–­43 and 58–­59 with n. 66 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, pp. 114–­15 and p. 45 with n. 66]. 23. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2 (337–­39); The Gay Science V, 382, The great health (pp. 635–­37). EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 6, 7, 8 (343–­44, 345–­47, 348).

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not to love.”24 And finally, it applies to the shared appearance of Dionysos and Ariadne in the eighth and final section. For after the commentary, “thus suffers a God, a Dionysos,” Nietzsche continues: “The answer to such a dithyramb of solar loneliness in light would be Ariadne . . . Who besides me knows what Ariadne is! . . .” Dionysos and Ariadne belong together. They are both present already in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, although the author decided to delete their names in the final version of the third part.25 In the first mention of the God and the philosopher by name in Nietzsche’s œuvre toward the end of Beyond Good and Evil, Dionysos is likewise accompanied by Ariadne. The theological “novelty” Nietzsche discloses in the same passage, that Gods too philosophize, presupposes that the God has a counterpart he did not create and cannot create, or that there is necessity.26 —­There remains the question of the teacher of the Eternal Return. It is true that the third and fourth of the four usages of “eternal return” occur in the piece on Zarathustra. “Zarathustra’s teaching,” however, is spoken of only in the subchapter on the Birth of Tragedy. Now Nietzsche speaks twice of a “thought.” At the very beginning, he calls the thought of the Eternal Return the “highest formula of affirmation that can ever be attained.” It goes without saying that not only the “most yes-­ saying of all spirits,” Zarathustra, but Nietzsche and Dionysos as well, may have recourse to this “formula” in order to express their judgment about life and the world in it. The other passage recalls the “most abysmal thought,” and with it the objection that Nietzsche raised at the first mention of the “eternal 24. Nietzsche vacillated between be loved and love, only to write love in the end, in harmony with the Platonic conception and along the lines of the argumentum e contrario that the night-­ song contains for the eros-­concept: “to be condemned not to love” (Faksimile, p. 77). 25. The heading of chapter III, 14, “On the Great Longing,” was still “Ariadne” in the fair copy of the manuscript. Similarly, in the fair copy the third stanza of the “third seal” in chap­ ter III, 16 was headed “Dionysos.” See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 152–­53 and 158 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 122–­23 and 127]; on the God’s love in the “Night-­Song” cf. pp. 67–­ 69 [pp. 52–­54]. 26. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 8 (348); Beyond Good and Evil 294 and 295 (pp. 236–­39). The reader who lets himself be guided by the question of who Ariadne is, instead of pursuing the “riddle” posed by Nietzsche of what she is, will not come one step closer to the solution. This not only goes for biographical speculations along the lines that Cosima or Lou is hidden in Ariadne, but applies also to the by no means trivial attempt to want to recognize Nietzsche in Ariadne, either of whom is turned toward the God Dionysos in passionately longing entreaty. Cf. Karl Reinhardt, Nietzsches Klage der Ariadne (Frankfurt am Main, 1936), pp. 24 and 30–­32; cf. p. 21 (Das Vermächtnis der Antike. Gesammelte Essays zur Philosophie und Geschichtsschreibung [Göttingen, 21966], p. 328 and nn. 5 as well as 6; cf. p. 324). Consider Footnote 25 and cf. Pp. 49–51 and 58.

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return” in Ecce Homo. Nietzsche draws attention to the “psychological problem” in the Zarathustra-­type, “of how he who to an unheard-­of degree says No, does No, to everything to which one hitherto said Yes, can nevertheless be the opposite of a no-­saying spirit.” In this connection he stresses that Zarathustra, “who has thought the ‘most abysmal thought,’ nevertheless does not find any objection to existence in this, not even to its eternal return—­but rather one more reason to be himself the eternal Yes to all things, ‘the tremendous unlimited Yes-­and Amen-­saying’ . . .” To the word from Zarathustra’s speech “Before Sunrise,” “Into all abysses I still carry my blessing yes-­saying,” which he cites for reinforcement, Nietzsche adds: “But this is the concept of Dionysos once again.” Readers who want to hear the teaching of the Eternal Return must turn to the Book for All and None.27 The third triad begins with the first work with which Nietzsche addresses the reader in his own name again after Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The prelude to the piece on Beyond Good and Evil marks the caesura: “The task for the years that now followed was set out as strictly as possible. After the yes-­saying part of my task was resolved, there came the turn of the no-­saying, no-­doing half.” Nietzsche announced the still-­outstanding “half ” at the end of the preceding piece, when he declared the deep certainty “that all creators are hard” to be the emblem of a Dionysian nature. The hint regarding the psychological problem of how Zarathustra, who “does No to an unheard-­of degree,” can nevertheless be the most yes-­saying spirit also prepared the new triad, though the question now reads, in reverse: How can Nietzsche, who wants to be yes-­ saying “to the point of justifying, of redeeming even all that is past,” bring himself to doing No in the great style?28 The sequence Nietzsche displays is a 27. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1 and 6 (335, 345); EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 3 (313); EH I, 3 (268). The first and last passages on the Eternal Return point to the objection that is to be overcome. None emphasizes the teaching’s promise or desirability. In an earlier version of the manuscript, Nietzsche explicitly repeated the objection from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (III, 13.2, 33): “One recalls the catastrophe in Zarathustra’s hermit-­happiness, his seven-­day sickness after having summoned the ‘most abysmal thought.’ Does one actually know which thought that is? / — ­Eternally he recurs, the man of whom you are weary, the small man . . .” (KSA 14, p. 497). In the new version of section I, 3 from December 1888, Nietzsche explains what his “actually abysmal thought” is already at the book’s first mention of the “eternal return.” See Pp. 21–­22, 68 and consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 228–­30 with n. 225 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 183–­85 with n. 225]. 28. In the last section on Zarathustra, Nietzsche equates the yes-­saying part of his task with the task of Zarathustra: “Zarathustra once determines, strictly, his task—­it is mine, too—­such that one cannot misapprehend the sense: he is yes-­saying to the point of justifying, even of redeeming all that is past.” The equation remains ambivalent, however, since the redemption of all that is past can be understood in two different ways: As “redemption” from the senselessness

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yes-­saying that has been wrested from no-­saying, and that must prove itself in no-­saying. The triads in Ecce Homo reflect the structure of the philosophic life, whose Yes derives its weight from the No that precedes it, and that takes shape in the No of confrontation and distinction. The revaluation requires a Yes and a No. After the primacy of yes-­saying for Nietzsche’s revaluation is clarified, it returns—­it was last mentioned in the first piece of the yes-­saying triad—­at the beginning of the no-­saying triad. On the program are: “the revaluation of the previous values themselves, the great war—­the conjuring up of a day of decision.” In addition, Nietzsche mentions “the slow look around for kindred ones” who “would offer a hand” to him in his endeavor. Given the linguistic armamenting in comparison with the earlier determination of the task, “to prepare a moment of mankind’s highest self-­reflection,” it is striking that Nietzsche is seeking, not allies, but kindred ones. No less noteworthy is Nietzsche’s declaration that “from then on,” i.e., beginning with Beyond Good and Evil, all his writings were “fishhooks.” Whereas Zarathustra, who in the fourth part of the poem climbs a mountain in order to cast out his fishing line, uses the honey of his happiness as bait, Nietzsche apparently relies on the captiousness of critique, the prospect of warfare, the call for decision, to reach readers who are of his kind. He thus places himself in the long series of political philosophers who won kindred natures over to a political project in order to lead the suitable among them to philosophy. Nietzsche is in harmony with the tradition, reaching back to Plato and Xenophon, when he says of Beyond Good and Evil that the book is “in all essentials a critique of modernity, not excluding the modern sciences, the modern arts, even modern politics.” This is especially true when he speaks of the writing’s hints at an “opposite type that is as little modern as possible, a noble, a yes-­saying type.” And he follows the example of his earliest predecessors when he seeks a single name for the “opposite type,” which encompasses two species that are to be distinguished—­in Nietzsche’s parlance: the noble one and the yes-­sayer, the noble one and the knower, the noble one and the philosopher—­and for this has recourse in his last book to gentilhomme, which is suitable for taking the place of the kaloskagathos. It is in this sense that he calls Beyond Good and

of accident through the remaking of the world. This is suggested by the verses Nietzsche quotes from the speech “On Redemption” (II, 20, 16–­19). Or, as redemption of accident through the “blessing yes-­saying” to the whole, whose neediness of redemption is denied. Nietzsche refers to this at the end of the sixth section. The verses from “On Redemption” lead to the philosophical crisis dealt with by the chapter. The word on “Yes-­and Amen-­saying,” by contrast, is taken from the speech “Before Sunrise” (III, 4, 15 and 22), in which the philosophical crisis is overcome. EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 6 and 8 (345 and 348–­49).

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Evil “a school for the gentilhomme, taking this concept more spiritually and more radically than it has ever been taken before.”29 What distinguishes the book is highlighted by Nietzsche through the contrast with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The completion of the poem led the author to a different “dietetic régime.” “The eye, spoiled by an immense need to see far—­Zarathustra is even more far-­sighted than the czar—­is here forced to focus sharply on what is nearest, the times, the around-­us.”30 Zarathustra’s sights and visions are followed by the turn to the human and the investigation of the nearest things, for which Nietzsche, at the beginning of his philosophic life, praised Socrates.31 The ascent to knowledge commences with the critique of the present and what is self-­evident for it, with the critique of the ruling ideas and the most powerful opinions. And the renewal of philosophy, which was due after the experiment with Zarathustra, demanded first of all its self-­critique. It is no accident that Beyond Good and Evil, the only book of Nietzsche’s in whose subtitle philosophy appears, makes the “prejudices of the philosophers” the subject of its first main part. Nietzsche continues: “In all parts, above all also in the form, one will find the same deliberate turning away from the instincts out of which a Zarathustra became possible. The refinement in form, in intention, in the art of silence, is in the foreground, psychology is wielded with avowed hardness and cruelty.” In Beyond Good and Evil no prophet is speaking. The author takes a different path. The refinement that was at work in Thus Spoke Zarathustra—­or more precisely, in its first three parts—­but remained in the background in view of the speeches is now deployed masterfully to make the necessary differentiations in the “school for the gentilhomme” and to intimate different things to the different addressees. “From then on,” if we leave aside the special case of Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s writings are books in the demanding sense, works in which all the parts, joined artfully, form a whole.32 When Nietzsche remarks of the first of 29. EH III, Beyond Good and Evil 1 and 2, 1 (350–­51). Gentilhomme is used only here and in III, The Case of Wagner 4 (362). On the distinction between “noble ones” and “knowers,” or “noble ones” and “philosophers,” which is of central importance for Beyond Good and Evil, cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 8–­12 and Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 35–­37 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 26–­27]. 30. Nietzsche wrote initially: “Zarathustra is more far-­sighted than the Christian God.” He then considered “the pope,” “the times,” “the czar,” only to decide finally for the comparison to the political ruler: “the czar” (Faksimile, p. 81). 31. The Wanderer and His Shadow 6 (pp. 542–­43). 32. How Nietzsche’s books before and after Thus Spoke Zarathustra differ with respect to their refinement, their polyphony, and their jointure can be examined by comparing “We Fearless Ones,” which Nietzsche adds to the Gay Science in 1887, with the first four parts, which he published in 1882.

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the “no-­saying” books that it is devoid of “any good-­tempered word,” he is making use of an exaggeration to accentuate the caesura, similar to the one he used in the case of the first “yes-­saying” book, of which he asserted that no negative word occurred in it. Moreover, the remark leads to the piece’s conclusion, which is anything but good-­tempered. Nietzsche stresses the recuperation that Zarathustra made necessary with its “squandering of goodness.” Working on Beyond Good and Evil was a recuperation for him, just as, according to the Prefatory Note, working on Twilight of the Idols has been a recuperation for him. In both cases, the author seems to have recuperated especially through the “hardness and cruelty” he expended as a psychologist. Yet Nietzsche does not stop there. The knowledge with which he recuperated from writing Zarathustra leads to a blasphemous comparison with the biblical God: “Theologically speaking—­listen, for I seldom speak as a theologian—­it was God himself who, at the end of his days’ work, lay down as a serpent under the tree of knowledge: he thus recuperated from being God . . . He had made everything too beautiful . . . The Devil is merely God’s idleness on every seventh day . . .” Nietzsche spoke theologically several times at the end of the previous piece. Now he speaks up ironically in order to subject the primordial myth of faith’s demand for obedience, and of the doctrine of sin, to a revision according to the standard of his theology: Without knowledge, Paradise is no paradise. An irrevocable deficiency transforms the creator God into his adversary. Or, to put the theological intervention’s moral into one proposition: The biblical God necessarily requires the serpent of philosophy.33 The thread of theological speech runs through all the pieces of the no-­ saying triad. The second, which deals with On the Genealogy of Morals, introduces Dionysos into the triad. “Dionysos is, as one knows, also the God of darkness.” Nietzsche circles back to the “devil” of idleness by attributing to the master at the outset the “uncanny” character of his polemic’s three treatises: “Perhaps” they are, “in terms of expression, intention, and art of surprise, the uncanniest thing that has hitherto been written.” The uncanniest thing does not, of course, have to be the most excellent. The direct comparison of Genealogy and Beyond, which is invited by the selection and arrangement of the attributes that Nietzsche ascribes to the two successive books, 33. EH III, Beyond Good and Evil 2, 2 (351) and Prefatory Note (263). Nietzsche considered placing these two sentences at the end of the piece: “But what, after a little psychology of my great teacher, Dionysos, which finishes off the book, does the latter himself say? He almost speaks himself like that famous serpent  .  .  .” Ultimately, he decided to mention Dionysos by name only in the central piece of the triad (Faksimile, p. 81). –­See EH Preface 3 (258–­59) and II, 1 (279). Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 19, 1–­3; II, 3, 36–­37 (pp. 87, 115) and Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 58–­59 with n. 66 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 45 with n. 66].

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confirms the precedence of Beyond Good and Evil.34 Refinement in form is superordinate to uncanniness in expression. And whereas the art of surprise might impress readers, the art of silence demands of them their own thought and the serious attempt to become involved with the intention of the author. Dionysos is also the God of darkness. In Beyond Good and Evil, he makes his appearance as a God of the halcyon smile. —­The piece on the Genealogy of Morals exhibits several distinctive features. It is—­besides the second triad’s central subchapter—­the only one of the ten that comprises only one section, and—­again along with its counterpart in the yes-­saying triad—­the only one in which the task is not mentioned. Moreover, it is the only one in which Nietzsche takes care to indicate the doctrinal content of the book in a way that is comprehensible to Everyman. From the yield of the psychology of Christianity, its birth out of the spirit of ressentiment, to the psychology of conscience, genealogically deconstructing the belief of God’s voice in man, to the investigation of the power of the ascetic ideal, culminating in its being exposed as the “harmful ideal par excellence.” The message of this pointed overview is clear: The faith in the “priestly ideal” drew its force and power above all from the fact that “it had no rival.” Nietzsche draws all attention to the “counterideal,” which was missing—­“until Zarathustra.” After so understandable a presentation, he can state: “I have been understood. Three decisive preliminary works of a psychologist for a revaluation of all values.” The Genealogy of Morals thus seems to stand entirely in the service of the task. Yet to the section’s four subsections Nietzsche adds a fifth, which consists of a single sentence: “This book contains the first psychology of the priest.” It is obvious that such a psychology not only has weight as a preliminary work for the Revaluation, but is in itself of great interest for the philosopher, including for his self-­knowledge. When Nietzsche omits the task from the center of the second triad and the center of the third triad alike, we can read this as a double hint that the two triads are not simply exhausted by being the yes-­ and no-­saying halves of the One task. Recuperation, idleness, knowledge assert their own right. For Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche originally provided the title: Idleness of a Psychologist.35 34. It is not without reason that Nietzsche noted in 1887, on the back of the title page to On the Genealogy of Morals, and clearly visible next to the preface: “Added to the last-­published ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ for supplementation and clarification.” KGW and KSA delete the hint in their edition. 35. EH III, Genealogy of Morals 1, 1–­5 (352–­53). Letters to the publisher Constantin Gustav Naumann of September 7, Carl Fuchs of September 9, Peter Gast of September 12, Georg Brandes of September 13, Paul Deussen of September 14, Franz Overbeck of September 14, and Peter Gast of September 27, 1888, KGB III 5, pp. 411, 414, 417, 420, 424, 426, 434, 443. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 23 (p. 39).

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The last book of the no-­saying triad, like the last book of the yes-­saying one, is elevated into a solitaire. In the case of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietz­ sche judged: “This work stands altogether apart.” Displaying the event, he went even further: “My concept ‘Dionysian’ became the highest deed here; measured against it, all the rest of human activity appears poor and conditioned.” Now he declares that Twilight of the Idols is “simply the exception among books: there is nothing richer in substance, more independent, more stunning—­more evil.” Both “halves”—­it is unmistakable—­are supposed to culminate in an exceptional work.36 At the same time, for the reader the Revaluation is still to come. Nietzsche therefore calls Thus Spoke Zarathustra the greatest gift mankind has hitherto been given. The demand with which he must approach it “in a short time” may be an equally great or an even greater gift for mankind.37 And he who, following Nietzsche’s recommendation in Ecce Homo, begins with Twilight of the Idols because he wants to “briefly” get an idea of how before Nietzsche “everything stood on its head,” will encounter there the announcement of an apparently even more independent book than the Twilight of the Idols.38 In other words, what Nietzsche says about Twilight of the Idols in the last piece of the triad is in large part said with a view to the Revaluation of All Values. It is aimed at the Antichrist, which, nota bene, unites in itself the yes-­saying and no-­saying strands. Yet the transition from No to Yes is also accomplished quickly in the piece on Twilight of the Idols. Nietzsche begins with the book’s overturning character: “What is called idol on the title page is quite simply what has hitherto been called truth.” He also makes clear that the critique pertains not only to “eternal idols,” but likewise to the “youngest of all, consequently the feeblest in age,” the “ ‘modern ideas’ for example.” He does not dwell on the details of the critique. Instead, he claims to have in hand “the measuring rod for ‘truths’ ”: The “truths,” that is, the doctrines and ideas that determine the beliefs and the actions of men, are questioned and judged by him according to whether they effect ascent or descent. Nietzsche draws practical consequences from the natural-­historical perspective he first tested out in Dawn, when he began his “campaign against morality.” The claim could hardly be greater, or the Yes

36. All three triads have in common that in each case the third book is emphasized in a very special way. Moreover, in all of them the third piece is composed of the most sections, and the central piece the fewest, in the triad. 37. The gift Zarathustra wants to bring to mankind is already a demand. See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface 2, 10 and 3, 2–­26 (pp. 13, 14–­16). 38. “I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my Zarathustra: In a short time I am giving it the most independent.” Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 51 (p. 153).

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more distinctly audible: “Nobody before me knew the right path, the path upward: only from me on are there again hopes, tasks, paths of culture to be prescribed—­I am the bringer of their glad tidings . . .” If Nietzsche lives up to his task and accomplishes the revaluation, there will again be tasks for others, by virtue of which they will be capable of realizing their highest possibilities.39 Nietzsche concludes by outlining the history of the Revaluation. In the three triads’ last section, he goes over and beyond the preparatory “yes-­ saying” and “no-­doing” books in order to relate how he took on and managed to handle the “immense task.” As before, in the history of Zarathustra, Nietz­ sche discloses the time and place of origin. But this time he does not settle for month and year. The dates of the historical event are noted down with precision: September 3, 1888, for the preface, September 20 for the departure from Sils Maria, September 21 for the arrival in Turin, September 30 for the finis operis. Even street and house number during his stay in Turin are handed down to posterity. Nietzsche does not appeal to any inspiration’s having set upon him. He presents himself not as a poet, but as a lawgiver. He speaks of having been filled with “a sovereign feeling of pride to which nothing is comparable” when he was occupied with the revaluation, “certain at every moment of my immortality and engraving sign upon sign onto bronze tablets with the sureness of a destiny.” The place of the lightning that compels the work is taken by the happiness of contemplation that follows the work. Already on the origin of the preface Nietzsche records: “when I stepped out into the open the morning after writing this down, I found before me the most beautiful day the Upper Engadine has ever shown me—­transparent, aglow with colors, including all opposites, all that mediates between ice and south.” And then the finale: “On September 30 great victory; completion of the revaluation; idleness of a God alongside the Po.” The “great war” proclaimed by the no-­saying triad’s first piece is answered by the “great victory” in the third. The Antichrist is the victory. The Revaluation is finished. The task is fulfilled. The theological thread, too, has reached its last knot. Nietzsche can look back. With the history of the “revaluation” he has arrived at the present, in which he recounts his life to himself and gives an account of how he became what he is. Everything rounds off. Nietzsche resumes the tone with which the Prefatory Note began: “I have never experienced such an autumn, nor ever considered anything of the kind to be possible on earth—­a Claude Lorrain, thought into the infinite, every day of the same unrestrained perfection.” The painter who knew like no other how to draw the beholder’s gaze into the depths of the landscape and to direct it to the vastness of the sea in 39. EH III, Twilight of the Idols 1–­2 (354–­55) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra 6 (343).

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order to have it reach out ever further, ever deeper, and gather itself in the movement’s vanishing point, provides Nietzsche with the image that unites the happiness of the “great victory” with the happiness of the “perfect day,” and the Antichrist with Ecce Homo.40 The Case of Wagner stands outside the three triads. Nietzsche’s narrative of his life alongside the chronology of his books ends with the word perfection. What follows is considerate of posterity and designed to protect the task. The tenth chapter on the books, in which Nietzsche speaks of “my task” for the seventh and final time, pointedly returns to the first chapter. Where the first piece began, “To be just to the ‘Birth of Tragedy’ (1872),” the tenth begins, “To do justice to this writing.” Both pieces are obviously supposed to counteract misunderstandings or misjudgments. And both deal with Wagner and with music. Or so it seems. In fact, what Nietzsche has to say about Wagner and music in the concluding chapter is said quickly: Nietzsche laments “that music has been deprived of its world-­transfiguring, yes-­saying character—­that it is décadence-­music and no longer the flute of Dionysos . . .” The “destiny of music” becomes a theme because and insofar as it affects the ascent and descent of life. As for Wagner, Nietzsche claims that the writing, which was understood by the public and above all by Wagnerians as a sharp polemic, was in truth “full of consideration and mild beyond measure”: “I kept everything decisive in this matter to myself—­I have loved Wagner.” The piece on the Case of Wagner is in the end about neither Wagner nor music. Nietzsche has commented on both, repeatedly and emphatically, prior to this in Ecce Homo. After having done with music and the attack on Wagner in seven sentences, Nietzsche puts two different attacks into play. The first is communicated with the utmost brevity and submitted to the reader as a riddle; the second—­it is aimed at the Germans—­is presented with the greatest hardness and remains determinative for the piece to the very end. Let us begin with the riddle: “Ultimately an attack on a subtler ‘unknown one,’ who is not easily guessed by anybody else, lies in the sense and path of my task—­oh, I still have ‘unknown ones’ to uncover of a quite different kind than a Cagliostro of music.” After all that we have experienced and learned in Ecce Homo, we may assume that the “unknown one” is Nietzsche, or, to be more precise, the décadent that Nietzsche also is. Like none of Nietzsche’s other writings, The Case of Wagner discusses décadence and the décadent. As the author puts on record, it achieves its “seriousness” in this discussion. It doubtless lay “in the sense and path” of his task that, in investigating the case of Wagner, Nietzsche arrived at clarity about his own case and subjected the décadent in himself to critique. 40. EH III, Twilight of the Idols 3, 1–­3 (355–­56) and Prefatory Note (263).

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The self-­critique indicates the stretch Nietzsche has covered since the Birth of Tragedy, when he confused his task with that of Wagner. Nietzsche is not mistaking himself for Wagner when he sees décadence as a feature they have in common and discerns their difference in the ability to recognize décadence and to get beyond it. The second part of Nietzsche’s statement is, and is supposed to be, understandable to Everyman: In the “sense and path” of his task lies “even more, of course, an attack on the German nation, which in spiritual things is becoming ever more sluggish and poor of instinct, ever more honest, which continues with an enviable appetite to nourish itself on opposites and swallows down ‘faith’ as easily as scientificity, ‘Christian love’ as easily as anti-­Semitism, the will to power (to the ‘Reich’) as easily as the évangile des humbles, without digestive trouble . . .” It is precisely because Nietzsche arose out of the German nation that he directs his sharpest critique against it, against its spiritual undemandingness, indecision, devotion to union and reconciliation. Since, in his best-­known book so far, he appeared as an advocate of the man he now calls a “Cagliostro of music” and nourished hopes for a revival of the German myth, he places all the more value on not being misunderstood as a German weltanschauung-­author. In order to make his philosophy proof against being appropriated by the Reich, and against being mistaken for any subservience to Germany’s interests as a great power, he concludes the account of his œuvre with a spectacular attack on the Germans. In an earlier version of the piece, one could still read: “I do not hide it, they [the Germans] are in my path, I [have] a few reasons too many not to mistake my task for any ‘Reich’ task.”41 The attack is aimed first at idealism. The sentence “Without doubt, the Germans are idealists”—­present three times in the text—­is the critique’s leitmotif. The counterideal Nietzsche proclaimed in the center of the no-­saying triad, and the Revaluation as a whole, are not to be misread as idealism in any way—­they are to be divorced from the idealist that Nietzsche was, and from the idealists that the Germans are. “Idealists,” Nietzsche calls the Germans in regard to their “selflessness,” their “lack of party” in the face of irrevocable oppositions, their readiness to grant “equal rights to all,” or their inability to make distinctions. “Idealists,” he calls them insofar as they impute to their history a moral mission, the preservation of the “moral world order” or the restoration of the “categorical imperative.” As “idealists,” he criticizes them because they evade reality in view of their “cowardice before the truth.” Nietz­ sche carries out his attack on the idealism of the Germans in the name of truth. 41. EH III, The Case of Wagner 1, 1–­3 (357–­58). The Case of Wagner, Turin Letter of May 1888, 5 (p. 21). KSA 14, p. 502. See Pp. 18–­20 and 40–­43.

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So that no one can fail to hear him, he has the attack culminate in the accusation: “All great culture-­crimes for four centuries they have on their conscience! . . .” The Germans—­thus runs the accusation, which Nietzsche also raises against them elsewhere—­deprived Europe of the Renaissance’s historic chance to overcome Christianity. “Luther, this disaster of a monk, restored the church and, what is a thousand times worse, Christianity, at the moment when it succumbed . . .” Against the Germans, in concreto Leibniz and Kant, it is held that they took “sneaking paths to the old ‘ideal’ ” and resorted to “reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal,’ ” i.e., that they persistently opted for idealism and against truth. Finally, the Germans are blamed for the “névrose nationale of which Europe is sick,” small statehood, the perpetuation of “small politics,” because they also deprived Europe of the “miracle of meaning in the existence of Napoleon.” To find a path out of the dead end into which the idealism of the Germans has led Europe, a task “great enough to again bind the peoples” is required. Nietzsche takes it upon himself to show the path. But to do this he must, instructed by historical experience, meet a danger early on: “In my case too, the Germans will try everything to turn the labor of an immense destiny into the birth of a mouse.”42 In order not to be “counted as one” with the German spirit, and compromised through the Germans, Nietzsche would prefer even to go through the centuries “as the contemner of the Germans par excellence.” He not only makes himself into the opposite of a German national philosopher, but also declares the German to be the contrary of the gentilhomme, the type for which, in both its species, Nietzsche’s books are intended: “When I think up a kind of man that runs against all my instincts, it always turns out to be a German. The first way I ‘try the reins’ of a man regards whether he has a feel­ ing for distance in his body, whether he everywhere sees rank, degree, order between man and man, whether he makes distinctions: with this, one is gentilhomme; in every other case, one belongs hopelessly to the charitable, ah! so good-­tempered, concept of canaille. But the Germans are canaille.”43 Personal experiences and disappointments are deployed in order to have the distance appear as great, and the gap as deep, as possible: “If I deduct my association with a few artists, above all with Richard Wagner, I have not spent one good hour with Germans . . .” The biographical reinforcement lends emphasis and vividness to the disparity, which has turned into a fundamental one. “Ten years: and no one in Germany has felt bound by conscience to defend my 42. EH III, The Case of Wagner 1, 3; 2, 1–­7; 3, 1 (358–­60). 43. EH III, The Case of Wagner 4 (362). Nietzsche initially wrote: “it always turns out to be a German—­or an anti-­Semite . . .”

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name against the absurd silence under which it lay buried.” Nietzsche draws the image of the philosopher who is not without honor, save in his own country. Everywhere in Europe he may have his readers and be paid attention to, not in Germany. “At which German university would lectures on my philosophy be possible today?” Whatever the Germans might do or say in the future, he does not belong to them. They cannot discredit his œuvre. Nietzsche would not be Nietzsche if he did not, even in the longest rhetorical preparation, place a light of philosophical importance. After the last usage of “my philosophy” in Ecce Homo, he states: “I myself have never suffered from all this; what is necessary does not offend me; amor fati is my innermost nature.” Nietzsche makes clear that the tenth piece is an apologia, but no jeremiad. In his attack, he does not allow himself to be determined by feelings of revenge and reaction. The philosopher does not mistake himself for a moralist. In the place where his appearance seems most human, all-­too-­human, he recalls what sets him apart and distinguishes him. At the end of the second part, he circles back to the end of the first, and makes the formula amor fati into the determination of his nature.44 After the statement on his innermost nature, Nietzsche lets the reader know that love for necessity does not prevent him from loving irony, “even world-­historical irony”: “And so, roughly two years before the shattering lightning-­bolt of the Revaluation, which will set the earth in convulsions, I have sent the ‘Case of Wagner’ into the world: let the Germans immortally misapprehend me once more, and eternalize themselves! there 44. EH III, The Case of Wagner 4, 4 (363). II, 10 (297). Cf. Pp. 49–51. The light Nietz­ sche kindles in the fourth section—­it is the thirty-­fourth and final section on his work—­ would have shone even brighter if he had decided to make use of the draft for a fifth section, which has been preserved, fully formulated, in the Nachlaß. However, the section would have reduced the concluding piece’s force of impact. Since the text is equally instructive for Ecce Homo and Antichrist, it is reproduced unabridged: “5. / —­A final point of view, perhaps the highest: I justify the Germans, I alone. We are in opposition, we are even untouchable for each other—­there is no bridge, no question, no glance between us. But this only is the condition for that extremest degree of selfness, of self-­redemption, which in me became man: I am solitude as man . . . That no word has ever reached me, this forced me to reach myself . . . I would not be possible without an opposing kind of race, without Germans, without these Germans, without Bismarck, without 1848, without ‘wars of liberation,’ without Kant, even without Luther . . . The great culture-­crimes of the Germans justify themselves in a higher economics of culture . . . I want nothing to be different, also not backward—­I was not permitted to want anything different . . . Amor fati . . . Even Christianity becomes necessary: it is the highest form, the most dangerous, the most seductive in the No to life, that first provokes its highest affirmation—­me . . . What, finally, are these last two millennia? Our most instructive experiment, a vivisection of life itself . . . Merely two millenn[ia]! . . .” Posthumous Fragments December 1888–­Beginning January 1889, 25 [7], KSA 13, p. 641.

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is just enough time for that!” The Case of Wagner is supposed to provoke the Germans to an attack on Nietzsche and give them the opportunity to bind their name eternally to his. It is obviously more than a world-­historical irony when Nietzsche, through Ecce Homo and The Antichrist, forever links his name to Christianity.

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At the end of the third chapter, Nietzsche has achieved his aim. He has announced who he is. He has recounted his life to himself. He has recognized his task. He has determined his nature. He has reviewed his œuvre. He has even taken precautions for his future reception. What is left? What would there still be to add? After two chapters on his being, and a third on the action and work in which his being manifests itself, Nietzsche returns to his being in the fourth chapter. He considers the destiny that he is for others through his action and his work, in particular through Ecce Homo and Antichrist. The fourth chapter of Ecce Homo, the book that is supposed to prepare the Antichrist, is in fact the last chapter of both books. It imagines the dyad as a world-­historical event and condenses the image of the author into that of a witness to the truth. “I know my lot.” “Why I Am a Destiny” is the only chapter that begins with I.1 The opening forms the bridge from the previous chapter’s last sentence—­“I carry the destiny of mankind on my shoulders”—­to the discussion of Nietzsche’s effect, in which destiny is invoked four times. Nietzsche’s lot occupies the center between the destiny of mankind, which he makes into his own cause, and the destiny that he is for mankind. “One day my name will be tied to the memory of something immense—­a crisis such as there has not been on earth, the deepest collision of conscience, a decision conjured up against everything that until then had been believed, demanded, sanctified. I 1. IV, 1 is the ninth and final section in Ecce Homo that begins with I: Preface 2; I, 3; I, 4; II, 7; III, 3; III, 4; III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1; III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 4; IV, 1. The nine sections have in common that Nietzsche’s relationship to others or his effect on others is discussed in them.

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am no man, I am dynamite.” The rhetoric with which the chapter begins and which continues in a similar pitch and volume to the end, the exorbitant use of the first person singular, the megalomania that the author puts on display, has contributed essentially to undermining the dyad’s world-­changing claim.2 But what if Nietzsche had foreseen just this? If it was in accordance with his intention? What if there was a subtle plan underlying the immoderation of his speech? The word “I am no man, I am dynamite,” which will be associated with Nietzsche’s name, in any case not only testifies to the author’s self-­ awareness—­megalomania or not—­but at the same time contains a serious warning. Nietzsche has already indicated the other side of his determination of philosophy as “wandering in the prohibited” before this, when he called the philosopher a “terrible explosive that puts everything in danger.” The philosopher who entirely becomes a teacher of the truth threatens to destroy society’s conventions and traditions, its foundations of faith. The section’s second subsection also returns to the preface of Ecce Homo: “And for all that, there is nothing in me of a religion-­founder—­religions are affairs of the mob.” The preface still set Zarathustra apart from the “awful hybrids of sickness and will to power that one calls religion-­founders.” After having attributed the “revelation of truth” to Zarathustra in the second part, Nietzsche insists on not being mistaken for a religion-­founder himself. “I want no ‘believers,’ I think I am too malicious to believe in myself, I never speak to masses . . .” Precisely because he appears in his own name as the bringer of the heaviest demand and the greatest gift for mankind, he makes provision against the dyad’s reader’s imputing to him any self-­misunderstanding, any confusion of selflessness with selfness: “I have a frightful anxiety that I will one day be pronounced holy: one will guess why I publish this book in advance, it is supposed to prevent one’s doing mischief with me . . . I do not want to be a saint, rather even a buffoon . . .” If he is going to be mistaken, then better for a satyr or a buffoon than for a saint, better for the author of a comedy than for that of a tragedy. He would prefer to be taken for an acolyte of Dionysos or to be regarded as another Socrates. For Nietzsche designated Socrates a buffoon in a prominent place in the Twilight of the Idols. Now he says of himself: “Perhaps I am a buffoon . . .” The buffoon speaks without respect of persons and without regard to reputation. He does not submit to any authority and is not bound by any doctrine. Yet he can tell the truth in a politically acceptable way, exposing the lie to laughter and strengthening the faith in truthfulness. The antistrophic third subsection has the revolutionary follow on the heels of the buffoon. Nietzsche speaks as the buffoon who wants to get himself taken 2. In section IV, 1, Nietzsche uses I, me, myself, and my thirty-­six times in rapid succession.

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seriously: “But my truth is terrible: for hitherto one has called the lie truth.” He proclaims a historical caesura.3 In the yes-­saying triad’s first piece, Nietzsche declared that it was his task to “prepare a moment of mankind’s highest self-­reflection, a great midday, when mankind looks backward and looks forward or outward, when it emerges from the rulership of chance and of priests and poses the question of why? for what? for the first time as a whole.” The question, raised by the determination of the task, of how mankind could reach such a moment of self-­reflection is now answered succinctly: “Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for an act of mankind’s highest self-­reflection, which has become flesh and genius in me.” Nietzsche is the incarnation of mankind’s highest self-­reflection. The highest self-­reflection became reality in his self-­reflection, his insight, his consciousness, and it was sealed on September 30, 1888, by the completion of the Revaluation, the “great victory” of the Antichrist. The caesura has occurred. What is most important has happened. It does not remain reserved for a great midday that lies in the future and may or may not take place. With the determination of his task and the explanation of his formula, Nietzsche has given expression, in a cheerful and philanthropic way, to the opposition between a follower of Dionysos and a saint. After this he introduces himself to the reader for the second time as a “bringer of glad tidings.” Now, in contrast to the no-­saying triad’s last piece, as one “like there has not been,” who knows “tasks of such a height that the concept of them has hitherto been lacking.” Nietzsche becomes the bringer of glad tidings for him who makes the formula his own and knows how to accomplish the “revaluation of all values” in his self-­reflection, in his consciousness. But if the “revaluation of all values” is supposed to become the turning point of world history, if the formula is understood as a political exhortation to subvert the existing conditions, then the bringer of glad tidings is “necessarily also the man of disaster.” Nietzsche predicts upheavals of undreamt-­of dimensions “when the truth steps into a fight with the lie of millennia.” He speaks in biblical tones of the “removal of mountain and valley” in order to make visible the reversal of above and below, the interchange of the high and the low, which would involve the old faith’s being toppled by the new. Should Nietzsche’s temptation reach the noble ones, whom his rhetoric has explicitly had as its political addressee since Beyond Good and Evil, and cause them to begin the fight of truth and lie on every level, the formula would prove to be dynamite. 3. EH IV, 1, 1–­3 (365); Preface 2, 3, and 4 (258–­61); III, The Untimely Ones 3 (320); III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 6 (343); Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates 5 (pp. 69–­70). Cf. The Gay Science 1 (pp. 370–­72) and Beyond Good and Evil 294 (p. 236).

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Nietzsche paints a daunting picture:viii “The concept of politics has then been entirely absorbed into a spiritual war, all the old society’s power structures are blown up—­they rest, all of them, on the lie: there will be wars like there have never yet been on earth. Only from me on is there great politics on earth.” In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche brought the “compulsion to great politics” into play to convince a future European aristocracy of the necessity for one will “that could set itself aims across millennia.” There, commensurate to the addressee, it was a matter of the rulership of the earth. Now it is a matter of the truth. The “great politics” seems to have become even greater.4 The talk of the truth’s fight with the lie, determinative for the rhetoric of “Why I Am a Destiny,” drives the fundamental tension between politics and philosophy to the heights of a conspicuous conflict. If politics could be based on the truth, philosophy would no longer be a wandering in the prohibited. The truth that great politics is able to seize is not the truth that keeps the philosopher’s life in motion. Politics can incorporate truth only as a teaching and adopt it only as a faith. Philosophy ceases to be philosophy as soon as it equates the truth with a teaching or contents itself with faith. It belongs essentially to the gesture of Nietzsche’s appearance in the fourth chapter that he does not distinguish the one truth from the other. The rhetoric of truth, whose hard core appears only in the central section of the nine, gives the impression that the author is making himself the advocate of proclaiming and enforcing truth at any price. Nietzsche therefore has reason to counteract his being mistaken for a moralist. He calls himself immoralist and leaves it to the reader to put the name together with the speech on truth and lie. He can count on the great majority of readers’ crediting to his truthfulness the proclamation that he is the first immoralist, so that the profession is not detrimental to the rhetoric of truth, but, on the contrary, provides it with additional force. Actually it is only in one place that the name immoralist—­the immoralist, like destiny, has four appearances in the fourth chapter—­comes dangerously close to the talk of truth and lie. It is introduced at the end of the second section, in which Nietzsche, applying a “formula” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, emphasizes the harsh truth that “whoever wants to be a creator in good and evil” must first “be an annihilator and shatter values.” In regard to the creating and annihilating that the teacher of the revaluation would bring about if his demand of mankind were to become law, Nietzsche once again underscores the Janus-­face of his public persona: “I am by far the most terrible man there has hitherto been; this does not preclude my becoming the most beneficial.” The accent now lies on the terribleness, the annihilating, 4. EH IV, 1, 4 (365–­66); III, Dawn 2 (330); Preface 2 (258); Beyond Good and Evil 208 (p. 140).

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and the no-­saying. At the only place where Nietzsche speaks expressly of his Dionysian nature, he announces that he knows the pleasure of annihilating. No one ought to misunderstand his invocation of the God and philosopher as edification or as an expression of yearning desire. The conclusion serves up the maximal shock: “I am the first immoralist: hence I am the annihilator par excellence.” The annihilating, the no-­saying, or the terribleness, however, does not yet by itself separate the immoralist from the moralist who obeys the maxim: fiat veritas pereat mundus.5 For clarification Nietzsche again deploys Zarathustra. This time, however, not the authority of the writing, but the name of the figure that he created, which he adduces in order to distinguish him from the moralist of the same name. “One has not asked me, one should have asked me, what the name Zarathustra signifies in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist.” Just as the reader of Ecce Homo should ask himself why Nietzsche has affixed the name the first immoralist to himself. The explanation of the choice of name merges the archaic Zarathustra with the present one. At the same time, it interweaves the moralist and the immoralist—­for the purpose of separating them. “Zarathustra,” the Persian, “was the first to have seen in the struggle of good and evil the actual wheel in the machinery of things—­the translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in itself, is his work.” The distinction of having brought the absolutization of morality into the world is thus not due to the founder of Christianity. “Zarathustra,” the Persian, “created this most fatal error, morality: thus he must,” in the form of Nietzsche’s creature, “also be the first to recognize it. Not only that he has longer and more experience in this than any other thinker—­the whole of history,” which lies between the two Zarathustras, “is after all the experimental refutation of the principle of the so-­called ‘moral world order’—­: what is more important is that Zarathustra,” the Persian or the figure created by Nietzsche, “is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching and it alone has truthfulness as the highest virtue—­that means the opposite of the cowardice of the ‘idealist,’ who takes flight from reality; Zarathustra,” Nietzsche’s creature, “has more bravery in his body than all thinkers taken together.” Zarathustra II satisfies the moral requirement of Zarathustra I and turns it against his antipode. “To speak truth and shoot well with arrows, that is the

5. EH IV, 2 (366). See P. 91. –­ Immoralist occurs once each in sections 2, 3, 4, and 6, destiny once each in sections 2, 4, 6, and 8. Nietzsche presents himself as the “first immoralist” four times in Ecce Homo: III, The Untimely Ones 2 (319); III, Human All-­Too-­Human 6 (328); IV, 2 (366); IV, 3 (367).

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Persian virtue.—­Am I understood? . . .”6 Nietzsche takes up a thought he put forward repeatedly after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so he can leave it at a hint to the understanding reader: In a historical process of deepening and sharpening, Christian morality, whose absolute claim is based on the authority of the Christian God, eventually turns the demand of conscientiousness or probity against the Christian God and, in “absolutely honest atheism,” deprives itself of its foundation.7 In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche skips over atheism from morality in order to turn without further ado to the consequences for morality. He also does not speak of conscientiousness, probity, cruelty toward oneself, or intellectual cleanliness, instead concentrating entirely on truthfulness, whose ambiguity is taken advantage of by his talk of truth and lie. “The self-­ overcoming of morality from truthfulness, the self-­overcoming of the moralist into his opposite—­into me—­this is what the name Zarathustra signifies in my mouth.” Nietzsche, who sets Zarathustra against Zarathustra in order to perform the spectacle of morality’s, and the moralist’s, self-­overcoming from morality, will not stop at the dialectical figure of his ad hominem argument. He will no more leave it at the immoralist from truthfulness than he can content himself with the atheist from probity.8 From “morality’s self-­overcoming,” which Nietzsche stages in the clash of the mythic and the poetic Zarathustra, the immoralist’s fundamental No to morality as an end, and to the moral world order or to the moral law as a whole, is evident. In order to link the name more tightly and strikingly to the Revaluation, in the next step Nietzsche undertakes a characterization that is directly calibrated to the political and philosophical task. “At bottom there are two negations contained in my word immoralist.” The double No applies to a particular type and a particular morality, both of which are the object of the revaluation: “I negate, for one, a type of man who has hitherto been regarded as the highest, the good, the benevolent, the beneficent; I negate, apart from that, a kind of morality that has attained validity and rulership as morality itself—­décadence morality, said more tangibly, Christian morality.” The immoralist says No to the ruling morality’s highest type and thus becomes 6. See Herodotus, Histories I, 136 and Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 15, 5 (p. 74); cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, p. 39 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 29]. 7. The Gay Science V, 357 (p. 600); On the Genealogy of Morals III, 27 (pp. 409–­10); cf. Beyond Good and Evil 55 (p. 74). With a view to the quoted passages and related ones, an “atheism from probity” was attributed to Nietzsche, i.e., his analysis and critique were understood as confession and affirmation. On this, see Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 78–­80, 173–­74, 179, and 185 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 61–­62, 139–­40, 143–­44, and 149]. 8. EH IV, 3 (367). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 32 (p. 51) and The Gay Science V, 344 (pp. 574–­77). See Pp. 70–71.

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another name for the revaluer. His inclusion in the chapter’s rhetoric of truth corresponds to his being taken into service by the endeavor of the revaluation. For Nietzsche’s talk of truth and lie emphatically holds against the previous morality’s highest type that it has the lie as a condition of its existence, and no less emphatically charges the morality that made it the highest type with slandering the world. In light of the two negations, the immoralist appears as an upright champion for truthfulness. Nietzsche divides his double No between the fourth and sixth sections. He subjects the type of the good—­the good according to the standard of Christian morality—­to a twofold critique, measured by the truth and measured by man’s capacity for a future. With regard to the truth, he judges that the “good” want not to see reality “at any price,” i.e., that they lack the required strength and bravery. With respect to the future of mankind, he stresses the development-­inhibiting consequences of their refusal to perceive and of their actions, which are oriented toward pity and good-­temperedness: “In the great economy of the whole the dread­ ful aspects of reality (in the affects, in the desires, in the will to power) are to an incalculable degree more necessary than that form of small happiness, so-­ called ‘goodness.’ ” For the first of the two negations Nietzsche explicitly refers to Zarathustra, who no doubt does sharply attack “the good and just” of the existing order: They taught “false coasts and surenesses” and sacrificed man’s greatness to the comfort of the present and to their own self-­satisfaction. In this connection there occurs for the only time in Ecce Homo, as a quotation, talk of the last man. Zarathustra calls “the good now ‘the last men,’ now the ‘beginning of the end.’ ”9 In the center of the chapter Nietzsche provides an unobstructed view of the “kind of man” the revaluation’s double No is driving at. The fifth section lies like an island between the immoralist’s first and second negations.10 With equal right, one can say that it is the turning-­and pivot-­point. It is the last section in Ecce Homo in which Zarathustra appears, and the first to begin with his name. Zarathustra, to whom he has ascribed a Dionysian nature, serves Nietzsche, when he calls upon him for the last time, as a mouthpiece of his own Dionysian nature, “which does not know how to separate no-­doing from yes-­saying.” He approaches the good at whom the revaluation aims via the No to the “good” who negate the good as the “evil.” “Zarathustra, the first 9. EH IV, 4 (367–­69). Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface 5, 5–­25; 9, 6–­8; III, 12.26, 1–­13; 27, 1–­3 (pp. 19–­20, 26, 265–­67). 10. The fifth section’s insular position is underlined by the fact that the most important patterns of the fourth chapter’s rhetoric are omitted in it. This goes for the use of formula (sections 1 and 2), destiny (sections 2, 4, 6, 8), immoralist (2, 3, 4, 6), as well as for the opening Have I been understood (sections 7, 8, and 9).

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psychologist of the good, is—­consequently—­a friend of the evil. If a décadent kind of man has risen to the rank of the highest kind, this could happen only at the expense of its opposing kind, the kind of man who is strong and certain of life.” The “strong and certain of life” type does not point to any blond beast, and the “exceptional man,” whom Nietzsche says the good have “devalued into evil,” does not set up any eulogy of Cesare Borgia. The revaluation manifests itself in the names, designations, and concepts: in the good and in the evil, in God or Devil, in truth and lie. “When mendacity at any price claims the word ‘truth’ for its viewpoint, the actually truthful one must be found under the worst names.” In the actually truthful one, we reach the center of the center, of the chapter and of its rhetoric alike. Nietzsche calls the type of man to whom Zarathustra says Yes a relatively overmannish type, whereby he disarms the leading figure of Zarathustra’s futurist doctrine in a remarkable way. To the hopes of redemption that the prophet awakened at the beginning of his teaching activity with the promise of the overman Nietzsche gives no nourishment. He only underscores the scope of the revaluation by remarking that Zarathustra does not hide “that the good and just would call his overman Devil,” and quoting two relevant verses. These are followed by the final elucidative statement on Zarathustra in Ecce Homo and in the œuvre in general. It is supposed to make comprehensible to the reader “what Zarathustra wants.” What, nota bene, the Zarathustra wants whom Nietzsche can call upon in expressing his own Dionysian nature: “this kind of man that he conceives, conceives reality as it is”: this kind “is strong enough for that—­it is not alienated, removed, from it, it is it itself, it has all that is dreadful and questionable in it also in itself, only thus can man have greatness . . .” The man who knows the world as it is, who has the strength to endure the truth, is the “actually truthful one.” He satisfies to the highest degree the “measure of value” that Nietzsche cites in the preface to Ecce Homo. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he is called the knower. Nietzsche usually calls him the philosopher.11 After evoking greatness, which recommends the truthful one to the noble ones as well, Nietzsche returns to the immoralist and to destiny. Not only does he, as announced, come to the second negation, the No to Christian morality, which or whose “ideal” he brands as the “poisonous fumes” of world-­ slander, anticipating the Antichrist. Even more, he links his No to a series of assertions of singularity and unprecedentedness that he knows do not correspond to the truth: His negation of Christian morality entitles him to wear the name immoralist proudly, as a badge of honor that “sets” him “off from all mankind.” “No one has yet felt Christian morality to be beneath him.” None 11. EH IV, 5 (369); IV, 2 (366); Preface 3, 3 (259).

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was capable of reaching such a height? “Christian morality was hitherto the Circe of all thinkers.” None knew how to resist her magic spell? No one before him had descended into the caves in which the Christian and related ideals have their place. “Who has even dared to suspect that they are caves?” None since Plato? “Who before me among philosophers was ever a psychologist, and not rather its opposite, ‘higher swindler,’ ‘idealist’? Before me there was no psychology at all.” The first immoralist is also the first psychologist. And he is the first philosopher who deserves to be called a philosopher.12 So much uniqueness and unprecedentedness turns into a destiny. A destiny that is this time not for others, but for the immoralist himself: “for one is also the first to have contempt . . .” The contempt apparently relates to what the immoralist knows, and concerns those before him who did not reach his knowledge. It is because of man’s smallness that disgust finally comes in. “Disgust at man is my danger . . .” It is not difficult to recognize that Nietzsche is abstracting not only from his philosophical precursors’ knowledge, but likewise from his own philosophical insight.13 Why this abstracting and leaving out of account? Why all the exaggerations and distortions? Why does the philosopher talk like a politician? Nietz­ sche opens the book’s last three sections in the same way, with the question: “Have I been understood?” What understanding is the author driving at? And how does the image with which he sees off the reader at the end accord with the exhortation “Above all do not mistake me for another!” which stood at the beginning? Even though in the concluding chapter Nietzsche twice offers formulas to make his task’s meaning comprehensible, and four times appears under a name that is supposed to mark his particular distinctiveness, he apparently considers it necessary to call for correct understanding three more times, and to help it along with another attempt. He concentrates all attention on one critique, one fight, one decision. “What demarcates me, what sets me apart from the entire rest of mankind, is to have uncovered Christian morality. Hence I was in need of a word that has the meaning of a provocation for Everyman.” At the beginning of the seventh section, Nietzsche takes up the sixth’s abstracting tenor and strengthens it. If a philosopher is to be understood by Everyman, he must talk like a politician. If he wants to reach all, he sets aside what is most important for him. Nietzsche is aware that what determines and distinguishes him is not exhausted by the uncovering of Chris­tian morality. But the unveiling of Christianity can become a historical 12. See in contrast Beyond Good and Evil 23 (p. 39). Consider Pp. 67–68. 13. EH IV, 6 (370–­7 1). See I, 8 (276) and II, 9–­10 (295–­97) as well as Pp. 51 and 49–51. Consider P. 110, Footnote 44.

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event for mankind.14 The hint he gives regarding the name immoralist, that the word is intended to be a provocation for Everyman, applies all the more to the dyad’s two titles, Ecce Homo and The Antichrist. The political speech, which is supposed to gather the forces and orient them toward the decision, leaves no doubt about who is the enemy. And it makes use of every register of accusation and moral judgment. That others before him “did not open” their eyes, and have not seen Christianity for what it is, Nietzsche calls “the greatest uncleanliness mankind has on its conscience.” He regards it “as self-­deception become instinct, as a fundamental will not to see every event, every causation, every reality, as counterfeiting in psychologicis to the point of criminality.” Even more: “Blindness toward Christianity is the crime par excellence—­the crime against life . . .” Above and beyond this verdict Nietzsche simply could not go. When he continues that the “millennia, the peoples, the first and the last, the philosophers and the old women” are, in their blindness toward Christianity, “all worthy of one another,” he seems only to want to repeat the previous section’s assertion of uniqueness and of unprecedentedness. In fact, however, he undermines this very assertion, for he now inserts the decisive correction in parentheses: “five, six moments in history excepted, me as the seventh.” Once again, Nietzsche indicates in passing, and in a place where it would be least expected, that he does not comprehend himself in terms of his­ toricism and does not claim any privileged historical moment of knowledge.

14. In the eighteenth century, Paul Thiry d’Holbach’s Le christianisme dévoilé ou Examen des principes et des effets de la religion chrétienne (1766) caused a sensation. The resolute critique of Christianity, which d’Holbach published under a false name and with misleading information (“Par feu M. Boulanger, à Londres 1756”), was prohibited immediately after its appearance and burned publicly by the executioner. It nevertheless found wide circulation—­Voltaire, among others, was initially suspected to be the author—­in a series of reprints. By contrast, in the nineteenth century Bruno Bauer’s Das entdeckte Christentum (Zürich und Winterthur, 1843) did not reach the public, as the writing was confiscated by the police before distribution. Only a few copies survived, one of which made it to Karl Marx. (The first edition was published by Ernst Barnikol: Das entdeckte Christentum im Vormärz. Bruno Bauers Kampf gegen Religion und Christentum und Erstausgabe seiner Kampfschrift. Jena, 1927.) Nietzsche calls Bruno Bauer, whose last two books were issued in 1880 and 1882 by the publishing house of Ernst Schmeitzner, which had published Nietzsche’s writings up to 1884, “one of my most attentive readers” in Ecce Homo (III, The Untimely Ones 2, 317). D’Holbach published another vehement polemic against Christianity in 1770, with Marc-­Michel Rey in Amsterdam, this time anonymously and without any information on location or year. On the title page one could read in capital letters ECCE HOMO: Histoire critique de Jésus-­Christ, ou, Analyse raisonnée des Evangiles. Ecce Homo. This book of d’Holbach’s, too, underwent several reissues and pirated editions. Neither d’Holbach nor Bauer made Christian morality the subject of his critique. On Nietzsche’s sharp demarcation from the libres penseurs, consider P. 70 with Footnote 21.

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At the same time, he implies to the preeminent addressee that he is fully aware of his speech’s exaggerations and distortions. He accordingly no longer calls Christian morality “the Circe of all thinkers,” but instead “the real Circe of mankind.”15 Christian morality figures in Nietzsche’s talk of truth and lie as the “most malignant form of the will to lie.” It has corrupted mankind. The author dec­ lares his horror at the “lack of nature” and demands the reader’s horror at the “perfectly awful facts of the matter, that antinature itself received the highest honors as morality and remained hanging over mankind as law, as categorical imperative.” The attack on Christian morality applies to the entire “morality of unselfing oneself,” up to its sublimest constructions and applications, especially those of Kant. The catalogue of violations and perversions that Nietzsche holds against the “antinature” that is exalted as morality reads: contempt for the “very first instincts of life”; playing off a “soul” against, inventing a “spirit” to the detriment of, the body; degradation of sexuality, the presupposition of life itself, into something impure; professing “strict selfishness (—­the very word is slanderous!—­)” to be the evil principle; elevating the “typical marks of decline,” the selfless, the loss of a center of gravity, depersonalization and neighbor-­love, into “value itself.” Since Nietzsche charges, not an individual or a people, but mankind with having blundered in Christian morality and everything that follows from it, the catalogue leads to the question: “What? would mankind itself be in décadence? has it always been?” The speech has obviously reached an impasse. What does the diagnosis of décadence mean if it should be applicable to mankind all along? And how is it to be explained that the “morality of unselfing oneself ” gained the upper hand even though it betrays a “will to the end”? Nietzsche must make a distinction. He asserts it to be certain that mankind “has been taught only décadence values as the highest values.” If the morality of unselfing oneself, which “in its bottommost ground” negates life, is the “only morality” that has hitherto been the subject of teaching, the teachers become the primary target of the critique. The speech’s turn opens up the possibility of not having to assume mankind as always already being “in décadence,” but of instead attributing décadence to a “parasitical kind of man,” as its work. The way out of the impasse is an agent theory of morality. In it, the question of the intentions, the interests, and the nature of the agents stands at the center. “And indeed, this is my insight: the teachers, the leaders of mankind, theologians all, were also all décadents: hence the revaluation of all values into what is hostile to 15. EH IV, 7, 1–­2 (371–­72). See P. 68.

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life, hence morality . . .” Thus the talk of truth and lie culminates in the attack on the priests, who divined in Christian morality their “means to power” and who pursued the “ulterior motive” of revenging themselves on life.16 The attack on the priests gives the political conclusion a thrust that is memorable to Everyman. Concentrating on the particular “kind of man” that taught and enforced the “morality of unselfing oneself ” has two further merits for Nietzsche’s speech. On one hand, it allows the reader to see the “revaluation of all values into what is hostile to life” as a distinct enterprise that requires an equally distinct enterprise in response. On the other, it emphatically underlines that with the revaluation, what is at question is which type should rule, or is most furthered by the revaluation. In the center of the no-­saying triad, Nietzsche associated the three treatises of the Genealogy of Morals with the revaluation’s prehistory: “I have been understood. Three decisive preliminary works of a psychologist for a revaluation of all values.” At the end of the book, he refers to the revaluation as a fact and brings out its readily comprehensible core, the critique of the Christian revaluation: “the uncovering of Christian morality is an event that has no equal, a real catastrophe. He who enlightens about it is a force majeure, a destiny—­he breaks the history of mankind into two pieces. One lives before him, or one lives after him . . .” Nietzsche appears as another Napoleon. An over-­Napoleon, who ends the Christian aeon. He speaks not with the voice of the lawgiver but with that of the enlightener, who triumphs over the old revaluation and its universal claim by raising up the truth. Since he can look back at the completion of the Antichrist on September 30, 1888, he speaks in the past tense: “The lightning of truth struck precisely that which hitherto stood highest: he who grasps what was annihilated there might look to see whether he has anything left in his hands at all. Everything hitherto called ‘truth’ has been recognized as the most harmful, treacherous, subterranean form of lie.” The rest follows from this. The destiny that Nietzsche is exposes the edifice of the Christian revaluation to destruction. From the Christian God to the concepts of the beyond, the immortal soul, redemption, sin, and the selfless, to the ideal of the good man—­an ideal that is made out of the opposition to the “proud and well-­turned-­out, the yes-­ saying, the future-­certain, future-­guaranteeing man.” Compactly repeating what has been said earlier, Nietzsche draws the image of antinature one last time and furnishes it with Voltaire’s battle cry as a caption: Ecrasez l’infâme!17 16. EH IV, 7, 2–­4 (372–­73). 17. EH IV, 8 (373–­74). III, Genealogy of Morals 1, 4 (353). Cf. III, The Case of Wagner 2, 6 (360) and 4, 4 (364).

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“Have I been understood?” In the case of the final section, the four words with which Nietzsche begins each of the three concluding sections are followed only by the four words: “Dionysos against the Crucified . . .” Whereas the chapter’s seventh section to a certain extent gives an explanation of the formula introduced by its first section, and the eighth provides a kind of commentary on the second formula, which is contained in the second section, the response of the ninth consists in a formula itself. The third formula, which Nietzsche does not call a formula, is conclusio, enigma, and finis operis in one. It condenses the fourth chapter’s political message into epigrammatic sharpness: The revaluation of all values into what serves life is to overcome the revaluation of all values into what is hostile to life. A new order is to take the place of the old order. The adherents of Dionysos are to gain victory over the followers of the Crucified. The last four words point back to Nietzsche’s task. They announce the demand with which he will address mankind “in a short time.” And, as an echo of the title—­the first two words of the book—­they call out to the reader: Look at Dionysos instead of at the Crucified. In Ecce Homo, the Crucified is mentioned only here. Jesus does not appear anywhere by name. Christ occurs solely in the mode of negation, in the one passage in which Nietzsche says of himself: “I am the Antichrist.” Matters are completely different with Dionysos. In his case, this is the tenth mention. In the first, Nietzsche speaks of the philosopher Dionysos, in the seventh and eighth he calls him a God. We must ask ourselves what the appearance of the philosopher who is supposed to be a God means. For when Nietzsche introduced the philosopher Dionysos into his œuvre, he also emphatically called him a God.18 Let us try this preliminary answer: Obviously Nietzsche places value on the God’s not remaining without a name, in contrast to the necessarily nameless truth. On his not—­deviating from a long philosophical tradition—­being represented as a pure spirit that, bodiless, leads an ascetic shadow-­existence in Hades. On his not being thought as without love and passion, free from pleasure and pain. In Nietzsche’s theology, a God means the most perfect being that is a person, living and not immortal, affirming the whole in joy and suffering, desiring knowledge and capable of insight.19

18. Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 238–­39). See P. 58. 19. With the God and philosopher Dionysos, Nietzsche draws the conclusions of his critique of the theologies of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. But he differs no less from Machiavelli’s theology of Fortuna. Cf. Posthumous Fragments, Spring 1884, 25 [17], KSA 11, p. 16 as well as Posthumous Fragments Summer 1883, 8 [15], KSA 10, p. 340 and see Politische Philosophie und die Herausforderung der Offenbarungsreligion, pp. 93–­99 and 110–­11 with n. 108 [Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, pp. 68–­73 and 82–­3 with n. 108].

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The last four words set a God who is a philosopher against the Crucified. The question of what a philosopher is is dealt with by the Antichrist.20 “Why I Am a Destiny” is an eccentric chapter in a double sense. Its rhetoric is eccentric, its position within the dyad is eccentric. The most strident of the four chapters, beginning with I and ending with the Crucified, in which the author appears as a knight of truthfulness and speaks as an immoralist, and which at the end proclaims nothing less than a new way of reckoning time for mankind, forms the last and highest hurdle on the rhetorical obstacle course that Nietzsche has marked out for the discussion of the philosophic life. Nietzsche makes use of a prohibitive rhetorical equipment in Ecce Homo similar to the one deployed by Rousseau in Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire, which likewise have the philosophic life as their subject. The rhetoric of Rousseau’s last book is no less eccentric than that of Nietzsche’s last book. But the two authors choose highly distinct strategies to impede access to the core of their writing and to protect what is most important to themselves. Whereas Rousseau opts for the rhetoric of political harmlessness, Nietzsche decides for the rhetoric of political offensiveness. If from the first sentence Rousseau imagines that he is alone in the world and has himself as his sole reader, Nietzsche pretends to turn toward mankind and bring it glad tidings in ever-­new attempts. If Rousseau purports to give himself over to the “precious far niente,” Nietzsche gives the impression of putting himself entirely in the service of the revaluation of all values. The one wanderer shows himself with herbarium and magnifying glass, identifying plants, the other dons the toga of the future lawgiver, carrying bronze tablets with him. In a word, both display the nonphilosopher to the best of their ability, Nietzsche in the final chapter above all. The diverging orientation and volume of their speech—­ where Rousseau appears willing to, as it were, let his thought float away in fleeting reveries, Nietzsche demands attention for his with the greatest emphasis and at the same time warns against it by speaking of dynamite—­are explained, not only, but also, by the highly different situations in which each is writing his book: Rousseau is the leading political theorist and one of the most famous authors of the time. His writings are read and discussed throughout Europe immediately after publication. He has stood in the storm of numerous controversies for a quarter of a century, attracted a flood of rebuttals, and been exposed to political and religious persecution in several states. Even though he lives in seclusion no less than will Nietzsche a century after him, he is a public person. Citizens and politicians entreat him for interventions 20. IV, 9 (374). III, 2 (302). See Pp. 22, 54, 98–99. –­It is doubtful whether the proposition Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse is applicable to the last four words of Ecce Homo.

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and draft constitutions for their polities. Scientists and composers exchange views with him. Worried mothers and young readers ask him for advice. Nietzsche does not need to defend himself against the public’s interest. He must first of all awaken it. His books sell badly. Ever since the publishing failure of Zarathustra, he can publish them only at his own expense. He is the inside tip shared by a few. The eccentric rhetoric has caused Rousseau’s last book, and Nietzsche’s last book, with the twin title belonging to it, to remain the two philosophers’ least understood books for more than one or two centuries. The strategy chosen by the citoyen de Genève, who was much more knowledgeable in political things, ensured, however, that the Rêveries were at most received as the heartfelt expression of a persecuted man or considered to be mere literature, whereas the gesture of the demolition master encouraged the unsuitable to make free use of Ecce Homo as a stone quarry, and certainly did not prevent political mischief ’s being done with it. Unlike Rousseau, who makes sure that the Rêveries have their place outside of the œuvre—­the œuvre, with which he addresses mankind, is complete and concluded with the Dialogues, Rousseau juge de Jean-­Jacques—­Nietzsche makes his book on the philosophic life into an integral component of the œuvre. The eccentric position of the fourth chapter of Ecce Homo results from this. Ecce Homo is supposed to prepare the Revaluation, i.e., the Antichrist. The book that gives information about how Nietzsche became what he is stands declaredly in the service of Nietzsche’s task. But the task is not only the central determination in Nietzsche’s discussion of becoming-­oneself and hence indispensable to his account of the philosophic life. Its fulfillment, too, is part of the discussion and the account. Nietzsche asserts the completion of the revaluation before the last chapter begins. Consistently enough, the fourth chapter is the only one in which the guiding concept of Ecce Homo, Nietzsche’s task, does not occur.21 “Why I Am a Destiny” presupposes both of the dyad’s books and looks back on both. And yet it links the one with the other, by representing the conflict of philosophy and politics. The last four words of Ecce Homo announce the Antichrist. They are not for that any less the last four words of Nietzsche’s œuvre.

21. In the fourth chapter there is twice talk of task, but no longer of Nietzsche’s task. In IV, 1, the “bringer of glad tidings” declares that he knows of “tasks of such a height that the concept of them has hitherto been lacking; only from me on are there again hopes.” Nietzsche brings tasks and hopes for others. In IV, 8, Nietzsche holds against Christianity that it has invented the concept of the beyond or the true world “in order to devalue the only world there is—­in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality!” If we do not count the sole usage of the negation, no task, the task occurs 36 times in the 72 sections of Ecce Homo.

second book

Nature and Politics II: The Antichrist: Curse on Christianity

i

Friends

The Antichrist, the name of the Revaluation of All Values that is withheld in Ecce Homo, is the most polemical title in Nietzsche’s œuvre. Nietzsche could have subtitled the writing A Book for My Friends with almost as much reason as he had in considering this, in a related formulation, for Ecce Homo. With the addition Curse on Christianity, he doubles the polemical appearance. Main title and subtitle mark the same oppositional stance.1 Without unveiling the true name of the Revaluation, Nietzsche prepares the reader for the title in Ecce Homo when he says of himself: “I am the Antichrist.” In the same place, he draws attention to the fact that the title is ambiguous. It designates both the one who opposes Christ and also the one who opposes the Christian. In the second sense, Antichrist speaks of “anti-­Christians” in the plural.2 In the first, Antichrist can again mean two different things. On one hand, the title refers to the one who knows himself to be fundamentally different from Christ 1. See First Book, Chapter I, Footnote 17. The title The Antichrist was chosen no later than a month before the commencement of work on Ecce Homo. On September 14, 1888, Nietzsche writes to Franz Overbeck that the book is called “between us, ‘the Antichrist’ ” and that he wants “to swear that everything which has ever been thought and said in the critique of Christianity is vain childishness compared with it” (KGB III 5, p. 434). See also the mention of the title in a letter of September 7, 1888, to Meta von Salis (KGB III 5, p. 411). As a subtitle, Nietzsche provided Revaluation of All Values and Attempt at a Critique of Christianity in the manuscript, but finally decided for Curse on Christianity. Cf. Pp. 4–5, Footnote 2. 2. EH III, 2 (302); see P. 54. On the “anti-­Christians,” see AC 38 (211); cf. AC 47 (226) and Twilight of the Idols, Morality as Antinature 3 (p. 84). –­When reference is made here and in other passages to Ecce Homo as the writing preceding the Antichrist, this is done from the perspective of the reader, who according to Nietzsche’s stated will is supposed to know of Ecce Homo before he gets to know the Antichrist. The order in which the two books are to be read does not correspond to the order in which they were written. See Pp. 4–5.

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in his attitude toward the world, his self-­understanding, his Yes and No. On the other, it takes up the determination of the enemy that Christianity associates with the name. Nietzsche plays with a figure that gathers in itself like no other the eschatological seriousness of a long tradition reaching back to Paul: The Antichrist as the adversary, who immediately precedes the Return of Christ at the end of history; the Old Enemy, with whom the final battle must be fought; the power that confronts man with the most important of all decisions: whether to take sides for or against Christ. Nietzsche makes reference to this tradition, in which believing Christians have been keeping watch for centuries, tense in expectation, for the Antichrist, without being able to name him in advance because the counsel of divine providence is inscrutable, when in the preface to the new, 1886 edition of the Birth of Tragedy, he interposes the question: “who would know the correct name of the Antichrist?” But, contrary to the believers’ eschatological conjectures, he does not deny being the Antichrist. He makes no effort to imitate the teaching of Christ. He also does not appropriate the slogan pax et securitas, which the Christian tradition ascribes to the master of cunning and dissimulation. Instead, already in Beyond Good and Evil he openly and unapologetically demands a “philosophy of the Antichrist,” which, as he does not fail to mention, requires corresponding depth and originality. With the title The Antichrist, Nietzsche claims to satisfy the demand.3 In sharp contrast to the announcement in the first sentence of Ecce Homo that “in a short time” he will have to “approach mankind with the heaviest demand that has ever been made of it,” Nietzsche states in the first sentence of The Antichrist: “This book belongs to the fewest.” The largest possible audience that Ecce Homo envisages for the Revaluation and that the subtitle Curse on Christianity has in view is limited by the opening of the preface to the circle of those to whom the philosophy of the Antichrist is accessible. The fewest may appeal to the Antichrist. The fewest can say of themselves that it is their book. The fewest will understand it. Only for the fewest will it be a gift. “Perhaps none of them is even living yet.” The addressees are the future ones who know how to understand. Their number is indeterminate, but in any case greater than that of those who find access to the Antichrist in the present. 3. The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt at a Self-­Critique 5 (p. 19). Beyond Good and Evil 256 (p. 203). Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:3; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:5–­6. 1 John 2:18 and 22 as well as 4:3; 2 John 7. Further references on the Christian tradition of Antichrist-­expectation are given in my Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und «Der Begriff des Politischen». Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden (Stuttgart, 1988), 3rd ed. 2013, pp. 55–­56, 63–­64, and my Die Lehre Carl Schmitts, pp. 45–­47, 168, 206–­8, 246–­50 [Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago, 1995), pp. 47–­49, 54–­55, and The Lesson of Carl Schmitt, pp. 24–­25, 108, 134–­35, 162–­65].

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“It might be those who understand my Zarathustra: how could I mistake myself for those for whom ears are already growing today?” Whoever knows how to unlock the Book for All and None is most likely to fulfill the conditions for also making this book, which is intended for the fewest, his own. He will not least be in a position to comprehend for what reason and to what end the author of Zarathustra, in which Jesus is the only man besides Zarathustra to be mentioned by name (once), wrote and had to write the Antichrist. As little as someone is free “to have ears for Zarathustra,” he is just as little free to have ears for Nietzsche, who takes the floor himself in the Antichrist. In the one case as well as in the other, the reader must be made for the book. Nietzsche adds: “Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born post­ humously.” The day after tomorrow belongs to Nietzsche because only then can he expect to find readers who accept his book as a gift by understanding it. The Antichrist connects Nietzsche’s belonging with that of the fewest: The book belongs to the fewest, and by means of them the future belongs to Nietz­ sche. Nietzsche is, however, by no means alone in his posthumous birth, as he lets the reader know not only here. Since the Untimely Meditations he has emphasized that philosophers are the stepchildren of their time.4 Nietzsche asserts that he knows the conditions under which he is understood, “and then understood of necessity,” “only too well.” He can name them specifically—­he spends ten sentences doing so—­because he meets them himself, because they are his conditions. The necessary understanding of author and reader is based on the encounter of kindred natures. The head of the catalogue is occupied by the virtue of probity or the capacity for cruelty toward oneself: (1) “One must be upright in spiritual things to the point of hardness even to stand my seriousness, my passion.” If Christ and Antichrist still meet in the first point, their paths begin to diverge in the second, which recalls the pathos of distance and points ahead to the solitude at the center of the list: (2) “One must be used to living on mountains—­to seeing the pathetic contemporary prattle of politics and national selfishness beneath oneself.” The third condition, the habitual practice of exposing oneself to the truth, regardless of whether it confers utility or brings about disaster (3), undergoes its historical sharpening in the third-­to-­last determination, a “new conscience” for “hitherto mute truths” (8). The radical, universal, and especial orientation toward the truth comprehends and includes the catalogue’s four central stipulations. The fourth sentence, in three parts, plays between courage and fate around the Nitimur in vetitum from the preface to Ecce Homo: (4) “A 4. AC Preface, 1, 1–­2 (167). EH Preface, 1 and 4, 2; III, 1, 2–­3 (257, 260, 298); see Pp. 13 and 52. Cf. Schopenhauer as Educator 3, 9 (p. 362); Beyond Good and Evil 212 (pp. 145–­47).

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preference of strength for questions for which no one today has the courage; the courage for the prohibited; the predestination for the labyrinth.” In five words each, sentences five, six, and seven aim at the philosopher, who overcomes the customary habits of hearing and seeing and, as a sailor on the open sea or as a wanderer on mountain heights, leaves behind him, beneath him, the noble one’s closed horizon: (5) “An experience from seven solitudes. (6) New ears for new music. (7) New eyes for what is furthest.” In the center of the preface to The Antichrist stands the experience of the highest solitude, just as in the center of the preface to Ecce Homo stands the voluntary life in ice and high mountains. The experience of solitude, not solitude tout court. For as little as the philosopher lives permanently in ice and high mountains, just as little does he simply remain in solitude. The reader who understands the Antichrist is no longer solitary. And the same goes for the author who anticipates the reader in the writing. The conclusion is made up of two determinations that point the reader and the author back to him, to himself: Economizing with and for oneself, the “will to the economy of great style,” the gathering of strength, the saving up of enthusiasm for one’s own task (9); and, again in three parts, the love of oneself: (10) “Reverence before oneself; love for oneself; absolute freedom toward oneself . . .” In the “reverence before oneself,” the noble soul and the philosophical nature meet. But in the latter, in contrast to the former, the peculiar description neither stands for the reverence “before the mask” nor does it indicate resistance to the curiosity of knowledge.5 Instead, it serves the demarcation from what is outside, and it prevents losing oneself to others. The second pole of the tenth determination, “absolute freedom toward oneself,” provides the guarantee that reverence will not detract from laughter at oneself and will not hinder self-­knowledge.6 Nietz­ sche comments on the list of the ten necessary conditions under which he is to be understood with the words: “Well then! These alone are my readers, my right readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter?” A literally unheard-­of provocation in the preface to a writing that, according to the will of its author, was supposed to find circulation in large numbers and in several languages simultaneously. Nietzsche sharpens the tone still more: “The rest is merely mankind.” And further: “One must be superior to mankind through strength, through height of the soul—through contempt . . .” The two mentions of mankind are the antipodes of the fourfold appeal to mankind in the preface to Ecce Homo. In which philosophical book would the first addressee

5. See Beyond Good and Evil 287 as well as 263, 270, and 281 (pp. 232–­33, 217–­18, 226, 230). 6. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 292 as well as 294 and 296 (pp. 235, 236, 239).

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have been singled out more sharply and loudly right at the opening? So loudly and sharply that the readers do not believe the author?7 The text’s first paragraph is addressed in direct speech to a We. In the beginning stands the imperative: “—­Let us look ourselves in the face.”8 Nietz­ sche commences, not with an attack on the enemy, not with a polemic or a curse, but with a request of himself and those like him, or of his friends, with the admonition to self-­knowledge. The We to whom he speaks initially comprises, as we may assume from the preface, the author and his “right readers.” It is constituted by a necessary understanding. The imperative concerns both sides and goes in both directions: In our looking ourselves in the face, we recognize ourselves and we recognize each other. Or, applied to the preface: The author encounters himself in the “predestined reader,” who finds himself in the book destined for him by the author.9 Nietzsche gives the We a name: “We are Hyperboreans—­we know well enough how apart we live.” Those who have their abode over and above Boreas, beyond the cold north wind—­the enigmatic name underscores the demarcation from the “rest” of mankind, the apartness, the removedness, the inaccessibility of the life that is common to the We and that unites it in the knowledge of its distinctiveness. “ ‘Neither by land nor by water will you find the path to the Hyperboreans’: this Pindar already knew of us.” To name the We Nietzsche invokes the same poet who stands in the background of the formulation of the subtitle to Ecce Homo.10 And in attributing to him a knowledge “of us” he expresses that the We reaches far back into the depths of time: The Hyperboreans were already there before there was Christianity. Nietzsche discloses his belonging to a We that is transhistorical or that includes the entire history of philosophy, for 7. AC Preface, 2 and 3, 1–­3 (167–­68). EH Preface, 3, 2–­3 (258–­59). Cf. EH III, 3 (303–­4) and Pp. 54–­56. –­On September 7, 1888, Nietzsche writes Meta von Salis about the preface to the Antichrist: “The third of September was a very remarkable day. Early on I wrote the preface to my Revaluation of All Values, the proudest preface that has perhaps hitherto been written. Afterwards I went out—­and behold! the most beautiful day I have seen in the Engadine—­a luminosity of all colors, a blue on lake and sky, a clarity of the air, perfectly unheard of . . .” (KGB III 5, p. 410). 8. The Antichrist is the third and last of Nietzsche’s books to begin its text with a dash: In the case of the Fourth Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is obvious that it is a continuation. In the Genealogy of Morals, which exhibits the same peculiarity, Nietzsche specifically stipulates in advance: “Added to the last-­published ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ for supplementation and clarifi­ cation.” Does the beginning of the Antichrist confirm the book’s character as a continuation, its belonging to the dyad with Ecce Homo, down to this inconspicuous detail? 9. Cf. Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens, p. 253 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, p. 190]. 10. Pindar, Pythian Odes X, 29–­30 and II, 72. See P. 5, Footnote 3.

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the Hyperboreans, or in any case their hard core, are, as we will read later, philosophers. To this corresponds the fact that the We is located in “space.” “Beyond the north, the ice, death—­our life, our happiness . . .” This does not mean that the We does not live in time, know, respond to challenges, that it is not subject to becoming. The We of the Hyperboreans, who are determined by their nature, arrives, after three ellipsis points, in the present: “We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we found the exit out of whole millennia of labyrinth.” The Hyperboreans, who thanks to their “predestination for the labyrinth” are at all times experts on the labyrinth of the soul, today testify to their expertise by showing the path out of the historical labyrinth associated with the name of Christianity. When Nietzsche credits them with having discovered happiness, moreover, he presents the Hyperboreans as the true alternative to the “last men,” whom Zarathustra had say: “We have invented happiness.” The discovery of happiness is related to its invention as reality is to delusion. The life and happiness of the Hyperboreans are confirmed and borne up by their knowledge.11 The Hyperboreans know the way. In contrast to modern man, on whom Nietzsche’s first attack is directed. “ ‘I know not outs, nor ins; I am everything that does not know outs or ins’—­sighs modern man . . . Of this modernity we were sick.” The We that looks back on its being sick and establishes a front against the “lazy peace,” the “cowardly compromise,” the “whole virtuous uncleanliness” of the modern Yes and No, is not limited to Nietzsche and his “predestined readers” or his friends. A wider circle of possible allies may find themselves in it. “Rather live in the ice than among modern virtues and other south winds! . . .” Nietzsche can persuade the noble addressees in particular to meet the Hyperboreans with benevolence, if not to equate themselves with them, by putting in the center of his anamnesis an aimless bravery: “We were brave enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others: but for a long time we did not know whither with our bravery.” Everything pushes powerfully to the resolutive word. “A thunderstorm was in our air, the nature that we are was darkened—­for we had no way.” Or, to speak with Ecce Homo: To become what we are according to our nature, the right task was needed. “Formula of our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, an aim . . .” The way and the happiness and the life—­all depend on knowing the aim, the task. Knowledge is the one thing needful.12 11. AC 1, 1 (169). Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface 5, 16 and 25 (pp. 19 and 20); cf. Was ist Nietz­ sches Zarathustra?, pp. 21–­22 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 14–­15]. 12. AC 1, 2 (169). Cf. Twilight of the Idols, Sayings and Arrows 44 (p. 66); John 14:5; Mat­ thew 5:37; Luke 10:42.

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The aim named by Ecce Homo, the “revaluation of all values,” seems to require a teaching that finds broad resonance and a flock of proselytes who are willing to put themselves in the service of the teaching and to espouse it. It would thus be grounded in the task when Nietzsche speaks of the Hyper­ boreans in such a way that nonphilosophers could join them or mistake themselves for them. For the expanded We, Nietzsche holds ready in the second paragraph—­without introduction and without elucidation—­mnemonic propositions that look like the prelude to an instruction of greater extent and a more universal character. Corresponding to the heterogeneous audience, he combines three Socratic What is?-­questions with three easily comprehensible catechism-­answers: “What is good?—­Everything that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. / What is bad?—Everything that stems from weakness. / What is happiness?—The feeling that power is growing, that a resistance is being overcome.” It is not to be overlooked that none of the three replies moves on the heights of Nietzsche’s philosophical insight. Neither the happiness Nietzsche ascribes to himself in Ecce Homo, nor the happiness he has Zarathustra describe, is exhausted by the feeling of the growth of power or is adequately grasped as a feeling of prevailing over resistances. The author, who has repeatedly stated the compulsion to refinement, investigated the varieties of mimicry, deduced the necessity of coming to intelligent solutions from out of a deficiency, knows that what is born of weakness need not be bad. And of course the author of the Antichrist is aware that not everything that heightens the will to power can be considered good: good, for instance, for the Hyperboreans. It is not by accident that Ecce Homo first mentions the will to power in connection with religion-­founders. But also from the viewpoint of those who detect an augmentation of the will to power in themselves, the increase is not simply to be called good. Zarathustra, who introduces the concept, speaks with reason of the need “to unharness” the will to power. Through the doctrine that finds expression in the three mnemonic propositions, Nietzsche shows in the narrowest space and with characteristic pointedness the price that is to be paid when a philosophical concept is detached from the context in which it has its place and converted into a universal teaching. For the “will to power” is first of all a medium of the philosopher’s self-­knowledge: an instrument of self-­critique and self-­control with regard to his will to truth.13 In 1888, Nietzsche rejects the work announced in 1886 and 1887, which was supposed to unfold the teaching of the Will to Power, in favor of Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce 13. See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 234–­35; cf. pp. 73–­80 and 97–­103 [What Is Nietz­ sche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 188–­89; cf. pp. 57–­62 and 76–­81].

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Homo. He gives no new nourishment to the confusion of philosophy with a doctrinal edifice. The three school-­responses are as it were the memoranda of the system, condensed to the extreme. They may be able to strengthen the partisans’ will to power for the upcoming confrontation. Immediately thereafter, the section’s fourth subsection issues the three-­part slogan: “Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but fitness (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtù, moraline-­free virtue).” The following subsection is obviously intended to align the proselytes with the ideal of a stronger, superior, higher man and to contribute to toughening them up: “The weak and badly turned out should perish: first proposition of our love of man. And one should even help them to it.” It remains to name and characterize the enemy against whom the revaluation is directed and against whom it is to be asserted. For the first section’s historical re-­presentation had reached up only to “modern man.” To do this Nietzsche chooses, for the fourth and fi­ nal time, the catechismal form of question and answer: “What is more harm­ ful than any vice?—­The active pity for all who are badly turned out and weak—­Christianity . . .”14 As soon as Christianity has appeared and been branded as harmful—­ harmful presumably for life and happiness—­the easy-­to-­grasp mnemonics come to an end. Nietzsche breaks off the doctrinal instruction in order to begin anew. He now makes the theme “which type of man should be bred, should be willed.” Thus he reaches the question that stands at the head of the entire revaluation. At the same time, he prepares the reader for the philosophical enterprise of the Antichrist, which is essentially a typological enterprise. He begins with a necessary demarcation and clarification: “The problem I herewith pose is not what should succeed mankind in the sequence of beings (—­man is an end—­).” At the place where Nietzsche says I for the first time in the text, he distinguishes his position from the futurist teaching made public by Zarathustra’s speech in the market, “On the Overman and on the Last Man.” A teaching that was, and continues to be, imputed to Nietzsche by many readers. “Man is an end,” not a bridge to the still-­to-­come fulfillment in the overman. Nietzsche rejects the hope of a new species or the promise of a meaning-­giving that lies in the future, which will redeem man and the past. He insists that the “higher-­value type” of which he speaks has “already existed 14. AC 2, 1–­6 (170). The will to power occurs four times in the Antichrist, as in Ecce Homo: AC 2, 6, 16, 17. Paragraphs 1–­7 of the Antichrist derive from the book The Will to Power, which was abandoned in the summer of 1888. A plan from August 26, 1888, still assigns them to that writing, as the preface and under the title We Hyperboreans (KSA 14, p. 437). Paragraphs 8–­24 also go back to the Will to Power.

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often enough.” However, “as a stroke of good fortune, as an exception, never as willed.” The revaluation is supposed to say Yes to the higher type, to elevate the stroke of good fortune into the aim, to make the exception into the object of willing. Whereas on the basis of the ruling valuation, “the reverse type” has been “willed, bred, achieved”: “the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal, man—­the Christian . . .” At the end of the third section, the primary sense of the title Nietzsche gave the book becomes accessible to the reader: The Antichrist as the type toward which the “revaluation of all values” is directed. The countertype to the Christian, Antichristianus against Christianus. —­ Nietzsche wants to keep the deep caesura marked by the revaluation free of any new, philosophy-­of-­history-­based misunderstandings. It is possible that the turn from the stroke of good fortune, the never-­willed, to the consciously willed sounds to him too much like Zarathustra’s speech on the “giant Accident” and the “nonsense,” the “senselessness,” that hitherto “prevailed over the whole of mankind.” In any case, Nietzsche sharpens the demarcation from the futurist conception. “Mankind does not represent a development toward the better or stronger or higher, in the way this is believed today. ‘Progress’ is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea.” This could also have been said by Zarathustra, who wanted to teach the people the overman. Yet Nietzsche does not leave it at the critique of progressive thinking. He once again draws on “a continual success in individual cases,” in which “a higher type is represented: something that is a kind of overman in relation to the totality of mankind.” It is no longer a matter of the overman, but of a kind of overman. And this kind of overman is not a project for the future but has long been among us: “Such fortunate strokes of great success were always possible and will perhaps always be possible. And even whole lineages, tribes, peoples can under some circumstances represent such a strike.” For the We, to whom and of whom Nietzsche is speaking, this means: The Hyperboreans were, cum grano salis, always pos­ sible, and they will, as far as we can foresee the future of mankind, always be possible. Nietzsche confirms their transhistorical nature.15 The “revaluation of all values,” contrary to how it may at first appear, is as a “demand of mankind” not just the expression of a humanitarian task. It arises equally out of the Hyperboreans’ ownmost interest. It serves their self-­ assertion and self-­defense. For, after having introduced the higher type as the stroke of good fortune that is possible at all times, Nietzsche emphasizes that Christianity is waging “a war to the death” against this very type. Not only that it devalued the strong man into the depraved one and took “the side of 15. AC 3, 1–­2 and 4, 1–­2 (170–­7 1). Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 22.2, 8 (p. 100). Overman appears only once in the Antichrist and only as a kind of overman. The last man does not occur anywhere.

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everything weak, low, badly turned out.” The revaluation for which Nietzsche holds Christianity responsible concerns the Hyperboreans directly: Christianity has “corrupted the reason of even the spiritually strongest natures, by teaching that the supreme values of spirituality were to be felt as sinful, as misleading, as temptations.” As in Beyond Good and Evil, where, taking up the attack of Christianity, Nietzsche stressed and affirmed with particular emphasis the attempting-­tempting character of philosophy, he draws on the case of Pascal to illustrate Christianity’s harmfulness for potential philosophers who never became what they were. He leaves unmentioned that the ban against philosophy as the continual repetition of the Fall did not corrupt but rather strengthened others, that the enmity did not harm them but rather helped them to attain clarity: his own case. The revaluation of all values is part of the Hyperboreans’ philosophic politics.16 With a view to this politics, Nietzsche returns once more to concise doctrinal instruction, again picking up the thread with the type that was “willed, bred, achieved” by the ruling order of values. He puts the “corruption of man” in a glaring light, pointing out once again to the audience for which the instruction is intended that the judgment is “meant moraline-­free.” It is meant in the sense of Nietzsche’s assertion of decadence, according to which “all values in which mankind now encapsulates its supreme wishes are décadence-­ values.” The recapitulation of the diagnosis of decadence gives him the opportunity to introduce the central concept of life into the instruction, and to tie it to the will to power, which the catechism questions placed at the head: “Life itself I consider to be an instinct for growth, for duration, for accumulation of forces, for power: where the will to power is missing, there is decline.” Shortening a diagnosis, or an analysis that crystallizes into a concept, to a simple-­ to-­memorize mnemonic proposition easily leads to error. This goes, as we saw, for the will to power. It also goes to a certain extent for décadence, which, considered more closely, designates not decline in general, but, in those places where Nietzsche uses the concept sharply and precisely, a lack of the vital forces required to generate a great style, to bind a multiplicity into a unity, to build with a long view. It is therefore consistent that Nietzsche does not stop at the assertion that the “supreme values” of mankind are “décadence-­values,” but instead makes the assertion more precise and determines the “values of decline” that are at issue as “nihilistic values.” The “corruption of man,” which Nietzsche claims to have unveiled, is the result of “nihilistic values” that attained rulership “under the holiest names” and continue to exercise their rul16. AC 5 (171). Beyond Good and Evil 46 (pp. 66–­67); cf. Dawn 46 (p. 53). See EH Preface 3, 2–­3 (258–­59) and II, 1, 4 (278–­79).

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ership. In a word: the concluding point of the quick doctrinal run-­through is formed not by decadence but by nihilism. How, in accordance with the philosophic politics, could it be otherwise? Among the Hyperboreans in different ages, as Nietzsche says of Socrates and as he says of himself, there may be décadents, and not every one of them is, like Nietzsche and like Socrates, at the same time also the “opposite” of a décadent. But the “Hyperboreans” are anything but nihilists—­“nihilism” understood as the belief that the world as it is, the world in which we live and toward which knowledge is directed, is null, that it is in need of redemption, that it should not be.17 —­In the same breath in which Nietzsche reaches nihilism, he returns to Christianity for the third time. The seventh and final section of the Hyperboreans-­opening, which marks the oppositional stance toward nihilism and is dedicated especially to the critique of pity as the “practice of nihilism,” contains the first express references to the “Nazarene” and the Christian God, to the beyond and redemption. Nietzsche opposes the “religion of pity” in the name of life. “Through pity, that loss of strength which suffering as such already causes to life is increased and multiplied. Suffering itself becomes contagious through pity.”18 The “life-­endangering character” of pity, which Nietzsche calls an instinct, comes to light when it is considered with a view to the enhancement of life and measured by its possibilities for development: “this depressive and contagious instinct crosses those instincts which aim at preserving life and heightening its value: both as multiplier of misery and as conserver of all that is miserable, it is a major tool of the enhancement of décadence.” The “nihilistic values” have in pity their natural basis and an effective instrument. Therefore Nietzsche begins his critique of nihilism with a critique of pity. “Pity persuades to nothingness! . . . One does not say ‘nothingness’: instead, one says ‘beyond’; or ‘God’; or ‘the true life’; or nirvana, redemption, bliss . . .” Nietzsche indicates the scope of the religion of pity’s “nihilistic values,” over and beyond the circle of Christian faith, in the first comparison of a modern and an ancient thinker by name: “Schopenhauer was hostile to life: therefore pity became a virtue for him . . . Aristotle, as one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous condition that one would do well to remedy here and there with a purgative: he understood tragedy as a purgative.” Schopenhauer, to whom Nietzsche attributes a “nihilistic philosophy,” without, however, calling 17. AC 6 (172). EH I, 1, 1–­2 and 2 (264–­66); see Pp. 18–20. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates 6–­9 (pp. 70–­72). 18. In the sequel, Nietzsche gives the sentence a blasphemous turn by placing the com-­ passion of the Christians in relation to the Passion of Jesus: “under some circumstances, a total loss of life and life-­energy can be reached with it that stands in an absurd relationship to the quantum of the cause (—­the case of the death of the Nazarene),” AC 7 (173).

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him a philosopher, since a philosopher cannot be a nihilist, proved to be an heir of the Christian attitude when he wrote “negation of life” on his shield.19 And he correctly saw that life is “negated, made worthy of negation” by pity. The “practice of nihilism” shows the pathway to the core of nihilism. The conclusion of the speech to the Hyperboreans and their possible allies circles back to the beginning, which directed the view to modernity, of which “we were sick.” And it refers once more to the new love for man that underlies the demand of revaluation: “Nothing is unhealthier, in the midst of our unhealthy modernity, than Christian pity. To be physician here, to be inexorable here, to wield the scalpel here—­this belongs to us, this is our kind of love of man, with this we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans! —­—­—­”20 The first mention of the philosophers coincides with the last invocation of the Hyperboreans. After the transhistorical character of the We, for whom Nietzsche investigates the question of what a philosopher is, is established in the opening of the Antichrist, he no longer designates the We by means of a proper name. To determine the We more precisely, Nietzsche resumes the contrast with the opponent. The opposition Antichristianus versus Christianus in the first seven sections is followed by the separation of the philosophers from the theologians. Taking up and modifying a word of Jesus’s, Nietzsche initially gives sections 8 to 14 the heading “For us—­against us.”21 The determination begins with the demarcation from the decisive counterposition. Prima determinatio est negatio. The division is foundational for the book’s typological enterprise. For the critical integration of the different types or of their most marked traits in the philosopher requires clarity with regard to the most important thing, which may not be confused, which is not to be 19. Consider Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 32 (p. 131). Eleven aphorisms before, under the heading Schopenhauer, Nietzsche declares that Schopenhauer is “for a psychologist a case of the first rank: namely, as a malignly ingenious attempt to lead into the field, for the benefit of a nihilistic total devaluation of life, precisely the counter-­instances, the great self-­affirmations of the ‘will to life,’ life’s forms of exuberance. He interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, great compassion, knowledge, the will to truth, tragedy, in turn as consequences of ‘negation’ or of the ‘will’s’ need for negation—­the greatest psychological counterfeiting, not counting Christianity, that there is in history. On closer inspection, he is in this merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: but he even knew how to approve of that which Christianity re­ pudiated, the great cultural facts of mankind, in a Christian, that is, nihilistic manner (—­namely as paths to ‘redemption,’ as preliminary forms of ‘redemption,’ as stimulants of the need for ‘redemption’ . . .)” Forays of an Untimely One 21 (p. 125). 20. AC 7 (172–­74). See AC 1 and 2, 4 (169–­70). On Aristotle’s view of tragedy, see P. 66, Footnote 14. On the “Hyperboreans’ ” love of man, cf. Beyond Good and Evil 295 (p. 239). 21. Thus ran the seven sections’ heading originally in the manuscript for printing (KSA 14, p. 438). Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23; cf. Mark 9:40.

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sublated in any synthesis, which establishes the superiority of the integration precisely because it is conceptually prior to it. In fact, Nietzsche sharpens and deepens the division by making the separation from the theologians the theme of the philosopher’s self-­critique from the beginning: “It is necessary to say whom we feel to be our opposite—­the theologians and all that has theologians’-­blood in its body—­our entire philosophy  .  .  .” The separation from the theologians requires the critique of the philosophical tradition. It demands exposing the “corruption” that the influence of “theologians’-­blood” and “theologians’-­instinct” caused in philosophy. Nietzsche started at the extreme end when in the seventh paragraph he attested the youngest link in the chain, a link that directly concerned him before his periagoge, to be a “nihilistic philosophy.” “One has to have seen the disaster up close, or better still, one has to have experienced it oneself, almost perished of it, to no longer understand it as a joke.” A tradition that promoted “nihilism,” helped sustain the No to the world as it is, and finally endorsed Silenus’s saying that for man what is best of all would be not to be born, not to be, to be nothing, such a tradition is in need of a radical revision. The revision is urgent for the We to whom Nietzsche is speaking, not only in view of the effect that Christianity had on philosophy, but likewise with regard to the influence that philosophy had on Christianity.22 The We must fix its eye on the teachings and the attitude of the “theologians” on both sides and in both directions. Nietzsche underscores the confrontation’s existential seriousness with a side-­glance at scientists, who, believing that they have freed themselves from any theological influence, pursue their science without paying attention to the political-­philosophical quarrel of revaluation and revaluation of revaluation, or coming close to the question of which type should stand at the top: “the free-­spiritedness of our Herrnix naturalists and physiologists is in my eyes a joke—­they lack passion in these things, lack suffering from them.” The opposition, in which the We must 22. In the preface to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche described Christianity as “Platonism for the ‘people’ ” and called the “invention of the pure spirit and of the good in itself,” with a view to their connection to the Christian God, the “worst, most protracted, and most dangerous of all errors.” Nietzsche’s response to the two dogmatists’ errors of the pure spirit and the good in itself is reflected in the structure of Beyond Good and Evil. At the centers of the two unequal halves into which the fourth main part, “Sayings and Interludes,” divides the book (I–­III and V–­IX) stand the chapters “The Free Spirit” and “Our Virtues.” Against the two doctrines of Platonism, Nietzsche deploys a type that he determines pithily according to its virtues and by means of a philosophical task. In accordance with this orientation, the three-­time characterization “we free, very free spirits” is reserved for the end of the preface as well as the second and seventh main parts (aph. 44 and 230). It is fitting that the book’s philosophical argument culminates in the second of the two centers, in aphorisms 227–­30.

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become aware of itself, Nietzsche makes vivid in the “theologians’-­instinct of arrogance,” the belief that one is superior to reality, of which he says that he found it wherever “one feels oneself today to be an ‘idealist.’ ” The idealist, “just like the priest,” plays off all great terms, “with a benevolent contempt, against the ‘understanding,’ the ‘senses,’ ‘honors,’ ‘living well,’ ‘science,’ ” which he sees beneath himself “as harmful and seductive forces” and fails to realize that holiness has hitherto done “unspeakably more harm” to life than all “atrocities and vices.” The arrogance toward reality in general and toward life in particular is grounded in the idea of a spirit that “floats in pure for-­itself-­ness.” But the “pure spirit” is the “pure lie.” With this, we advance to the core of the opposition Nietzsche is concerned with: In the self-­critique of philosophy, just as before in the oppositional stance of Antichrist and Christ, it is a matter of truth: the truth that does justice to life. The “theologians’-­instinct of arrogance” prevents access to it. “As long as the priest is still considered to be a higher kind of man, this negator, slanderer, poisoner of life by profession, there is no answer to the question: what is truth? One already has stood truth on its head when the conscious advocate of nothingness and negation is considered to be the representative of ‘truth’ . . .” The quarrel over truth is carried out as a fight over the type of man that is able, and in a position, to expose himself to truth. The revaluation is aimed at the “theologians’-­instinct,” which causes the one who lets himself be guided by it to stand “crookedly and dishonestly toward all things from the start.” It is directed against a type that, with the pathos of belief, closes its eyes to itself “in order not to suffer from the aspect of incurable falsehood.” It establishes a front against an untrue perception of reality: “One makes a morality, a virtue, a holiness for oneself out of this faulty viewpoint toward all things, one ties the good conscience to false-­seeing—­one demands that no other kind of viewpoint may have more value after one has made one’s own sacrosanct with the names ‘God,’ ‘redemption,’ ‘eternity.’ ” It is part of Nietzsche’s politics of revaluation that it seeks to awaken and implant a prejudice against the theologians. This includes the polemical rule of thumb that what a theologian feels to be true must be false, in which one almost has “a criterion of truth,” or the no less hyperbolic assertion that the theologian’s “instinct of self-­preservation” prohibits “reality’s being honored in any point or even getting a word in.” The politics of revaluation translate the quarrel over truth into a fight in which the affirmation of life meets the “wills to the end,” and a conflict in which the We of the philosophers must arm itself against the “nihilistic will” of the theologians, which wills to power.23 23. AC 8 and 9 (174–­76); cf. EH Preface 3, 3 (259). The Birth of Tragedy 3, 2 (p. 35); see Pp. 42 and 65–­67.

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Mindful of the heuristic maxim of intellectual probity, to turn cruelty toward what is closest to one, Nietzsche begins the necessary self-­critique of philosophy with the circle from which he comes. “Among Germans one immediately understands when I say that philosophy is corrupted by theologians’-­blood. The Protestant pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy, Protestantism itself its peccatum originale.” When, with reference to the Tübingen Seminary, he reproaches German philosophy for being at bottom “an insidious theology,” he shines a bright light on the self-­critique’s urgency. At the same time, the ironical judgment of original sin recalls what Nietzsche does not mention specifically: how many philosophers Protestantism has produced. For it is no accident that before Nietzsche, and far over and beyond Nietzsche, in the denominationally mixed country almost all philosophers of importance were of Protestant origin: For future philosophers who grew up in Protestantism, as for a philosopher of Jewish origin, it was much easier to recognize that a philosophic life would mean a “wandering in the prohibited,” and would thus amount to a choice of most far-­reaching, not to say “infinite,” consequence, a choice that no institution can relieve and that cannot be shared with any authority. Luther’s critique of philosophy, or, more precisely, his attack on Scholasticism, which allowed philosophy a place as the handmaiden of theology, decisively contributed to the sharpening of the either-­or. Nietzsche does not mention the service Luther rendered to the philosophers. Instead, he reproaches him, together with Leibniz and Kant, for having been a “hindrance” to the “in itself unsteady German integrity.” In the case of Luther, as Nietzsche made clear in Ecce Homo, the accusation is that he restored an already moribund Christianity and hence delayed its overcoming. However, since it is the theological burdening of German philosophy that is at issue, the attack is principally directed against Kant. Him Nietzsche reproaches for having opened up for the “theologians’-­instinct” a “sneaking path to the old ideal.” Kant’s distinction between thing-­in-­itself and appearance brought back the concept of the “true world,” and, in conjunction with the assertion of a universal moral law, the concept of “morality as the essence of the world.” The “two most malignant errors there are” were to be, “thanks to a crafty-­prudent skepticism, if not provable, at least no longer refutable.” “Reason,” ran the objection of faith, “the right of reason does not reach that far . . .” Arrogance toward reality had made reality into an “appearance” and a “perfectly mendacious world” into reality. In the center of the critique stands Kant as a moralist. Moral universalism not only misses reality but is detrimental to life: “What is not a condition of our life harms it.” Kant’s concept of duty and his reference to the good in itself, “the good with the character of impersonality and universal validity,” Nietzsche calls “figments of the

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imagination” in which decline, “the final enfeeblement of life,” expresses itself. Kant’s categorical imperative, which contradicts the hierarchization of moralities, as well as the understanding of them as means, appears to Nietz­ sche as “life-­endangering,” and Kant’s devaluation of pleasure strengthens him in his judgment that the Königsbergian advocate of the moral law is a “nihilist with Christian-­dogmatic entrails.” If one applies Nietzsche’s standard of usefulness to life or enhancement of life, Kant’s enterprise of offering as proof of the “moral tendency of the human race” a phenomenon of human history that cannot be forgotten, namely, the “disinterested participation” of the spectators in the event of the French Revolution, and the associated speculation by the philosophy of history that mankind—­in accordance with the “final purpose of creation”—­is “progressing toward the better,” appear to be blunders of lesser rank.24 The accusation of having been a hindrance to German integrity, which Nietzsche levels at the beginning of his critique of Kant, is made more precise at its end: Kant attempted, with his concept of practical reason, to “scientify” the “lack of intellectual conscience” that holds conviction to be a criterion of truth: “he invented a special reason for cases in which one does not have to concern oneself with reason, namely when morality, when the exalted demand ‘thou shalt’ becomes audible.” The critique of the lack of intellectual probity aims at nothing less than the “morally necessary” postulates of practical reason or of the Kantian “rational faith”: immortality, freedom, and the existence of God.25 Nietzsche expands the critique of Kant and of German philosophy into a critique of the philosophy of the past as a whole. Everywhere the “first demands of intellectual integrity” were not known. Only one type does he exempt from the verdict. In the first paragraph of the Antichrist to begin with I, he sets the skeptic against the rest: “I put to the side a few skeptics, the decent type in the history of philosophy.” Later Nietzsche will more fully characterize the skeptic, to whom he already pointed the reader in Ecce Homo as the only honorable type “among the so equi-­to quinquivocal people of the philosophers.” The determination of the type is reserved for paragraph 54, one of the most demanding and important sections of the book, if not the most important section. But at the first mention of the skeptic, it already leaps to the eye that he who is called decent or honorable in the sense of the revaluation, who, 24. Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten II, §§ 6–­7 (Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 7, pp. 85–­89). 25. AC 10–­12 (176–­78); see On the Genealogy of Morals III, 25 (p. 405). Cf. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft Second Main Part, IV–­VI (Akademie Ausgabe, vol. 5, pp. 122–­34, esp. pp. 125, 126, and 132).

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in the effort to approach and to expose himself to the truth, does not succumb to wishes, also does not mistake good intentions for sound arguments, and does not stop at his conviction or take it as proof of having achieved the aim. The “skeptics” in the history of philosophy can serve as eponyms because they refrained, in a way recognizable to everyone, from illusions with regard to doctrines and systems. He who does not delude himself or let himself get away with anything in his attempt with the truth should be seen as decent or honorable by the Hyperboreans. The verdict on the “rest,” the philosophers whom Nietzsche charges with “counterfeiting before oneself, ” is the foil for the revaluation. The “counterfeiting before oneself,” a kind of inverted revaluation, as the “inheritance of the priest” par excellence, brings the list of the corrupting effects of “theologians’-­blood” and “theologians’-­instinct” to its conclusion and peak. “If one has holy tasks, for example to improve, save, redeem men, if one carries the deity in one’s breast, is the mouthpiece of imperatives from the beyond, then with such a mission one already stands outside of all merely rational valuations—­oneself already hallowed by such a task, oneself already the type of a higher order! . . . What does science matter to a priest! He stands too high for that!” The most noteworthy case of a philosopher who gave Nietzsche reason to request that he overcome the “priest” in himself, and whose grappling on the path to philosophical liberation Nietzsche observed at the closest proximity, was the case of his “son” Zarathustra. Zarathustra, who descended to men with the self-­chosen mission to redeem them, and to whom his animals, the eagle and the serpent, later suggested the mission that determined his eternal destiny, confessed during his teaching activity on the “blessed isles” that his blood was “kindred” to that of the priests. Nietzsche gave him the name of a prophet. What he would become is a skeptic.26 In the fight over the authoritative type, which the quarrel over truth is carried out as, the priest who “ruled hitherto” and the skeptic or the philosopher who has overcome his inner theologian clash. After having summarized the rulership of the “priest” in the succinct formula “He determined the concept ‘true’ and ‘untrue’!” Nietzsche opens the thirteenth section with an admonition to the We: “Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, 26. AC 12 (178–­79). EH II, 3 (284). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 4, 5 (p. 117). –­In his commentary on a relevant passage of Twilight of the Idols, Andreas Urs Sommer points out that the expressions revaluation of values and counterfeiting, which Nietzsche frequently uses in his late work, have a common point of reference in Diogenes Laertius’s ambiguous report of the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope. In De vitis VI, 20, it says of the Cynic that “he restamped what was valid” or “he falsified the coin,” since nomisma can mean both coin and order of value (NK 6/1, pp. 352–­53). Nietzsche was quite familiar with Diogenes Laertius, to whom he devoted three longer essays and his second stand-­alone writing in the years 1868–­70.

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are already a ‘revaluation of all values,’ a corporeal declaration of war on and victory over all the old concepts of ‘true’ and ‘untrue.’ ” The admonition is supposed to prevent the We of the Hyperboreans, the skeptics, the free spirits, from overestimating the “revaluation” as a project of the future or confusing the “revaluation of all values” with a “holy task.” Reversing the direction of view, becoming aware of the revaluation that they themselves are, allows the preeminent sense of the project to emerge. The very same awareness is also suitable for strengthening the free spirits’ confidence that the old rulership has lost its power, since with their “most valuable insights,” the methods of science, they withstood all attacks—­“one was considered an ‘enemy of God,’ a contemner of truth, a ‘possessed one’ ”—­and they knew how to assert themselves in the order that was averse to them. “We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us—­its concept of what truth should be, what the service of truth should be: every ‘thou shalt’ was hitherto directed against us . . .” The revaluation that the free spirits are is their “victory,” the re-­presentation of their self-­assertion across more than two millennia becomes for them and their allies an encouragement in the “war” demanded by the revaluation. The war that is to be waged concerns the politics of the Hyperboreans, the victory that is declared relates to their nature. In both cases Nietzsche defends truth against the Ought of morality. Ultimately he also defends it against the Ought of aesthetics: The “aesthetic taste” caused mankind to demand “of the truth a picturesque effect.” The free spirits refuse this as well as every other request to orient the truth toward aesthetic expectations, adjust it to moral demands, or subject it to preconceived opinions. In a critical turn against the “arrogance” of the idealists and theologians, “priests” all, who believe themselves exalted above reality, Nietzsche speaks of the “modesty” of his addressees. It was “our modesty” that went “against the taste” of mankind “longest,” that aroused their suspicion, that they found unbearable. He adds: “Oh how they guessed it, these turkeycocks of God —­—­.” The domesticated birds will never find the path to the Hyperboreans, whom one reaches neither by land nor by water. Ice and high mountains remain barred to them. With their clipped wings they do not fly to any truth.27 The We to whom the Antichrist is addressed is sufficiently designated in the first thirteen sections by the names and concepts Hyperboreans, philoso­ phers, skeptics, free spirits. Thus in the fourteenth section, the only paragraph in the book that begins with We, Nietzsche can follow the indications of the characteristic activity and specific habitus of the We with a closer determination of the material position that the We can attribute to itself as an 27. AC 13 (179). Cf. Pp. 114–19.

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achievement. For the free spirits have “relearned.” Thanks to the liberation from the theological heritage, they have “become more modest in every respect.” In outlining the new modesty or sobriety, Nietzsche at the same time marks the starting point of the enlightenment that the Antichrist will make its own matter of concern in the following paragraphs: “We no longer derive man from the ‘spirit,’ from the ‘deity,’ we have placed him back among the animals. He is considered by us to be the strongest animal, because he is the most cunning: a consequence of this is his spirituality.” The Hyperboreans never stipulated a perfect beginning from which man would have originated and away from which he would have fallen. When Nietzsche presented his genealogical enterprise for the first time in Dawn and made man as part of natural history into the object of the investigation, he declared that he wanted to seek out the “pudenda origo.” The free spirits, however, also keep themselves far away from all teleological assumptions, regardless of whether they are openly propounded or silently presupposed. “On the other hand, we protect ourselves against a vanity that would like to become audible again also here: as if man had been the great hidden purpose of animal development.” Nietzsche rejects the amour-­propre of faith in revelation, as well as that in progress, which elevates man into the “crown of creation.” He is at one with the Hyperboreans and free spirits from Lucretius to Rousseau that every natural being along with man, every species or kind, is “on an equal level of perfection.” He furnishes the critique of anthropocentrism with an addition that no one before him grasped more sharply than, again, Rousseau: “And in asserting this, we are still asserting too much: man is, taken relatively, the most badly turned out animal, the sickliest, the one that has aberrated most dangerously from its instincts—­of course, for all that, also the most interesting!” The “not yet determined animal,” which has to rely on custom, discipline, law, which according to its nature is in need of guidance, valuation and revaluation, offers to the divine observer the spectacle of an extravagant natural-­historical experiment.28 —­In approaching man, the Hyperboreans consciously and emphatically rely on physiologia. They begin with the animal among animals: “what is comprehended of man at all today goes exactly as far as he is comprehended mechanically.” They reject the postulate of the “free will” as a “dowry 28. AC 14, 1 (180); cf. Genesis 1:26–­28; Psalm 8:4–­9, and P. 78, Footnote 32. Dawn 42 and 102 (pp. 49–­50 and 102–­3). Beyond Good and Evil 62, 203, 230 (pp. 81–­83, 126–­28, 169). On the Geneal­ ogy of Morals III, 13 (p. 367). Cf. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, Critical Edition (Paderborn, 1984, 7th ed. 2019), First Part, pp. 88, 92, 102–­4, 166; Second Part, p. 256; and Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens, First Book, pp. 158–­64, as well as Second Book, pp. 330–­35 [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, First Book, pp. 115–­20, as well as Second Book, pp. 252–­56].

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from a higher order” or a gateway to a world that stands under the moral law. Just as little do the free spirits consider man’s consciousness to be a proof of his “higher descent.” They do not deduct the nervous system and the senses, the “mortal veil,” from the spirit.29 Whereas before Nietzsche called the “pure spirit” the pure lie, he now speaks of a pure stupidity. The repudiation of the “free will” gives Nietzsche the opportunity, at the end of the part directly addressed to the We, to provide the doctrinal instruction of the proselytes or the possible allies from the beginning with a philosophical correction. Whereas the first of the four catechism questions and answers introduced the will to power, Nietzsche now discloses that “we” have “even taken away the will” from man, “in the sense that it may no longer be understood as a faculty.” The will is no entity on which it would be possible to build, no ultimate ground to which it would be possible to go back. “The old word ‘will’ serves only to designate a resultant, a kind of individual reaction that necessarily follows from a series of partly contradictory, partly harmonious stimuli:—­the will no longer ‘effects,’ no longer ‘moves’ . . .” The skeptic is far from determining the “intelligible character” of the world as will to power. The philosopher does not have the intention of bringing metaphysics to its conclusion with the will to power. It is consistent that Nietzsche refrains from placing before the eyes of the Hyperboreans and free spirits a doctrinal edifice under the heading “The Will to Power.”30

29. When Nietzsche declares, “we deny that anything can be made perfectly, as long as it is still made consciously” (AC 14, 2), he stresses the incorporation of a skill or the appropriation of a technique that becomes second nature and thus undergoes its perfecting. He denies neither the possibility of perfecting consciousness nor the reality of a highest consciousness. Cf. Pp. 96–­99. 30. AC 14, 2 (180–­81). Beyond Good and Evil 36 (pp. 54–­55). Consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 234–­35 with n. 230 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 188–­89 with n. 230].

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The Antichrist belongs to the fewest. The meaning of Nietzsche’s announcement takes form in the part that grasps and addresses the Hyperboreans and free spirits as a We. The book concerns them, who will always be few, or at least some among them, to the highest degree, because it seeks to bestow legitimacy on the anti-­Christian against the Christian and to replace the hitherto ruling type with a newly authoritative one. It is, however, their book in still another sense. Only the fewest will recognize, in and behind the polemical thrust of the Curse on Christianity, the Antichrist’s philosophical enterprise: the clarification of the question of what a philosopher is. The Antichrist gives the answer, not in the form of a doctrinal determination or even a catechismal instruction, but by way of a typological discussion. It provides the necessary elements through the characterization of types to which the philosopher is to be brought into the right relation, i.e., from which he is to be distinguished. In the treatment of Buddha, the Redeemer, Paul, and Manu, to name the big four, Nietzsche shows what the philosopher has to overcome, what he must keep himself away from, what he must involve himself with, in a word: what he is able to integrate, or what he is over and beyond. The book hands out the parts, which the reader is obliged to fit together, to think together. In this way it selects its preeminent addressee. The philosophical enlightenment is very tightly interwoven with the political enlightenment. The types that serve the contrast and bring out the profile of the philosopher are integrated into the program of revaluation. They are invoked throughout in the context of the critique of Christianity. In fact, this critique appears so comprehensive that the significance of the figures it draws on seems to be absorbed in it. At the latest, however, it is Manu, the last to be introduced among the four mentioned, who can instruct the reader to

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be set right and thus also in the end teach him to see the types that precede the aristocratic lawgiver in a different light. But let us begin at the beginning. After the address to the Hyperboreans and the free spirits, Nietzsche opens the critique of Christianity with a condensed recapitulation of the critique that he leveled in the first fourteen sections. The influence of theologians on philosophy no longer stands in the foreground. Now it is a matter of Christianity as a whole, of its historical power, and of it as a sociological phenomenon. The objection that the theologian’s instinct of self-­preservation prohibits reality’s “being honored in any point or even getting a word in” is expanded into the judgment: “Neither morality nor religion touches reality at any point in Christianity.” Whereas the theologians were reproached for arrogance toward reality, Christianity appears to be a refusal of reality through and through, or a unique counterproject to reality: It connects nothing but imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,” “I,” “spirit,” “free will” or “unfree will”) with nothing but imaginary effects (“sin,” “redemption,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sin”), builds upon an intercourse between imaginary beings (“God,” “spirits,” “souls”), makes use of an imaginary natural science (of an anthropocentric character and without any concept of natural causes), relies on an imaginary psychology (along with the sign language of a “religio-­ moral idiosyncrasy” of “repentance,” “sting of conscience,” “temptation by the Devil,” “proximity to God”), and culminates in an imaginary teleology (“the Kingdom of God,” “the Last Judgment,” “the eternal life”). Nietzsche’s sketch of a “pure fiction-­world” over which Christianity has command raises the question, which will accompany the critique of Christianity to the end like a shadow and which is meant to accompany it from the beginning, of how the world-­historical rise, in the real world, of a religion and morality so little in touch with reality is to be explained. Or, more precisely: what the rulership of the “reverse type,” the triumph over the Roman Empire, the missionizing of the barbarians, the bondage of philosophy, etc., say about the religion and the morality of the pagans, about the politics of the aristocracy, and not least about the philosophy of antiquity. The hyperbolic manner of the presentation presses the reader to the question with such emphasis that he will no longer forget it. It goes without saying that Nietzsche traces the denial of reality back to decadence, i.e., to a suffering from reality: “suffering from reality means being a misfortunate reality  .  .  .” Yet as we have learned, decadence is not the privilege of Christianity, and not every misfortunate reality is capable of gaining acceptance or asserting itself across millennia. While Nietzsche is for the most part setting the scene for the drama that follows, right at the beginning he gives an answer that concerns a point of the greatest importance: The

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system that Christianity is—­in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche explicitly calls Christianity “a system” and “a whole vision of things”—­gains its inner unity from the opposition to philosophy. Nietzsche does not mention philosophy, but he does mention the concept that it introduced and with which it stands and falls: nature. Nature is the counterconcept to the central concept of the system, the belief in God, the moral, obedience-­demanding God of the beyond, which one cannot break out from Christianity without breaking up the whole. “As soon as the concept ‘nature’ was invented as the counterconcept to ‘God,’ ‘natural’ had to be the word for ‘reprehensible.’ ” The opposition to nature gives Christianity’s revaluation its particular thrust.1 In the immediate sequel, Nietzsche spends four successive sections on the critique of Christianity’s central concept. For the first confrontation—­a second, more profound and far-­reaching one will have its place in the fourth chapter—­he chooses a political approach. In order to set the Christian concept of God off from nature, he goes back to the natural, i.e., prephilosophical and pre-­Christian world, and seeks to grasp the idea of God that satisfies the standard of usefulness to life: “A people that still believes in itself also still has its own God. In him it reveres the conditions through which it comes out on top, its virtues—­it projects its pleasure in itself, its feeling of power, into a being whom one can thank for this.” The idea of God, in other words, is the natural expression of a people’s will to power and is drawn out of its gratitude. Similarly, in the speech “On the Thousand Goals and One,” in which the will to power appeared for the first time, Nietzsche had Zarathustra declare that the “table of goods” that every people hung over itself, its good and evil, “the table of its overcomings,” was the voice of this people’s will to power.2 Religion is originally an identity-­guaranteeing, self-­reassuring, life-­affirming form of gratitude. “One is grateful for oneself: for this one needs a God.” The “not yet determined animal” is in need of the God for self-­interpretation and self-­determination. The people equally has need of him as a disciplinarian and ally: he “must be able to benefit and harm, must be able to be friend and enemy—­one admires him in the good as well as in the bad.” On this level of genealogical reconstruction, the “antinatural castration of a God into a God merely of the good” would lie “outside all desirability” for a people that is 1. AC 15 (181–­82). Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 5 (pp. 113–­14). The aphorism with the heading G. Eliot should be pointed to here once and for all. The central sentence of the central section reads: “Christianity is a system, a thought-­together and whole vision of things.” 2. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 15, 1–­6 and 18–­19 (pp. 74–­75); see Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 37–­41 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 27–­30].

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concerned with asserting its freedom and unity. With the disappearance of political freedom or through subjugation to foreign rulership, the idea of God is dramatically transformed. When the people and the individual “become conscious of the virtues of the subjugated as conditions of preservation, then their God must be changed also.” Now he supports peace of soul, demands humility, and fosters subordination in every way. He advises indiscriminate love toward friend and enemy. “He moralizes constantly, he crawls into the cave of every private virtue, becomes God for Everyman, becomes a private man, becomes a cosmopolitan . . .” The political consideration of the peoples as the wellspring of religion leads to the conclusion that there is “no other alternative for Gods”: “either they are the will to power—­and for this long they will be Gods of the people—­or else powerlessness becomes power—­and then they necessarily become good . . .” It is obvious on which side the Christian God stands. To clarify the finding, Nietzsche adds to the sketch of the natural starting point a supplement that takes into account the stratification of the polity into strong and weak, or masters and servants, and is supposed to explain the emergence of the dualism of God and Devil. Again he assigns the key role to the decline of the will to power. This time, however, not with a view to the people as a whole, but rather with regard to the weak, whom he elsewhere calls “slaves,” and who call themselves “the good.” The decline of the will to power of the weak manifests itself in the “dualistic fiction” of one good and another evil God: “With the same instinct with which the subjugated bring their God down to the ‘good in itself,’ they strike out the good qualities from the God of their overcomers; they take revenge on their masters by diabolizing their God.” Of the will to power of the strong, and consequently of its possible deficiency, not a single word is spoken. In the case of the enslavement of a nation, like the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people, the question may not arise. In contemplating the stratification within a polity like the Roman Empire, the response, or lack of a response, by the masters to the action of the “weak” cannot be ignored. Actually, in the first exposition of his critique Nietz­sche’s attention is not so much on the decadence of the historical actors as on the decadence, sit venia verbo, of the concept of God itself. What matters for Nietzsche is the revaluation of the course of development “from the ‘God of Israel,’ the God of a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of everything good.” What Christian theology and non-­Christian historiography evaluated as progress, he evaluates, measured by the standard of the enhancement of life, as decline. He draws the descending line from the “cosmopolitan” who “got ‘the great number’ and half the earth on his side,” to the stage where “the Herrn metaphysicians” took over the God and transformed him into an

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“ideal,” a “pure spirit,” an “absolute,” or into something even more incomprehensible. “Decay of a God: God became ‘thing-­in-­itself ’ . . .”3 The process of decay that Nietzsche traces is the exact opposite of the Christian narrative of salvation history and its teleology. “The Christian concept of God” perhaps “even represents the low-­water mark in the declining development of the types of God.” But tracing the decline serves as a preparation. The “low” points to a “high.” Nietzsche makes visible to the reader the heaviest and most urgent challenge, the one that demands the greatest commitment, the highest exertion of force. The central concept of Christianity marks the most extreme opposition to nature. “In God, enmity declared toward life, toward nature, toward the will to life!” It compels revaluation. “God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes!” As before in the critique of the influence of theologians on philosophy, in the critique of the Christian God, too, the diagnosis of decadence is not the last word. Nietzsche once again has the critique culminate in the reproach of nihilism: “In God, nothingness is deified, the will to nothingness pronounced holy! .  .  .” The Hyperboreans have reason to encounter the “will to nothingness” with the utmost attention and to take Christianity, which wages a “war to the death” against them, seriously.4 After he has characterized the most extreme opposition in all sharpness, Nietzsche directs his gaze for the first time to the role that the strong or the supposedly strong played in the rise of the Christian God. He limits himself to the “strong races of northern Europe,” which did themselves “no honor” by not withstanding the missionizing. Because they did not summon the strength to overcome the God of Christianity, “a curse” lies upon them: “since then they have not created another God!” The curse concerns, not decadence in general, but its political core, the slackening of the will to power, with which the peoples give expression to their highest aspirations and bind themselves by duty. Against the “strong races” that took over the succession of the Roman Empire, Nietzsche holds: “Almost two millennia and not a single new God! Instead, existing still and as if rightfully, like an ultimatum and maximum of the God-­forming force, the creator spiritus in man, this pathetic God of Christian monotono-­theism!” Apparently the “revaluation of all values” holds out to man the prospect that the drying-­up of the shared wellspring 3. AC 16 and 17 (182–­84). The last two of the four total usages of will to power in the Antichrist are reserved for paragraphs 16 and 17. Cf. Pp. 135–­36. 4. AC 5 and 13 (171 and 179). Cf. On the Genealogy of Morals III, 28 and III, 14 (pp. 412 and 368, 371–­72).

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of life affirmation can be reversed. But it does not promise that new Gods will take the place of the “monotono-­theism.” For his part, Nietzsche will not condescend to undertake the mission of a religion-­founder.5 He is not the prophet of a coming God. He also does not proclaim that only a God could bring salvation. The God as whose “disciple” he speaks is a philosopher.6 The difference Christianity’s central concept makes with regard to politics and the conduct of life Nietzsche brings out by means of Buddhism, in looking comparatively at “a related religion” that “according to the number of its adherents, even outweighs it,” without having a “cosmopolitan” for its Lord. The relatedness that suggests the comparison is stated with the utmost brevity. “Both belong together as nihilistic religions,” both therefore have in common the belief in the need for redemption or in the nullity of the world, both are “décadence-­religions,” i.e., religions that have detached themselves from the natural conditions of political life. Far more than in the features they have in common, Nietzsche is interested in the fact that the two are “separated from each other in the most remarkable way.” He says not a word about pity, which thirteen sections before stood in the center as the “practice of nihilism.” He speaks just as little of redemption or nirvana. In the first sentence of the comparison, the critic of Christianity mentions the cardinal point separating the two religions: “the concept ‘God’ is already done away with” when Buddhism appears. Closely connected is the fact that Buddhism—­“this distinguishes it deeply from Christianity”—­also “already” has “behind it the self-­deception of concepts of morality.” No Christian God, no Christian morality. That Buddhism, in Nietzsche’s language, stands “beyond good and evil,” that it no longer says to “fight against sin,” but to “fight against suffering,” that it is “a hundred times more realistic” than Christianity, this Nietzsche traces back—­like the cardinal difference itself, from which the others follow—­to a “philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years,” which preceded Buddhism. Are the Christian concept of God and Christian morality, then, traceable to a deficiency in or a failure of the philosophical tradition, which Christianity came upon and which favored its rise? The beginning of the comparison leaves no doubt that what is at stake in the treatment of Buddhism is not only the critique of Christianity, but likewise philosophy and the philosopher. This is the moment in which Buddha is invoked. The type for which Buddha stands in the Antichrist is that of the teacher of a dietetics, hygiene, art of living that has happiness, or the condition of desirelessness in itself, as its aim. Buddha 5. Cf. EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 6 (328), and see P. 79. 6. AC 18–­19 (185); cf. Beyond Good and Evil 53 (p. 73). See Pp. 98–99 and 124 with Foot­ note 19. 

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begins with suffering, with sickness, with dependence. He proceeds hygienically, i.e., preventatively, prophylactically, alleviatingly, against a “depression” whose “physiological conditions” Nietzsche identifies as, on the one hand, an excessive excitability of the sensibility, along with a pronounced capacity for pain, on the other, an “overspiritualization” in consequence of having “all too long lived by concepts and logical procedures,” a devotion in neglect of one’s own good. Nietzsche underscores the relevance of the diagnosis by adding, in parentheses, that “at least some” of his readers, the “objective ones, will know,” like himself, both conditions “from experience.” The therapeutic advice from Buddha’s dietetics that Nietzsche cites calls to mind the rules of prudence that he discusses in Ecce Homo: “the life in the open, the wandering life, moderation and selectivity with food; caution toward all spirituosa; caution likewise toward all affects that raise the gall, that heat the blood.” This is no longer true, however, of the last link of the series, “no care, neither for oneself nor for others,” and the overlap before this cannot obscure the fact that Nietzsche’s “casuistry of selfishness” stands in the service of the task, of self-­enhancement, of becoming-­oneself. Buddha’s art “demands ideas that either give rest or cheer up” and “invents means of weaning oneself from the others.” Prayer, asceticism, compulsion, especially that of a categorical imperative, are precluded because they keep one in dependence or strengthen irritability. For the same reason, Buddha advises against the agon, and he “fights against nothing more” than against feelings of revenge and reaction—­“ ‘not through enmity does enmity come to an end’: the touching refrain of all Buddhism . . .” The hygiene rejects ressentiment as unhealthy and recommends goodness as health-­promoting. The spiritual “fatigue” that manifests itself “in an all too great ‘objectivity’ (that is, weakening of the individual’s interest in himself, loss of a center of gravity, of ‘egoism’),” is countered in his dietetics by “a strict tracing-­back of even the most spiritual interests to the person.” In Buddha’s teaching, the unum est necessarium is neither faith nor knowledge—­knowledge is passed over in silence by Nietzsche, as is truth—­ but the all-­dominating thought, “how do you get rid of suffering?” Buddha consistently turns his gaze back toward his own good, but he radically curtails that good. At the end of the section, Nietzsche brings into play “that Athenian” “who likewise made war on pure ‘scientificity’ ” and “who elevated personal egoism into a morality also in the realm of problems.” Socrates, whose name is the only one mentioned alongside Buddha’s and who has only this single appearance in the Antichrist, linked the exploration of the “realm of problems,” the articulation of the world by means of asking the question of what something is, to the question of what good it is—­what his own good is in the exploration and articulation. Socrates is the most prominent case

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Nietzsche can cite to recall the type that knows how to determine the “one thing needful” as knowledge for my own sake. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietz­ sche credits him with having invented and asserted a new form of agon for his enterprise: the Socratic dialectic.7 Buddhism will not help to provide mankind with the affirmation of life that it needs. It will not prompt it to stride out, strive over and beyond itself, grow with a high or highest task. It does not open up the prospect of an ascent. Besides this, it is bound to a number of geographical, political, and historical peculiarities. As a religion of late ages, which can look back on a long philosophical prehistory, it no less for this allows Nietzsche to contrast it with Christianity and with philosophy. The “movement,” which has its “hearth” in the “higher and even scholarly classes,” offers the individual a path that is not to be confused with that of philosophy: “One wants cheerfulness, stillness, desirelessness as the highest aim, and one achieves one’s aim.” Cheerfulness, stillness, desirelessness are here the evidence of a correctly applied art that has them as its immediate purpose or its actual subject matter. They do not come about against expectations or unhoped for. They are not the result or the accompaniment of a “wandering in the prohibited” that consciously exposes itself to negativity. On the other hand, a religion for which the achievement of the aim is “the normal case” seems to be superior to the other “nihilistic religion” in the most important if not in every respect. The catalogue of Christianity’s characteristics that Nietzsche sets up comes out clearly when measured against Buddhism, especially since Nietzsche silently keeps to the older Hinayana Buddhism and leaves aside the younger Mahayana Buddhism, which erects a heaven of Gods and declares pity to be the decisive virtue. At the beginning stand “the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed,” which gain the upper hand with Christianity, since in it—­ unlike in Buddhism, which is aristocratically oriented toward the model of the wise one—­it is “the lowest classes” that “seek their salvation.” The end is constituted by hatred toward the spirit, “toward pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of the spirit,” toward the senses, toward their joys, in a word: “toward joy in general.” In between, among other things, come “the casuistry of sin, self-­critique, conscience-­inquisition” and the “affect toward a powerful one, named ‘God,’ ” which is “constantly maintained” through prayer, in which 7. AC 20 (186–­87); 7 (173). Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates 5–­8 (pp. 69–­7 1). Cf. Seth Benardete, The Being of the Beautiful: Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman (Chicago, 1984), III, p. 69, and Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic (Chicago, 1989), pp. 44 and 163. –­In the manuscript for printing, sections 20–­23 originally stood beneath the heading: Buddhism and Christianity (KSA 14, p. 440).

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what is highest is considered unattainable and can be received only as grace. In the corresponding place of the catalogue there is talk of the “deadly enmity toward the masters of the earth,” toward the “noble.” In the center of the list Nietzsche places, first, hardly surprisingly, contempt for the body, then—­of some importance for the ambivalence of the comparison with Buddhism—­ cruelty: “Christian is a certain sense of cruelty, toward oneself and others; hatred toward those who think differently; the will to persecute.” For out of the cruelty toward oneself practiced by Christianity, Nietzsche gains the virtue of the enlightener par excellence, probity. And hatred and persecution become a goad that drives the philosopher’s self-­knowledge. The Antichrist is a testimony to this. —­The comparison is recalibrated toward politics as soon as Nietzsche turns to explaining Christianity’s historical triumph. He begins counterchronologically with the phase “when it left its first soil, the lowest classes” and “went out after power” among “barbarian peoples.” Here, in contrast to Buddhism, it met not with weary people of excessive irritability who were striving to get rid of suffering, but “inwardly feral and self-­rending” ones who yearned for the discharge of inner tension “in hostile actions and ideas.” “Christianity had need of barbaric concepts and values in order to become master over barbarians.” For example, “contempt for the spirit and for culture.” The subjugation of the barbarians is a matter of nothing less than the domestication of “predatory animals” or of their successful weakening. For the “Christian recipe” for taming is weakening. The missionizing thus concerned “the strong man,” “but,” as Nietzsche promptly adds, “the badly-­ turned-­out one.” The truly strong one does not let himself be weakened by Christianity. Once again, Nietzsche directs the view in passing to the deficiency of the strong. This includes the hint that to the barbarian, “suffering in itself is nothing decent,” which is why he needs an interpretation “in order to admit to himself that he suffers.” His morality, his lack of self-­knowledge, makes him receptive to the Christian teaching of sin.8 The attainment on the level of civilization makes a difference for Christianity. Whereas Buddhism is a religion for “the end and the weariness of civilization”—­“Europe is still far from ripe for it”—­Christianity, in its expansion beyond the limits of the ancient world, “does not yet even find” civilization. Instead, it establishes it, “under certain circumstances.”9 8. “Here the word ‘Devil’ was a boon: one had an overpowering and terrible enemy—­one did not need to be ashamed of suffering from such an enemy,” AC 23, 1 (189–­90). Consider the derivation of the dualism of God and Devil from the condition of the “weak” in AC 17, 1–­2 (183). See P. 152. 9. AC 21–­23, 1 (187–­90).

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But Nietzsche cannot stop at the civilizing of the barbarians. He must seek out Christianity in the ancient world. He must go back to its beginnings. He does this by making the roots of the later success, guided by the Pauline triad of faith, hope, love, the subject of an anthropological discussion, with which he prefaces the historical consideration. “Christianity has some subtleties at bottom that belong to the Orient.” First of all, the knowledge “that it is in itself completely indifferent” whether something is true, “but of the highest importance” insofar as it is believed to be true. Faith makes the difference. Not, however, in the sense that faith would be a supplement to truth, as so to speak its political activation. One comes to truth and to faith “on fundamentally different paths.” If the paths are not kept apart, the search for truth undermines faith, and the fortification of faith prevents access to truth. “To be knowledgeable about this—­in the Orient this almost makes the wise one: thus the Brahmins understand it, thus Plato understands it, thus every pupil of esoteric wisdom.” From knowledge of the conflict, Christianity draws the conclusion of elevating faith into the unum necessarium. But if “above all, faith is needful, one must bring reason, knowledge, research into discredit: the path to truth becomes the prohibited path.” It belongs to the greatness of Christianity, or of its founder, that it makes a clear choice.10 In hope, Christianity relies on a force that is able to become a far stronger “stimulant of life than any single actually occurring happiness.” Precisely its imaginary character grounds its power, its dynamism, its tendency toward the infinite, its sheer inexhaustibility. If it is directed to a world beyond, it can sustain man in a faith that is not in danger of being “done away with by a fulfillment” or disappointed by being contradicted by reality. Nietzsche notes that because of its ability to string along the unfortunate, hope was “considered by the Greeks to be the evil of evils, the truly treacherous evil”: only the evil of hope, the deceptive expectation of the future, remained back in Pandora’s barrel.11 Love is closely bound up with hope and faith through the imagination. It is “the condition in which man most sees things as they are not.” Nietzsche emphasizes the illusion-­producing force in love, but he does not forget to mention the sweetening one, which makes existence pleasant, nor the transfiguring one, which lends life beauty. For love to fill and carry faith, God must be imagined as a person. And if Christianity was to become master “on a soil” where “Aphroditean or Adonis cults” determined “the concept of the cult,” it also needed a young God, beautiful saints, and a visible Mary. The demand for chastity, finally, “strengthens the vehemence and inwardness of the religious instinct.” 10. Cf. AC Preface, 2 (167) and 5 (171); EH Preface 3, 2 (258). 11. See Hesiod, Works and Days 80–­100.

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In its cult Christianity thus not only accounts for the Greek-­oriented environment, but corresponds to deeply anchored human dispositions. With a view to Paul’s word about love, that it “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” Nietzsche summarizes: “A religion had to be invented in which one can love: with that, one is over and beyond what is worst in life—­one does not even see it anymore.” At the end, Nietzsche calls the three Christian virtues the three Christian prudences, choosing now—­ corresponding to the Pauline weighting of love—­the sequence faith, love, hope. The three prudences in their cooperation are the foundation of Christianity’s world-­historical rise, which the Antichrist will investigate further. But whereas Paul grants precedence to the love for God, Nietzsche gives particular prominence to the hope of man. Unlike faith, which Nietzsche locates in the Orient, and in contrast to love, which he associates with the soil of Hellas, the prudence of hope, as it were free-­floating, remains assigned entirely to Christianity. Even more, only hope is expressly set apart from the valuation of “the Greeks,” in opposition to it. Hope points to the real revaluation made by Christianity. It not only unites the two other Christian virtues and so becomes, as it were, the quintessence of that “fiction-­world” which, in Nietzsche’s account, Christianity deploys against reality. It is the point of attack for the changing of the world that is brought about by Christianity. The specifically Christian prudence stands for a comprehensive dynamization, a tense future-­directedness that breaks open the ancient world’s closed horizon, a promise that, if it does not make the existing conditions dance, at least gives one disposal over them in one’s expectation, puts them on call, renders them fluid in time. Hope is the key to the space of history, which Christian­ ity opens up between the Incarnation of God and the Return of Christ at the end of time.12

12. AC 23, 2 (190–­91). Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:7 and 13. When Nietzsche rearranges the sequence “faith, hope, love, these three” into “faith, love, hope,” in light of the addition “but the greatest of these is love,” he conforms to Paul’s intention, and at the same time, he gives the reader a clue as to how, over and beyond this passage, his own intention is expressed in the arrangement of terms.

iii

History

The history of Christianity, its rise and its decline, is of central interest for the Antichrist. On one hand it is a matter of the prehistory of the task, whose greatness and urgency the author emphasizes. The revaluation of all values is situated historically. It responds to the revaluation brought about by Chris­ tianity, just as the anti-­Christian counters the type that was promoted, “bred,” achieved, by Christianity.1 On the other hand, the history of Christianity con­ cerns the philosopher in regard to the entanglement of philosophy in this his­ tory, as an object of self-­knowledge and self-­critique. Nietzsche at first ignores the influence of philosophy when he turns to the beginnings of Christian­ ity, and indicates this through the prelude to his genealogical sketch: “I only touch here the problem of Christianity’s emergence.” A thorough treatment of the initial conditions and eventual triumph of Christianity would require a discussion of the role that philosophy played as a trailblazer and helpmeet.2 Nietzsche focuses entirely on its origin in Judaism in the first step of his his­ torical approach to the “problem of Christianity’s emergence” (24–­26). Chris­ tianity is “only to be understood out of the soil from which it has grown.” It 1. In the book in which Nietzsche speaks for the first time of the “revaluation of all values,” he makes sure that the formulation of the task that he entrusts to the “new philosophers” is pre­ ceded by the indication of the “revaluation of all ancient values” by Christianity: Beyond Good and Evil 46 and 203; cf. 195 (pp. 67 and 126; 116–17). 2. AC 24 (191, my emphasis). See P. 141 with Footnote 22, Pp. 150 and 154. –­In the manuscript for printing, the heading of the section initially read: The Roots of Christianity (KSA 14, p. 440). The I with which paragraph 24 begins points back to my condemnation of Christianity in para­ graph 20. The fight with Christianity is tied to Nietzsche in a different way than, for example, the quarrel over the position of man within the whole, the subject of paragraph 14, which begins with we and concerns all Hyperboreans in equal measure.

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follows the “awe-­inspiring logic” of Judaism. “In the Redeemer’s formula: ‘salvation is of the Jews.’ ” In the second step, Nietzsche draws on the “psy­ chological type of the Galilean” in order to separate it from the “complete degeneracy” of which Christianity availed itself when it created the “type of a Redeemer of mankind” (27–­35). Christianity, in other words, is to be recon­ structed from its origins and deconstructed in its core. The reconstruction begins with nature. It starts with the “most remarkable people in world his­ tory,” which, following nature and for the sake of its nature, conjured up an all-­round perversion of the attitude toward nature. Politically “faced with the question of being and not being,” the Jewish people deployed what it had to deploy to preserve itself in being: in the face of the most extreme danger, it decided for life. It proved its will to power by preferring, as Nietzsche states with a mixture of barely concealed admiration and seeming indignation, “with a perfectly uncanny awareness, being at any price.” The price was “the radical falsification of all nature, all naturalness, all reality, the whole inner world as well as the outer.” The “falsification” of reality turned out historically to be highly real. Just as the “false seeing” of the theologians, about whom Nietzsche judged in paragraph 9 that their “instinct of self-­preservation” pro­ hibits “reality’s being honored in any point or even getting a word in,” proved to be real in the highest degree. In the one case as in the other, what Nietzsche is concerned with is not the usefulness to life of the falsification for those who act, but rather the consequences for mankind, above all, however, for truth. Self-­assertion under conditions in which no other people could live and preserve itself induced the Jewish people to create an “opposite concept” to the natural conditions, and to invert religion, morality, psychology “into the contradiction to their natural values.” In the historical reconstruction, the revaluation that Nietzsche ascribes to the Christian religion is traced back to the Jewish people; the universalism that is detached from political reality is traced back to a concrete political existence. The unprecedented success of their imagination and innovation earns the Jews the judgment of being not only the “most remarkable” but “the most disastrous people in world history”: “in their aftereffects they have made mankind false to the degree that even today the Christian can feel anti-­Jewish without understanding himself to be the ultimate Jewish consequence.”3 3. AC 24, 2 (191–­92). John 4:22, 25–­26; cf. Isaiah 2:3. On Nietzsche’s political classification of the Jewish people, consider Dawn 205 (pp. 181–­83); cf. Beyond Good and Evil 250 and 251 (pp. 192–­93). –­Benjamin Disraeli had the hero of his novel Tancred express what the Antichrist would present as a genealogical finding four decades later: “Christianity is Judaism for the mul­ titude, but still it is Judaism, and its development was the death-­blow of the Pagan idolatry.”

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To elucidate the transition from the Jewish people to the Christian church, Nietzsche has recourse to the agent theory of morality that he developed in the Genealogy and that he also draws on in the last chapter of Ecce Homo. For although he denies the Christian church any originality “compared to the ‘people of the saints,’ ” and ranks it “merely as a copy,” the transition from a nation’s concern for the in suo esse perseverare to a church’s mission in the service of the moral world order and the redemption of all believers requires an explanation. The connecting link is the priests. When they set “ressentiment-­morality” against “noble morality” and take “the side of all décadence-­instincts,” they are acting, in the first case, in harmony with the vital interest of the nation whose identity they are founding, or supporting and securing, under foreign rulership and during the diaspora. In the sec­ ond case, by contrast, their will to power, which makes use of décadence as a means, comes to light as it were unfiltered, politically emancipated. The priests, thus runs Nietzsche’s verdict, have no less than “a vital interest in making mankind sick and inverting the concepts ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘true’ and ‘false,’ into a life-­endangering and world-­slandering sense.” The revaluation of all values that was inaugurated by the priests differs fundamentally from the revaluation with which Nietzsche responds, in that the priests taught re­ valuation without, like the Hyperboreans, being it themselves: “they have, with a non plus ultra of playacting genius, known how to place themselves at the head of all décadence-­movements,” in order to “create” out of them, for the increase and exercise of their own power, “something that is stronger than ev­ ery yes-­saying party of life.” Here Nietzsche names the “Christianity of Paul.” Paul, the embodiment of the “priestly kind” par excellence, created the tran­ sition, the new. Nietzsche introduces the name of Christianity’s founder into the book before mentioning for the first time the name of Jesus, who, until the twenty-­seventh section, appears exclusively as “the Nazarene,” “the Galilean,” and “the Redeemer.”4 Christianity’s emergence “out of the soil” of Judaism concerns both the Christian God and Christian morality. Whereas in the evolution of the con­ cept of God, to which Nietzsche devoted four sections (16–­19), he reserved the first two steps for the God of Israel, in paragraph 25 he deals with the evolution that delineates the detachment and universalization of morality en­ tirely on the basis of Israel’s history. Apparently the latter evolution is deter­ minative for the former. The history of Israel offers Nietzsche, informed by Tancred: or, The New Crusade. London 1847, VI, 4 (ed. Bernard N. Langdon-­Davies, London–­ Edinburgh, 1904, pp. 505–­6). 4. AC 24, 3 (192–­93); cf. 13 (179). Daniel 7:18–­27. See Pp. 122–23.

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the historical investigations of Julius Wellhausen, what he needs in order to trace the emergence of the belief in a moral world order. Corresponding to his philosophical interest, he calls it, with respect to the logic that can be deduced from it, invaluable. For him it is “invaluable as a typical history of all denaturalization of natural values.” He divides the process into four steps. (1) The beginning satisfies the proposition that the right is the natural: “Originally, above all in the time of the kingship, Israel too stood in the right, that is the natural, relation to all things. Its Yahweh was the expression of consciousness of power, of joy in oneself, of hope for oneself: in him one expected victory and salvation, with him one trusted nature to give what the people has need of—­above all, rain.” Rain stands for that on which a people of stockbreeders and farmers is dependent, but which eludes its influence or exceeds its power. By means of its God, Israel attempted to gain control over what is humanly uncontrollable, to master chance. Yahweh was supposed to increase the peo­ ple’s power in this world. To speak with Wellhausen: “God meant helper, this was the concept of the word. Help, support in earthly matters, was expected of Yahweh, not salvation in the Christian sense.”5 The strengthening of one’s own power through Yahweh is the first of “five facts” that Nietzsche prom­ ises “to indicate.” The second concerns the derived character of justice in the original relationship of the people to its God. “Yahweh is the God of Israel and consequently the God of justice: the logic of every people that is in power and has a good conscience about it.” The cult reflects both sides of Israel’s self-­ affirmation: “it is grateful for the great destinies through which it came out on top, it is grateful in relation to the yearly cycle and to all fortunateness in stockbreeding and farming.” (2) After the political decline—­“anarchy within, the Assyrian without”—­has removed Israel from its natural condition, the right thing is “still the ideal for a long time,” but it is no longer the lived real­ ity. The people hangs on to the “vision of a king who is a good soldier and a strict judge.” Isaiah, the “typical prophet,” helps to give expression to its “highest wish.” (3) The prophet’s hope for rulership remains unfulfilled, the political longing of the people unquenched. “The old God could no longer do what he could once do. One should have let him go.” Only at the price of his displacement and de-­worlding could one continue to hang on to him: “one denaturalized his concept.” Yet by this very artifice the nation preserved itself under the conditions of foreign rulership. Political powerlessness leads to the moralization of God, history, and the world. After Yahweh’s unity with the 5. Julius Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels und Juda’s im Umriss, in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, First Volume (Berlin, 1884), p. 44. Besides this writing, Nietzsche drew above all from Wellhau­ sen’s Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin, 1883).

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people of Israel was shattered, the God of justice takes his place for Judaism. He becomes “a tool in the hands of priestly agitators who from now on inter­ pret all fortunateness as reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedi­ ence toward God, for ‘sin’: that most mendacious manner of interpretation of an alleged ‘moral world order.’ ” (4) In the moral world order, Nietzsche’s judgment of the “radical falsification of all nature, all naturalness, all reality” achieves its aim, since with it, “once and for all, the natural concept of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ is stood on its head.” “Once one has, with reward and punishment, eliminated natural causality from the world, one requires an antinatural cau­ sality: all the rest of unnature” follows from this. With the detachment from the community’s political existence, morality, having become absolute and universal, not only stands in an “opposition to life,” but becomes the “evil eye” for all things. Thus at the end of his sketch Nietzsche brings Jewish and Chris­ tian morality to a single denominator: “Chance deprived of its innocence; misfortune besmirched with the concept ‘sin’; well-­being as a danger, as a ‘temptation’; physiological illness poisoned with the worm of conscience . . .” The first part of the four-­part conclusion points out to the attentive reader that the first step toward the moralization of God and the world was taken with the attempt to become master of chance by means of prayer and sacri­ fice. Chance loses its innocence with the belief that divine providence reigns.6 The double “falsification” with which Nietzsche charges the Jewish priest­ hood, the denaturalization of the concept of morality and the moralization of the concept of God, goes back to a third “falsification.” Or rather, it is one with it: the “falsification” of Israel’s history and of the Bible. The Antichrist draws its conclusions from Wellhausen’s revolution, which assigned the redaction of the relevant writings to the time after the caesura of the Babylonian exile and made the Mosaic law the starting point, not of the history of ancient Israel, but of the history of Judaism, “i.e., of the religious congregation which outlived the people that was annihilated by Assyrians and Chaldeans.”7 The priests, Nietz­ sche concludes, “brought off that marvel of falsification whose documentation lies before us as a good part of the Bible: they translated their own people’s past, with an unequaled scorn toward every tradition, toward every historical reality, into the religious.” Now that Nietzsche is approaching the religious core of Judaism, he does not insert a single word on the self-­preservation of the na­ 6. AC 25, 1–­4 (193–­94); 24, 2 (191). Consider Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 4, 25–­28 (p. 209); see Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 121–­23 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 96–­98]; cf. Politische Philosophie und die Herausforderung der Offenbarungsreligion, pp. 101–­2 [Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, pp. 74–­75]. 7. Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, p. 1.

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tion, unlike previously in paragraph 24 or afterward in paragraph 27. He places all the weight on the self-­empowerment of the priests, who justify their ruler­ ship through the invocation of the will of God, through their history writing and legislating. They make a “time of decay” out of Israel’s “great time” and transform the “long misfortune” of the exile into an “eternal punishment for the great time—­a time in which the priest was still nothing.” The interpreta­ tion of all events in history, and the regulation of all circumstances of life, they subjugate to the formula obedience or disobedience to God. A formula that in concreto means the demand of obedience to the priests. At this point, in con­ nection with the priests’ claim to rulership, in the arithmetical center of the twenty-­sixth section, Nietzsche introduces revelation into the Antichrist. The “ ‘will of God,’ that is, the conditions of preservation for the priest’s power, must be known—­to this end a ‘revelation’ is required. In plain language: a great literary falsification becomes necessary, a ‘holy scripture’ is discovered.” Rev­ elation as a historical event is removed far into the past. “The ‘will of God’ was already revealed to Moses.” All the more do the interpretation and assertion of the revealed will in the present require the priest as its administrator. The comprehensive character of the law makes the priest authoritative and indis­ pensable everywhere. From revelation he derives the commission to sanctify the natural incidents of life, i.e., to denaturalize them. “For this,” Nietzsche emphasizes, “one must understand: every natural custom, every natural insti­ tution (state, judicial order, marriage, care of the sick and poor), every demand issuing from the instinct of life, in short, everything that has its value in itself, is made fundamentally valueless, value-­averse, by the parasitism of the priest (or of the ‘moral world order’): it requires a subsequent sanction—­a value-­ conferring power is needed which negates what is natural in it, which precisely thereby first creates a value . . . The priest devalues, desecrates nature: it is at this price that he exists at all.” The political consideration of revealed religion transitions into the historical determination of what Nietzsche elsewhere calls nihilism. The revaluation by revealed religion “sanctifies” the world, i.e., as­ cribes it sense and meaning solely in relation to the God of the beyond, the almighty Creator, unfathomable Lord and omniscient Judge. If this relation is not believed in, as soon as “God is dead,” nothing remains of sense and meaning, so that the formula obedience or disobedience toward God is at first supposed to prove its truth in the choice, and at last reveals its truth in the equation: revealed religion or nihilism.8 That Nietzsche does not speak of the nation’s self-­preservation in para­ graph 26, but instead concentrates entirely on the priests’ will to power in 8. AC 26, 1–­3 (194–­97).

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the service of their self-­interest, allows him, in the treatment of Christian­ ity’s emergence, to emphasize the continuity in which the “Christian church” stands toward the “Jewish church.” In using the anachronistic term that un­ derlines the continuity, he once again follows Wellhausen. In one case as in the other, the church stands in contrast to the political community. Moreover, extending the line of the tradition forward and backward gives him the op­ portunity to bring the contribution of the philosophers into play and to iden­ tify a gravamen that is of particular importance. For, Nietzsche notes, “the church was seconded by the philosophers: the lie of ‘the moral world order’ runs through the whole development even of modern philosophy.” A hint, which will be followed by more.9 The second step of the historical approach, which introduces the name Jesus into the Antichrist, begins with a paradox. Nietzsche deploys the break, the discontinuity of Christianity, in order to stress its continuity with Judaism. He looks at Christianity’s emergence, not as an extension or expansion of, but as an insurrection against, the “Jewish church.” But as a Jewish insurrection, as a negation of Judaism that draws the ultimate consequence of Judaism. With its turn against Judaism, Christianity—­“a form of deadly enmity toward reality that has not been surpassed hitherto”—­continues that very process of “falsification,” of denaturalization and moralization, that Nietzsche ascribes to Judaism and that he has begin with its turn away from ancient Israel. Seen more closely, the discontinuity proves to be a sharpening and intensification of a deeper-­reaching continuity. Christianity grew out of a constellation in which “every nature, every natural value, every reality” had “the deepest in­ stincts of the ruling class,” i.e., the priests, against it, and the people was left with “only priestly values, only priestly words for all things.” In this situation, 9. AC 24, 2; 26, 2; 27, 2 (192, 195, 198). Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, pp. 84 and 448. Nietzsche encountered the emphatic appeal to the “moral world order” in, inter alia, his reading of his near-­contemporary Eduard von Hartmann, who explains of the Teuton and his mission in the evolution of mankind’s religious consciousness: “the concept of the moral world order, as an impersonal power and objective spiritual substance of spiritual life, he gained directly for his Gods, but thereby also indirectly for himself, insofar as the behavior of the Gods toward the moral world order served him as a model for his own behavior toward the same. Just as the plant is allowed to die when it has fulfilled its purpose by producing fruit, so the Teuton was allowed to sacrifice his pantheon to the moral world order after it had fulfilled its moral task in making this moral world order prominent: precisely by viewing his Gods as impermanent, he caught sight in them and above them of the divine, which celebrated its highest triumph in their perishing. Thus he could and had to consecrate his Gods to impermanence, because they had fulfilled their task of pointing out to him the path to the permanently divine.” Das religiöse Bewusstsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Entwickelung (Berlin, 1882), p. 179. Cf. EH III, The Case of Wagner 2 (358).

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the people brought forth “an ultimate formula”: “it negated, as Christianity, even the ultimate form of reality, the ‘holy people,’ the ‘people of the chosen,’ the Jewish reality itself.” Nietzsche corrects himself in the very next sentence. It is not the people but a rebellious minority that now seems to have set the world-­historical upheaval in motion—­just as it was not the people, but the priesthood, that turned away from the history of Israel and established Juda­ ism: “the small insurrectionary movement baptized with the name of Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish instinct once again—­differently said, the priestly in­ stinct, which no longer tolerates the priest as reality, the invention of an even more removed form of existence, an even more unreal vision of the world, than conditions the organizing of a church.” The break was so profound, the negation of reality so far-­reaching, that for the insurrectionists there was ap­ parently no path leading from the “Jewish church,” which was negated in its worldliness, to the Christian church. “Christianity,” Nietzsche expressly does not speak of Ur-­Christianity, “negates the church . . .” Once again the ques­ tion arises of who or what put Christianity in a position to become a political power that would subjugate the world for centuries, if not millennia.10 Nietzsche confirms the break and at the same time prepares the dis­ tinction of Christianity from Jesus or, more precisely, from the type of the Redeemer when, in a paragraph he opens with I, he calls the insurrection, “whose author has been understood or misunderstood to be Jesus,” an insur­ rection against the church “taken precisely in the sense in which we take the word today”: The uprising was directed against “the good and just,” against the representatives of the existing order, against the hierarchy of society, “against everything that was priest and theologian.” The subversive thrust of the movement of Jesus’s adherents became a political danger for Judaism. For the theocracy or hierocracy that “was called into question, even if only for a moment,” by the insurrection “was the pile dwelling on which the Jewish people, amid the ‘water,’ still continued to exist at all,” through which the nation was able to preserve itself. An attack on the order determined by the priests and represented by the priests was an attack not only on the caste of the priests and their privileges—­first of all, on the privileged access to the will of God—­but also “on the deepest instinct of a people, on the most tenacious will of a people to live that has ever existed on earth,” a will to live for which, as we have heard, no price was too high when it was a matter of securing its own existence. No wonder, then, that the “holy anarchist” who according to the New Testament stood at the head of the movement fell victim to the verdict of being a “political criminal.” That he “exhorted the chandala within 10. AC 27, 1 (197).

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Judaism to dissent against the ruling order—­with language, if the Gospels were to be trusted, that even today would lead to Siberia,” brought him to the cross: The “proof of this is the inscription on the cross,” which marks the political antagonism: Rex Judaeorum.11 But Nietzsche does not stop at the political agitator. Neither is he satisfied with proving that from its very beginning, Christianity has been a movement to mobilize the “chandala”—­as important as this characterization otherwise is to him. Nor does he pursue the intention of bringing the early congregation’s indignation into position against the church’s claim to rulership. He aims at nothing less than wresting the Redeemer away from Christianity. What if the Gospels were not to be trusted? If the author of the insurrection had been misunderstood? If the movement falsely bore his name? If Christianity un­ justly invoked Jesus of Nazareth? Nietzsche poses the question of whether the “holy anarchist” was at all conscious of being in opposition to the ruling order, to the church, to Judaism, or “whether he was not merely felt to be this opposition.” Only with this question, he lets the reader know, does he “touch the problem of the psychology of the Redeemer,” the problem that preemi­ nently interests him. It interests him not merely with a view to the “problem of Christianity’s emergence.” In the Antichrist, it does not even interest him in the first place with regard to a historical question. Nietzsche does not intend to contribute a new chapter to the research on the life of Jesus. He expressly does not want to build on David Friedrich Strauß: “The time is far past when I, like every young scholar, savored the work of the incomparable Strauss with the prudent slowness of a refined philologist. Then I was twenty years old: now I am too serious for that. What do the contradictions in the ‘tradition’ matter to me?” Just as little does he want to continue Bruno Bauer’s critique of the Gospels. “The histories of saints are altogether the most ambiguous literature that there is: to apply the scientific method to them, when no other documents are available, seems to me doomed from the start.” Nietzsche’s in­ tention remains not understood, what is most important is missed, as long as one sees his treatment of the Redeemer in terms of the quarrel over the his­ torical Jesus. “What matters to me is the psychological type of the Redeemer.” Nietzsche’s philosophical interest pertains to the type. For his treatment of the Redeemer it is decisive that, despite all the polemical sharpening, it is not 11. AC 27, 2 (198). The inscription on the cross is rendered differently in each of the four Gospels. The renderings agree only in the words Rex Judaeorum. Nietzsche, who in the same section spoke of the movement baptized “with the name of Jesus of Nazareth,” is probably refer­ ring in the first place to the version that is mentioned only in the Gospel of John: Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum. He has in view the Jesus of the ultima verba “It is finished.” John 19:19 and 30; cf. Matthew 27:37 and 46; Mark 15:26 and 34; Luke 23:38 and 46.

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absorbed into the critique of Christianity but has its place in the typology of the Antichrist.12 The typological enterprise of the Antichrist has recourse to historical fig­ ures in order to think through the natural possibilities of the types in ques­ tion, i.e., to determine their inner hierarchy and characteristic contours, and in order, in turn, to illustrate the types by means of these figures. The figure of the Redeemer is by far the most intricate case, since according to Nietzsche’s interpretation it plays a central role not only in his typological enterprise, but, as we will see, also in Paul’s political enterprise, an enterprise to which the Antichrist responds politically. Nietzsche indicates that he gives priority to the philosophical interest over the political when he declares that the psychologi­ cal type of the Redeemer “could indeed be contained in the Gospels despite the Gospels, however garbled or overloaded with foreign features: as that of Francis of Assisi is preserved in his legends in spite of his legends.” He is not concerned with denying the historicity of the figure of Jesus that is drawn by Christianity. Hence the side-­glance to the saint from Assisi. What matters to him is that the type remains “still conceivable at all” and can be investigated in its coherence and used as a basis for comparison. The type marks off the limits of what can be brought together in one. Because Nietzsche interwove the philosophical presentation of the Redeemer very tightly with the political polemic against Christianity, the image of the type must be uncovered step by step. The main discussion begins with a resolute rejection of all attempts “to read” out of the Gospels “the history of a ‘soul.’ ” For Nietzsche, these testify to “a despicable psychological frivolity” that leads to missing what is essential about the type of the Redeemer: the absorption in the Here and Now, the ex­ istence in pure presentness, the absence of any actual development or history. The most prominent of the contemporary historians to propound a “Life of Jesus,” Ernest Renan, provides Nietzsche with “the two most improper con­ cepts” for the explanation of the type, genius and hero, from which he is able to push himself off and set his own exposition apart. The concept “hero” is unevangelical and cannot be reconciled with Jesus: “Precisely the opposition to all wrestling, to all feeling-­oneself-­fighting, has become instinct here.” The Gospel, which Nietzsche makes into a court of appeals for the correct expla­ nation of the type, neither breathes heroism nor gives a handhold to fanati­ cism. Tragedy does not belong to it, but the same goes for self-­enhancement and for every substantive distinction. “Inability to resist” becomes morality in him, “bliss in peace, in gentleness, in not-­being-­able-­to-­be-­enemy.” In the request “do not resist the evil one” Nietzsche recognizes the “deepest word 12. AC 28 and 29, 1 (198–­99).

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of the Gospels,” their “key”: It allows consent to the present condition as a surrender without restriction, without reservation. “What does ‘glad tidings’ mean? The true life, the eternal life is found—­it is not promised, it is there, it is in you: as a life in love, in love without subtraction and exclusion, without distance.” The glad tidings of the fulfilled present give no indication of the cardinal “Christian prudence” of hope, which initiates the time of history and opens it up for the conquest of the world. On the other hand, since noth­ ing is further from the glad tidings than the pathos of distance, it establishes the egalitarian orientation of the Christian mission: “Everyone is the child of God—­Jesus by no means claims anything for himself alone—­as a child of God, everyone is equal to everyone . . .” Jesus, presented as the embodi­ ment of the evangelical spirit, confirms the universal character of the Chris­ tian teaching. The one Son of God is replaced by all as the children of God. The morality of nonresistance and the happiness of the fulfilled present are universalizable in the sense that they are universally accessible, not tied to any particular abilities or virtues, not reserved for any particular natures. All the more sharply does the contrast between the universalism of the Gospel and the particularity of Jesus emerge as soon as Nietzsche, in characterizing the type, distances himself from the second of the “most improper concepts.” Bringing the provocation to a head, the Antichrist objects to Renan’s “ge­ nius” that “a completely different word” would “rather be in place”: “the word idiot.” However it may be with the “strictness of the physiologist,” who has a specific clinical picture in mind with the designation—­“a condition of sickly irritability of the sense of touch, which then recoils from any touch, from any grasping of a solid object”—­and regardless of whether he let himself be in­ spired in the choice of word by Dostoyevsky’s figure of Prince Myshkin, the content Nietzsche attaches to the term, and for which he himself stands with his description, is a radical inwardness: evasion into the indeterminate and self-­encapsulation meet in the turn away from reality. Nietzsche speaks of the “flight into the ‘ungraspable,’ into the ‘incomprehensible,’ ” of “ill will toward every formula, every concept of time and space, toward everything that is fixed, custom, institution, church,” finally of “being-­at-­home in a world that is no longer touched by any kind of reality, a merely ‘inner’ world, a ‘true’ world, an ‘eternal’ world.” The universalism of the Gospel has its reverse side in the particularity of the Redeemer. The price of universalizable morality and of the fulfilled present for all is the loss of reality.13 13. AC 29, 1–­3 (199–­200). In the editions of the Antichrist published under its aegis, the Nietzsche Archive suppressed the passage: the word idiot. It did not delete the term idiot in paragraph 11, where Nietzsche applies it to Kant. (The publishing house of Wilhelm Hoffritz ap­

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At the end of the first round of his critique of Christianity, including the comparative look at Buddhism, Nietzsche summarizes his diagnosis of the “physiological realities” out of which the “teaching of redemption” grew. He once again brings up the hatred toward reality that has become “instinct,” as well as the “exclusion,” likewise called “instinct,” “of all aversion, all enmity, all boundaries and distances in feeling,” both of which he derives—­thus the “physiological” classification—­from an extreme capacity for suffering and sensitivity. This much for the repetition. What is new in the recapitulatory section, in which neither Christianity nor Buddhism appears by name and the Redeemer also finds no mention, is that with Epicurus, a philosopher is introduced into the treatment of the type. Nietzsche calls the “teaching of Redemption” a “sublime further development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid foundation” and explicitly places it in relation to Epicureanism. Ep­ icureanism is “most closely related” to it, albeit “with a large allowance of Greek vitality and strong nerves.” Set alongside the teaching of redemption as most closely related to it, and distinguished from it, is the very philosophical teaching that Christianity and Judaism have banned like no other. An enmity that survived the centuries. Of course, Nietzsche is aware that the “pagan teaching of redemption” that bears Epicurus’s name stood in the sharpest op­ position to punishing and rewarding Gods and denied the moral world order as well as the reign of providence. There is no path from Epicurus to the “religion of love.” Later we will hear from Nietzsche that Epicurus “had made war” on the “preexistence-­form” of Christianity, and that Epicurus’s pupils in pended to its freestanding 1932 edition a note with the following hint: “Attention! In chapter 29 a single word has been omitted, which represents a very sharp designation for Jesus. The publisher is gladly prepared to communicate this sharp word to any reader, if the note attached below is sent by printed matter with a 4 penny stamp for return postage.”) The thrust of Nietzsche’s critique—­the confinement in another, moral, inner world and the loss of reality—­emerges even more clearly in a preliminary study from the Nachlaß with the heading “Jesus” Type: “Jesus is the opposite of a genius: he is an idiot. One feels his inability to understand a reality: he moves in a circle around five, six concepts, which he heard earlier and has understood gradually, i.e., understood falsely—­in them he has his experience, his world, his truth—­the rest is foreign to him. He speaks words, just as Everyman uses them—­he does not understand them like Every­ man, he understands only his five, six concepts. [. . .] Not the remotest breath of science, taste, spiritual discipline, logic, has blown on this holy idiot: as little as life has touched him. Nature? Laws of nature?—­No one has disclosed to him that there is a nature. He knows only of moral effects: Signs of the bottommost and absurdest culture. One must hold on to that. He is idiot amidst a very prudent people . . . Only, his pupils [were] not—­Paul was by no means an idiot!—­on this depends the history of Christianity.” Posthumous Fragments Spring 1888, 14 [38], KSA 13, p. 237, corrected in accordance with KGW IX 8, pp. 168–­69. (Nietzsche deleted the word wildling and replaced it with holy idiot.)

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the Roman Empire were the last significant obstacle to the rise of Christianity. In the discussion of the type of the Redeemer, Epicurus has the function that belonged to Socrates in the discussion of Buddha. He points to the typologi­ cal enterprise’s real aim: the clarification of the type of the philosopher. Nietz­ sche makes sure the philosopher is present in the discussion of every type. That he presents Epicurus as a “typical décadent” does not detract from this. It connects him with Socrates and with—­Nietzsche.14 The Redeemer in Christianity is fundamentally different from the Re­ deemer in the typology of the Antichrist. The Savior, revered as the Son of God, who declares that faith is the one thing needful and demands this faith; who confronts mankind with the either-­or He that is not with me is against me; who says of himself, “I came not to send peace, but a sword”; who exhorts decision and compels decision, this messenger, disputant, and proclaimer is a world away from the Redeemer who affirms everything and resists noth­ ing, finds the true life in himself, stands in the service of no mission, and demands the conversion of no one. Nietzsche’s Redeemer redeems himself, not mankind. He is not to be mistaken for Christ. That means, conversely: for the Redeemer to be able to unfold his effect in history, for him to sat­ isfy the demands that were made of him by the movement against the Jew­ ish church, the early congregation, and the Christian church, changes that meant a “strong distortion” of the type became necessary. It was “enriched with features that first become intelligible only on the basis of war and for the purposes of propaganda.” In a word: the differences between the type of the Redeemer and the Christian Redeemer are explained by spiritual war­ fare. They are grounded in politics. In order to historically clarify the image that the Christian tradition has drawn of the figure of Jesus, Nietzsche first takes account of the adherents’ need and their ability to comprehend: “the first disciples in particular first translated a being which was swimming en­ tirely in symbols and incomprehensibilities into their own crudity in order to understand anything at all of it—­for them, the type only existed after a re-­forming into more well-­known forms . . . The prophet, the Messiah, the future judge, the teacher of morality, the man of miracles, John the Baptist—­ just so many opportunities to misunderstand the type.” Unconscious reshap­ ing also has its place in the dynamics of reception. Nietzsche points out that “the proprium of all great, especially sectarian reverence” must not be under­ estimated: such reverence “effaces the original, often embarrassingly foreign 14. AC 30, 1–­3 (200–­201); 58, 3–­5 (246); cf. 20 (186–­87). See Pp. 18–­20 and 31. –­In the dis­ cussion of Buddha and the Redeemer, Socrates and Epicurus presage the role that will fall to Nietzsche and Plato in the discussion of Paul and Manu.

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features and idiosyncrasies in the revered being—­it does not even see them.” In addition, he considers an alternative explanation for the deviations from coherence that suggests itself to the diagnostician of decadence in particular: “the type could, as a décadence-­type, have actually been of a peculiar multi­ plicity and contradictoriness.” Incoherence would thus be characteristic for it and make the talk of a distortion pointless. Even though Nietzsche is “not able to fully exclude” the possibility of intrinsic incoherence, he holds that, in view of the historical testimonies and the interests that manifest themselves in them, “everything” advises against the alternative: “precisely the tradition would have in this case to be a remarkably faithful and objective one: whereof we have reasons to assume the opposite.” Thus it remains that the contradic­ tions in the figure of Jesus—­for example the gap between the “sermonizer on the mount, lake, and meadow, whose appearance seems like that of a Buddha on a soil that is very little Indian,” and the “fanatic of attack, the deadly enemy of theologians and priests, whom Renan’s malice has glorified as ‘le grand maître en ironie’ ”—­are traceable back to the capacities of the disciples, the expectations of the congregation, and, seen as a whole, the will to power of Christianity’s founder. The particular features of the traditional image are the result of “Christian propaganda.”15 In the center of the book Nietzsche places the statement that the first con­ gregation, when it needed a superior theologian in the fight against theo­ logians, created “its ‘God’ according to its needs” and “put into his mouth those completely unevangelical terms” in which the temporal expectation of faith and the longed-­for promise come to expression: “Return” and “Last Judgment.” The teaching of the Eternal Return, which Nietzsche put into the mouths of Zarathustra’s animals, the eagle and the serpent, responds to a cen­ tral concept of Christianity and of its spiritual warfare: the victorious Return of Christ, the lord and judge, at the end of history.16 Whereas Nietzsche spends the first of the two central sections of the Antichrist on the Christian Redeemer, he devotes the second—­both begin with I—­to the ideal-­type, which he contrasts with the historical “distortion,” in order to come ultimately to what particularly “matters” to him in the treat­ ment of the Redeemer. He resists, “to say it again,” “introducing” the fanatic into the type. In the renewed rejection of fanaticism with reference to the Gospel, which he now calls the “glad tidings” and summarizes in the message 15. AC 31 (201–­3). Luke 10:42; Matthew 12:30, Luke 11:23; Matthew 10:34. 16. AC 31 (202–­3). Nietzsche says not a word about the teaching of the Eternal Return in the Antichrist. He reserves the term Return for the Christian teaching. See the repetition of para­ graph 31 in paragraph 41 (215) and consider Pp. 153–54.

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“that there are no longer any opposites,” he adduces Jesus’s word about the little children, to whom belongs the kingdom of heaven, in order to shield the Redeemer’s faith from every theological and political claim: “the faith that becomes audible here is not a faith that has been fought for—­it is there, it is from the start, it is as it were a childishness that has retreated into the spiritual.” The “faith” in the blissful present has hardly more than the name in common with the Christian faith. “Such a faith is not angry, does not blame, does not defend itself: it does not bring ‘the sword’—­it does not at all divine how it could one day divide.” It does not distinguish between the faithful and the unfaithful. It knows no order and disorder. It does not want to rule or to persuade. “It does not prove itself, neither through miracles, nor through reward and promise, nor even ‘through Scripture’: it is itself at every moment its miracle, its reward, its proof, its ‘kingdom of God.’ This faith also does not formulate itself—­it lives.” The faith of the Redeemer is not the faith of a prophet. It is sufficient unto itself in every respect, forward and backward, in­ ner and outer. Of the “Jesus” presented in this way as a Counter-­Jesus, Nietz­ sche says that one could label him, “with some latitude of expression,” a “free spirit.” He may be considered free insofar as he does not allow himself to be determined by anything fixed or binding. To him life means movement, fluidity, indeterminacy: “For him the concept, the experience of ‘life,’ in the only way he knows it, resists any kind of word, formula, law, faith, dogma. He speaks only of what is innermost: ‘life’ or ‘truth’ or ‘light’ is his word for what is innermost—­everything else, the whole of reality, the whole of nature, language itself, has for him only the value of a sign, a parable.” The type of the Redeemer is free of law and dogma, not bound by any duties or directives, and, in the insistence of his yes-­saying, bei sich selbst. But in contrast to the free spirit, his affirmation is not based on any knowledge of negation. To his Yes there does not correspond any No. The negation of culture, state, religion lies outside his horizon. Of the Christian concept “world” he has no inkling. “Negating is just the thing that is entirely impossible for him.” This results in a further distinction. Unlike the free spirit, he has no access to dialectics. He “lacks the idea that a faith, a ‘truth,’ could be proved through reasons (—­his proofs are inner ‘lights,’ inner feelings of pleasure and self-­affirmations, so many ‘proofs by strength’—­).” Since he does not know how to negate, and reasons mean nothing to him, he cannot oppose and contradict any teaching. He is hence not in a position to develop a teaching himself or to propound a teaching.17 17. AC 32, 1–­3 (203–­5). Cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 205–­10 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 165–­69].

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The Redeemer of mankind has a teaching. The salvation he promises is essentially a work of the teaching. The obedience of faith he demands relates to the teaching. It is comprehensive. It extends from right belief concerning the first and the last things, to the commandments and prohibitions of right action, to instruction in the right kind of prayer and the future commemora­ tion of the redemptive act. With it, the Christian Redeemer addresses himself not only to the circle of disciples, but to all men. And he propounds it, as it were incessantly, wherever he goes and wherever he stands. His speeches and sermons make up the core of the Gospel. When Nietzsche invokes the “glad tidings” in order to bring out the profile of the type of the Redeemer, he must refer to these speeches and sermons, without, however, acknowledging that they were the speeches and sermons of the Redeemer of himself, who has no intention of changing the world and does not want to be anyone’s teacher. Nietzsche’s division of the two Redeemers presupposes that the Gospel goes back to Jesus’s words, actions, and gestures, out of which the adherents who surrounded him and followed him created the teaching discourses. They made him into their teacher and the teacher of mankind by transforming expressions of his feeling of life, testimonies of his bliss, communications of his inner emotion, into tidings for others, tidings that contain a demand and expressly contradict earlier teachings or those that are incompatible with it. Accordingly, the Sermon on the Mount owed its form and its purpose to the adherents’ ingenuity—­most conspicuously, for example, in the refrain of con­ tradiction that is far from Nietzsche’s Redeemer: “But I say unto you.” If, in the thirty-­third section of the Antichrist, Nietzsche has his Redeemer and the Christian Redeemer meet and makes reference to winged words from the best-­known sermon of the tradition, this should not deceive the reader about the fact that Nietzsche does not introduce the “sermonizer on the mount, lake, and meadow” into the type of the Redeemer, any more than he did the “fanatic.” In the psychology of the Gospel that has been reconstructed or decon­ structed according to the standard of the typology, the concepts of guilt and punishment, reward and desert, no longer have any place. Sin, the presuppo­ sition of the Christian teaching of Redemption, is “abolished” and with it “any relationship of distance between God and man.” Precisely in this, according to Nietzsche’s reading, consist the glad tidings that the Redeemer lives. “Bliss is not promised, it is not attached to conditions: it is the sole reality—­the rest is signs for talking about it . . .” Neither a sacrificial death, nor a media­ tor or bridge-­builders that are appointed by him, are needed for mankind’s atonement, also no leap of faith to close a gap toward the divine or to partake in a future salvation. The condition of bliss finds its expression in a “new

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practice,” which, like the condition itself, is contagious. Action distinguishes the true Christian who, following the example of the Redeemer, makes no distinctions, offers no resistance to those who do him evil, does not separate those who belong from those who do not belong, neither seeks for himself, nor is subservient to, justice. “The life of the Redeemer was nothing other than this practice—­his death was also nothing else  .  .  .” Whoever joins in the practice can, like him, feel “divine,” “blessed,” “evangelical,” at all times a “child of God.” With the practice that Nietzsche calls evangelical, not only was the “whole Jewish church teaching” in its concepts, from sin to forgiveness of sin and faith to redemption through faith, “done away with,” the teaching of the Christian church, at which the choice of concepts aims, is above all negated. The way of life of the “Christian” in paragraph 33 disclaims nothing more than it does the Christian faith. The yield for the typological enterprise finds expression in the sentence: “The deep instinct for how one must live in order to feel oneself ‘in heaven,’ to feel oneself ‘eternal,’ whereas with any other behavior one does not at all ‘feel’ oneself ‘in heaven’: this alone is the psychological reality of ‘redemption.’ ”18 The negation of soteriology is followed by an attack on the christological center: the Messiah and the only-­begotten Son of God. “If I understand any­ thing of this great symbolist, it is that he took only inner realities to be reali­ ties, to be ‘truths’—­that he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, spatial, historical, only as signs, as the occasion for parables.” The Redeemer who made the designation “Son of Man” his own did not claim with it to be the Messiah. He did not speak of a person “who belongs in history.” Instead, he had in mind “an ‘eternal’ factuality, a psychological symbol redeemed from the concept of time.” Even though he had no concept of nature, he liberated it in his own way from the historical contraction and temporal constriction of a singularity, to a constant possibility. In the speech of God, of the kingdom of God, of the kingdom of heaven, of being a child of God, that the Gospel attri­ butes to him, Nietzsche recognizes the semiotics of the inner world and per­ ception of a “typical symbolist.” Which does not prevent him from elevating the speech into a Christian one, in order, following a long Christian tradition of recollection and renewal, to turn it against really-­existing Christianity: “Nothing is more unchristian than the churchly crudities of a God as a per­ son, of a ‘kingdom of God’ that is to come, of a ‘kingdom of heaven’ beyond, of a ‘Son of God,’ of the second person of the Trinity.” To rebuke the Chris­ tian creed, Christianity’s appeal to Christ, as unchristian is a feast of anti-­ Christian irony, but not a peak of the philosophical critique. The like may be 18. AC 33, 1–­4 (205–­6). Cf. Matthew 5:3–­10, 14–­16, 22, 32, 34, 39–­41, 44–­48.

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said of the polemical statement that the church made out of its revered head’s symbolism “an Amphitryon story”—­in which the Holy Spirit would follow the example of Zeus, and Mary would be in the position of Alcmene—­in order to place it “at the threshold of Christian ‘faith.’ ” The typologist moves on different ground when he holds against the “crudities” of the tradition, in retrograde succession, his interpretation of the Redeemer’s symbol-­language: The son stands for bliss or, as we have heard, “entry into the feeling of the total transfiguration of all things,” whereas the father expresses “this feeling itself, the feeling of eternity, of completion,” in which the Redeemer finds himself secure, has his foothold, and comes to rest. The kingdom of heaven, which belongs to the little children, is a condition of the heart, and not something that could be located “above the earth” or hoped for “after death.” The “con­ cept of natural death” is missing in the reconstructed Gospel. It, like “time, physical life and its crises,” simply does “not exist” for the “teacher of the ‘glad tidings.’ ” Finally, the kingdom of God points to the experience of completion. It is not something that is expected: “it has no yesterday and no day after to­ morrow, it is not coming in a ‘thousand years’ ”; it designates the coincidence of moment and eternity.19 The death on the cross is the only determination, or in any case the only “external” fact, that Nietzsche retains from the Christian creed. “This ‘bringer of glad tidings’ died as he lived, as he taught—­not to ‘redeem man,’ but in or­ der to show how one has to live.” This “in order to” is spoken retrospectively and objectivizingly, since, as we have seen, the Redeemer of himself in the strict sense does not want to teach anyone or to show anything. If Nietzsche nevertheless calls him a teacher, he does so in contrast to the teacher of the church and with regard to the lived tidings, that which is left behind: “The practice is what he left behind for mankind: his behavior before the judges, before the bailiffs, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn—­his behavior on the cross.” Nietzsche collects the whole practice in the tidings “not to resist the evil one,” which at the beginning he already singled out as the Gospels’ deepest teaching, and adds at the end: “—­to love him . . .” For love averts ill will and counteracts the emergence of feelings of revenge and reaction.20 Nietzsche lends emphasis to his reading of the Gospel by freely creating, out of the material of the tradition, a brief dialogue, which he in­ vokes as a striking testimony of Scripture: “The words to the thief on the cross contain the whole Gospel. ‘This was truly a divine man, a child of God,’ says 19. AC 34, 1–­3 (206–­7). 20. On the agreement with and the difference from Nietzsche’s amor fati, consider Pp. 49–51 with Footnote 30.

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the thief. ‘When you feel this—­answers the Redeemer—­you are in paradise, you too are a child of God . . .”21 Nietzsche places in the mouth of the criminal a statement that the Gospel of Luke ascribes to a Roman centurion after the death of Jesus. The criminal understands the action of the Redeemer, who beseeches, suffers, loves “with those, in those, who do him evil,” as divine. Through the “practice,” it becomes obvious to his feeling that he has before him a divine man. And this very feeling becomes for him—­in it “the whole Gospel” is enclosed—­paradise, and proves him to be a child of God, without postponement, immediately, in this moment. Nietzsche replaces the judg­ ment just man (anthropos dikaios) in the centurion’s statement with divine man, and, with the interpolation a child of God, indicates the connection be­ tween the Redeemer and the thief. In the Redeemer’s “glad tidings,” justice and piety are replaced by being a child of God—­by bliss.22 After Nietzsche has introduced the Redeemer into the typology of the Antichrist and deployed, in his own name, a bringer of glad tidings who has been renewed from the ground up against the Redeemer in the Christian tradition, he brings back into the text the We for whom he raised his voice programmatically, politically, and philosophically in the first fourteen sec­ tions. “Only we, we spirits that have become free, have the precondition for understanding something that nineteen centuries have misunderstood.” The free spirits of paragraph 13 have been transformed in paragraph 36 into spirits that have become free. Nietzsche speaks for and to free spirits who, like him, have passed through Christianity. To characterize the We that comprises the author and the preeminent addressees, he uses a concept that bears in itself the evidence of the historical becoming and the historical position. The pre­ condition that allows the We to understand the Redeemer, the Gospel, and Christianity, as Nietzsche continues, elucidating, is “that integrity which, hav­ ing become instinct and passion, makes war on the ‘holy lie’ even more than on every other lie . . .” Integrity or probity, which the spirits that have become 21. In the first printing of the Antichrist in 1894, and in all editions based on the Nietzsche Archive’s composition of the text (including the first standalone edition in 1932 and the reprint in Alfred Baeumler’s Kröner pocket edition, which was disseminated for more than half a century), the passage is suppressed. The words, which according to Nietzsche contain “the whole Gospel,” remained unknown to readers until Karl Schlechta’s 1956 edition. Various commentators have expressed the suspicion that Nietzsche’s sister and the Weimar Archive deleted the two sentences because they showed that Nietzsche was not “versed in the Bible.” One can hardly more misun­ derstand what Nietzsche is doing in section 35. 22. AC 35 (207–­8) and 29 (200). Luke 23:39–­47; cf. Matthew 27:44 and 54; Mark 15:27 and 39. In the Gospel of John, which Nietzsche preferred, neither the thief nor the centurion appears. Luther translates anthropos dikaios/homo iustus in Luke 23:47 with pious man [ frommer Mensch].

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free have at their command, was so sharpened by Christianity, by the moral demand of absolute truthfulness, and in the quarrel with Christianity, in the “war” against its pia fraus, that it is now possible to distinguish between the Redeemer of himself and the Redeemer of mankind, the tidings of the Gospel and the teaching of the church. The spirits that have become free have the precondition at their disposal. But it is the author of the Antichrist who makes use of the sensorium and applies the instrument in order to accomplish the separation. He does not shrink from using those poetic means that his integ­ rity discloses to be in the work of Christian tradition: By having the Redeemer speak “the words” that in his understanding express “the whole Gospel,” he shows what the evangelists did to create the Redeemer of mankind, who corresponds to the teaching of the church. How much the bringing-­out of the type is embedded in the enterprise of spiritual warfare emerges not only in the confrontation of integrity with the lie and in the pose of indignation over the “shameless selfishness” that underlies the construction of the church “out of the opposition to the Gospel.” It becomes particularly evident in the crescendo with which Nietzsche drives the polemic against Christianity to the point of imagining a “great play of the world,” in which an “ironic divin­ ity” competes with the providence of the moral world order and makes use of Christianity as an “immense question mark.” For Nietzsche holds against mankind “that in the concept ‘church’ it pronounced holy precisely what the ‘bringer of glad tidings’ felt as beneath himself, as behind himself,” and at­ tests of Christianity from the highest vantage point that one searches “vainly for a greater form of world-­historical irony.” Yet the attack itself appeals to “the right of the Gospel” and thus confirms that the content of the type of the Redeemer is worthy of consideration. That Christianity becomes an im­ mense question mark for the divine observer, moreover, raises the polemic to another level and foreshadows a fundamental change of perspective, which Nietzsche will shortly make explicit.23 But first, the deconstruction of the tradition is continued and the attack on the church further sharpened. The historical sense, on which the age so prides itself, did not get to the bottom of the history of Christianity because it lacks the typological insight required for understanding the “great symbolist.” Thus the “crude fable of the miracle-­worker and Redeemer” that the church placed at the beginning remained untouched, and it was not understood that the history of Christianity is a history of apostasy and decline, that it is the history of “the misunderstanding, growing cruder with every step, of an original symbolism.” Christianity’s rise and spread led to its vulgarization: “it has 23. AC 36, 1–­2 (208); see P. 117. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 62 and 218 (pp. 83 and 153).

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swallowed into itself teachings and rites from all the subterranean cults of the Imperium Romanum, the nonsense of all kinds of sick reason.” Accord­ ing to the image Nietzsche draws, with recourse to the Redeemer’s symbol­ ism, of the progress of Christianity, it was not so much Christianity that cor­ rupted the barbarians. Instead, Christianity apparently succumbed, through the missionizing, to the declining barbarians. “As the church, sick barbarism itself finally mounts up to power—­the church, this form of deadly enmity to­ ward all integrity, toward every height of the soul, toward all discipline of the spirit, toward all frank and generous humanity.” The price of universalizing the “Jewish church” was barbarization: the diminution of man, the curtailing, stunting, and misunderstanding of his highest possibilities. The attack on the church is supposed to make these possibilities newly visible. To this belongs the distinction of the two Redeemers, as well as the recollection of the aris­ tocratic order that was defeated by Christianity, but above all the uncovering and vivifying of the fundamental opposition to the Hyperboreans. Nietzsche brings the distinction, recollection, and uncovering to the simple binary for­ mula: Christian or noble. “Christian values—­noble values: only we, we spirits that have become free, have restored this greatest opposition of values that there is!”24 With the oppositional stance of the spirits that have become free toward Christianity, Nietzsche’s consideration of history has arrived at the present. The integrity that “makes war” on the lie in Christianity marks the extreme end of the history of Christianity’s impact. As Nietzsche confesses, the integrity he praises is accompanied by a feeling of “contempt for man,” which afflicts him on some days: contempt for the man who lacks the necessary integrity in his attitude toward Christianity. The contempt is aimed expressly at the man of the present. Toward the past, Nietzsche, “like all knowers”—­no different from the “ironic divinity” previously brought into play—­is “of a great tolerance, that is, magnanimous self-­mastery.” He goes “with a gloomy caution through the madhouse-­world of entire millennia, be it called ‘Christianity,’ ‘Christian faith,’ ‘Christian church,’ ” without making mankind responsible. But in the present, his feeling shifts. “What was formerly merely sick has today become indecent—­it is indecent today to be a Christian. And here begins my disgust.” Once again Nietzsche steps out of the We. He speaks, without suppressing “a sigh,” of his feeling. He exhibits his disgust. He declares his indignation in or­ der to mobilize moral indignation in the fight against Christianity, which he connects with his person. The condemnation of the lie, the reproach of inde­ cency, the recapitulation of the church’s catalogue of sins, whose concepts he 24. AC 37, 1–­2 (208–­9); cf. 21, 2; 22; 24, 2–­3 (188–­89 and 192–­93).

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brands “as the most malignant counterfeiting”—­all serve to proscribe Chris­ tianity. The indignation is to be cultivated politically. The accusation that the church pursues the end “of devaluing nature, the natural values,” and that the Christian priest is “the real poisonous spider of life,” indicates that Nietzsche is also seeking to activate disgust in its defensive and protective function. The intention of employing disgust productively in a twofold way prohibits any hint that Nietzsche has long recognized disgust as his greatest danger. For the book’s first addressee, the repetition is not needed.25 The political aim of the diatribe against Christianity becomes clearer when, toward the end of the thirty-­eighth section, Nietzsche targets “our statesmen” and apostrophizes them as “anti-­Christians of deed,” a designation he uses only in this passage. As actors, the statesmen of the present are “anti-­ Christians of deed through and through,” since “every valuation that becomes deed today is anti-­Christian.” Yet they do not draw the necessary conclusions from their habitual anti-­Christianity and hide their not being Christian from themselves or from the public. To win the political actors as allies, Nietzsche holds before their eyes, in an easily comprehensible way, what in their hori­ zon is negated by Christianity: “That one is soldier, that one is judge, that one is patriot; that one defends oneself; that one holds on to one’s honor; that one wants his advantage; that one is proud . . .” But above all, he subjects those among them who have not yet accomplished the separation from Christianity to the reproach of being false, of either incoherence or hypocrisy. He charges the young emperor of the German Reich, for example, with showing himself “at the head of his regiments, magnificent as the expression of the selfishness and self-­conceit of his people,” and at the same time, “without any shame,” professing to be a Christian. The anti-­Christians of deed should see it as a dis­ grace to be associated with Christianity. The philosopher, who contemplates the world from a vantage point beyond good and evil, knows that morality is an indispensable part of politics. The author of the “Curse on Christianity” makes use of the accusation of indecency and shamelessness as a weapon of spiritual warfare.26

25. AC 38, 1–­2 (209–­11); cf. P. 145, Footnote 26. See Pp. 29–31. 26. AC 38, 2 (211). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 295 (p. 239). –­In the sentence “A young prince, at the head of his regiments . . . ,” the first printing of the Antichrist suppressed the adjective young, which made the reference to Wilhelm II obvious. He had been emperor for only a few months when Nietzsche edited the manuscript for printing. In his ascension speech of November 22, 1888, the twenty-­nine-­year-­old made a profession of Christianity. For details, see Andreas Urs Sommer’s notes in NK 6/2, pp. 187–­88.

iv

Faith

The knowledge at which the typological enterprise aims, the self-­knowledge and self-­understanding of the philosopher, keeps pace with the polemic of the Antichrist. When spiritual warfare has the upper hand, Nietzsche makes sure that contemplation steps out of its shadow and takes over the lead. The parallel ordering, which advances in staggered alternation, is expressed strikingly in the two pairs of paragraphs Nietzsche begins with I: Sections 31 and 32, which form the center of the book, contrast, as we have seen, the Redeemer in Christianity with the Redeemer in the typology. Sections 38 and 39 are connected by their contrary treatment of disgust with regard to Christianity.1 Whereas in the thirty-­eighth paragraph, the anti-­Christian propaganda reaches a peak and Nietzsche has the attack on present-­day Christianity culminate in the statement of his disgust, the thirty-­ninth paragraph carries out a fundamental change of perspective. On one hand, Nietzsche declares Christianity—­in accordance with the typological reconstruction, which goes back from history to nature or goes beyond history to nature—­to be a kind of eternal possibility. The typological augmentation in value, however, does not imply any exoneration of historical Christianity. For it expressly concerns “genuine” Christianity, Christian practice in contrast to the Christian doctrine, “a life such as he who died on the cross lived it.” Such a life “will be possible at all times . . .” Even if Nietzsche emphasizes that Christianity as an appellation is already “a misunderstanding,” since there was “at bottom only one Christian,” the question suggests itself of whether the “Christianity” that found expression in the Christian 1. Nietzsche begins eight paragraphs of the Antichrist with I: 12, 24, 31, 32, 38, 39, 45, 50. In the center stand the pairs that speak of the Redeemer (31–­32) and deal with disgust (38–­39).

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doctrine cannot likewise be classified typologically. Whether the Christianity that emerged and began its rise based on the transformation of the Gospel [Evangelium] into a “dysangelium,” a “bad tidings,” is thus not to be reckoned with time and again in different forms. This question of the recurrence will accompany the book until the end. Should the Antichrist lose its political-­ philosophical meaning with the victory over historical Christianity?2 On the other hand, Nietzsche takes a new look at historical Christianity itself, at which the author’s “curse” is aimed. In doing so he neither lowers the sights of his critique, nor diminishes the vehemence of the attack. Instead, he repeats the verdict that Christianity, like its Redeemer, is driven by “instinctive hatred against every reality,” and he calls it a “religion inventive and even ingenious only in harmful, only in life-­and heart-­poisoning errors.” “Seen from the heights,” however, “this strangest of all facts” remains a “spectacle for Gods,” namely, “for those deities who are at the same time philosophers.” To characterize them more precisely, he refers to the deities that he encountered “during those famous dialogues on Naxos”—­encounters that owe their occurrence to the force of his thought, and dialogues that owe their fame to the poetic presentation in Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols. For the divine philosophers, contemplation makes the difference. From the distance of the highest vantage point, they have disgust beneath them.3 “At the moment when the disgust recedes from them (—­and from us!), they become grateful for the spectacle of the Christian: the pathetically small star called earth deserves perhaps a divine glance, a divine sympathy, on account of this curious case alone . . .” What such a divine sympathy might look like Nietzsche imagined in the first dialogue he conducted “on Naxos,” when he had Dionysos say about man: “I think often about how I might still bring him forward.” With the overcoming of disgust in gratitude, he has just given an example.4 Nietzsche begins anew in section 39 after three dashes at the end of section 38. “I turn back, I recount the genuine history of Christianity.” The genuine history follows the guiding thread of the Christian doctrine. It is true that at the outset Nietzsche, opposing Luther’s sola fide, devalues faith into a cloak, pretext, curtain, behind which at all times “the instincts played their game.” Even so, he directs attention to faith in the next fourteen paragraphs, 2. AC 39, 2 (211–­12). 3. See Pp. 49–­51. 4. AC 39, 2–­3 (212–­13); on “instinctive hatred against every reality,” 15 (181–­ 82), 29, 3 (200), 30, 1 (200). Cf. 36, 2 (208) and Pp. 178–­79. Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 238–­39). Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 19 (pp. 123–­24). See P. 58 and consider Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 58–­59 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, p. 45].

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not only because the critique of faith is indispensable for the philosopher’s self-­understanding, but also knowing that the history of Christianity cannot be recounted if one does not take it at its word and disregards its teaching. He therefore points immediately to the inner framework of faith, which he emphatically characterized as a “system” in Twilight of the Idols: “One concept gone here, a single reality in its place—­and the whole of Christianity rolls into nothingness!”5 Nietzsche sees the crossroads of Christian practice and Christian doctrine in the death on the cross, which the disciples did not understand as “the strongest test” of the glad tidings, but which struck them as “the awful question mark, ‘why precisely thus?’ ” and drew all of their attention to the enemy who was to be made responsible for the death. “Here everything had to be necessary, have meaning, reason, the highest reason; a disciple’s love knows no accident.” The way out of the impasse of meaninglessness and hopelessness was pointed by faith in God’s providence, which turns everything toward salvation. The natural enemy became tangible as the “uppermost class” of Judaism. Jesus’s adherents obtained satisfaction by retroactively interpreting their master as “in rebellion against the order.” “Up to that point, this warlike, this no-­saying, no-­doing trait in his image was missing; even more, he was its opposite. Obviously the small congregation did not understand precisely the main thing, what was exemplary in this way of dying, the freedom, the superiority over every feeling of ressentiment.” Ressentiment transformed the Gospel into a dysangelium. The faith of the powerless was compensated for the defeat in the present by the displacement of the kingdom of God into the future, and took revenge on the world—­drawing on the traditional expectation of a Messiah—­by elevating Jesus out of the “evangelical equal right of Everyman to be a child of God” and detaching him, as the Son of God, from the disciples, from mankind, from everything earthly, “just as the Jews, out of revenge on their enemies, once severed their God from themselves and raised him into the heights.” In this way Nietzsche, right at the beginning of his narrative, has traced the central concepts of the Christian doctrine—­God as Lord of the moral world order and Christ as the Son of God—­back to one root, and derived them from feelings of revenge and reaction.6 The overcoming of despair and reconciling of the congregation with itself by faith was one thing, the universalizing of faith into the religion of mankind and missionizing of the unbelievers in all climes was another. The bridge be5. AC 39, 2 (212). Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 5 (pp. 113–­14). See P. 151 with Footnote 1 and P. 165. 6. AC 39, 1–­2 and 40 (211–­14).

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comes apparent in the answer that the “small community” found to the question of how God could have allowed Jesus’s death on the cross: “God gave his son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice.” He sacrificed the innocent for the sins of the guilty, i.e., for all men. Nietzsche calls this guilt offering “ghastly paganism” and stresses the opposition to the Gospel as he reconstructed it: “Jesus had indeed abolished the very concept of ‘guilt’—­he denied any gap between God and man, he lived this unity of God and man as his ‘glad tidings’ . . .” The rise of Christianity into a world religion presupposes the turn away from the glad tidings, or, more precisely, the reinterpretation of the Redeemer of himself into the Redeemer of mankind. Into the type of the Redeemer, which Nietzsche now makes the starting point of the historical development, there “enters step by step”: the teaching of the Last Judgment, which promises justice to Everyman and retribution to the powerless in particular; the teaching of the Return, which promises victory over the Old Enemy and the end of history; the teaching of the death as a Sacrificial Death, which lends existence a moral center of gravity; and finally, the teaching of the Resurrection, “with which the whole concept of ‘bliss,’ the whole and only reality of the Gospel, is conjured away—­in favor of a condition after death! . . .” In the last step, decisive for everything further, toward the Christian doctrine, Paul returns to the Antichrist, furnished with invectives. Nietzsche charges him with the Gospel’s having become through him “the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless teaching of personal immortality. Paul himself even taught it as a reward! . . .” The world-­missionary was not only skilled at revenge and retribution but knew about man’s self-­love and vanity.7 Paul had at his disposal the necessary knowledge and the requisite will to power to create a world-­spanning religion out of the faith of a scattered congregation. To the more precise characterization of Paul, and to the preview of the political consequences of Paul’s effect, Nietzsche devotes two sections, which halt the progress of the historical narrative but decisively extend the typology. For he brings the true founder of Christianity into the field as the “opposite type to the ‘bringer of glad tidings.’ ” If the Redeemer in the Gospel is absorbed in the bliss of the present, the founder of the religion of mankind is tensely directed entirely toward the future. If the former lives without any distinctions in this world and if his teaching is limited to the example of practice, the latter stringently orients faith toward the beyond and gives it the fixity of a system that satisfies all catechismal demands. If for the one, the separation of man and God does not last in the inwardness of his feeling, 7. AC 41, 1–­2 (214–­15); cf. 24, 3 (192–­93) and P. 162.

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the other emphasizes God’s sovereignty and the obedience of faith. If Jesus is associated in the typology with the incapacity for resistance, for negation, for enmity, Paul for Nietzsche embodies “the genius in hatred, in the vision of hatred, in the inexorable logic of hatred.” The Antichrist sharpens the opposition to the utmost and reproaches the teacher of the Christian faith for having sacrificed the only Christian to his work: “What all has this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Redeemer: he nailed him to his cross.” As before in the case of the Redeemer, the typological characterization is presented in the garb of the sharpest polemic: “The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the whole Gospel”—­nothing of what Nietzsche credited the Redeemer with was left once the “counterfeiter out of hatred” comprehended “what alone he could use.” The apostle to the Gentiles subordinated everything to the one end of his founding. To this belonged the approach to the history of the first Christianity, which he “invented for himself,” and to the history of Israel, which, drawing on the priests of Judaism, he “once again falsified,” so that it appeared to be the “prehistory for his deed”: “all the prophets spoke of his ‘Redeemer’ . . . The church later even falsified the history of mankind into the prehistory of Christianity . . .” After the appearance of Paul, the path back to what Christianity could also have been, in the wake of the Redeemer, was blocked: “a new, a thoroughly original start to a Buddhistic peace-­movement, to an actual, not merely promised happiness on earth.” With this judgment the height of the drop seems to be indicated for the discussion that follows.8 But Paul broke ground for a different kind of movement. The type that bears his name in the Antichrist neither contents itself with dietetics, nor takes its measure from the art of good living. It wills the changing of the world. It is concerned with rulership and obedience. It is wholly will in the harness of tense purposefulness. The image that Nietzsche draws has its iconic-­ emblematic counterpart in Albrecht Dürer’s late masterwork that shows Paul, in contrast to the apostles John and Peter and to the evangelist Mark, not as immersed in the Scriptures or with his gaze turned toward heaven, but in the highest watchfulness for what is happening outside the painting, in the world, so that no matter how much he tries, the beholder cannot escape the eye of the figure—­the only one who holds, next to a closed book, a sharp sword in his hands. Whoever has this apostle for an enemy has reason to meet him on the level of his claim. Nietzsche confirms Paul’s priesthood, which he emphasized 8. AC 42, 1–­2 (215–­16); cf. 26, 1–­2 (194–­95) and Pp. 164–­66. –­For a discussion of Paul outside the typology of the Antichrist, see Dawn 68 (pp. 64–­68) and The Gay Science V, 353 (pp. 589–­90).

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on first mentioning him: “His need was power; with Paul the priest once again willed to power.” But he does not neglect to add that Paul “had his home in the main seat of Stoic enlightenment.” In recalling the school of the Stoa of Tarsus, Nietzsche gives a pointed hint of the philosophical influences that found their way into the founding of Christianity.9 In the immediate context, it serves to expose the account Paul gave of the miracle of his conversion and calling to become an apostle—­Nietzsche speaks of “hallucination”—­as the political artifice of a knowing one: “Paul willed the end, consequently he also willed the means . . .” Paul’s charismatic legitimation was an expression of his will to power.10 The absolute will to power that distinguished him prompted him to take up the universalization of revealed religion and lead it to success by means of the Platonic-­Stoic teaching of immortality, which he adapted and applied with virtuosity. It gave him world-­historical stature. Nietzsche extends the line to Islam and thus makes Paul’s synthesis and innovation into the point of intersection of the three revealed religions: “What alone did Mohammed later borrow from Christianity? Paul’s invention, his means to priestly tyranny, to herd-­formation, the belief in immortality—­that is, the teaching of the ‘Last Judgment’ . . .” The Last Judgment reveals the political-­ theological significance of personal immortality. It holds ready reward and punishment.11 9. Among the contemporaries whom Nietzsche read and who read him, Bruno Bauer most strongly stressed the influence of the Stoic and, through them, Platonic doctrines on emerging Christianity. In Christus und die Caesaren. Der Ursprung des Christenthums aus dem römischen Griechenthum (Berlin, 1877), he claims to have proven “that the principles of Christianity, the gain by dying, the wisdom of flight from the world, and the consummation in death (plus the image of the logos as the revealer of the divine), were established by the philosophy of Greece and are made visible by Christianity as one fact for the discipleship,” p. 325. Cf. pp. 36–­43. 10. Acts 9:1–­31. Consider 1 Corinthians 15:1–­17. –­For an explanation of Paul’s “hallucination” that does not leave it at priestly deception, see EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3 (339–­40) and Pp. 92–94 with Footnote 15. 11. AC 42, 2–­4 (216–­17). In the manuscript for printing, the passage about Paul’s home initially read: “who had his home in the main university of ancient Stoicism” (KSA 14, p. 443). Cf. Strabo, Geographica XIV, 5, 13–­15. –­Nietzsche read in Julius Wellhausen that for the prophet of Islam, “in the center of his thoughts” stood “the judgment of individuals, in which every soul appears naked before God and God draws the sum of its life [. . .]. Now this individual judgment is hardly known to the Jews in theory, completely unknown, at any rate, in practice. Of the universal responsibility on the last day, of heaven and hell in the New Testament sense, the Jews know nothing, close as these ideas seem to lie to them. Instead, these are specifically Christian powers of thought [. . .]. If, then, man’s return to God and his responsibility before Him after death emerges with Mohammed, especially at the beginning, as the soul of his monotheism, then the soul of Islam stems from Christianity.” Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, Vol. 3: Reste arabischen Heidentumes. Berlin, 1887, pp. 209–­10.

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Putting the Pauline founding’s political consequences in a sharp light does not require any additional efforts from Nietzsche, since the polemics of the Antichrist have targeted these consequences from the beginning. This does not mean that he brings in no heavy artillery. Before he turns to the political effects in the narrower sense, he makes the teaching of personal immortality into a sub-­or applied case of his diagnosis of Christianity as nihilism: By displacing life’s center of gravity into the beyond, it displaces it into nothingness. The “great lie of personal immortality” not only contradicts reason and nature. It also exposes to mistrust “everything that is beneficial, that is life-­promoting, that is future-­guaranteeing in the instincts.” “To live in such a way that there is no longer any meaning in living, this now becomes the ‘meaning’ of life . . .” In a word: it is Christianity’s meaning that creates nihilism. Nietzsche classifies the specifically political effects within the nihilistic perversion as a whole. First, the fact that public-­spiritedness, gratitude for origin and ancestors, commitment to “any common good” henceforth appear as “temptations” or as distractions from the “one thing is needful” of faith and from the salvation that is tied to faith. The teaching, however, has not only a passive consequence, weakening the political power of the opposing party; it has first of all an active consequence, strengthening the political power of the church. That Everyman occupies an equal rank as an immortal soul, that his salvation within the totality of all beings “may lay claim to an eternal importance,” that for his sake miracles are done, “the laws of nature are constantly broken,” this one cannot “brand with sufficient contempt.” Nevertheless, “Christianity owes its victory to this pathetic flattery of personal vanity.” Whereas in the twenty-­sixth section Nietzsche emphasized the power that the teaching of sin puts into the hands of the priest, and translated the sentence, “God forgives him who repents—­in plain language: him who submits to the priest,” he now translates the “salvation of the soul” promised by the teaching of personal immortality: “—­in plain language: ‘the world revolves around me’ . . .” In the case of both teachings, the verità effettuale della cosa is the strengthening of the key power of the priest as a mediator of salvation and hence the empowering of the church.12 Nietzsche digs deeper in the forty-­third section, since it is only here that he uncovers the anthropologically deeply rooted desire to which revealed religion, which he introduced in the twenty-­sixth section, responds: the wish to stand in the center, as a people, as a species, as an individual—­and to assure oneself of the infinite 12. In the Antichrist, Nietzsche uses the turn of phrase “—­in plain language” [“—­auf deutsch”] only in the two quoted passages from paragraphs 26 and 43, in which he translates the biblical or Christian parlance made use of by the priests.

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significance of one’s uniqueness. Nietzsche’s talk of “personal vanity,” which includes and surpasses anthropocentric pride, makes conspicuous the opposition to the Hyperboreans, to whom, in contrast to their adversaries, he ascribed modesty.13 The political critique approaches its peak as soon as Nietzsche fixes his eye on the egalitarian character of the doctrine. “The poison of the teaching ‘equal rights for all’—­Christianity has sowed it most fundamentally.” Most fundamentally because it established the move toward egalitarianism theologically and anchored it across the centuries religiously in the hopes, expectations, and valuations of men. The manifold accommodations to which Christianity condescended, from the divine right of kings to the support for the class order, covered up the fundamental egalitarianism without being able to do it any harm in the long run or lessen the depth of its impact in the end. The linking of Christianity to the “modern ideas” against which Nietzsche seeks to position the alliance with a new aristocracy thus in no way rests on a historical misunderstanding. Modernity’s egalitarianism draws the political conclusion of the teaching of personal immortality. Nietzsche has in view the political vanishing point of the enemy and of the imagined ally alike when he holds against Christianity that, out of the ressentiment of the masses, it has “forged its main weapon against us, against all that is noble, glad, high-­ minded on earth, against our happiness on earth.” Once again, Nietzsche’s speech opens the We of the Hyperboreans up for the noble addressee. And it confronts him with the assessment of the Pauline enterprise’s late political triumph: “No one today any longer has the courage for special rights, for rights of rulership, for a feeling of reverence before oneself and one’s equals—­for a pathos of distance . . .” The assessment becomes an admonition. “Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!” The noble ones are exhorted to action. When they hear from Nietzsche that the “aristocratism of attitude” was “undermined most subterraneously” by the teaching of the equality of souls and that it “is Christian value judgments which every revolution merely translates into blood and crime,” they are apparently supposed to understand the revaluation of all values as an incitement to a counterrevolution. Only, on the character of the counterrevolution—­where and when it is supposed to take place, on which level it must start, how it must intervene, and whom exactly it concerns—­nothing is yet stipulated.14

13. AC 43, 1 (217); cf. 14 (180–­81) and see Pp. 146–47 with Footnote 28. Cf. Rousseau, Discours sur l’inégalité, note XV, p. 370. 14. AC 43, 1–­2 (217–­18). Cf. 13 (179); 21, 2 (188); 24, 2 (192); 36, 1 (208).

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From Paul and the anticipation of the latest effects of the Pauline founding, Nietzsche turns back to the Gospels and the beginnings of the apostasy from Christian practice that began “with the death of the Redeemer.” The Anti­ christ keeps to the canon of the New Testament, which has the Gospels and the Acts, as the five history books, precede the twenty-­one teaching books, among which Paul’s letters make up the first thirteen. That he adduces the Gospels as a testimony of the “inexorable corruption within the first congregation,” and classifies Paul’s deed as “later,” is in accordance with his use of the Gospels in the treatment of the Redeemer: On the one hand, he stressed the corruptness of the report, the lack of understanding by Jesus’s adherents and followers of his path and way of life; on the other, he made use of the tradition of the disciples and of the early congregation as a source for the image of the type of the Redeemer that he drew. Nietzsche thus turns for a second time to the Gospels, of which he confessed the first time that he reads “few books with such difficulties.” He confirms that one cannot read them “cautiously,” i.e., attentively and circumspectly, enough, since they have “their difficulties behind every word,” difficulties he traces back to an “artistry in psychological corruption.” Before getting into “the refinement par excellence” that makes the Gospels “stand apart,” and launching into a sharp polemic, he confesses, again, that with the very difficulties that distinguish them, the Gospels “are for a psychologist a pleasure of the first rank.” Whereas previously, in sections 38 and 39, he had the joy of contemplation follow disgust, he now refers to the pleasure of deciphering and investigating before he gives the “lie,” the “counterfeiting,” the “self-­disguising as ‘holy’ ” in the Gospels, over to the indignation of the readers. The joy proper to knowing is bound neither to the moral nor to the aesthetic quality of the object toward which the knowing is directed. The polemic itself repeats, sharpening, surpassing, in an increasingly drastic way, what Nietzsche already said, in the treatment of the continuity of the Jewish and Christian “church,” about the continued effect of Judaism in Christianity, which is turned against Judaism, and about the assertion of the priests’ self-­interest. About the Christian, for example, it is said—­leaving aside the most strident expressions—­in allusion to the teaching of the Trinity, that he is “the Jew once more—­even three times . . .”; or, with a view to the negation of the law and the detachment from the nation, that he is “only a Jew of a ‘freer’ denomination.” The resounding success achieved by the priest thanks to his artistry and his will “to apply only concepts, symbols, attitudes which are proven from the priest’s practice” is summarized thus: “The whole of mankind, even the best heads of the best ages—­(one excepted, who is perhaps merely inhuman)—­have let themselves be deceived. The Gospel has been read as a book of innocence . . . : no small indication of

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the mastery of the playacting here.” The one who remains excepted does not need any further explanation.15 Like an erratic block jutting out of the text in the center of the polemic, separated by dashes and marked as a separate subsection of the forty-­fourth section, stands the sentence: “Fortunately, for the vast majority, books are merely literature—­.” That the vast majority form the counterpole to the one who does not let himself be deceived is evident. But for whom is it supposed to be fortunate that for the vast majority, books are only literature? For them, the vast majority, since the deception relieves them of a task that would weigh them down and demand too much of them? Or for us, the fewest, since the error prevents them from taking the book of books as what it claims to be? And since, moreover, it protects a book like the Antichrist from being understood by them as what it is: a political deed or a work of education, a medium of life and thought that contains “dynamite”? Nietzsche is in any case far from holding the Gospels to be mere literature. He requests that they be read “as books of seduction through morality”: “Mankind is best led by the nose through morality!” Above all, he presents them as writings in which the self-­empowerment of the priests and the self-­exaltation of the believers come to expression or find their expression: “In letting God judge, they themselves judge; in glorifying God, they glorify themselves.”16 Nietzsche devotes a special paragraph—­it is the penultimate one that he opens with I—­to making visible, on the basis of thirteen passages from the New Testament, the character of the Scriptures’ authors, and to marking out their horizon: “I give a few samples of what these little people have put into their heads, what they have put into the mouth of their master.” The ironic-­ laconic remark, “so many confessions of ‘beautiful souls,’ ” sets the tone for the brief commentaries that accompany the selection of ten sayings of the master’s and three of Paul’s. It is a question of hypocrisy and ressentiment, evidence of parochialism and self-­conceit, the exhibition of contemptibility and lowliness. Nevertheless, amidst sarcastic remarks and surrounded by gibes, the anti-­Christian scriptural proof contains a theological argument that is of importance for the further course of the confrontation. For the passages from the history books, Nietzsche draws exclusively on the synoptic Gospels, throughout quoting Jesus’s teaching-­and parable-­speeches. The Gospel of Mark is represented with five passages (1–­5), Matthew with four (6–­9), and Luke with one (10). The Gospel of John, whose words of Pilate play a 15. AC 44, 1–­3 and 5–­6 (218–­21), 28, 2 and 29, 1 (199); cf. 24; 26; 27 (191–­93; 194–­98) and see Pp. 162, 166–67. 16. AC 44, 4 and 5 (219–­20). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 247 (p. 191).

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prominent role in Ecce Homo and in the Antichrist, is omitted. Nietzsche is obviously aware that the synoptics are to be placed earlier than John, and wants with his “samples,” in disregard of their authors’ rank, to come as close as possible to the point of view of the disciples and the “first congregation,” in order to illustrate the “process of decay that began with the death of the Redeemer.” Right away, the first two passages are supposed to demonstrate how little evangelically Mark has Jesus speak: The threats of punishment and annihilation that the evangelist’s Redeemer pronounces against unbelievers and the enemies of the disciples cannot be reconciled with the type of the Redeemer. They show as well that hatred does not “first” enter the teaching of Christianity with Paul—­or that Paul “already” left his mark on the synoptic Gospels. The third sample—­“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out,” to which Nietzsche adds, in explanation: “It is not exactly the eye that is meant . . .”—­is aimed at enmity toward the body, at the degrading of sexuality, at antinature. The fourth is supposed to underscore the frivolity and baselessness of the promise regarding the kingdom of God. The fifth and final Mark passage—­“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross. For . . .”—­Nietzsche glosses, as a “psychologist”: “Christian morality is refuted by its Fors: its ‘reasons’ refute—­thus is it Christian.” The Fors lay bare the valuations on which the Christian teaching rests and which the Antichrist holds against it—­the devaluation of the body, the world, knowledge, etc. But they also indicate the motives, the expectations and hopes that Christian morality addresses and that contradict the teaching itself. Thus the For that in the adduced case follows the commandment of self-­denial has recourse to self-­interest. “For,” the Gospel continues in the passage truncated by Nietzsche, “whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” Samples 6–­ 10, all taken from the Sermon on the Mount, are linked by Nietzsche’s use of them in an ad hominem objection: The Christian speaks of justice and love, but what he wants is reward and mercy. Passages 6, 8, and 9 raise the much-­ further-­reaching question of what kind of being is spoken of in the Christian talk of God, which characteristics are attached to him, which actions are requested of him. It leads and goes back to the question of philosophy: What is a God?17 17. AC 45, 1–­11 (221–­22). On the fifth passage, Mark 8:34–­35, a preparatory note says: “If Christianity is only a prudent self-­interestedness, it is an even more prudent self-­interestedness to clear it out of the way—­/ everything is falsified and corrupted: / death as punishment; the flesh; the earthly; knowledge / eternal life as reward / all acts of love, charity, and psychic delicatesse as shrewdnessess of the elect with a view to the most bountiful reward / the whole of virtue

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The Redeemer in Christianity is followed by its founder. Paul, the thirteenth, who unlike the twelve apostles bases his office not on a kind of traditional legitimation but on his own word, is given voice three times by Nietzsche. Passages 11, 12, and 13 each come from the 1st Letter to the Corinthians, which has to stand in for all of the New Testament’s teaching books. Samples 11 and 12 illustrate the reproach of “flattery of personal vanity,” of which Nietzsche said before that Christianity owed its victory to it. Matters are different with the thirteenth passage. It is not so much a clarification or confirmation of what has already been said. It points to the political target. In it Nietzsche’s selection achieves its aim. It introduces Paul’s attack on the wisdom of this world: “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” The word of Paul’s forms the prelude to the quarrel between faith and philosophy, which is determinative for the following thirteen paragraphs. Nietzsche emphasizes the quarrel’s existential significance by reproducing four further verses, which he has immediately follow the first two: “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in his presence.” The attack immediately concerns the two addressees of the Antichrist, the philosophers and the noble ones or the aristocrats of the future. For an understanding of the Paul passage Nietzsche explicitly refers the reader to the treatment in the Genealogy of “chandala morality,” which is born of ressentiment and revenge. There, the political quarrel is traced back to the question of whether it is the priests or the noble ones who have command over rulership. The author of the Antichrist has a clear idea of what it means for philosophers to live under the eye of Paul.18 To the claim of truth and of election that Paul asserts against the “wise” and the “noble,” Nietzsche responds politically. After the presentation of the thirteen scriptural testimonies, he engages in practical revaluation: “What follows from this? That one does well to put on gloves when one reads the New is deprived of its ‘innocence’ . . . / —­The refutation of the evangelical speeches lies in their ‘For.’ ” KGW IX 6, W II 2, p. 4. 18. AC 45, 12–­14 (222–­23); 43 (217). 1 Corinthians 1:20–­21 and 26–­29. Paul attacks the “wisdom of this world” three times: 1:20 (kosmos); 2:6 (aion); 3:19 (kosmos). Cf. Isaiah 29:14. On the Genealogy of Morals I, 7–­8 (pp. 266–­69). See Pp. 186–­87 and 188–­89.

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Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost compels one to.” What was revered as holy is stigmatized as disreputable. The noble readers should see it as a commandment of self-­regard to keep their distance. If they have involved themselves with Paul, they are advised to recoup themselves afterward with a pagan, the “most graceful, most exuberant mocker Petronius.” His work, like “every book,” becomes “cleanly, when one has just read the New Testament.” Once again Nietzsche appeals to the noble affect. And he again takes up a prejudice in order to turn it against its author or beneficiary. The evangelists and apostles can only be in the wrong. They must negate what is right: “everything that is attacked by them is thereby distinguished.” The decisive attack, the negation of the wisdom of this world, “which an impudent windbag seeks in vain to confound ‘through foolish preaching,’ ” finds its second mention. The Antichrist escalates the counterpropaganda to the point of becoming a reversible figure [Kippfigur] when he makes the “first Christian” into an exemplum with a transposed sign: “all his values, all his aims are harmful, but whom he hates, what he hates, that has value . . .” If in the critique of the theologians he passed off what a theologian feels to be true and false only “almost” as “a criterion of truth” e contrario, he now declares the “priestly Christian” to be a veritable “criterion for values.” The rhetorical exaggeration must leap to the reader’s eye. At the end of the attack Nietzsche deploys as an ally the historical witness from the Christian creed. In the sharpest conceivable contrast, he elevates Pontius Pilate into the “single figure” in the New Testament “whom one must honor.” Pilate, from whose speech Nietzsche takes the title of the dyad’s other book, has “enriched the New Testament with the sole word that has value—­that is its critique, even its annihilation: ‘what is truth!’ ” The Roman governor’s exclamation expresses the supremacy of the political authority as opposed to the religious claim to truth. But the value of the “sole word” is not exhausted in the assertion of auctoritas. Nietzsche attaches no less importance to the service it renders to veritas. This is why he speaks of the “noble scorn” of the Roman, “before whom is perpetrated a shameless misuse of the word ‘truth.’ ” The response of the representative of worldly power keeps open the question that lets the philosopher begin on his path: quid est veritas?19 The philosophers, who make quid est veritas? their question, are necessitated into posing that other question—­and giving a response to it: quid est 19. AC 46, 1–­4 (223–­25); 9 (175). John 18:37–­38; see 14:6. Cf. AC 8 (175) and see Pp. 140–42. –­ Four years earlier Nietzsche noted: “It is recounted [that] the famous founder of Christianity said in front of Pilate, ‘I am the truth’; the response of the Roman to this is worthy of Rome: as the greatest urbanity of all time.” Posthumous Fragments Spring 1884 25 [338], KSA 11, p. 100.

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deus? Nietzsche indicates this necessity when he returns, seemingly abruptly, to the We, and with no transition begins to speak of God: “What sets us apart is not that we find no God, neither in history, nor in nature, nor behind nature—­but that we feel what was revered as God not to be ‘divine,’ but pathetic, absurd, harmful, not only an error, but a crime against life . . .” The political conclusion draws attention to the believers. But the following sentence leaves no doubt about the philosophical question at stake: “We deny that God is a God . . .”x The question What is a God? makes the qualities that determine God as a God the subject of the discussion. It directs attention to the criteria that allow or prevent a being’s classification in the species about which it inquires. Accordingly, Nietzsche continues: “If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we would know even less how to believe in him.” The proof of existence, in other words, would not be synonymous with knowledge of and recognition as a God; it would still by no means involve our veneration as a divine being. The political determination of the enemy and the philosophical question are brought together in the second part of the section, which consists of a brief maxim: “In a formula: deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio.” For the formula presupposes that Nietzsche has attained clarity about the question quid est deus? at least with regard to the criteria that permit exclusion.20 God, “as Paul has created him,” has the wise against him because, as Paul knows, he contradicts wisdom. In the religion that was formed around him and that appeals to him, this contradiction of wisdom is reflected in its “not touching reality at any point.” Nietzsche already used the hyperbolic formulation once before, when in paragraph 15 he distinguished the “fiction-­world” of Christianity from the world in which the Hyperboreans live and to which the free spirits seek to do justice in the confrontation with Christianity. But only now does he establish the connection between the attitude toward reality and wisdom and the central concept of the Christian doctrine. The religion corresponding to Pauline theology “must fittingly be deadly enemy to the ‘wisdom of the world,’ which is to say, to science.” Three times in rapid succession Nietzsche refers to the attack of Paul, who, in Luther’s translation, opposes the “wisdom of this world,” i.e., the wisdom of the secular, temporal, impermanent world, three times; and since it is a matter of the one real world, Nietzsche replaces the “wisdom of this world” with the wisdom of the world three times. “ ‘Faith’ as an imperative,” the faith that Paul determined essentially as obedience, and that—­as Nietzsche recalls for the third 20. AC 47, 1–­2 (225). Cf. Die Lehre Carl Schmitts, p. 300 [The Lesson of Carl Schmitt, p. 205]. See P. 34 with Footnote 4, Pp. 48, 49, 103, and 124–25.

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time—­Jesus, according to the evangelist Luke, elevated into the “one thing needful,” this faith “is the veto against science.” Insofar as faith is deployed knowingly against science and wisdom, Nietzsche speaks of a lie: “Paul comprehended that the lie—­that ‘faith’ was needful; later, the church in turn comprehended Paul.” The God of Pauline theology was supposed to confound “in the narrower sense, the two great opponents of all superstition”: philology and medicine, which have as their object the reality of the text and of life. Paul’s enemies are in particular the good philologists and physicians of Alexandrian, i.e., Greek schooling. And one cannot in fact truly be a philologist and physician “without at the same time also being an anti-­Christian.” What goes for the philologists and physicians who understand their science goes all the more for the Hyperboreans, who, in approaching wisdom, become what they are according to their nature.21 From the God of Paul, whom the apostle calls “unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness,”22 Nietzsche goes back to the God of the “priestly book par excellence.” The image of the God who stands at the beginning of all revealed religion is supposed to make visible the reason why the Hyperboreans refuse him recognition. For this Nietzsche draws on the story of the Fall, the quintessential account of the conflict of faith and philosophy. Since “one” has not understood the “famous story,” Nietzsche recounts it anew as the story of “God’s hellish fear of science,” i.e., of knowing, of knowledge. He follows the maxim formulated by Goethe in his consideration of the Book of Exodus, “Israel in the Desert”: “as the man so also his God.”23 In the Fall, the “priestly book” deals with the alternative to the obedience of faith and gives a response to the priest’s real “difficulty”: “he has only one great danger, consequently ‘God’ has only one great danger.” God’s “hellish fear” is the priest’s “hellish fear” of knowledge. In the section, which is divided into twelve parts, the hellish fear appears, after the first time, once more each in the fifth and in the eighth part, so that it symmetrically surrounds, demarcates, and emphasizes the center of the exegesis. The prelude to the story shows God as he strolls in his garden and—­gets bored. The first glimpse of the “old God” already disclaims the decisive attribute that Nietzsche, following the intention of the Book of Genesis’s authors, ascribes to him: that of being, not only “entirely ‘spirit’ ” and “entirely high priest,” 21. AC 47, 3–­4 (225–­26); 14–­15 (180–­81); cf. 38 (211). Romans 1:5 and 16:26. Luke 10:42, along with AC 23 (190), 43 (217), 47 (225); cf. 20 (187). See Pp. 150–51 and 193, Footnote 18. 22. 1 Corinthians 1:23; cf. 2:14 and Romans 9:32. 23. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, West-­östlicher Divan. Besseren Verständniss, ed. Hendrik Birus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), p. 246.

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but “entirely perfection.” Boredom contradicts perfection. It is not compatible with self-­sufficiency. Do the Hyperboreans get bored? Through the modification of a Schiller quotation that is known to Everyman—­“Against boredom even Gods struggle vainly”—­Nietzsche ultimately brings boredom together with stupidity. In any case, the “sole need that all paradises have in themselves” testifies to a grave lack of foresight. It is therefore not surprising that the lack of providence is the red thread that connects the eleven steps of the story in Nietzsche’s account: The God of Moses proceeds according to the principle of trial and error, and is instructed, step by step, to be set right, or wrong. Out of boredom he “invents” man, of whom it is to be expected that he is “entertaining.” Man, however, is also bored, which is why God supplies him with “other animals.” “God’s first blunder: man did not find the animals entertaining,” more, “he did not even want to be ‘animal.’ ” In the next trial “God created woman.” His second blunder.24 “The boredom” indeed came “now to an end”; the drama of knowledge, however, runs its course. For “every priest” knows that the woman is, “according to her essence, serpent, Heva,” and that from her “every calamity” comes “into the world”—­hence also “science.” “Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.” With the sharp-­sighted eye of the enemy, the authors of Genesis 2 and 3 see the connection between eros and knowledge that the philosophers, from Plato’s Symposium to Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, will emphasize. And in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they succeed in planting the symbol of a life that is not based on obedience. The “hellish fear” responds to the “greatest blunder” that man himself turns out to be, because knowledge puts him in a position to become a rival. Eritis sicut dii: “it is over for priests and Gods when man becomes scientific!” 24. In Julius Wellhausen, who advocates for the priority of Genesis 2 and 3 to Genesis 1, Nietz­sche read: “Yahweh himself sets his hand to everything and thereby in the main presupposes the existence of the world. He plants and waters the garden, he forms man and breathes life into his nostrils, he builds the woman out of the man’s rib, having previously failed in his efforts to provide him with companionship: the animals are living witnesses to his unsuccessful experiments. In other respects, too, he proceeds like a man. In the evening, as it is getting cool, he goes for a walk in the garden; in doing so, he accidentally discovers the transgression, and conducts an investigation in which he makes not the least use of his omniscience. And when he says: ‘behold the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now—­lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever,’ this is just as little irony as when, on the occasion of the building of Babel, he utters: ‘behold one people and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of their doings, and now—­nothing will be too difficult for them that they have presumed to do; go to, let us go down and confuse their language.’ That with all this, Yahweh’s majesty is in no way compromised, is the secret of the spirit.” Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, p. 322.

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The moral of the story of the Fall reads: “science is the prohibited as such—­it alone is prohibited. Science is the first sin, the core of all sin, the original sin.” It is the embodiment of disobedience, its first case, and its constant repetition. The story’s sixth step is reserved for the one commandment and law back to which Nietzsche’s interpretation traces the secular quarrel: “ ‘Thou shalt not know’:—­the rest follows from this.” The “hellish fear” inspires a series of countermeasures, beginning with the expulsion from Paradise: “Happiness, idleness, brings on thoughts—­all thoughts are bad thoughts . . . Man shall not think.”25 Next, to the “priest as such” is ascribed the use of “need, death, the danger to life of pregnancy,” etc., as so many means in the fight with science. Because the trials outside the garden possess the same lack of foresight as the trials mentioned in the first half of the story, the narrative about the confusion of tongues and about wars heads directly for its end in the punishment of the Flood. It is the most visible admission of the continuing failures and the most telling expression of the violence of feelings of revenge and reaction.26 After the interpretation of the story of the Fall, Nietzsche makes sure that the political intention does not remain misunderstood: “I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest.” The discussion of the question of what a God is, which linked the previous four paragraphs, recedes into the background. There is no longer any talk of the “old God.” The noble addressee’s undivided attention is drawn to the world-­historical adversary, the priest, who, as Nietzsche summarizes his exegesis, is the enemy of science. “The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—­the healthy concept of cause and effect.” The noble ones of the present and the aristocrats of the future will not be able to refrain from protecting and promoting science, as long as they comprehend their true enemy. In court and in political confrontation, the question cui bono? stands in the foreground. It lies in the vital interest of the priest to keep man in dependence. “The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole ‘moral world order,’ is invented against science—­against man’s detachment from the priest.” The rulership of the priest is based on the teaching of sin. Whoever wants to break the rulership of the priest must overcome this teaching. The noble ones thus have their natural allies in the philosophers. The alliance is to their benefit and will bring them fame and honor. Nietzsche holds out to them the prospect of nothing less than being able to take part in the defense against the greatest crime. This crime is what is at stake in the priests’ “assassination 25. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 2 982b22–­24. 26. AC 48, 1–­12 (226–­27). Cf. EH I, 6 (273); II, 1 (279); III, Beyond Good and Evil 2 (351), and Pp. 25–­27, 34, 103.

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attempt” on man’s “causal sense”: “When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer ‘natural,’ ” but are instead conceived of “as merely ‘moral’ consequences, as reward, punishment, wink, means of education, then the presupposition for knowledge is destroyed—­then the greatest crime against mankind has been committed.” The greatest crime is the prevention of knowledge.27 For the sake of sharpening the political confrontation, Nietzsche leaves unmentioned the philosophical tradition’s share in instituting the “moral world order.” He also does not refer to the fact that the “spirit of revenge,” which revolts against powerlessness in the face of necessity, found expression in philosophical doctrines without having any need of the corrupting influence that emanated from the teaching of sin in the first book of Moses or the Letter to the Romans.28 The beginning of paragraph 50 subtly makes the philosophical addressee attentive to the fact that his cause—­in the form of the danger of abetting the priest’s rulership or even of becoming a priest himself—­is still being discussed: “I do not let myself off at this point without a psychology of ‘faith,’ of the ‘faithful,’ precisely, as is fitting, for the benefit of the ‘faithful.’ ” Certainly, the psychology of faith connects seamlessly to the psychology of the priest articulated in paragraphs 48 and 49. Nietzsche also does not weaken the polemic in the least, but rather, linking to the sharp attack in the center of the book, declares it simply indecent to be “faithful.” Indeed, he seems to be as far as possible from the address to the fewest, to whom he turned in the preface, when he proclaims, with the gesture of the prophet or lawgiver: “My voice reaches even the hard of hearing.” For the care­ ful reader, however, the last section that begins with I circles back to the first section that began with I and set the “skeptic” against the “priestly type” in order to admonish the philosopher to overcome the “inheritance of the priest, the counterfeiting before oneself.” Paragraph 12 called for “intellectual integrity” and formally rejected “conviction” as a criterion of truth.29 This is 27. AC 49, 1–­7 (228–­29). In a preparatory note, Nietzsche wrote: “The concept of guilt and punishment, including the teaching of the ‘grace’ of ‘redemption,’ corrupts the causal sense of man once and for all. When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer ‘natural,’ but reward or punishment-­effects of a power reigning in the beyond, then the presupposition for knowing is destroyed. With the concept ‘reward and punishment’ science is abolished” KGW IX 10, W II 8, p. 130. 28. Consider Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 20, 31–­38 (pp. 180–­81), and Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 97–­101 with n. 105 [What is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 76–­80 with n. 105]. 29. How much Nietzsche links to section 12 in the transition from section 49 to section 50 is also shown by section 12’s conclusion: “What does science matter to a priest! He stands too high for that!—­And the priest has hitherto ruled! He determined the concept of ‘true’ and ‘untrue’! . . .” AC 12 (179). Cf. Pp. 144–45.

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continued by the discussion of the relationship between faith and truth in paragraphs 50–­53, which is in turn part of the treatment of the question of how the truth can be successfully approached.30 The first target of Nietzsche’s critique is the “proof by strength,” which “among Christians” is considered to be a kind of criterion of truth: “Faith makes blissful: thus it is true.” As far as bliss is a promise that is “tied to the precondition of ‘faith,’ ” and faith and hope are therefore one, it is not difficult for Nietzsche to reduce the “proof by strength” to a credo quia absurdum: “ ‘I have faith that faith makes blissful;—­consequently it is true.’—­But with this we are already at the end. This ‘consequently’ would be the absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.” Matters are different with the blissful experience, different in particular with the bliss that the type of the Redeemer is filled with here and now, in the world, in his life. This bliss prompts Nietzsche to pose the fundamental question: “would bliss—­more technically speaking, pleasure, ever be a proof of truth?” He does not content himself with the obvious answer that neither pleasure nor displeasure is suitable as a proof of truth, but instead, mindful of the strong inclination toward pleasure not only “among Christians,” replies that it produces almost the counterproof, “in any case the highest suspicion toward ‘truth,’ when feelings of pleasure have a say in the question ‘what is true.’ ” Pleasure can be an indication of the usefulness of activities for life, since life is not able to overcome, enhance, and preserve itself without pleasure.31 But it does not prove the truth of judgments, since there is no reason to assume a “pre-­established harmony” according to which true judgments of necessity “would trail pleasant feelings behind them.” In order to make visible to those who want to approach the truth the difficulty of the task and the difference between wanting-­to-­get-­to-­the-­truth and wanting-­to-­ hold-­to-­be-­true, Nietzsche refers to the initial experience “of all deep-­natured spirits”: “One has had to wrest from oneself every step of truth, one has had to abandon for it almost everything on to which the heart, on to which our love, our trust in life, otherwise hangs.” The approach to the one as well as to the other addressee of the Antichrist requires stressing the hardness that the “service of truth” commands, the severity “toward his heart,” the matter of “conscience” that has to be made out of every Yes and No, for whoever wants to take the path to truth. The bliss of knowing comes contrary to expectation. It is the reverse of a promise.32 30. AC 50, 1 (229). The eight sections beginning with I in the Antichrist have a strategic meaning throughout, structuring the rhetoric and the course of the argument. See Footnote 1. 31. Cf. AC 11 (177). 32. AC 50, 2–­9 (229–­30). Cf. 1 Corinthians 2:4–­5.

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The faith of Christianity is shown in a double confrontation with truth, corresponding to the two addressees, in paragraphs 51 and 52: First, in contrast to the truth of the noble nature, then in opposition to the truth of the life of knowledge. The Christian priest denies “out of instinct” that sickness is sickness, and, what weighs more heavily, consciously promotes sickness in order to assert his interest in rulership. Thus through the rites of the “whole Christian training in penitence and redemption,” a “folie circulaire” is induced, the tornness and fluctuation between baseless Außersichsein and self-­debasing contrition. Health is “fought” as “a kind of enemy, devil, temptation”; on the other hand, in holiness “a series of symptoms of the impoverished, enervated, incurably corrupted body” is elevated as a model. Christianity, which relies on the sick and “has need of sickness,” began its rise, as Nietzsche specifically avers, not at a time when noble antiquity was in the grip of corruption, but rather, when “the countertype, nobleness,” was “in its most beautiful and maturest form.” How Christianity could be victorious and “a noble attitude” perish of it appears more and more enigmatic and in need of explanation. The first message for the noble ones is all the clearer: “The great number became master; the democratism of the Christian instincts was victorious . . .” Nietzsche returns to the “invaluable word of Paul’s” that he cited in paragraph 45 as the thirteenth sample from the New Testament, and again reproduces it, shortened to the statement that most closely concerns the noble ones’ rulership: “ ‘The weak things of the world, the foolish things of the world, the base and despised things of the world hath God chosen’: this was the formula, in hoc signo décadence was victorious.” The passage gains its particular significance through the fact that Nietzsche counters it in Ecce Homo with his “in this sign my philosophy will be victorious one day,” appealing to the in principle prohibited truth. He continues with the explication of victorious Christianity: “God on the cross—­does one still not understand the terrible ulterior motivation of this symbol?—­All that suffers, all that hangs on the cross, is divine . . . We all hang on the cross, consequently we are divine . . . We alone are divine . . .” The quarrel that is carried out between Christianity and the countertype, nobleness, concerns in the final instance the question of what can be considered divine.33 “Christianity also stands in contrast to all spiritual well-­turned-­out-­ness.” The also in the opening of the fifty-­second section sets the opposition to which Nietzsche now turns apart from the contrast to nobleness that he sketched in the fifty-­first section as a contrast of sickness and health. The also immediately 33. AC 51, 1–­5 (230–­32); cf. Beyond Good and Evil 188 (p. 109). EH Preface, 3 (259). 1 Corinthians 27–­28; cf. AC 45, 14 (223).

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turns out to be an above all, for in the very same sentence we learn that Christianity pronounces “the curse against the ‘spirit,’ against the superbia of the healthy spirit.” It is this curse against the “spirit,” against science, against knowledge—­against philosophy, to which the curse in the subtitle of the Antichrist responds above all. The curse against the “superbia of the healthy spirit” repeats the Fall’s prohibition and judgment. It is a conspicuous expression of the teaching of sin, which Nietzsche dealt with in the discussion of the God of Paul and of Moses. Against the background of the story of the tree of knowledge in the book of Genesis and the determination of faith as obedience in the Letter to the Romans, Nietzsche finally characterizes faith as “wanting-­ not-­to-­know what is true.” With this, the necessity of the opposition to the life of knowledge is clear as day: For the defense of faith, “all straight, integral, scientific paths to knowledge must be repudiated by the church as prohibited paths. Doubt is already a sin . . .” Without doubt no science, without disobedience no philosophy. A prohibition on doubt, or on the suspension of judgment where lack of evidence necessitates doubt, is contra naturam. We have reached the basis of the opposition.34 From the faithful and the priests Nietzsche turns back to the theologians, whom he juxtaposed to the philosophers in the first part of the book. After the fundamental conflict has been named, he ascribes to them, as “another badge” in addition to the “unfreedom to lie or not to lie,” the “incapacity for philology.” He understands philology as the art of reading well in the comprehensive sense: “being able to read off facts without falsifying them through interpretation, without, in the desire to understand, losing caution, patience, refinement. Philology as ephexis in interpretation: whether it is a matter of books, of news in the paper, of destinies or facts about the weather—­to say nothing of the ‘salvation of the soul’ . . .” The critique of the incapacity for philology does not linger over the details of scriptural interpretation, but instead, without further ado, targets the interpretation of the world as the expression of divine providence. It concentrates on the reign of particular providence, which faith hopes to influence through prayer, intercession, and sacrifice. It aims, in other words, at the understanding of God that the Christian theologians reveal in their interpretation of the world, of man, of life: “With even the smallest measure of piety in our body, a God who cures a cold at the right time, or who bids us climb into a carriage at the very moment when a great rainstorm breaks out, should be to us so absurd a God that one would have to abolish him even if he existed.” “ ‘Divine providence,’ ” Nietzsche sums up, “would be such an objection to God that a stronger one 34. Cf. Politische Philosophie und die Herausforderung der Offenbarungsreligion, pp. 81–­83 [Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, pp. 58–­60].

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could not even be thought.” The revaluation of all values takes its start from the question quid est deus?35 The discussion of the attitude of Christian faith toward truth, which began with the critique of the “proof by strength,” ends with the critique of the martyr as a “witness to the truth.” The sacrifice that the martyr makes for his faith is no better as a confirmation of the truth of the faith than is the bliss that faith promises him or with which he is filled in the presentiment of victory over himself and of its reward. Neither pleasure nor pain, nor the combination of pain and pleasure in cruelty, can serve as a criterion of the judgment’s truth. That is also why for the knower, cruelty toward oneself, probity, can only be a means, not an end, important as this virtue’s contribution is, in view of man’s inclinations, preferences, and biases, as a heuristic. The impact had by the martyrs, their share in the success of Christianity, is another matter. Nietzsche calls the martyrs’ deaths “a great misfortune in history: they seduced . . .” They set an example, calling, like the Passion itself, to discipleship. Nietzsche dares to advance quite far with regard to the noble addressee when, in the center of the section, he poses the question: “What? does it change anything in the value of a cause that someone lays down his life for it?” In politics, for the perception of the cause and the assertion of its “value,” it obviously changes a great deal. In the eyes of the Christian and the noble one alike. That Nietzsche is aware of this is shown by his judgment on the persecution of the Christians: “Precisely this was the world-­historical stupidity of all persecutors, that they gave the opposing cause the appearance of something honorable—­that they gifted it with the fascination of martyrdom . . .” Nobleness “in its most beautiful and maturest form” was no match for Christianity. The “countertype” lacked insight, foresight, political prudence.36 The Roman aristocrats created the martyrs, who, as Nietzsche emphasizes, harmed the truth. The unreason of the aristocrats decisively contributed to the rise of Christianity, of which the Antichrist says that it was “hitherto mankind’s greatest misfortune.” At the end, Nietzsche, parodying the scriptural 35. AC 52, 1–­2 (232–­34); cf. 5 (171); 8–­14 (174–­81). 36. Ernest Renan passes no less harsh a judgment on the political elite of the Roman Empire: “La faute que commirent les classes éclairées de l’Empire en provoquant cette exaltation fiévreuse ne saurait être assez blâmée. Souffrir pour sa croyance est quelque chose de si doux à l’homme que cet attrait seul suffit pour faire croire. Plus d’un incrédule s’est converti sans autre raison que celle-­là; [. . .] Un secret instinct nous porte, d’ailleurs, à être avec ceux qui sont persécutés. Quiconque s’imagine arrêter un mouvement religieux ou social par des mesures coercitives fait donc preuve d’une complète ignorance du cœur humain et témoigne qu’il ne connaît pas les vrais moyens d’action de la politique.” L ’A   ntéchrist (1873), in Œuvres complètes (Paris, 1949), IV, p. 1229.

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proof of faith, supports the critique of the martyr with three verses from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which he elevated to the rank of a canonical book in Ecce Homo, and whose authority he claims in the Antichrist only here. The word, “which one would have needed for millennia,” was spoken by Zarathustra alone. The second verse reads: “But blood is the worst witness to the truth; blood poisons even the purest teaching into the heart’s delusion and hatred.” The aristocrats of the future have their slogan.37 The critique of the martyr as witness to the truth of faith allows Nietzsche to clarify quietly that the “service to the truth” is not to be mistaken for the service to a deity that demands martyrdom. The philosopher does not have to lay down his life for the sake of the truth, in its defense.38 Furthermore, Nietzsche suggests to the book’s preeminent addressee, as it were in passing, that the truth necessarily remains anonymous. An insight that belongs to the modesty of the Hyperboreans: “Truth is not something that one might have and another might not have: only peasants or peasant-­apostles of Luther’s kind could think thus about truth.” Truth is exhausted or designated by no one’s teaching. It bears no name. Neither that of Heraclitus or Plato nor that of Spinoza or Nietzsche.39

37. AC 53, 1–­6 (234–­35); 51 (230). Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 4 (On the Priests), 30–­32 (p. 119); consider verse 5 (p. 117). 38. “The martyrdom of the philosopher, his ‘sacrifice for the truth,’ forces into the light what lurked in him of the agitator and the playactor; and provided that one has hitherto watched him with only an artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher the dangerous wish to see him once also in his degeneration (degenerated into the ‘martyr,’ into the stage-­and platform-­ shrieker) can certainly be comprehensible.” Beyond Good and Evil 25 (p. 43); cf. Preface, first sentence (p. 11). 39. AC 53, 1 (234); 13 (179); 50, 7 (230). Consider AC 46, 4 (225) and Beyond Good and Evil 295 (p. 238) as well as Pp. 124–25 and 194–95.

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Zarathustra makes a double appearance in the Antichrist. First he speaks as a soothsayer. Then he embodies the skeptic. In the fifty-­third section, the cri­ tique of sacrifice, faith, and the witness to the truth is handed over to him. In the fifty-­fourth, the question of rulership is linked with him. The section, which like no other deals with the philosopher, begins abruptly: “One should not let oneself be misled: great spirits are skeptics. Zarathustra is a skeptic.” The opinion that great spirits are men of faith or men of conviction is misguided. A spirit is not great because it is great of faith or lets itself be determined by a great conviction. It deserves to be called great, on the contrary, insofar as it has overcome faith and gained distance from its convictions—­ insofar as it is a spirit that has become free. “Strength, freedom through the force and overforce of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction simply do not come into consideration for everything that is fundamental about value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons. They do not see far enough, do not see beneath themselves: but in order to be permitted to have a say on value and disvalue, one must see five hundred convictions beneath oneself—­behind oneself . . .” Zarathustra is summoned by Nietzsche as a witness to the truth of the connection between greatness of spirit and skepticism. Apparently Nietzsche assumes that the reader considers Zarathustra to be a great spirit, without his therefore seeing in him a skeptic, or conversely, because he believes he has before him, not a skeptic, but a man of conviction. In fact the assumption is not farfetched that the majority of those who know of the Book for All and None, either from their own reading or from hearsay, consider Zarathustra to be a prophet or in any case someone who acts out of conviction. Does he not bear the name of a prophet? And is he not filled with the mission of having to bring to mankind the teachings of the Overman, the

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Will to Power, the Eternal Return? Does he not promise mankind the path to redemption? In the face of this commonplace understanding, with which Nietzsche has to reckon, Zarathustra’s second appearance in the Antichrist serves not so much to provide evidence of the skeptic and elucidate the spirit that has become free by means of a famous example, as first of all to set up the example and draw attention through a pointed hint to the fact that the figure from Nietzsche’s poem is in the end to be understood not as a prophet, but as a philosopher.1 When Nietzsche calls Zarathustra a skeptic, he declares him to be a philosopher. Paragraph 54 does not discuss the skeptic in general. It also does not distinguish, as Nietzsche does elsewhere, a skepticism of strength from a skepticism out of weakness, in order, for example, to attribute to Friedrich the Great “the skepticism of audacious manliness.” He uses the name of the “decent type in the history of philosophy” to protect the philosopher from any mistaking for a priest, prophet, or politician, including self-­mistaking.2 The sentence, “A spirit who wants something great, who also wants the means to it, is of necessity a skeptic” likewise does not relate to just any “spirit” or any arbitrary project that claims something “great” for itself. It is not aimed at the great enterprise of a politician like Napoleon or of a priest like Paul, who, as we have heard, “also” wants “the means” for his founding. Rather, it has in view the truth, the truthful one, and the spirit that has become free, all three of which are invoked in the second part of the paragraph. The following sentence accordingly reads: “The freedom from every kind of conviction belongs to strength, being-­able-­to-­view-­freely . . .” But even more, and above all, the determinacy of the philosophical orientation pertains to the passion of which Nietzsche says that the skeptic has in it nothing less than the ground and the power of his being: “The great passion, the ground and the power of his being, even more enlightened, even more despotic than he himself is, takes his whole intellect into service; it makes him unhesitating; it gives him courage even for unholy means; under certain circumstances it permits him convictions. Conviction as a means: Many things are achieved only by means of a conviction. The great passion uses, uses up convictions, it does not subject itself to them—­it knows itself sovereign.” What paragraph 54 states about the “great passion” is eminently applicable to the passion Nietzsche has been drawing on since Dawn to characterize the philosopher: the passion of 1. AC 54 (236–­37). Nietzsche pursues the same intention with Zarathustra’s appearance in the preface to Ecce Homo. See Pp. 12–13. 2. Beyond Good and Evil 208 and 209 (pp. 137–­42). AC 12 (178).

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knowledge. It is the One passion that can know itself sovereign because for it, in contrast to all other passions, the turn back to itself in knowledge is essential. The skeptic is able to find in it the ground and the power of his being because the inner relations of rulership that make him a skeptic have their architectonic principle in the passion of knowledge. It determines the rank-­ order that distinguishes him, both through the highest goal, which takes the lead, and through the deepest impulse, which sustains the movement. Its rulership is grounded in the fact that it reaches over and beyond each of his passions: it understands how to employ all of them, despotically, for its end, or constantly to examine them, enlightenedly, in terms of its end. In employing and examining itself, it confirms its rulership. To its rulership, which is one with the skeptic’s freedom, belongs the use of convictions: the playing-­ out, acting-­out, and testing-­out of convictions, up to the boundary at which they are overcome as “convictions,” at which their conditions and limitations are understood. The approach to the truth, which the passion of knowledge impels by means of convictions, corresponds to the philosopher’s becoming-­ oneself by means of the task, which cannot be thought without convictions. In both cases, the instrumental relationship means that the conviction or the task must be accorded due seriousness, so that the means can fulfill its end—­ penetrating and comprehending, unfolding and deepening—­and so that it can be contemplated from the highest perspective as “beneath oneself, behind oneself.” In both cases, the rulership, as despotic as it is enlightened, is an ex­ pression of the philosopher’s nature.3 A side-­glance at aphorism 230 in Beyond Good and Evil—­it is of comparable importance for the “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future” as para­graph 54 is for the “Revaluation of All Values”—­may allow the underlying conception to emerge more sharply. There, Nietzsche deals with the rulership of the philosopher’s nature in two clearly differentiated steps. In the first, he goes back to a “basic will of the spirit,” which seeks to become master of the world by comprehending and appropriating, interpreting and incorporating, but, in forcing its dominance and succumbing to self-­deception, misses the truth. He takes as his starting point the “commanding something that is called ‘the spirit’ by the people” and presents it as “a will that ties up, subdues, thirsts for rule, and is actually ruling.” In their orientation toward ruling, the “needs and capacities” of the spirit are the same “as those the physiologists posit for everything that lives, grows, and multiplies itself.” In a word: the basic will of the spirit is one with the will that is at work in life generally. “The spirit’s strength 3. AC 54, 1 (236). See Pp. 49–51 and 89.

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to appropriate the foreign reveals itself in a strong inclination to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repulse that which is entirely contradictory: just as it, arbitrarily, more strongly underscores, accentuates, falsifies into shape certain features and lines of the foreign, of every piece of ‘external world.’ ” Like life, it is intent on growth, “more specifically, on the feeling of growth, on the feeling of increased strength.” Here, at the latest, the reader can no longer be in doubt as to which will is being discussed. The same will is served, as Nietzsche stresses, by “a seemingly opposed drive of the spirit”: A sudden “resolve for ignorance,” a “shutting of one’s windows,” a “kind of defensive-­condition against much that is knowable,” a “contentment with the dark, with the closing-­off horizon,” even the “occasional will” to let oneself be deceived, “a jubilating self-­enjoyment in the arbitrary narrowness and secrecy of a niche, in the all too near, in the foreground, in what is enlarged, diminished, displaced, beautified,” finally “that not unobjectionable readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and to disguise itself in front of them.” The contentment with the dark, with the closing-­off horizon, we can also designate as a stopping at conviction, a settling-­down in faith. —­ The basic will of the spirit and of life, the will to seeming and surface, to simplification and assimilation, which Nietzsche usually calls will to power, is countered in the second step by “that sublime inclination of the knower, who takes and wants to take things deeply, multiply, thoroughly: as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every brave thinker will recognize in himself, provided that, as is meet, he has hardened and sharpened his eye long enough for himself, and is accustomed to strict discipline, also to strict words.” In the knower, the basic will turns back to itself. There occurs a bifurcation of the will to power, in which the will to the surface encounters the will to thoroughness. Or the one ruling will must, as soon as the knower is involved, split itself into the will that wants to become master of the world, and the will that wants to become master of itself. The advantage of the conception, which goes back to the philosopher’s passion of knowledge, is that both strands are compellingly related to each other, intertwine, and enhance each other, since in it the knowledge of the world and self-­knowledge necessarily have One goal. However, the two steps, which follow each other but are turned against each other, emphasize truthfulness’s need of probity as sharply as it can be emphasized, without therefore deviating in the least from the course that leads back to the nature of the philosopher. On the contrary, Nietzsche, who introduces probity in the center of the “Seventh Main Part: Our Virtues” as the virtue “which alone remained to us,” makes precisely this virtue, in the passage in which he speaks in the voice of the “free, very free spirits” for the third and final time in Beyond Good and Evil, into

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the touchstone and example of the return to nature.4 It is supposed, as cruelty toward oneself, to be anchored in “our” nature. Certainly “it would sound more courteous if, instead of cruelty, we were said, whispered, reputed to have, for instance, an ‘excessive probity’—­we free, very free spirits.” As for the virtues, distinctions, encomia conferred on the philosophers, it is generally the case that “probity, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful—­there is something in this that makes one’s pride swell.” Yet “we hermits and marmots” have “persuaded ourselves,” in ice and high mountains or in voluntarily sought-­out deserts, that sociable pomp and moral finery like this are to be dispensed with and “that even from under such flattering colors and painting-­over, the terrible basic text homo natura must again be recognized.” For this is the task that the “free, very free spirits” set themselves: “To translate” man “back into nature; to become master over the many vain and enthusiastic interpretations and secondary senses that have hitherto been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text homo natura.” The “basic will of the spirit,” which “wants to be master and wants to feel itself as master,” is not in itself sufficient for this task, since the scrawlings and paintings-­over are essentially its work. For the basic text to be able to be uncovered from under the interpretations that conceal it, attention must first be directed to the interpreter and the interpretive activity. This is why Nietzsche shines such a bright light on the will to power in the will to truth: its being visible is the precondition of its being steered. Only the insight into its dysfunctionality allows control. Thus Nietzsche has Zarathustra raise the demand that the will to power must be “unharnessed.” In the Antichrist, as we saw, he demands ephexis in interpretation.5 In aphorism 230, it is probity that he opposes to the “basic will of the spirit” and its fabricating, beautifying, 4. In the same aphorism (VII, 227) in which Nietzsche emphasizes probity as “our virtue, from which we cannot get away, we free spirits,” he warns that it not “become our stupidity.” For every virtue “tends toward stupidity”—­as soon as it is misunderstood as an end. The aphorism refers back in a significant way to the aphorism in which the love of truth and the will to power were introduced (I, 9): Nietzsche groups himself among the “Stoics”—­“we last Stoics”—­and he speaks for the second and final time in Beyond Good and Evil of the “most spiritual will to power.” In aphorism 9, he held against the Stoics the fact that they read their morality, their ideal, into nature, i.e., ascribed to the text what was actually their interpretation, because they had no clarity about their own nature. They believed in their philosophy because, unlike the “last Stoics,” they did not recognize that philosophy is the “most spiritual will to power,” which requires cruelty toward oneself if it is to do its work despotically and enlightenedly. Beyond Good and Evil, 9 and 227 (pp. 21–­22 and 162–­63). 5. Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 13, 27 and II, 20, 43 (pp. 152 and 181); see Pp. 26 and 135 with Footnote 13. AC 52, 2 (233); cf. Twilight of the Idols, What the Germans Lack 6 (pp. 108–­9); also Beyond Good and Evil 22, 38, and 47 (pp. 37, 56, and 69).

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flattering interpretations. The very probity that as cruelty toward oneself is supposed to exemplify an adequate interpretation of the terrible, eternal basic text of nature that man is. —­The “free, very free spirits” that set themselves the task of recognizing the basic text homo natura and ensuring that man stands before man as he stands “before the rest of nature” make a beginning by fixing their eye on their own nature. Nietzsche ends the aphorism with the sentences: “Why did we choose it, this mad task? Or to ask differently: ‘why knowledge at all?’—­Everyman will ask us about that. And we, pressed in this way, we, who have already asked ourselves this very thing a hundred times, we found and find no better answer . . . .” We can fill in the answer and replace the four ellipsis points with: than our nature. Or: than the passion of knowledge.6 —­ The path that Zarathustra travels in the four parts of Nietzsche’s philosophical poem makes him a telling example of the spirit that has become free, which the fifty-­fourth section introduces and characterizes more precisely as a skeptic. Not only does the passion of knowledge “permit” Zarathustra convictions that he has to overcome—­the core of the futurist teaching for mankind, his own neediness of redemption, his faith in the consummatory deed of the sacrificial death. The liberation Zarathustra and Nietzsche undergo in the years they spend together also manifests itself in the changed orientation of the action, which begins with the announcement of a tragedy and ends in a comedy. Zarathustra also as it were provides the epigraph for what the section has to say about the type of the spirit that has become free, when at the beginning of the third part, in the chapter “The Wanderer,” he requests of himself to climb over himself, onward, upward, until he has even his stars beneath him: “To look down on myself and even on my stars: that alone would I call my summit.”7 In sharp contrast to this, Nietzsche sketches the man who is filled with the “need for faith, for some absolute of Yes and No,” for an absolute in which he finds a foothold, which promises him security, toward which, from which, under the commandment of which he is able to understand himself as a means to a higher end. “The man of faith, the ‘believer’ of every kind, is necessarily a dependent man—­such a one as cannot set himself as an end, as cannot set ends from out of himself at all.” To be able to set ends from out of oneself presupposes the freedom of view that does not fall by chance to anyone, but must instead be earned. Nietzsche traces 6. Beyond Good and Evil 230 (pp. 167–­70) and 229 (pp. 166–­67); cf. 210 (p. 142). Consider P. 141, Footnote 22. 7. Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 1, 16–­17 (p. 194); cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 110–­11 and 120–­23 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 88–­89 and 96–­98].

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the opposition between the “skeptic” and the “man of conviction” back to the opposition between freedom and belief, rulership and slavery, inner hierarchy and outer dependence. The “man of faith” gives a “morality of unselfing oneself the highest honor: to it everything persuades him, his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every kind of faith is itself an expression of unselfing oneself, of self-­alienation . . .” If the skeptic, the strong spirit that has become free, is the embodiment of self-­determination par excellence, which makes one capable of setting ends and of openness to the truth, the man of faith, the man of conviction, who has “his backbone” in conviction, who cannot be without faith, appears to be “the antagonist of the truthful one” and finally of the truth. This is the deepest opposition uncovered by the Antichrist. The fanatic, who emerges at the end of paragraph 54, is only the “pathological” peak of the opposite type and makes an impression on this very type: “the fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than hear reasons . . .” To the reader who remembers the earlier rejection of the desire for a “picturesque effect” from the truth, it is now visible why, from the very beginning, Nietzsche placed such value on carrying out the quarrel over truth as a fight over the authoritative type.8 Rulership of the philosopher over himself is one thing, rulership over others is another. What is suitable for accessing the truth therefore does not yet suffice for asserting the authoritativeness of a type. Even if the “revaluation of all values” is supposed to have its vanishing point in the truth,9 it remains politically dependent on the fact that espousing anti-­Christian convictions is paid more respect than questioning them.10 Nietzsche’s attack on conviction is a daring game. All the same, he continues the critical endeavor and makes reference to having already, years ago, “submitted for consideration whether convictions are not more dangerous enemies of truth than are lies.” The consideration poses no difficulties, since with the lie, in contrast to the conviction, an awareness of the contradiction to or deviation from the truth is to be assumed. Nietzsche’s definition turns out accordingly: “I call a lie wanting not to see something that one sees, wanting not to see something as one sees it: whether the lie takes place in front of witnesses or without witnesses is 8. AC 54, 2 (236–­37); cf. 8 (175); 12 (179); 13 (179). See Pp. 144–46. –­Rousseau, whom Nietzsche groups among the “fanatics,” undertook a determination of the fundamental opposition that agrees in substance with Nietzsche’s. Cf. Discours sur l’inégalité, Second Part, p. 268, and Note XV, p. 370. 9. “How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? more and more, this became the real measure of value for me.” EH Preface, 3 (259). See P. 11. 10. In a preparatory note to AC 53, it says: “A very popular error: having the courage of one’s conviction—­? but having the courage to attack one’s conviction!!!” KGW IX 8, W II 5, p. 47.

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immaterial. The most common lie is the one with which one lies to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exceptional case.” Which does not mean that the exceptional case of wanting to make someone else see something as one does not see it is not the case that everything comes down to in the end. Nietz­ sche  begins with the most common case, which he previously designated “counterfeiting before oneself,” in order, as he says, to bring the “decisive question” into play: “is there an opposition at all between lie and conviction?” The answer reads: no, because Nietzsche transforms the opposition into a succession, a historical sequence. “Sometimes merely a change of person is required: in the son, that becomes conviction which in the father was still lie.” The “counterfeiting before oneself ” curdles into conviction or it turns into a certainty of faith, which gains prestige to the extent that the origin is forgotten or transfigured. The “party man of every kind” demands respect for his belief: “This is our conviction: we profess it before all the world, we live and die for it—­respect for everything that has convictions!”11 This universal relativism of respectable convictions is disrupted by the priests, “who are subtler in such things,” in their appeal to a higher, prevailing, divine authority. “Kant too,” whom Nietzsche, with a view to the postulates of practical reason, adduced earlier as the moral heir of the “priestly type,” was, “with his categorical imperative, on the same path: herein his reason became practical.” At this point, when it becomes clear why he called the question of the relationship between lie and belief decisive, Nietzsche gives the floor to the defenders of revelation: “There are questions in which man is not entitled to decide about truth and untruth; all the supreme questions, all the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason . . . To comprehend the limits of reason—­that alone is truly philosophy . . . For what did God give man revelation? Would God have done something superfluous? Man can not know by himself what is good and evil, therefore God taught him his will . . .” Nietzsche evidently considers this apologia to be unable to refute the argument underlying his treatment of revelation’s demand for obedience and of the Fall in paragraph 48. The appeal to divine revelation, moreover, does not relieve human reason of its 11. Nietzsche continues: “—­I have heard the like even out of the mouths of anti-­Semites. On the contrary, meine Herren! An anti-­Semite does not become any more decent by lying out of principle . . .” Andreas Urs Sommer comments on the passage: “As brief as the parenthesis against the anti-­Semites turns out to be, it nevertheless makes Nietzsche’s brusque distancing clearly visible.” He also refers to a letter of September 14, 1888, to Franz Overbeck, in which Nietzsche praises Wilhelm II for having “recently taken a sharply anti-­anti-­Semitic stance” (KGB III 5, p. 433). “The not very friendly words against ‘the Jews’ in AC 24–­26 can only be appropriately understood in terms of argumentative strategy, namely as means of leading Christianity ad absurdum” (NK 6/2, p. 262).

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need to judge, since it appears in the plural, in mutually conflicting appeals, and since revelation reaches men solely by means of human testimonies and human interpretations. Nietzsche limits himself to tracing the “priestly syllogism,” which is supposed to protect the priests against the accusation of lying, back to the interest in power that supports the assertion: The things of which priests speak elude human judgment about “true” and “untrue,” which is why they do not even allow the priests, as men, to lie. “For in order to lie, one would have to be able to decide what is true here. But just this, man can not do”—­God alone can. The judgment about truth and lie rests with him. The priest is “only the mouthpiece of God.” Nietzsche is so little willing to enter again into the truth-­claim made by faith in revelation that he attributes the syllogism to the priest without respect of Gods. He speaks as a kind of sociologist of rulership: “the right to lie and the prudence of ‘revelation’ belong to the type of the priest.” The priests, who are now under discussion because it is a question of the political basis of faith and of the institutions that form it, are no longer only the priests of the revealed religions, but expressly include the priests of paganism, who represent entirely different valuations: “pagans are all those who say Yes to life, to whom ‘God’ is the word for the great Yes to all things.” In paganism too, the law, the will, or the model of God, the holy book, inspiration, designate the means and the preconditions of the priests’ acquisition and preservation of power. Finally and above all, on the origin of all “priestly or philosophical-­priestly” edifices and projects of rulership, Nietz­ sche states: “The ‘holy lie’—­common to Confucius, the lawbook of Manu, Mohammed, the Christian church: it is not missing in Plato.” In the pia fraus, the discussion of lie and belief has reached its aim.12 What the philosopher subjects to a thoroughgoing critique in consideration of himself and his own life, the theorist of politics and religion, the lawgiver, the politician and priest cognize as necessity: conviction and belief, counterfeiting before oneself, and the holy lie at the bottom of every political-­ religious institution designed to endure belong to the standing-­reserve that is to reckoned with, that is to be built upon. Nietzsche knows that the skeptic of paragraph 54 eludes generalization. And with a sharp cut he makes it clear after paragraph 55 that, as so often in the Antichrist, he does not stop at the moral gesture—­“the priest lies”: “Ultimately it is a matter of the purpose for which one lies. That in Christianity the ‘holy’ purposes are missing is my objection to its means.” The true quarrel is carried out over the purpose. “Only 12. AC 55, 1–­10 (237–­39); 12 (178–­79); see P. 144. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, The “Improvers” of Mankind 5 (p. 102). On inspiration see EH III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3 (339–­40), and Pp. 92–94.

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bad purposes: poisoning, slandering, denying of life, the contempt for the body, man’s degradation and self-­defilement through the concept of sin.” To sharpen the highest point of view, on which the judgment about the means depends, Nietzsche brings the lawbook of Manu, which he already deployed as a pagan testimony against Christianity in Twilight of the Idols, into position. If, in the immoralistic provocation “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind,” he compared the mythical lawgiver’s code with the “wretched” New Testament, he now, proceeding more fundamentally, sets it apart from the Bible as “an incomparably spiritual and superior work.” The first thing that he emphasizes about the ancient Indian scripture is that it has “a real philosophy behind it.” With this the deepest difference from the Bible is designated.13 It also gives “even the most spoiled psychologist something to chew on.” The main political matter, however, that which distinguishes the lawbook of Manu above “every kind of Bible,” consists in the fact that “with it, the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors, hold their hand over the crowd.” With deliberation and, as we will see, with good reason, Nietzsche avoids the word rule when he mentions the philosophers and the warriors in the same breath and assimilates them to each other as “the noble classes.” The cooperation, not yet determined more precisely, of the “noble classes,” by means of the code, shapes the entire order: “noble values everywhere, a feeling of perfection, a yes-­saying to life, a triumphant feeling of well-­being toward oneself and toward life.” Unlike in Twilight of the Idols, he does not stress the “protective measures” against the “chandala,” against the “great number,” of which he said there, glaringly illuminating the challenge, that there was “perhaps nothing more contradictory to our feeling.” Instead, he speaks of the sun, which shines on the whole book. He draws attention in particular to the fact that the foundations of life, procreation, woman, marriage, are handled “with reverence, with love and trust.” To illustrate what a way “these old graybeards and saints” have “of being courteous toward women,” he quotes three passages from the lawbook of Manu, which he contrasts with a word of Paul’s from the 1st Letter to the Corinthians. Of the third and final one, Nietzsche remarks that it is “perhaps also a holy lie.”14 13. Consider Nietzsche’s statement on the “philosophical movement” that preceded Buddhism, in AC 20, 2 (186). In the manuscript for printing, Nietzsche had initially furnished his definition of paganism in section 55, 9 (239) with a reference to the “Brahmans, for example” (KSA 14, p. 447). 14. AC 56, 1–­3 (239–­40). Twilight of the Idols, The “Improvers” of Mankind 3–­5 (pp. 100–­ 102). 1 Corinthians 7:2 and 9. Nietzsche takes the passages from the lawbook of Manu from the compilation and French translation of Louis Jacolliot: Les législateurs religieux. Manou. Moïse–­ Mahomet. Traditions religieuses comparées des lois de Manou, de la Bible, du Coran, du rituel

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Perfection, which Nietzsche ascribes to the order established by Manu as a determinative feeling, is the central subject of the longest section by far of the Antichrist. The three sections in which Manu is named and in each of which the holy lie appears once culminate in the fifty-­seventh paragraph. Plato is present in it as in no other paragraph. The section takes up the question of what links the philosopher’s rulership over himself to rulership in the polity. Its theme throughout is “nature and politics.” The opposition to Christianity forms the frame. The critique of Christianity, the demonstration of the “unholiness” of its means in light of the Christian purpose, justifies the comparative glance at the “purpose of the Manu-­lawbook.” Manu’s founding in turn gives Nietzsche the opportunity to make further-­reaching statements about the hierarchical structure of the polity, the rank-­order of the types, the purpose and foundation of the rulership. He begins with a genealogical re-­ presentation of the connection between legislation and historical experience, the role of tradition, the exaltation of the ancestors, and the attestation by recourse to a first, highest authority. The lawbook of Manu marks a beginning and designates an ending. It sums up, “like any good lawbook,” the “experience, prudence, and experimental morality of long centuries.” It is based on the insight—­as we have already heard, it has “a real philosophy behind it”—­ “that the means of creating authority for a slowly and expensively acquired truth are fundamentally different from those by which one would prove it.” Into the legislation goes what has been tried and tested, what has been shown to be useful for the order of the polity and the individual’s conduct of life. But in order for it to fulfill its function, it must not have recourse to its functionality. “A lawbook never recounts the utility, the reasons, the casuistry in a law’s prehistory: precisely by doing so it would forfeit the imperative tone, the ‘Thou shalt,’ the presupposition for being obeyed.” Spoken in a formula: For the sake of the good, the good must be presented as morality. An ending in the precise sense is designated by the founding, insofar as it commands a halt to the great experimentation, trial and error, the “persistence of the fluid condition of values.” Nietzsche associates with it the caesura in the development of a people that is marked by the fact that—­in the best case—­“its most circumspect, that is, most backward-­and outward-­seeing stratum” declares “the experience according to which one should—­that is, can—­live, to be concluded.” In order to remove the founding from criticism, in order enduringly to establish the law, the order of life as a whole, in order, above all, to lend the égyptien, du Zend-­Avesta des Parses et des traditions finnoises (Paris, 1876), pp. 225–­26. Contrary to what the title suggests, the entire 483-­page book is devoted to Manu and to the transcription of the code.

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moral demand of the “Thou shalt” the greatest emphasis, the lawgivers take refuge in two authorities that allow them to point away from their insight and over and beyond themselves: they appeal to a revelation and invoke tradition. Revelation means here “the assertion that the reason in those laws is not of human provenance, not sought and found slowly and with blunders, but, as of divine origin, whole, perfect, without history, a gift, a miracle.” The tradition anchors the laws in political reality. It means “the assertion that the law has existed already since time immemorial, that it is impious, a crime against the ancestors, to place it in doubt.” Revelation and tradition attest to the good that the law serves by standing in for the highest insight and the longest experience, and by tracing them both back to one source, a first cause. “The authority of the law is established with the theses: God gave it, the ancestors lived it.” When the “most backward-­and outward-­seeing” authors ascribe the lawbook to a mythical lawgiver, they claim the merits of both authorities for their work.15 With the erecting and asserting of the law’s authority, its authors pursue the intention of “pushing consciousness back, step by step, from the life that is recognized to be right,” i.e., the way of life “proven by such an immense and rigorously sifted experience” is supposed to pass over into flesh and blood. The “higher reason” of the founding consists in the fact that the determined order finds expression in a kind of second nature. It has the aim of giving the conduct of life a security and unquestionability that the “not yet determined animal” does not have at its disposal by nature. Nietzsche, exaggerating the divide in both directions, speaks of the “perfect automatism of instinct” and elevates it to the presupposition of every kind of mastery. “To set up a lawbook after the manner of Manu means to allow a people henceforth to become master, to become perfect—­to aspire to the highest art of life.” That life, and with it the law that underlies it, be “made unconscious” in the sense that has been explained, that it appear self-­evident in its orientation and proceeding, is “the purpose of every holy lie.” The teacher of the revaluation cannot leave it at the anthropological structural analysis propounded by the philosopher. Because of their nature, men need law, institutions, order; this makes the law a work of reason, notwithstanding the unreasonableness proper to it, its blindness to individual cases, its generalizing of what eludes 15. AC 57, 1–­3 (241–­42). Jacolliot says of Manu: “L’origine de Manou, le grand législateur de l’Inde, nommé communément ‹le fils de Swayambhouwa, c’est-­à-­dire de celui qui existe par lui-­même,› se perd dans la nuit des âges antéhistoriques.” Manou. Moïse–­Mahomet, p. 1, n. 1. Cf. Politische Philosophie und die Herausforderung der Offenbarungsreligion, pp. 177–­79 [Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, pp. 138–­41].

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or resists generalization, its helplessness in the face of the exception. But the consensus about the necessity of the law does not diminish the quarrel over its content. Matters are similar with the “moral imperative of nature” that Nietz­sche formulates from the distance of contemplation in Beyond Good and Evil: “You shall obey, whomever, and for a long time: otherwise you will perish and lose the last respect for yourself.” And the situation is no different with the holy lie, which is supposed to make self-­evident what is not self-­ evident.16 For the partisan of the revaluation, everything must come down to which law, which institution, which order is lent self-­evidence. The function, which Nietzsche calls purpose in the case of the holy lie, brings us back to the initial question of wherein Manu’s purpose differs from the purpose of Christianity. Nietzsche gives the answer immediately after he has mentioned the holy lie for the last time, obviously speaking in the persona of the founder: “The order of castes, the supreme, the dominant law, is only the sanction of a natural order, natural lawfulness of the first rank, over which no arbitrariness, no ‘modern idea,’ has power.” Nietzsche follows the example of the lawgivers in their double appeal to what is highest and what is oldest, but he goes all the way back to nature, which, surpassing both, takes the place of revelation and tradition. The lawbook of Manu serves to illustrate a conventional order that claims to be in harmony with the natural order: “In every healthy society, there are three types which condition one another and gravitate differently physiologically, each of which has its own hygiene, its own realm of labor, its own kind of perfection-­feeling and mastery. Nature, not Manu, separates from one another the predominantly spiritual, the predominantly strong in muscle and temperament, and the third, who have distinction in neither one nor the other, the mediocre.” The teacher of the revaluation makes nature the first political authority.17 Since nature separates the three types, Nietzsche does not go into the details of Manu’s caste order. That he is clear on the terrors of this order we know from Twilight of the Idols. How little he was under any illusions about the character of the law is attested by posthumous notes.18 In the Antichrist, 16. It is no accident that in AC 55, 4 (237–­38), Nietzsche explains the basic structure by means of the faith that takes shape in the transition from the father to the son. 17. AC 57, 4–­5 (242); cf. 14, 2 (181). Beyond Good and Evil 62 and 188 (pp. 81 and 110). 18. “Critique of Manu: Reduction of nature to morality: a penal condition of m[an]: there are no natural effects—­the cause is Brahman. / Reduction of the human driving forces to the fear of punishment and the hope of reward: i.e., of the law, which has both in its hand . . . / One has to live in absolute conformity to the law: what is reasonable is done because it is commanded; the most natural instinct is satisfied because the law has dictated it. / This is a school of stupidification: in such a school of theologian-­breeding, where even the young military man and farmer must go

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his interest aims at one case above all. It is directed at one type. In the center of his discussion of Manu’s four castes, which he silently reduces to three and thereby brings into agreement with, not only the three types of nature, but also the three classes in Plato’s Republic, Nietzsche places the uppermost caste, “the select,” which stands opposed to the “great number” of the third. Here he makes known to the reader right at the opening that he is not keeping to the template: “The uppermost caste—­I call them the fewest—­has, as the perfect, also the privileges of the fewest.” Nietzsche names the class, which Manu reserves for the priests, after the first addressee of the Antichrist.19 What follows concerns them directly. It belongs to the fewest. In a hierarchical order whose purpose is perfection, the uppermost class has the function of lending perfection visibility, so that it can be looked up to. It therefore has the privilege, which cannot be separated from a duty, “of representing happiness, beauty, goodness on earth.” Nietzsche emphasizes the central of the three, beauty, and seemingly subordinates happiness and goodness to it, because beauty is to be perceived, and unfolds its effect, from a distance. “Only the most spiritual men have permission for beauty, for the beautiful: only with them is goodness not weakness.” To the fewest the founder ascribes the right to “beauty,” because in their case the beautiful is not based on “counterfeiting before oneself ” or on faith. When they let the whole appear beautiful or beautify the social order, the good they thereby do for all is an expression neither of their recoiling from reality nor of their compliance with the wishes and hopes of others. It does not result from a denial of the ugly, but is rather grounded in the knowledge of the good. Consequently Nietzsche goes back from the beautiful to the good, making use of a modified word of Horace’s which he uses repeatedly: “Pulchrum est paucorum hominum: the good is a privilege.” The founder cannot, however, concede to the fewest a “pessimistic

through a nine-­year course of theology in order to be ‘confirmed,’ the nine-­year ‘military service’ of the 3 uppermost castes, the chandalas must have had to themselves the intelligence and even what was most interesting. They were the only ones who had access to the true source of knowledge, empirics . . . Added to this the inbreeding of the castes . . . Missing are nature, technology, history, art, science. / There is much talk today of the Semitic spirit of the New Testament: but what is called thus is merely priestly—­and in the Aryan lawbook of the purest race, in Manu this kind of ‘Semitism,’ i.e., priestly spirit, is worse than anywhere.” KGW IX 8, W II 5, p. 13 (Posthumous Fragments Spring 1888 14 [203–­204], KSA 13, pp. 385–­86 with variations). 19. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche distinguishes “no less than four races” in Manu: “one priestly, one warlike, one that trades and farms, finally a servant race, the Sudras” (The “Improvers” of Mankind 3, p. 100). In Jacolliot, he read: “Les quatre castes sont: Les Brahmes ou prêtres; Les Xchatrias ou rois; Les Vaysias ou marchands et cultivateurs; Les Soudras ou esclaves” (Manou. Moïse–­Mahomet, pp. 2–­3, n. 2).

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glance,” “an eye that uglifies,” to say nothing of “an indignation over the total aspect of things.” Elucidating the contrast with the “great number,” he adds: “Indignation is the privilege of the chandala; pessimism likewise.” But what cannot be “conceded” to the “most spiritual ones” in view of their function in the hierarchical order is not seriously claimed by the fewest. For neither pessimism nor indignation is in agreement with the deepest insight, which supports their life, which in them has passed over into flesh and blood, and of which they nevertheless know how to give an account at all times.20 “The world is perfect—­so speaks the instinct of the most spiritual ones, the yes-­ saying instinct: the imperfection, the beneath-­us of every kind, the distance, the pathos of distance, the chandala himself even belongs to this perfection.” The statement “The world is perfect” Nietzsche takes from the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which in this way, although it is silently passed over in the chapter “Why I Write Such Good Books,” is present in both works of the dyad.21 Zarathustra expresses in the sentence the happiness of the perfect midday, which is a natural, not historically unique, but recurrent midday: a judgment in which thinking and feeling meet and reach agreement.22 In the Antichrist, the sentence seals the perfection of the “uppermost caste.” It depicts, at the top of the hierarchy, in the “most spiritual ones” who embody and pronounce it, who live it “unconsciously” and consciously make it their judgment, the founding’s purpose. The judgment of the “fewest” has weight because it expressly includes imperfection. The pathos of distance does not abandon the “chandala” to disgust, but absorbs them into the necessity of the whole and makes them a part of its perfection.23 Nietzsche underscores the passage’s importance by letting the two key concepts of his treatment of the philosophic life in Ecce Homo, task and recuperation, appear together only here in the Antichrist. The “most spiritual men” find their happiness, “as the strongest ones,” not in allaying or extenuation, but in self-­testing and self-­enhancement, in accepting and passing the greatest challenge: “in the labyrinth, in the hardness toward themselves and others, in experimentation; their pleasure is self-­mastery: with them asceticism becomes nature, need, instinct.” Their second nature is in the service of their first nature. “The heavy task they regard as a privilege, to play with burdens that crush others a recuperation . . . knowledge—­a form of asceticism.” The privilege of the task of 20. See EH III, The Birth of Tragedy 2 (311) and Pp. 64–66. 21. EH I, 4 (270–­7 1). See Pp. 24 and 94–95 with Footnotes 17–­18. 22. Thus Spoke Zarathustra IV, 10 (At Midday), 13 (p. 343). See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathu­ stra?, pp. 186–­89 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 149–­52]. 23. On the pathos of distance, cf. besides AC 43 (218), Beyond Good and Evil 257 (p. 205), On the Genealogy of Morals III, 14 (p. 371), and Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 37 (p. 138).

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playing with what is heaviest circles back to the privilege of beauty, which the founder confers on the fewest: In doing what corresponds to their nature, in becoming what they are, they serve their purpose.24 As the “most venerable kind of man” they satisfy their political duty. “They rule, not because they want to, but because they are.” They rule, in that their being determines the orientation of the order and justifies the order itself. Their rulership corresponds to the rulership of the one Nietzsche elsewhere calls the complementary man.25 But does the rule over themselves of the “fewest,” who follow the ground and the power of their being, suffice for determining the order of a political community? Does the rulership par distance, in which the “most spiritual ones,” like Epicurean Gods, make “the beneath-­them of every kind” look up to them, without themselves intervening in the course of things, solve the problem associated with Plato’s proposition regarding the philosopher-­kings: that the philosophers would have to be necessitated into ruling and serving as kings? How clearly Nietzsche sees this problem he indicated in para­graph 56, when he spoke of the fact that with the lawbook, the philosophers and the warriors “hold their hand over the crowd.” In paragraph 57, in which he nowhere mentions the philosophers by name, he states that the fewest are not free to be second. They rule by virtue of their being, but not as kings. “The second ones: these are the guardians of the law, the tenders of order and of security, these are the noble warriors, this is the king above all as the highest formula of the warrior, judge, and upholder of the law.” The fewest, the most spiritual ones, the philosophers, are separated from the noble ones. Nature assigns the king to the second type, Manu assigns him to the second caste. “The second ones are the executive of the most spiritual ones, the nearest, what belongs to them, what takes all the rough things in the labor of ruling away from them—­their following, their right hand, their best pupils.” The founder does not have to belong to the political order he has designed or in­ stituted. The teacher of the revaluation can gain a determinative influence from a distance. He has, though, to be prepared for his intentions to be misunderstood by the most zealous pupils, and for even the most loyal following not to act in his spirit. Using the example of Zarathustra Nietzsche spelled out the discrepancy of teacher and pupils in regard to the understanding and implementation of the teaching. The fundamental misunderstanding of the intention of the lawgivers and teachers therefore stands as much before his 24. Consider EH II, 10 (297) and Pp. 47–51. 25. AC 57, 5–­6 (242–­43); cf. 1 (169), 13 (179), and 54 (236). Beyond Good and Evil 207 (p. 136); cf. 28 (p. 47). See Pp. 46–47.

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eyes as do the deviations and aberrations that might occur anywhere. The situation comes to a head when the lawgivers or law interpreters and teachers are, as the uppermost class, supposed to be an integral part of a political community, when the “fewest” are supposed to have their institutional place in it, when they are supposed to rule and live in it. Not only would they be expected to intervene as soon as the executive goes off course, to be ready, in one way or another, to take care of the “rough things” assigned to the king, to satisfy their providential duty, in case the founding gets into existential danger. More heavily still weighs the fact that even if they knew how to keep themselves out of all executive entanglements, they can preserve their position as “the most venerable kind of man” only to the extent to which they, their life, their actions and their speeches correspond to the ideas of the noble ones, especially the ideas that the noble ones have of honor, beauty, greatness. The cheerfulness and amiability of the fewest will not suffice for the reputation that justifies their rulership. The first ones will be measured by the noble morality of the second ones. Nietzsche gives a hint when, among the things that can by no means be conceded to the fewest, he lists in the first place “ugly manners.” To the noble one, to name an example that is more than an example, curious questioning, seeking, unveiling may appear ugly. For the philosopher, however, curiosity is an outflow of the passion of knowledge or merely a less venerable word for the love of truth. The rulership of the fewest depends on what they seem to be in the eyes of the noble ones, and the noble ones cannot do without faith. Their nobleness is essentially faith. There is no way around it: Even if the philosophers should rule, philosophy remains a wandering in the prohibited.26 Directly following the treatment of the Platonic problem, Nietzsche repeats the appeal to nature that immediately preceded the discussion of the first ones and the second ones, the philosophical and the political class: “In all this, to say it again, there is nothing of arbitrariness, nothing ‘made’; what is otherwise is made—­nature is then made a mess of  .  .  .” The distinction between philosophers and kings or warriors is grounded in their respective natures. Leaving the core of the discussion behind him and reaching out further, the teacher of the revaluation claims “the supreme law of life itself ” for the “order of the castes,” which, however, he replaces immediately with the 26. AC 57, 5–­7 (242–­43). EH Preface 3, 2 (258); see P. 12. On curiosity: Beyond Good and Evil 45 (p. 66); cf. 230, 270, 292 (pp. 169, 226, 235). On the faith of the noble ones, see also 258, 265, 287 (pp. 206, 219–­20, 232–­33). –­That with Manu Nietzsche is thinking of Plato is also demonstrated—­if such a demonstration were needed—­by a preparatory note from the Nachlaß: “Plato is entirely in the spirit of Manu; he was initiated in Egypt. The morality of castes, the God of the good, the ‘eternal unique soul.’ ” Posthumous Fragments Spring 1888. 14 [191], KSA 13, p. 378.

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order he has been concerned with from the beginning: “the rank-­order.” The separation of the “three types” is not only necessary for the preservation of soc­ iety, but “in order to enable higher and highest types.” In the enabling of higher and highest types, and hence in the preservation and promotion of man’s developmental ability, aristocratism has its ultimate justification. What follows, with utmost brevity, is the sketch of the aristocratic doctrine. Its main propositions read: “A right is a privilege. In his way of being each also has his privilege.” Politically applied, the whole edifice of the aristocratic order can be erected on these. The third type is not further distinguished by the founder. In the discussion, neither the third ones nor the fourth ones appear. After the “great number” there is talk only of the “vast majority” and, once again, of the “mediocre,” into which all the rest are indiscriminately absorbed. It is obvious that the mediocre are of only subordinate interest for the teacher of the revaluation. Even so, the aristocratic doctrine demands the realization that the entire hierarchical framework would lack its basis and stability without the third type: “A high culture is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base, it presupposes first of all a strong and healthy consolidated mediocrity.” When, with a view to the social division of labor on which both the philosophers and the noble ones are dependent, Nietzsche distinguishes, at least in rough strokes, the domains in which the third type unfolds its activity and is supposed to find its determination, all reference to Manu’s legislation is omitted: “Handicraft, trade, farming, science, the greatest part of art, in a word, the whole quintessence of professional activity, is certainly compatible only with a mediocre measure of ability and desire.”27 The aristocratic doctrine not only awards to the “mediocre” his part in the perfection of the whole, but points, in the spirit of aristocratic equality, of the suum cuique, to the perfection of the part, which is attainable for him in each particular mastery. “For the mediocre to be mediocre is happiness; mastery in one thing, specialization—­a natural instinct. It would be completely unworthy of a deeper spirit to see an objection already in mediocrity as such.” Since, again, “a high culture” is conditional on mediocrity, since, more specifically, mediocrity is nothing less than “the first necessity if there are to be exceptions,” in the aristocratic order these exceptions have the duty “to handle” precisely the mediocre “with delicate fingers.” The duty is the tribute demanded by the purpose of the political community.28 In the sketch of the aristocratic conception, the speech that the Antichrist directs to its political addressee reaches its peak. At the same time, the dis27. Cf. the statement on Manu pertaining to science and art in Footnote 18. 28. AC 57, 8–­9 (243–­44).

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cussion in the fifty-­seventh section brings to a close the typological tableau that the book holds ready for the fewest. Manu completes, after Buddha, the Redeemer, and Paul, the four outer and inner supports of the framework that can serve to compare and demarcate the philosopher. Whereas the two inner figures, the Redeemer and Paul, are characterized by means of distinctive traits as representatives of two psychological types, the two outer figures, Buddha and Manu, represent functional types. All four have in common that they present the philosopher with a challenge: The Redeemer, who stands for felicity in the present, and Paul, who stands for the tensely future-­directed will to power, directly concern the self-­understanding of the “fewest.” Buddha’s dietetics, which aim at the conduct of life of the individual, and Manu’s legislation, which establishes the hierarchical order of a polity, give them occasion to gain clarity about dealings with themselves and others, about outside-­relations and their repercussions in every sense. All four meet in the fact that the type of the philosopher must integrate elements characteristic of each of them, that the integration, however, necessarily involves a decisive change, i.e., demands a critique. The treatment of Manu brings together important subjects from the four discussions—­mastery and happiness, rulership and perfection—­and surveys them as aspects of one political-­philosophical constellation. This allows Nietzsche to bring to the mind of the fewest the difference it makes whether the reference to nature concerns the rulership of the philosopher over himself or whether it concerns political rulership. More broadly, whether it applies to the hierarchy of the person or whether it applies to the stratification of society. When Nietzsche calls the “most spiritual ones” the “strongest ones,” he has in view the actualization of their own potential, their becoming-­themselves, the nature of the type. The fewest, however, can become the “strongest ones” within the polity only by virtue of the obedience of the noble ones—­or in an alliance with the “mediocre”—­on whose power their political power depends. Section 54 traced the philosopher’s inner order back to the “ground and the power of his being,” i.e., in the final instance, to the passion of knowledge. Section 57 shows that the order of the polity, which is supposed to correspond to the “supreme law of life,” cannot do without the holy lie. The reader who thinks through the differences between the two sections and draws the necessary conclusions will also be in a position to gain a sharper image from the typological contrasts, and to answer for himself the question of what a philosopher is, or of what he should be.

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Nietzsche leaves no reader in doubt as to which enemy the book has in its sights. From the title and subtitle, to the writing’s center, to the last sentence of the fifty-­seventh section, the enmity toward Christianity is emphasized time and again. The author does not neglect to underscore that his declaration of enmity is a response to Christianity’s “war to the death,” “deadly enmity,” “deadly hatred,” and to “Christian propaganda.”1 If not an act of self-­ defense, still one of defense and in any case of liberation. Nietzsche also sufficiently stressed the political ramifications in the usual sense, above all the enemy’s responsibility for the egalitarianism at the center of “modern ideas.” At the end of his discussion of the rank-­order of types in paragraph 57, he identifies the Christian and the anarchist in the same breath as the adversary of the aristocratic order and the aristocratic politics. Both, anarchist and Christian, are of the same origin, born “out of weakness, out of envy, out of revenge”—­envy and revenge not being suddenly added to weakness in the sequence, but traced back to it as forms of weakness.2 In the last five sections of the Antichrist, Nietzsche builds on the opposition of aristocratism and Christianity. The political conclusion is focused on the enmity between the noble ones and Christianity, which it seeks to sharpen and to deepen by considering great examples from the past in order to adduce them for the enterprise of the revaluation. The enmities toward Jews and Germans in paragraphs 58 and 61 come into the picture as, so to speak, collateral damage. They are subordinate to the enmity toward Christianity. In the case of the Jews, the enmity is aimed at the trailblazers of Christianity and remains historical. In the case of the 1. AC 5 (171), 21, 2 (188), 27 (197), 31 (201–­2), 43 (218), 58 (245). 2. AC 57, 9–­10 (244); cf. 2, 2 (170).

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Germans, it is aimed at the defenders of Christianity. Here it concerns the present and the future. Once again Nietzsche returns to the emergence of Christianity and to Paul. For the Roman Empire is the first exemplum of the enmity between Christianity and the noble ones. The Imperium Romanum, the “most magnificent form of organization under difficult circumstances that has hitherto been achieved, in comparison with which everything before, everything after, is patchwork, bungling, dilettantism,” this unsurpassed monument of political greatness, which “stood there aere perennius,” was brought to its fall by Christianity. The “holy anarchists have made themselves a ‘piety’ out of destroying ‘the world,’ that is, the Imperium Romanum, until not one stone remained upon another—­until even Teutons and other louts could become masters over it . . .” Filled with a “deadly hatred” toward “everything that stands, that stands there greatly, that has duration, that promises life a future,” i.e., toward everything to which the noble valuations are directed, Christianity caused “the Romans’ tremendous deed, of gaining the ground for a great culture that has time, to be undone overnight.” Undone, the great In vain—­Nietzsche chooses the strongest register of noble lamentation, not only about a bygone deed and a bygone empire, but about the impermanence of what is greatest and most excellent, about impermanence simply. Christianity, thus reads the reproach, reduced to nothing a great culture, and an even greater future, of the noble ones. For the Imperium Romanum “was a beginning, its construction was calculated to prove itself through millennia—­to this day nobody has ever built thus, nobody has even dreamed of building in the same measure sub specie aeterni!” How could Christianity cause the “most admirable work of art in the great style” to collapse? Nietzsche cites what he already alleged before: Christianity understood how to stoke the “fire of revenge, of chandala-­revenge.” But he then adds that in Christianity, “the same kind of religion” ultimately became master over Rome “that Epicurus had already made war on in its preexistence-­form.” Epicurus knew how to suppress with his philosophy the religion that became a danger for political authority not only in Rome. “One should read Lucretius in order to comprehend what Epicurus fought, not paganism, but ‘Christianity,’ which is to say the corruption of souls through the guilt-­, through the punishment-­ and immortality-­concept.” The political significance of Lucretius’s De rerum natura—­which has a Roman aristocrat as its explicit addressee—­consisted, in other words, preeminently in the fact that it took away the sharpest weapon, the belief in an otherworldly judgment, from the priests and partisans of “subterranean cults” of all kinds. Nietzsche’s parenthesis heads for a dramatic turn that is likely to make the reader prick up his ears: “And Epicurus would have been victorious, every respectable spirit in the Roman Empire was

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an Epicurean: then Paul appeared . . .” The founder of Christianity had success where its “preexistence-­form” had been denied success. He created a religion that politically defeated Epicurus’s philosophy. Obviously he succeeded not only in encouraging, connecting, and unifying the “chandala” to an unprecedented extent, but also in impressing and, at least in part, winning over the “respectable spirits.” The hatred and revenge of the “weak” were not sufficient for this. The belief in guilt, punishment, and a judgment in the beyond did not, as the look back to Epicurus makes clear, do its work on them. Matters are different with the “flattery of personal vanity,” to which Nietzsche previously attributed Christianity’s victory. Were the “manly-­noble natures” of Rome not receptive to this? Did being addressed in the name of the salvation of their soul and the promise of eternal life not agree with their orientation toward honor, beauty, greatness? In the case of the “bravest,” too, the spoilage that lies in the idea of a divine providence that reigns over the whole and cares for everyone is not to be underestimated. Epicurus’s Gods did not provide any nourishment to the “enhancement of every kind of selfishness into the infinite,” and he did not talk of philosopher-­kings. His philosophy did not have a political conception that would have offered the noble ones a foothold of resistance. When Nietzsche has Paul appear for the last time, he does not say a word about what made Christianity alluring to the noble ones or the noble ones susceptible to Christianity. To the attentive reader, he has already said it. He focuses entirely on the enmity Paul harbored toward the noble ones. He speaks anew of the “chandala-­hatred toward Rome,” toward “the world,” and calls Paul the “eternal Jew par excellence.” The last appearance belongs to the founder of the world-­religion, who conquered Rome in order to erect another Rome, and who inflicted on the noble ones their greatest defeat. Paul guessed “how with the help of the small sectarian Christian movement set apart from Judaism, one could spark a ‘world fire,’ how with the symbol ‘God on the cross,’ one could add up everything lying at the bottom, everything secretly rebellious, the entire inheritance of anarchistic machinations within the empire, into an immense power. ‘Salvation is of the Jews.’ ” With the final mention of his name in the Antichrist, Nietzsche explicitly confers on Paul what he just as explicitly denied to Jesus: genius. The genius of Paul consisted in the insight into how Christianity was to be employed “as a formula for surpassing the subterranean cults of all kinds, those of Osiris, of the great mother, of Mithras, for example—­and for taking their sum.” Not to mention the philosophical tradition’s doctrines of immortality.3 3. AC 58, 1–­6 (245–­47); 43, 1 (217). Cf. 29, 2 (200) and 42, 2–­4 (215–­17). John 4:22; cf. AC 24, 1 (191) and Pp. 160–62.

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To the “genius of Paul” Nietzsche responds with anti-­Christian rhetoric. “The whole labor of the ancient world in vain: I have no word to express my feeling about something so monstrous.” He amplifies the noble lamentation into the immoderate, obviously untenable: “the whole meaning of the ancient world in vain! . . . Wherefore Greeks? wherefore Romans?” The “in vain” is supposed to stoke indignation over those responsible, the erstwhile victors, the adversaries. “All in vain!” Yet as in similar cases prior to this, Nietzsche is using indignation and accusation as attention-­magnets in order, seemingly in passing, to take a position on questions that are of philosophical interest. This time they relate to progress, to the ancients and the moderns, and to historical self-­situating. He stresses that in antiquity everything essential had been found “so that the labor could commence.” He begins with two presuppositions whose importance he underscored earlier in the book: “all scientific methods were already there,” and “the great, the incomparable art of reading well had already been established—­this presupposition for the tradition of culture, for the unity of science.”4 Moreover, natural science, with mathematics and mechanics, was “on the very best path.” The sense for facts, “the last and most valuable of all senses,” had “its already centuries-­old tradition.” The historical self-­situating necessarily includes Christianity: “What we have again conquered today with unspeakable self-­mastery—­for we all still in some way have the bad instincts, the Christian ones, in our bodies—­the un­ obstructed view of reality, the cautious hand, the patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge—­it was already there! already more than two millennia ago!” When Nietzsche refers to intellectual probity elsewhere as our “youngest” or “last” virtue, he is not claiming a his­ torically privileged position for himself. He is not insinuating that philosophers who lived, thought, and investigated before Christianity had risen to be the determining power were subject to a limitation with regard to the integrity of knowledge that they were not able to overcome because it is historically conditioned, or that they were deficient in a virtue that presupposes Christianity. He is drawing attention to probity, conversely, because it is to a special degree needed by “us,” in order to overcome the limitation to which we are subject, because we, after Christianity, need probity all the more for “self-­mastery.”5 The all in vain of Greeks and Romans, which he blames on Christianity, Nietzsche summarizes for the noble ones in a synoptic catalogue that can serve as a model for their zeal and inspire their elevation: “The nobleness of 4. See AC 13 (179) and 52 (233); cf. Pp. 145–46 and 202. 5. AC 59, 1–­2 (247–­48). Consider Pp. 68 and 122 as well as 117 with Footnote 7.

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instinct, the taste, the methodical research, the genius of organization and administration, the faith in, the will to man’s future, the great Yes to all things, visible as the Imperium Romanum, visible for all the senses, the great style no longer mere art but become reality, truth, life . . .” After illustrating the noble valuations propagated by the Antichrist through the example of the ancients, Nietzsche turns, at the second stage of the look back and with the second point of historical accusation, to Islam. For Christianity has deprived “us” not only of the “harvest of ancient culture,” but later also of the “harvest of Islam-­culture.” Nietzsche speaks only of the culture of Islam. The concepts religion, belief, revelation do not appear. Also unmentioned is Mohammed, about whom the reader learned earlier that he borrowed from Christianity the belief in immortality, the teaching of the Last Judgment, hence nothing less than the “means to priestly tyranny.” What, then, does Nietzsche praise in this case? The “wondrous Moorish culture-­world of Spain,” which owed its emergence to “noble” instincts, “manly instincts,” which “said Yes to life also with the rare and refined treasures of Moorish life.” He praises Islam, which has “men as its presupposition.” He exalts the enemy of the enemy. The praise allows him to recall Friedrich the Second, the “great free-­spirit” whom the pope banned and the church branded the “Antichrist.”6 The “genius among the German emperors” knew how to distinguish correctly between friend and enemy in his world, in his time. His actions followed the maxim: “War to the knife with Rome! Peace, friendship with Islam.” Yet even the model-­ image of the noble king or statesman shown by paragraph 60 changes nothing about the fact that the second historical stage has the function above all of constructing a bridge from antiquity to the Renaissance, between the two exempla on which the emphasis of the historical-­political instruction lies. Nietzsche establishes a closer connection through the critique of the German nobility, which offered itself to and was at the service of the church in the Crusades. “That the church carried out its war of deadly enmity against everything noble on earth precisely with the help of German swords, German blood and courage!” The German nobility was far from recognizing friend and enemy. The aristocrats of the future cannot take it as an example, and they certainly must not be mistaken for it.7 Whereas Nietzsche made Christianity responsible for depriving the noble ones of the “harvest of ancient” and “Islam-­culture,” respectively, in the first 6. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche calls Friedrich the Second the “first European to my taste” (200, p. 121), in Ecce Homo “one of my closest relatives” (III, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 4, p. 340). 7. AC 59, 4–­6; 60, 1–­3 (248–­50). 42, 4 (216–­17).

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and second cases, in the third case he accuses the Germans. They “deprived Europe of the last great culture-­harvest that there was for Europe to bring home—­that of the Renaissance.” However, it soon turns out that a “German monk,” a “religious man,” the Christian Luther has to bear the bulk of this historical burden. Ecce Homo speaks of a “crime.” In the third and final exemplum, the flattery of the noble addressee reaches its peak. In a picturesque gesture, the Antichrist passes off the Renaissance as the anticipated revaluation. He makes a mixture of hopelessly crossing sorts of things into the forerunner of an enterprise that springs from and obeys one intention. “Does one at last understand, does one want to understand, what the Renaissance was? The revaluation of Christian values, the attempt, undertaken with all means, with all instincts, with all genius, to bring the counter-­values, the noble values, to victory  .  .  . There has hitherto been only this great war, there has hitherto been no more decisive questioning than that of the Renaissance—­my question is its question—­: there has also never been a more fundamental, a straighter, form of attack, in which the whole front was led more strictly against the center!” Among the numerous value-­appreciations that are presented for the sake of the contrasting value-­depreciation, this overvaluation of a historical movement or current—­of its intention and purposefulness, of its coherence and its rank—­stands alone in Nietzsche’s œuvre. No less exaggerated are the expectations, is the importance, that he associates with an emblematic event, which his imagination counterfactually places before the reader’s eyes and paints with “a perfectly superterrestrial magic and allure of colors: Cesare Borgia as pope.”8 “Am I understood? . . . Well then, that would have been the victory that alone I crave today—­: with that, Christianity was abolished!” If Alexander VI’s son had succeeded his father as pope, this would not necessarily have sealed the destruction of the church. It would still, as Nietzsche knows, have been far from the end of Christianity, and even less would it have meant the victory of a new order. A travesty is not a revaluation. Luther “rebelled in Rome against the Renaissance.” He appealed to God, followed his faith alone—­“A religious man thinks only of himself ”—­and “restored the church: he attacked it . . .” Reformation and Counter-­Reformation 8. Jacob Burckhardt discusses plans by Alexander VI to make Cesare his successor: Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch (Basel, 1860), pp. 114–­19 (Jacob Burckhardt Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Munich-­Basel, 2018, v. 4, pp. 80–­84). There Nietzsche read, inter alia: “. . .  what would Cesare have done if, at the moment when his father died, he had not likewise been lying deathly sick? What a conclave it would have become if he, equipped with all his means, had let himself be elected pope by a College of Cardinals expediently reduced with poison, especially at a moment when there was no French army nearby! The imagination loses itself in an abyss as soon as it pursues this hypothesis” (p. 119/84).

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defeated the Renaissance. “The Renaissance—­an event without meaning, a great In vain!” At the end of the four sections of historical accusation that immediately precede the lawgiver’s judgment, Luther is linked to a threefold return and a threefold concluding critique. The treatment of him provokes, for the last time, the In vain, the refrain of the noble critique of history. It leads back to the critique that the Antichrist leveled against German philosophy in regard to its entanglement with Christian morality and Christian theology. And it leads into a critique of the Germans in general, to which Ecce Homo allotted a similarly prominent place: “In vain—­that was always the work of the Germans.—­The Reformation; Leibniz; Kant and the so-­called German philosophy; the wars of liberation; the Reich—­each time an In vain for something that was already there, for something irrecoverable . . .” In Ecce Homo the attack takes up much more space, and it is of greater vehemence. But Nietzsche reserves the formal declaration of enmity for the Antichrist: “They are my enemies, I confess it, these Germans.” There is apparently a weighty reason for this declaration of enmity. Nietzsche informs the reader that the Germans have “on their conscience the most uncleanly kind of Christianity that there is, the most incurable, the most irrefutable, Protestantism.” With the irrefutability of Protestantism, he has in view, as we may assume, the retreat into the fortress of inwardness, which keeps itself in the circle of sola fide and sola gratia and wants to let all reasons shatter on the unfathomability of God. “If one will not have come to an end with Christianity, it will be the Germans’ fault . . .” The political-­historical look back ends with a question mark. For the political addressee, one more reason for the exertion of all forces to help the revaluation to victory.9 In order to make the enterprise’s necessity visible to Everyman, the teacher of the revaluation gives the anti-­Christian critique a bottom line. It is kept as brief and comprehensible as is appropriate for a public assault. The polemical tone testifies to the political intention. “—­Herewith,” Nietzsche opens the last section of the Antichrist, “I am at the conclusion and speak my judgment. I condemn Christianity, I raise against the Christian church the most terrible of all accusations that any accuser has ever uttered.” Nietzsche speaks his judgment, not as an unbiased judge, but as an afflicted accuser. He speaks not from the distance of a divine observer, not as a cheerful skeptic, but as a partisan of the revaluation, as a political actor. He claims world-­historical singularity for his deed. One reason why he does not ascribe the accusation to the We of the Hyperboreans, but instead advocates as I. Nietzsche uses 9. AC 61, 1–­5 (250–­52), cf. 10 (176–­77). EH III, The Case of Wagner 2–­4 (358–­64). Consider Pp. 108–11.

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I seven times in paragraph 62. He makes the condemnation of Christianity his cause, without appealing to a commission or subordinating himself to a foreign will. It is no prophet and no anointed one who speaks. It is the Antichrist.10 The accusation reads: the Christian church is the highest of all conceivable corruptions. It has left nothing “untouched with its corruption”: “it has made a disvalue out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every integrity.” It thus has to answer for the worst possible revaluation, and in the center stands the perversion of truth. The main article of accusation that is in the narrow sense political concerns the “equality of souls before God.” He calls this idea an “explosive of a concept, which in the end has become revolution, modern idea, and principle of decline of the whole social order.” In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche counters the “Christian dynamite” with the assertion that he is himself “dynamite.” The conclusion of the accusation summarily indicts the church for having conspired, under the distinctive sign of the cross, against the noble valuations and ends: “against health, beauty, well-­turned-­out-­ness, bravery, spirit, goodness of soul, against life itself . . .”11 The Antichrist elevates his accusation into the “eternal accusation of Christianity”: It shall exist as long as there are men who are able to comprehend it. Which means that the memory of Christianity must also be preserved “eternally.” He wants, unlike the hand sent by God in the Book of Daniel, to write the tidings, not on one wall, but “on all walls, wherever there are any walls.” It is intended not for this king or that people but for all kings and all peoples. And the writing on the walls requires no soothsayer for the tidings to open the eyes of all: “I have letters to make even the blind see.” That his voice reaches even “the hard of hearing,” we have already heard. After addressing Christianity, the founder and lawgiver addresses mankind. In the new aeon it is the horizon of the action. The teacher of the revaluation enlightens it about the “one great curse” with which it is burdened, and to which the curse of the Antichrist is supposed to be the response. He will make sure, in his way, that the connection to Christianity is not lost in the “great In vain,” a connection that has existed ever since the founder Paul set his sights on mankind. The “eternal” tidings call Christianity “mankind’s one immortal blemish.”12 The overturning event signified by the victory over Christianity is to be reflected in a new reckoning of time. The old reckoning of time was erected by 10. Cf. EH III, 2, 2 (302) and P. 54. –­To the 7 usages of I in paragraph 62 are added 3 of me. The first-­person plural does not occur. 11. See AC 51 (232) and Pp. 201–2. 12. AC 62, 1–­2 (252–­53); 50 (229). Daniel 5:5, 14–­16, 22–­28 and 6:1. Cf. AC 19 and 52 (185 and 232). See Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 24–­26 and 40–­41 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 16–­18 and 30].

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Christianity and implemented under its rulership. It is, however, related not to the day of victory or to the day of founding but to the birth of Jesus, which long precedes both founding and victory. The Christian reckoning of time is an expression of Christian salvation-­history, i.e., of the Christian revaluation. In all the world time is reckoned “from the dies nefastus,” from the execrable day on which the “disaster commenced”: “from the first day of Christianity!—­ Why not rather from its last?—­From today?” The beginning of the Christian aeon is to be replaced by the completion of the Antichrist. A book takes the place of an eschatological event. The world-­historical parallel is evident: The day on which the Antichrist “came to an end” designates the day on which the revaluation “commenced.” And indeed, the three words that follow today, the last words of the book, read, “Umwerthung aller Werthe! .  .  .” In both Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo, Nietzsche provided the day with a precise date: September 30, 1888. But he does not specify this date in the Antichrist. Neither in the preface nor at the conclusion of the text. He writes instead: today. For whom is today the “last day” of Christianity? For the author, who has fulfilled his task and can therefore speak of a “great victory.” He has, in the confrontation with Christianity, liberated himself from its rulership and given himself an account of his reasons. But also for the reader who understands the Antichrist, this day is today. For the reader who not only sees the world-­historical parallel but comprehends the task that the author’s intention has thought out for him. For the reader who knows in what sense the writing and the reading of this book can be a “great victory.” The author and “the fewest,” to whom the Antichrist “belongs,” meet today, on the day on which the readers, each for himself, understand what belongs to them. Today is, for both, the day of knowing the revaluation. Nietzsche speaks of the revaluation of all values only twice in the Antichrist. In the final sentence, in which he evokes the persisting today, and, toward the end of the Hyperboreans part, when he requests that the We of author and reader not underestimate this: “we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a ‘revaluation of all values.’ ”13 The “Law Against Christianity,” which Nietzsche wanted to have follow the Antichrist as a kind of supplement, bears a precise date.14 “Given on the 13. AC 62, 3 (253); 13 (179); Preface (167–­68). Twilight of the Idols, Preface (p. 58); EH III, Twilight of the Idols 3 (356). See Pp. 106–7, 130–31. 14. After paragraph 62, the title Law Against Christianity was supposed to be printed on a new page, and on the pages following it the law itself, beginning with the words “Given on the day of salvation.” Since the manuscript page at the end of the Antichrist that contains the law (not the title) was subsequently pasted over with a white sheet, it is unclear whether Nietzsche decided in December 1888 to forgo publication or to keep the Law secret for the time being—­ similar to his decision, likewise in December 1888, to make the Fourth Part of Thus Spoke

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day of salvation, on the first day of the year one (—­on September 30, 1888, of the false reckoning of time).”15 The law is dated to the day Nietzsche twice announced to the public as the day for commemorating the completion of the Antichrist, before the Antichrist itself was known to it. A law, which is decreed by an authority with the request of being obeyed, cannot be located in that open today which is first of all determined by the understanding of the reader of a book. Since books are “for the vast majority merely literature,” Nietzsche, with a view to general notice, obviously considered it advisable to confirm the historical event of the Antichrist through the gesture of a law, which would assist the book politically. In fact, everything about the law is gesture.16 From the dating, which, parodying Christianity, proclaims the turning point in time and breaks the history of mankind into two pieces, to the signature, which makes the title of the book into a persona of the author.17 The heading, “War to the death against vice: vice is Christianity,” clarifies the law’s character: It is a declaration of political enmity and of moral proscription. The law is not supposed to legislate. It instructs neither administration nor police. It specifies no juridical sanctions. It aims, in all its “propositions,” at public opinion and the citizens’ valuations that are transmitted by it, at their morals and customs.18 As in Nietzsche’s discussion of the code of Manu, nature is the law’s final standard and ground for appeal. Accordingly, “antinature” occurs three Zarathustra available to the public “only after a couple of decades of world-­historical crises” (letter to Peter Gast of December 9, 1888, KGB III 5, pp. 514–­15). At the beginning of December 1888, he writes in a draft of a letter to Georg Brandes: “When you finally read the law against Christianity signed by the ‘Antichrist,’ which comprises the conclusion, who knows but that even you, I fear, may get weak in the knees . . .” Following this, he quotes not only the heading, but also the first, the fourth, and the sixth propositions of the Law (KGB III 5, p. 502). With all the uncertainty about Nietzsche’s considerations in the last weeks and days of his authorship, it is beyond question that during the revision of Ecce Homo at the beginning of December 1888, he newly included the fourth proposition of the Law as a quotation in the text (EH III, 5, p. 307) and later released it for printing (“Onwards with Ecce!” to the publisher Constantin Georg Naumann, January 2, 1889, KGB III, 5, p. 571). Details about the manuscript and the publishing history are supplied by Mazzino Montinari, KSA 14, pp. 448–­53, and Andreas Urs Sommer, NK 6/2, pp. 315–­19. The only edition of the Law that provides variants (four improved passages) was produced by Erich F. Podach: Friedrich Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruchs (Heidelberg, 1961), pp. 157–­58. Podach’s edition also contains a facsimile of manuscript page 47 from The Antichrist along with the text of the Law (Table VIII). 15. Nietzsche had initially written: the old reckoning of time. Podach, Werke des Zusammenbruchs, p. 157. KGW and KSA do not report the change. 16. See AC 54, 2 (237). 17. Cf. EH IV, 8 (373). 18. Rousseau calls these kinds of laws, which are not laws in the strict sense, “the most important of all” and adds that the lawgiver attends to them “in secret”: Du contrat social II, 12, 5.

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times in the short text, which is three times as often as in the entire Antichrist. The “First Proposition” begins with the definition: “Vicious is every kind of antinature.” This is immediately followed by the political classification: “The most vicious kind of man is the priest: he teaches antinature.” The teacher bears the greatest responsibility and therefore requires the greatest attention. “Against the priest one does not have reasons, one has the penitentiary.” The threat of the penitentiary is the first act of social proscription. Martyrs must be avoided.19 The “Second Proposition” declares participation in divine worship to be an “assassination attempt on public morality” and states that the “criminality in being a Christian” is to be evaluated according to the degree of proximity to science. “One should be harder on Protestants than on Catholics, harder on liberal Protestants than on those of strict faith.” The “criminal of criminals,” however, is the philosopher who has not liberated himself from Christianity or causes it to persist in altered form. He obviously has the least to bring forward for his exoneration.20 The “Third Proposition” focuses the curse of the Antichrist and directs it to the “site upon which Christianity hatched its basilisk-­eggs,” turning a biblical mythologem against Christianity in order to denounce its contrariety to nature. The location from which the monster, a poison-­spewing chimera of rooster and dragon, sprang “should have its ground leveled and, as a reviled place of the earth, be the terror of all posterity. One should breed poisonous serpents upon it.” Christianity is to be banned and preserved in memory. Since the law does not localize the “site,” its closer determination and everything further is left to the “second ones,” the kings and the warriors, the executive.21 Antinature, the “public incitement” to it through the preaching of chastity, is the subject of the “Fourth Proposition,” which wants to shield sexual life from any contempt and, in order to protect it, proclaims a “sin against the holy spirit of life.” Anticipating the publication of the Law, Nietzsche cited it in Ecce Homo as a proposition from his “moral code against vice.”22 The “Fifth Proposition” completes the social proscription of the priest by reversing the exclusion from Communion: “To eat at one table with a priest is to exclude oneself: one thereby excommunicates oneself from 19. See AC 53, 2–­5 (235). 20. Consider AC 11 (178); see EH IV, 7 (371) and P. 122. 21. See Isaiah 59:5. Andreas Urs Sommer has investigated the manifold mythological references and usages of the basilisk, and both pointed out the dragon-­slaying motif that is contained in it and detected the subterranean connection to the “Hyperboreans” that can be established via the Perseus legend: Friedrich Nietzsches “Der Antichrist”. Ein philosophisch-­historischer Kommentar (Basel, 2000), pp. 676–­79. 22. EH III, 5 (307). See P. 57. Cf. Twilight of the Idols, What I Owe to the Ancients 4 (pp. 159–­60).

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honest society.” And it gives an example of political-­practical revaluation. If “we ourselves, we free spirits” were the chandala as long as the priest ruled, now it is the case that “The priest is our chandala—­one should ostracize him, starve him, drive him into every kind of desert.”23 The “Sixth Proposition” brings the revaluation, in the straightforward sense of simple reversal, to an end. Sacred history is henceforth to be called cursed history. The highest concepts and the most revered figures of the old aeon are abandoned to abuse and shame: “one should use the words ‘God,’ ‘Savior,’ ‘Redeemer,’ ‘Saint’ as terms of abuse, as badges for criminals.” Presupposed in all the words cited is the object of the law: Christianity. The same goes for the priest who is to be considered the most vicious man. The adjective “Christian” must be added each time. The “Seventh Proposition” confirms that propositions 1–­6 contain what is needed in order to determine the orientation and scope of the “war to the death.” It reads: “The rest follows from this.” The seventh proposition also makes the fourth, the only one that invokes the revaluation’s central concept, life, into the law’s central proposition. One or another reader of the Anti­ christ may also notice that the “Seventh Proposition” parodies a proposition into which the philosopher condensed the counterposition to philosophy: “ ‘Thou shalt not know’:—­the rest follows from this.” In the “Law Against Christianity,” Nietzsche does not speak as a philosopher. He signs it with “The Antichrist,” after he had initially written “Nietzsche—­Antichrist.” He chooses the ambiguous term for a second time in order to appear under his mask as a lawgiver.24 Through Ecce Homo and The Antichrist, Nietzsche has linked his name to Christianity like no philosopher before him. What prompts him to distinguish Christianity in this way?25 Why does he chain his œuvre’s concluding dyad to the memory of the declared enemy? Why does the philosopher who subjects Christianity to critique as the “opponent de rigueur,” and, as a lawgiver, proclaims a “war to the death” against it, want to eternalize Christianity?26 The answer that for him it is a question of the fame of victory not only does not go far enough but misses what is most important. Nietzsche does not mistake himself for his noble addressees. He is under no illusions about the “eternity” of fame, and he knows that the pursuit of fame is not sufficient reason to write a book that belongs to the “fewest.” Besides, the “great 23. See AC 12 and 13 (179) and consider 48, 5–­8 (227). Cf. Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 45 (p. 147). 24. AC Law Against Christianity 1–­7 (254); 44, 4 (219); 48, 7 (227). Podach, Werke des Zusammenbruchs, p. 158. KGW and KSA do not report the improvement. See Pp. 129–30. 25. See EH I, 7 (275) and Pp. 28–29. 26. Cf. EH III, The Case of Wagner 4 (364) and AC 62, 2 (253).

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victory” that the Antichrist signifies for him is not one and the same as what the world celebrates as great victory and awards its laurels for. Neither do the two books lose their import if they do not bring about the “historical victory,” nor do they forfeit their life after this has occurred, if it does occur. In precisely this consists the difference from the committed writings that are to be classified as weltanschauung-­literature, or from tracts that become obsolete through their political success or failure, because they are absorbed in the service of a determinate, unique, “historical” end. One cannot misunderstand Nietzsche’s intention more completely than to believe that, in the view of the author, Ecce Homo and The Antichrist could become expendable through the victory over Christianity or, conversely, that through them Christianity could become irrelevant. Even if Nietzsche should still live or would have lived to see the “last Christian”—­a consideration that The Antichrist, parodying the Christian expectation of an imminent eschaton, puts in play furnished with a Perhaps—­even then, Christianity would by no means be done away with.27 Christianity’s effects on morality and consequences for politics are not tied to its being professed. All the less is this the case for its influence on philosophy, which is emphasized by the Antichrist. Even if one comprehends the “revaluation of all values” as a world-­historical event, it would be not an isolated act but a complex process that demands self-­demarcation, self-­determination, self-­ascertainment. For this, Christianity remains invaluable, as Nietzsche knows from the knowledge of the revaluation that he is. His reminder that Buddhism, unlike Christianity, came “after a philosophical movement lasting hundreds of years” points to the unexhausted potential inherent in the antagonism toward Christianity.28 The “spiritualization of enmity,” which is the affair of philosophy, necessarily leads to the “eternalization” of the enemy.29 But above all, it is the typological enterprise of the Antichrist that results in the consequence that Christianity is further to be reckoned with. Whether it persists in a changed way, or whether it recurs in an altered form. Not by accident does Nietzsche say that a Christianity along the lines of the “Redeemer” in the typology will “be possible at all times.” He does not have to explicitly add that a “Paul” of the future might found a religion that has important features in common with historical Christianity.30 The critique of the old religion is not 27. AC 46, 3 (224). 28. AC 20 (186); cf. 56, 2 (240). 29. See Twilight of the Idols, Morality as Antinature 3 and 6 in fine (pp. 84 and 87). Consider P. 110, Footnote 44. 30. AC 39, 2 (211). Cf. 61, 5 (252) and P. 230.

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squandered, is not irrelevant for the critique of the new. Since the typology has recourse to nature, it is not rendered obsolete by history. The question of the historical status of the Antichrist leads us to the typology, and the typology points us back to Ecce Homo. Ecce Homo not only makes the “Hyperboreans” of the Antichrist visible in a single case, but through it illustrates the integration and negation with respect to the types in the Antichrist that the philosopher signifies. It will not escape the careful reader how “Buddha,” “the Redeemer,” and “Paul” are present in the twin book. Consistent with this is the fact that the Antichrist, at the two peaks of the work insofar as the discussion pertains directly to the philosopher, in paragraphs 54 and 57, points over and beyond itself and to Ecce Homo: The man who can “set himself as an end” and “set ends from out of himself ” is not treated in greater detail in the Antichrist, but he is the subject of Ecce Homo. The sentence of the great yes-­saying, “The world is perfect,” is uttered in the Antichrist, but receives its place only in Ecce Homo, to which also falls the demonstration of its import. In emblematic compression, the philosophical orientation of the Antichrist toward Ecce Homo emerges from the conceptual pair of task and recuperation, which in the Antichrist appears only in paragraph 57, whereas in Ecce Homo it is the central instrument for thinking through the dialectic of means and end, of commitment or subordination and self-­determination. Since this dialectic concerns the Antichrist to the highest degree and involves it in its entirety, the book’s philosophical status is decided in Ecce Homo. It cannot, in other words, be adequately comprehended as long as it is not comprehended as part of the dyad, as long as it is not understood in the light of Ecce Homo. Ecce Homo confers on it its rank as a moment of becoming-­oneself. In a similar way and for the same reason, the determination of the relationship between knowledge and conviction in paragraph 54 requires the deepening in the discussion in Ecce Homo. The book that investigates how one becomes what one is shows in concreto how “the great passion” “uses up” convictions without subjecting itself to them. The “skeptic” cannot liberate himself from his convictions by asserting that he occupies a point equidistant from them and wanting, as it were through absolution, to rid himself of them in one stroke, but only on the path of exposing himself to and working through those convictions, which, by rejecting and confirming, overcomes the conviction as a conviction and includes it in a higher perspective. Precisely this is the theme of “task and recuperation” in Ecce Homo. For his concluding double-­work, Nietzsche utilizes the possibilities offered to him by the dyad’s together-­and-­apartness, in order to think through and give an account of the dualities of means and end, life and task, history and

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knowledge, nature and politics, in their opposed-­and-­intertwinedness. The order into which he converts the dualities is mirrored in the order of the pair that he chooses for the investigation. Ecce Homo begins with the claim of preparing the groundbreaking enterprise of the Antichrist. The first part of the dyad seems to be related to the second as the means to a higher end. Yet in the course of the action, the relationship between means and end is reversed. It is the book that places itself in the service of the other that proves the latter’s serving function. It is Ecce Homo in which Nietzsche occupies the highest perspective. And it is Ecce Homo that contains the eccentric conclusion of both books. The reader who follows the author’s ordering and begins with Ecce Homo is, if he involves himself in the dyad’s movement of thought, pointed back, at the end of the Antichrist, to Ecce Homo.

appendix

Twilight of the Idols, or, How One Philosophizes with the Hammer

The Philosopher among Nonphilosophers

Twilight of the Idols, like The Antichrist, was born of Nietzsche’s decision to give up on the Will to Power. In fact it is the first testimony of this decision. For at least six of the original eight chapters of which the book consisted when Nietzsche sent the manuscript to the publisher on September 7, 1888, were taken from the Will to Power. The second testimony is provided by the Antichrist, which likewise contained substantial parts of the Will to Power when Nietzsche finished it on September 30, 1888. The third and final stage is marked by the improvement Nietzsche made in the manuscript for printing of Ecce Homo at the end of December 1888, according to which the Antichrist was no longer the “first book” of the Revaluation of All Values, but rather the Revaluation without qualification and without the announcement of any continuation. Thus the Will to Power was scrapped.1 At that time Nietzsche had the first copies of Twilight of the Idols in hand in Turin. They had been sent to him a month earlier from Leipzig, where the printing had been completed on November 13, 1888. Against the background of the rejected Will to Power project, common to Twilight of the Idols and the dyad, given the overlapping work on the three books in the summer and fall of 1888—­Nietzsche expanded Twilight of the Idols considerably in September and October, when he was still occupied with the Antichrist or already occupied with Ecce Homo—­in view, finally, of the thematic interweavings, unmistakable references, and

1. For the correction in the manuscript for printing of Ecce Homo see Pp. 15–16, Footnote 15. Paragraphs 1–­24 of the Antichrist go back to the Will to Power papers (KSA 14, pp. 397–­98); see P. 136, Footnote 14.

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conspicuous similarities down to the details in the usage of terms,2 the question arises as to what place in the œuvre Nietzsche assigns Twilight of the Idols, and what intention he pursues with the first of the three books, in contrast to Ecce Homo and The Antichrist. Twilight of the Idols stands altogether apart. It is not a “kind of twin work of the Antichrist.”3 It also does not expand the dyad that it precedes into a triad. In the political and philosophical enterprise that binds Ecce Homo and the Antichrist into a duality revolving within itself, Twilight of the Idols is not included. Whereas the pair makes the philosophic life and the philosopher in his exposure by a world-­historical task into the object of contemplation, the book that has philosophizing in its title shows the philosopher as he pursues his principal activity, not to say practices his usual craft, of critique. Since in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche deals in a focused way with the prominent objects of critique that he has been confronting in ever-­new approaches since Beyond Good and Evil—­from the critique of the philosophical tradition and the modern ideas to the critique of Christianity and decadence—­it is not surprising that he speaks of a “perfect overall-­introduction” to his philosophy. Twilight of the Idols hence fulfilled the commission to push open the door to the œuvre and to convey to suitable readers an impression of the scope and depth of the critique that it holds ready for them. If the book affords insight into the author’s usual craft, it nevertheless does so in a way that is unusual, even for Nietzsche. The radicality of the presentation surpasses everything Nietzsche had previously 2. Thus Nietzsche uses the term will to power four times in Twilight of the Idols, as he does in Ecce Homo and in the Antichrist: Forays of an Untimely One 11, 20, 38; What I Owe to the Ancients 3 (pp. 118, 124, 139, 157). 3. “The Twilight of the Idols represents a kind of twin work of the Antichrist, above all from the point of view of its genesis.” Mazzino Montinari, “Nietzsche lesen: Die Götzen-­Dämmerung,” in Nietzsche Studien 13 (1984): 72; cf. KSA 14, p. 410. Montinari is right when he emphasizes the two books’ commonality in regard to the history of their development, to the clarification of which he contributed essentially. He encapsulates this commonality in the succinct formulation: “Out of the notes for Will to Power arose the Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist; the rest is—­Nachlaß” (KSA 14, p. 400). But a book becomes a twin work not on account of its author’s reaching back to the same source material that he also draws on for another book, but rather through the intention he pursues with both, the common end that he determines for the one and the other work alike. Nietzsche spoke, incidentally, of a “twin” with a view to the writing that immediately preceded Twilight of the Idols, without the remark’s declaring the two books to be twin works in the demanding sense: “This writing, appearing in all respects as a twin to the ‘Case of Wagner’ (even if about twice as strong) must come out as soon as possible: because I need an interim period before the publication of the Revaluation (—­this one with a rigorous seriousness and a hundred miles away from all tolerances and amiabilities).” Letter to Peter Gast of September 12, 1888; cf. letter to Constantin Georg Naumann of September 7, 1888; KGB III 5, pp. 417–­18 and 411.

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considered advisable. The announcement that it is a “very bold and precisely jotted summary” of his “essential philosophical heterodoxies” is formulated with reticence. Nietzsche hits the mark when he lets the same friend to whom he holds out the prospect of a “perfect overall-­introduction” know that the content is “of what is worst of all and most radical, though hidden under many finesses and mitigations.” That with the provocative book Nietzsche seeks to win the public’s attention and wants to prepare the ground for the “Revaluation,” which then becomes the dyad, is beyond question. To Peter Gast he characterizes the writing “as initiatory and appetite-­whetting” for the “Revaluation of Values,” and to his publisher he suggests that it could “perhaps also have the effect of opening ears somewhat to me: so that that major work does not again encounter such absurd silence as my Zarathustra.”4 As much as Nietzsche relied on hardness and making a splash with his book, he may, after having sent the manuscript to the publisher, have had second thoughts about whether the “finesses and mitigations” were sufficient to cushion what was “worst of all and most radical” to the required extent. In the original conception, only the “Sayings and Arrows” and the “Forays of an Untimely One” provided framing for the six chapters extracted from the Will to Power. After the pieces that were uncompromisingly directed to the philosophical addressee, the “Forays” alone took a few steps toward the nonphilosophers. The particular approach to the noble addressee, which plays an important role in all the writings after Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was also essentially reserved for the concluding part. While the text was already in the process of being typeset, Nietzsche undertook such far-­reaching interventions that later commentators saw themselves confirmed in their evaluation that the author had lost the architectonic feeling, that he had shattered or destroyed the conception of the book: On September 18, Nietzsche inserted the chapter “What the Germans Lack” between the six and the “Forays.” In the first half of October, the “Forays” were in turn expanded by thirteen aphorisms, which received the numbers 32–­44, and at the end of October “What I Owe to the Ancients” was added as the new concluding chapter. With the preface and a longer, postpositioned quotation from Zarathustra, “The Hammer Speaks,” that initially occupied the same place in the Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols obtained the twelve-­part structure of the definitive printed version.5 Nietzsche destroyed the old conception, but he created a new one that 4. Letters to Constantin Georg Naumann of September 7, 1888, Carl Fuchs of September 9, 1888, and Peter Gast of September 12, 1888, KGB III 5, pp. 412, 414, 417. 5. The structure, including the distribution of the numbers, or, in the case of the Preface, of the paragraphs, is as follows: Preface (3). (I) Sayings and Arrows (44). (II) The Problem of

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was subtler and rhetorically superior. Thus he did not simply shatter the original framing, but replaced it with one that was more complex, consisting on the one hand of chapters I and II, which could now be seen together, and on the other chapters IX and X, which symmetrically correspond to them, something he draws attention to by assigning 56 numbers to each of the two pairs.6 The final conception is superior because it allows the reader who engages more closely with the book and its structure to make yet another grouping and to locate the divisions, after the expansion from eight to ten chapters, in such a way that chapter I forms the opening and is followed by three triads, each of which is tightly linked in terms of content.7 The triadic structure indicates the weight that, in the new conception, is attached to the third triad: the rhetorical cushioning is no longer left to the “Forays” but now taken over by three chapters. At the same time, the central triad, chapters V, VI, VII, whose radicality more than anything else requires the strengthened counterweight, are placed in sharper profile. In the following hints and remarks on the plan of Twilight of the Idols, which may be of use to one or another reader, I will exclude the middle triad in order to clarify the conception, and deal with chapters V, VI, VII separately afterward.8 The first framing of the book consists not of chapters I–­II and IX–­X, but of the title Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with the Hammer, and the word of Zarathustra’s under the heading “The Hammer Speaks.” The signal of the hammer, with which Twilight of the Idols begins and ends, seems clear enough. Apparently the author is not only announcing a twilight of idols. It is to be promoted, brought about, accomplished. Where Wagner speaks of Gods, Nietzsche speaks of idols, or, since the title is ambiguous,xi

Socrates (12). (III) “Reason” in Philosophy (6). (IV) How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable (6). (V) Morality as Antinature (6). (VI) The Four Great Errors (8). (VII) The “Improvers” of Mankind (5). (VIII) What the Germans Lack (7). (IX) Forays of an Untimely One (51). (X) What I Owe to the Ancients (5). The Hammer Speaks. 6. The symmetry of the pairs at the beginning and the end corresponds to the symmetry of the two halves of the book, which the reader can recognize at first glance: chapters I–­V comprise 74 parts, chapters VI–­X, 76. If the preface and “The Hammer Speaks” are counted, the two halves comprise 77 parts each. 7. The triadic conception of Twilight of the Idols (1–­3–­3–­3) is mirrored by that of the ten books in the third chapter of Ecce Homo (3–­3–­3–­1). 8. In two seminars that I taught on Twilight of the Idols at Ludwig-­Maximilians-­Universität in Munich in Summer 2015 and in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in Spring 2016, I presented a thorough interpretation of the book. In the appendix to the confrontation with Nietzsche’s dyad, I must limit myself to a first approach to his “overall-­ introduction.”

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of the one idol whose destruction, whose smashing, it invites. The hammer as a call to action. To this corresponds the fact that the eight Zarathustra-­ verses at the end refer to the last of the new tablets imagined by the lawgiver-­ prophet in the speech “On Old and New Tablets,” with the laconic inscription: “become hard!” The commandment is expressly addressed to the “creators,” who want to impress their hand “upon millennia as upon wax.” The hammer speaks to the noble ones: “Only the noblest is entirely hard.”9 The frame formed by the double appearance of the hammer, however, was not initially part of the book’s layout. Nietzsche decided for it when he began to readjust the rhetoric as a whole. Upon receiving the first proof sheets from the printer, Peter Gast, in a letter to Nietzsche, objected to the original title, Idleness of a Psychologist, that to him it sounded “too undemanding, when I envision the effect it could have on our fellow men.” Besides, “idleness [Müssiggang] usually” occurs “only after work, and the Mü also occurs in weariness [Müdigkeit]. Ah, I entreat you, if an incapable man may entreat: a more resplendent, more sparkling title!” In his reply letter Nietzsche calls Gast’s objection, which reveals a characteristic failure to understand philosophical idleness, “very humane” and assures the proofreader that the objection was anticipated by his “own second thoughts.”10 The definitive title certainly has the merit of appearing “more resplendent” and “more sparkling.” It is, especially with the newly added Zarathustra quotation at the end, likely to find resonance with the noble addressee’s agonal spirit. Above all, it looks “more humane” than its predecessor, which was anything but “undemanding,” which kept its distance and coolly challenged. The preface undermines the martial impression of the hammer as the tool of the great smashing and gives idleness back its rightful place. As in the outer and inner prefaces to Ecce Homo, Nietzsche contrasts the task of the Revaluation of All Values with the recuperation that the Twilight of the Idols signified for him. However, in doing so he does not present the Revaluation as the “heaviest demand of mankind,” but instead introduces it—­taking for granted that the reader knows what he is talking about—­as “this question mark, so black, so immense, that it casts shadows on the one who sets it down.” What becomes a demand of mankind is at first a question mark for Nietzsche, an 9. Twilight of the Idols, The Hammer Speaks (p. 161); Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 12.29, 1–­8 (p. 268); cf. Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 136–­40 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 109–­12]. 10. Peter Gast to Nietzsche, September 20, 1888, and Nietzsche to Peter Gast, September 27, 1888, KGB III 6, pp. 309–­10 and III 5, p. 443. In his answer to Gast, Nietzsche expresses the expectation that the new title would also be heard as “a malice against Wagner.” On the title Idleness of a Psychologist see P. 104 with Footnote 35.

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experiment with an uncertain outcome.11 The “destiny of a task,” which the revaluer, experimenter, lawgiver takes on himself, “forces one to hasten into the sun at every moment to shake off a seriousness that has become heavy, all too heavy.” It is for him a matter of maintaining “cheerfulness.” Later Nietz­ sche will say that what matters is attaining a height from which it is possible and permitted to deal with the heaviest task as play.12 To shake off the seriousness, “every means” is “justified” and, as he continues—­alluding to the recently published Case of Wagner—­“every ‘case’ [Fall] a stroke of good fortune [Glücksfall]. Above all, war.” War as a means of countering an all too heavy seriousness, as prudence for “spirits that have become too inward, too deep,” is compatible with an agonal attitude, but not with heroic devotion. Nietzsche places the explanation of the subtitle in the center of the preface: “Another convalescence, under some circumstances even more desirable to me, is to sound out idols . . . There are more idols than realities in the world.” To sound out, not shatter: the hammer as an instrument of investigation, as a diagnostic tool: “Here to pose questions for once with the hammer, and, perhaps, to hear as an answer that famous hollow tone that speaks of distended entrails”—­this strengthens the cheerfulness Nietzsche needs for his task. It is a joy for the knower, a “rapture” for the “old psychologist and pied piper, before whom precisely that which would like to remain silent must become audible  .  .  .” Nietzsche, as a dialectician and seducer of the young, places himself in a series with Socrates and Dionysos, whom he earlier designated as pied pipers.13 It is only a small step from the pied piper’s rapture over successfully demonstrating the baselessness of the “idols” to the book’s original title. Nietzsche takes this step at the beginning of the third paragraph by assimilating the new title, the twilight of the idols and the philosophizing with the hammer, to the old: “This writing too—­the title betrays it—­is above all a recuperation, a sunny spot, a side leap into the idleness of a psychologist. Perhaps also a new war? And are new idols sounded out?”14 The book is 11. Consider EH III, Human All-­Too-­Human 6 (328) and Pp. 78–79. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 203 (pp. 126–­28). 12. EH II, 10 (297); see Pp. 49–51. The “destiny of a task” in the preface of Twilight of the Idols is the only usage of task in the singular. There follow three more usages in the plural: What the Germans Lack 6, Forays of an Untimely One 39 and 48 (pp. 57, 108, 142, 150). 13. The Gay Science 340 (p. 569); Beyond Good and Evil 295 (p. 237). See P. 58 with Foot­ note 40. 14. That the hint “the title betrays it” refers to the definitive title—­and need not be due, for example, to the author’s having forgotten to make a deletion in the old preface, as some commentators conjecture—­follows from the classification of war as a means of hastening “into the sun” in the first paragraph, and especially from the characterization of the hammer as a

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explicitly supposed to be both “a great declaration of war” and an enterprise of knowledge, “the sounding out of idols.” This time it is “not idols of the age”—­ like the one Zarathustra took up in his speech “On the New Idol”—­“but eternal idols” that “are touched with the hammer as with a tuning fork.” Nietzsche varies the tool’s diagnostic usage in the hammer’s second and final mention in the preface. In the one case as in the other, however, it is a matter of examining reality-­content: “there are altogether no older, no more convinced, no more inflated idols . . . Also none hollower . . . This does not prevent them from being the most believed in; also one does not, especially in the noblest case, at all say idol . . .” The reader must fill in the two omitted words at the end for himself.15 The first chapter demands the reader’s active participation. To find his way through the forty-­four Sayings and Arrows, most of which comprise only two lines—­the longest aphorism, number 36 about us “immoralists,” has four lines—­he must engage in the practice of collecting and dividing, likewise demanded by the following nine chapters, though in them the requirement does not leap to the eye in the same way. The author obviously expects the reader to stay on his trail and, when he makes arrows out of sayings, to do the same: when he takes up winged expressions and learned quotations, words of old and new authorities, traditional teachings and widespread opinions, in order to examine their truth-­content, to point out contradictions, to encourage doubt in the commonplace and reconsideration of the familiar, to shake up the self-­evident, to promote self-­knowledge through a surprising turn of phrase, in short: in order to acquire projectiles that reach their aim.16 psychologist’s instrument for sounding out idols in the second paragraph. (See also the second of the two usages of the title Twilight of the Idols in the text: What the Germans Lack 3, pp. 105–­6.) Nietzsche’s appearance as a psychologist comes as no surprise for readers who recall the announcement in Beyond Good and Evil that psychology is “now again the path to the fundamental problems” (23, p. 39). 15. Preface 1–­3 (pp. 57–­58). The preface is dated: “Turin, September 30, 1888, on the day when the first book of the Revaluation of All Values came to an end.” The “question mark” of the first paragraph is determined and announced as the title of a book at the end of the preface. See Footnote 1. 16. Sayings and Arrows 26, whose second sentence I quoted in the preface, is reproduced here in full: “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” This “arrow,” which equally strikes the dysfunctionality of the will to power in the will to truth and the enterprise of the “systematic major work,” goes back to a note Nietzsche wanted to use in the preface of the Will to Power: “I mistrust all systems and systematizers and avoid them: perhaps behind this book one discovers the system that I have evaded . . . / The will to a system: in a philosopher, morally expressed, a more refined corruption, a sickness of character / immorally expressed, his will to make himself out to be stupider than he is—­Stupider, that

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In line with the propaedeutic prelude to the book’s three triads, groupings of what is thematically related are to be made here—­numbers 1–­11 for example deal with the virtues of the philosopher—­cross-­references are to be followed—­thus number 13, rightly understood, answers the open question of number 7—­and finally the structure of the Sayings and Arrows as a whole is to be considered: It is articulated by the three aphorisms that speak of happiness, numbers 12, 33, and 44. The first eleven “arrows” mainly relate to the philosopher, the twenty-­two “sayings and arrows” in the middle mostly to nonphilosophers, the last eleven “arrows” mainly to Nietzsche. At the beginning of the chapter, Nietzsche takes up the challenging self-­ascription from the Preface that was originally supposed to serve as the book’s title and holds against it a proverb that contains the objection of the people and of politics, of the vita activa, to the philosopher: “Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? would psychology be a—­vice?” The philosopher begins with the ruling opinion that opposes him and makes a question out of it. The philosopher appears by name as soon as animal and God are mentioned (3); truth (4), wisdom (5), nature (6), and a God of a different kind (7) count among his nearest followers. The series of maxims on his virtues—­from the courage to know (2), the strength for solitude (3), and the truthfulness toward himself (4), to moderation and limitation to what is important (5), suitable recuperation (6), right questioning and unbiased reflection (7), to the hardness of self-­exposure (8), the self-­confidence needed for independence (9) and steadfastness (10), finally the insight into his own abilities (11)—­leads to the result that the case of the philosopher is not a tragic case. Idleness, which to most appears to be the beginning of all vices, is for the fewest a condition of their virtues and of their happiness. At the end of the chapter, the author, who has found the Why of his life and understood what belongs to happiness, places an adage with which the opening of the Antichrist will encapsulate the happiness of the Hyperboreans: “Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, an aim . . .” The 44th aphorism, which corresponds to Nietzsche’s 44th year, points back to the preface of Beyond Good and Evil, which introduced the arrow of the task.17 means: stronger, simpler, and more imperious / more uncultured, more commanding / more tyrannical . . .” KGW IX 6, W II 1, p. 1. Consider Pp. 26, 135–36, and 207–9. 17. Sayings and Arrows 1, 12, 33, 44 (pp. 59–­66); on no. 1 see Pp. 103 and 198; on no. 12 see Pp. 133–­34; on no. 33 see Thus Spoke Zarathustra IV, 10 (pp. 342–45), cf. The Gay Science V, 383 (pp. 637–­38); on no. 44 see Beyond Good and Evil Preface 1 and 2 in fine (pp. 12 and 13) as well as AC 1 in fine (169); on the arrow see also EH IV, 3 (367). Consider Pp. 14–16. –­No. 1, like several of the other numbers in the first chapter, goes back to a note in “Sayings of a Hyperborean” from the spring of 1888: “Idleness is the beginning of all philosophy. Consequently—­is philosophy a vice?” (15 [118], KSA 13, p. 478.)

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The sample of dialectics given in the first chapter is followed in the second by the return to the most famous of all dialecticians and, in the middle of the chapter, by Nietzsche’s contest with the older “pied piper” over the best way of comprehending him. Nietzsche deals with “The Problem of Socrates” in all three respects in which the heading can be read: The problem before which Socrates stood from the viewpoint of a diagnostician of the present, i.e., the decadence of the time and of himself. The problem of reaching Socrates, who left behind no œuvre and served Plato as a semiotic for his own purposes. The problem Socrates has become for us, through the influential tradition that has appealed to him and shaped his image. It is to the last problem that the chapter gives the greatest prominence. Which is not surprising, since “The Problem of Socrates” is the first of six chapters that subject the philosophical and the Christian tradition to a sharp critique. In chapter II, the critique is directed in particular against the legend of the saint that elevated Socrates into a kind of Savior. In the first and in the last part of the chapter, Nietzsche purposely brings the Savior into conjunction with Socrates, in the first case, recognizable for every reader, smuggling it into an ostensibly verbatim quotation, the ultima verba from Plato’s Phaedo.18 If the poet Plato, whose name is mentioned twice (2, 10), serves as a signpost to problems 2 and 3, it is Nietzsche himself who poetically introduces problem 1 by setting up the fiction of a “consensus sapientium,” against which he, as an innovator, solitary voice, challenger of all, can revolt and help the truth to break through: “About life the wisest of all times have judged alike: it is no good . . .” Nietzsche knows that this “consensus,” to which “even Socrates” is to be added, is his own invention, that the agreement on the “No” may hold for “our pessimists” but is already no longer the case for all “décadents,” that the philosophical art of writing bears witness by itself to the persistent Yes to life and has for ages confirmed it anew. At the end of the first part, he makes it sufficiently clear that the “wise” referred to were not truly wise: “the wisest,” measured by the standard of a wisdom that is in agreement with itself and does not succumb to the spirit of revenge, turn out to be unwise. In the same place, he makes known that the chapter’s prelude was, in the strict sense, a digression.19 The actual discussion of Socrates

18. “Even Socrates said, as he died: ‘living—­that means being long sick: I owe a cock to the Savior Asclepius.’ ” The Problem of Socrates 1; see 11 (pp. 67 and 72). Except for the words “owe a cock” and “Asclepius,” the entirety of the quotation stems from Nietzsche. Socrates is mentioned by name a total of 33 times in Chapter II. 19. The first part’s last section reads: “—­But I come back to the problem of Socrates” (2). The “problem of Socrates” is mentioned only here and in the heading. –­The chapter has a symmetrical structure: I Life and wisdom (1–­2); II The offensiveness of Socrates (3–­5); III The

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commences with the second part, with section 3, the only section that starts with the word Socrates. At the beginning stands Socrates’s offensiveness (3–­5). Nietzsche deploys whatever he can deploy to counteract the fable convenue of the noble and pious Socrates. He recalls his origin in the mob, plays off his ugliness against the image of the kaloskagathos, and, making reference to the high esteem for beauty among the noble Greeks, links to it the question: “Was Socrates a Greek at all?”20 Referring to the physiognomic observations of contemporary “criminologists,” and alluding to the verdict of the people of Athens, he next poses the question: “Was Socrates a typical criminal?” In two moves, the most extreme counterposition to the stylization of Socrates as an icon of veneration is reached. In the second of the three sections on offensiveness (4), Nietzsche provides support for the counterposition through traits of “décadence,” from “dissoluteness and anarchy in the instincts” and the “superfetation of the logical,” to the “auditory hallucinations” that, “as the ‘daimonion of Socrates,’ have been interpreted in religious terms.” The just man who has been transfigured by religion is the first aim of the attack on the tradition.21 In the same section, the critic notes that in the Socrates of the tradition, not only is everything “exaggerated, buffo, caricature,” but at the same time everything is “hidden, ulterior, subterranean”—­a problem for the interpreter.22 The sharply marked opposition to the noble valuations leads to the question of how Socrates could have succeeded in defeating “noble taste” and in asserting himself as a dialectician (5). For the noble one, “What must first be proven is of little value. Wherever authority still belongs to good manners, where one does not ‘give reasons,’ but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon.” Socrates was the exception. He was “the buffoon that got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?” The explanation, which Nietzsche gives in the center of the chapter (6–­7), reads: The master of dialectics knew how to transform an instrument of self-­defense into a weapon of attack, which allowed him to prove his superiority, in a way visible to all, in any fight chosen by him and held on his conditions. “One has, as a dialectician, a merciless tool in one’s hand; with it one can play the tyrant; one exposes by being victorious.” In other words: underlying the riddle of Socrates is an riddle of Socrates (6–­7); IV The fascination with Socrates (8–­10); V The misunderstanding by the tradition, and the wisdom of Socrates (11–­12). 20. According to his own judgment, Plato represented Socrates “more beautiful and younger” (Second Letter 314c). However, he had Alcibiades stress Socrates’s outer ugliness and portray him as a satyr (Symposium 215b). Nietzsche will say of himself in the preface to Ecce Homo: “I would rather even be a satyr than a saint. But one has only to read this writing.” See P. 7. 21. Consider AC 20 (187) and Pp. 155–56. 22. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 28 (p. 47).

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extraordinary will to power.23 The fascination with Socrates (8–­10) is based first on the fact that he “discovered a new kind of agon, that he was its first fencing master for the noble circles of Athens.” With this, the question of his Greekness (4) is answered. He touched “on the agonal drive of the Hellenes” and “introduced a variant into the wrestling match between young men and youths.” Here Nietzsche’s interpretation meets that of the Platonic Socrates,24 who claims to be expert only in matters of love: “Socrates was also a great eroticist.” Socrates fascinated no less by his understanding of how to become master (9) of the “dissoluteness and anarchy in the instincts” (4). He gave the answer that he needed, but of which the noble Greeks in an era of decadence had just as much need: “The drives want to play the tyrant; one must invent a counter-­tyrant who is stronger.” Socrates’s exemplary self-­mastery and his victories in the spiritual agon attested to the elevation of reason into a tyrant as the proven means of overcoming decadence (10). This much on the fascination with Socrates, in his time as well as in Nietzsche’s. From the philosopher’s conduct of life, the moralism of the tradition detached a universal doctrine. The enigmatic equation reason = virtue = happiness henceforth meant: “one must imitate Socrates and against the dark desires set up a permanent daylight—­the daylight of reason. One must be prudent, clear, bright at any price.” The demand of enlightenment for everyone and under all circumstances, the faith in “rationality at any price,” the “whole morality of improvement” go back to an absolutized and universalized, i.e., misunderstood Socrates (11). This is why Nietzsche makes “The Problem of Socrates” the leading chapter of the six that end with “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind.” In the last section of his treatment of Socrates, he speaks once again of the wisdom of his “courage for death,” on which he already commented some years before. “Socrates wanted to die:—­not Athens, he gave himself the poisoned cup, he forced Athens to the poisoned cup . . .” Nietzsche knows that there might have been good reasons for Socrates’s choice. In the meantime, he has had Zarathustra give a speech about the free death. He nevertheless keeps to the strategic decision from the Gay Science, of having the Platonic Socrates of the Phaedo appear as a pessimist and hence as a witness against the optimism that claims him for itself. He grants Socrates the last word. But as with the three previous Socrates quotations, it is Nietzsche who puts into the figure’s mouth what it has to say on the world-­historical stage: “ ‘Socrates 23. The term does not appear in chapter II. In substance, however, the will to power is of the greatest importance in sections 7 and 9. It also finds explicit mention in the preparatory notes for “The Problem of Socrates”: Posthumous Fragments Spring 1888 14 [92], KSA 13, p. 270. 24. Plato, Symposium 177d and 198d. Cf. Forays of an Untimely One 23 (p. 126).

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is no physician, he spoke quietly to himself: death alone is physician here . . . Socrates himself was only long sick . . .’ ” The name Xenophon does not appear in chapter II.25 Following the three-­time rejection of a “rationality at any price,” the third chapter makes unreason in philosophy the object of critique. Nietzsche willingly responds to the request of an unnamed person that he speak about those biases of the philosophers which are opposed to reason: “You ask me what all in the philosophers is idiosyncrasy?” Common to the selection of examples he goes into is that the respective idiosyncrasies correspond to the valuations of the polities in which the philosophers grew up. The critique of the philosophers’ reason concerns the same weakness and the same flaw in every case: deficient scrutiny of the inherited judgments and insufficient confrontation with the authoritative opinions. The critique of the legend of the saint is followed by enlightenment on the basic equipment of the tradition, on the alignment and adjustment of its teachings with regard to the highest subjects. It begins with the oldest and most powerful idiosyncrasy, “Egypticism,” which Nietzsche associates with “hatred toward the very idea of becoming”: “They believe they are doing honor to a cause when they dehistoricize it, sub specie aeterni.” “Egypticism” points politically to the rulership of the priests, morally to the priority of death over life. To defend life and reason Nietzsche delivers a frontal attack on the philosophers, who “for millennia” have operated with “concept-­mummies”: “They kill, they stuff, these Herren concept-­ idolaters, when they worship—­they become life-­threatening to everything when they worship.” The “idols” of concepts and ideas have their vanishing point in the “true world” to which they, absolutized and universalized, belong. It is opposed to the “seeming world,” in which we are imprisoned by our senses. “These senses, which are also so immoral otherwise,” thus reads the devaluation of the real world, “deceive us about the true world. Moral: get rid of sense-­deception, of becoming, of history, of the lie” (1). In this quarrel, which is steeped in morality, Nietzsche brings the antithesis into position: the senses “do not lie at all. What we make out of their testimony, that is what first introduces the lie, for example the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of duration . . .” (2). The rehabilitation of the senses has nothing to do with a blind realism. Nietzsche is aware that the senses can lead astray, that they are prone to error and require critique—­that is why he mentions the “error” of the sun’s movement, which “our eye” supplies and approves of 25. The Problem of Socrates 1–­12 (pp. 67–­73). The Gay Science 340 (pp. 569–­70). Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 21 (pp. 93–­96). See P. 81 with Footnote 37.

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(5). Sense perception is meant to be emphasized as the irreplaceable initial condition of all knowledge of reality—­that is why he says that what matters is to learn to “sharpen, arm, think” the senses “to the end” (3). The plea for the “seeming” world as the only one does not deny the necessity of making distinctions in reality. It is not a request to content oneself with seeming or to let up in the search for truth. What is at issue is the defense of the real world, of body, life, and reason, against their degradation in the name of another, “true” or “higher world,” which we purportedly used to be in before, are actually in, or will be in someday (5). Standing up for becoming, like advocating for the senses, is part of this defense. With subtle irony Nietzsche notes that Heraclitus will “remain eternally right that being is an empty fiction” (2). The “other idiosyncrasy of the philosophers,” the confusion of what is last and what is first, is closely tied to the previous one. In accordance with the traditional equation of the good and the ancestral, on the model of the widespread orientation toward the oldest legislation, the superior insight of the founder, the venerable origin, the “highest concepts”—­which are in truth “the most universal, the emptiest concepts”—­are set as the beginning: “what is higher must not grow out of what is lower, must not have grown at all . . . Moral: all that is of the first rank must be causa sui” (4). The genealogical enterprise of going back to the “pudenda origo” with a critical intention counteracts the bias for the first as the highest, which is derived from the beginning of philosophy: The discovery of physis went along with the surmounting of the conflicting nomoi to something that preceded or underlay them, something that corresponded to the valuation of the oldest as the highest. Finally, Nietzsche gives a sample of the way he conceives of “the problem of error and of seeming” by reference to “language-­metaphysics.” No different from the case of the senses, language is a tool that is at the same time indispensable and in need of thoroughgoing critique: It abstracts and universalizes, makes equal what is not equal, unifies what is manifold. In its most ordinary usage, it contains the whole metaphysics of which the “concept-­idolaters” avail themselves. Thus it promotes belief in the I as a substance, as well as in other substances. The “error of being, as it was formulated for example by the Eleatics,” has “every word, every sentence that we speak going for it.” Nietzsche’s particular interest applies to the critique of the metaphysics of the will: “In the beginning stands that great disaster of an error, that the will is something that effects—­that will is a capacity . . . Today we know that it is merely a word . . .” (5). The aim, in which all the parts of the critique that Nietzsche levels against “reason” in philosophy meet, is the highest concept of traditional metaphysics: from “monotono-­theism,” which is anchored in a beyond, in the “true

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world,” to the causa sui, the perfect, which is set at the beginning, to God, whom we cannot get rid of as long as we “still believe in grammar.”26 The critique of reason seems to receive a historical supplement in “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable.” The fourth and by far shortest chapter is the only one that Nietzsche furnishes with a subtitle: “History/Story of an Error.”xii But what kind of history/story is it? And what exactly is its subject? Will the history—­the definite article is quickly added—­of the idea of the “true world” be placed in front of our eyes? Or does the chapter, in which, unlike in the chapters before and after, God finds no mention, possibly outline the history of metaphysics, which begins with Plato and comes to its end with Nietzsche?27 The history Nietzsche recounts undoubtedly has the purpose of showing that the “true world” was unveiled by him as a fable, i.e., as an untrue invention.28 At the same time, however, it serves him as a fable, i.e., as a true 26. “Reason” in Philosophy 1–­6 (pp. 74–­79). See Pp. 147–­48 and 151–53. 27. Martin Heidegger has read the chapter as “Nietzsche’s brief account of the history of Platonism and its overcoming,” or more precisely, interpreted it as the history of the reversal of the basic metaphysical position. If for Plato the supersensible world was the true one (the upper) and the sensible world the seeming one (the lower), Nietzsche’s inverted Platonism, which retained the Platonic “formal structure” of upper and lower, set the sensible world against the supersensible one. Nietzsche recognized “only in his last creative year (1888)” that “the overturning of Platonism” would have to become “a twisting out” of it (hence the abolition of the “true” and the “seeming” world in one). In other words: Nietzsche saw or suspected, as evidenced by the fourth chapter of Twilight of the Idols, that another beginning was required, but it remained for Heidegger to draw the conclusions of the end of metaphysics (Nietzsche [Pfullingen, 1961], vol. I, pp. 231–­42). Heidegger’s metaphysical interpretation is contradicted by the fact that neither the supersensible nor the sensible appears in Nietzsche’s text (the same goes for beings, being, and the essence of being). His explanation, that Nietzsche wanted to give an account of “the history of Platonism,” where the “six sections” into which he divides “this history” are “easily identifiable as the most important ages of Western thought,” is opposed not only by the fact that Heidegger is necessitated into making do with forced attributions. It also has against it the testimony of the Nachlaß, which Heidegger usually places above Nietzsche’s books: The fourth chapter of Twilight of the Idols goes back to a text that, as late as spring 1888, Nietzsche still intended to be a prelude to the first chapter of The Will to Power. In the posthumous manuscript, Nietzsche elucidates the first section, or Heidegger’s first “age,” not with Plato, but with Spinoza. He initially writes (in no fewer than three attempts), “sub specie Spinozae,” and where the final version reads “I, Plato, am the truth,” it read originally: “I, Spinoza, am the truth.” In the second passage in which Plato is later mentioned, the name was also initially missing: In the fifth section stood not “Plato’s blush of shame,” but “reason’s blush of shame.” The sixth section, in turn, ended not with the words “INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA,” but “INCIPIT PHILOSOPHIA.” The cornerstones of the “history of Platonism” were thus marked by Spinoza and the beginning of philosophy. Plato found no mention (KGW IX 8, W II 5, pp. 64 and 65). 28. In the same sense of fable it says in the chapter before: “To fable about an ‘other’ world than this one makes no sense at all, unless an instinct of slander, diminution, suspicion of life

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piece of didacticism, to show how an activity is reflected in a doctrine, and how an authentic experience gives rise to an erroneous conception, whose overcoming in the end requires the very activity that stood at the beginning. Nietzsche’s story deals with the conception of the true world, in regard to the reality of the life that finds expression in this conception, interprets itself in its terms, takes heart from it, encounters it with indifference, turns against it, finally rejects it and generates a new conception. The fable begins with a condition that is not reserved for any particular age: (1) “The true world reachable for the wise one, the pious one, the virtuous one—­he lives in it, he is it.” For the wise one, the “true world” means the life of knowledge; for the pious one, the life in the feeling of unity with God; for the virtuous one, the life in agreement with itself. The true world corresponds to the inner certainty: I live the true, the highest, the right life. Nietzsche adds by way of explanation: “(Oldest form of the idea, relatively prudent, simple, convincing. Circumlocution of the sentence ‘I, Plato, am the truth.’)” The “idea” can take its start from Plato’s eudaimonia just as well as from Spinoza’s beatitudo. But it can also be related to the felicity of the “Redeemer” who is typologically determined by the Anti­ christ.29 The transposition of the characteristic activity—­in the case of the wise one: knowing and thinking—­into a corresponding conception and the doctrinal presentation of the beatitudo that is associated with it lead to detachment, universalization, and rigidification in doctrinal edifices that unfold their historical effect as Platonism or Spinozism.30 (2) “The true world, unreachable for now, but promised for the wise one, the pious one, the virtuous one (‘for the sinner who does penance’).” As far as philosophy in particular is powerful in us: in the latter case, we revenge ourselves on life with the phantasmagoria of an ‘other,’ a ‘better’ life.” “Reason” in Philosophy 6 (p. 78). 29. Not only did Nietzsche initially write in his explanation of the first section: “I, Spinoza, am the truth” (see Footnote 27). Spinoza, unlike Plato, is also present in the third chapter, in which the “true world” is introduced, by means of distinctive references to his terminology: in section 1, at the beginning of the first part, and in section 4, at the beginning of the second part of “ ‘Reason’ in Philosophy” (pp. 74 and 76). Cf. John 14:6 and 18:37. 30. Nietzsche levels his sharpest critique of Platonism in Beyond Good and Evil. The reader who pays due attention to the seven passages in which Plato is mentioned by name can convince himself that Nietzsche knows how to distinguish Plato from Platonism. Consider in particular the fourth passage, Aphorism 28 (p. 47). In the Nachlaß there are two instructive statements from the year in which Beyond Good and Evil was written: “Plato was certainly not so limited when he taught concepts as fixed and eternal: but he wanted this to be believed.” And in the same notebook: “Initially, absolute scepsis toward all traditional concepts is needed (as it has perhaps been possessed once before by one philosopher—­Plato: naturally, [he] taught the opposite—­)”. Posthumous Fragments April–­June 1885 34 [179] and 34 [195], KSA 11, pp. 481 and 487. See P. 141, Footnote 22.

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is concerned, the second step, with its protreptic effect, leads to a political thrust and a popular expansion that recoil upon philosophy.31 In Christian terms, the “progress of the idea” means the promise for all to be the children of God, i.e., the sowing of the expectation, and the rooting of the claim to equality, in history. (3) “The true world, unreachable, unprovable, unpromisable, but already as a thought a consolation, an obligation, an imperative.” With the third step, the idea, having “become sublime, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian,” fades into a regulative idea. It becomes a postulate of the Ought. What remains is the demand, and the foothold, of the moral law. (4) The fourth step designates the turn away from the idea in any life-­determining sense. “The true world—­unreachable? In any case unreached. And as unreached also unknown. Consequently also not consoling, redeeming, obligating: to what could something unknown obligate us? . . .” Politically, the nadir is in sight: Zarathustra’s “last man,” who, no longer capable of distinguishing within himself between the higher and the lower, remains in indifference toward all higher ends and in the comfort of the condition he has reached. (5) The fifth step, with the “free spirits’ ” turn against an idea that has lost any orienting force, brings back critique and distinction, life and cheerfulness. “The ‘true world’—­an idea that is no longer useful for anything, not even obligating—­an idea that is useless, that has become superfluous, consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it!” (6) The beginning, which is characterized by the abolition of the “true” and the “seeming” world, which is opened up by the insight that without us “the world” is not, Nietzsche links to the name of Zarathustra, who exposed the will to power’s effect in the will to truth and left it to the discretion of the philosopher’s self-­knowledge: “(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; peak of mankind; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)” Midday points to the deepest happiness and the highest knowledge: the affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction and without duplication. At the end of the fable stands the confirmation of philosophy. It conceives the world on the basis of the hierarchy of perspectives, to which the hierarchy of ways of life corresponds.32 Chapters VIII, IX, and X give the book, which up to that point has taken up the perspective of philosophy with offensive brusqueness, a more “humane” cast and make it more politically acceptable.33 With the third triad, 31. Consider The Gay Science 328 (pp. 555–­56). 32. How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable 1–­6 (pp. 80–­81); cf. Thus Spoke Zarathu­ stra IV, 10 (pp. 342–­45); Beyond Good and Evil 9, 150, 186, 230 (pp. 21–­22, 99, 107, 167–­70); EH III, Dawn 2 (330) and IV, 1 (365). See Pp. 206–11. 33. See Pp. 243–45 with Footnote 10.

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Nietzsche takes a step toward the readers. He turns to the noble addressee, critiques the Germans, and draws attention to himself as an author, as a contemporary, as a teacher. The headings of the three chapters already indicate the special connectedness of the final triad. In “What the Germans Lack,” one who knows the Germans speaks about “what the German spirit could be” but is not. In it the deficiency of culture, for which Nietzsche reproaches the German Reich in all his late writings, is this one time condensed into the remedy-­ seeking result that “there is no longer a single German philosopher left.”34 The title of the central and by far longest chapter, “Forays of an Untimely One,” then has the author appear in a persona and invites comparison with the early work that preceded the periagoge. The path he has traveled since the Untimely Meditations, and the gap that separates him from the idea he had of philosophy at that time, Nietzsche shows in an exemplary way through the critique of Schopenhauer, whom in the third Untimely One he elevated into his imagined model of the philosopher, and whom he now disqualifies from being a philosopher in almost as many words.35 In the third heading, the author of the Twilight of the Idols finally passes over without further ado into the I. “What I Owe to the Ancients” to a certain extent elucidates the support that put the “untimely one” in a position to undertake the forays whose yield is contained in the 51 aphorisms of the chapter before it.36 The three chapters are united by their presentation of Nietzsche as educator. With the “Forays of an Untimely One,” Nietzsche made known, already in the first version of Twilight of the Idols, that he was conscious of speaking as a philosopher among nonphilosophers. Yet the thirteen aphorisms that he subsequently inserts into the chapter, and that belong entirely to the educator, together with the two new chapters that flank the “Forays,” decisively strengthen the presentation. In “What the Germans Lack,” Nietzsche’s attention is expressly aimed at “noble education.” And when he states that “educators are needed who are themselves educated,” he leaves no doubt that he is speaking as an educator of future educators.37 In “What I Owe to the Ancients,” he gives an eloquent example of self-­education, and at the end, in the chapter’s last sentence, formally appears as a “teacher.” I must, in my brief overview, limit myself to three aspects that are of particular interest for the education of the philosophical reader. 34. What the Germans Lack 2 and 4 (pp. 104, 107). 35. Forays of an Untimely One 21 and 32 (pp. 125, 131). Cf. Pp. 139–40. 36. In this sense Chapters IX and X mirror Chapters I and II, so that with their double linkage they replace the book’s old framing, which Nietzsche shattered through the expansion from eight chapters to ten. See Pp. 243–44. 37. What the Germans Lack 5 and 7 (pp. 107–­8, 110).

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It is no surprise that the art of writing and reading is a recurring theme in chapters VIII, IX, and X, which are so important for the rhetoric of Twilight of the Idols. In “What the Germans Lack,” Nietzsche calls learning to write, along with learning to see and learning to think, one of the “three tasks for the sake of which educators are needed.” The task of learning to see, which takes the lead among the three, is determined precisely by Nietzsche: “accustoming the eye to rest, to patience, to letting-­things-­come-­to-­it; putting off judgment, learning to go around and encompass the individual case from all sides.” To preclude any misunderstanding on the point, which is fundamental for the philosophical education, he adds by way of clarification: “Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what the unphilosophical way of speaking calls the strong will: what is essential in it is precisely not ‘to will,’ to be able to suspend decision.”38 In regard to the second task, Nietzsche stresses the mastering of the craft, the sense for nuances, and the training in agility. Thinking wants to be learned, “like dancing wants to be learned,” as a “being-­able to dance with the feet, with concepts, with words.” For the third task, there remains only the hint that one must be able to dance “also with the quill.” After discussing the necessary presuppositions of the art of writing, the eighth chapter breaks off. In place of it, the tenth presents masters of writing. Authors who are skilled in sharpening the epigram as well as composing mosaics out of words and sounds; who know how to employ the energy of signs and mark out conceptual fields; who master the most diverse styles and deploy the most manifold forms of prose and poetry for their purposes. “What I Owe to the Ancients” points the reader to the example of the ancients from whom Nietzsche learned to write, but above all to the example that Nietzsche himself is and gives to those who want to learn to write. The tenth chapter makes conspicuous what the ninth, in which writers of every kind and quality play a prominent role from the beginning, teaches in its own way: Learning to write means first of all learning to read. This agrees with the fact that where one can speak of the art of writing in the demanding sense, the rule holds: An author writes the way he reads. The “Forays of an Untimely One” shed light not least on the “art of silence” that Nietzsche claims elsewhere for his art of writing.39 In a dense way and as it were in passing, he elucidates this art from three sides: “It can be height of the soul when a philosopher is silent; it can be love when he contradicts himself; a politeness of the knower’s which lies is possible.” The art of silence can find expression in the author’s not speaking about something

38. Consider Pp. 202 and 209. 39. EH III, Beyond Good and Evil 2 (351).

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in order to prevent insights and experiences from being vulgarized;40 in his recognizably contradicting himself in order to make insights and experiences possible that the reader is able to gain and to have only in this way; in his not speaking the truth in order to protect readers from insights and experiences that he does not want to impose on them. The art of silence can therefore both serve for protection and pursue a pedagogical purpose.41 The “Forays of an Untimely One,” which begin with an aphorism about Nietzsche’s “impossible ones”—­thirteen names from Seneca to Zola are mentioned—­end with an aphorism in which Nietzsche labels Goethe the last German for whom he has reverence. More precisely, the last four aphorisms of the concluding group of seven in which the “Forays” culminate deal with Goethe.42 The ascent seems to reach its aim in Goethe, who, as Nietzsche does not neglect to point out, was “not a German event, but a European one.” “He made use of history, of natural science, of antiquity, likewise of Spinoza, above all, of practical activity,” in order to overcome the eighteenth century, whose “strongest instincts” he bore within himself: “sentimentality, the idolatry of nature, the anti-­historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary.” Goethe “did not detach himself from life, he placed himself in it; he was not despondent and took as much as possible upon himself, over himself, into himself.” Goethe serves the educator Nietzsche as the guiding figure of all-­ around development: “What he wanted was totality; he fought against the apartness of reason, sensuality, feeling, will (—­preached with the most abhorrent scholasticism by Kant, Goethe’s antipode), he disciplined himself to wholeness, he created himself . . .” Even more: “Goethe conceived a strong, highly educated man, skilled in everything bodily, having himself in check, 40. “Language, it seems, was invented only for what is average, middling, communicable. With language the speaker already vulgarizes himself.” Forays of an Untimely One 26 (p. 128). 41. What the Germans Lack 6–­7 (pp. 108–­10). Forays of an Untimely One 46 (p. 148). What I Owe to the Ancients 1–­2 (pp. 154–­55); on the characterization of Plato as the “first décadent of style” consider EH III, 4 (304–­5) and the combination of different forms and genres in Nietz­ sche’s œuvre. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 30, 40, and 286 (pp. 48–­49, 57–­58, 232); also Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL, 1952), pp. 36 and 144. 42. The concluding group of seven (45–­51) begins with the philosopher (“The criminal and what is related to him”), just as the group of thirteen before it (32–­44), which Nietzsche inserted into the “Forays” in October 1888, begins with the philosopher (“The immoralist speaks”) and ends with the aphorism “My concept of genius.” The first 18 aphorisms, written in the fall of 1887 for the Will to Power (“Among Artists and Writers”), have as their subject the critique of writers in regard to faith (1–­6), the psychology of the artist and of the arts (7–­11), and the psychology of faith and of modern man (12–­18). Aphorisms 19–­31, like aphorisms 45–­51, originated in the summer of 1888 and, originally intended for the Will to Power, bore the heading “From My Aesthetics.” In them Nietzsche speaks as a physiologist in the sense of the ancients.

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reverent of himself, who may dare to indulge in the whole range and wealth of naturalness, who is strong enough for this freedom.” Goethe becomes the sworn witness for the “man for whom nothing is prohibited any longer, unless it be weakness,” so that Nietzsche can extend the line to the “spirit that has become free,” the spirit that no longer negates, since it is filled with the faith “that only the particular is reprehensible, that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole.” The eulogy’s conclusion marks the limit to which Nietzsche leads the reader: “such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysos.” For even the highest of all possible faiths remains—­ faith. In the Case of Wagner, Nietzsche called Goethe the “last German of noble taste.” In Twilight of the Idols, he says about him no less pointedly: “he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons.”43 The very nobleness that distinguishes Goethe marks his limitation. From the final chapter the reader can learn that Goethe’s nobleness prevented him from having access to the core of the Dionysian condition and thus that the “fundamental fact of the Hellenic instinct” lay outside his horizon: “Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks.” But already in the “Forays,” the ascent does not stop with Goethe. After Nietzsche, in the first sentence of the last aphorism, has expressed his “reverence” for Goethe and remarked that they also understand each other “about the ‘cross,’ ” he speaks only about himself as an author. About the claim of his writing—­“To create things on which time tests its teeth in vain; in form, in substance, to strive for a little immortality”—­about his mastery in the art of the aphorism, the maxim, and about his ambition “to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—­what everyone else does not say in a book . . .” The chapter’s last sentence does not leave the reader unclear about the rank-­order: “I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my Zarathustra: In a short time I am giving it the most independent.”44 Nietzsche refers to the Dionysian twice in the third triad, before and after the aphorism devoted to Goethe in the “Forays,” in different contexts and with different intentions. In the first usage, he recalls the opposition of the Apollonian and the Dionysian with which he operated as a young scholar, in order to subvert or supersede it immediately in the initial question: “What is the meaning of the conceptual opposites, introduced into aesthetics by me, of Apollonian and Dionysian, both comprehended as kinds of rush?” For the author of the Birth of Tragedy had set the Dionysian “rush” against the 43. The Case of Wagner, Epilogue 1 (p. 52). Forays of an Untimely One 49 (p. 151). 44. Forays of an Untimely One 49–­51 (pp. 151–­53). What I Owe to the Ancients 4 (p. 159). On the “understanding” concerning the “cross,” see Goethe’s Venezianische Epigramme 66 (Gedichte 1756–­1799, ed. Karl Eibl [Frankfurt am Main, 1987], p. 457).

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Apollonian “dream,” the “rush-­artist” against the “dream-­artist.”45 Now it is supposed to be a question of various kinds of rush, i.e., Nietzsche is recognizably driving at one thing. “The Apollonian rush above all keeps the eye excited, so that it obtains power of vision.” With it are associated painters, sculptors, epic poets. “In the Dionysian condition, by contrast, the entire affective system is excited and enhanced: so that it discharges all its means of expression at once and at the same time brings out the power of representation, imitation, transfiguration, transformation, every kind of mimicry and playacting.” Besides the playactor, the mime, and the dancer, the musician and the lyric poet are named here. Nietzsche singles out as essential “the inability not to react,” an inability that stands in the way of precise seeing and calm contemplating.46 Instead of this, the “Dionysian man” appears as a virtuoso of empathy and adaptation. Nietzsche goes so far as to attest of him that it is “impossible” for him “not to understand any suggestion.” What Nietzsche usually says about the décadent applies to him: “He enters into every skin, into every affect: he transforms himself constantly.” The brief recapitulation of the talk of the Apollonian and Dionysian arrives at its specific point when Nietzsche comes to speak of architecture, which, contrary to expectations based on his firstling, he does not associate with the Apollonian. Architecture instead explodes the old conception and gives it a new meaning. “The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian condition: here it is the great act of the will, the will that moves mountains, the rush of the great will, that aspires to art.” Architecture points to a third, higher thing, which overarches the Apollonian and the Dionysian. It creates a walkable order, something in which one can live. The “rush” of the architect concerns design on a grand scale and for the long run. “In the building, pride, the victory over heaviness, the will to power, are supposed to become visible.” From the victory over heaviness, Nietzsche progresses to the great style that is not limited to erecting buildings made of wood, stone, or steel: “The highest feeling of power and sureness is expressed in that which has great style.” When there is talk of the “power that disdains to please” and “that rests in itself, ” at the latest, the reader has reason to extend the line further and look at philosophy, which unites seeing, dancing, building, in itself and orients them to one aim.47 The last usage expressly has its vanishing point in the “philosopher Dionysos.” Yet 45. The principium individuationis, borrowed from Schopenhauer and aligned with the Apollonian, along with the redemption hoped for through the Dionysian, we let rest under the veil of oblivion that Nietzsche spread over the principle as well as over the redemption. 46. Cf. What the Germans Lack 6 (pp. 108–­9). See P. 258 with Footnote 38. 47. Forays of an Untimely One 10–­11 (pp. 117–­19).

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when he speaks again of the “Dionysian condition,” Nietzsche starts much deeper, far below philosophy, at the source of life. He goes back to orgiasm and places in the center the Dionysian mysteries, with which the Greeks reinforced “the triumphant Yes to life over and beyond death and change” and reassured themselves of “the true life as the overall living-­on through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality.” He praises the symbolism of the Dionysia as an antidote to Christianity: “In it, the deepest instinct of life, that to the future of life, to the eternity of life, is felt religiously—­the path itself to life, procreation, as the holy path . . .” At the end of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche invokes a path that in principle stands open to Everyman, to philosophers and nonphilosophers.48 The second triad is oriented entirely toward the philosopher. It serves Nietz­ sche as practice in a two-­tiered access, which will be characteristic for the pair Ecce Homo and The Antichrist: On the one hand, the confrontation with the question at issue, the quarrel with the adversaries, the critique of the tradition, the fight in the present, on the other, the distance-­taking that permits contemplation of the whole, along with the turn back to the philosopher as the part that is exposed in a special way. In a narrow space and illustrated by means of weighty subjects, chapters V, VI, and VII link political negation and philosophical affirmation. The first of the three chapters gives the decisive hint for understanding the underlying thought. In “Morality as Antinature,” Nietzsche does not repeat the genealogical enterprise of earlier writings. His primary interest is not in the analysis of morality or the critique of faith in revelation, but in the question of how the philosopher places himself, beyond analysis and critique, into relation with morality and with the God of morality. The key word is spiritualization. Morality as antinature means, first of all, morality insofar as it aims at the “annihilation” of the passions. The attempt at annihilation is the opposite of all spiritualization. As an example Nietzsche draws on the Sermon on the Mount, in which it is said, “with useful application to sexuality”: “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” He holds against the church that it fights “the passions with excision in every sense.” “But attacking the passions at the root means attacking life at the root: the practice of the church is hostile to life . . .” With hostility to life [Lebensfeindlichkeit], enmity [Feindschaft] is invoked. Nietzsche speaks explicitly of the “declaration of enmity” toward passion, and thereafter of “radical enmity” or “deadly enmity toward sensuality,” as a symptom of “degeneration.” This prepares the turn the chapter takes at the beginning of the third section. For Nietzsche

48. What I Owe to the Ancients 4–­5 (pp. 159–­60).

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does not steer toward the alternative annihilation or spiritualization in the sense of sublimation, as may be suggested by the prelude, which emphasizes the passions. After the extremely brief opening sentence: “The spiritualization of sensuality is called love,” in which spiritualization can, but does not have to, be understood as sublimation, he immediately transitions to “our spiritualization of enmity”: “It consists in one’s deeply comprehending the value there is in having enemies.” Spiritualizing now means comprehending; comprehending what that which resists is good for, what is good in that which is opposed; comprehending the good in the bad. Nietzsche elucidates the alternative annihilation or spiritualization in the sense of comprehending one’s own good with the example, once again, of Christianity. “The church at all times wanted the annihilation of its enemies: we, we immoralists and anti-­Christians, see our advantage in this, that the church exists . . .” We may also express it this way: as anti-­Christians, we see that the enemy’s challenge induces us to summon all our strength, and that the opposition necessitates us into determining our being; as immoralists, we affirm the enemy who promotes the knowledge of our being, and in the insight into what is good for us, we are over and beyond the opposition without having to annihilate or deny him. Spiritualization concerns not only the enemies in “great politics,” but likewise the “inner enemy.” Here too, what matters is to comprehend the “value” of enmity or of opposition: “One is fruitful only at the price of being rich in oppositions; one remains young only under the presupposition that the soul does not stretch itself out, does not desire peace . . .” In the name of the “great life,” Nietzsche pits “war” against “the Christian wish” of “peace of soul,” against the desire for a condition in which enmity is annihilated. Nietzsche does not stop, however, at praise of the agon. He concedes that the most different things can be misunderstood as “peace of soul,” that “peace of soul” can thus be understood in entirely different ways. Among the ten examples he gives of possible confusions with the concept of the Christian wish, the central two are: “the becoming-­still of the convalescent, to whom all things taste new, and who waits . . . ,” i.e., who, in overcoming his “sickness”—­let us say his disgust—­gathers himself to venture a new beginning; and “the condition that follows a strong satisfaction of our ruling passion, the well-­being of a rare satiety,” i.e., in the case of the philosopher’s passion of knowledge, the sense of well-­being that does not stand in the way of but gives wings to the continuation on the path. The final example in the series is: “the expression of maturity and mastery amid doing, creating, effecting, willing, restful breathing, attained ‘freedom of the will’ . . . ,” i.e., the long-­striven-­for heights of activity and overview. The sentence that Nietzsche has follow the ten examples, and with which he concludes the first part of the chapter, contains

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the first of the book’s two usages of the title Twilight of the Idols.49 It allows the testing of whether the reader has grasped the meaning of the twofold access and understood Nietzsche’s talk of war and idleness, of recuperation, task, and play: “Twilight of the Idols: who knows? perhaps also only a kind of ‘peace of soul’ . . .”50 The decisive test for the spiritualization of enmity is reserved for the second half of the chapter, which Nietzsche begins with I. It not only adds the distinction that the first half presupposed, between a “healthy” morality determined by a “commandment of life” and an “antinatural” morality directed against the “instincts of life.” The fourth section introduces God into the discussion and mentions the God at issue, the God of morality and faith in revelation, no fewer than four times. The morality that says “God looketh on the heart” says no, not only to the “lowest,” but also to the “highest desires of life.” It “takes God to be an enemy of life . . .” Underscoring the opposition, the section breaks off after the either-­or: “Life is at its end where the ‘kingdom of God’ begins . . .” The question of how things stand with the spiritualization of God’s enmity is deferred or given to the reader to consider. Just as in the writings that precede and follow Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche makes the revaluation visible beginning with the most prominent case: the “revolt against life” takes the place of the revolt against God and is to be comprehended as “the sacrilegious.” Nor is the relevant clarification missing, that valuation and revaluation admit of inferences regarding the strong or the weak life that is expressed in them. Correspondingly, the valuation as ascending and as descending life is a judgment made by life itself, and depends on the height of the perspective from which life is seen, from which it contemplates itself. Nietzsche states “that that antinature of a morality which grasps God as a counterconcept to and condemnation of life” is “also only a value-­judgment of life’s.” With the fifth and final mention of God in the fifth chapter, the first step toward “spiritualization” is taken. The second follows when, after having made their first appearance in the third section, “we immoralists” return in the sixth. Immediately preceding this is an attack on the moralist, who wants man to be other than he is, who would like to subject him to his idea of moral virtue and render him equal: “he paints himself on the wall and says ‘ecce homo!’ . . .” We hear that there were “consistent moralists” who wanted man “in their image, namely as a prig: for this they negated the world.” This much on the contrasting figure from which the immoralist’s affirmation sets itself apart. “We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, opened our hearts wide 49. See Footnote 14. 50. Morality as Antinature 1–­3 (pp. 82–­85). Cf. P. 110 with Footnote 44 and Pp. 235–38.

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to all kinds of understanding, comprehending, approving.” The immoralist contemplates, comprehends, affirms at a different height than that at which he intervenes, acts, negates. “More and more our eye has opened to that economy which needs and knows how to exploit even all that the holy witlessness of the priest, of the sick reason in the priest, rejects.”51 The second part of the sentence establishes the link between the contemplation of the whole and the most exposed part in the terms of “spiritualization”: “to that economy in the law of life,” Nietzsche continues, “which even derives its advantage from the repellent species of the prig, the priest, the virtuous—­which advantage?” The conclusion follows from the thought that determines the conception of chapters V, VI, VII from the beginning: “—­But we ourselves, we immoralists, are here the answer . . .” The philosopher is able to say yes to the whole only if he knows how to comprehend what good the enemy is who says no most decisively to his life, who holds against him a prohibition, who demands from him obedience, who challenges him most fundamentally.52 The central chapter of the second triad, “The Four Great Errors,” has its vanishing point in God. The four errors that Nietzsche makes the object of critique—­the errors (1) “of the confusion of cause and effect,” (2) “of a false causality,” (3) “of imaginary causes,” and (4) “of free will”—­are dealt with not from the vantage point of epistemology, but in constant consideration of morality and religion. This explains the fact that the “great errors” are not so clearly distinguished, and their number is not so obvious, as the definite article in the heading suggests. In fact, when looked at more closely, the first three errors can be comprehended as the one error of going back to God instead of to nature.53 It agrees with the intention that guides the chapter’s arrangement that the first talk of God, unlike the seven subsequent mentions, relates to a God who is possible by nature and can have his place in Nietzsche’s theology.54 The first misunderstanding of nature, which consists in the fact 51. The eye, which was introduced in III, 5 as the organ of knowledge, and then stood for sense perception, which is exposed to error, returns in V, 1 as an expression of both sexual desire and the pleasure of seeing, which are subject to the biblical prohibition of sin, and reaches its aim in V, 6 as a label for the insight in which the whole is justified. 52. Morality as Antinature 4–­6 (pp. 85–­87). See Genesis 2:17; EH Preface 3, 2 and II, 1 (258–­59 and 279); AC 48, 6 (227). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 207 (p. 136). 53. Chapter VI could with reason have been titled “The Two Great Errors,” or, thought to the end, “The Great Error.” If we take into consideration the drafts Nietzsche had in front of him during the editing, the title could also have read “The Three Great Errors” or “The Five Great Errors.” See KSA 14, p. 418. The four errors that Nietzsche identifies are discussed in the following way: I: sections 1 and 2; II: section 3; III: sections 4, 5, 6; IV: section 7. Section 8 is not associated with any of the four errors in particular. 54. The Four Great Errors 2 (p. 90). Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I, 7, 22 and 26 (pp. 49–­50);

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that morality and religion have recourse to a lawgiver who indiscriminately subjects the most diverse natures to one commandment and law, Nietzsche elucidates in corpore vili by means of a widely read diet guidebook that takes the place of the Bible. The “most universal formula”—­Nietzsche calls it “the great Original Sin of reason,” the “immortal unreason”—­reads: “Do this and that, refrain from this and that—­thus you will be happy! Otherwise . . .” The revaluer opposes it with his reversal: “a well-­turned-­out man, a ‘happy one,’ must do certain actions and instinctively shies away from other actions, he carries the order that he represents physiologically into his relations with men and things.” That the “formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness” is not universally applicable, but inferred from the well-­turned-­out nature, belongs essentially to Nietzsche’s “revaluation.” The statements “everything good is instinct” and “toil is an objection” also reveal their specific meaning when they are applied to the favored one, who finds the ground and the power of his being in the passion of knowledge. The deepest happiness is grounded in nature.55 From the imperative of universalization, which characterizes morality and religion, Nietzsche draws the arc to the universalizing projection of the “inner world,” which is “full of illusions and false lights.” The will as cause “is one of them.” For the knower, the will no longer moves anything, and it “consequently also no longer explains anything—­it merely accompanies processes, it can also be missing.” The critique of the will aims at a veritable trinity: “Man has projected out of himself his three ‘inner facts,’ that in which he believed most firmly, the will, the spirit, the I,” and thus created a world in his image. Nietzsche does not need to elaborate de deo et mundo on what this means. The connection between the will envisaged as cause and the lawgiver who reigns over all is obvious. Nevertheless, God is expressly mentioned in the last sentence of the section that is devoted to “false causality.” The three sections on the “error of imaginary causes” and on its psychological explanation explicate the old propositions timor fecit deos and amor fecit deos in their own way. Nietzsche places the emphasis on fear and the wish for security. The “drive for causes” is conditioned by the feeling of fear. “To trace something unknown back to something known”—­even if it is a familiar phantasm or a traditional creed—­“relieves, calms, satisfies, also gives a feeling of power.” For the psychology of morality and religion the principle holds true that “any explanation is better than none.” Most of the “universal Beyond Good and Evil 295 (pp. 237–39), and see Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 33, 58–­59, 233 n. 229 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 24, 45, 188 n. 229]. 55. The Four Great Errors 1–­2 (88–­90). Cf. EH I, 2 (266–­67) and AC 54 (236). See Pp. 49–51.

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feelings” excite the “drive for causes.” Men want to have a reason why they feel bad or good. The unpleasant “universal feelings” are traced back to beings who are hostile to men or are understood as punishment for sins, as “repayment for something that we should not have done, that we should not have been.”56 Whereas the pleasant “universal feelings” are explained as contingent on trust in God, as stemming from a good conscience, or by means of faith, love, hope. The supposed explanations transpose cause and effect. Morality and religion are “completely” subject to the psychology of error: throughout, “truth is confused with the effect of what is believed to be true.”57 The fourth error, the error of free will, is also not investigated in itself or elucidated by way of a theoretical discussion. Nietzsche does not repeat the arguments he has propounded elsewhere. He instead follows the cui bono? and once again has recourse to the agent theory of morality: “the teaching of the will was essentially invented for the purpose of punishment, that is, of wanting-­to-­find-­ guilty,” and it “has its presupposition in the fact that its authors, the priests at the head of ancient polities, wanted to create a right for themselves to inflict punishments—­or wanted to create a right to this for God.” In a word, the doctrine of free will goes back in the final instance to the political-­theological will to power of the priests. “Men were thought ‘free’ in order to be able to be judged, to be punished—­able to become guilty: consequently every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness.” The scope of the fourth “error” is obviously so great—­Nietzsche speaks of the “most fundamental counterfeiting in psychologicis”—­the underlying enmity so profound, clarification in the matter so indispensable, that “we immoralists” are exhorted for the third and final time to bring the philosophical perspective to bear on it. Without regard to political acceptability or social expediency, the innocence of becoming is set against the moral world order. There is “in our eyes no more radical antagonism than that of the theologians, who continue to infect the innocence of becoming with the concept of the ‘moral world order’ through ‘punishment’ and ‘guilt.’ ”58 The “innocence of becoming” does not designate a political program any more than the talk of “extricating” the concepts of guilt and punishment “from the world” implies a practical instruction for transforming social 56. Nietzsche continues, in parentheses: “impudently universalized by Schopenhauer into a proposition in which morality appears as what it is, the real poisoner and slanderer of life: ‘every great pain, be it physical, be it spiritual, tells us what we deserve; for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it.’ Welt als Wille und Vorstellung 2, 666.” 57. The Four Great Errors 3–­6 (pp. 90–­95). 58. The Four Great Errors 7 (pp. 95–­96). Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 19 and 21 (pp. 31–­34, 35–­ 36). See Pp. 122–23 and 187.

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conditions. The immoralist knows that the life of men requires moralities and that no society can do without punishments. But the innocence of becoming is, and is explicitly introduced by Nietzsche as, a counterconcept.59 Its purpose is first of all to negate the “moral world order,” which Nietzsche comprehends as a work of the spirit of revenge, as the revolt of the will to power against its powerlessness before contingency and in the face of its own fatality. The spirit of revenge attempts to become master over the world by way of subjugating it to morality. Whether through a meaning that has recourse to a teleology in conformity with justice, or whether by means of a demand for obedience that has recourse to a highest lawgiver. The teleology promises an intelligible order, the lawgiver promises, in addition, possibilities for political influence, from invocation to sacrificing to empowerment by the sovereign authority. Nietzsche leaves no doubt that the God of morality stands at the center of the quarrel carried out between the innocence of becoming and the moral world order.60 “The concept ‘God’ was hitherto the greatest objection to existence . . .” That the “responsibility in God” is denied, that the “mode of being” must not be traced back to the intention of a “causa prima,” that the world is not a unity instituted by the purposes of the spirit, “this alone is the great liberation—­only with this is the innocence of becoming restored . . .” As long as the “innocence of becoming” stops at the redemption for which Nietzsche formally deploys the term, it admittedly remains a concept of negation. It becomes the expression of affirmation in the highest sense only when, as we have seen, the philosopher in his contemplation of the whole understands how to absorb the greatest objection into the “innocence.” Then the innocence of becoming designates the “redemption” of the world from its neediness of redemption.61 The redemption spoken of at the end of the central chapter concerns the knowledge of the world. That it is not to be mistaken for the improvement 59. The innocence of becoming occurs only twice in Nietzsche’s œuvre—­in Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors 7 and 8 (pp. 96 and 97). In the Nachlaß, the term can be found, alongside a series of further usages, in a note for a possible book title from the time when Nietz­ sche was occupied with the Second Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The Innocence of Becoming. A Signpost to the Redemption from Morality.” Posthumous Fragments Summer 1883 8 [26], KSA 10, p. 343. 60. In Chapter VI, God occurs eight times: in four sections (2, 3, 6, 7) one time each, four times in one section, the concluding one (8). Each of the four sections in which God is mentioned once belongs to the discussion of one of the “four great errors.” 61. The Four Great Errors 8 (pp. 96–­97). Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra III, 4, 24–­28 (p. 209); The Gay Science V, 343 (pp. 573–­74). See Pp. 51, 64–66, 237–38 and cf. Über das Glück des philosophischen Lebens I, 4, 17–­21 (pp. 158–­64) [On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life, I, 4, 17–­21 (pp. 115–­20)].

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of mankind is emphasized in the following chapter, which is the only one that begins with a demand of the philosopher: “One knows my demand of the philosopher, to place himself beyond good and evil—­to have the illusion of moral judgment beneath him.” This demand involves classifying morality as a means, comprehending it as the determination of the “social structure of drives and affects,” and understanding it as a sign language.62 The “Improvers” of Mankind exemplifies the “symptomatology” with reference to two varieties of “improvement-­morality,” by means of which the last of the six chapters stemming from the Will to Power returns to the first.63 Nietzsche contrasts one morality of improvement that aims at the “taming of the beast, man,” with another that serves the “breeding of a particular species of man.” The morality of taming, for which the Christian church has to stand in, aims to curtail the types and level their differences by weakening the strong and assisting the weak, whereas the morality of breeding, represented by the Indian caste order, conversely undertakes the attempt at enhancement as well as an expansion of the spectrum through the augmentation of the strong, the enlargement of distances, and the diminution of the weak. The two examples Nietzsche gives for taming and breeding meet in the fact that the improvement of mankind is supposed to be achieved by making sick. In the case of Christianity it is the “blonde beasts,” in the case of Manu’s legislation it is the “chandala,” who are made sick. If Nietzsche holds against the church that “it corrupted man, it weakened him,” he says of the measures with which Manu sought to preserve the caste order and to counteract the regression to the mean that there is perhaps “nothing more contradictory to our feeling.” Placed in a historical sequence and translated into the great narrative of revaluation and revaluation of revaluation, the morality of taming appears to be a reaction to the morality of breeding, and Christianity is assigned its place as the “revaluation of all Aryan values”: “the immortal chandala-­revenge as the religion of love . . .” But in “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind,” diachrony and opposition do not stand in the foreground. This time it is a matter of what the opposing moralities of improvement have in common: the will to legislation and to changing the world. “The morality of breeding and the morality of taming are, in the means they use to assert themselves, perfectly worthy of each other: we may set down as the supreme proposition that, in order to make morality, one must have the absolute will to its opposite.” Laying stress on the special position of the question that is to be clarified, Nietzsche continues with the confession: “This is the great, the uncanny problem, which I have 62. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil 12, 19, 62, and 203 (pp. 27, 34, 81, and 126–­28). 63. The Problem of Socrates 11 (p. 73); see P. 251.

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pursued the longest: the psychology of the ‘improvers’ of mankind.” The “side leap into the idleness of a psychologist” has as its subject here the revaluer himself, who, obviously with reason, in the preface called the “revaluation of all values” a “question mark so black, so immense, that it casts shadows on the one who sets it down.” Actually Nietzsche had sounded out the “uncanny problem” with fictional distance and thought it through for himself when he made it the core of the Zarathustra drama. Before he declared philosophers to be born lawgivers in Beyond Good and Evil, and attributed to them the responsibility for “discipline and breeding,” he had to gain clarity about the problem in at least three respects: (1) Clarity about the discrepancy between the moral purpose of improvement and the immoral means required for its realization. (2) Clarity about the fact that the lawgiver does not make the affirmation of the whole dependent on his work’s success, i.e., that he does not have to acknowledge to himself that he would not know how to live if he “were not also a seer of that which must come.” (3) Clarity about the attitude the philosopher necessarily adopts toward the enterprise of improving mankind, or about the approach to his task which is appropriate for him.64 In “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind,” Nietzsche expresses himself unapologetically on the first aspect. “A small and at bottom modest fact” gave him his “first access” to the problem: “the pia fraus, the inheritance of all philosophers and priests who ‘improved’ mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius, nor the Jewish and Christian teachers have ever doubted their right to the lie.” Thus the chapter, which begins with a demand of the philosopher, ends with the “formula”: “all means by which mankind was supposed to have been made moral hitherto were immoral from the ground up.” The last words of Twilight of the Idols in the form that the author gave to the book in October 1888, by contrast, read: “I, the teacher of the eternal return . . .” The teacher addresses mankind. He points to the doctrine that he leaves behind for it. The philosophers will know how to understand it as an expression of the highest affirmation. To the nonphilosophers it promises a new faith.65

64. Cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra II, 20, 11–­12 (p. 179). Twilight of the Idols, Forays of an Untimely One 48 (p. 150). EH II, 9 and 10 (295 and 297). 65. The “Improvers” of Mankind 1–­5 (pp. 98–­102); What I Owe to the Ancients 5 (p. 160). See Pp. 217–21 and Was ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?, pp. 228–­30 [What Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, pp. 183–­85].

Translator’s Notes

i. “First” is used in the sense of “preeminent” or “first in rank” when it modifies “addressee”; this is also the case with Nietzsche’s use of the phrase “first virtues” (P. 25), inter alia. ii. Beyond its usual meanings, the term “word,” German Wort, is also used in a particular sense throughout to mean “dictum or saying.” iii. “Nondisposability” translates Unverfügbarkeit, which is the condition of not having something at one’s disposal or command, or of not having control or authority (Verfügungsmacht) over it. iv. Because of their novel usage and importance to the argument, I have chosen to leave the key terms Beisichselbstsein and Außersichsein (along with their variants bei sich, bei sich selbst, and außer sich) untranslated after this passage. Taken literally, they would mean something like “being-­with-­oneself ” and “being-­outside-­oneself,” respectively (though the German particle bei has no exact English equivalent). v. The German word Unmut is related to Mut (“courage” or “heart” in the sense of nerve or boldness), though not as its negation. Instead, Unmut carries a sense of anger, annoyance, and resentment, and may in fact be very mutig (“brave”). Because of its particular importance to the author’s argument, I have opted to leave the term untranslated. vi. “Selfness” translates Selbstigkeit, a Nietzschean word meant to invoke the idea of being for or occupied with oneself, without the negative connotations of “selfishness” (Selbstsucht). vii. “Rush” translates Rausch and is intended broadly to include all states of acute excitation, including those associated with sex, drug and alcohol use, artistic creation, playacting, dancing, being in love, and philosophizing. It is usually translated by “intoxication” or “frenzy,” but I have opted for the cognate “rush” to suggest the term’s breadth. viii. Literally “Nietzsche paints the case on the wall” (Nietzsche malt den Fall an die Wand); cf. Pp. 70, 72, 231, and 264. ix. Herrn (or Herren) is the plural of the German word for “Mr.” (Herr) and is used as a (sometimes sarcastic) honorific, along the lines of sirs, gentlemen, or the French messieurs. x. More literally: “We deny God as [a] God . . .” Throughout, I have opted to leave the words “God” and “Gods” capitalized to reflect the fact that there is no uppercase/lowercase distinction in the German.

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xi. Götzen-­Dämmerung literally means “idols-­twilight” or “idol-­twilight.” I have translated it as Twilight of the Idols because that is how it is best known in English, but the ambiguity as to number should be borne in mind. xii. Geschichte can mean both “history” and “story” in German. Generally I have opted for the former, but in this section the author is playing on the word’s dual sense, and so in some cases the latter is needed.

Index of Names

Aeschylus, 61 Alcibiades, 250n20 Alexander the Great, 22 Alexander VI (pope), 229 Antichrist, 54, 124, 129, 130, 131, 137, 170, 186, 190, 192, 194, 203, 228, 229, 231, 233n14, 235 Ariadne, 99 Aristotle, 18, 22, 33, 66, 124n19, 139, 140n20, 198n25 Asclepius, 81n37, 249n18

Delacroix, Eugène, 40 Deussen, Paul, 85n43, 104n35 Diogenes Laertius, 145n26 Diogenes of Sinope, 145n26 Dionysos, 7, 9, 19, 22, 28, 38, 54, 58, 64, 65–­68, 91, 98–­100, 103, 103n33, 104, 107, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 124, 183, 246, 260–­62 Diotima, 91 Disraeli, Benjamin, 161n3 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 170 Dürer, Albrecht, 186

Bacon, Francis, 39 Barnikol, Ernst, 121n14 Baudelaire, Charles, 40 Bauer, Bruno, 121n14, 168, 187n9 Benardete, Seth, 156n7 Berlioz, Hector, 40 Bernays, Jacob, 66 Bismarck, Otto von, 70, 110n44 Borgia, Cesare, 119, 229 Brandes, Georg, 104n35, 233n14 Brochard, Victor, 37 Brünnhilde, 63 Buddha, 25–­26, 27, 149, 154–­55, 172, 173, 223, 237 Bülow, Hans von, 39 Burckhardt, Jacob, 229n8 Byron, Lord George Gordon, 39

Eliot, George, 151n1 Epicurus, 53, 124n19, 171–­72, 220, 225, 226

Caesar, Julius, 22 Chopin, Frédéric, 43 Confucius, 213, 270 Daniel, 162n4, 231 Darwin, Charles, 79n33

Förster-­Nietzsche, Elisabeth, 4, 5n2, 21–­22, 23n9, 178n21 Francis of Assisi, 169 Freud, Sigmund, 6n4 Friedrich the Great, 206 Friedrich II (Hohenstaufen emperor), 94, 228n6 Friedrich III (emperor), 94 Fuchs, Carl, 85n44, 104n35, 243n4 Gast, Peter (Heinrich Köselitz), 45n21, 92n12, 95n18, 104n35, 233n14, 242n3, 243, 245 Gersdorff, Carl von, 84 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 196, 259–­60 Hartmann, Eduard von, 166n9 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 62 Heidegger, Martin, 254n27 Heine, Heinrich, 38–­39, 43 Heraclitus, 67–­68, 204, 253 Herodotus, 117n6 Hesiod, 158n11

274 Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry d’, 121n14 Homer, 61n3 Horace, 57, 84, 218 Isaiah, 161n3, 163, 193n18, 234n21 Jacolliot, Louis, 214n14, 216n15, 218n19 Jesus, 13, 64, 124–­25, 129–­30, 131, 139, 140, 159, 161, 162, 166–­78, 184, 185, 186, 190, 191, 192, 196, 226, 232 John, 5n2, 134n12, 161n3, 168n11, 178n22, 186, 191–­ 92, 194n19, 226n3, 255n29 John the Baptist, 172 Kant, Immanuel, 23n10, 109, 110n44, 122, 143, 144, 170n13, 212, 230, 259 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 109, 143, 230 Liszt, Franz, 43n18 Lorrain, Claude, 106 Lucretius, 147, 225 Luke, 134n12, 140n21, 168n11, 173n15, 178, 191, 196 Luther, Martin, 109, 110n44, 143, 178n22, 183, 195, 204, 229–­30 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 36, 124n19 Manu, 149, 172n14, 213–­18, 220–­23, 233, 269, 270 Mark, 22n8, 140n21, 168n11, 178n22, 186, 191, 192 Marx, Karl, 121n14 Mary, 158, 177 Matthew, 22n8, 134n12, 140n21, 168n11, 173n15, 176n18, 178n22, 191 Mohammed, 187, 213, 228 Montaigne, Michel de, 84 Montinari, Mazzino, 233n14, 242n3 Moses, 7, 94, 164, 165, 197, 199, 202 Napoleon I (emperor), 109, 123, 206 Naumann, Constantin Georg, 4–­5, 104n35, 233n14, 242n3, 243n4 Nietzsche, Carl Ludwig, 18–­23, 77 Nietzsche, Franziska, 18–­22, 23n9 Odysseus, 55 Osiris, 226 Overbeck, Franz, 95n18, 104n35, 129n1, 212n11 Ovid, 11–­12 Pascal, Blaise, 138 Paul, 6, 92n11, 94, 116, 130, 149, 158, 159, 162, 169, 171n13, 172n14, 185–­96, 199, 201, 202, 206, 214, 223, 225–­27, 231, 236, 237

index Perseus, 234n21 Peter, 186 Petronius, 194 Pilate, Pontius, 191, 194 Pindar, 5, 133 Plato, 11, 21, 53, 56, 61n3, 64, 65, 68, 71, 81n37, 84n42, 91n10, 99n24, 101, 120, 124n19, 141n22, 158, 172n14, 187, 187n9, 197, 204, 213, 215, 218, 220, 221, 221n26, 249, 250n20, 251, 254–­55, 259n41, 270 Podach, Erich F., 233nn14–­15, 235n24 Redeemer, 149, 161, 162, 167–­80, 182, 183, 185–­86, 190, 192, 193, 200, 223, 235, 236, 237, 255 Rée, Paul, 78–­79, 81 Reinhardt, Karl, 99n26 Renan, Ernest, 169, 170, 173, 203n36 Rohde, Erwin, 61n3 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, x, 72n23, 77n31, 94n15, 125, 126, 147, 189n13, 211n8, 233n18 Salis, Meta von, 129n1, 133n7 Salomé, Lou von, 92, 99n26 Schiller, Friedrich, 197 Schmitt, Carl, 27n17 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 35n5, 62–­65, 67n16, 70–­72, 74, 78, 78n32, 81, 85n43, 139, 140n19, 257, 261n45, 267n56 Schumann, Robert, 39 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 259 Shakespeare, William, 39 Socrates, 19, 21, 56, 58n40, 61n3, 62, 64, 65n12, 67, 71, 81–­85, 102, 113, 135, 139, 155–­56, 172, 246, 249–­52 Sommer, Andreas Urs, 6n4, 72n23, 81n37, 145n26, 181n26, 212n11, 233n14, 234n21 Sophocles, 61 Spinoza, Benedictus de, 204, 254n27, 255, 259 Steinhart, Karl, 81–­82n37 Stendhal (Marie-­Henri Beyle), 38 Strabo, 187n11 Strauß, David Friedrich, 28, 70, 168 Strauss, Leo, 22n8, 58nn39–­40, 259n41 Tristan, 41–­42 Voltaire, François-­Marie Arouet, 73, 74n25, 81, 121n14, 123 Wagner, Cosima, 43, 72n23, 99n26 Wagner, Richard, 28, 40–­43, 61–­64, 68–­70, 72n23, 74, 75–­76, 78, 81, 83, 85n43, 91, 107–­8, 109, 244, 245n10 Wellhausen, Julius, 163–­64, 166, 187n11, 197n24 Wilhelm II (kaiser), 181n26, 212n11

index Xenophon, 15n14, 83–­85, 101, 252 Yahweh, 163, 197n24 Yorck von Wartenburg, Paul, 66n14 Zarathustra, ix, 12–­14, 16, 18n2, 24, 26, 29n19, 30–­31, 34, 42, 47, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 68, 69, 81,

275 83, 86n1, 90–­93, 94, 95n18, 96–­102, 105n37, 113, 116–­19, 131, 134, 135, 136–­37, 145, 151, 173, 204, 205, 206, 209, 210, 219, 220, 244, 245, 247, 251, 254n27, 256, 270 Zarathustra (Persian), 94, 116 Zeus, 177 Zola, Émile, 259