Karl White writes,
I was wondering if I might share a philosophical irritant. I was recently in correspondence with a well-established Nietzsche scholar, a nice guy with a recent book out. Thing is, like all Nietzsche scholars, or so it seems to me, he confidently proclaimed that all other Nietzsche scholars had overlooked the ‘real Nietzsche’ and that his book would ‘surprise them’.Now obviously the critical enterprise regarding all philosophers should be ongoing, but it strikes me that in regard to certain thinkers, and Nietzsche in particular, there is a never-ending production line of tomes declaring the ‘real thinker’. Now while Nietzsche fans might say this is a validation of Nietzsche’s own ‘perspectivism’ and so on, I am drifting closer to the possible view that on the contrary it may also signal a fundamental incoherence at the heart of Nietzsche’s ‘project’. If there are so many views and with no end in sight to their formulation, then it is not possible that the subject in question is a ‘Sphinx without a secret’?Curious if you’ve any views.
Good to hear from you, Karl.
In BG & E, Part One, Section 6, Nietzsche says that every great philosophy is the personal confession of its author (Selbstbekenntnis ihres Urhebers). I believe he is right about that, and that the observation applies also to us lesser lights who are unlikely to produce any great philosophy: an ineluctable subjectivity attaches to our quest to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. I would add that the observation also applies to the efforts of the commentators to penetrate the Nietzschean corpus.
They see in Nietzsche what interests them, and they find what they can exploit for their own projects. Three Germans from same generation, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Alfred Baumler read our man in very different ways. My post Nietzsche and National Socialism, which may add to your irritation, sports a link to an excerpt from Baumler. Heidegger has two fat volumes on Nietzsche. Have you read them? How about Jaspers’s book? And then there are the analytic Nietzsche enthusiasts. Have you read Laird Addis? He’s “Iowa School” (Gustav Bergmann and associates). I was impressed by the former’s Natural Signs, but I haven’t been able to acquire his Nietzsche book, a review of which is here. If you have a copy I will buy it from you should you want to sell it. Same goes for the book by Jaspers, whether in English or in German. I’m a big fan of Jaspers. In fact, my own philosophical position shares deep affinities with his.
You are right to be irritated by those who claim to have laid bare the “real Nietzsche.” A deep thinker, a tormented soul, whose deep entanglement in problems that are lived and felt and not merely thought about, is unlikely to arrive at a nice, neat, pat view with an easily discernible sense. There is no “real Nietzsche,” or at least no such person accessible to the academics who live from philosophy rather than for it.
Is the multiplicity of interpretations a validation of Nietzsche’s perspectivism? No. An incoherent doctrine cannot be validated. I explore the problem in a numvber of posts, all of which require re-thinking and revision.
“I am drifting closer to the possible view that on the contrary it may also signal a fundamental incoherence at the heart of Nietzsche’s ‘project’. If there are so many views and with no end in sight to their formulation, then it is not possible that the subject in question is a ‘Sphinx without a secret’?”
I sympathize with your drift, Karl, and thanks for writing.
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