Nietzsche's Aesthetic Turn: Reading Nietzsche After Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida PDF
Preview Nietzsche's Aesthetic Turn: Reading Nietzsche After Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida
NIETZSCHE'S AESTHETIC TURN Reading Nietzsche after Heidegger, Deleuze, and Derrida J A M ES J. W I N C H E S T ER Bogazici University Library II II11 III III III 39001103265446 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS NIETZSCHE'S AESTHETIC TURN SUNY SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY DENNIS J. SCHMIDT, EDITOR 32,1^ - \U55 Published by '\,lfSjQ 139 tf State University of New York Press,'Albany © 1994 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by E. Moore Marketing by Dana E. Yanulavich Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Winchester, James J. Nietzsche's aesthetic turn : reading Nietzsche after Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida / James J. Winchester. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-2117-1 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-2118-X (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900—Aesthetics. I. Title. II. Series. B3317.W55 1994 193—dc20 94-4928 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 FOR EVE, LOU, FRANQOISE, GENE, AND RUDI BOGAZigi III III III III 111 § ". * £ ^ < s Wr UNJVERSiTESI KUTUPHANESI ™™ ^/W ^ CONTENTS Preface ix Abbreviations xix Introduction 1 1. The Eternal Return and the Plurality of Nietzsche's Voices 9 2. A System of Will to Power? 35 3. Deleuze's Reading of Nietzsche As a Pluralist 71 4. Philosophical Constructions in the Age of the Loss of Absolutes 87 5. Necessary Fictions 107 6. Nietzsche's Aesthetic Criteria 123 7. Aesthetics and Morality: The Moral Implications of the Aesthetic Turn 151 Notes 167 Index 203 vii PREFACE I Thinking that they are doing Nietzsche a service, scholars instinctively strive to peer beneath what appears to them to be the tangled surface of his writings—seeking to elucidate his "truths" and find the "system" underlying what they often experience as a bewildering plethora of voices, literary creations, styles, and mythi cal settings. Zarathustra is the best known of Nietzsche's characters, but there are many others. Animals, demons, a variety of women, priests, blond beasts, and overmen inhabiting mountains, forests, caves, and even sailing the seas: these are only a few of the characters and settings found throughout his works. Even when Nietzsche "writes philosophically" and clearly identifies a position in the text as his own, he confounds our expec tations by speaking more directly and personally than is normally commended by philosophical custom. Traditionally, scholars are not interested in one person's view, but the truth towards which all strive. Nietzsche often stresses the partiality of his views. And his views are subject to change. For example, Plato is at one time called the practitioner of a "noble way of thinking," one who knew how to remain master over his instincts (BGE, 14). Later on, in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche claims to be "a complete skep tic" about Plato. He writes that he had never been able to admire the artist in Plato as scholars are prone to do. Plato throws, all stylistic forms together and is therefore a decadent in his style (TI, "Ancients," 2). ix x Preface In these two references we see yet another challenge facing the interpreter. Nietzsche's writings often take the form of conversa tions, debates, or analyses of historical figures such as Plato, but these are not done in the style to which we are accustomed. These are not scholarly dissections of the conceptual underpinnings of their thoughts; more often they are psychological or even quasi- physiological investigations of these thinkers' characters—usually punctuated with humorous barbs. In the struggle to encapsulate Nietzsche's thought, it is tempt ing to turn to the famous, in some cases infamous, concepts such as "will to power," "overman," or "eternal return," but these notions do not appear all that often in Nietzsche's published writings. The overman or superman [Ubermensch) appears in neither On The Genealogy of Morals nor in Beyond Good and Evil. Eternal return is mentioned by name in only a few of Nietzsche's works. Sometimes it is attributedto Zarathustra, but at other times Nietzsche identifies it as his own doctrine. Nietzsche discusses the will to power more frequently than any of his other notions; yet a careful study shows, I think, that there is no single or final interpretation of the doctrine in Nietzsche's work. If these difficulties (as these aspects of Nietzsche's thought are often experienced) were not enough, we can add at least one more. Nietzsche calls himself the philosopher of masks; he maintains that masks rise naturally around all deep thinkers (BGE, 40). Great thinkers, he asserts, write books in order to hide themselves! All of these things may seem like obstacles to a philosophical understand ing of Nietzsche's thought if by "philosophical" we mean a clear and unambiguous understanding of the systematic structure of Nietzsche's truths. Ironically, many nonscholars find that on the surface Nietzsche's writings are much more straightforward and compre hensible than other philosophers' and certainly more comprehen sible than many of his interpreters. His sentences and paragraphs are, for the most part, very clear; yet scholarly attempts to sum marize his thought are the source of much confusion. What is it about the secondary literature on Nietzsche that seems, almost inevitably, to lead to this obfuscation? Nietzsche believed that his reevaluation of truth would be one of the hardest things to under stand about his work: "the falsity of a judgment is for us not an
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