Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality: A Revaluation Based in the Dionysian World-View

336 Pages·1999·29.6 MB·English

by  Peter Durno Murray

Peter Dumo Murray
Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality
1749
Monographien und Texte
zur Nietzsche-Forschung
Begründet von
Mazzino Montinari • Wolfgang Müller-Lauter
Heinz Wenzel
Herausgegeben von
Günter Abel (Berlin) • Jörg Salaquarda (Wien)
Josef Simon (Bonn)
Band 42
1999
Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York
Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality
A Revaluation Based in the
Dionysian World-View
by
Peter Durno Murray
w
DE
G
1999
Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York
Anschriften der Herausgeber:
Prof. Dr. Günter Abel
Institut für Philosophie
TU Berlin, Sekr. TEL 12/1
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, D-10587 Berlin
Prof. Dr. Jörg Salaquarda
Institut für Systematische Theologie der Universität Wien
Rooseveltplatz 10, A-1090 Wien
Prof. Dr. Josef Simon
Philosophisches Seminar A der Universität Bonn
Am Hof 1, D-53113 Bonn
Redaktion
Johannes Neininger, Aschaffenburger Str. 20, D-10779 Berlin
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murray, Peter Durno.
Nietzsche's affirmative morality : a revaluation based in the
Dionysian world-view / by Peter Durno Murray.
p. cm. - (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-
Forschung ; Bd. 42)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 3-11-016601-1 (alk. paper)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 - Ethics. I. Title.
II. Series.
B3318.E9M87 1999
170'.92-dc21 99-32855
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging in Publication Data
Murray, Peter Durno:
Nietzsche's affirmative morality : a revaluation based in the Dionysian
world view / by Peter Durno Murray. — Berlin ; New York : de
Gruyter, 1999
(Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung ; Bd. 42)
ISBN 3-11-016601-1
© Copyright 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of transladon into foreign languages. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.
Printed in Germany
Printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin
Binding; Liideritz & Bauer GmbH, Berlin
for Michael Burnie
in appreciation of his friendship and
continued enthusiasm for the possibilities of
Nietzsche's philosophy
What the philosopher is seeking is not truth,
but rather a metamorphosis of the world into
the human. It is a striving for an under-
standing of the world through self-conscious-
ness. It is a striving for an assimilation.
The philosopher is only satisfied with an
anthropomorphic explan-ation of something.
Just as the astrologer regards the world as
serving the individual, the philosopher
regards the world as a human being.
Nietzsche, P 151-KGWnLt, 19[237]

Foreword
Are you satisfied by my concluding with the Dionysian
morality [der Dionysos-Moral]? It occurs to me that this
series of concepts should at no price be omitted from this
vade mecum of my philosophy.1
The "Dionysian morality" to which Nietzsche refers in the above is outlined
in the chapter of Twilight of the Idols entitled What I Owe to the Ancients.
Here, in what he refers to as a handbook of his philosophy, he restates a faith
in the possibility of an "affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest
problems".2 This faith, which is maintained throughout his works, is
primarily opposed to the value systems which are developed from a belief in
the evil of nature and becoming. This book explores the development of an
affirmative ethics or morality in Nietzsche's work, and attempts to
demonstrate that this process is that of an increasingly complicated
articulation of the encounter with otherness.
With the announcement of the basis of affirmation, Nietzsche returns to
the fundamental premise of The Birth of Tragedy - that a Dionysian ground of
pleasure [Lust] underlies all meaning-creation. The articulation of this new
basis for ethics and morality, which shares its model with the Heraclitean
flux of simultaneously creative and destructive becoming, is central to
Nietzsche's philosophical project. This project begins with Nietzsche's
adaptation of the imagery of Greek Dionysianism to describe a contradictory
world of joy and suffering in which joy [Z,«si] is fundamental. This
contradictory relationship, exemplified by the impossibility of denying the
epiphany of Dionysus as the god of the simultaneity of life and death, is
found to be present in the fragments of Greek thinkers who propound the
1 KGB m5, 462.
2 TI, What I Owe to the Ancients, 5.
vm Foreword
metaphysics of the Mysteries. From this beginning in the thought of
Heraclitus, Aeschylus and Empedocles, Nietzsche finds that an affirmative
interpretation of existence has been effective throughout the development of
European culture, albeit driven underground by the promotion of the value
of self-consciousness and the devaluation of the sensible world by
Parmenidean metaphysics and Christian moral dogmatism.
In his early work, Nietzsche also considers that Dionysian thinking might
re-emerge in conjunction with a renewed imagery derived from German
mythology. However, this youthful enthusiasm for the suffering of a
romanticised god and the processes of history is overcome as the essentially
affirmative qualities of his early Dionysianism gradually emerge and mature
into the concepts for which his work is famous - "will to power", "eternal
return" and "amor fati". It is on this basis of the development of the
theoretical role of the affirmative pathos, as one pole of the twofold meaning
of all concepts, that Nietzsche can describe himself as "the last disciple" of
Dionysus and "the teacher of eternal return ...".3
In his later work, Nietzsche would paraphrase his alternative to the denial
of life by advocating that we find in ourselves "the eternal joy [Lust] of
becoming" as the basis of an affirmative [Jasagen], "tragic", "Dionysian" or
"noble" morality.4 In fact, it is the exploration of the self as a particular
instance of universality of Lust that ultimately introduces an ethical
component into meaning. This basis is considered to be the state of
purposeless interestedness in life, as opposed to the disinterested
contemplation basic to Schopenhauer's ethics. It is a state of constantly
approaching what is beyond individual existence in an attempt to assimilate
the world into meaning, and is opposed to the belief that the primary
moment of human existence is solely a meaning-creating negation performed
by self-consciousness, in which affectivity must be overcome. For, while
Nietzsche fully agrees that the creation of conceptual meaning requires
measurement and limitation, he suggests that all concepts also include an
account of the subject's encounter with the universality of Lust. He finds
that, due to the inescapability of the human basis of knowledge, this
concurrent meaning should always be conceived of in terms of otherness.
The direction of this expansiveness, outwards towards what is beyond the
3 TI, What I Owe to the Ancients, 5.
4 TI, What I Owe to the Ancients, 5.
Foreword IX
control of the individual will, towards what is not willed, coincides with a
demand by otherness that the subject attests to their interpretation through
the creation of a bipolar, particular and universal meaning. The creation of
this meaning is the primary cognitive mode of human existence, which, if it
can preserve the underlying affirmative affect, forms a complete affirmative
orientation towards the self and otherness One pole is that of a universality
of Lust, while at the other pole is history or culture, an interpretation-world,
which is available at a conceptual level, and which a subject limits in creating
a specific fate, or a history of meanings.
From the twofold basis in Lust and in the interpretation-world,
Nietzsche's morality revalues the concepts most valued in Christian-Platonic
thought. Ultimately he is concerned with the relationship humanity has
with the infinite and the divine. Nietzsche does not deny the importance of
these epiphanic moments, he is opposed to the anti-natural meaning
attributed to them. In the process of the revaluation of the basis of these
moments, the role played by the Dionysian imagery is most important,
identifying the coincident manifestation of the universal, affirmative
affectivity which underlies and forms a complementary opposition
[Gegensatz] with each interpretation-world.
Interpretive thinking involves making judgements concerning existence
on the basis of pleasure [Lust] and displeasure [Unlust], which is to say, on
the basis of the feelings which are the traditional components of Western
ethics since Plato. This twofold basis in affectivity is the essential "Yes" and
"No" of human existence, which describes the fundamental impulse of
existence outwards, with an immediate complement in the interpretation-
world. The content of such judgements are determined by the prior infinity
of interpretations of pleasure and displeasure of our "fatality".
Nietzsche suggests that this fatality is a conceptual counterpart which
accompanies the unfathomability which is characteristic of the immersion in
Lust. He finds that the generalised otherness whifh history becomes, when
viewed from the perspective he calls "Life", makes certain moral
pronouncements fundamental to the experience. These pronouncements
concern the impossibility of determining the meaning of the existence of
others. He opposes a notion of power becoming gracious in its acceptance of
otherness, to that power which would seek, in the context of determining the
meaning of Life, to dominate existence. This is to advocate the state of
ethical being of a specifically human relation to history which allows us to
X Foreword
recognise our own historical specificity, where this thought arises as a result
of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the
same.
By refusing to become the same, the other necessarily rejects the attempt
at overpowering by becoming the cause of a meaning which at the affective
level is resistance, but which at the universal level is "otherness". However,
this is not an abstract idea which we could choose to believe or not. The
other, by resisting becoming part of our interpretation, makes us face a
limitation of the feeling of power which arises from the belief there could be
an identity of existence and thought. This refusal occurs through the a priori
demand of the conjointly particular and universal otherness that we
accompany all meaning with that of the priority of otherness and in this way
liberate otherness from the dominatory power of the will to truth. The
demand of the other is that we should will to become who we are, which is
to distinguish ourselves from others and from history, and in so doing
distinguish others from our interpretation. This can only occur as a result of
the refusal of others to accept our judgement through a demand that we
admit our dependence on otherness for meaning. In this sense, others assume
the place of divinity in offering us the only source which can attest to the
impossibility of a particular or universal correspondence of truth with our
ideas. Others demand that we give up the power derived from the illusion of
knowing; that we revalue the worth of the will to truth. It is a demand for
intellectual integrity; for an end to masks, disguises and secret worlds. It is a
demand that we show ourselves and our world, saying: "It was my hand that
threw the dice - thus I willed it".
April, 1999 Peter D. Murray