Pious Nietzsche: Decadence and Dionysian Faith

292 Pages·2007·1.359 MB·English

by  Bruce Ellis Benson

Philosophy
Religion
Pious
Bruce Benson has turned Bruce Ellis Benson puts forward the surpris- Benson
Nietzsche
out a provocative and major ing idea that Nietzsche was never a godless
study of nietzsche, present-
nihilist, but was instead deeply religious. But
ing nothing less than the
how does Nietzsche affirm life and faith in the
prayers of tears of Friedrich
midst of decadence and decay? Benson looks
nietzsche.This ground-
carefully at Nietzsche’s life history and views
breaking work, which dem-
onstrates the deeply religious of three decadents, Socrates, Wagner, and Paul, Decadence and Dionysian Faith
character of nietzsche as a to come to grips with his pietistic turn. Key to
new religiosity that issues this understanding is Benson’s interpretation
from his critique of the reli-
of the powerful effect that Nietzsche thinks
gion that he had inherited, P
music has on the human spirit. Benson claims
will make us think again
i
that Nietzsche’s improvisations at the piano
about nietzsche no less than o
were emblematic of the Dionysian or frenzied,
about religion.
—John D. Caputo ecstatic state he sought,but was ultimately un- u
able to achieve, before he descended into mad-
s
Benson clearly formulates ness. For its insights into questions of faith,
what even the most perspica-
decadence, and transcendence, this book is an
n
cious readers only vaguely
important contribution to Nietzsche studies,
suspected: the subterra-
i
philosophy, and religion.
nean link between Paul and e
nietzsche.not only was
t
nietzsche’s life-asserting BrucE ElliS BENSoN is Professor and
z
stance deeply Paulinian, Paul chair of the Philosophy Department at Whea-
s
himself, in his violent appeal ton college. He is author of Graven Ideolo-
to love beyond law, was a c
gies: Nietzsche,Derrida, and Marion on Mod-
nietzschean avant la lettre.
ern Idolatryand The Improvisation of Musical h
nothing will be the same in
Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. He is
Paul studies and in nietzsche e
editor (with Kevin Vanhoozer and James K.
studies after Benson’s explo-
sive short-circuit between A. Smith) of Hermeneutics at the Crossroads
two opposed traditions. (available from indiana university Press).
—SlavoJ ŽiŽek
Indiana series in
the Philosophy of Religion
Merold Westphal, editor
INDIANA
University Press
cover illustration: Friedrich
Bruce Ellis Benson
Bloomington & Indianapolis Nietzsche, 1875. Photo by
INDIANA
F. Hartmann, Basel. c. Klassik
http://iupress.indiana.edu
StiftungWeimar, Goethe-Schiller-
1-800-842-6796 Archiv, GSA 101/17.
Pious Nietzsche
INDIANA SERIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Merold Westphal, general editor
Pious Nietzsche
Decadence and
Dionysian Faith
BRUCE ELLIS BENSON
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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© 2008 by Bruce Ellis Benson
All rights reserved
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benson, Bruce Ellis, date
Pious Nietzsche : decadence and Dionysian faith / Bruce Ellis Benson.
p. cm. — (Indiana series in the philosophy of religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34964-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21874-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich
Wilhelm, 1844–1900. 2. Religion. I. Title.
B3318.R4B46 2008
193—dc22
2007021396
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09 08
CONTENTS
Preface: Reading Nietzsche vii
Acknowledgments xvii
List of Abbreviations xix
Introduction: Improvising Pietism 3
PART 1 From Christian Pietism to Dionysian Pietism
ONE The Prayers and Tears of Young Fritz 15
TWO The Euthanasia of Christianity 27
THREE The Piety of Zarathustra 41
PART 2 Profiles in Decadence
FOUR Nietzsche’s Decadence 55
FIVE Socrates’ Fate 79
SIX Wagner’s Redemption 97
SEVEN Paul’s Revenge 119
PART 3 Nietzsche’s New Pietism
EIGHT Deconstructing the Redeemer 141
NINE Nietzsche’s Musical Askêsis 165
TEN We, Too, Are Still Pious 189
Notes 217
Works Cited 249
Index 261
v

PREFACE: READING NIETZSCHE
If you should come round to writing about me . . . be sensible
enough—as nobody has been till now—to characterize me, to
“describe”—but not to “evaluate.” This gives a pleasant neu-
trality: it seems to me that in this way one can put aside one’s
own passionate emphasis, and that it offers all the more to the
more subtle minds. I have never been characterized, either as a
psychologist, or as a writer (including poet), or as the inventor
of a new kind of pessimism (a Dionysian pessimism, born of
strength, which takes pleasure in seizing the problem of existence
by the horns), or as an Immoralist (the highest form, till now, of
“intellectual rectitude,” which is permitted to treat morality as
an illusion, having itself become instinct and inevitability).1
S
o Nietzsche writes—near the end of his productive life—provid-
ing his own guidelines for interpreting him. It is clear that he des-
perately wants to be interpreted in certain ways—as psychologist,
writer, poet, inventor of Dionysian pessimism, and immoralist. But, more
than that, he wants to be interpreted by someone who has set “one’s
own passionate emphasis” aside. Presumably, then, the ideal Nietzsche
interpreter is a cool, detached observer, one who only describes and thus
keeps herself out of the picture. Indeed, this idea of proper interpretation
fits well with Nietzsche’s own worries about how he has been received so
far: “This is, in the end, my ordinary experience and, if you will, the orig-
inality of my experience. Whoever thought he had understood something
of me, had made himself something out of me after his own image—not
uncommonly an antithesis to me; for example, an ‘idealist’—and whoever
had understood nothing of me, denied that I need be considered at all”
(EH “Books” 1; KSA 6:300). Tracy B. Strong quotes the first part of this
passage and then goes on to say: “I take this warning seriously.”2
Certainly it is a warning. But does not Nietzsche provide us with
one of the most difficult cases of interpretation? Can we even speak of a
“right” interpretation of Nietzsche, on the basis of what Nietzsche himself
says? Should our quest be one of finding/explicating the “real” Nietzsche
or should that quest be something else?
vii
PREFACE
The Quest for the Historical Nietzsche
For at least the past half-century3—beginning with Walter Kaufmann’s
Herculean efforts to rescue Nietzsche from various sorts of strange inter-
pretations and uses—there has been a remarkable attempt to get clear as
to what Nietzsche really did say, as well as what those sayings could pos-
sibly mean.4 That such an effort was needed stems from myriad aspects:
the intentional and unintentional lack of clarity in Nietzsche’s texts, the
“holding hostage” of Nietzsche’s writings by his cunning but philosophi-
cally challenged sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the use of Nietzsche
for Nazi propaganda, and the ways in which Nietzsche’s thought chal-
lenged (and continues to challenge) not just the conclusions of most phi-
losophers but the very philosophical enterprise and its basic logical prem-
ises.5 No better example could be given of this sort of project than the
title of the text What Nietzsche Really Said, an illuminating popular book
by two highly respected Nietzsche scholars.6 The efforts of Nietzsche
scholars over the past fifty years have yielded exemplary Nietzschean
scholarship that has clarified much of what can be clarified. Today we are
far from the situation of needing to “rescue” Nietzsche.
Or are we? Even today the interpreter of Nietzsche is faced with at
least four significant complications, ones that concern not just our posi-
tion vis-à-vis Nietzsche but also Nietzsche’s own views. First, Emmanuel
Levinas has made many of us aware of the conceptual violence that is
seemingly endemic to the very hermeneutical enterprise.7 I take Levinas’s
concern seriously. To encounter Nietzsche is to encounter an “other” that
(to speak with Hans-Georg Gadamer) “breaks into my ego-centeredness
and gives me something to understand.”8 Yet it may be safe to say that any
interpretation of Nietzsche—simply because it’s an interpretation—ends
up doing at least some sort of conceptual violence to Nietzsche’s thought.
Although Gadamer at one point insists that, in reading a text, the inter-
preter “disappears—and the text speaks,”9 such is never the case. The
text may indeed speak, but the interpreter never disappears—for the
interpreter is the very possibility condition for the text to speak at all.
No texts come to us “uninterpreted.”
A second complication is Nietzsche’s own so-called perspectivism and
his criticism of the “true world.” Here the problem is not merely one
of sifting through the extant texts that seem at times contradictory or
viii
PREFACE
incoherent with the goal of discovering the real Nietzsche. Even if there
were something analogous to the “Jesus Seminar” (a “Nietzsche Seminar”
perhaps) to give a final pronouncement (deciding, say, once and for all
that Nietzsche really was a Polish noble [EH “Wise” 3; KSA 6:628] and
identifying which fragments of the Nachlass truly represent his “final”
thinking), such a pronouncement would be at odds with Nietzsche’s own
thought. If Nietzsche is right in denying the existence of the “true world”
(TI IV; KSA 6:80–81), then claims to “perspectives” of what we might
call the “true Nietzsche” become problematic. Certainly any pretension
to having the ultimate perspective on Nietzsche—whether defined as
Platonic eidos or Kantian noumenon—would be self-defeating, since such
a claim would be profoundly un-Nietzschean. But the problem cuts more
deeply than that. For Nietzsche’s stated view actually undercuts itself. If
there are only “perspectives” and no “true” Nietzsche, then Nietzsche
neither has any privileged perspective on “himself” nor can he continue
to speak in such terms. There are only interpretations of interpretations,
traces of traces. Despite that, most interpretations of Nietzsche at least
imply that they are giving us a perspective of the “true Nietzsche,” and
the usual implication is that this particular perspective is somehow closer
to the “true Nietzsche.” Moreover, Nietzsche himself seems to be seek-
ing after what we might call “the highest possible perspective.” In other
words, Nietzsche is not simply a perspectival relativist who judges all per-
spectives of equal validity. Even for Nietzsche, then, some perspectives
are better than others. Better? In what way better? There are at least two
ways of answering that question. On the one hand, some perspectives are
better in the sense that they promote life. Living by certain perspectives,
for Nietzsche, simply brings about a better quality of life. On the other
hand, some perspectives are more “true.” This leads us to a third aspect
of Nietzsche interpretation.
That Nietzsche interpreters find it so difficult to leave behind the
quest for the historical Nietzsche demonstrates that we clearly have
not left the correspondence theory of truth behind (something that
Nietzsche’s account would seem to suggest we do). For the notion of the
“true Nietzsche” still functions (to use a term of Edmund Husserl’s) as
a kind of idea “in the Kantian sense,”10 a regulative ideal toward which
to strive. And it’s hard to imagine any text of Nietzschean scholarship
without that goal (even if a more minimal sort). When we say that certain
interpretations of Nietzsche are more “true,” we do not mean that in
ix